Con-Red: Recourse Read Online Free Page A

continued as he reached over for his injector and a small cartridge of medication.  He snapped in the cartridge and pressed the tip of the injector against Val’s carotid artery, on the side of his neck, before pressing down on the trigger.  There was a barely audible hiss as the drug entered the patient’s bloodstream.
    Almost instantly Valeri relaxed and uncrossed his arms as his breathing went back to a normal resting state as well.  “Thank you so much doctor.  I really hope this helps.”
    Touching the man’s shoulder, the doctor smiled. “I hope so as well, Val.  If you need anything, though, even just to talk, please come see me.”
    Once out of the infirmary Valeri started to feel tired, the lack of sleep and the injection were catching up with him.  He reached his room without incident, pausing only momentarily to talk with a few coworkers that still wondered the consulate hallways.  Locking his door for privacy, Val stumbled towards his bed.  His body suddenly yearned for sleep like never before, almost as if something within him was taking control.
    It seemed that no sooner than he hit the covers on top of his bed that his eyes opened.  The only difference was that he no longer felt tired, in fact, he felt nothing at all.  Val felt as if he was in a dream when his body slowly swung out of bed.  Everything around him looked the same, but felt completely different, almost unreal.  He wanted to get back into bed, but his body would not follow his commands.  Instead it silent rose from the bed and moved towards the door.
    In the corridors there was no one around and Val knew it must be the close to midnight SET, Standard Earth Time.  Slowly he walked towards the closest gravlift that led to the engineering room and waited for the doors to part for him.  Once inside his hand reached out and touched the control panel.  Inside his own body Val tried to shout and fight his body, but the lift descended deeper into the planetoid nonetheless.
    The doors opened once more after only a moment and Val recognized it as the corridor he always took to his work station.  He didn’t have a clue what he was doing there, but as he watched through his own eyes, the body that used to be him stopped in front of the yellow restricted access door.  Val’s hand pressed against the scanner and it quickly slid aside for him . 
    As his figure started to punch in command at his work station, he finally understood what was happening and it terrified him completely.  The job he was tasked with at the consulate was monitoring the base’s power generators and he watched his hands were completely shutting down the safety protocols built into the system.  These measures were in place to prevent the overheating of the reactors and controlling power flow through the station.  With them disabled the reactors would overheat in minutes and their internal monitoring systems will have no choice but to shut them down completely. 
    There were backup generators, of course, but as Val looked on, unable to stop what was happening, those were being disabled as well.  For a second Valeri thought he heard shouting and the sound of feet running, but that dissipated quickly and the hands in front of him never ceased working.  All of the sudden he saw another pair of hand reaching around him and pull him away from the computer console.  His body broke free somehow and moved back towards the workstation, plugging in the last of the commands, which brought up a red flashing screen on the floating display.
    Val didn’t even get a chance to finish reading the warning when pain shot through his body.  The dreamlike state vanished as his entire being seized for a second before going limp, dropping him to the ground instantly.  Voices came to him in pieces, all of them muffled, as he lay on the floor with closed eyes.  Finally he opened them, almost as if for the first time.  The world around him was blurry and the colors all seemed