Omega Zero

by Kurtis Eckstein

  “See?” Robert said in a shaky voice. “They must be reconnecting it now.”

  I reached out with my sixth sense to determine if he was right, only to see Jordyn lying down flat, with one of the medical staff pressing on her heart. The person then jumped back, and Jordyn’s body jolted like it had just been electrocuted, prompting a beep on the screen next to us, only for it to immediately flatline again.

  We both stood there motionless, with Robert staring intently on the screen like he was in a trance, while I focused on what was happening in the room down the hall.

  We were both completely silent as I sensed them switch people for chest compressions, followed by another jolt a few minutes later, followed by another person doing chest compressions.

  And then it happened.

  They all just stopped, standing there as if they had given up. I thought for a moment they were going to shock her again, but they didn’t appear to be doing so. It was like they were…beginning to clean up.

  “Oh, hell no,” I snapped. The tile beneath my feet cracked from my initial push-off as I bolted down the hall.

  “Wait!” Robert called out, probably thinking they were still working on her.

  I ignored him, slamming into the closed door with such force that it snapped in two, half of it swinging inwards to slam against the wall, while the other half flew into the room and slammed into the side of Jordyn’s bed, narrowly missing one of the doctors.

  Everyone screamed.

  “Get the hell out!” I shouted as I came to a halt beside her bed.

  The pale color in her skin was gone now, replaced with a light gray. They had pulled her gown down, exposing her bare chest, along with two large patches with wires attached – I assumed it must have been what was shocking her heart.

  I drew the curtain back the moment the last person ran from the room, instantly shooting my blood into her inner thigh a second time. Except this time, it was different. This time I didn’t hold back.

  With a thick tendril, I filled her body with my blood, lining her veins and arteries, mingling with her own only to pull her blood inside of me via a different pathway while being careful to not actually make it apart of myself – being careful not to feed on it. In doing so, with my next heartbeat, I pumped her blood straight back into her body, only to pull it back again. And out again.

  With each beat of my heart, I pumped her blood, not mine.

  Because I didn’t really need a heart to survive. I had been stabbed in the heart before when protecting Trinity and had been fine. Perfectly fine.

  Just as I was now, using my heart to pump her blood.

  But it was a temporary fix.

  She needed to breathe, and ultimately her heart needed to beat again on its own.

  As I searched the inside of her body, I discovered a ton of spots in her chest where blood was leaking out with each of my heartbeats from her ribs being broken. I quickly blocked those areas with my blood to stop the bleeding, while simultaneously focusing on her lungs, trying to get them to expand without doing permanent damage. It took me a moment, but after a few tries I figured out which muscle I needed to manipulate, and then I had her breathing.

  Now the heart…

  “You can’t do this,” Robert exclaimed weakly from behind me. I hadn’t even bothered paying attention to him coming into the room.

  “You want me to stop?” I asked in disbelief, glancing back at him. “Let her die?”

  He shook his head, his eyes wide in shock. “N-No, but there will be consequences if I don’t stop you. If I don’t obey orders. You aren’t authorized to try to resuscitate her, and we already have the information we need…”

  Well, so much for caring about her. Obviously it was clear who was ultimately number one in his life. But surely, wouldn’t his superiors want her alive? I mean, I knew they were worried about the virus spreading, but still…

  Unless there was something else going on here, like a demented sense of possessiveness – Robert got to keep Jordyn if she was sick, but if she got better, then surely he knew she’d escape his grasp.

  Did he not want me to bring her back? Possibly because he’d rather see her dead than free away from him?

  In her current state, she was like a prisoner in a way – he could keep her right where he wanted her, pretending like she was his, and she couldn’t escape. But if she got better, she could do what she wanted, and he would lose his delusional control over her.

  Was that the real reason he didn’t want me to help? Not because he didn’t believe me, but because he did believe me?

  I wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but the idea made me sick. And in that moment, it was the only logical reason I could think of for why he didn’t want me to succeed.

  “You’re not moving me from this spot,” I spat in a livid tone. “No one is.”

  Suddenly, I felt the gravity begin to turn up, prompting an eerie resolve to settle in my entire body. It was like my mind snapped, without actually snapping. My emotions were still there, but that calm decisiveness began to take over.

  I glanced over my shoulder again, my expression cold, my eyes dead, my voice threateningly calm. “Don’t make me kill you,” I warned in a monotone. “Or is that what you want?” I considered. “For me to incapacitate you, so you won’t be blamed?” When he didn’t respond right away, I scoffed. “Coward.”

  That was the breaking point for him.

  “Shit!” he cursed in frustration, storming out of the room.

  I supposed that was better than nothing. He obviously had decided he wasn’t going to disobey by helping, but at least he wasn’t going to try to stop me either.

  I returned my attention to Jordyn, my heart actively beating for her, my blood breathing for her. But it wasn’t enough. I had to get her heart going.

  With my blood filling her body, I walked over to the other side of her bed to the portable cart full of drawers where the machine that had shocked her heart was sitting. I assumed all the settings were still correct, so I pushed the button that literally said ‘shock’ and instantly felt a wave of energy pulse throughout my body while hers jerked.

  But it still wasn’t enough.

  Trying to minimize as much damage as possible, I used the areas where she had been bleeding to invade her chest and find her heart. Once I had carefully wrapped around it, I began squeezing it in between my heartbeats, alternating beats rapidly between the two of us.

  I hit the button again, causing her body to jolt a second time.

  Still no indication that her heart was going to take over.

  “Dammit,” I hissed. “Come on Jordyn. What do I need to do to save you?”

  But I had no way to know for sure. All I could do was experiment.

  Paying attention to each section of her body, I realized she had some fluid in her lungs that didn’t belong there. I lifted my hand and shot some blood into her mouth, running down her throat in order to syphon it out, contracting my blood to pump it onto the floor.

  That then gave me an idea. I knew the fluid didn’t belong in her lungs because I understood that about my own body. Which meant there might be other problems I could fix, if only I knew it wasn’t right. So I began searching her body again, comparing it to my own, only to realize that all the fluid in her skull didn’t match what I had. It was denser. Thicker. More pressurized.

  Afraid I might kill her, I carefully found my way into her skull and pulled some of the fluid out around her brain, thankful when it became more like what I sensed in my own skull. I then carefully traveled into her spine, discovering the same problem.

  Once I had reduced the pressure a little by siphoning the fluid into my own body and out onto the floor, I hit the shock button again, relaxing my blood on her heart to see if it would beat for itself.

  Nothing.

  Still nothing.

  Frustrated, I hit the button a fourth time, only for there to be no shock – her body didn’t jerk, and I didn’t feel a pulse in my own blood
. Infuriated, I glanced down at the machine seeing no indication that it was broken. I realized it must have a timer or some kind of restriction on how quickly I could push the shock button.

  Dammit!

  I didn’t know what to do now.

  All I could do was keep her breathing, keep her blood flowing, keep her heart artificially beating, but I didn’t know how to bring her back to life. Were the doctors right to call it? Was I just wasting my time, disobeying orders and potentially suffering severe consequences all for nothing?

  Was her life really even worth all this?

  Dammit!

  “Shit!” a woman exclaimed behind me, a few feet away.

  I glanced at her in annoyance, knowing she was one of the doctors who had been in the room earlier. She had blonde hair and brown eyes, appearing to be in her early thirties. Maybe Jordyn’s vital signs looked normal now on their monitor down the hall, prompting her to work up the courage to return.

  She was staring at my blood with wide eyes, before shifting her gaze to Jordyn. “Y-You resuscitated her?” she asked in disbelief.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “But she’s breathing!” she exclaimed.

  “I’m doing that!” I hissed right back. “Now why don’t you make yourself useful and help me get her heart going again! This damn machine isn’t doing anything!”

  “The defibrillator can’t restart a heart, only correct rhythms,” the woman exclaimed. “It’s not like on TV – a completely stopped heart is almost always irreversible.” She paused. “I can give her more epinephrine and atropine, but if it didn’t help the first time, another dose is unlikely to do anything either. And without knowing exactly why her heart stopped, there isn’t much more we can do.”

  “Well do that then!” I exclaimed, feeling even more desperate. “Because she’s not getting any deader! And I’m not leaving until she’s alive again! Even if that means I stay here for a week!”

  The woman gawked at me like I was crazy, before carefully making her way over to the cart, and pulling out some vials. Her hands were shaking as she went to work, and before long she was twisting a needleless syringe into Jordyn’s IV.

  Instantly, as she began pushing the drug, I felt a warmth creep all throughout my body, prompting me to be terrified for half a second, thinking I was absorbing Jordyn’s blood. But then I realized it was a different kind of warmth, distinct from when I was hungry and well-fed. It wasn’t unlike what I had sensed when Ava or Trinity touched me affectionately, though it wasn’t exactly the same either. It made me feel…really good.

  However, I snapped out of my temporary euphoria when I felt Jordyn’s heart sputter underneath my grasp. I quickly slammed my finger on the shock button again, prompting the doctor to drop the syringe and jerk her arms back the moment before Jordyn’s body jolted.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed. “Warn me next time!”

  “Sorry,” I replied insincerely, speaking more out of habit, knowing it was the right thing to say. I was too focused on Jordyn’s heart to care. It was fluttering now, contracting as if it was out of sync with itself.

  The woman craned her neck over to look at the screen on the defibrillator, prompting me to glance down too to see an erratic heart rhythm displayed. She rushed back to the cart to grab something else, and a moment later was back at the bedside, screwing another syringe onto her IV.

  “I’m going to try pushing some magnesium,” she announced. “Hit the button with the up-arrow to increase the energy level. But do not hit the shock button yet,” she emphasized. “You have to let it charge all the way.”

  I scoffed. “Well that’s a stupid design,” I commented in annoyance.

  “No, it’s not,” she retorted. “Not when the user knows what the hell they’re doing.”

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t argue with her there. I had no idea what I was doing. If it wasn’t for the fact the shock button literally said ‘shock’ right next to it, then I wouldn’t have known which button to push.

  The doctor finished injecting the magnesium and then walked around me to get a better look at the defibrillator’s display. She studied the bouncing heart rhythm for a moment before reaching out to place her finger over the shock button without pushing it.

  I didn’t know what she was waiting for – if maybe she was looking for a particular pattern, or if she was just waiting for it to finish charging. But then she hit it, sending another wave of energy throughout our bodies. I felt Jordyn’s heart spasm just before it began pulsing rhythmically.

  “Holy shit!” the woman said in disbelief.

  “What?!” I exclaimed, concerned by her expression.

  “It worked,” she replied with wide eyes.

  I sighed heavily in relief. “Why are you so surprised?” I asked seriously.

  She glared at me. “Because I told you a completely stopped heart is almost always irreversible. We’re lucky the second dose of epinephrine, along with the magnesium put her in a shockable rhythm. If it hadn’t worked, then nothing else would have.”

  “I suppose I could have just squeezed her heart forever until they put in a pacemaker or something,” I considered.

  She gawked at me again, before her brow furrowed. “A pacemaker is basically just a defibrillator, so it wouldn’t help. She would need a heart transplant, and you can’t stay awake for weeks to keep her alive while we get her a new heart.”

  I almost informed her just how wrong she was, but decided against it at the last minute, realizing that sharing such information would probably only get me into more trouble. Instead, I ignored her and began carefully receding out of Jordyn’s body. However, the moment I pulled out of her thigh she began gushing blood all over the bed.

  “Shit!” the woman exclaimed again. “Plug her back up!”

  I immediately did while she frantically ran out of the room, yelling down the hall for a suture kit and a blood bag for her patient. However, she didn’t come back in the room right away like I was expecting. Instead, I got a creepy sense that I was being watched again, like what had happened back in Indonesia when I was feeding, though I was certain Ava was nowhere near. Not to mention, this sensation felt like I was being watched by a true ghost – I felt a presence but couldn’t detect its location. I quickly reached out with my sixth sense anyway, trying to discover the source, only for it to vanish when I noticed what was keeping the doctor. She was wrapped up in a man’s arms with his hand covering her mouth.

  No, not a regular man.

  A soldier.

  And he was with seven others, all of them with guns ready, quietly sneaking into position to barge into the room.

  Pissed that Robert had really wimped out, I reached out further to find him, only to discover the coward in an unexpected location. He was in a bathroom down the hallway, leaning against the wall with his head pressed against his forearm.

  Was he ashamed of calling for help? Why would he even call for help, knowing what I could do? Human soldiers were no threat to me.

  Or was it possible the hospital staff called for help? This was a military facility after all, which meant the panic button would likely call in soldiers rather than the civilian police.

  Either way, I wasn’t sure what to do in this situation. Jordyn was alive again, but if I removed my blood completely, she might bleed out. The gash in her inner thigh I had made to circulate her blood was just too large to not be stitched up immediately. Alternatively, a gun fight might lead to a stray bullet hitting her, and I knew killing them was a bad idea too, since I’d definitely get kicked off the team then.

  In order to achieve my long-term goals, I had to stay with the military for now, because I didn’t have the resources to go after these terrorists alone. Not to mention, if I was going to eventually return to Trinity, then I needed them to believe I had died. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to pull that off – maybe facing off against a metahuman like Trinity who could theoretically kill me, hide the body, and then just never return – but ha
ving them try to imprison me wasn’t ideal. I wouldn’t be able to fake my death then, and if I escaped they’d be after me indefinitely.

  Which meant, my best option was to at least give the appearance of obedience for now.

  No, that wouldn’t work either.

  This wound had to come first.

  My best option was actually to hold them all hostage, make the doctor stitch her up, and then once it was taken care of, turn myself in willingly to these guys…

  Five of the men rapidly filed into the room, guns up, with one of them barking out orders.

  “Hands up!” he yelled.

  My blood shot out and tore all the guns out of their hands in a flash, before ensnaring them in strategically placed tendrils to bind their hands and feet. The crimson fluid then bolted out of the room to grab the last few men, pulling the doctor away from her captor.

  I called out to her then, over the sound of several of the men cursing in shock.

  “Get that damn suture kit already! I didn’t do all this work just so she could die by bleeding out!”

  The woman hesitated, seeming shocked as she stared at the men struggling against my crimson grasp in vain.

  “Hurry dammit!” I exclaimed.

  She made a motion to head down the hall, only to pause for half a second, and then took off in a sprint. I was watching her closely to make sure she didn’t try to escape altogether, and was relieved when she darted into what looked like a supply closet. She then made a stop at their workstation, appearing to speak to one of the other staff, and ran back to the room.

  She had to weave in between the restrained men, who were all baffled, with none of them daring to speak now that they were hostages themselves. As she went to work, opening a few packages and beginning to get everything ready, I turned my head towards the guy who had originally spoken to me, hoping to diffuse the tension a little.

  “I work for you,” I stated matter-of-factly, as if my military clothing wasn’t enough for them to realize that. “This patient is invaluable to the military, and we can’t let her die,” I added.

  The man swallowed loudly before speaking in a surprisingly hoarse tone. “We got a call that the hospital staff’s lives were in danger,” he replied.