Excerpt
Hildi’s nose
itched.
She ignored
it. While she waited for her lab partner to emerge from the airlock, she
checked the seals of her blue biocontainment suit again. Good habits could save
her life.
Hildi pulled a
coiled yellow air hose suspended from the ceiling and plugged it into a socket
near her waist. The deflated suit expanded as air roared past her face. The
familiar ballooning sensation saddened her for a moment. She’d miss her work
here.
Then she
grinned. She’d be wearing a pressure suit in her new job and performing similar
cutting-edge work in an even stranger environment.
Her practiced
eyes appraised Biosafety Level 4, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s most dangerous lab. Everything “down and cold.” But an adjoining
room held liquid-nitrogen freezers filled with hot agents, the deadliest
diseases known to man. Francine stepped from the airlock. Hildi’s college
friend had never worked in Level 4, but she moved with confidence. Hildi stared
into Francine’s faceplate and noted her calm expression. She’d do fine.
Hildi
maneuvered past the stainless-steel tables dominating the room. She pulled
two-inch test tubes, a push-button micropipette, and other tools from drawers
and placed them in the biosafety cabinet, a glorified box with a fume hood and
clear front that rested on the work counter. She detached her hose, inhaling
the reserved air in her suit.
Humming to
herself, she walked into the adjoining room and attached her suit to another
hose. Every time Hildi moved in the lab, she repeated the procedure, a
necessary inconvenience if she wanted to continue breathing.
She punched a
code into the lock of one of the stainless-steel freezers and extracted a vial
of the latest X virus that may or may
not have killed John Doe.
Returning to
the biosafety hood, she slipped her yellow-gloved hands under the clear
protective shield, a sneeze guard at a toxic salad bar. She withdrew a tiny
sample of the unknown and released it into one of the tubes. After Hildi
repeated the protocol many times, she keyed the information into the computer.
Hildi glanced
at Francine just as she straightened from a hunched position over a microscope.
Francine turned, her movements jerky like a marionette’s. Her suit’s chest
zipper gaped, exposing her blue scrubs underneath. She seemed to shrink as her
biosuit deflated.
Hildi froze.
“I’ve got a
problem here!” Francine yelled, her voice quavering. The rush of air in their
ears turned conversations in Level 4 into a shouting match. Francine fumbled
for the zipper with trembling fingers.
Bonnie’s debut novel, Dark Biology, released September 2013 from Harbourlight, an imprint
of Pelican Book Group.
She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her
husband of thirty years. They’re owned by two Siamese cats. John is an
electrical engineer who works with lasers for a living. He’s also a Mad
Scientist who owns 2,300-pound electromagnet.
Bonnie’s other interests besides writing include
reading, cooking, solving Sudoku puzzles, and volunteering at the Denver Museum of Nature
and Science. She attends a local science fiction convention as well as various writers
conferences. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, its North
Denver Chapter, and the Denver Area Science Fiction Association.
Website: Where Faith
and Science Fiction Collide: http://www.bonniedoranbooks.com/
Blog: The Mad
Scientist's Wife: http://bonniedoran.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bonniedoranbooks
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bonniedoranbooks
Twitter: @bonniedoran
Twitter hashtag:
#DarkBiology
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