The man stood a little taller than most folk around him. He had an old hat on - some ancient Earth style - and a long coat. His face was always half in shadow.
He would have gotten away without anyone noticing him if it wasn't for the pregnant woman.
She fell, her eyes rolled up into her head, sending a cascading wave of alarm through the crowds around the terminal. He sensed it. Hairs picked up on the back of his neck. He checked the time. Two more minutes. That's all. He just had to keep his head down for two more minutes.
A child screamed.
He sighed. Nothing is ever easy.
"Hey!" A woman next to him peered up at his face. She was almost as tall as his shoulders. "I know you!" she said.
"Nope," he said, and turned away.
She grabbed his arm. "Why won't you help them?" She gestured back toward where the woman had fallen.
"Techmedics are on the way."
"They might not get here in time."
"It's not my problem." He shrugged and kept his face impassive. Less than a minute.
"I heard stories about you," she said. She maneuvered around to face him again. "About what happened on Riley Station."
She said the words softly, but people were starting to notice. Thirty seconds.
"Help them," she urged. "It's not too late. For either of you."
Ten seconds. The ship was sliding into port. The hiss of doors opening, seals locking and decompressing, started in a wave from the front and rippled down to in front of them.
He was two steps away from freedom.
"God damn it," he muttered. He glanced around but the girl was gone. He took one last look at the doors, at the transport, at the infinity of space, then turned on his heel. His plans crumbled around him.
The crowd parted around him and flowed into the waiting transport. He swam against the current to the knot of people clustered around the spot where the woman had fallen.
He pushed his way through. Some people asked him what he thought he was doing, one tried to tug him away, but most just let him be. The woman was still breathing. Her belly was distended and moving on its own, filled to the brim with her child, but the rest of her was eerily still.
He knelt beside her and checked her for a biotech receiver. She had one nestled behind her right ear. He set his wrist against it and executed the program required to wake up the unique microscope nano bot that he hosted, then physically propelled it into her body.
His training came back as if nothing had ever happened. He could have been back on Riley, out on the Frontier, doing any one of a thousand different procedures, just like nothing had happened.
He sent the bot - affectionately named Henry - to her heart and kept her cells oxygenated and her body functioning. It wouldn't fix her heart, but it would buy him time.
He operated Henry via a telepathic link awarded to him after a dozen years of intense study. Henry was an outdated model - the new crop had been all the rage for a while now, but he refused to trade Henry out. Henry worked.
Besides, it would have hurt Henry's feelings.
From the outside, he was a man knelt beside a sick woman, his eyes closed and his body still, but the crowd knew what was happening when they saw it and a hush fell over them. Even those who had never seen someone like him in action knew what it looked like. Everyone knew. He heard vague whispers and a boy asking what a 'biomage' was.
Another, louder, disturbance registered in the back of his mind as he worked in concert with Henry to keep the woman alive. Her baby was fine - Henry's elaborate sensors had reported the condition of her unborn child and the rest of her systems and he concentrated on what was vital to her immediate survival, filtering out the rest. But he heard everything. He knew when the medics came and he transferred control to their more sophisticated bionanos seamlessly.
He recalled Henry to his body. The little bionano had a personality of his own - a development that wasn't actually possible - and Henry chirped his displeasure.
I know, he said.
Boss you promised, Henry said.
I know.
I thought we were retired, said Henry.
We are, he said.
Hmph, said Henry.
"Hey mister?" a kid pulled at his coat. "You a biomage?"
"Sure, kid."
"Then why are you here and not out on the frontier? My pa says they need biomages real bad out there. He says people are dying."
A few other people had gone still. He knew they were listening for his answer. The kid had asked what everyone wanted to ask but didn't have the guts to.
"Your pa is a smart man," he said finally.
"Then you're gonna help?" The kid said. He had those big brown eyes in a little round face and it was killing the man just to look at him. He had hope. Trust. Stuff that the man had thought he'd left behind him. When people had hope, they had something other people could use against them. He'd made a promise. He had good reasons.
When he didn't say anything, the kid looked down. "Mister?" he said, his voice mumbled, "Ain't you gonna help?"
"Yeah kid," he finally said. "I am helping."
The kid looked confused. He walked away and pulled his hat lower on his face. He was helping, he told himself. He was helping by staying away.
