Farheen submitted the final order for the nutritional semi-fluid gel, which she had spread out over a dozen suppliers and shipped to as many different locations.
She pursed her lips as she sat back in the chair and looked up at the static images of Subject 1101 that now lived on the screens in the computer lab in what had become the main base of operations for the research team outside of the containment room.
There had to something they were overlooking, she thought as she turned her attention to the other side of the room.
Her eyes wandered over the many screens that were playing the news station coverage of the missing person incident, which was rapidly gaining national attention and had already been assigned to an entire row of computers for monitoring. Instead she found herself drawn to the looped video from the operation that still played in the background, the explosion rippling through that preserved digital O.R. again and again.
She hesitated for a moment before a thought struck through her like lightning.
She whirled toward the door to the lab, a spike of adrenaline propelling her forward.
Rose looked up with calculating curiosity as Farheen burst through the door and almost jumped out of her skin, clearly expecting the head researcher to be with the subject and not in the hallway a floor down from the holding cell.
"Rose, good, come look at this," Farheen said, out of breath not from the exertion but from the growing certainty that her revelation was correct.
Rose raised an eyebrow behind her lenses, but followed without comment as Farheen led her back into the computer room. The junior researcher stopped at the control station briefly to shuffle the images on the screens so that the two that she wanted were next to each other.
"Look here," she said, pointing as the recorded video of Subject 1101's post-operation brain structure flickered onto the largest screen. A second later the loop from the O.R. security cameras followed onto the screen beside it.
"We have been stuck on this blast because we do not understand where it came from, yes? Pearl certainly has never shown a pseudo-psychokinetic capability like this before," Farheen began. Rose nodded slowly as she turned her attention to the videos, one hand coming to rest on her hip.
"But what if we are looking at the wrong instigator?" Farheen explained, her words picking up speed as her theory gained momentum. "Look at the residual structure of Pearl around the brain," she swallowed, hands shaking, "what if, rather than being a new control configuration, this shape is the result of Pearl being blasted, blown up and away from the brain like a balloon?"
A pen clattered to the floor and Rose took a half step closer to the screens.
"You mean to say it wasn't Pearl," Rose said, her voice soft but tight like a coiled spring.
"Yes. The one possibility that we have not yet considered—that the blast originated from the human subject, not the symbiont," Farheen confirmed, her eyes on Rose.
Rose stared at the screens, eyes flicking from the security feed to the brain and back again.
"Incredible," she whispered.
The air was painted red as the emergency siren wailed and warning lights bled across the walls.
-----------------
Victor heard glass shattering through the closed metal door before his hand had fully gripped the knob.
Seconds later the door surged off its hinges, pushed from the inside, taking him along with it as it flew across the hallway.
YOU ARE READING
Pearl
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