✅ Project SETI: Surrogates for Extra-Terrestrial Insemination

Part XVI: Cold Front

          For a second, the only sound in the room was the heart monitor as it blared out a flat, steady tone. The trace was still—Nova had flatlined, and the rest of his vitals rapidly fell along with it. Dr. Ali shakily removed the mask from his face and replaced it with the mask of an oxygenated ambu bag.

          Gabriel sprang up when the alarm sounded off, but he quickly replaced his face with his gloved hand when he saw that the other two attendants were already rushing to resuscitate him. He began to thrust into him again, this time with three fingers instead of two, and even though he was unresponsive in all other ways—Gabriel still felt an increase in lubrication as he rhythmically pushed in and out.

          "What the fuck just happened," Gabriel demanded. He watched as Julia rubbed her knuckles firmly along Nova's sternum and slammed down on it with a closed fist— but he didn't respond, so she positioned herself to begin chest compressions.

          "I—I don't know," Dr. Ali tripped over her words. "I don't know. He—had an adverse reaction..."

          "Nova takes just fine to anesthetic," Gabriel snapped at her. Even in his anger, he kept fingering Nova; the fact that he still responded to him now had him convinced that it actually might help, in some weird way. "What the fuck did you just give him? And more importantly, how much did you give him?"

          Dr. Ali couldn't hide her surprise when she noticed that even though she'd taken the mask off of Nova's face, she'd forgotten to turn off the anesthetic gas. And when she pressed the button on the console to turn it off, she saw that the output dosage had a critical extra zero on it. All the colour drained from her face at the realization and her heart fell into her stomach.

          "Melika!" Julia exclaimed between compressions when she didn't answer. She started to press down on Nova in rough messy movements when her attention became divided. "What did you give him?"

          "I... I... uh..." She stuttered and slurred even worse and her grip on the ambu bag became visibly shaky.

          "Jesus Christ," Gabriel swore when he saw the now-pallid anesthesiologist sway on the stool. She tried to catch herself on the table's headpiece and dropped the ambu bag as she tried to grasp at it and hold herself up. Gabriel saw her lips tremble while she struggled to stay upright, and then she fell and puked at the same time.

          "You have got to be kidding me..." Julia mumbled and sighed sharply as she finished the cycle of compressions. The last push, more forceful than all the others that preceded it, caused one of Nova's legs to slide off the table. "Gabe—"

          "I'll take Nova, you take Melika," he cut her off; he was already moving to take her place.

          Julia bounded over to a console on the wall and flipped a switch. A voice began to sound off outside the room, but it sounded distant while muffled by the heavy doors of the decontamination chamber.

          "Code Blue in OR #2. Code Blue in OR #2."

          The first thing Julia noticed were the unnaturally bright green chunks and streaks in the vomit that stained her face and scrubs, and she hoped like hell she'd expelled the majority of whatever she had clearly taken beforehand. As she sprang up to find the tools needed to treat the aspiration and secure her airway, she thought that whoever was going to respond to their call had better fucking do it now.

          "She took something," Julia said as she rushed around Gabriel, who had climbed up on the table to straddle Nova while he administered CPR. She noted that he hadn't fixed his leg when it fell off and idly wondered if that was purposeful before she turned her attention back to Melika. "There's chalky green chunks in her vomit."