Parasite (Completed)║🏳️‍🌈 LGBT+

20: The Hangar

Jaya near-rips the curtains aside and storms into the surgery area. Five of the stretchers are empty. On the sixth lies a man.

My love. Seemingly asleep, possibly comatose, still Shiro shines brighter than the sun.

Jaya leans over Shiro and prods a finger to his neck, searching for a pulse. "He's alive. Barely."

The lack of feeding tube or monitoring equipment sends me into a panic; either Shiro is not in a coma or he's been dumped here to expire. Shy is crumpled on the floor next to the stretcher, a section of her hair crudely shaved and sporting a trail of ugly stitches. She looks up at me with unfocussed eyes. It takes all of my restraint not to scoop Shiro into my arms.

A cry from beyond the surgery alcove has me whipping around. Jaya is on the ground, squirming underneath the azalea guard, now fully conscious and punching Jaya's face with unmitigated glee. 

I throw myself towards them but a gloved hand catches my uniform from behind. Another guard has appeared, and another hoves into my peripheral vision. Guards pile into the lab in a flood of azalea-pink.

Shiro lies on a stretcher, his sister curled in a ball next to him. Daiyu is lost forever. Jaya sobs as gloved guards pin them to the lab floor. 

It's over. 

I gaze at Shiro's sleeping form. Goodbye, my love.

A crepitation. 

A high-pitched whistling. 

Then, a sickening boom tears through the air.

The building shakes, sending us all toppling. Earsplitting roaring rends the air around us. My ears ring with the noise.

Guards fly backwards and bounce against the lab walls in a splash of pink. Glassware tumbles and shatters. Chips of recycrete dust rain down on us.

An explosion.

Another rumble jolts us, sending guards scattering again. The lab's iris scanners wink green.

Now or never.

My ears throbbing, I drag Shy up by her shirt and ram the stretcher through a cluster of panic-stricken guards, whisking Shy after me.

Jaya follows hard on my heels, slamming open door after door until they find another lab. They toss me the data key. I can barely hear them for the ringing in my ears, but I make out the words: "I'm getting Daiyu out."

I stow the data key in my sock, words of thanks trapped by the lump my throat. I offer Jaya a teary smile and hurry along the debris-strewn corridor towards the foyer, and the safety of Eris-1's streets beyond.

Except the foyer is no longer there.

A yawning gap opens up before me. An explosion has taken out the entire atrium. Caving walls and twisted steel are all that remain of the magnificent brick-and-glass ground floor. Sections of the building's vast underground maze peeks up through clouds of dust. Isamu Kida's glorious facade is now a pile of rubble exposing the dull recycrete and steel underneath.

I whirl around searching for guards but they've long-vanished, keen to evade wardens now that the entire building is prised open for all of Eris to explore. Meg is nowhere to be seen. The Governor-General of Eris emerges coughing out of the haze, an arm wrapped around a stricken-looking lady whom I assume is the governor from Earth. 

Someone climbs out from behind a steel girder and joins them. Ying.

I realise it then. The only people on Eris with explosives are the mining companies. Could Ying have been moved by our pleas enough to sabotage the Earth governor's meeting?