Chapter 28

Happy people talked more, and Allie was no different. Although wary, our two roommates—Jaime and Jennifer—came to like Allie and accepted me.

“So NY City is still there? The news said it was facing a crisis.” Allie slipped her work boots over new socks and twirled her ankles. It was her first day at her assigned job, and she couldn’t have been more excited.

“Nope, a guy from Jersey told us he spoke to family there before everything went dark. National Guard had things under control.”

Tall and athletic. Jaime played volleyball once. A state champion that led to a scholarship in fortress hydroponics.

“Do you want us to walk with you, Amy?” Jennifer asked, brushing her hair back into a ponytail. “It’s not that out of the way.”

I shook my head and looked at the clock in our apartment. “No, it’s ok. I know how to get there.”

Time was a funny concept outside; we only cared about sunrise and sunset. But the fortress ran on schedules, and our work shifts began at 8 am.

“Then we’ll meet here later.” Allie lunged and grabbed my hands. “After we eat, we can shower and go to that theater.”

Allie couldn’t wait to spend her earned credits on an old movie, and I couldn’t blame her. It felt pointless to save. We’d go with Chris and Dan and pretend there was nothing wrong. Agreeing to her plans, I clipped my helmet to my vest but left the mace, my security compromise.

The new arrivals hospital, my assigned work, was a ten-minute walk from the apartment. The original settlers staffed the medical ward well—doctors, medics, nurses, and technicians—to deal with injuries and health issues brought from outside. I’d spend the day observing.

I walked through the maze of lilies and past the park with recorded bird songs to my new job. The lights hanging from the cavern roof worked on a timer, with dimmers that mimicked the rising sun. A false moon and fake stars glowed during the night.

No matter how they tried to mask it, there was no way to hide the truth. We lived in a cave far nicer than the world outside.

Painted white with bold red letters, the hospital was one of the few buildings not built into the fortress walls themselves. I walked through the motion-detecting door, and the chemical scent struck me. Disinfectants and bleached linen that burned your nose when breathing. Inside, staff lined chairs in rows and placed children’s toys in a corner.

A short-haired receptionist behind a glass window greeted me, “Do you need help?”

Avoiding the tile cracks for no reason, I made my way across the room, rubbing my left arm. “I’m Amy. I was told I start here today.”

“Oh, Amy! Here, let me scan your bracelet.” The middle-aged woman had a comforting voice, perfect for the job. “Everyone was so excited when we heard there’d be a new medic. We’re so busy with engineering and maintenance accidents that it feels like we never have enough doctors.”

The presenters at orientation informed us of the workplaces with the most accidents. People living at equilibrium had a hard time protecting themselves. Injuries were common, but most were minor.

The receptionist wore pink scrubs with a floral shirt and pulled my records to her screen. “Your levels are quite high. Did you meet an essence manipulator?”

I nodded and gave her the same response I gave everyone. “At the military base. They, um, transferred essence to me so I could treat more people.”

“Well, that would make sense. I’ll call Gina to get you right away.”

Wired phones were magic I couldn’t understand. Her voice went into a wire, and a minute of receptionist humming later, Gina greeted me like an overworked doctor with little time to waste.

“Amy Sullivan. It says you have experience with large wounds. Ever help with surgeries? Internal injuries?”

She held a tablet and swiped through the information I provided at orientation, which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

“My ability doesn’t work like that.” I continued rubbing my shoulder like a terrible itch, thinking of how to explain something even I didn’t understand. “I kind of force a person’s soul to heal their body.”

“How much training do you have?”

“One month.”

“Are you serious?” Gina paused and nearly dropped her tablet. “Why’d they send you here, then? You’d be better off in the engineering ward.”

Like the doctors I had worked for in the emergency hospitals, Gina hurried through the wings and spoke quickly. A habit of those used to handling multiple patients, but there weren’t any. Empty rooms filled the one-floor hospital.

Questions on my experience, body parts I had healed, the training I had received, and snarky comments. As we continued down the bright corridor, I remembered why I hated working in hospitals. The world was different, and Gina was annoying.

“Send me to engineering.” I stopped rubbing my arm and refused to follow her any further. “Or to maintenance.”

“What?” Gina turned towards me as if I had insulted her and opened her mouth, but she had nothing to say.

“Enough, Gina,” an older man wearing a white lab coat and glasses said. “I’ll take her from here.”

Similar questions, followed by similar answers, with a different tone. Dr. Williams wasn’t looking for an expert; he was looking for information and an additional way to heal.

“So you don’t stimulate growth with Rigmons; you force the soul to use them. That could be useful.”

The Doctor continued with the tour, and I thought about the word he casually threw out. I had never heard it.

“Um, what are Rigmons?” I squeezed my arm and waited for him to slow down.

“Oh, I thought you knew. Breach particles. Physicists call them Rigmon particles.” The Doctor paused for a moment, noticing I didn’t react, then continued, “They used Greek for crack or rift, or something like that. Every breach has…”

He gave a lecture, but I didn’t understand most of it. Each breach created new particles. Each particle had a unique spin. Rigmon was the scientific name; Essence was the name that stuck.

“And they follow a pattern: integer spins and half spins. Well, the professor knows more than me. You can talk to him about that.” We stepped into his office, and he gestured towards a plastic chair with armrests. “Sit down, sit down. Tell me, when did you first notice your ability? Do you feel a change with each breach?”

I sat in a considerably lower chair, my chest to the desk’s surface, looking up. “On the first breach, I felt like I could move my soul. It feels different each time.”

“So a full Rigmon user.” He grabbed a notebook and searched his drawer until he found a pen to write with. “That’s helpful. Most of our doctors are halves or integers.”

I watched as he scribbled information, notes, and thoughts on things that once mattered in a lab notebook—a person who wouldn’t allow his knowledge to disappear. There were shelves full of books on either side of his office—medicine, physics, biology, and chemistry. He had a library of college textbooks of classes he took, packed with the information he needed. I never owned one.

“What’s a full essence or um, Rigmon user?” The Doctor had the habit of saying things without explaining them.

“Oh. It just means each breach affects you. Close to 20% of people are full.” He tapped his pen on his chin. “You’ll be with the special interest quarantines.”

“The what?” I knocked my knee into his desk, trying to stand.

“Relax, relax. Didn’t they tell you? Breach quarantines. We’re quarantining all new arrivals during this breach. Known fulls and integers will get additional monitoring. Even if they’re settlers, we’re quarantining full and integers. Some will turn. Shame you got here so late.”

“What do you mean? And how long’s the quarantine?”

Dr. Williams removed his glasses and folded his hands in his lap. “Two weeks. We’re watching for scab transitioning. Anyone affected by the second and fourth is at risk.”

The Doctor continued, and I thought about Andy, and the others I had met. Scientists studied scabs, and I knew that, but I didn’t realize they developed a way to tell who would change. They measured everyone and gave a probability score.

They had a way to test. A prediction model they could implement, but it took time and resources. Resources they didn’t have for new arrivals.

“Can you stop it?” If they had a way to detect it, if they could determine whether someone would turn, they probably worked to fix it. I hoped they did, but he shook his head.

“We can’t. We started, but after the fifth, we lost too much. The facilities, labs, scientists, supplies from the outside, they’re all gone.” Dr. Williams leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “People will transition, and we can’t cure them when they do. But we can delay the advances. Come with me.”

The Doctor walked down the sterile hallway, and I followed. Bright lighting made stains impossible to miss. New gurneys with white sheets lined the walls, and a door with an unauthorized personnel prohibited sign met us at the end—secured, but unlocked.

We stepped through the door, and my body tensed. The gray paint over concrete steps reminded me of my college quads basement, the first time I saw the changes; snarling sounds of beasts and the wails of people trying to escape. The hospital stairwell carried the same aura.

I followed him down the flight with shaky legs to a desk staffed by a single guard. A gray uniform, black vest, and a handgun. “Morning, Doctor. New medic?”

“The one we talked about,” Dr. Williams replied while the guard scanned his bracelet. “I put the request in for access. Should be through before the breach, but you know how slow they are.”

The guard sighed as if the Doctor reminded him of his own bureaucratic nightmare and unlocked the door. “Have a good day.”

On the other side, a wall with signs to different laboratories and holding facilities. Offices and equipment rooms. To the left, I followed to Doctor towards holding facility B.

“We’ve been working on a cure, on a way to remove decay buildup from the body and repair the soul, but our teams have made little progress recently. These are our most successful.”

Opening the unmarked door, he ushered me into what looked like a prison block.

Concrete cells with see-through front panels, each filled with instruments and a person inside. They were prisoners, but not for a crime.

“We siphon decay products and slow the collapse.” Dr. Williams shook his head and walked to a cell where a young girl played with a woman in her late 20s. “We can slow it, but we can’t stop it.”

Children were rare. Intact families like the ones we stayed with were rarer. Essence overwhelmed low capacity souls early. The scientists filtered the poison, but they couldn’t remove the cause.

“How long?” I squeezed my arm and turned to the other cells. Dozens held along the walls. “How long until they turn?”

“One year, maybe less,” the Doctor replied. “One year, unless we find another way. Unfortunately, we don’t have the tools to build new equipment.”

Dr. Williams shook his head and guided me through the research facility. Scientists in every room, names I’d never remember, faces that slowly blurred. Each worked towards finding the missing pieces and solving the problem. Something I thought nobody bothered with any longer.

He explained the work and progress they made for the rest of the day in detail, glossing over the failures. They experimented on the scabs like the rumors said, and soon there’d be more to prod with their instruments. The only difference was who they prodded.

Each person in the facility was family to someone in the fortress, not a stranger in a cell. More than anyone, they wanted to find a cure, not for humanity’s sake, but for the people they loved.

When I arrived back at my apartment, it was nearly 7 pm, and Allie had left a note. A time and place to meet with Chris and Dan for dinner. Taking clean clothes and my shower kit, I scanned my bracelet and entered one of the community bathing rooms.

Rows of stalls and a wall of sinks filled the gray-tiled room. A steamy warmth that buried itself inside hit me from the moment I entered. I rinsed away the basement’s stench, remaining even after the hot water turned off.

My body had no scars, no scratches, no injuries. Other than my hands, my skin remained smooth and soft. Thanks to Chris, my hips no longer protruded, my elbows and knees no longer looked so large. My ribs were barely visible.

Other than the weight loss, my body hadn’t changed. My hair hadn’t changed, and my skin hadn’t changed. I brushed my fingertips across my face and found nothing unexpected. I couldn’t face a mirror, though.

She waited in the mirror, and I wasn’t ready.

I dragged my feet towards our apartment with fresh clothes and scented skin and pushed the last scenes of a dying scab from my mind.

Research to cure scabs. Dr. Williams wanted me to help.

I held Allie’s note and decided not to go, curling into a ball on my bed with the stuffed moose they returned to me. There was little alone time recently, but the short period of solitude was what I needed—a moment of quiet where I didn’t have to force myself.

In the fortress, people ate and laughed together. They enjoyed each other’s company and felt good about themselves. I didn’t want to spoil the mood.

Because happy people talked more, and I had nothing to say.