The female doctor put a hand on the skeleton man’s arm, glanced at the clipboard propped on his bedside table, and spoke to him in a honeyed croon. “Marcus, can you hear me? I’m Dr. Yancy and this is Dr. Gearhart. We’re here to help you get better. You’ve been through an awful lot, and we have been working very hard to make a treatment plan for you. Can you understand me?”
The man turned toward the sound of her voice, scratching at the bedcovers with his blade-like fingers. “That’s good,” Yancy said, nodding encouragement. “Very good.” The man’s fingers crept toward her hand. A creaky groan issued from his lips, which were stretched so taut that they refused to meet over his teeth. The word came out as “Hlease.”
“We know you are very hungry, Marcus. We perfectly understand that, and we want to help you. As soon as you’re stronger, you can be moved to the rest ward and then down to rehab. If you follow the protocol closely, you will recover fully and return to your loved ones before long. You want that, don’t you? They must be so worried about you.” At the doctor’s words, Marcus twisted on the bed and let out a tortured animal sound as tears bled from his eyes. “We know you miss them, Marcus,” Dr. Yancy soothed, as she turned to the tray of surgical implements and revealed another section of the marked body behind her.
This one had reddish whorls of hair matting his unmoving chest, a slight cleft to his chin, and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. His face was slack, and though his eyes were partially open, they saw nothing. It was the first dead body Gabi had ever seen, and it made her want to burst into the room and cover him—cover those sightless eyes and that vulnerable cleft chin.
“Surely you want to return to your family healthy and strong? As you are, you would only be a burden to them, so let’s just focus on getting you better. Your loved ones would want that.” As Dr. Yancy pivoted toward the metal cot, Marcus seemed to notice the other body for the first time. His eyes bulged farther from their sockets, and his hand twitched toward the corpse.
“Before he passed,” Dr. Gearhart continued, picking up Dr. Yancy’s monologue as she swabbed the exposed haunch of the man on the metal cot, “your friend Nicolas asked us to make sure you understood that he gladly gave his life for yours. He knew how you would suffer from this illness and that there was only one thing that could cure you. He gave of himself in the tradition of our Lord and asked only that his sacrifice not be in vain.”
Gabi’s eyes could not stop looking at the dead man’s body, searching for some sign of life. Her gaze found the soft jumble of flesh in the nest of hair between the dead man’s thighs, and she jerked her eyes back to his torso. With more of his body exposed, Gabi could see a patch of shiny pink scar tissue on the left side of the man’s rib cage.
Dr. Gearhart’s words were strange and hypnotic, like a sermon. What was he talking about? Was the marked man Nicolas? The word sacrifice flashed at her like a neon sign. It was as though Dr. Gearhart was quoting a translation. The starved man, Marcus, thrashed weakly on his bed, which barely caused the sheets to shift across his shrunken body. Dr. Gearhart looked over his shoulder at Dr. Yancy, who was bent low over the flank of the corpse. “We need to go ahead, or we’ll have to sedate,” he said, impatience straining his professional monotone.
“Yes, ready,” Yancy answered. “I needed to make sure not to take something too tough. It would have been better to start internally, but it’s too upsetting for the first dose. We’ll start small. Get me the dish.”
Dr. Gearhart passed a kidney-shaped steel bowl from the surgical tray to Yancy. As she reached for it, Gabi noticed she had donned surgical gloves and that the fingertips were coated in blood. There was a moist plop as she placed something into the dish, then set it on the corpse’s naked belly as she pulled off the soiled gloves.
Turn away now, Gabi commanded herself, but she couldn’t to save her life.
Dr. Yancy turned, exposing the hip of the marked man, which was bleeding from a neat incision where the flesh of his left buttock swelled out to the side. Blood wept from the wound and into the narrow gutter that encircled the bed. After picking up the dish from the dead man’s stomach, Dr. Yancy handed it to Dr. Gearhart, who cradled it in one hand while he chose a pincer-like instrument from the surgical tray with the other. Marcus was sobbing in earnest now, saliva soaking his chin and the top edge of the sheet. Dr. Gearhart grasped the contents of the dish with the pincers and raised it into the light. It looked like a blood-soaked wad of chewing gum. Dr. Yancy was frowning.
“Are you sure he’s been coded for this procedure?” she asked. “If the gene mods had taken hold, I doubt he would be so agitated. Perhaps we should try again later with an anonymous donor, put him on some liquid nutrition to prevent organ failure until the behavioral tendencies can be confirmed.”
With a shake of his head, Dr. Gearhart set down the tray and dipped his finger into it. He was not wearing gloves, and his naked finger emerged with a vermillion-coated tip.
“Some resistance is normal. You know as well as I do that in the first phase, it’s crucial that the donor be familiar to the subject. He’s ready. Hold his head.”
Dr. Yancy edged around Dr. Gearhart to station herself by the top of
