Project 137

by Seth Augenstein

“I’ll be there, dear.”

  She straightened my tie and collar like she always did and patted the side of my face.

  “Okay. Go save some lives, superdoc.” She finally kissed me.

  I couldn’t help but smile. I loved this woman. I picked up my briefcase, then walked to the front door. Outside I started the car and drove off. Saxas’ voice accompanied me the entire way, describing a meeting between China, Korea, and Japan in East Asia, complete with a surprise appearance by the U.S. Vice President to help broker the negotiations. She described the ongoing missing-persons epidemic and the results of the second episode of the seventh season of How Low Can You Go. The show must go on, and the program will continue, she said. Finally, she spoke of the massacre at the stadium that had interrupted the star-studded competition.

  “The Newark FactSecond reports that some one-hundred people were killed, but seventy-five are recovering at the hospital,” Saxas’ voice said.

  “That lying bastard,” I snarled, pounding the steering wheel.

  I replayed the conversation between O’Keefe and myself in my mind. But before I could totally recall everything I’d said, my stomach sank in horror—as my own voice erupted from the speakers.

  “But…a terrible job. Listen—I…know about what happened. I…think it was terrorists, based on the carnage. But I can tell you…the stem boosters that we gave them, and the surgeries and the stitches…keep them together until the bodies can heal,” my voice said, unnaturally stilted.

  The car nearly swerved off the road as I shook with rage. It was my voice, sure. But my words were chopped up, rearranged, perverted.

  It was total bullshit. It was libel.

  “The police have deferred comment on the terrorist claims, saying the investigation remains privileged under the terms of FOJA. In other news…”

  I called Lanza on my Atman.

  “Hey, bro,” Lanza said.

  “I’m going to kill that reporter,” I blurted.

  “Don’t ever tell a cop you’re going to kill somebody,” Lanza said. “It’s not smart.”

  “Somebody has to take this guy to task,” I said. “He just chopped up audio of what I said and remixed it for their soundbite on the news. The national fucking news.”

  “There’s a lesson to be learned here,” Lanza said. “Don’t talk to the press. Ever. Beware the pen, no matter how dull it is. I learned that in the academy. You best just let this one go, Joe.”

  We hung up. I pulled into the hospital parking lot. I braked, slowing to a crawl in front of the mob of TV cameras and stunningly beautiful women in suits with low-cut tops—the glamorous reporters for the New York news stations. This opportunistic horde made the trek across the river for each mass-casualty shooting, explosion, and tragic drowning of a child the hospital treated. Everything else in New Jersey went ignored. (All their reporting all got funneled to the Saxas broadcasts anyway, and most would remain unused). These bottom feeders were the last people I needed to speak with. They made O’Keefe seem like an ethical pillar of the community. I hit a button and my window started to roll up.

  “Doctor, Doctor,” said one of them, a blonde Asian woman in a leopard-print, two-piece suit that bared her midriff, as her heels clattered up to my driver’s side, “can you give us a status update on the victims of the terrorist attack?”

  “No,” I said, the window shutting just as the newscaster thrust her microphone in the gap in the window. I rolled forward a few feet, she shrieked, her arm caught inside. I braked and opened the window enough for her to pull her hand back. Before she could jab the microphone in again, I punched the accelerator, tires screeching, careening around the corner of the hospital. I sped along the delivery road the wrong way, praying no trucks would come. I lucked out—the coast was clear. I parked at the end of the administration lot, a little spot in the shade near the biohazard dumpsters of amputated limbs and expended guts. I only parked in that spot in the gravest emergencies.

  I hadn’t been back there in more than a year, and I was surprised to notice a new hatch in the building’s foundation, shiny and silver. The Bureau seal was emblazoned on it. A sign said “Bureau of Wellness—Special Deliveries” above it.

  I stopped and stared. Why would the Bureau need its own chute at the back of the hospital? Since when did they do anything more than hinder the work of real doctors? They never provided anything that needed to be delivered—and particularly nothing “special.” The chute looked like it descended to the basement. I tugged on the steel handle. It wouldn’t budge. It had to be some kind of new access portal for the pharmaceutical corporations. I stared for a second longer, then walked around the front of Saint Almachius.

  I ducked in the front door, behind the TV crews who still faced toward the ultrahighway, waiting for an interview from somebody, anybody. They had forgotten me already.

  Inside the hospital, a surreal scene lay before me. I breathed slowly, even though my heart raced.

  The hallways of the intensive care unit were lined with gurneys. On each was a body covered in a white sheet, the nose poking up like a tiny peak on a long and morbid mountain range. Dozens of them, the massacre victims who had been alive and sleeping peacefully just hours earlier. Echoes of my footsteps resounded down the long hallway. From far-off, a heart-rate monitor beeped, and a machine rolled somewhere on rickety wheels with a clackity-click-clack. My heart thumped so hard I could hear it. I walked down the west corridor, made a right at the nurses’ station, looking for any living person. There was no one. I pulled up one of the sheets. I saw a young face. Red contusions ran down either cheek, with streaks of yellow and green in there, too—it was facepaint. She was a young brunette, maybe sixteen or so. A cute button nose, a pert mouth, dry staring eyes. Dead as a doornail. I replaced the sheet over that face.

  I went from one sheet to another. The fifth or sixth was the body of the substitute French teacher, Nancy, alive in bed the night before, now with that same blank void across her face. I stood rooted to that hospital floor, unable to move with all the death surrounding me, taunting me despite my best efforts to have preserved life.

  A hand fell on my shoulder. I jumped, and Betty Bathory’s haggard face was there behind me, staring down at the body. She pulled the cover ever so slightly back, exposing the pale curve of the substitute French teacher’s collarbone, and near her armpit, a blood-soaked bandage which had dried brown.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Of twenty-four alive last night, twenty-two dead. The other two are in grave condition,” she said.

  “Jesus, why?” I said.

  She put her hands atop her head.

  “We have no idea,” she said. “The O.N.K. can’t tell us anything.”

  “They were fine last night. We had them stabilized,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “And we have no idea.”

  A door burst open at the end of the hallway, and a squad of nurses and doctors like a mismatched defensive line wheeled a body toward the elevator. Without a word, I hurried after them. The group had emerged from Room 371 and rushed down to the trauma surgeons—I saw the hurried efficiency of their steps, heard their insistent voices barking directions. I caught up with them just as the elevator doors started to close, but between them I caught a glimpse of the celebrity Joe Steelman, beady eyes bulging bloody red, moustache twitching, tattooed arms convulsing under fastened straps. He looked like a cartoon character about to burst his celluloid seams.

  I rushed back to Room 371. I swiped my Atman, then walked in. The smell of something burnt—candlewick?—stung my nostrils. The bed was rumpled. Spots of faded blood spattered the pillow. I canvassed the room, scanning for something, anything. The O’Neill-Kane wouldn’t be able to determine cause of death in this case, I was already sure of that. Two dozen people stable and recovering from moderate trauma—and every single one of them dies overnight. For it all to happen in one wave of medical disaster was…impossible. This was not a single biological fluke, a microsco
pic blood clot exploding a crucial artery or a brain lobe swelling to a catastrophic pop against a rigid skull. The O.N.K. would find something like that very easily, something that physiologically ostentatious. No, something had happened that could not be explained by simple biology alone. I had to know what it was.

  I went to the room’s terminal. I felt in my pocket, remembering suddenly that my portable drive had been confiscated by the Kraken. I needed to inspect the records immediately, before I lost my nerve. I heard the unmistakable squeak of Betty Bathory’s sneakers come up behind. I turned slightly and held my hand out.

  “Betty, give me your portable drive,” I said.

  “But Joe, we—”

  “The drive, goddammit,” I said. “I need it now.”

  A second’s pause. I swallowed hard. The drive fell in my hand. Her sneakers squealed as she rounded the door and went out, her footsteps hard and angry. In that moment, I didn’t care.

  I logged into the terminal, bypassing the security with the hacker’s code on the flash drive. Once again, the screen opened up before me: the entire patient history, the color-coded tests, treatments, diagnoses, and prognoses. It was a personal history without compare.

  Joe Steelman’s real name had been Joseph Harry Dugash, and he had been a diabetic. But aside from that, the mild obesity and the controlled hepatitis, the 34-year-old celebrity was in good health. The records went further, too. A tab on the side of the screen opened to a background account—education (tenth grade), marital status (divorced three times, four kids), and even a criminal record (shoplifting and marijuana misdemeanors). His profession was listed simply as “celebrity.” The medical risks of biting a poisonous snake to death on live national TV for money were not included. But everything else seemed to be: I had never seen such a thorough patient record at the hospital. I clicked through to the most recent updates.

  And there, at the bottom edge of the screen, was the entry that bottomed out my stomach.

  A person named Shiro Ishii had visited the room before dawn for three minutes, departing without administering any drugs, or logging any activity.

  I scanned the records for more data. But there was none, beyond that ghostly visit. A chill crept along my skin. I logged out of the terminal, pulled out the drive, and walked around the room. I scrutinized everything, down to each floor tile. A partial footprint of a surgical booty was smeared in some dirt. I reached under the bed, felt around in the dust. My fingers closed around something soft. I cringed.

  And I yanked out…a tattered label. Identical to the one I’d found after Cruzen died. I recognized the same serial number prefix: BOW-137. My brow furrowed. I pocketed it and stood. I strode to the door. I needed to collect my thoughts, understand what was happening here.

  I rushed toward my office. But the elevator just pinged, and just as I turned the corner, a set of footsteps echoed against my own in the dead silence of the hospital corridors. I quickened my pace, but the steps hurried after me. I rounded the corner just as the person caught up to me.

  “Dr. Barnes!”

  I turned around slowly. Standing before me was a gesturing Suzanne Kranklein. She approached, finger wagging like a scolding mother. I jammed my hands in my pockets and braced myself. This time she wouldn’t steal anything from me.

  “Barnes—what were you thinking, giving an interview to that reporter? Even the nurses know not to talk to that idiot Jim O’Keefe.”

  “Suzanne, the guy edited the hell out of that interview. He erased some words, spliced the others together to make the whole thing convey the opposite of what I actually said.”

  She crossed her own arms, staring down at the floor, running her foot along a crack in the floor. Her movement was slow, and deliberate. I steeled myself for whatever may come next.

  “I believe you, Barnes. I really do. He did that once to your precious mentor. Wetherspoon got so burned once, he retired for the third time. But that doesn’t change the fact that the hospital looks really bad right now. So, I have a suggestion.”

  I looked at her. The softer tone of Kraken was well-known and feared throughout the hospital. Whenever she seemed to relax, it was simply the executioner’s calm, the deep breath before the beheading. I had heard it during my time on the night shift, when I’d seen the same cool fall of the axe time and again on some hapless doctor, nurse or orderly. She stared at the corpse, pausing for effect.

  “What do you suggest?” I said.

  She smiled. That wan, bloodless smile.

  Ten minutes later, I walked out the front door of the hospital, my tie askew. My face was reddened and I could feel a burning sensation as my boss’ words rang again and again through my ears as I approached a tiny podium with a big microphone in my face. The crush of reporters closed in on me. There were flashes, the cameras pointed and focused. I blinked repeatedly. O’Keefe was at the front of the line, the loudest voice in the chorus—although the leopard-print woman was trying to elbow around him, shoving her microphone Atman up from the huddle. They would not stop until their questions were answered. So I took the plunge, as the Kraken had instructed me.

  “Ask away,” I said, nodding at the crowd.

  “Dr. Barnes, is it true all the patients from the How Low Can You Go audition died overnight?” said O’Keefe, his voice high and raspy.

  “We still have one hanging on, but yes, we’ve lost all the others,” I said, rubbing at my eye. “We don’t yet know the cause of death.”

  “What’s the cause of death?” said one of the voices at the back of the crowd.

  I shook my head, bit my lip. I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, that much had been made clear to me by the Kraken.

  “I just told you, we don’t know the cause of death, or whether there’s a link between the patients. The investigation is still underway.”

  “How is Joe Steelman doing? What is he wearing?”

  “We can’t confirm that Joe Steelman was one of the injured in the attack,” I said, nodding, trying to sound as official as Lanza had always advised me to be. “I’m sure the TV network will issue a press release shortly. If he was a patient here, he would be issued a standard hospital gown. That’s what he’d be wearing. Next question.”

  “What about the terrorism link you made in the interview with the Newark FactSecond yesterday? Do you feel like you have egg on your face?” said an older woman, the only person without a microphone, the only one taking notes directly on her Atman.

  I shook my head.

  “Someone has egg on their face, but it isn’t me.” I pointed down at O’Keefe, my finger a foot away from the hack’s nose. “You all might want to ask your colleague here about his journalistic ethics.”

  O’Keefe’s neck turned red, but he kept his head down and kept fiddling with his Atman. The coward couldn’t even look at me. The blonde Asian woman seized the momentary lapse, muscling past him and positioning herself right in front of me.

  “You know, doctor, you assaulted a reporter—namely, me—in the parking lot about an hour ago. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  She half turned from me and vamped at the camera, pouting her botox-plump lips.

  “I’ll let you know if I ever decide to sue for harassment and maybe file a restraining order against TV reporters who attack my car,” I said. “Next question?”

  The woman kept speaking to her camera, recording her broadcast without a hitch; she had not heard me. I looked across the crowd.

  “Unless there are any more questions, I think we’ll conclude for today,” I said.

  O’Keefe’s hand went up. His face had regained its natural pallor. But he still wouldn’t look me square in the face.

  “I’ve got one, doc,” the hack said. “Were these overnight deaths at the hospital accidental? Were they avoidable?”

  “An investigation is underway,” I said. “Cause and manner of death have yet to be determined.”

  “But why did they die, doc?”

  I smiled and stepped aw
ay from the microphone, waving my arms and bringing the press conference to an end. The throng tried to accompany me into the hospital, but the automatic rotating door brushed them all away. All, that is, except for O’Keefe, who clung to my side like a damned pilot fish.

  “Mr. O’Keefe,” I said, walking toward the front desk where the two security guards were sitting. “I thought we made it clear. No press inside the hospital when an emergency lockdown’s in effect.”

  “Seeing as how every victim of the massacre is dead, I figure the emergency’s over,” the reporter told me.

  “One patient is still alive.”

  “Yeah, wonder how long Steelman lasts,” O’Keefe said, tugging on my white sleeve. “Doc, this is the story of a lifetime. I couldn’t have made up a story this good.”

  I stopped.

  “I bet you could have made up a pretty good one, considering,” I said. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You completely edited that soundbite. Why did you do that to me?”

  “Can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story,” the reporter whispered conspiratorially. He nudged my elbow. “Anyway—you should just let me come up and get some visual footage of the scene for my voiceover. What do you say?”

  “I’ll have to pass,” I said, turning toward Stash and Stanislaw, the security guards. “Fellas, please escort Mr. O’Keefe out.”

  I kept walking on, passing between the gigantic figures of the guards, who lumbered toward the reporter.

  “I could make it worth your while, doc,” O’Keefe said, as the guards plucked him up by the arms and hauled him like a stuffed doll backward toward the door. “A TV show—the medical mystery of Saint Almachius, probed by Doctor-Detective Joe Barnes. They could make a sitcom. A reality show—solving the riddle of the death of Joe Steelman. The stations would have a bidding war. Millions would watch!”

  But he was already thrown inside the revolving door and spat outside the hospital. I watched as O’Keefe was swallowed up in the dispersing crowd. The two security guards trudged back to the desk, their muscled gait stiff. The decorative waterfall behind them gushed down.