Page 97 (1/2)

@TwistahSistahBB5

I don’t get this hostility — if you want to take their drugs, take them, if I don’t want to, that’s my choice! It’s a Big Pharma trick.

@BadAstronomer

Hey, antivaxers, heard of a thing called “the news”? You know, those fancy moving pictures that keep showing what happened on the Brashear? #TakeTheMeds

@BootyHooty912

You don’t want to drink your gunk? s.h.i.+t, dawg, give it here — I’ll put it next to my Glock, which you’ll see again when you change.

MANIPULATION

She had to find a way to control the men.

Margaret sat with her back against the mission module’s thin, metal wall, her thighs parallel to the ground, her feet on the floor — the chair position. Her thighs burned. A fight was coming: she needed to be strong.

At the count of one hundred, she bent forward, extended her body and started doing push-ups.

One … two … three … four …

Math. The most basic language of the galaxy. The language created by G.o.d. Not the human G.o.d, or G.o.ds, but the real G.o.d.

Sixteen … seventeen … eighteen …

If the men on this s.h.i.+p had converted, she knew she would have been able to control them. They would have followed her, did whatever she said; G.o.d had made it that way. But the men weren’t converted — they were merely human.

Human, yes, but trained killers. Dangerous.

Thirty-four … thirty-five … thirty-six …

She was smarter than they were. She could find a way to make them do what she wanted. If she started now, when the right time came she could play them against each other. Or, at least, she could stay alive long enough to find her own kind.

Fifty-nine … sixty … sixty-one …

Her arms and chest burned. She ignored the pain. Years spent hiding away had made her soft. She needed to make her body hard.

Clarence would be the easiest to manipulate. She knew what motivated him — the simple sentiment of a soon-to-be extinct species: he loved.

One hundred two … one hundred three … one hundred four …

BIG PHARMA