Starship: Rogue

Chapter Twenty-Five

The door to her cell, opened with a clunk, and Rowan scrambled to her feet as two guards walked in. "Turn around and face the wall," one of them instructed, and Rowan did as she was told. "Hands above your head."

The guards came over and unlocked her shackles, then stepped back. "Put the clothes we've left on your floor on," the other one said, and the door shut behind them once more.

Rowan turned back around and picked up the bundle they'd left on ground beside her. She shook it out, revealing the same shapeless grey shirt and grey leggings she'd seen the other prisoners wearing. She pulled off her ballgown, which, at this point, was more of a collection of rags somehow clinging together, and shrugged on the new clothes. They were scratchy and too big, but Rowan figured it wasn't important.

A few minutes later, the door opened again, and two different guards marched in, cuffed her hands back together, and then marched her outside. Neither of them said a word as they pushed her down hallway after hallway, and she was almost glad. If they'd talked, she might have been tempted to speak her mind and tell them exactly what she was thinking, which would have just gotten her into trouble.

The men stopped in front of a sturdy door, unlocked it, uncuffed her, then slammed the door shut behind her. She heard a lock click into place.

Rowan looked around, taking in the room they'd flung her into. It was obviously a lab, but without most of the tools most labs contained. There were no metal tools, nothing sharp, no chemical compounds that could be mixed together into anything immediately dangerous, and, instead of any electronics, there was paper everywhere.

There were also two people inside, a guy and a girl, both around her age. Rowan guessed the girl was the biochemist Dr. Beech had told her about, and the guy was probably the engineer. Both of them looked up when she was flung inside. "What do you do?" the girl asked. Not, what's your name? or Who are you? but What do you do?

"Geneticist," Rowan answered. "And environmentalist."

"Oh," the guy said. "Good. It means you won't get moved around. None of us are either of those things. I'm an engineer and a mathematician, and she's a biochemist." The girl gave a little wave.

Just then, the door slammed open again, and Dr. Beech was shoved inside. "Ah," he said when he saw Rowan. "It's you." To the others, he explained. "She's in the cell next to mine. Okay, let's get down to business. Today, we've been asked to start working on a new bioweapon."

The biochemist looked up, her eyes wide. "But this isn't a biosecurity lab!"

"I don't think they care," the engineer told her. "So we'll just have to be careful, yeah?"

The girl nodded, and they both turned to Dr. Beech, who picked up a notebook and a pen. "Anyone have any ideas? We really need some, cause they won't let us out of here until we do."

The biochemist spoke up. "What if we were to make a dispersing device that would make things airborne?" she asked, and Rowan felt her stomach lurch. The last thing she wanted was to help the Red Night make a weapon that destructive, but, like Dr. Beech had pointed out, they didn't have a choice.

"I can work on the actual design," the engineer said. "If you could all work on how to make chemicals and viruses actually transmit through the air, how to disperse them, and how to make sure their effects aren't altered by the change in state."

The biochemist slipped over to Rowan. "We can work on the first and the third," she said smiling shyly.

"Okay," Rowan agreed. She would hate herself for this, but she didn't want to put her companions at risk.