Free Pack Dynamics by Julie Frost Page B

humans—”
    “And yet you brought it anyway, so you must think it’s special. He’ll die on my table if we don’t do something drastic, now.” Allen briefly met Reed’s eyes across the still form before he went back to hunting whatever the hell was bleeding in Ben’s chest.
    Reed nodded on the periphery of his vision. “All right. No guarantees.” Reed opened the case and pulled out a syringe.
    “It’s better than what I have.” Which was a whole lot of nothing. He still couldn’t find the bleeders … “Now. Now would be ideal. Shit,” he added as warning klaxons began sounding on more than one machine.
    “Stand aside; you don’t want these things in uninjured tissue.” Allen and Hasgrave backed off, and Reed stuck the needle into the incision in Ben’s chest and pushed the plunger.
    “Now what?” Hasgrave asked.
    “We wait,” Reed said.
    “Not too long,” Allen breathed, watching the monitors. “He’s going to go into v-fib in a minute. Get the paddles ready, Hasgrave.” He stripped the wrapping off a hypo full of adrenaline.
    More panicked beeping from the machines, telling them the patient was crashing. Like they didn’t know. Allen moved, was arrested by Reed’s hand on his arm. “Thirty seconds.”
    It was the longest thirty seconds of Allen’s life. Everything in him screamed that he needed to do something, right the hell now, and the inaction was like to kill him, if not Ben. But by the end of thirty seconds, the monitors had gone back to being reassuring, and, at forty-five seconds, Ben’s vitals started stabilizing.
    Allen blinked. “Why … are we not using this on everyone?”
    “It hasn’t been fully tested yet.” Reed tipped his head and grimaced. “And some of the side-effects, at least in animals, have been kind of nasty. Strictly last-ditch.”
    Allen poked around, looking for the bleeders. They’d closed up. “Well, your last-ditch nanotech just saved my patient. What was it?”
    “Mostly a higher concentration of what we usually use, with some extra added oomph.” Reed shut his eyes. “Just … watch for the side-effects, yeah? High fever, berserk behavior, heavy disorientation, anything like that. I need to know right away.”
    “At least he’ll be alive to have them.”
    O O O
    Alex opened his eyes, Megan noticed, as soon as she walked into his room. Gunfire hadn’t woken him up, but her muffled steps on his carpet did. Later she might have time to laugh at the irony.
    Something in her face must have given everything away, because he sat up immediately and said, “What happened?”
    She fell into the wheelchair and covered her face with her hands. “I’m just happy you were here and not there. The last thing we needed was two heroes getting themselves shot.”
    “Jeremy?”
    “That’s who you’d think, but no.” Her voice shook. The wolf wanted to curl up and hide under the bed at this point. “We had fake cops show up to take our trespasser away. Ben recognized them and took them out in, like, three seconds with the sniper rifle. But one of them got a round off, too. Ben’s in the OR downstairs with Doc Allen and Reed. Shot in the chest. It looked …” She stopped, swallowed. “Fatal.”
    Alex gave her a Look she was sure he’d learned from her. “Did you ever get any sleep, Megan?”
    “When would I have done that?”
    “All right, seriously. Go to bed. That’s an order.” His tone brooked no argument.
    She had to try anyway. “I haven’t cleared your schedule yet.”
    “I’ll do it. What’s the usual excuse, personal emergency, so sorry I have to reschedule, what’s a good time for you?”
    She nodded, her face still in her hands. “Words to that effect.”
    “How many appointments did I have today, anyway?”
    “Three. A teleconference with the board, a meeting with Moore in R&D, and … something else.” Her memory failed her. It was her job to remember, and she couldn’t. She wanted to cry, but didn’t have the