The fifth house was different. The damage inside the house seemed off somehow, but Runstom couldn’t put his finger on why. They didn’t find a body, just lots of broken glass, ceramics, and plastic. They dug around for a few minutes, just to be sure they didn’t overlook a corpse.

“What was that?” Roxeen said with a start as Runstom flipped over half a lounge chair.

“Huh? I dunno, just a chair, I guess.”

“No, shh!” She stood still for a moment, and he turned to give her an annoyed glare. “I heard something,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

“What?” he said in a hushed voice. He tried not to move for a moment as he listened.

“In the lavatory, I think.”

He looked at the bathroom door and stared in silence, straining to hear. He looked back at her, and shifted his weight around. He suddenly remembered that he was still wearing that damned, bulky jacket and Detective Porter had yet to remote in. He disconnected the CamCap from the port in the jacket and shrugged off the latter. He was about to take the helmet off too, but then had a sudden image of Porter trying to call in right at that moment. The last thing he wanted was a demerit, so he plugged the CamCap cable into the regulation Personal Mobile Device in the inside pocket of his ModPol uniform. The PMD had a weak transmitter on it that didn’t work well for a long distance up-link, but if Porter tried calling in, Runstom would at least know it and could just plug the CamCap back into the jacket real quick.

“I think there’s someone in there,” Roxeen said. She inched closer to the bathroom while Runstom messed around with his equipment.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Don’t move.” He took a step toward the bathroom door, unclipping his holster and touching the butt of his gun. It suddenly occurred to him that if anyone were alive in there, he had no reason to suspect they were dangerous. He kept one finger on the gun anyway, and crept forward. Something about this house was ringing alarm bells in his head.

He got to the door and punched the release handle, but the door stuck firmly closed. Locked from the inside. Someone was definitely in there; whether they were still alive or not, he wasn’t sure. He broke the silence with a knock on the door.

“Anyone in there?” It was quiet for a moment, then he heard a distinct, thin cough from the other side. “Hello?” Runstom said, loudly now. “If you can hear me, can you hit the door lock?”

He heard no other sound. “Shit,” he muttered, pulling a multi-tool off his belt. He jammed the tool into the side of the door-handle mechanism, popping the safety latch. The panel fell away revealing the manual handle. He grabbed it and yanked the door sideways.

“Shit,” he repeated, unsure of how to react to the scene before his eyes. “I think we’ve got a live one here.”

The bathroom floor was red and wet with blood. Sitting on the floor, against the far wall, was a tall, red-skinned, red-haired man. His eyes lolled back in his head, but his chest moved ever so slightly, in and out, in and out. The slow motion mesmerized Runstom for a fraction of a second, and he pictured each corpse they’d examined, each a thing, an object to be scanned, but each of them had been more than that only a few hours ago. Each one had once been alive.

“Oh, my!” Roxeen breathed as she came up to the bathroom door. “He’s … he’s covered in blood!”

Runstom took a step forward as her words sunk in. He swallowed a few curses before finding the right response. “You don’t get outta the sub-domes much, do ya?” He looked at her, and she turned away from the body on the floor long enough to give Runstom a blank look. “He’s an off-worlder. Probably from Poligart, that big moon in the Sirius system. Or maybe Betelgeuse-3. That’s red skin,” he said, pointing to the man. “That’s blood,” he added, pointing to the floor.

Roxeen’s mouth moved a little, but she didn’t say anything. “Well, get over here!” he barked at her. “He’s still breathing, but I don’t know for how much longer.”

She stutter-stepped toward the red man on the floor, fumbling with her scanner. She knelt gingerly in the gooey, half-dry, red-brown plasma that covered the tiled floor, planting herself a few feet away from the resident as she stretched the scanning unit toward him. It began blinking and chirping all kinds of warnings and alarms. Runstom couldn’t use a med-scanner to save his life, but the device practically quivered with fear as it chattered on about fading vitals.

Liquid oozed out of the right side of the man’s mid-section, and Runstom and Roxeen both stared at the open wound dumbly. Runstom’s mind clumsily sifted through all the crime-scene procedures he’d been re-memorizing on the flight to B-4 as though there would be some rule or policy on how to handle the situation, something to tell him what to do. A gurgled cough came from the dying man, causing Runstom to throw aside the mental handbook and focus on the life slipping away from them in that moment. He lunged forward and put his hands on the open wound, applying pressure. He felt the goo of a QuikStik bandage. An open med-kit lay on the floor underneath the nearby counter. This guy had managed to partially close his wound, but not completely. The ragged way he was breathing and the agitation of the med-scanner led Runstom to guess there was probably a lot of damage somewhere on the inside.

“Can you do anything for him?” Runstom said, craning his neck to watch the red man’s face while keeping his hands on the wound. When the med tech didn’t reply, he looked at her. She stared through him with those big gray eyes. “Roxeen!” he shouted.

“They said they would all be dead,” she said softly. “They said there wouldn’t be anyone alive.”

“Yeah, well they were fucking wrong, Roxeen! This guy is breathing!”

The dying man coughed several times in succession. “Uhhhnnn.”

“Hey. Hey!” Runstom tried to look into the eyes rolling around in the red man’s head. “Hey, look at me! Help is here, you’re going to be okay.”

“Uhhhhnnn,” the man groaned. “Eh,” he coughed a strange sound like he was trying to speak. “Eh. Eh.”

“That’s it, talk to me.” Without taking his eyes off the man, Runstom spoke out of the side of his mouth at Roxeen. “Get another QuikStik, so we can close this wound. And we need some syn-plasma. He’s lost a lot of blood. Hey buddy – talk to me. Where are you from?”

“Ehh. Ehhh. Kkkkssss.”

“Come on, buddy. Stay with me.”

Roxeen dropped the med scanner to the floor, where it continued beeping and flashing more intensely, locked on to the patient’s vitals. She broke open her own pack, unrolling it across the still-wet tiles and revealing all manner of emergency medical product.

“Ehhh. Kkkksss.” With an effort, the man raised his blood-stained hands, bringing them up to his face. He tried to put them together, shakily forming a cross with his index fingers.

Roxeen had gotten another QuikStik out of its package and moved Runstom’s hands away so she could apply it. With his hands free, Runstom tried to hold the red man’s head straight.

The man looked into Runstom’s eyes. He crossed his index fingers again, holding them in front of his face for a few seconds before dropping them weakly and going limp. He exhaled one last time and closed his eyes.

The med scanner blared one last mechanical scream and went silent.

CHAPTER 3

After several hours, the Modern Policing and Peacekeeping officers, their remotely connected detectives (Porter did eventually call in), and their accompanying medical technicians found thirty-seven residents and one maintenance worker. Two people who lived in the block were later found to be in the Blue Haven dome during the incident and were detained for questioning, but quickly released. Of the thirty-eight found in block 23-D, nine were still alive. Two of those were unstable and died before the med techs could get them out of the block. The other seven were taken to Gretel Hospital and were in various medical conditions, and despite the likelihood of permanent physical and mental damage, all were expected to live.