Connected Infection

45. Gobi - Chapter 30.1

30

18:44 (UTC+8)

The world shifted around Simon Parfitt.

He opened his eyes. A tanned male face peered back.

'Can you hear me?' said a voice, far, far away, despite the proximity of the lips which spoke.

'You'd better not be a Ho,' Simon tried to say, but it came out in a sludge of consonant-less syllables.

****

When he opened his eyes again the world was still moving, bouncing gently up and down. He was back in the USSIME stairwell, only this time, rather than the dim emergency lights, sunlight shone in from above, and the stairs and walls around him were blackened and charred. Simon blinked at a face below him, a face that smiled back, and was connected to a soldier's body that appeared to be carrying him.

'Hi,' said the face.

'Hi,' Simon replied.

****

The next time his eyes opened he found himself lying in a patch of cool shade, squinting at the brightness of the sky overhead. He tried to lift his head, but it hurt too much, so he just tilted it sideways. He could see a lot of desert, and the remains of buildings, and tanks and helicopters. People were moving around nearby, most of them soldiers, but others from the Red Cross, and yet more in suits which seemed inappropriate for the heat.

'Anna,' he tried to say, but nobody seemed to notice. 'Where's Anna?'

He searched his memory for the last thing saved, and came up with panicked flight from the ceiling of fire plunging towards them down the stairwell. He had made it through a door, into a corridor, and then...

Nothing.

'Has anybody seen Anna?' he croaked. 'Is she okay?'

One of the Red Cross men looked over. 'Can we get some water over here?' he asked somebody else, but then moved out of sight without answering the question.

Simon groaned. He would have to find her himself; make sure she was okay and wasn't still down in the bowels of the facility, trapped under rubble and debris somewhere.

But when he tried to move, his head throbbed so painfully that he could only collapse back onto the stretcher. It was useless.

And then he noticed that there was something by his hand, under the blanket with him. He took hold of it and brought it up to his eyes.

It was the flow-regulator cap he had taken from the fuel canister and thrown down to Anna in the reactor chamber.

She had given it to him, to let him know she was okay.

Simon let out a sigh of relief, closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax. She was probably off somewhere inspecting the damage the facility had sustained. After all, she was one of GASP's Project Coordinators. He smiled to himself as oblivion closed in again, his last idle moments of consciousness spent considering how great she looked in a shredded blouse.