The Dead Room Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

  Hope came up behind him. “New group?” she asked as she set a cup of coffee in front of him.

  “Yes. We have some very promising candidates.” He held up two folders. “These two in particular are interesting. Such different cases, and yet…”

  Hope took the folders and looked at the pictures. Ashby never did that. It was best to make an unemotional decision. After seeing a face, it was difficult not to make assumptions about the person based on appearances. It was best to just read the data and meet the candidates after the decision was made. But Hope didn’t operate like that. She got too attached to the chimps, and the rats for that matter, and things didn’t look like they’d be much different with actual patients.

  “Hope, try not to get too attached, okay?” Ashby cautioned.

  “I can’t help it. We could save them. Why not take them both?” she suggested. “They both need you. How can you turn them away?” It came out a bit accusingly, but Ashby knew she didn’t mean it like that. She didn’t have an accusing bone in her body.

  “At this stage of the game, you have to think about not only what’s best for them, but also what’s best for the research. Think of that man who died slowly. Painfully. If I had been more careful about my selection, he wouldn’t have suffered like that.”

  She frowned down at the two faces. “But at least he had a chance.”

  “I’m not sure he was so grateful for that chance,” Ashby said, gently taking the folders from her. He was leaning one way, and he just needed to look over the files one more time to be sure. He supposed there was no reason why he couldn’t take both, but for the first trial with more than one bot, he felt one patient was plenty. He needed to see how, and if, it worked. In this case, better to kill one bird with two stones than two birds with two stones.

  She stood behind him while he paged through the charts and data. The woman was young. Too young. She was stage four with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Otherwise, she was healthy. Ashby tried not to look at the other data, but it was difficult not to. Even he had his limits. She had young children, ages five and seven. A boy and a girl.

  On the other hand, the man was in his late fifties, with a much-less aggressive but no less deadly type of cancer. He had more time than she did. His kids were grown. His wife was retired, and he wasn’t far behind her. A physician himself, he would either be very easy to work with, or very difficult. Although he’d understand the jargon, and he wouldn’t need a lot of hand holding, doctors sometimes made the worst patients.

  He told himself the decision was based on the cancer. One was fast moving, and the other wasn’t. The man had time to explore more options. The woman didn’t. With an aggressive type like this, the bots might be her only chance. If they did their job, they’d wipe out the cancer in a few short weeks, and hopefully, he could beat it to the finish line, leaving her intact.

  Then, the first woman popped into his head. The one who’d died because her cancer was too aggressive for the bots to keep up.

  Holding up her file, he turned to Hope. “Do you think three or even four bots would be better on aggressive cancers like this one?”

  “In theory, yes. Three or four would be overkill for our chimps. But a human is different. There’s more ground to cover. You’d need to do almost daily scans on her, if not hourly at first, to track their progress,” she said, searching the woman’s data. “She will die if you don’t help her.”

  “She may die even if I do help her. I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “Not yet.”

  The very next day, Ashby met with the woman and went through the procedure. He knew he shouldn’t be spending so much time with one patient, but he couldn’t help thinking that she could be his breakthrough.

  She seemed very enthusiastic. Ashby struggled to keep her expectations realistic.

  “You must understand. This is a brand-new procedure. Even I don’t know if it will work. Your cancer is very aggressive. I’m not offering you a miracle. I’m offering you a risk. The bots could eat you alive.”

  She smiled. “Like some monster movie?”

  “It’s not a joke, Mrs. Loretti.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m not worried. After all, what do I have to lose? One way or another, we’re all meeting our maker. I’d just like to see my kids grow up before I meet mine.”

  The procedure was delicate. He’d never worked with four bots at once before. They were squirrelly little devils, and hard to capture. But, slowly, he got them all, and inserted them into a small incision made by the overseeing surgeon, in order to get them as close to the cancer as possible. Giving them a head start, so to speak.

  When it was over, he sat back and let out a deep breath he didn’t know he was holding.

  “I want scans every six hours on this one. We need to keep close track of where these robots are, and what they’re doing. Don’t let them start eating her,” he instructed the nurse and the attending physician, who looked startled. Apparently, they didn’t understand the extent of the potential side effects. It didn’t matter. As long as they were diligent.

  For a moment, he wished Mendi had been there. He would’ve recommended a less cowboy-style approach. Two bots would’ve been safer. But Ashby knew two wouldn’t be enough to save her. The man, sure. Two would’ve been plenty. He had time. But her, no. She needed more. That was when it occurred to him. Treatment and number of bots could be tailored to the patient. For someone with less-aggressive or early-stage cancer, they could save money by using fewer bots. This didn’t have to be a cookie-cutter procedure.

  The idea excited him. He wanted to call the man and get him started right away with two, but he knew he should wait and see how his little beasties did in the woman first. It was absolute torture.

  The first six hours revealed nothing. Mrs. Loretti rested comfortably in her hospital room where she had to stay during the duration of the treatment. Ashby tried not to be discouraged, and he told her to do the same.

  But oddly, she wasn’t disappointed at all. “Mr. Ashby, it’s been six hours. They’re probably just learning their way around. It’ll be fine.”

  He wished he could be as calm as she was. On the bright side, they weren’t eating her alive. Yet.

  By the next six-hour scan, something remarkable was happening. Her tumors were shrinking. Markedly.

  Ashby ordered another scan in three hours. “Now that we’re seeing a change, we need to stay on top of it, so we can remove the bots at just the right moment.”

  “Sounds great,” Mrs. Loretti said with a smile. Ashby was starting to like her in spite of himself. He didn’t just want this to work. He wanted it to work on her.

  By the next scan, fifteen hours post procedure, her cancer had diminished eighty percent.

  “Eighty percent,” he repeated. Hope had a gleeful glimmer in her eye, and Mrs. Loretti beamed.

  “I never imagined it would work this quickly,” she said quietly, squeezing her kids’ hands.

  Her husband had a tear in his eye, and he mouthed ‘thank you’ to Ashby.

  Ashby nodded and felt the need to sit down. Quickly, he left the room and sat on a bench just outside. Was this what Mendi was always talking about? The people behind the disease? But he’d sold out. He was a bit of a fraud. And instead, Ashby, the one who’d never professed to be any kind of savior, was having a change of heart.

  The last scan, two hours later, revealed no trace of the cancer. Ashby ordered a blood test to be doubly sure that all the cells had been removed, but in the meantime, he rushed her to the OR to remove the bots.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Tired,” Mrs. Loretti replied honestly.

  Ashby nodded. “Well, you’ve been up a lot of the night with us scanning and prodding you. Get some rest. I bet you’ll feel some improvement before you know it.”

  The removal went off without a hitch. Unlike the insertion, he didn’t need a surgeon, although the man was on hand, just in case something went wrong. No need to go
fishing around for the energetic little things. He could use the signal from the box to call them out of his patient.

  Slowly, he gathered the four bots in a smoother-than-anticipated procedure and deactivated them. Using microscopic thermal goggles, he was able to watch them all exit and obediently go back into the small, black box, just as he’d watched them go mere hours ago.

  The doctors kept Mrs. Loretti at the hospital another night for observation and to wait for the results of her blood test.

  “What if they come back positive?” her husband asked, a look of fear in his eyes. It was a look of knowing. Of promises being broken. Of having been there before.

  “If they come back positive, we can always send the bots back in. Or try a more traditional method of treatment, now that most of the cancer is gone. Your doctors will be able to advise the best course of action. But now that you have this tool at your disposal, I’d say there’s no reason to despair.” It was the first time he’d deliberately given a patient and their family hope. Or maybe she’d given him hope.

  But there was no reason to worry. Her cancer was gone. They’d gotten it all. Every last cell. They’d done minimal damage internally once it was gone. What they had done—chew a bit around her intestines near where the cancer had been—could be repaired.

  As he pored over the blood work just outside her hospital room, Hope looked at him expectantly. He looked up, feeling like he had a bigger purpose in his life for the first time ever.

  “A success,” he breathed.

  9

  Approximate year, 2346

  Lehman’s home was in a lovely spot. She didn’t have an expansive ocean view like some of the other elders, with the waves constantly crashing and the salt air ruining their porches and leaving a film on their windows. She didn’t need all that. Her home was right on the edge of the woods, closest to the preparation stone, which was why she often got the task of carrying a body to the stone.

  She tried not to mind it, since it was such a short walk home, but bodies were heavy. One of the men could do it, if they weren’t such pansies. Ashby forbid they had to walk an extra mile just to spare her carrying a hundred and sixty pounds of dead weight.

  But that wasn’t what was on her mind that evening as she sipped her tea on the back porch, watching the stars twinkle at the edge of the woods. She was thinking about Mason. She knew Mattli had made the right choice in him. He would be a good second in command. So why did she feel a little slighted? Nothing was promised to her. She wasn’t entitled to anything, and the moment she started thinking that way was the moment she reduced herself to Branneth’s level.

  She groaned inwardly as she sipped her tea. Branneth. Now there was an elder she could live without. Nothing but a whiny pain in the ass.

  But Mason, he was different. He wasn’t raised to be an elder. He would shake things up, and that was just what they needed. In spite of her slight melancholy, she smiled.

  It wasn’t as if Mason made it easy to be upset with him. He was so gracious, and he’d even offered to give her the position if it meant that much to her. He said he didn’t want it anyway.

  But she’d given it to him without hesitation. He needed the protection of that spot, and she didn’t. No one threatened her the way they would threaten him once the news spread that a convicted murderer was leading the island.

  Lehman sighed. It was well past getting late and advancing on early. She’d been contemplating things far too long, and she had nothing to show for it. No answers, no suggestions to make things easier. Nothing.

  Reluctantly, she stood with her cup in hand and went inside. As she stood at the sink rinsing out her mug in a basin of cold water, she heard it. The distinct sound of gunshots rang through the woods, and the birds took to the air.

  Checking to see that her gun was in place, she took off running into the woods, toward the sound.

  Nothing. No other sounds followed. After a few moments, she had no idea where to turn. She hadn’t thought to grab anything useful, like a kinetic flashlight or shoes sturdier than slippers.

  She stood in the center of the woods, listening hard, but hearing nothing. So, she decided to cut through to the path that led to the preparation stone. If she didn’t find anything on her way, she’d loop back home and let it go. It was probably just some kids hunting for extra rations. Kids who had somehow gotten a hold of a gun, when only the elders had free access to them…

  Shaking her head, she tried to let the uneasy feeling go. But it took hold and settled deep in her stomach, propelling her feet forward a little faster. Despite the darkness, she found her way easily. She’d lived near those woods so long she could walk them with her eyes closed, path or no path. Reaching her hands out as she went, she lovingly brushed the big trees.

  Rather suddenly, she was on the path to the stone, and if she’d kept going, she knew she could walk straight across it and disappear once again. But she didn’t. She turned right and walked toward the stone. She just wanted to get a look at it, make sure nothing was amiss, and then go back home. Her mind was restless, so she knew she wouldn’t sleep anyway. And, as much as she loved the woods, wandering around in them in nothing but slippers and her pajamas at three AM wasn’t her idea of a good time.

  A voice stopped her just short of the stone. She couldn’t see its source, but she knew it had come from around the next bend.

  “Who’s there?” it asked. It was a man’s voice. An old man.

  “Elder Mattli? What on Ashby’s island are you doing out so late?” she asked as she jogged around the corner.

  “Elder Lehman,” he said, the relief in his voice making her quicken her pace even more.

  If she expected to see anything at all, what she found wasn’t it. She thought maybe Mattli was just sitting on the stone, contemplating his friend’s death and preparing for tomorrow’s funeral. But what she saw was the old man kneeling by the stone, glistening in the moonlight, with hands pressed tightly to Mason’s middle.

  Lehman went to her knees near Mason’s head. “What happened?”

  Mattli nodded toward another figure lying just behind him. She stood and squinted toward it. “Is that…?” She couldn’t be sure, not in the darkness, and the way the head was turned away, but it sure looked like…

  “Elder Branneth made some poor choices,” Mattli said

  “That much is plain.”

  “Help me get him back to your house. We need to get a doctor. He might bleed to death before…” Mattli’s desperation choked his words.

  “We won’t let that happen,” Lehman assured the old man. “Give me your robe,” she said, holding out her hand. He shed it in record time. She tore long strips of it, tying them around Mason’s waist, hoping it would be enough to staunch some of the bleeding while they moved him.

  It was a struggle. And when she lifted him, he cried out in terrible pain, making her almost drop him. She was well versed in carrying dead weight, but not people who cried out. It broke her heart.

  “I’m sorry, Mason. I’m trying to help you.” But the poor man wasn’t conscious enough to comprehend what was happening to him. All he registered was pain.

  She took his top half, just under his shoulders, and she let Mattli take the legs. Their progress was agonizingly slow, but they were going as fast as they could. Still, it took more than double what it took to walk the path unhindered. The whole time, Lehman walked backward, keeping her eyes on the makeshift bandage, watching it get more and more saturated with blood as they walked. With each step, it seemed like his skin grew more ashen looking, but she tried to tell herself it was the moonlight.

  By the time they arrived at her home, his heartbeat was faint and his breathing was shallow.

  “Run and get a doctor,” Mattli commanded once they had him laid out on her kitchen table.

  It was the first time in quite a few years she wished her match was still alive. He’d been a doctor. He was a good man, but cold. He never looked at her with love, never offered a warm emb
race, or a gesture of affection. He did his duty when necessary, but that was all. He’d died of an infection he caught from a patient almost fifteen years ago, and she’d been right on the edge of being rematched. She was only a year away from being too old to have children, and they hadn’t had luck so far, so she passed on the option. She’d lived happily alone. Until that moment, she’d never missed him.

  The nearest doctor lived three blocks over. She nodded fervently and took off running in her slippers, hoping Mattli would be able to find what he needed in her home to keep Mason alive until she got back.

  The doctor took an intolerable amount of time to answer the door. True, it was four AM, but still.

  Clumsily, he adjusted the glasses on his face, hand-me-downs, no doubt, that merely sharpened his vision, but never quite made it perfect, since they weren’t made for him. “Elder Lehman, this is a surprise.”

  “One of the elders has been mortally wounded. We need your help. We can’t let him die. Not another one,” Lehman explained, a little breathless from her run.

  “Of course,” he answered as he snatched his bag off a chair near the door and followed her down the walkway to the driveway and out into the street.

  They ran at a good pace. Lehman had no idea where her energy came from after carrying Mason all that way. She thought she’d never lift another thing. But his life depended on that run.

  She never looked over her shoulder to make sure the doctor was keeping up. He was younger than she was by about twenty years. He’d better be keeping up. He’d better not even be winded when they got there.

  They burst through her front door. She led the way to the back, where Mattli had Mason laid out on the dining room table. Mattli had quite a few candles lit, and Mason had soaked through his makeshift tourniquet. His breathing was shallow and intermittent. He was letting go.

  “No,” Lehman said as she went to him, grabbing a clean towel from the closet in the hall and pressing it hard to his side.