The Tea Machine by Gill McKnight Page B

thoughts returned to the tank and its lurid contents, and she bit her lip. She considered experimentation on living specimens cruel, but this looked like an attempt to reanimate dead tissue. The question was how did the specimen reach the tank? She hoped the tentacle had not been dismembered from a living organism.
    “Do all the laboratories do this type of experimentation?” she asked.
    Sangfroid grimaced. “You’re the brains. I’m just the shooter who keeps you alive and thinking.”
    “There’s babies,” Gallo called from another tank. Millicent’s heart sank as she went to look.
    “Larvae,” she said with some relief. Hundreds of the translucent little molluscs floated in a deep vat. They tumbled and fell in a myriad of pearlescent blues and whites, swirling like liquid jewels in a kaleidoscope.
    “Squirmy little buggers,” Gallo said.
    “They’re dead.” Millicent’s voice was flat. “They’re only moving because the liquid’s vibrating.” She moved away, disappointed and distressed. This part of the lab was almost entirely stocked with tanks filled with various parts of squid anatomy. There was an awful gruesomeness to it, an urgency to try and understand these creatures, though most probably only to research their weaknesses rather than wonder at their magnificence. Hubert had often bewailed that the greatest scientific advances were so closely associated with, and financed by, warfare and cruelty, rather than a sincere and altruistic thirst for knowledge. If this was the future, then he would be disappointed that so little had changed. The work in this laboratory was not so much know thine enemy as, quite literally, divide and conquer .
    “Let’s get out of here.” Sangfroid was back to guide her away from the tanks. “Kappa sector’s this way.” Her grip on Millicent’s elbow was curiously gentle as if she sensed her distress. A quick glance at her fixed profile told Millicent that Sangfroid was also affected by the laboratory’s research.
    They moved on, weaving through the wide benches with their array of fantastical instruments and machinery. Millicent would often stop and dither by a particularly marvellous contraption, but could do little more than ogle before Sangfroid pulled her away and kept them moving.
    “I think we can exit through there.” Gallo pointed off to the left. “It leads to Kappa through the aft decks.”
    Sangfroid hesitated a moment then redirected them to the door Gallo had identified. They approached a separate wing of the laboratory guarded by even more locked doors which were covered with vivid iconography that Millicent took to be warning sigils. Gallo muttered an oath, and her hand strayed to her medallion. Both she and Sangfroid raised their handguns and blazed away at a nearby door panel.
    “Get ready to run when I tell you,” Sangfroid roared over the din of her weapon. The panel was on fire, and the doors were slamming open and shut like a sideways guillotine. Would the danger ever cease? Millicent had not appreciated how tiresome adventuring could be.
    “Gallo, you go first. When she says it’s clear, you’re next. Okay?” Sangfroid shouted at her. Millicent snapped out of her reverie and watched in alarm as Gallo timed her leap and passed through the slicing doors unscathed. Weapon at the ready, Gallo scoured the room beyond before giving Sangfroid an affirmative that all was safe.
    “On three,” Sangfroid told Millicent. “One, two…three.” She counted down, then pushed Millicent so roughly she sailed through the gap with her feet barely touching the floor. Sangfroid followed hard on her heels, slammed her flat onto the floor with her huge body sprawled flat over her. They lay nose to nose, and Millicent found she was momentarily transfixed by the grey of Sangfroid’s eyes; they had little green flecks, and the irises were expanding at a rate of knots until her eye was almost black.
    “Kindly remove yourself at once, Miss Sangfroid,”