Supernova by Jessica Marting Read Free Book Online Page A

else nagged at her, and she wanted it out in the open. “You’re
speaking English,” she said to them.
    The
captain replied. “We’re speaking one of the dialects of the original Republic
colonies. There are fifteen official languages in Commons space and a number of
dialects in each. This one is the most widely spoken in the Fleet, but most
other officers are fluent in at least two or three. In fact, if you include the
dialects as individual languages, there are more than sixty...” Ashford cleared
his throat, and Marska quieted and looked at his hands.
    “ Y a
til quelque’un qui parle français ?” Lily asked experimentally. At their
blank looks, she exhaled noisily. “I spent all that time failing French for
nothing.” She soldiered on, and continued her story. “I moved to Toronto in
June. A lot of things in my life—” She fumbled for words. “Unraveled. I was
hired by Lazarus Cryonics about six weeks later, to book appointments for
consultations, answer the phone, reconcile their accounts. I did a lot of that
at the tree farm.” In reality, she ended up playing zombie games on the
computer, the phone rarely rang, and she never had the chance to go over the
books in her short time there. “There were two doctors at the lab, and me. That’s
it. Their names were Zadbac and Pitro.”
    At that
pronouncement, Marska’s and Ashford’s eyes widened and Steg hissed, “Spy!”
    “Final
warning, Lieutenant,” said Marska.
    Lily
ignored Steg and asked the captain, “You know them?”
    “We know
of Zadbac,” Marska said. “Go on.”
    “I’d
been working there about two weeks when a client named Andrew Claybourne made
an appointment to look into having his head frozen,” she continued. Ashford hid
a smile. Marska tried to. Steg scowled.
    “Cryonics
was never successful,” Ashford said. “One of the greatest scams ever
perpetuated in history.”
    “Except
me,” Lily said.
    “You
were never dead.”
    Lily
soldiered on, forcing herself to relive that final afternoon in horrifying
detail. “I heard Mr. Claybourne yelling in the lab,” she said. “In the doctor’s
office. I went in and he’d been attacked. It looked like someone had smashed
his face in and bitten his hand. Dr. Pitro did it, I think, and he
was...licking blood off his fingers.” She shuddered. “Andrew Claybourne had a
big needle sticking out the side of his neck.” She gasped, remembering the news
that morning. “There were two bodies that washed up in the river right
before...they were found with syringes sticking out of their necks, too.”
Captain Marska nodded.
    “I ran
out of the lab to the street, but I tripped and Dr. Zadbac caught me.” She took
a deep breath and willed the tears away. “He did something to the air. I
remember these orange stripes, bars, whatever they were, all around us, and he
said no one could hear or see us. Then he sprayed me here.” She pointed to the
pulse point on the side of her neck. “The next thing I remember, I woke up in
that room with that other guy pointing a ray gun at me.”
    She
watched the looks being exchanged between the doctor and officers.
    “Nym,”
growled Steg.
    Marska
cut him off. “Can you describe these doctors, Miss Stewart?”
    She didn’t
question why, although they clearly knew about Zadbac already. “Creepy
vampire-like psychotics” probably wouldn’t cut it, but Lily was unsure how to
describe them more succinctly. Her father had been the writer, not her. “Very
tall,” she said. “Thin, with heads that didn’t really fit their bodies. They
looked like bobbleheads.” Ashford and Marska looked at her questioningly but
she didn’t explain. “Bulgy eyes. Zadbac’s were all black and Pitro’s
lime-green. They both had really jagged teeth, too, but Zadbac’s looked worse.”
    “So you’ve
dealt with the Nym,” Steg snapped.
    “I’m not
a spy!”
    “She’s
not a spy,” Ashford echoed. “Captain, remember what I told you last night?”
Marska