Chapter 600: No Time for Tears (1/2)
YOU BELONG TO US rang out across the system, psychic power pushing it into every living brain, driving millions to their knees as they screamed, holding their heads, staring at the uncaring sky with suddenly bloodshot eyes.
Across the planet, over ten billion souls here slashed by that simple statement of fact from the oncoming Atrekna.
Buildings with psychic shielded, most of them unmaintained and largely forgotten, weathered the psychic assault much more easily. Those inside whimpered, flinching, looking around and wondering what was going to happen now.
Hospitals had the most recent and the best psychic shielding outside of some government and a few military buildings (most had pocketed the money or sold the equipment and never installed it or never finished installing it) and the nurses inside felt little more than a twinge and a cold whisper.
The nurses on the 19th floor of the largest hospital on the proto-continent had barely even heard a whisper. The psychic shielding on that floor even extended to separate rooms. An open door would reveal a wavering iridescent curtain, like a soap bubble, across the doorway.
They all wore white, with little folded hats, and wore shoes that whispered on the tile floor of the ward out of respect for their patients culture.
The Phrewicken nurses shivered as the roar of YOU BELONG TO US whispered through the ward, but they went on with their work.
Half of the floor was taken up by vast wards where the patients were side by side in beds, a hundred to a row, in four rows per ward. Their eyes were taped shut and covered with soft pads. Feeding tubes went up their noses and into their mouths. IV's were sunk into thick veins beneath skin that required razor sharp implements to pierce. Electrostimulus patches were on their muscles to use muscle spasms to keep their skin tone. Their bodies ran hot, their endothermic systems powered by sugars and carbohydrates in a complex system the more simple ectothermic Phrewicken found fascinating.
The nurses, still shivering as that terrible cry roared out again, moved between their patients, checking their monitors.
Body Temp: 96.8 to 99.8, hot enough to feel baking to the Phrewicken. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Blood Pressure: 90/60 to slightly less than120/80, an insanely high pressure that meant the Phrewicken could see their veins pulse with life.
Pulse: 45 to 100 beats per minute, wildly varying. The Phrewicken often showed new nurses how strong their patients single four-chambered heart was by having them touch the middle of the patient's chest to feel the organ thumping away.
The Phrewicken were moving between the vast rows of patients, examining EKG and EEG readouts, the computer terminals showing vitals, when the scream came again.
YOU BELONG TO US
Every nurse frowned as they saw the monitors jump. The EEG's, which showed the brain of the comatose patients was dreaming, suddenly whispered at the massive activity.
The lead nurse summoned one of the doctors even as she turned up the psychic shielding.
One nurse noticed the pads had fallen from her patient's eyes and the tape had come loose.
Instead of a cool amber fire deep in the startling blue eyes, the eyes now glowed a steady red.
She got the tape, put ointment on the eyes, then taped the eyes shut before putting ointment on fresh pads and replacing them.
One nurse noticed the patient she was checked suddenly balled their fists, the muscles on their forearms standing out, their biceps muscles clenching, their knuckles protruding. The joints of their knuckles crackled as the fists clenched.
She alerted the head nurse. The electro-stimulation was showing no output, the muscles should have been relaxed.
The doctor arrived, surprised that there was any activity in the ward that had been largely silent for over a year. Nurses were bustling from patient to patient, replacing eye coverings, trying to get muscles to relax.
He thought, for a moment, about seeing if stimulants would wake them all, but changed his mind. He was not here to do experiments on them, he was there to care for them. He ordered muscle relaxers and began to examine EEG and EKG and other esoteric device readings.
YOU BELONG TO US!
He flinched slightly but felt relief in the way the heavy psychic shielding, preventing patients of floors above or below from suffering intense nightmares and night terrors, was keeping out that terrible roar.
He saw every patient's instrumentation jump, almost as if their endless dreaming was interrupted by a sudden sharp sensation that pulled them toward wakefulness. Curious, he called in multiple colleagues, including those who specialized in neurological disorders.
The patients were highly complex mammals, but the Phrewicken still had vast databases on medical care for them.
The doctors all examined the chart. Like the coma itself, or the sudden frenzied and explosive violence of the other survivors, none of it could be explained.
YOU BELONG TO US!
The vitals all jumped.
One nurse shrieked as a patient sat up, the pressor beam projector the kept the patient stable on the gurney/bed exploding in a shower of sparks as it overloaded. Their arms went straight forward, their muscles clenched as they made fists. Their jaw muscles clenched. The pads slipped from their suddenly open eyes, which burned with a bright red light.
Another jumped back as the patients around her, in unison, mumbled something too low for her to hear, in their own language, all at once, all together, all the same word.
The doctors hurried in.
The one sitting up slumped back down and relaxed.
The whispering stopped.
The doctors paged more colleagues, who hurried in to examine patients that had been completely comatose, not even responsive to pain, for over a year.
One doctor, a doctor of psychiatry, told the others that the patients in the high security psychiatric ward had stopped screaming or throwing themselves against the integrity screens of their cells and were now all staring at the ceiling. When the roar would come, they would roar something back, as one.
The doctors were intrigued.
The hospital administrator broke into the examinations.
Civil Defense was ordering everyone into what shelters had been completed. The shelter beneath the hospital was now open and the doctors were ordered to enter. The nurses were ordered to enter the shelter to help care for patients that would be moved to the shelter.
The Head Nurse asked if her charges, which she had watched over for more than a year, would be moved to the shelters.
The Chief Administrator regretfully informed the Head Nurse that he regretted to inform her that regrettably the patients would not be moved to the shelter.
Regrettably.
The Head Nurse asked about the other patients in the high security psychiatric ward that had been built just for them.
The Chief Admiistrator said that in no uncertain terms he would not move psychiatric patients that had required military grade weaponry to capture to be put in an underground shelter full of possible victims.
Regretfully.
The Head Nurse regretfully informed the Chief Administrator that she would be staying up with the patients and suggested, regretfully, that perhaps the Hospital Chief Administrator should jump up his own ass in a clown costume. She then cut the call.
Regretfully.
She was inordinately proud of her staff when nearly a third declared their intention to stay behind and care for their patients.
The Chief Hospital Administrator ordered the hospital security forces to move the patients from the psychiatric unit that had been specially built for them to the 19th floor.
The security forces found the psychiatric patients, all of them with burning red eyes and rock hard musculature, to be strangely docile. Allowing themselves to be bound with specially designed jackets with straps the could be used to haul a fully loaded cargo ship and made with psuedo-cloth that could repel medium grade fixed weaponry fire.
The Head Nurse clenched her jaws and had patients moved from rooms into the large bays and put the psychiatric patients in the room.
YOU BELONG TO US!
The comatose patients murmured and whispered. The insane ones roared at the sky.