There was nothing to hide behind in the corridor if anyone came along, but Gabi had come this far, and the memorial service wasn’t going to last forever. She would be expected to be there for the closing, and the processional to the incineration unit where all deceased fellows were taken. The primitive ritual of burying the dead in the ground seemed much more fitting for Gram, who had so loved the earth, but even the Tribes rarely practiced it anymore. The little soil that was left after endless cycles of radioactive seepage, drought, freezing, and flooding was either terminally compacted or too dangerous to handle.
The small window of time to honor Gram’s wishes was shrinking by the minute, and along with it, the meager ration of courage that had buoyed Gabi thus far. She noticed that of all the doors along the hall, only one had a card swipe beside it. The door with the passcard reader had a window in it, but all Gabi could see on the other side was a tiny vestibule and another door, this one windowless. A splinter of dread pierced her at the thought of being trapped in that space with a locked door on either side.
Stop dithering, Gabi chided herself. You’re here now. Just go! She approached the door, swiped her father’s card, and stepped into the vestibule.
She tried to keep her foot wedged to prop the door behind her while she jiggled the handle of the windowless one, but she couldn’t quite reach both at the same time. Reluctantly she stepped all the way into the vestibule and clasped the knob in front of her. As the door clicked shut behind her, there was an answering click in the mechanism of the knob in her hand. She pushed the door slightly open and slipped through.
The ward was divided into cubicles by curtains suspended from rods. Gabi felt the sudden terror of exposure as the fluorescent lights overhead stripped any concealing shadows from the room, so she dove into the nearest cubicle after a quick look to ensure that it was empty. There were two beds inside, one flanked by a tray of surgical equipment and the other by a carousel of hanging IV bags. The bed with the surgical tray next to it was heavier, its frame made of metal and its surface rubberized, with a small gutter running along the outside. The metal bed lay completely flat, whereas the other was a plush adjustable one like those in the other wards.
The sound of metal rings scraping across curtain rods startled Gabi, her heart crashing until she realized the sound had come from the cubicle next door. The jolt made her aware that she’d been frozen like a frightened animal when what she needed to do was hide and think. After dropping to her hands and knees, Gabi crawled around the side of the plush bed and wedged herself into the narrow space between it and the nightstand by the dividing curtain. The nightstand was taller than the top of her head if she hunched over and hugged her knees, and the bed concealed her from anyone who might happen to peek into her cubicle. Once she got herself situated, she saw that a slice of the cubicle next door was visible through a crack where the curtain didn’t reach the wall. Voices issued from the other side, and she leaned her head against the wall to peer through.
She could only make out the bottom half of the adjustable bed in the other room, which was laid out in an identical format to her own. Recruiting as much of her spindly leg strength as possible, Gabi pushed herself up the wall until she could see over the top of the bed, biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from crying out at what she saw.
A human skeleton with a translucent hide stretched over it and the visible outline of a syringe pumping IV fluids under its skin lay propped up on the adjustable bed. Its lips were colorless, pulled tight over protruding yellow teeth, and its eyes were great glass marbles glinting from its skull. The skeleton’s hands, which lay draped across the sheet, looked like the pearlescent whale bones in the stolen photograph, but this was a human and he was alive. Barely. A tall, dark-haired man and a silver-bobbed woman, both draped in white lab coats, were turned away from the emaciated body, bent over another figure on the rubber-sheeted table before them. Their conversation reached Gabi as her gaze was pulled again and again to the pitiful creature lying close enough to reach out and touch.
“I don’t know what he will be able to digest at this point,” said the older woman. “He’s gone too long is my guess.”
The man turned his face toward her, revealing a salt-and-pepper beard and eyes bracketed by deep crow’s-feet.
“Could be, but I think it’s the perfect time. The body has to reach extreme deprivation to override this kind of thing. The gene mods can only do so much. If he’ll take it, we can bring him out of ketosis easily enough.”
“Only one way to find out,” the woman said. “Remember, it’s important that he see the incision being made. Shall we begin?”
The man nodded, and the two stepped apart, turning toward the starved figure and revealing another body on the metal cot behind them. Gabi strained to see around the doctors, searching for signs of life in the second supine form, whose skin was marked with ink from midriff to thigh as though a cartographer had mapped its contours. The dimensions of this body were smoother and more padded with flesh than those of the wasted man closer to her. There were scrapes
