Sleep. Hushed neurons curl up in tight and cozy bundles in the whorls and gyri of a carefully medicated brain. A warm saline bath keeps the tissues supple, pliable, and ready for cutting. The heart is carefully regulated; too fast, and it will go into arrest. The body becomes useless. Too slow, and the blood will not flow to keep the organs functioning properly. Sleep. No light reaches the eyes to disturb this delicate balance.
All around, there are more bodies safely cocooned. The machines hum and ping contentedly, reassuring the room that all will be taken care of. No messiness, no pain, no harsh intrusions.
Sleep.
. . . . . .Two of them enter the darkened room, one taller than the other. The light from outside the room reveals to a hidden security camera the fact that both are wearing long white lab coats and ID tags clipped to their lapels. One is pushing a gurney. The door shuts behind them automatically.
"Shit. I keep forgetting how dark it is in here."
"That's why you got the goggles. You should get your eyes modified. Which tank?" the taller man says. His partner quietly huffs, a replacement of his usual grumble, and pulls the low-light goggles slung around his neck up to his eyes.
"28. That's why, Murphy; can't do it. Docs say I got enough mods. Any more and it upsets ... what the frag they call it. The aural structure, or some mumbo-jumbo drek like that."
The silence afterward tacitly affirms what the other says. He knows something of aural structures although the gift that had shown them to him in their vibrant glory had long since fled away. Too many drugs, too many implants, too much pushing at an already meager gift, they'd said. Now and then he thought he would see something, but more often than not it turned out to be nothing but the equivalent of a phantom ache. Like now. A slow-moving gleam runnels down the body in tank 28. He resists the urge to tap at his temples, as if adding percussion to them might jog the circuitry in his low-light enhanced eyes and clear up the glitch.
"Jones, put a note in that memory of yours, would you? Remind me to make an appointment for a tune-up."
"Goddit. Let's get moving on this. Place makes me feel like I got the DT's."
Murphy also knows about the delirium tremens, and knows that his partner is suffering under a misperception. Without further comment, he orders the machines to release one of their precious charges. Obediently, tank 28's clamps open, offering the now-autonomous structure to the embrace of Jones's gurney with the care of a nurse handing a new mother her babe. They take the encapsulated body and make sure it is latched securely, all systems still pumping and regulating as they should, before wheeling it out of the humming and pinging cave-like room.
. . . . . . . . .The soft susurration of air in the dimmed operating theater counterpoints the muted pings of the heartbeat monitor. Carefully wrapped figures silently keep track of their patient's condition.
"Set the lidocaine nearer to the tubing, please," murmurs one anonymous figure to another. The barest nod, and the white-sheathed assistant does as bid, setting the ointment in its appointed place with a delicate care usually reserved for circuitry manufacture, brain surgery, or painting minute ideograms on perfect grains of rice.
Tranquility reigns; the doctor in charge of the procedure demands it. If utter sterility were not required, a Zen garden with precisely placed stones might have sat in the corner even now. And yet, all must be just so. No garden, not even a small and soothing display of water running over an artificially lit glass lantern.
Not even subdued musical strains invade this sanctified space, provided the patient could hear it from within his simsense-and-sedative induced dreams. He lies under a blanket of calm, dreaming and waiting for a renewed chance.
It finally arrives, embodied in the mechanical casket escorted on a gurney. Its attendants, Jones and Murphy, wheel it to the antechamber's entrance as all eyes within the theater track their progress. Murphy, the more introspective of the pair, can't help but think of cultists awaiting the arrival of their god.
Jones, meanwhile, stands on tiptoe and squints at the keypad access. A grunt tells Murphy that Jones is very dissatisfied yet again; the keypads and other access devices typically rests at a height more comfortable for human eyes and fingers in this place. But Murphy has not been given the access codes yet, so he can't input them for the dwarf who is now pressing the buttons with deft stubby fingers.
The doors on their side slide open with the near-noiseless hum of electronics. Murphy knows the drill - the dwarf goes first. He pushes the gurney forward, just halfway inside the little chamber to prevent the outer doors from closing, and then stops. The inner doors won't open until the outer doors shut or the occupants inside key in the code.
"Whassaproblem? C'mon, get it inside," says Jones, his great eyebrows furrowed to match his scowl of impatience.
"Can't get it to move. I think the wheels're stuck," mutters Murphy. He pushes at the gurney, which moves a millimeter under his tight grip. He bends and stares at the problematic wheels, feeling his ceramic Ceska digging into his kidney. The dwarf grunts a curse at the disease-infested mother of the gurney's inventor and bends with Murphy.
"Just checked on these last night ..."
Jones doesn't see the Ceska come out nor descend in a blow that knocks him out cold. One down, more to go.
"Sorry, old man," Murphy whispers, then keys the 'go' code in his wristwatch. Rising swiftly, he aims the Ceska at the juncture where the still-closed inner doors of the antechamber meet, over the unconscious entombed body that is a twin of the one inside. Several be-scrubbed personnel had taken hesitant steps near those doors. Several pair of eyes widen at the danger pointing at them, scrambling out of the way as soon as Murphy presses the trigger.
A three-round burst of plastic-encased bullets of an acid compound explodes from the gun and hit the doors, blat-blat-blat. They burst open on impact, melting the mechanism that keeps the portal shut, but the doors only slide partway open. Shouting ensues inside the operating theater; one figure makes it to one of the machines and slaps what could only be a Panic ButtonTM. Another figure calmly presses a stud on the table on which the patient lies.
Drek. Murphy grabs the gurney-cum-battering ram, hearing the pounding of feet and gunfire behind him. In front of him, half of their target is sinking through the floor to safety as he uses the other half to gain entrance to the previously serene arena. One assistant scurries behind a machine, holding it in front as a shield against promised violence, while another simply backs into a corner and screams in a panic of hysteria.
The doctor, backing away from his descending charge, plucks a ready scalpel and throws it at Murphy in what would have been deadly accuracy if Murphy weren't chipped to fly. He blurs, just dodging the surgical instrument, which nets his target more time to escape. Furious, he fires a deadly rain at the doctor. One bullet clips his shoulder and splatters, another completely missing, and another plows straight into the doctor's midsection. Agony etches his proud face; he stumbles forward to his knees, his hand swinging forward with a meaty thwack on a row of buttons on the tube's interface while the acid eats him from the inside out.
But Murphy doesn't have time for the doctor anymore. The patient's body has just gone below floor level, his twin's tube is bubbling as the saline drains, and an assistant, mask removed to reveal a grim male face, is bearing down on him like a Saeder-Krupp automated freight truck. He grits and bares his teeth in a rictus grin, silently screaming for his team to get the fuck in here!, and fires another burst. Two bullets make it out and hit their target, but the gun jams on the third with an ominous click.
The male takes a while to crumple to the floor, crashing into a monitor first and sending it careening across the tiled floor into the microsurgery machine. Both topple like wrestling brothers, knocking other implements down with them in the process. Murphy tucks the Ceska into the lab coat's pocket; he doesn't have time to clear the weapon, and he can't use it.
A panel on the floor is sliding shut to cover the patient's route, so he snatches an IV stand and jams it in place, keeping the panel open. He glances up, ignoring the male assistant's moans of pain, and sees a teammate jog in with a silenced Predator in hand.
"Christ, Murphy, it's a cock-up all around out there," says the blonde wild-haired young man, panting. He takes in the room, frowning at the still-screaming assistant before training the heavy pistol on her chest and pulling the trigger. The noise ceases abruptly and the woman sinks to the tiles, leaving a bloody smear on the wall behind her. "Looks like it's snafu in here too. Where's Vargas?"
"Gone. Fucker dropped down there," Murphy replies, his voice heavy with disgust. He jerks a thumb at the jammed panel and the near-darkness below. "The body's right here, though the damn doctor got the tube unlocked before he bought it." Another thumb jerk, this time at the cylinder which is now devoid of liquid, leaving the target's twin lying flat. The clear macroglass is gently fogging, leftover moisture beading down the inside like rain on a windowpane.
"Well fuck, Murphy, you couldn't wait until you got Vargas, too? No wonder Taylor, Gibbs and I are getting pasted!" The blonde, pissed, spares a look for the body in the tube. It doesn't seem entirely human to him, although its DNA is nothing but; the pallor of the skin and the forced breathing reminds him of a snake exhibit he'd seen once as a child. An albino boa constrictor had lain coiled, resting, until a handler had thrust a live mouse in the cage. He'd watched it strike and kill the mouse, then slowly unhinge to swallow it whole. He'd stood there, fascinated and repulsed, until even the tail was gone. Afterwards the snake had coiled again, this time to sleep ... or so a man next to him had said.
But the snake's eyes are open, he'd protested. He can't be sleepin'.
Snakes sleep with their eyes open, was the man's amused response before moving to the next exhibit.
"Shit," mutters the blonde, shaking off the memory. The lights at that moment go out, the dark glow of red from the emergency generators bathing the operating theater in a bloody light.
The blonde and Murphy both swear. Murphy knows it will be tougher, now, to find Vargas down below the panel. His low-light eyes work well in the current environment, but if they are glitching like he thinks they might, then he can't trust them if he drops to the next room to find their target.
"I gotta go and update Taylor and Gibbs on our status. We'll be back for the body, Murphy; you just get Vargas, alright? You fuckin' get Vargas, because I ain't missing out on twenty large for your screw up," spits the blonde, and he sprints out before Murphy can respond.
Alone in the theater, Murphy resists the urge to swear again.
He walks the few steps over to the hole in the floor, hearing his footsteps faintly echo in the once pristine room. Below the floor, the darkness is stygian, as if leading to another plane of hell different than the one he currently occupies. He blinks, trying to wrest more light in order to see the path in front of him at all, much less clearly. The last thing he needs is to find an abattoir awaiting another body's arrival. He can't make out anything ...
... Sssss ...
What the hell?
Murphy crouches, kneeling at the lip, and peers even more intently into the blackness. In the back of his mind, he's thinking that he really should get moving; Taylor, Gibbs, and Roy can't hold off security indefinitely. That doesn't stop him from trying to puzzle out just what that hissing sound had been. Finally, however, Murphy decides that it's the air pump from the body's cylinder. It had probably gotten damaged during the casket's duty as battering ram.
As he sets his hands on the edge, ready to take the plunge, a fireball roars up from the depths, searing Murphy's eyes. He hadn't picked the flare compensators as well when he'd gone under the knife for the new eyes, and he does not have time to regret this before he is flung backward, enveloped in flames.
The flames spread quickly from his body and the remnants of the fireball. They catch on fabric and hair, kicking the heat up a notch in the bargain. Vargas, who sits below, exhausted from the spell he'd cast, knows it will scour the room clean in the only way that fire can. He trusts that security will find the clone and take care of it for him, since it is still hospital property. Gathering his strength, as well as what clothing he can salvage, he takes a ride down another chute to the laundry, from which he can walk away and wait another day to get his heart replaced.
But back in the inferno that is the operating room, Murphy's teammates return to find Murphy a burning corpse along with the rest, the tube the only thing untouched. Disregarding the pain, one of them grabs the gurney's blistering handle and pulls it out behind him, the others keeping the way clear in front of them. Only by sheer miracle do they find their way out.
Only by sheer dumb luck, later when they and the tube are piled in Gibbs' van and fleeing down the highway, are they hit. A two-ton eighteen wheeler, its driver sleep-deprived and simply wanting to dump his cargo so he can curl up with his wife tonight, makes a left turn right into the runners' vehicle. The momentum and angle toss the van on its side; it skids ten feet, throwing sparks, and slams into a parked Runabout. The impact kills Taylor as he is crushed under the tube's weight, Roy hurtling through the windshield and slamming to the asphalt in a sickening crunch.
Rescue workers later cut Gibbs away from the steering wheel embedded in his chest cavity, and marvel at the empty cylinder lying, cracked and smeared with blood, on the sidewalk a foot away from the carnage. One paramedic sees what must have been its inhabitant, a naked man covered in profusely bleeding lacerations, crawling mindlessly towards a nearby doorway and motions his colleagues to abandon the dead men to take care of the live one.
Efficiently they pick him up and strap him to a gurney, one of them attempting to ask the man questions. The unknown man's eyes, a sharp green, stare at everything in incomprehension. The inquisitor eventually gives up and looks over the body to his partner, shaking his head. He twirls a finger next to his ear. They both shrug; it's a typical day, after all, and they'd seen worse. At least this one would live.
Their patient, the ambulance's rocking as it weaves in traffic soothing him, is lulled back to sleep.
. . . . . . .Teller has been working in Seattle General's ER for too damn long. Fifty goddamned years, and none of the new shits squeezed out of U-Dub's medical school ever listens to him. That's just fine with Teller, because most of the new kids couldn't hack ER. They'd rather get the cushy biomedical or cyberimplant jobs than deal with a victim just in off the street with a spurting stump where his leg used to be.
The only fly in Teller's ointment is the cocky little bastard currently in charge of ER. That boy has plans, Teller can see it. He's also seen him taking lunch or going off for some virtual golfing with the hospital's director. But Teller isn't looking to get ahead. His retirement is looming in just a few months, and all he wants is his watch and his pension.
"So what've you got for me tonight?" he directs to the nurse on duty, Becky Schwartz, as he logs on duty for his shift. Becky is a middle-aged and motherly Betty Page, the type with a dry but sharp sense of humor. Sometimes he wishes he were at least ten years younger; he likes 'em spunky.
"The usual sort, Dr. Teller. Multiple stab wounds in two, chiphead OD in three, SURGE in four, and trouble brewing in the waiting room," she rattles off, taking Teller's datapad and uploading patient charts. "Chiphead's girlfriend has been caught soliciting what Nature gave her as well as trolling for more chips now that her supply's gone. We're short-staffed tonight,' she adds with a roll of her eyes and a sigh.
Teller shakes his head as he takes back his datapad and reviews the charts. "Get security to hustle her butt outta here. She gives you grief, make like security'll hand her to Lone Star. Don't have time for her kind of crapola." He hates two-legged parasites with the same fervor that he does the organisms he's done battle with for just over fifty years. He turns to begin his round when he gets to the last chart.
'Becky? What's this John Doe in seven?"
"Well drek, Dr. Teller, you caught me with my pants down," she answers deadpan, mouth quirked as if she'd just sampled something she wasn't sure she liked or not. While Teller would love to actually catch her in just that way, he isn't sure the flesh is as willing. Not to mention he also hates the new street words. He likes to hear a good old-fashioned 'shit' out of a woman's mouth.
"We'll put it down to a long shift." He looks the case over again; the patient was found at the scene of a car accident, seems to have suffered mild head trauma and assorted lacerations, and has been prescribed with vasopressin. "Amnesia?" His eyes shoot straight for hers; he'll have a better idea how to go about this one based on her reactions. Teller had learned how to read her within a year of her signing up here, and had learned to trust her judgment. Rarely is Becky ever wrong. She has a knack for discerning bullshit stories and diagnoses.
Becky hesitates. "That's the initial diagnosis."
"You mean, the one that Gorman slapped on it." He'd label a brick of crap as gold if it kept him in the director's good graces, thinks Teller. He would never have selected Gorman to take charge of ER, but the hospital director hadn't asked him.
"Gorman was busy," Becky prevaricates. The look in her eyes, however, says yes.
"Uh huh. I'll see John Doe first. Tell the others to take two aspirin and call me in the morning," he says, heading straight for room seven. It is entirely likely that Gorman might be right in that the patient may be suffering from amnesia, but since he is so near to retirement, Teller would rather check for himself. It would be just like that punk to misdiagnose the patient and then blame Teller should it turn out that the man has a severe concussion that results in death. Records can be 'altered' to show anything.
Upon entering #7, the first thing that strikes Teller is how corpse-like John Doe looks. He lies there so quietly, sleeping with his breath gently easing between his teeth without whistling or snoring and paler than his usual sun-deprived patients. Doe is also bald, but he can see the first brush of dark new hair starting to poke up out of his scalp. As he approaches, Doe's eyes open, a guileless green gaze fixing on him in a manner that he finds somewhat unnerving.
"Hello there, how are you feeling after your spill?" Teller says with a reassuring smile, partly to dispel his unease and partly to establish some rapport. There are details to fill in on the patient's chart, and being able to speak with him should help ascertain if he's been diagnosed correctly or not.
Doe's eyes blink a few times, but otherwise maintain their gaze. He does not speak, and something in the man's manner strikes him as being familiar although he can't place it. It is obvious that Doe knows that Teller is speaking to him, but yet has no concept of communicating. This thought seems a bit ridiculous to him, so he tries a different tack.
"Don't feel like speaking right now, eh? That's fine. I hear you've had a rough time, so I don't blame you," he continues, patting the patient's hand. "I need to ask you a few questions, though, so maybe you feel like doing a little writing or using some sign language?"
Silence. Something, a memory perhaps, briefly flits across the man's face; his eyebrows come together just the slightest bit, the gaze changing momentarily to something more introspective, and his mouth almost moves. But the look passes, leaving an apparent mild frustration and confusion behind. His hand tenses under Teller's, clutching the blanket tightly. Inexplicably, his face then screws up as he lets out a very un-adult wail.
Perplexed, he attempts to soothe the man. "Hey hey, it's alright. I'm on your side," he says, finding himself almost adding kiddo. Again that sense of familiarity. Reminds me of my grandkids, he thinks as Doe seems to calm down. Except he's an adult and was just in an accident. What's going on here?
"Tell you what, I'll be back soon and we can talk then. Sound good to you?" Teller asks. He's not surprised when the man sniffles and gives a whimper in answer. He pats Doe's hand again, smiling, and departs the room. Several theories are going around in his head, and he doesn't like the sound of any of them since he doesn't know if the man will even be able to afford treatment.
"So what's up, doc?" Becky asks on Teller's return. Her demeanor is a complete contrast to Doe's, and this sets him to shaking his head.
"I don't know, Becky dear." He pauses, setting his datapad on the counter and resting his arms protectively around it, and rubs his chin. "He's not entirely compos mentis, if you get me."
"Do I ever. My sister's kids when they were babies were just like that," she says with a rueful smirk.
"Exactly!" he says, pouncing on the idea. He straightens up. "It's as if he's regressed. Of course there's several possible explanations for it, but we don't even know his name, much less if someone will pay for the treatment. Huntington's tops my list, except we haven't observed him enough to see the other symptoms yet."
Becky nods. "I haven't seen the shakes, although I don't know if the guy can walk on his own or anything yet-"
Another wail reaches their ears. Two pair of eyebrows go up, sending questioning looks at each other before they take off to #7.
Inside, a very endowed young woman stands a few paces from Doe's bed, wincing with her hands over her ears. Doe, for his part, clutches his blanket and curls up towards the far side of his bed away from the girl. The din makes them wince as well; Becky moves to quiet the man down and Teller yanks the girl out of the room.