Orbital

Twenty-Two Rad

A few minutes after take off, the helicopter lands and I’m carried several hundred yards inside my pouch, trying not to have panic attacks about finding myself inside another DIA black site about to be tortured.

As a precaution, I grab the plasma torch off my belt and have it ready in case I have to go berserk.

Through the yellow plastic I can see a row of lights overhead as I’m slid into some kind of chamber. A moment later someone unzips the pouch and I’m looking at a different person in a radiation suit staring down on me. This time it’s a woman’s face. She’s giving me a smile.

“David? I’m Dr. Garrison. How you holding up?” She asks me this as other people in yellow suits slide the bag off of me.

“I feel like a Snickers bar.”

“What?” She takes a pen light and aims it at my eyes through the glass in my visor.

“It was a joke. I was being unwrapped like a candy bar,” I feebly explain.

“Oh. Funny,” she replies, not laughing.

“I got it, David,” says Laney over the comm.

“Hey, you’re still here?!”

“Of course I’m still here, David. Are you feeling dizzy?” asks Garrison.

“I was talking to my radio,” I reply.

“I’m going to need you to refrain from doing that. We need to get you out of this suit and run some tests. First we need to clean it.”

For the next several minutes I’m sprayed down with a pressure washer and scrubbed with some kind of special gel. All I can think about is my Chinese pal. I hope they’re being more gentle with him.

After making sure that I didn’t track in any radioactive cookie crumbs, they have me take off the suit and my thermal so I’m standing there buck ass naked in front of a bunch of people wearing yellow nuclear cleanup suits. And it’s cold.

Because I mentioned that I opened up my face shield back in the CS, they decide to spray my naked body down as well. And the water is really, really cold.

Next I’m tossed back onto a stretcher, sealed inside another bag — this one is clear and has air — and carted into a special medical facility where they probe and poke me, making sure I didn’t get a dangerous dose of radiation.

“Drink this,” says a nurse as she hands me small plastic carton.

Starving, I take a big gulp of the liquid.

“Now puke in this,” she says, holding a bucket near my head.

“What the BLARGH?” I try to reply as I vomit everything I’ve ever eaten in my entire life into the pail.

At first I think I’m actually suffering delayed radiation sickness. And to think, I just grew back my luscious locks after shaving them when I was on the run.

As I hold my head over the bucket, hurling, she helpfully explains, “We’re trying to clear out anything you may have consumed that could be radioactive.”

“It’s not like I ran my tongue across everything! BLARGH!”

I wipe away at my chin and give her a frustrated look. “Next time, tell them what the hell that stuff does.”

After my medically induced puke session, I keep asking about the other astronaut, but they tell me they don’t know. Which sounds like a lie, because I see them carting equipment off in a hurry when they’re done with me. I’m sure he’s probably only a floor away.

I can tell I’m in the clear when I’m moved into a new room and Dr. Garrison steps inside without her radiation suit.

They have an IV plugged into my arm as some special concoction is pumped into me. Meanwhile, another tube is pumping out my blood while another is putting new stuff in.

“Give it to me straight, Doc. Will I notice my superhero powers all at once, or will they happen gradually?”

“Radiation exposure is serious, David. You’re going to be okay, but we’re not taking any chances.”

“What about the other guy?”

“I don’t have any information on him.”

“You don’t have? Or you don’t say?” I reply.

She makes no reply. Which is the same as telling me she can’t say.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so to check on you. If you need anything, ask the orderly.”

“How about food?”

She points to the blue bag on the IV stand. “That’s your meal for the next couple days. We need to cleanse you.”

When she leaves I notice two armed men in tactical uniforms are standing outside my door. That seems a little unnecessary.

“Hey, Laney, do you know why…” My voice trails off as I realize the for the first time in almost twenty-four hours that I can’t talk to my friend.

I don’t just feel alone, I feel like part of me has been cut off. Strange. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

After staring at the walls for twenty minutes, Admiral Jessup enters the room.

“Admiral.”

He pulls up a chair next to me. “How you doing, Dixon?”

“I was fine until I got to the hospital.”

“That happens.”

I nod to all the tubes going into me. “Isn’t this a little excessive?”

“We weren’t expecting the CS to be so radioactive.”

“That’s the thing with Chinese manufacturers, you have to inspect the factory floor. Say, how is he?”

“Alive. He might make it.”

The first good news I’ve heard all day. “Great. That’s great.” It kind of makes this worth it. Sort of.

“Maybe…”

“Maybe? What do you mean?”

“If he lives we might be faced with a serious problem. What do we do with him? If we send him back to the Chinese, he can tell them everything we learned. Plus he knows about the DarkStar and Night Bird.”

“Admiral, he was unconscious when I loaded him into there and then transported him to the Unicorn. I guarantee you, that if he saw anything, he doesn’t know what he saw. We can just use the cover story from last time that we have an all-black Unicorn capsule.”

“Maybe. But we don’t want the Chinese knowing what we do about the CS. Especially the fact that we sabotaged it.”

“You’re not going to send him back…”

“We don’t know. This is an unusual area.”

“Give him a pretty translator. Have him defect. I mean, his people were going to let him die up there.”

“We’ll see. In the meantime, we need to figure out your situation.”

“You mean Flavor and his threat to arrest me?”

“It’s no threat. There are two guards outside right now.”

“Fuck him. The law is very clear on this situation. I did the right thing.”

“Yes, pilot. You certainly did. It makes my life complicated, but I guess that’s the price of a moral compass.”