Mission: Planet Biter (Veslor Mates #4)(3)

Vera took some deep breaths. “I know. There’s an imaginary bigfoot at my back, my asshole of a father—who is obviously not here—keeps picking fights with me, and the tremors in my hands are way worse than they were yesterday. But I’m trying to keep it together. I am.”

The nurse nodded. “Same. Only it’s not a bigfoot or my dad I’m seeing. I’ve got really messed-up vision. Like, everything is moving and swaying. At one point, colors were exploding around me and then everything went black for a while.” She held out her hands. They shook badly. “The tremors are worse for me today, too. I also can’t stop crying.” Then she lowered her hands. “I’m feeling suicidal.”

“Don’t do it. Please! Don’t leave me,” Vera begged. “Help is going to come. We just need to hang on.”

“We couldn’t figure out how we were all exposed before everything went to utter hell.” Nancy sniffed. “We failed. Everyone is dying because we couldn’t find the source. We’re still being exposed, otherwise the symptoms would have faded by now. Josie kept saying that over and over. I want to go outside to escape it, but I keep remembering what happened to Crystal. I don’t want to be eaten alive.”

“Listen to me,” Vera said in the calmest voice she could muster. “It’s not your fault. Someone did this to us on purpose. They were smart and evil. Like, genius level. Stop blaming yourself. You’ve done everything possible. We all have. We just need to hang in there. We’re going to make it off this planet. You don’t really want to die. It’s just the drug messing with your mind.”

Nancy nodded. “Right.”

“You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re a survivor. Say it.”

“I’m a survivor. I’m not letting some evil bastard or bastards take me out.”

“That’s it. Keep saying it over and over. We’re going to make it.” Vera herself really needed to believe it, and she hoped saying the words aloud would help Nancy trust it would happen, too.

“We are.”

Vera saw something move out of the corner of her eye but didn’t glance that way. It wasn’t real. “How are your patients?”

Nancy slowly shook her head from side to side.

Vera felt shocked. “They all died?”

“Josie died, and…that left me alone with them. They were eventually going to break free from their restraints. I’m locked in with them, Vera! Five against one are horrible odds. You didn’t see Ted when he tried to get free yesterday. He was so violent and enraged! He couldn’t even feel pain. It made him stronger than normal. I had to protect myself.”

Vera felt sick. “What did you do?”

Nancy sniffed again. “I killed them. I had to! It was self-defense.”

Vera dropped her gaze to the desk surface, staring at the lights on the keyboard built into it.

It couldn’t be real. Nancy wouldn’t murder five helpless patients strapped tightly to med beds. They had been highly violent, it was the reason they were secured that way, but to kill them for something beyond their control would be wrong.

No. It was just Vera’s mind screwing with her again.

“I had to do it.” Nancy’s voice rose. “Tell me you agree!”

Vera looked up at the nurse as it sank in that Nancy must have completely lost her mind, and she probably had done it for real. It horrified her, but she tried to mask her features. To freak out would only send the nurse that much more over the edge. “Of course.”

Nancy reached up and delicately tucked her blonde hair behind her ears. “Now that I don’t have to deal with them, you should let me out. We can keep each other company until help comes. Talking to you makes this easier.”

Vera gazed at the desk again.

“Vera? Let me out, and I’ll come to you.”

“I uh, don’t know how to take us off lockdown,” she lied.

Nancy had already killed five people. It was highly possible that she’d go after Vera next. Her brain was currently working well enough to make her wonder how Josie had actually died…if maybe Nancy had murdered her, too.

Vera followed the lie with some truth. “Dr. Hazel made me promise to keep us where we are, remember? That’s why I’m in here. The security guards wouldn’t take her orders. People were leaving their rooms and attacking each other. I understand that I have to protect everyone.”

Of the three of them the least infected by the drug, Dr. Hazel was dead, Nancy had lost her mind, and that left her. And Vera was a mess.

They were all screwed. She knew it, but she refused to admit it to the nurse.

Instead, she met Nancy’s gaze. “I have to do camera rounds. I’ll contact you soon. Just think happy thoughts. Someone is going to come for us. They will. Just hang in there, okay? Remember, it’s the drugs. They’re messing with our minds.”

Nancy nodded.

Vera ended the call and began rocking in her chair again. Many regrets filled her head. She’d never really known love. The children she’d dreamed of being able to afford to have one day wouldn’t ever become a reality. She was going to die on a shitty planet all alone. It wasn’t right or fair.

“If I start screaming, I’ll never stop. Hold it together.” She leaned forward, touching another one of the desk controls that she’d figured out by trial and error. It showed life signs inside the pods.