Tag: Scifi

Short Story: A New Age Begins

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

It would be the first in the next-generation of prosthetic That was how everyone at Cameron Mobility Incorporated saw it. They’d been designing prosthetic devices since the 1940s; from an old man’s scrap wood in a garage, to the custom fitted, laser-cut, hand-assembled metals and plastics of billion dollar industry. Needless to say, the precision-engineered chrome and carbon-fiber had come a long way from the whittled bits of wood Arnold Cameron had first created for his son.

The company hadn’t operated out of a garage in nearly a century, from any one location in decades. The global enterprise had been built on a foundation of one man’s dream and hope for his son. When Arnold died in the late 1980’s, that son stepped into the role of overseer, both poster-child and client from a childhood accident, he took the company public with an image bolstered by his company-replaced right arm and leg.

Public-trading brought investors, stocks, money as the prosthetics became more complex, more specialized, elegant, elaborate. Sturdy, proto-plastics, later replaced again by fully articulated poly-alloys and carbon-fiber “joint and bone” designs.
The heir to the fortune fell ill, forcing his daughter to replace him as head of the company. That was when everything changed– for better or worse was merely dependent on one’s view-point. The company’s stock plunged until measures were taken to secure its future. What those measures were, only one fluent in legalese and corporate intimacies might say. All the world knew was that Cameron Mobility was suddenly growing again, and to new heights.

But until the forth generation Cameron sat on the board of directors, nothing truly astonishing took place. Evelyn Cameron changed that. Like her mother, Evelyn was a trail-blazer, but also a certified genius with a hands-on approach to research and development. On top of her duties as jet-setting business woman, she worked long nights with engineers and technicians in the labs, designing what would come to be known as the most revolutionary prosthetics known to man.

And so, when the culmination of four generations of eager, forward-minded Cameron men and women– and the collaborative toiling of Evelyn and her R&D team– finally came to fruition, they stood at-the-ready for mass production. Their factories in Taiwan and China had already received the plans, and if all went as Evelyn hoped, in a matter of hours the first line in bionic, augmentation prosthetics would be manufactured.

There were already whispers of elective surgeries– voluntary amputations for augmented replacements that would be stronger, tougher, sleeker than human parts. A new black market was ready to form, both around the sale and installation of the new “augs.” No matter the repercussions, there was no doubt this was a new-age. Augs were not just prosthetics, replacements for those poor souls who’d lost part of themselves. Now, they were true to life upgrades, the next step in man’s apex-predatory nature that would see the food-chain and natural evolution forever left behind.

Evelyn and her team had one philosophy; why just return function when it could also be augmented? A decade of research centered on thought-controlled interfaces, superalloys, and miniaturized hydraulics, came next. Then, another five years of prototype construction and programming trial and error that resulted in a line of limb prosthetics that, when installed and routed to the brain via wireless, neural-controllers, exceeded anything an evolved creature could hope to sport.

Everyone had heard the talking heads on Info-Corp’s pseudo-news entertainment channel debating augment-ethics. Most learned people saw them as spouting uneducated nonsense. Evelyn agreed. She’d nearly plunged her company into the red, but somehow retained investor confidence. The rumors spreading of her receiving a Nobel prize didn’t hurt, and were she in any other position, she might have argued them. Instead, she remained silent, watched them bolster investor confidence and keep the money flowing.

She stood now before her first, real test subject. The factories in Taiwan and China were poised for a sprinting run on the first, mass-production line of augs. The man before Evelyn wasn’t someone who’d lost their limbs in an accident, or been born with a corrupted genome and no limb. He was an elective, someone willing to replace limbs with Cameron Mobility’s newest augments.

Evelyn chewed at the tip of her thumb behind a pair of windows. The small observation corridor looked out on the muscled, naked body of the subject. Chrome and carbon fiber rippled from his torso where his limbs should be, as if someone had taken his flesh-less arms and legs, dipped them in steel and carbon-fiber, then replaced the muscles and tendons with criss-crossed mini-hydraulics, actuators, servos, and good, old-fashioned tongue-and-groove gears.

Around him, were masked and suited doctors who’d entered through a clean room. A nurse appeared, wheeling a cart of metal panels and Allen-wrenches. The doctors took places around the body to fit the panels over the augments to hide and protect their innards. For what seemed like hours, but was only moments, they worked the wrenches along bolts. When they stepped away again, the carbon-fiber panels had given the man an intimidating patchwork and a futuristic gleam.

All but one doctor left, the nurse with them. The last prodded the naked man’s neck with a needle, set it aside on the cart. Evelyn waited, breath held. She’d was dimly aware of her team beside and behind her, lined up along the windows in silence. She sensed their own refusal to breathe through the unnatural stillness of the corridor.

The man’s eyes flickered open. The group leaned forward in expectation. He blinked hard, as if waking from a pained sleep, and sat up on an elbow to rub his eyes. The corridor echoed with a half-dozen gasps as the doctor’s mouth moved in silence from the sound-proof room. Evelyn knew from protocol he was being questioned for residual pain.

The man sat up, back to the group, as the doctor carried out a physical exam. After a minute or so, the doctor stepped to the side with a thumbs up. The corridor exploded in cheers, congratulations. The team shook hands, hugged. Someone patted Evelyn’s shoulder and she deflated into her exhaustion.

The truth was, she’d never known if it would really work. Not when it came time to test it. Now, Taiwan and China could begin manufacturing, and in a matter of days, the first augs would ship to awaiting patients and electives. Only then could they know of blow-back from the masses, if any. As the others celebrated around her, she thought rationally; more testing was needed, as was careful monitoring. The man needed to be watched for signs of rejection or other, unpredictable complications.

Time would come to remember those feelings as only footnotes, but even then there was no doubt; a new age had begun.

Short Story: Home

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Resplendent beams of gold waved over the rusted horizon. The rays winked and glittered along frost-tinted ground, rebounded off it and back up into the atmosphere. The soil had long been deprived of life, or so the surveys had said. In its absence, only clumped balls of hard minerals remained. Every handful of dirt grabbed up, held against only until a slight pressure pulverized it to dust.

The gloved-hand of Mars-one’s Dr. Cameron Markinson did just that. She let the Red-Planet’s malnourished life-blood trickle through her fingers. It caught a north wind, whisked away and dispersed until invisible. Lead-weight steps of low-g boots deposited a figure in place beside her; Commander Mackenzie Williams, always an imposing figure, made one feel he was in their space even at a respectful distance away.

Today was no exception, but neither felt the usual awkwardness from it. It was a new day. One for the record books– the ages, so to speak. Both of them sensed it. The truth of it infected their every breath, each one that much softer, gentler. Something colored the space between them, made even Mac seem smaller, while their forms were dwarfed by the awe-inspiring humility of events around them.

“First sunrise on Mars,” Mac said.

Tears wavered beneath the awe on his tongue. Cameron sympathized. She felt her eyes welling up, preparing to rain behind her helmet with vain hopes of watering thirsty ground. The sharp pain in her chest was as much welcomed as embraced.

“Six million years of Evolution,” Cameron said. “Two-hundred and fifty-thousand years of Human existence, five thousand of recorded history, and we’re finally home.” Her voice stiffened a little, “It took us a less than a century to go from ground-confinement to exploring the solar system. Imagine what we’ll have in another century– or even a millennium.”

Behind his glass face-plate, Mac smiled. He patted a shoulder of her suit, “C’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

He turned for the shuttle, but she lingered a moment before following him.

Mars-One’s shuttle, Verne, looked for all the world like a streamlined city-bus with millions of dollars more investment to it. Its infinitely more complex systems didn’t hurt the image, and its 747-like cock-pit managed to contain twice as many instruments and systems as a the jumbo jet into even less space. Technology was like that; unrelenting, pervasive, even astronauts were just well-educated techies at heart.

Half the cock-pit was used to communicate and monitor Verne’s docking cradle alone. Orbiting the planet, it was a veritable hotel for cosmonauts, and the only way-point between Earth and Mars’ surface. It was the sole place capable of harboring life outside Earth’s orbit. Even the shuttle itself could only power their suits’ oxygen, and otherwise was merely an airtight coffin for anyone seeking refuge.

But coffins weren’t needed here. The International Cosmic Exploration Agency, or ICEA, had made sure of that. Even a total-systems failure on the shuttle had been compensated for. Excess resources and parts aboard the orbiter could be shot down like one of Heinlein’s bouncers, aimed by the pair of crew still aboard. The canister would reach the target area in less than ten minutes, and could be repeated almost ad nauseum to ensure any problems were repairable.

Cameron and Mac worked to roll out metal cases and tubular contraptions for the next hour, aligning a series of large cylinders and various-sizes of steel and aluminum parts into formations. By the time “tank change” came, the items were separated into several, individual piles, each with angled sheets of aluminum, steel cases, cylinders, hoses and nozzles, and a plethora of fasteners and tools. Once assembled, the seemingly innocuous conglomerate of spare parts would form a fleet of UAVs that would begin laying down high-level nutrient sprays.

In the fleet’s wake, the orbiter would launch specialized seed-pods into the sprayed soil. The hardy seeds, genetically engineered for the Martian atmosphere, would theoretically take root in days. A month from now, Cameron and Mackenzie would return to check the results of the growth. If the seeds had taken root, and truly appeared to be surviving the harsh-Martian climate, phase two of “Habitat Reformation” would begin. It had become Cameron’s sole, life pursuit.

A little less than a decade before, she’d broken ground in astrobiology. It was the only reason she was on Mars now, why she wouldn’t have let anyone go in her place: While analyzing Martian soil deposits from the first, return-probe, striking similarities appeared between impact craters on both Mars’ and Earth’s surfaces. Rigorous testing proved conclusively the two shared a cosmic connection.

That connection, Cameron soon concluded, was the impact of a sole asteroid on Mars’ surface. Ejected debris from the impact was launched through the skies, into space, and eventually into Earth’s atmosphere, carrying microbes formed from an unknown, primordial ooze on the Red Planet.

Another probe Cameron designed, tested, and launched, eventually proved what many in the scientific community had begun to suspect; Earth’s life was alien. More specifically, it wasn’t Earth’s life on Earth, it was Mars’ life. The revelation of life being “extraterrestrial” took the world by storm. Space-exploration was suddenly reinvigorated. The ICEA formed to compensate for the sudden cascade of researchers seeking funding for space or Mars-based experiments. An influx of private investors, millionaires and billionaires with passions for science, quickly helped fund them.

But Cameron’s vision was different. Eventually, it had taken her to Mars, to home. The primordial ooze that had formed life, she reasoned, could not be understood until “home” or its history was. With Mars’ life no longer theoretical, only one option appeared to remain open to her. Most of her learned colleagues agreed; they needed to return home, begin seeking answers in their true birth-place.

Mars’ life may have merely gone extinct, some said, unable to thrive in the harshness of multiple impact events. It was probable even, others added, that the same impact transferring the microbes from Mars to Earth, had eradicated what remained of them on Mars. Most agreed, the impact had effectively launched a time-capsule, that opened prematurely on Earth, and thrived in its complimentary conditions.

There was no confirmation of whether the asteroid was responsible for the extinction, nor if the life had continued thrive before dying off from something unrelated. As Cameron saw it, there would be no further confirmation of their place in the universe until Mars was made habitable. After all, it had taken hundreds of years and countless naturalists to piece together even an infinitesimal amount of understanding regarding life’s formation on Earth– or rather, its evolution after arriving on Earth. That wayward life, now searching for its origins, simply couldn’t do so properly until it once more inhabited its home.

Over the course of six hours, and several air-tanks, she and Mac constructed and scrutinized the UAVs. The drones had enough battery-life, solar-panels, and payload to work unaided for a week. As the harsh winds grew colder, and the skies dustier and pinker from particulates, the last of the UAVs was assembled and tested via comm-connections to the orbiter.

When all was green, they stepped back to watch. As if launched like rockets, the UAVs sprinted into the distance, gained altitude. They came about in formation, fanned out, and separated for pre-programmed zones. They sank toward the ground, disappeared against the red-orange with streaks of invisible hope on their tails. In a month, the two cosmonauts would return to find life thriving, or dying, then try again, or continue the search for their true history.

Mac patted Cameron’s shoulder again, then made for the shuttle. She lingered once more, her mind on only one thing; Humanity had returned home, and begun to lay down its roots.

Preview: Hijack

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Coming next week: Hijack

Lone-Wolfe Shipping’s refusal to phase out drivers for A-I Rigs has caused their so-called “non-compliance” to turn public opinion against them. Owner/operator and CEO of Lone-Wolfe, Gail Wolfe, must attempt to discredit the perception before it puts she and her employees on the street.

In a world where money is power, the mega-corp trying to buy her out is a God. It’s also become the number one suspect in the sudden death of one of Gail’s veteran drivers. Unfortunately, she cannot even begin forming accusations against them until she learns the true cause of the accident that killed him. Investigating it proves more difficult than anticipated though as red tape and road-blocks appear at every turn.

Follow Gail as she and her ace mechanics battle the forces allied against them to uncover the truth before Lone-Wolfe’s drivers are out of a job– or worse. Can Gail clear Lone-Wolfe’s name, or will she find herself wheels-up, her company and drivers beside her?

Hijack is a Sci-Fi novella beautifully mixing intrigue, emergent technology, and transnational shipping with the ethical dilemma of automation in human-made industry. You won’t want to miss a single moment! Read it here, starting November 4th, on the Logbook!

Preview:

Presently, Gail was focused on the back-office and the silhouette behind its frosted glass. She stopped to hand a file to Walt Thacker, a dispatcher with a beer-gut larger every time she saw it.

“Latest pay,” Gail said unceremoniously. “Make sure Brianne gets it before shift-change.”

He grunted an “eh,” in reply.

Truth was, she didn’t care to hear his Hutt-like wheezes anyhow. She glanced at the frosted glass, checked her watch, 7:30 on the dot. “Who’s here?”

Xavier Knaggs replied, “Suit.”

Gail’s face turned red and she stormed for the office, “Son of a bitch!”

Hot Iron: Part 5

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

9.

Kennedy peeked past the charting tablet in her hand at the half-mangled body of the comatose woman. An explosion had done this. She’d suspected as much, but now knew it as fact. She felt better somehow, more confident in treating her. They were burn victims, but also victims of attempted murder. Knowing the cause kept her from wondering, let her focus on the task at-hand.

Unfortunately, knowing what she did now required lying to Mendez or Torres’ visitors. While Melissa Fannon had already been cleared and green-lit for visitation, she wasn’t allowed to know the whole truth. Despite expecting the contrary, that didn’t make Kennedy’s job easier. The eyes-only files she’d been given had included a few pages of Q and A responses for anyone inquiring about their injuries, and eventually, their deaths.

As the story went, they’d been raiding a drug-den when stray fire ignited a propane tank. The resulting explosion mangled them, killing all responsible parties. Lies muddled the truth, of course, but given what Barnet had said it seemed necessary. Kennedy wasn’t one for lies though– Kevin’s constant pestering was proof enough of that– and it was difficult to produce even the most white of lies. The only thing comparable in her repertoire was a series of high-school drama classes so murky she wasn’t sure they’d existed. Eight-years of med school, in addition to the usual fog of age, had nearly ensured she’d forgotten them.

Nonetheless, she was expected to keep the story straight and screen anyone that came to visit. In time, she’d also carry out her patients’ arranged deaths and be forced to inform their families. That was going to be the hardest part. Lying was one thing, lying about their deaths upturned her stomach and wrenched her heart.

A man appeared in the doorway to Mendez’s room. Kennedy caught sight of him; he was tall, steel-haired, with baggy, wrinkled skin of olive complexion. He moved to speak, but his eyes swept the room. A quiet gasp escaped him as his face hit a brick-wall of reality. He inched in toward Mendez, fell to his knees beside her bed.

“Brittany,” he said breathlessly.

Kennedy watched the man carefully, jotted a note on the tablet, then pulled a cell-phone from her pocket. The scanner was easy cover, no-one would think twice about someone looking at a phone for a split second here or there. She eyed it while a progress bar sprinted forward. Its silent, invisible calculations, and sensor readings compiled. It flashed a “complete” message, instantly relaying the information to Barnet’s agency. A second later, another bar appeared. She’d been able to deduce its sifting of nearby electronic devices as it singled out new ones and scanned them for sensitive information. When it finished, a message vibrated the scanner, “Subject clear.”

The whole process took about five seconds. Enough time for Kennedy to slip the phone from her pocket, thumb the activator, eye it once or twice, then replace it. It was fast, efficient, and utterly heart stopping. So far, only two people had been scanned, Melissa and this man, and both had come back clean. What happened when they didn’t?

She shuddered at the thought, pulled a paper chart from the foot of the bed, marked it in a few places, then hung it back there. She took up a silent post beside the man. He wept as only a father might. The scanner might have confirmed their relationship had she bothered to check, but Kennedy had been a nurse– and a daughter, for that matter– long enough to sense the bond whose grief tainted the air.

She stood sentinel while his tears flowed. He knelt, half-hunched over the bed, and clenched one of Mendez’s hands in his. Kennedy thought to turn away, leave, but there was something to the man’s grief that asked her to stay. He seemed less afraid of grieving in front of her than being alone with his grief. The state lasted long enough that Kennedy felt no awkwardness nor compulsion to rectify it. When he finally wiped his eyes, pulled a tissue from a box beside the bed, he let out a chest shaking sigh.

“Thank you for staying. I know it’s rough watching… this”

Kennedy gave a weak smile, “It’s okay. I’m trained to handle it.”

He sank into the chair beside Mendez’s bed, eyes lingering on her, “I have been too, but until you’re on the other end, you don’t realize how difficult it is to keep composed.”

Kennedy understood with a look, “You’re an MD, then?”

“Retired Army Medic and surgeon.” His chest heaved with a sharp breath at the thought.

“You look young to be retired,” she admitted.

“Early retirement,” he corrected. He held out a level hand that shook uncontrollably, “Tremors, brought on by years of stress-triggered PTSD from the war.” She apologized, as people often do when at a loss and feeling empathy. He waved the hand off. “I get more money now than I did working– and that was a lot– and all I have to do’s sit on my ass and sign some paperwork once a week. I’m still active in the medical community, mind you, I just can’t perform surgery anymore.”

“And you’re Brittany’s father?” He nodded. “Then you know she was injured—”

“I know the bullshit cover-story they gave you. I was in the army– Green Beret, Ranger, whatever they call it nowadays,” he said dismissively once more. Despite it, he retained his emotions enough that he did not appear outwardly hostile. “I don’t care how she was hurt, just that she receives the best treatment and recovers.”

She gave a small nod, “I promise my team will do its utmost best to ensure her health.”

He extended a hand to shake it, “Sorry, my mind’s… elsewhere. Roger Mendez.”

Kennedy shook it, repeated her name with “R-N” attached. Roger turned in his seat to watch his daughter breathe. Her banana-bags of fluids and meds were fresh, full, dripping their steady doses of anesthetics, antibiotics, and painkillers.

He surveyed the scene with professional detachment, “When Brit was six, she had a bout of leukemia. She was like this for a year straight. She’s been in remission ever since. I promised myself I’d never let her end up like this again…. a young fool’s dream, you know? To eradicate pain, evil, to be righteous and true.” He snorted a sarcastic breath. “All I care about now’s that she pulls through.”

Kennedy did her best to comfort him, “She’ll be fine in time, Dr. Mendez. I promise that. I imagine you know it’s standard protocol for a burn victim to be sedated with wounds this bad.”

He turned to look her full-on, “I assume you also know that nothing about these injuries are standard protocol– or you should, anyway.” She eyed him with confusion. “It’s never been standard protocol for Nurses to falsify medical information about patients.”

Kennedy winced, “Dr. Mendez–”

“Roger,” he interjected. “And please, I’m not going to ask you why. I just want to know one thing.” She gave a small, downward tilt of her head to allow it. “Is it the government making you do it? FBI, DOJ, that sort of thing?”

Kennedy wondered if she could be tried for treason for saying anything. She decided not to. Instead, gave only the slightest, smallest nod she could manage.

He sank backward in his chair, “I just hope the situation’s rectified sooner rather than later– for your sake, as well as my daughter’s.”

10.

The moment had come. It had been only days since Kennedy had been pulled off normal duty and forced to run the special-burn team. Torres and Mendez’s rosters were ready. Barnet was on-hand, hidden somewhere out of sight on the ward, to await the final stages of the plan. Kennedy was forced to do it herself. She would have to kill both of her patients, then inform their families that they would be taken to a morgue.

He’d given her four, filled syringes; two for each patient. One for now, to kill them. One for later, to hopefully revive them. She wasn’t sure why it needed to be done. Even in all of the legalese of her briefings, she still hadn’t gotten anything near a straight answer. Barnet had boiled it down as best he could; they needed the bad guy, “killing” the cops would bring out the bad guy, he’d intercept them.

She’d known as much to begin with, but it hardly answered the deeper question; why did she have to do it? The answer was even simpler than she wanted to accept, because no one would expect her to. An autopsy might reveal the cause later, but seeing as how things would never get that far, it didn’t matter.

She stood beside Mendez’s bed first, the room empty of all but its patient. She uncapped a syringe with a deep breath, stuck it in the IV, and pressed the plunger. It would take time, long enough for her to stroll across the hall, complete the process on Torres, and move away before kicking in. She left one room, entered the other. Before she could reach the conference room, nurse’s station alarms began to scream. They echoed down the hall, rending her heart and forcing her through the door.

As soon as the code went out, two NSA-teams disguised as crash response were dispatched to perform resuscitation. They acted it out until eventually calling time of death while Kennedy was forced to stand among one, panicking and working as though it were a real incident. She rifled and dug for meds in a cart they’d brought in, each one a benign placebo to keep up appearances without use.

The whole thing was a whirlwind of movement and sickness rising in her gut over unassailable guilt. When the time was finally called, she fell against a hallway wall between the two rooms and nearly full-on wept. Her tears were real, however manufactured the situation was, and everyone around felt them– just as they had Melissa Fannon’s, maybe more-so.

She took the long void between the rooms and the nurse’s station, eyes down and heart in her throat. The NSA had assured her no-one would suspect anything, but she doubted their grasp of reality. Having one patient die, who’d been otherwise stable, was one thing. Two looked like neglect, or malevolent intent. She kept her eyes averted, called Fannon, then Roger Mendez. Their voices equally cracked, their hearts broken, Kennedy’s with them.

Before being allowed to flee the hospital, she signed off on a form to transport them to a morgue across town via ambulance and police escort. After the families viewed the bodies, they would be transferred to an NSA safe-house. As Kennedy “left work early,” Barnet would meet her in the parking lot, delivered her to the safe-house to administer the second round of injections.

The experience was surreal. From the moment Kennedy administered Torres’ injection, reality became a sort of swirling abyss of terror. Contrary to what she’d expected, knowing it was a farce only made things worse. She was forced to lie, betray, and flee where she might otherwise stand and fight.

Barnet met her in the parking lot, consoled her along the drive. His words were muffled by phantom fluid around her head, her ears still ringing from the dual-monitors that reported the patients’ afflicted vitals. The city spun for an eternity until she half-slumped in the car-seat, edging on vomit. Barnet offered her a bottle of water from the back seat. She took it mindlessly, sipped it slow.

Everything had been simulated perfectly, as real as it could be. Kennedy feared it might have been. Paranoia took over, made her question if Barnet hadn’t been the man she should have feared– the person working for the free-agent, or maybe even the free agent himself. The only thing that kept her grounded was the reality of the image he’d shown her, and the hope that their ride would truly end with the officers’ revival.

Neo-Chicago was a blur of evening light and neon that reflected off glass and plexiglass surfaces. The electric palette of signs and billboards burned her eyes beneath fear that kept anything else from focusing. Nothing more of the city registered. Dirty asphalt and the mixed, historic-modern skyline of N-C’s concrete jungle were merely footnotes on unfocused eyes.

They came to a stop in something resembling a strip-mall on the city’s north-end. The place was as nondescript and bland as the rest of the upper-class looking buildings around it. Their seas of concrete and asphalt were broken up by expensive, precisely placed landscaping that added just enough green to confuse the brain. It was clear the idea had been to fool oneself into thinking they were no longer in Neo-Chicago’s infested metropolis. It was a poor illusion, Kennedy felt, especially given the inner-city skyline expressly visible to the south.

Barnet led her from the car, into a building whose upper and lower floors were divided between two offices. She ambled past a dentist’s office and up a short staircase. Barnet explained something about it being good cover, and that the two patients would be brought in the “back-way” to minimize gawkers. Kennedy wasn’t listening. She’d become hyper-focused on the two syringes in her pocket and ensuring they reached their destination unharmed.

Barnet opened the heavy, frosted-glass door that read “Williams Exports” in black vinyl on it. They entered to a typical office-scene; a reception area, a desk, and a blonde woman sitting there. If Kennedy would’ve had the mind to look, she’d have recognized the same, fine, golden hair she’d seen when everything had begun. Instead, she kept her eyes on the floor, hand sweating in her pocket as she rolled the syringes between her fingers.

The woman gave Barnet a sort of nod, as much a spook as he was, and returned her eyes to the computer screen before her. More surreality infected Kennedy, but she couldn’t dwell. She was led to an office behind the reception desk and the facade was put into its final stages.

She and Barnet entered a wide, deep room with patient beds clustered near one another in a corner. Monitors and machines were already prepared beside banana bags and I-Vs. Apart from the obvious venue-change, the set-up was identical to the hospital. Barnet resigned himself to silence as Kennedy took a seat near a bed to wait. Time passed in mental ticks and tocs that she counted to keep composed.

When the door finally opened again, Kennedy almost burst into tears from the relief she felt. Instead, she was instantly up, moving away to let the two, faux-teams of crash-respondents through. They paid her no mind, rushed the patients passed, and laid them over the beds. Two of them hurried the gurneys away, and the rest filed out behind them.

“Kennedy?” Barnet said, returning reality to her. “You’re on.”

She acted mechanically, moved to insert I-Vs, slap on monitor probes, and inject each of the patients with their death-antagonists. Once finished, she stood back to view them both, eyes seemingly unfocused, but actually taking in both heart monitors’ noiseless, flat-lines.

She held her breath, grit her teeth. Torres’ respiration spiked. A visible rise appeared on a line. It strengthened, spiked higher. Kennedy’s knuckles were white. Mendez’s respiration returned next. Torres’ pulse became rhythmic, erratic. Then, Mendez’s was spiking. A moment that Kennedy was certain she’d pass out in saw the heart monitors suddenly settle into regular, healthy rhythms.

She exhaled a breath that could’ve blown down weaker walls. Barnet patted her on a shoulder. She turned to look at him, face drained of color, “Bathroom?”

He pointed back at a door. She sprinted for it, fell through it to her knees, and vomited.