S.L Huang - Half Life

HALF LIFE

by SL Huang

Copyright 2014 SL Huang

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
For more information or further permissions, contact information is available at www.slhuang.com.

Cover copyright 2014 Najla Qamber

All rights reserved. The cover art may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission from the copyright holder, except as permitted by law.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance in the text to actual events or to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9960700-4-1

Cover art: Najla Qamber Designs

Editing: Anna Genoese

Chapter 1

What are you doing in here?

I looked up. A flashlight beam shone directly in my eyes, blindingly bright.

Im the janitor, I said. I was wearing a coverall and everything. I waved my mop vaguely. Im janit-ing.

Behind the bright bulb of the heavy flashlight, the outline of a security guard loomed over me. His shadow was thick and beefy, and he didnt seem inclined to take the light out of my eyes. Let me see your ID, he barked at me.

Well, that was a problemI didnt have one. Not yet, at least. I stood my ground and made a show of fishing around in my pockets. I could take this guy, but I needed to bait him toward me just a little bit more first. Uh. I forgot it.

Youre going to have to come with me. He took one more step forward, right out of range of the nearest security camera.

Perfect, I said, and spun the mop handle to bring it smack across the side of his head.

Mathematics spiraled through my brain as I moved, non-uniform circular motion blossoming in my senses. A burst of angular speed in an instantaneous blur, and the linear velocity at the far end of my mop-radius maxed out and decelerated with a thunk against the security guards temple. He thudded to the floor, his flashlight rolling to the side.

Newtons Second Law of How to Knock a Grown Man Unconscious.

I picked the flashlight up and turned it off. Id planned to pickpocket an ID cardit was a bit more subtlebut, hey, six of one, half a dozen of the other. I pulled the security guards card off his pocket, duct-taped his mouth, wrists, and ankles, and left him locked in a utility closet.

The angry-looking photo on my purloined ID was of a middle-aged white man, and I was none of those things. But though Swainson Pharmaceuticals might require swiping a card to so much as access the toilet, the state-of-the-art security system didnt care what I looked like. I made it to the laboratory on the twelfth floor without setting off any alarms. The cameras were a joke to avoid; I estimated for the widest angle possible and stepped blithely around their lines of sight as they turned back and forth to survey the hallways.

Ghost in the machine, I whispered, slipping up to the door of the lab and swiping my stolen ID card one more time.

The door slid open.

Someone inside squealed in surprise.

I had my Colt in my hand before I registered the chubby Indian guy in a white coat standing at the counter, his gloved hands thrust as high in the air as he could get them.

What are you doing here? I demanded. It was two in the morning, for Chrissakes.

Im an intern! he stammered. Im cleaning the glassware. Please dont shoot me!

Oh, relax, I said. Im not going to kill you. Im in a program.

Youre in a what?

I ignored the question. My idiotic promises to friends were my business. Im just here for that new-fangled drug you guys are making.

He paled. Nothatsyou cant

Shut up. I waved my gun at him. Im only not supposed to kill people. Ill still shoot you in the leg if you annoy me too much.

I was lying a little bit. The kid wasnt a threat, and I wasnt about to shoot some poor low-paid intern who wasnt in my way anyway. But he didnt know that. He buttoned his mouth in the terrified kind of quiet and sank down onto a lab stool.

I moved to the back of the lab. The intel I had was correct: the industrial-strength lab freezers stood against the wall, heavy and solid and very securely locked.

I stepped over to the third one from the left. My usual MO when committing high-end theft was a judicious application of C-4, but lab freezers were built to be explosion-proof, and a blast big enough to get in risked damaging the samples anyway. Besides, blowing holes in things was a good way to set off a security alert.

Hey, I said to the intern, examining the keypad. You know the code for this?

IuhnoIm just an intern

I fired without looking. The bullet zipped down its velocity vector and pinged right where Id aimed, taking a chunk out of one of the legs of the kids lab stool. He shrieked.

You sure you dont know the code? I asked.

I swear! I swear! They dont tell me anything!

Okay, I said. Back to Plan A. My employer had told me the code was only four digits long. I started with 0000.

I was on 2491 when the intern, who must have had a death wish, burst out, Youre seriously brute-forcing it? Wont that take forever?

My fingers didnt stop twitching through the combinations. Forever is a gross exaggeration, I said. My upper bound is less than eighty-seven minutes.

Which could result in an unexpected problem, I reflected, if someone noticed my friend the security guard was missing. Oh, well. Id deal with that eventuality if it happened.

A touch before the hour mark, the keypad light flashed green on 6720, and the lock clunked. I heaved open the freezer. The shelves were filled with neat phalanxes of vials, the liquid inside each a pale yellowish color. I slid a small insulated metal case out of the bag I had snugged across my shoulder, unscrewed the top, and transferred a rack of the vials to the padded interior. Then I twisted the case shut and pushed the freezer closed again.

I swear I wont say a word about you, said the intern, his words coming out so fast they tumbled over each other.

Well, not right away, you wont, I answered, re-stowing the case in my bag and zipping it secure. Youll be unconscious.

He squeaked and tried to back away from me. Not that it would do him much good. Im very fast.

The alarms went off.

Sirens wailed through the corridors, with red lights flashing on all sides and an automated voice repeating security lockdown in three languages. This was Mr. Interns lucky dayno need to deal with him now; I was already blown. Someone must have found my trussed-up guard buddy. I skidded to the door and tried my stolen ID, but nothing happened.

Its a lockdown, stuttered the intern from behind me. Nobody in or out; thats how it works

Good for them, but this lab had outside windows. I turned, picked up the nearest piece of ridiculously expensive lab equipment, and sent it smashing through the nearest one. The intern squealed again.

I pulled a coil of Tech line out of a pocket of my pack. Almost as thin as wire, it was more compact than rope and just as sturdy. I threw the coils into the air as I sprinted for the window. The mathematics coalesced in my senses without effort: the line bloomed out from my hand, wave equations propagating down its length, the parametric function dropping a wide loop neatly around one of the huge industrial freezers just as I hit the window.

I pulled my jacket sleeve over my hand, gripped the line, and jumped.

I slid down the line into the night at breakneck speed, the floors flashing past. Tech line is slicker than most rope, but the strength of my grip created normal force sufficient to slow mejust enough. I stuck out a foot, leveraging the sole of my boot against the side of the building as it flew by, giving myself a touch more friction. A long skid of black spiked in my wake as the brick took off the rubber.