“Med unit three responding,” came a voice over the comm. “How many, Agent Kale?”
“Five intruders, down. They need to be taken to detention. One Observer wounded and in need of immediate medical response.”
“Roger that. Sending a bus and a med unit. Five minutes, Agent Kale.”
Brian quickly slipped off his leather belt and started to tie it around Julian’s thigh. “It’s bleeding a lot. Five minutes could be too late if regeneration doesn’t kick in any time soon.”
“What could slow it down like that?” Birdie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kale replied, shaking her head as she assessed her wounded agent. “I’ve never seen this before, except…” her sentence tapered off as her eyes grew momentarily distant. She blinked, shaking her head as if to clear it. “I’ve never seen this before,” she said, pushing up and moving to survey the area.
Birdie furrowed her brows in thought, then looked up at Brian. He was looking at the back of Kale’s head with some sort of suspicion, then met Birdie’s eyes and realized they were thinking along the same lines.
“Sitrep!” Kale shouted over the noise, as they approached the subterranean walkway leading to the medical center. Two officers fell into stride alongside her, Brian and Birdie following quickly, but staying out of the way. The walkway was kind of dark, and it smelled stale.
“Twenty-three Defectors in custody, Agent Kale,” one of the agents reported. “Nineteen in detention. Four in interrogation. Apprehended weapons are in O.S.”
“What about us?” she asked as they continued to walk.
“Three agents are in the sickbay regeneration unit. Four more are wounded and receiving treatment. Regeneration doesn’t seem to have started for any of them.”
“Anyone?” Kale slowed her steps and looked over at the reporting agent for the first time since they’d started talking.
“Not for anyone shot, Agent Kale.”
“Agent Kale!” an older man, salt and pepper hair, waved from sickbay’s hatch, urgently.
Kale glanced to the agents around her. “Keep me posted on interrogations,” she told them. “Dismissed.”
They turned and filed out, passing Brian and Birdie, and allowed them to catch up to her as Kale stopped in front of the older man. “Aaron, how’s Agent Julian?” she asked. The doctor was tall, Birdie observed. Taller than her, but not quite as tall as Brian. Brian was like a giant, and she’d periodically jokingly pick on him about it, only because she was insecure about her own height. Birdie had been six feet tall since the seventh grade. Brian had shot up and surpassed her by the time he was twenty. Then all of the, “Do you play basketball?” questions skipped over her, and landed on his six foot four self. Brian wasn’t very athletic, though. He was competitive as all hell, and would never back down from a challenge.
The doctor was cute, Birdie noted. He filled out his lab coat well, and it was obvious that he took good care of himself, unlike some of the doctors she’d known in her past life.
“There’s no change,” he told Agent Kale. “I’ve stabilized his leg for the meantime, but he requires surgery. There’s a bullet lodged in the muscle right at the femoral nerve.”
“Could that be stopping regeneration?” Kale tilted her head in confusion.
“I don’t see how,” the doctor replied. “Too tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on, here. I’ve got two other agents who aren’t regenerating, either.”
“Could the Defectors have released something into the air?”
“I don’t think so. One agent healed up just fine. He was impaled in the abdomen by metal piping, after a fall. They brought him in for the blood loss. He’s doing just fine.”
“So this has something to do with the bullets,” Birdie surmised. The doctor looked over at her.
Kale glanced back at Birdie and Brian as if just remembering they were there. “Aaron, this is our newest agent, Amber Farran.”
“Birdie,” she corrected, holding her hand out.
“And this is Dr. Aaron Foster,” Kale introduced.
“Nice to meet you,” Birdie shook his hand once he grabbed it, unable to hold back a little smile when his eyes met hers.
“Likewise,” he returned the smile. “And I suspect you may be right. About the bullets, I mean,” he gently pulled his hand away and grabbed hold of the chart under his arm. “I think it’d be a good idea to get a team together to give the intruders’ weapons a closer examination. In the meantime, I need someone to sign off on Agent Julian’s medical treatment.”
“Can’t he do that?” Kale asked.
“If he were conscious,” Foster replied. “Blood loss and all. He’s got you listed as a medical proxy.”
“Really?” she rose a surprised brow.
“They don’t ever think they’ll need that to be known,” Foster told her, “With this place not usually needing too much use. But clearly he respects you enough to know you’ll make a responsible decision should the event arise that he needed one to be made.”
Kale nodded, swallowing as she let that absorb. “Okay,” she said as she straightened. “What do I need to do?”
“Just sign here,” he told her. She took the pen and signed the line he’d pointed out. “Thank you.”
“You’ll keep me updated on his condition?” she asked. “And the others, as well,” she added as an afterthought.
“Of course, Jeri,” he gave a small smile. “Should I contact your home number, or get on the comm?”
Kale seemed caught off guard at the use of her first name. Not many people called her by that. Not anymore. “I’ll probably not be home any time soon. But you can comm in and ask if I’m available. Then feel free to call my home,” she told him. “Thank you, Aaron.” He nodded and turned to quickly make his way back inside.
Kale stood there and watched him walk away until the doors hissed closed. And when she still stood there watching nothing, Birdie stepped up beside her. “Kale?” Some strange twinge of jealousy tingled in Birdie’s stomach, just at the fact that Kale and the doctor were on a first name basis. She quickly shoved that aside, though. Something was bothering the agent.
Kale shook her head slightly, and looked to her. “We need to get over to O.S,” she turned and started back up the walkway.
“What’s O.S.?” Birdie asked as she and Brian followed her.
“Ordnance Storage,” she supplied. “It’s where we keep any recovered weapons, and replacements if we should ever need them. It’s not a large facility, but it’s all we normally need.”
“Pardon me for bringing this up,” Brian said, “But if my math is correct, there are like four agents not out of commission right now. Aren’t you kinda freaking out at all? Because I feel like someone should be freaking out right now…”
“Mr. Farran, I am aware of the current situation,” Kale replied without breaking stride or looking at him. “I can tell you that I am trying to process our options, and that I am finding it difficult to calculate how it would be possible with the meager amount of agents at my disposal. But ‘freaking out’, as you so eloquently put it, would be the opposite of help for our current situation.”
They took an access door off the side of sickbay, and stepped through into an even smaller walkway. Lights flickered on as they walked, and Birdie tried her best to not even allow herself to think about the confining space they were in. If she let herself think about it, she’d start to panic.
“So uh… Mind if I ask what you did before you came here?” she asked Kale as a distraction.