Ground Zero: Prequel to Numbered Series (3 page)

Marnee laughed as she slid the door open to the
library.

“Don't worry, we were all like that too,” she said,
coming to take Aurelia's arm and guiding her to a chair. “It wears off in a few
minutes.”

And Aurelia realised that she'd not even considered
the fact that Marnee wouldn't be here, that she might never have seen her
again, and tears began to form in her eyes. Marnee opened her arms and embraced
her, and yelled at another student to bring synth coffee. Once the warm cup was
in her hands, Aurelia began to feel a little better, though still shaky.

“Three haven't come out from our group,” Marnee said,
sitting opposite her. “I think they couldn't decide. Or, well.... you know.”

Aurelia nodded. She knew. She drank down her coffee.

“We'd better get to work,” she said, dully.

Marnee looked at her strangely, but then nodded.

Aurelia's father was sitting at his desk in the living
pod when she arrived home. He looked up at the sound of the door.

“Congratulations,” he said, smiling slightly at her.

She looked at her feet, not sure whether she should be
congratulated or not. She'd taken the first step towards taking life. But she
was still considering what her father had asked her the evening before, and
knew she wasn't ready to discuss it again yet.

“You don't seem surprised to see me,” she said,
instead.

He shrugged. “I know you. You handle responsibility
well. The decision was an easy one for you.”

Hearing Aurelia's voice, her mother came in from the
kitchen pod, just in time to hear Aurelia's next sentence.

“But I could have chosen a syringe with the toxin,”
she pointed out.

Aurelia's mother eyed her father, frowning. “You
didn't tell her?” she said.

He shook his head. “No, that would have betrayed the
test. It is a valuable milestone, whether or not I agree with injecting as a
whole.”

“Tell me what?” Aurelia asked, confused.

Her father looked a little guilty, and shifted in his
desk chair.

“None of the syringes contain toxin,” he said,
finally.

“None?” she
asked,
her voice
disbelieving.

“None,” he confirmed. “It's simply a test.”

A long, long time in the future Aurelia would wonder
why she'd never thought to ask her father why or how he knew this. And
eventually, she would get an answer to these questions. But for now she was
angry.
Angry at not being told, angry at being put through
the test, angry at what she was going to have to do in the future.
Just
plain mad.

“You should have told me,” she spat. “I trusted you.”

Her father looked on helplessly, as she slammed the
living pod door closed.

“Leave her,” she heard her mother say, just before she
slammed her bedroom pod door.

***

With so many cadets graduating at the same time, from
many different fields, City 01 had something of a festival air about it.
Eschewing the crowded public transport pods, Aurelia and her parents walked the
few blocks to the Medical Institute. They passed Block 3 on their way, and
Aurelia kept her eyes firmly focussed on the pavement beneath her feet. Marnee
had lived there.

It was natural that this be a time for reminiscing.
She was about to leave training behind. The only problem
was,
that all her memories contained Marnee. And it was still so painful to think of
her. Three days ago she had sat beside her, brushed the pale blonde hair,
laughed at their shared memories. And when they were done, when they had
reminisced as long as they could, she'd held Marnee's hand. And she'd promised
that she would celebrate on graduation day. That she wouldn't let the sadness
mar her achievements. Yet it did, and she was helpless to control it.

“You'll get first in the cohort,” Marnee had said.

“I...”

But Aurelia had had to bite off what she was going to
say. She was so used to the friendly competition between them, used to sharing
the top spot with Marnee, who had grown into a brilliant Med Trainee as her
confidence blossomed, that it was natural for her to remind her friend that she
too could get first in the cohort. But, of course, she wouldn't. Not now.

The large Medical Institute loomed in front of them, a
flood of red and black
Med
uniforms streaming into the
tall front doors. Aurelia squeezed her mother's hand, feeling a deep ache in
her heart.

***

The time was growing near. Every Year Five student had
to inject. But, of course, each had to wait until a suitable patient had been
found. Aurelia knew that the patients would be sick with little or no chance of
survival. These were considered the best candidates for the Trainees first
injections, since the psychological stress of injecting someone likely to die
anyway was less. But that didn't ease her worries. She spent more and more time
thinking about what her father had asked her.

“If you fail to inject someone that is supposed to be
injected, what will happen to that person?”

She was still uneasy about taking life. But the more
she thought, the more she thought she could understand what he was getting at.

“They will die anyway,” she said to him, coming to his
desk one evening.

“Ah,” he said, putting down his screen. “You've had
time to consider then?”

She nodded, and perched herself on the edge of his
desk.

“If I refuse to inject a patient, someone else will do
it anyway. I'll then become a Failure, and will not have had any other effect
on the outcome of the situation, making it illogical to refuse to inject
someone.”

“Very good,” said her father. He appreciated logic.
“Take it further.”

“I'm not sure yet,” she admitted. “But I think that
you're telling me that if I disagree with the system that it's better to fight
from inside than from outside. Maybe that if, when, I'm qualified, I will be in
a better position to change the system.”

“Possibly,” said her father.
“Though
you might also not be.”

Aurelia nodded her head in acquiescence of this. “But
by becoming a Med Worker I can save lives, as well as taking them, and include
the possibility of trying to change the system. Whereas if I refuse to perform
injections I can save nobody, because I will become a Failure.”

Her father's blue eyes clouded a little, but he nodded
in agreement with her. “Sometimes, Aur, there's no right answer. You must learn
this. As hard as it can be, there are times when the only thing that you can do
is to mitigate the negative, rather than removing it altogether. Life just
isn't black and white.” He smiled at her. “It would be boring if it were. There
are millions of shades of grey in between, and it's up to you to navigate them
as best you can.”

It was a comfort to her. She remained worried, but
intellectually understood what she was being told. The situation was made
slightly better when Marnee's distinctive tone sounded from Aurelia's screen.

“I did it,” she said, the moment that Aurelia clicked
the com icon. “The call came this afternoon when I got home, and I had to go
straight back to the hospital. But I did it. I injected.”

Though Marnee was her best friend, Aurelia hadn't
shared all her thoughts on injecting with her. To think as she did was
tantamount to treason, and she knew that Marnee had not been brought up in the
same way as she had. Marnee's fears had been those shared by most Trainees,
that when the time came they wouldn't be able to do the job. As it turned out
though, the patient chosen for Marnee had been desperately ill, and injecting
had been a mercy.

“Things were so still, so quiet after,” Marnee said.
“Like something had left the room. It was weird.”

Aurelia smiled, doing her best to be happy for her
friend. But inside she still had waves of nausea at the thought of taking a
life. And she knew that her time was coming.

The call came late at night, just two days after
Marnee's successful first injection. Aurelia was already undressed and in bed,
but when she saw the alert on her screen she threw back the covers and rapidly
began pulling her uniform back on. She acted quickly because she was trained to
act
quickly,
it was second nature to her, but also so
that she didn't have time to think about what was to happen. Quietly, she left
her bedroom pod, but her father was still at his desk.

“It's time,” she said.

He stood, and came to her. Briefly he held her,
then
let her go.

“Be strong,” he said. “And no matter what, I love
you.”

She swallowed and nodded, but before she could respond
the chime sounded to tell her that her transport pod was at the door.

The flight to the hospital was a short one, the small
transport pod hovering over the grid like streets of the City, mostly empty of
traffic at this time of night. Within five minutes, the pod was humming and
descending, engine idling as it sank to the ground. Aurelia got out, slammed
the door, and the pod took off again, fading quickly into the night. Looking up
she saw lit windows, small squares of light, each one a patient or two or five.
Which, she wondered, was the room she was going to?

She stopped at the reception desk and gave her
personal ID number, and a young woman directed her to the room where her
Trainer was waiting. Still not
thinking,
keeping her
mind on what she was currently doing rather than what she would do, Aurelia got
into the elevator and pressed the appropriate button.

It wasn't until she was standing outside the door that
she had a flash of real thought. I don't want to do this. I don't want to take
the life that's behind this door. But she had little choice. She kept her
father's words in her head as she reached for the handle and slid the door
open.

“Ms. Cole,” said the Trainer, who was standing quietly
beside the single bed in the room. “Take your time.”

The Trainer was one she would come to know well,
though right now she had known him only for the two weeks that she'd been a
Year Five student. But she knew the drill, knew what was expected of her.
Cautiously, she approached the bed.

Her face was yellowed, but the skin unlined. Dark,
wavy hair spread out on the pillow. She was young, younger than Aurelia had
expected. Maybe a year or two older than she herself was. It was clear from her
pallor that something was very, very wrong here, though the woman's breathing
was deep, drugged and even.

Aurelia folded back the sheet that covered the
patient, and took a moment to examine the woman's body visually. She could see
nothing obviously wrong. Placing her hand on the woman's chest she felt her
warm, soft skin. Blinking at the vitality of the feeling, Aurelia began to
carefully
palpitate
the abdomen.

She found it almost immediately, but continued with
her physical examination, just to make sure. There was no point jumping the
gun. Only after she had spent almost ten minutes examining the patient did she
speak.

“Pancreas,” she said, turning to her Trainer.
“A large mass.
Inoperable at this point.
Presumably cancerous, though I'd need blood tests to be sure.”

The Trainer smiled. “Very good,” he said, though he'd
obviously been expecting her to do well. “Shall we proceed?”

Aurelia nodded. This woman was going to die, whether
she injected her or not. And if she chose not to inject, the woman would die in
agony, a long and protracted death. The decision was an easy one.

The Trainer fumbled in his pocket for a moment and
then pulled out a locked vial. He keyed his personal ID number into the lock,
and it clicked open. He held the vial out to Aurelia, who took it, her hand
steady. Shaking out the syringe inside, she went through the motions of
preparing it to inject the woman.

There was no need to roll up her sleeve, her arm was
bare. Turning the elbow to allow easier access to the vein, Aurelia paused.
There, beneath the pale skin, was a small but constant movement.
Beating, under the skin, like the flutter of a curtain in the
breeze.
A pulse.
Aurelia swallowed. Who was
this woman? What had she done? Did she have a pair-mate? Was she a qualified
Worker? She had smiled, loved, laughed,
cried
.
And now this.

“Ms. Cole?”

The Trainer's voice brought her back to the room.
Aurelia placed the needle on the skin, then in one, smooth movement, pressed down
and through to the vein. Fluidly she depressed the plunger until the syringe
was empty,
then
withdrew the needle.

There was silence.
A loud, echoing
silence.
And stillness.
Just for an instant
Aurelia felt that the world had stopped turning. The room was empty. The life
was
gone,
and all other life stopped for a moment in
grief. Then that moment, too, was gone, and life continued.