Page 5 of Alien Mercenary's Wife
"Is it?" Red stood, moving to his side. "Because it seemed like it mattered plenty to him. And to you."
He met her look directly, but didn’t answer. She sighed, her expression filled with frustrated affection. “Come on then, we'd better get back to the ship. The others will want to know how the intelligence drop went."
He snorted. "That's what we're calling it?"
"What else would we call it?" Her grin was sharp.
He chuckled as he followed her out of the room. "To steal a Sparky-ism… situation normal, all fucked up?"
Her left leggave out on the third step.
Reese caught herself against the bathroom doorframe, breathing hard as sensation crawled back into the limb like ants under her skin. The neural implant had been fucking with her balance for weeks, but this morning it decided to get creative with her nervous system. She tested her weight, shifted her stance, and tried again. This time the leg held, though it trembled.
"Piece of shit," she muttered, though she wasn't entirely sure whether she meant the implant slowly destroying her motor control or her own treacherous body.
The apartment reeked of instant coffee and the industrial-strength disinfectant the building management slathered on everything to mask decades of wear and tear. Military pension housing wasn't exactly luxury accommodations, but it was cheap, anonymous, and the management didn't ask awkward questions.
She limped to the kitchenette, her left foot catching on the fold in the linoleum that had probably been white sometime in the previous century. The coffee maker wheezed to life when she jabbed the power button, gurgling like it was drowning in its own mechanical misery. Everything in this place was secondhand, broken, or both. Just like the people who lived here. Just like her.
Steam rose from the ancient machine, fogging the small window that looked out over an alley filled with dumpsters and overflowing trash bins. Wiping the condensation away with her sleeve, she peered down at the street below. Mrs. Rodriguez walked her ancient terrier with the precision of a drill sergeant…same route, same pace, every morning at seven-fifteen sharp. Some patterns were comforting in their predictability.
Others could get you killed.
Her tablet buzzed against the counter. She grabbed it and scrolled through messages from veterans scattered across the country. Each message was another entry in her catalog of corporate-sponsored suffering: muscle weakness, coordination problems, the slow, inexorable creep of paralysis that the doctors insisted was all in their heads.
Ryans in Seattle could barely hold a pen anymore, his handwriting dissolving into illegible scrawls. Williams in Detroit had started using a cane, the proud scorperio unit commander reduced to shuffling like an old man. Dubois in Jacksonville was having seizures that the doctors dismissed as panic attacks… She snorted. Yeah, right. She’d heard that one before. Apparently,watching your nervous system shut down was just another case of veteran hysteria.
Opening her console, she cross-referenced the symptoms with implant serial numbers. The pattern was unmistakable to anyone who bothered to look… Neural interface units between batches KTV-3099 and STV-4092 were failing at catastrophic rates, turning elite soldiers into broken shells of their former selves. Oh, they’d all complained, gone through the official channels, but Nexus Dynamics had deep pockets and deeper connections, the kind that made inconvenient data disappear behind walls of classification and corporate privilege.
Her comm chimed with an incoming call. Hughes's face materialized on the screen, and her heart clenched at the sight of him. The kid had been her comms specialist, solid as granite under fire, the kind of soldier who kept his head when everything went to hell. Now he looked like he'd aged a decade in the past month, his face drawn with the exhaustion that came from fighting an enemy you couldn't see or touch.
"Captain," he said, his voice tight with something that might have been pain or fear. Probably both. "Got the test results back from that neurologist in Seattle."
"And?" She kept her voice level, though dread was already building in her stomach.
"Same bullshit as always. Progressive neural degradation, cause unknown." His laugh was sharp enough to cut glass, bitter as old coffee. "Doctor recommended immediate psychiatric evaluation. Apparently, I'm imagining the paralysis."
Hughes's test results settled in her chest like a cold weight. She kept her expression neutral, years of command training holding her voice steady. "I'm sorry, Hughes. You deserve better than that."
His results were just one more piece in the mountain of evidence she'd been building one devastating piece at a time.Fifty-three veterans with identical symptoms, all dismissed as head cases by medical professionals who wouldn't recognize a cover-up if it bit them on the ass. The corporate machine ground on, efficient and merciless.
"Any word from the legal team?" he asked, hope flickering in his eyes.
"That's the other problem," she sighed, the weight of constant disappointment settling on her shoulders. "Lawyer says the class action is stalled again. Defense is claiming national security privilege on everything related to implant specifications."
"Shit." Hughes's expression crumpled slightly. "So what are we going to do?"
The coffee maker finished its death rattle, producing something that barely qualified as caffeinated water but would have to do. She poured a cup anyway, needing the ritual more than the stimulation, the familiar motions a small anchor in a world that seemed determined to drift away from her. "I'm going to get him to file discovery motions on the safety testing protocols. Those predate military contracts. Let the team know that's the way we're going and to sit tight."
Hughes nodded, making notes on his own tablet with hands that trembled visibly. "Will do. Anything else?"
"Yeah." She leaned forward. "Tell everyone to vary their routines. Different routes to work, different times, different patterns. And if anyone sees the same car twice, I want to know about it."
"You think they're watching us?"
She sipped her coffee and grimaced. It tasted like disappointment with notes of artificial vanilla. "They're a multi-billion-dollar corporation with government contracts and a lot to lose. What do you think?"
"Yeah. Good point." Hughes straightened slightly, some of his old military bearing reasserting itself. "I'll tell everyone to watch their backs. Catch you on the flipside, boss."
