The Aftermath

By Asali Wilson

Twenty-eight year old sculptor, Moira Pearce, goes to her sister’s workplace, Innovate Corp, to help her retrieve a document for a job interview. She has no authorised access and also wears prototype camera contact lenses her sister designed.

She is caught up in an accidental fusion reactor explosion and wakes up days later in a hospital to find that she is paralysed from the waist down and some aspects of her life are not quite as she remembers them...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asali Wilson
• Release date: Aug 8, 2020

Book preview

AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

Just a little bit further and you’ll be there, Angie directed as I made my way through the maze of identical white walled corridors.

You know you owe me an additional bottle for this, I groaned, turning a corner and smiling stiffly at a man in a lab coat who smiled back guardedly. His caution was not unexpected, most people would remember a colleague with a partly shaved head and a metal rod in her brow. At least my hair wasn’t blue anymore.

Angie’s chuckle turned into a hacking cough and my chest tightened. She had been in pretty bad shape when I left her back at the apartment about an hour ago, but she sounded much worse. I knew I shouldn’t have let her talk me into coming on this hare-brained mission.

Okay, you’ve convinced me, I’ll take one bottle. But it has to be a Highland single malt, at the very least. Just don’t pass out before I get back.

The laugh that came through my earpiece this time was unaccompanied by any other worrying sounds. I promise, I’ll hold on just for you. Wait, this is it.

I stopped in front of a grey unmarked door with an access reader positioned below its handle. Pulling out my phone, I swiped to the app Angie had installed earlier and flashed the screen on the reader. A low beep sounded before I tried the handle and let myself in.

I had never been to Angie’s lab at Innovate Corp but I had always expected the space to be decked out with multiple large screens and clever gadgetry which reflected the revolutionary work she did. The room I stepped into was small and simply laid out with two workstations, a water dispenser and a sofa that looked like it doubled as a bed more often than a sitting spot.

Underwhelmed was not an apt enough word to describe how I felt.

Moira? What are you doing here?

Even though I had been warned about this possibility, I was still startled to find Preya at her desk. It was past ten on a Saturday night and most people had returned to the warmth of their homes or moved on to some other form of social engagement, but Angie had said her colleague practically lived in the lab.

You can’t let her know I can see her, Angie hissed in my ear and I had to refrain from nodding.

There was nothing unusual about the earpiece Angie was using to communicate with me, but it would be a lot more difficult to explain the contact lens camera device she was using to share my sight. Ordinarily, I would never have allowed myself to be roped in as a guinea pig for prototype tech, but I had full confidence in anything my big sister had created and she had sworn these were safe. Preya might not have had the same cavalier reaction to the use of the company’s unregistered gear by non-staff members.

Hey, Preya, I tried to sound as casual as possible. Just picking up some things for Angie. You know she’s off sick.

She gave you her access code? Preya’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at the incriminating phone I still held in my right hand. I had met Preya a couple of times and she always struck me as the type of person who would be suspicious even if she bumped into you at the grocers. I couldn’t help noticing she didn’t ask about Angie’s recovery.

Come on, it’s not exactly like I’m going to clone it and be back here tomorrow, I joked, but my humour fell flat.

I’m guessing she also gave you her login details. Her observation sounded a lot like an accusation. You know this means we both need to have our access codes reset. That’s the protocol for a breach in security.

When she put it that way, I almost felt guilty. I wasn’t usually this much of a rule breaker, but Angie needed this and I didn’t have it in me to sit back and do nothing.

Ignore her, I’ll handle things when I get back, Angie reassured me. But, if this all works out as planned, I may not need to come in at all.

I smiled apologetically at Preya before sitting at the empty workstation opposite her, typing in the password Angie read out to me. It was purely a case of rotten luck that I even had to be there. All of Angie’s company research was usually backed up