Meru

Chapter 10

Ruchi only knew one way to fight fear. She would face it head on.

The best way to stop fearing something was to understand its constituents, its motivations.

She was also not good at taking orders. So she circumvented the ban on scientific examinations of the precious cargo in the lab.

The solution to Ruchi's problems was an undocumented non-intrusive scan.

The DWARAKA had just initiated FTL travel to speed up their journey to Sudarshana. So she would only have a short window of time to achieve her goal.

The scanning units on the robotic arms of the Mass Spectrometer, moved around the head inside the glass case, pulsing green and blue, as it analysed its subject.

Even after she assured herself many times that her fears were irrational, she half expected the thing to open its eyes and stare at her hatefully.

The robotic arms stopped their scan and a nearby screen flashed the results in tabular form.

Ruchi read it with great interest.

Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.

A proto-human, but a high evolved one. How is that even possible?

She was about to switch on the Carbon Analyser to test its age when she noticed a sudden dip in temperature. When you worked in the lab by yourself, it was not unusual to find that the room had grown cold.

But there is cold, and then there is freezing your eyelids off.

As she watched on in surprise, frost crept over glassy surfaces and equipment. Everything frosted except for the glass case which enclosed the head.

"What the?" Ruchi said.

A throbbing vein appeared on the creature's forehead.

She shivered as she placed a hand on the case to check its temperature.

Normal.

Ruchi moved her face closer to study the vein that had come to life.

Its eyes opened suddenly, startling Ruchi. She stepped away from the case.

"Shit. Shit. Shit," she repeated.

Its mouth moved.

"What the..." Ruchi blurted.

The phenomenon unfolding in front of her, jarred the rational scientific mind she had carefully cultivated over the years.

She pressed her ear to the glass to catch its muffled utterings.

"OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE!," it said.

The iron grip of fear crushed the air out of her lungs.

"Outside outside." The voice now filled the room.

"How is this possible?" She felt like she would lose control of her bowels.

"Outside outside.:"

Ruchi ran out of the room not because of the ministrations off the head, but due to sheer panic.

She froze as a her eyes encountered a gory sight. A powerful cry built up in her throat.

The body of a crew member was harpooned to the door with a mining gun used to blast rocks, its head squashed like a watermelon, the pale skin covered in lacerations.

Ruchi looked back into the lab. The reanimated head smiled at her.

She turned her attention back to the body. After taking a moment to summon every last reserve of courage in her soul, she walked up to it and wiped away the gore caking the name-patch on the maintenance suit. It read 'Chanchal'.