… monitor the effects of the smoke inhalation, but we’ve given him injections in both lungs and he’s responding. This one should make a perfect recovery.
I was jubilant for a second, but then saw what else he was thinking.
By the time they reach the ones deeper in that crawl way …
The park suns changed from ominous red to their normal colour. I went across to sit by Lucas’s side, hold his hand, and made myself smile reassuringly into his dazed eyes despite the thought dominating my mind. My Beta Strike team were working their hardest to pull out the rest of the people trapped in the crawl way, but Rothan would be the last one to be saved.
Chapter Sixteen
Lucas drifted in and out of consciousness for the next couple of minutes, and then started trying to ask questions despite the oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. The doctor made two attempts to persuade him to stop talking, before giving him another injection that sent him into instant, blissfully peaceful sleep.
The doctor gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let him talk to you, but it’s very important to keep a patient quiet and still while the treatment works on their lungs. We’ll be transferring him to a medical facility or hospital after that, and …”
This man was part of a random emergency response team. He had no idea this wasn’t an accidental fire, and he didn’t know he was talking to a telepath. I was just the girl who was holding the hand of his patient, and obviously cared deeply about him. I could see the rest of his explanation on the pre-vocalization level of his mind, so I interrupted him to save time.
“You were quite right to sedate Lucas. It’s the only possible way to stop him asking questions. He’s stable now, and it’s better to keep him here than move him when his lungs are in the vital first stage of treatment.”
The doctor’s worried face cleared. “I didn’t realize you were imprinted with medical information.”
“Go now,” I said. “Other patients need you.”
He hurried away. I stayed sitting on the grass, holding Lucas’s hand, watching the scenes of frantic activity going on around me. I’d have found this situation far easier if there was something, anything, that I could do to help, but there wasn’t.
I rubbed the moisture from my eyes with my free hand, set my ear crystal to receive only, and listened to the others talking. There were breathless comments from Adika, Forge, and the Beta team members working round the hole and in the crawl way, and the occasional announcement from Nicole. Emili had gone very quiet, but the Tactical team would have little to say now this was a straightforward rescue situation.
“Fire containment reports the fire is out on Level 20,” said Nicole. “Their teams are directly beneath the crawl way now, dampening down lingering hot spots.”
The Beta team and people in medical uniforms were crowding round the hole in the ground, so it was hard to see what was going on in there. The Alpha team had moved out of the way to give them space, and were gathered under a nearby tree. Most of them were stretched out in exhaustion on the grass, but the five on bodyguard duties were standing up and alertly watching me.
I saw another limp body being passed out of the hole, and a little knot of doctors taking charge of it. After a combination of observing people and reading their minds, I understood the routine now. The patient was given injections and an oxygen mask, and a triage specialist assessed their condition. If the patient just had mild smoke inhalation problems, they’d join the groups of people waiting on stretchers while the healing fluids injected into their lungs did their work. If they were in a more serious condition, they’d be rushed off to the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre that specialized in treating patients suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
This time the activity around the body was totally different. The doctors worked with desperate urgency before their shoulders sagged and they stepped backwards. A minute later, the patient was quietly shrouded in a white sheet and carried away.
I bit my lip. The Beta team were keeping a head count of the people rescued. That was number twenty-five, and the first death. Law Enforcement systems kept a record of everyone going in and out of Security Units, so we knew that Lucas, Rothan, and forty-nine staff members had entered that Security Unit this morning. No one had left before the fire started, so there were twenty-six people still in there.
“Are you all right, Amber?” asked a familiar voice. “Do you need me to explain why Lucas hasn’t been transferred to a medical facility yet?”
I looked up, startled that Megan was at an incident scene, and then realized why she was here. This area was officially safe now, and our own people were among the injured, so our unit’s medical staff had come to help. Megan’s Senior Administrator imprint included medical expertise, so she’d come with them.
“I don’t need any explanations,” I said. “There are about thirty minds around here that are thinking it’s best to limit any disturbance to the patient while the lung injections work.”
“It will be about another hour before we can move Lucas,” said Megan. “By then, he should be well enough for us to take him back to the unit and let him finish recovering in our own medical area. I’m assuming you’ll want to stay here until then, but the Alpha Strike team can escort you home if you prefer.”
“I want to stay here with Lucas. I couldn’t leave anyway. Not when Rothan’s still in that crawl way.”
“How is he now?”
I closed my eyes, and reached out with my mind. I hadn’t checked Rothan since they brought out Lucas. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared far too much. Rothan had been in such a bad state the last time I checked him that I was terrified there’d be nothing there for my mind to read. I touched the pale threads of unfamiliar thoughts. Waste it, was …? No, Rothan was there!
“Rothan’s mind is very, very faint, but there’s better air in the crawl way now, and I think that’s helping him.” I remembered I’d set my ear crystal to receive, so only Megan was hearing me. “I’d better tell Emili.”
“I’ll tell her.” Megan adjusted her ear crystal. “Emili, Amber says Rothan’s still holding on. Where are you now?”
“I’ve just arrived at the park entrance,” said Emili’s breathless voice in my ear crystal.
I’d noticed Emili hadn’t said much lately, and assumed that was because Tactical didn’t have much they needed to say. That was probably true, but it was also because Emili was on her way here. She must have said she was leaving the unit, but I’d been too distracted to pay proper attention.
Strictly speaking, Emili was acting Tactical Commander and should have stayed in the unit, but once the situation turned into a simple rescue she could follow events on her ear crystal. I couldn’t blame her for giving way to her emotions and coming to the park herself.
“I saw a team from Hive channel 1 arriving,” said Emili. “What are they doing here?”
“We couldn’t hide a fire on this scale,” said Nicole, “so we put it on the Hive status updates as a freak electrical fire that had spread startlingly fast. When Hive channel 1 heard a heroic rescue was in progress, they rushed a team over here to take images of the scene to use in this evening’s ‘All Hive Update’ programme.”
The deep groan I heard on my ear crystal had to be Adika.
“They’re hoping to interview some of the heroic rescuers as well,” added Nicole.
I knew from reading his mind that Adika had a wide vocabulary of obscene words, but he didn’t usually use them where I could hear him, limiting himself to such mild comments as “waste it” instead. Now he said a startlingly crude phrase.
There was a second of awed silence before Nicole bravely spoke. “I’ll take that as meaning you aren’t keen on the idea, Adika.”
“Strike teams are supposed to deal with trouble without attracting attention to themselves. Of course I’m not …” Adika broke off for a moment, clearly battling against using that phrase again. “Not very keen on my men being intervi
ewed. Nicole, you can tell Hive channel 1 that the heroic rescuers are too busy doing the heroic rescuing to be interviewed. You can also suggest that Hive channel 1 should go and … waste themselves!”
I could understand why Adika was in such a foul mood. The people around the hole were handing out another limp body. This was casualty number forty-four, and the second person to be shrouded with a white sheet. There’d be another six people before we reached Rothan. A man who was Adika’s deputy, his brother in arms, and his friend.
The moisture was back in my eyes again as I turned to Megan. “Thank you for saying what you did. It stopped them dragging me away from here.”
“I knew how you felt,” said Megan.
“I know you …” I couldn’t finish the sentence because I was crying too much. Ever since I came out of Lottery, I’d resented Megan’s attempts to mother me. I’d fiercely told Lucas that I didn’t want or need someone replacing my own mother. He’d said that I should think of Megan as a safety net. A substitute parent who’d be there if needed.
I’d admitted that having to hide the fact I was a telepath meant I couldn’t discuss a lot of things about my new life with my own mother, but never believed I’d want to call on the safety net of Megan. The Hive Duty songs that I’d been taught in school constantly repeated that the Hive knew best, and the Hive had known far better than me when it selected my Senior Administrator. You didn’t need safety nets until you were falling, and I was falling now.
I found myself hugging Megan. She wrapped her arms round me, and whispered comforting words in my ear. I was aware of another person being handed out of the hole in the ground. The medical staff were hard at work, so this one was alive. Only five more to go before Rothan.
Emili’s voice spoke from beside me. “Amber, what’s happening? How is Rothan?”
I made myself close my eyes and check the minds underground again. The familiar ones of Forge and two of the Beta team. A stranger, an emergency medical response worker, giving a sad, brief shake of his head in acknowledgement that his current patient was beyond human help. The unconscious minds were faint flickers in comparison. I tried not to count them, but I couldn’t fail to when there were only three.
I couldn’t face telling Emili that Rothan was dead. I did the cowardly thing, pulling away without checking if one of those three remaining minds was his, so I could truthfully plead ignorance.
I opened my eyes and turned to Emili. “I can’t tell. The casualties still left down there are unconscious, and their minds are very faint compared to the rescuers.”
I broke off. Emili was staring at another body being lifted out of the hole and shrouded in white. Megan kept one arm around me, but freed the other to hold it out in invitation. Emili moved closer, and leant gratefully against her.
“Emili, I’m sorry I made things difficult for you by insisting on staying here,” I said.
“Don’t apologize for that, Amber. I can work out the numbers. You stayed, and that meant the whole of the Alpha team stayed here digging instead of only half of them. Five minutes quicker getting into the crawl way. Five minutes quicker to start pumping out smoke and pumping in air. Lucas would probably have lived anyway, but Rothan wouldn’t. Those five minutes have given him a chance.”
Emili paused. “I’ve often worried that Rothan would get himself killed protecting you. Foolish of me. The statistics say that Strike team members are ten times more likely to have their lives saved by their telepath than to die in their defence.”
She gave a bitter strangled sob of a laugh. “I can’t even blame this on Rothan’s work. Whatever job the Hive had given Rothan, even if it had made him a pipe cleaner in the depths of the Hive, he’d still have ended up in a situation like this. He’s the noble, self-sacrificing type, rushing into danger to help others without a thought for his own safety.”
The three of us stood there, Megan in the centre, her arms round Emili and me, as two more figures were lifted out of the hole. They were worked on by medical teams, and then rushed away on stretchers. Emili was obviously cheered by the fact they were alive. I wasn’t. I knew there were three more people down there, and only one was alive. If the next person brought out was living, it meant that …
“We’ve reached Rothan,” said Forge’s voice through my ear crystal. “His condition is critical, but he’s getting emergency treatment right here in the crawl way, and then he’ll be rushed to the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre.”
Emili gave a gasp of relief. I was relieved too, but I was also confused. How could they have reached Rothan already?
“We seem to be missing two people,” said Forge.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time the still sleeping Lucas had recovered enough for us to take him back to our unit on a wheeled stretcher, the fire containment crews had found one of the missing people. He must have either got lost in the chaos, or decided he stood a better chance waiting for an emergency response team, because his body was in a room next to the reinforced wall of the Security Unit. Megan said he’d have died of smoke inhalation before the flames reached him. I hoped she was right.
There was no sign of a second body, so it must be buried under wreckage. That left the death count at four, with one person missing, and seven people in a critical condition.
As soon as we arrived back at our unit, Emili put Gideon in charge of the Tactical team in her absence, and left for the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre.
I followed Lucas’s stretcher to a white-walled room in our medical area, watched him being carefully lifted onto a bed, and then sat down in a chair next to him. Megan positioned some metal blobs on Lucas’s forehead and chest, studied a display on the wall where multicoloured lines were zigzagging up and down, and gave a smile of satisfaction.
“Lucas needs to stay quietly resting,” she said. “There’s no hope of him doing that when he’s conscious, so I’ve decided to keep him sedated until tomorrow morning.”
I nodded. Lucas was lying unnaturally still, his mind was a grey shadow of its normal glowing splendour, but he was going to recover. I dragged my gaze away from him and looked at Megan.
“Does Rothan have any chance of surviving?”
She hesitated.
“I know you got an update on his condition while we were coming back to the unit. I also know that you didn’t pass that information on to Emili, which means it was very bad news. I think it will be easier for me to hear this in words, rather than see the images in your mind, so please don’t make me read your thoughts.”
Megan sighed. “It was a long time before the rescuers reached Rothan. He was given treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning when he was still in the crawl way, but he also suffered severe hot smoke inhalation. That has caused pulmonary damage that’s far beyond the level treatable by medical knowledge in our Hive.”
“You’re saying that Rothan is going to die?” My voice sounded like that of a cold and distant stranger.
“I’m saying that he’s in a critical condition and needs help from a Hive that specializes in advanced medical treatments.”
“Then get him that help and get it quickly! Get it for the other patients who need it as well. Whatever influence a telepath has, use it. If you need me to shout at anyone, threaten anyone, just tell me and I’ll do it.”
“I’ve already flagged this with Telepath Unit priority, and added a covering statement in your name,” said Megan. “The treatments have been ordered, but the problem is that they have to be grown from each patient’s own cells. An aircraft should already be taking tissue samples to the other Hive. Those samples will be used in an accelerated growth process, and the resulting genetically tailored treatments will be flown back to us.”
“How long will that take, and what are the chances of the genetically tailored treatments working?”
“The treatments should arrive about forty-eight hours from now. Our Hive used this type of treatment for fifty patients after the big fire in Burgundy Zone last year, and our exp
erience confirms the selling Hive’s claims on the trade system. Nine out of ten patients will respond to the treatment and rapidly progress to make a full recovery.”
I checked my understanding. “So if Rothan and the others can manage to stay alive for the forty-eight hours until this treatment arrives, then they have a nine out of ten chance of surviving and making a full recovery?”
“Yes. They’ll be given every available help to hold on until the treatment arrives. You should go back to your apartment now, Amber. Have something to eat and try to rest. I’ll let you know at once if there’s any change in Rothan’s condition.”
“I’d prefer to stay here with Lucas.”
I was braced for an argument, but Megan just left the room. I heard strange noises in the distance, which were explained when two of the medical staff entered the room with a bed on wheels. They positioned it neatly against the wall.
“Thank you,” I said.
They hurried off. A couple of minutes later, Megan returned, pushing a trolley holding jugs of drink, glasses, and a covered dish.
“We’ll be making hourly checks on Lucas, but other than that we’ll leave you in peace.”
She moved towards the door, but I called her back. “Megan, can we discuss some things?”
“Yes.” Megan went to sit on the edge of the wheeled bed, and I turned my chair round to face her.
“I shouldn’t have ranted at you about your personal relationship with Adika.”
Megan shook her head. “I was upset after arguing with Adika. You were suffering from stress after that emergency run. We both phrased things in a way we wouldn’t have done in other circumstances, but what you said was true. My personal problems had reached the level where they were endangering the Strike team and had made you lose confidence in me as your counsellor. That’s why I’m leaving.”
“There has to be a better solution than you leaving us, Megan. You’ve been doing a wonderful job running the unit. Would you be willing to continue as Senior Administrator, with just the slight change that you don’t do my regular counselling?”