The Dangers of Saving a Life

Chapter 1: Milo

Milo Skart was busy promoting the latest Keret brand of exoskeleton to a particularly jittery man when the teen girl stumbled through the hospital door. Neither of them noticed her at first, despite her swollen and pregnant stomach, her tattered and filthy appearance, and her disease. 

But to Milo's credit, he had other concerns. He had not made his sales quota for that month, and then he would not get his bonus. "Think of what your friends will say," he told the jittery man. He could sense a sale and he was already dreaming about his bonus. "This is a top-of-the-line Keret exoskeleton. You can't do any better. You'll be faster than all of them."

"Oh, I'm not sure," the jittery man said. He must have been a centenarian. His shriveled body moved stiffly, hesitantly. "I just don't know. It's such a big place."

The Atraville Hospital was indeed a big place. The two spoke in the expansive foyer where a hundred congested levels merged into one open corridor. There, cars and ambulances flew into multiple pods on various levels, dropping off and picking up patients. Interweaving helical escalators brought patients up and down from the pods and the different levels.

The girl stumbled through an unused and at first unnoticed pedestrian entrance of this foyer.

"You need this exoskeleton," Milo said with a big smile, pressing the man's small and withered hand between both of his young and smooth palms. He could feel his bonus within reach. He would need it for his college tuition. He would need it for food, room, and board. "You deserve this exoskeleton. Think of yourself. It's the right thing to do for you."

The man melted in Milo's grasp. "Yes, you're right. I think I will-."

A siren shrieked, rising and falling. In between bouts of the siren, a loudspeaker blared: "This area is extremely dangerous. Leave immediately." At the same time, the walls of the foyer, bland white up until that moment, flashed brilliant red.

This was no routine alarm. It did not come from an ambulance, a police car, or any other emergency vehicle. The siren declared a dire warning. This girl was dangerous. When people heard the siren, they didn't simply move out of the way. They fled for their lives.

Milo's attention, however, focused down on the girl, whose large pregnant stomach pushed through a torn uniform from the school of Axion. Her body was caked with dirt, barefoot, with a mark on her left cheek about the size of a small handprint. The sirens said she was high on dark energy, a dangerous and illegal form of energy.

"Help me-" the girl called out. She groaned from a contraction, doubling over, holding her large stomach. "Help me...it's coming...my baby-"

The elderly man snapped his hand back away from Milo, fear spreading across his wrinkled face. As he called for a car, masses of people rushed for the exits. Those near enough sprinted into the hospital before the bulkhead doors slammed shut. Many leaped back up the spiral escalators to the landing pods, diving into cars, then shooting into the sky. Others crammed into service elevators behind the escalators.