✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Two - Part XIII: Mercy

          Jarah was already waiting at the reception when the security personnel arrived. The one carrying Gabriel stepped out of the transport pod first, and behind him was the female Daxut that had part of her beak burnt off.

          "That's them?" Jarah asked as they disappeared into the back area of the medical laboratory together.

          "Yes, this is who was crawling around in the subsystem. They almost shot my face off," she lifted her head to show the blackened wound on the underside of her beak and shook the firearm in her hand. "With this thing."

          Jarah clicked at her a few times in acknowledgement. "Anything else I should know?"

          "The suit appears to be keeping them alive," she explained as they entered a treatment room. She leaned the plasma rifle against the wall, just on the inside of the doorframe. "And there was one casualty. The escaped clone crossed paths with us and is still missing, as far as I know."

          "Get your beak fixed up and get back to it," Jarah commanded dryly. She turned to the other Daxut once he finished laying Gabriel out on the table. "You too."

          They both gave an affirmative whistle and filed out of the room. Jarah pulled on a pair of gloves so her feathers wouldn't impede her work and gently pulled on the helmet.

          "Warn... ing. Life—life support will...—connect if helmet is—is—is removed."

          She found the console on the left arm of the suit. There was a small button with a cover over it, labeled MEDICAL ACCESS. She lifted the hinged cover and pressed it.

          "Medical access—anted. L... Life support dis—dis—disengaging."

          There was a slight hiss as the collar of the suit receded back from the helmet, and along the front, the metal-fabric material automatically separated to reveal the seam that allowed the suit to open. She jolted in surprise when she pulled the helmet off and saw who it was. After a beat, she pressed her fingers into his neck and held her other hand firmly against his chest, but she couldn't feel a pulse nor any respirations.

          She debated just leaving him like that. She knew, just from his presence here, that he'd likely witnessed far too much of their illicit activities at Project SETI and a fair bit of what they were up to on the Temetor One.

          I suppose you're worth more to me alive, she thought as she opened the suit and ripped open the shirt he wore beneath. She quickly interfaced with the console jutting out of the wall nearby, and a panel in the ceiling opened up to reveal a concave transmitter on a sleek articulated arm. Jarah reached up and positioned it so that it hovered about five feet above his chest, and the console's screen notified her that the device had locked onto the patient's heart successfully a few seconds later. She pressed a button and the CPR device hummed quietly as it started up and began to promptly let out focused pulses of complex, dense energy that compressed Gabriel's sternum and effectively beat his heart for him.

           Jarah clipped a pulse oximeter onto his finger, and the monitor in the wall surged to life soon after. It showed that he actually was breathing—it was just so shallow and slight that she couldn't feel it, and it wasn't sufficient to provide oxygen to his body. It also picked up on the pulseless electrical activity in his heart, and she was grateful to see he wasn't quite in full code.

          She took the drug infuser off of her belt and quickly loaded the epinephrine-like pharmaceutical into it, then pressed it against his chest. The device above her automatically detected her movement and stopped for the duration that she was in its path. The monitor showed that his breathing had started to become deeper and slower in response to it, and the pulseless electrical activity ceased—but only for a second. His heart started to fibrillate—badly—and the CPR device paused completely to wait for further input upon registering the shockable rhythm.

           Jarah swiftly rigged him up to the defibrillator unit mounted into the wall next to the monitor. When the electrodes were in place, it recommended a 300J shock to start. She took the prompt and defibrillated him the moment the joules were available. He jerked and shook, then laid still.

          She sighed when she saw the trace for his respirations go flat afterward, and the line above it displayed the same atrial fibrillation as before. She brought the defibrillator to a 360J charge as prompted and pressed the discharge button just a few seconds later. Gabriel's body contracted sharply with the shock, and as he settled, the monitor in the wall beeped at her in warning that the patient was in full arrest.

          She jabbed her finger at the touchscreen on the console nearby, and the CPR device resumed. The trace reflected this, but the beep sound was shorter and the same tone as the flatline to denote that his heart was beating artificially. She then pulled a mask out of the wall panel and positioned it over his mouth and nose. The flexible metal casing around the hose moved slightly so that it was pressed firmly against his face, and the edges of the mask adjusted just enough to make the seal airtight. She set the unit to ventilate him, and his oxygen saturation started to rise accordingly. She also wrapped a cuff around his bicep to get a full read on his vital signs, then moved to prepare another infusion.

          She used the same drug as last time, but at a higher dose, and pushed it directly into his heart again. The monitor warned her of the extremely erratic coarse fibrillation the infusion had induced, and the defibrillator prompted her to deliver a 300J shock to correct it. The unit swiftly readied the joules, and she pressed the discharge button right after.

          The electrical current squeezed Gabriel's heart and caused his arms to spring forward, but the life-threatening arrhythmia stubbornly continued on uninterrupted. Jarah's crown briefly puffed in frustration as she prepared another 300J shock and defibrillated him again. He jerked and twitched along with it, and then, the trace finally read sinus. It was a bit fast at first, around 120 BPM, but it steadily fell until it was in normal resting range.

          Jarah relaxed upon seeing his vital signs stabilize. His oxygen saturation, heart rate and blood pressure were all within normal levels, but his respirations remained artificial. She was confident that he would start to breathe on his own soon and started to disarm and restrain him. She took the energy pistol off of his hip and slipped it into the larger pocket on the front of her utility apron, then moved over to a small closet in the far left-hand corner of the room. Within were many types of equipment, medical and otherwise, including several reinforced metal cuffs attached to articulated ropes. They were similar in appearance to the metal that encased the hose around the ventilator mask, except these were solid rather than hollow. She clicked them in place around his wrists and ankles and attached the ends to the magnetized panel beneath the gurney. She made sure they would hold against Gabriel by giving each fixture a firm tug, then glanced at his vital signs one last time before she turned to leave. She took the plasma rifle with her and pointedly locked the door behind her.