Story code: ST-000555
Part 4: The Drill
The weight of the woman pinning Marcus to the linoleum felt like a concrete slab. Her knee ground into his bicep, perfectly positioned to deaden the nerve. He tried to thrash, to buck his hips and throw her off, but the severe diabetic ketoacidosis had hollowed him out. His muscles were useless, twitching uncontrollably as his cellular energy plummeted to absolute zero.
“Let go!” the rep shrieked. Her fingers, slick with sweat and his blood, clawed at his clenched fist.
Marcus squeezed his eyes shut, trying to rotate his wrist inward. The exposed micro-needle of the prototype injector pen was less than an inch from his chest. If he could just angle it. If he could just slam his own hand downward against his sternum, the needle would pierce his heavy cotton uniform and deliver the synthetic insulin. It wouldn’t be a proper subcutaneous injection, but it would be in his system. It would be something.
He gritted his teeth and pushed. His forearm trembled violently.
The rep felt the shift in his leverage. She let go of his collar, dropping her full body weight onto his wrist with both hands. The impact drove Marcus’s knuckles hard into the floor tiles. Pain shot up his arm, shattering his concentration. She dug her manicured thumbnails directly into the webbing between his thumb and index finger, pressing the pressure point with a savage, calculated precision.
Marcus gasped, his lungs inflating with another massive, involuntary Kussmaul breath. His mouth tasted entirely of nail polish remover and rotting apples. The chemical imbalance in his blood was reaching a critical toxicity. His brain was starving, sending misfiring signals to his extremities. His grip involuntarily loosened.
“No,” Marcus choked out, a wet, pathetic sound in the suffocating darkness.
It was too late. The cold, smooth plastic cylinder slid through his sweaty palm. The rep snatched it away with a triumphant, ragged sob. She immediately scrambled backward, kicking her expensive leather shoes wildly against his calves until she hit the far wall of the supply closet.
Marcus lay flat on his back, his arm still outstretched on the cold floor. The darkness pressed down on him, thick and suffocating. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, but his body finally refused the command. The heavy, leaden paralysis of a diabetic coma was creeping up his spine. His extremities were already numb. His hearing felt like his head was submerged underwater. He could hear the rep panting in the corner, a chaotic rhythm of pure panic, punctuated by the metallic click of her verifying the pen’s dosage dial was still locked.
She saved it, Marcus thought, his mind drifting into a detached, syrupy fog. She saved the inventory.
Above them, the school intercom crackled with a sharp, electronic chime. The sound was deafening in the tiny space, slicing through the tension like a blade.
“Attention, staff and students,” the synthesized, automated voice vanished, replaced by the calm, authoritative tone of a living person. “This concludes our unannounced active threat drill. The building is secure. All clear. Please resume normal instructional schedules. Administration, please reset the magnetic locks.”
A heavy, mechanical thud echoed down the hallway outside. The lockdown electromagnets releasing.
Marcus’s heavy eyelids fluttered. A drill. There had never been a shooter. There was no threat in the hallway. The footsteps had just been a school resource officer checking doors to ensure compliance. They had been fighting in the dark over a corporate prototype while a high school practiced a safety procedure.
With a sharp, electric buzz, the motion sensors in the administrative corridor detected the opening of doors. The master relay kicked over. The fluorescent tube lights inside the supply closet snapped on instantly, bathing the cramped room in a harsh, blinding white glare.
Marcus squinted, the sudden light sending daggers of pain through his retinas. He turned his head slowly, his cheek resting against the cold, filthy linoleum scattered with crushed boxes and brightly colored dry-erase markers.
The rep sat backed into the corner, trapped between a stack of copy paper and the metal shelving unit. Her tailored wool jacket was torn at the shoulder. Her face was smeared with Marcus’s blood, her hair a disheveled wreck. But she wasn’t looking at the door. She wasn’t looking at Marcus.
She was staring down at the sleek, silver injector pen clutched tightly against her chest in both hands. Her knuckles were white. She traced the pristine, unpunctured seal of the dosage dial with a trembling thumb. A profound, hollow relief washed over her features. The asset was secure. The chain of custody, though bruised, remained legally defensible.
Marcus’s jaw went slack. He wanted to speak, to beg her one last time now that the fear of the intruder was gone. He needed her to look at him, to see the human being dying on the floor less than three feet away from a miracle cure.
But his lungs stopped their frantic heaving. The heavy, suffocating blanket of the coma settled over his brain, shutting down the visual cortex. The harsh fluorescent light faded to gray, then to a deep, permanent black. The last sound Marcus heard was the rep carefully, meticulously, clicking the plastic safety cap back onto the prototype pen.