Story code: ST-001637
Part 3: The Bounty
The reinforced security door gave way with a sickening, structural shriek. The magnetic lock sheared entirely in half, dropping a glowing, molten chunk of steel onto the reception room linoleum. The heavy door swung outward on its pneumatic hinges, scraping a deep, permanent gouge across the floor.
Thick, acrid smoke poured into the pristine patient hallway. Marcus did not wait for the smoke to clear. He grabbed the bleeding veteran by her good right arm, hauled her away from the wall, and threw her weight over his shoulder. In his free hand, he maintained a white-knuckled grip on his heavy steel Swingline stapler.
“Move,” Marcus ordered, his voice cracking as the adrenaline shoved the last remnants of his bureaucratic training out of his brain. “The stairwell is twenty yards down. I have a master key for the fire doors.”
The veteran leaned heavily against him, her oversized olive-drab jacket reeking of burning fabric and metallic copper. They stumbled together down the bright, fluorescent-lit corridor, slipping slightly on the polished floor. With every hurried step, thick drops of the dark, bubbling liquid fell from her saturated left sleeve. Wherever the liquid hit the floor, it hissed violently, eating instant, smoking craters into the industrial wax coating.
“It’s not a pathogen,” the woman gasped, her breath hot and ragged against Marcus’s neck. “I told you, it’s not a disease.”
Marcus cast a terrified glance down at her arm. The sleeve of her jacket was partially dissolved. Beneath the frayed fabric, he could see a heavy, synthetic port fused directly into the flesh of her forearm, wired directly into her radial artery. The corrosive fluid wasn’t leaking from a wound; it was flushing out of the synthetic valve.
“What did they put in you?” Marcus asked, his chest heaving as they reached the halfway point of the corridor.
“A subdermal gestation graft,” she choked out, her boots dragging. “Next-generation combat tissue. They needed viable incubators with high pain tolerances. Contracted us right out of the VA system. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them birth whatever it was growing into.”
Behind them, the sharp, rhythmic squeak of rubber-soled shoes echoed through the hallway. Marcus looked over his shoulder.
The man in the crisp navy polo shirt stepped through the billowing gray smoke. He did not run. He walked with a terrifying, measured calm. He held the matte-black, suppressed pistol pointed toward the floor, perfectly relaxed. He raised his left hand, pressing his earpiece tightly into his ear. He was speaking into his phone again, but this time, the thick bulletproof glass wasn’t muffling his voice.
“Operator, this is Bounty ID 409-Romeo,” the man said, his voice echoing sharply down the sterile corridor. “I am updating my registry on the state tip line. The suspect is actively shedding the asset. She ingested black-market abortifacients. Repeat, the target is in the middle of an unauthorized, self-managed abortion. Tell dispatch to hurry. If she reaches plumbing, the evidence flushes, and the payout is void.”
Marcus stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. The sheer weight of the words slammed into him, stopping his forward momentum faster than a physical wall.
He looked back at the veteran. She was clutching her stomach, her face pale and shining with sweat. The corrosive liquid dripping from her arm was the engineered amniotic fluid and synthetic tissue breaking down, rejected by the pills she had taken to reclaim her own body.
Marcus turned slowly to face the man walking down the hall. The polished veneer of the federal biosecurity agent vanished in an instant. The man hadn’t flashed a federal badge at the window; he had flashed a state-issued bounty hunting license.
“You aren’t a quarantine team,” Marcus said, his voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper that carried perfectly in the quiet hallway. “There are no containment units coming.”
“Local patrol is three minutes out,” the man replied, coming to a halt ten yards away. He leveled the suppressed pistol, not at the woman, but directly at Marcus’s chest. He couldn’t risk shooting the veteran. If she died before the tissue was extracted and cataloged, the bounty wouldn’t pay out.
“Step away from the suspect, Marcus,” the man commanded, his flat, dead eyes locked onto the clerk. “I am placing her under citizen’s arrest for the illegal termination of a state-protected biological asset. The tip line reward is fifty thousand dollars. Walk back to your desk, keep your mouth shut, and I will wire you five thousand of the cut for your trouble.”
Marcus looked at the man’s calculating eyes. There was no fear of contagion. There was no duty to public safety. There was only the cold, mechanical greed of a mercenary terrified of losing his paycheck to a bathroom drain.
Marcus tightened his grip on the heavy steel stapler, planting his feet firmly between the bounty hunter and the bleeding woman.