The Law of Averages

Chapter 20

Dan frantically moved through rows of grey shelving, his eyes roaming about. In his mind, he repeated the letters he'd heard over the radio, the labels given to the needed medicine.

B3, H7, L19. Three items, three small packages to save a life, so long as they arrived on time.

What a bargain.

The shelves were sensibly organized and labeled in alphabetic order. They were filled with unlatched plastic containers, each containing a different medicine, sorted numerically. The whole setup was quite sturdy, with the shelves bolted to the floor and the containers bolted to the shelves. It would take far more than an unfortunate tumble to cause a disruption.

Dan was not the only volunteer rushing about, searching for someone else's miracle. He dodged past several others, each with their own obvious upgrades. A man dressed in a tracksuit moved about with the speed and grace of an Olympian, bouncing from shelf to shelf before sprinting out the exit. A woman waved her hand at the row of shelves and a variety of supplies launched themselves at her. She lifted off into the air, the goods trailling behind her.

Dan was no slouch himself, especially while in an adrenaline fueled panic. He flitted about like an overexuberant hummingbird, and his supplies were gathered quickly. Dan barely paid them a glance once they were in hand, stopping only to verify that they hadn't been misplaced on the shelf before throwing them into a plastic bag. Not that there was much difference between them.

The items were so small, so unassuming, just small tubes and jars. They had no brand, no colorful designs, no name to speak of. It was the same all over the shelves. Not a single item could be identified past the small label printed on its container. Dan could be holding wart removal cream, for all he knew.

That was a worrying thought.

"Doc," Dan whispered quietly, a little embarassed to be seen talking to himself even within this artificial world.

"Hmm?" Mercury's voice rang out in his mind, smug as always.

Dan did his best to ignore the man's tone. "Why isn't the medicine labeled?"

"It's easier for people without mental upgrades to remember letter and number designations than complicated medical terminology," Mercury replied. Dan could practically feel the old man shrug.

"But what if I pick up the wrong thing?" Dan hissed. "Shouldn't these things have commercial labels of some kind?"

"Ah. You're treating this like a drugstore. No, Daniel, we do not make things easier for thieves. Some of that medicine is incredibly valuable and no individual is perfectly selfless, volunteer or not. It's better to remove the temptation entirely. A medical professional who knows the designations is assigned to every team of volunteers, and they call in the necessities."

Dan frowned at the explanation, at the overwhelming pessimism it implied, but reluctantly moved on. He teleported out of the hospital tent, onto a roof deep within the blast zone. His feet scraped against loose gravel and blackened concrete. Ash wafted past his face as he caught his bearings, drifting away from the smouldering door nearby that gave access to the rooftop.

Dan was as far inside the zone as he'd ever been. His delivery target was practically at the center of the blast, less than a hundred yards away from the office building where the fire had originated. Dan's earlier scouting efforts had not extended that far, as the overwhelming heat had easily dissuaded him.

Discomfort was no longer an acceptable excuse. The fires were being dealt with over time, and the center of the blast had moved from boiling to a low simmer. A haze hung over the street, shimmering with heat. The ground had not yet cooled. The air above it danced like summer in a desert. Grey clouds of smoke hovered in the sky, casting shade over the center of Atlanta, the only reprieve that Dan would find. But the temperature was survivable, if only just.

He shifted from roof to roof, jumping a football field at a time, gazing downwards all the while. There were people on the ground, volunteers with physical upgrades, digging their way through broken streets. Dan didn't stop to speak to them; he merely nodded to those who noticed him and moved on. His path was a beeline towards the center of the blast, towards the corner of a street a stone's throw away from ground zero. He apppeared on a roof overlooking the location.

The group of volunteers was immediately obvious. Few people had made it this far in yet. Street travel was damn near impossible, with the ambient heat and melted ground. So, it was with great relief that Dan laid eyes upon a shimmering blue bubble, a small sphere of cerulean cold. Flecks of ice spiralled within it, born aloft on an impossible breeze. The air surrounding it was translucent, frozen but not; it blurred his vision and obscured the numbers within. He could see the path that these people had walked, the quickly melting road of ice that trailed them like a snail. Someone had invented a self-contained mobile air conditioning upgrade.

Because of course they did.

Dan quickly confirmed the contents of his plastic bag. It would be unbearably painful to show up without any actual medicine. He appeared below, just outside the bubble of cold. The group was huddled in a circle, crouched down around something. Their words were soft, distorted but frantic.

"Careful Daniel. Not all upgrades are safe. Not all situations are what they appear to be. Not all people can be trusted."

Dan frowned at the sudden advice. A hint, perhaps, that the field would hurt him somehow? That the volunteers were not necessarily good people? That Dan should be more paranoid? Or was the old man just giving general advice? Trust but verify, twisted by a cynical worldview?

A decade of reading fiction told Dan to heed the old man's words, to stop and think and plan and worry. Experience told him that Marcus was almost certainly just fucking with him.

Just in case, Dan glanced around the area. He could see ground zero in the distance, the office building more broken in this unreality than he remembered it being on camera. The street was in worse shape here than anywhere else. Thick fault lines ran down the center of the street, cracked as if struck by an earthquake. There might have been a sewer there, before the blast, as Dan could see rubble filling in a small sinkhole. The concrete had melted oddly past it and along the sidewalk. The ground was convex rather than flat, bulging outward several feet like a balloon ready to pop. It looked like a tunnel, almost, one that lead inside the field of icy blue.

Satisfied that he knew enough about the area to panic-teleport, Dan took a cautious step forward.

He entered the field without resistance and the world snapped into focus. Loud voices called out in quick succession, and a woman's stern tone barked out orders. Dan finally laid eyes upon his fellow volunteers.

Three people surrounded a body. A man, covered in blood, dirt, and burns. His features were unrecognizable beneath the grime, and the skin along his chest was stained crimson. His shirt had been cut off him with great care. Even now, a woman carefully removed what remained of his sleeves with a pair of scissors.

She was dressed like a nurse who'd just walked out of a warzone. Her white smock was covered in black smears, ash and blood mixing together to form a horrific abstract down the front of her body. A white nurse's hat sat discarded on the ground beside her, a large red cross emblazoned on the front. She wore a pair of comfortable white walking shoes, their soles as black as the ash stained buildings surrounding her. The woman worked quickly, stripping off what clothes remained on the man while giving orders to her companions.

There was an odd ringing in Dan's ears.

He stared at the body in front of him, almost uncomprehendingly. It hadn't quite hit him, what was at stake here. He knew it, of course, in a sort of conceptual sense. Dan was no fool; he knew that people were dying. Had died. It just hadn't quite registered with him until now. The gravity of it, the tremendous burden that he had so brazenly taken.

There was a person dying on the ground before him and Dan's body would not move. His fellow volunteers had not even notice him yet, so focused they were on the dying man. The nurse searched through a nearby duffel bag, pulling out bandages and water bottles. Another man, large and dark-skinned, carefully lifted the body onto a blanket that the final volunteer had produced.

And still Dan stood, frozen. Adrenaline pounded through his veins like a storm. He was filled with energy, with drive, with the desire to act, but he didn't know what to do! His brain warred with his instincts, his pride clashed against sheer horror, and a decision was made.

"Marcus," Dan rasped shakily, "help me."

"The nurse is there for a reason, Daniel. Use her." Mercury's voice was no longer smug, not a trace of amusement lingered in his tone.

Dan's eyes snapped to the woman in white, and he stepped forward with haste. The trio noticed his approach, three pairs of eyes landing on him. Dan produced his bag of medicine, shakily placing it on the ground beside the dying man.

He tapped his orange vest, hand shaking. "I brought the meds you asked for."

The men stared at him for a moment, before dismissing him and continuing their work. The nurse gave him a grim smile.

"Good timing. Take this." She shoved a bucket half-filled with water into his arms. Dan blinked in confusion as the nurse rooted through the medicine that he brought. She pried the cap off of one of the tubes and emptied it into Dan's bucket.

"Mix it," the woman told him, passing him a wooden ladle.

He complied with only slight hesitation, using the old-fashioned implement to mix the two liquids together. They formed a viscous cream in seconds, expanding outward to the top of the bucket.

Dan glanced at the final volunteer as he stirred. The man was clearly the source of the cold field. His skin was light blue and covered in a thin layer of ice. Even his mustache was covered in frost, tiny icicles hanging down past his lips. He moved slowly within his bubble, mostly retrieving items from the nurse's duffel bag and passing them to her with great care.

The dark-skinned man snatched away Dan's bucket, passing it to the nurse as Dan flinched in surprise. Wordlessly, he passed Dan a wet sponge. The man ran his own sponge down the arm of the burnt body, gently scrubbing away layers of blood and dirt. Dan quickly joined him, mimicking the action on the wounded man's other arm.

"Gently, gently," the nurse chided softly. "Just enough to wet his skin."

She ladled out some of the thick solution, and gently poured it along one burnt arm, then the other.

"This will disinfect his burns," she explained calmly, urging Dan to continue scrubbing.

The sticky liquid worked far more effectively than water. Within moments, dirt and grime had given way to pink-tinged skin. Dan frowned at it. Something about it seemed wrong.

The nurse shared his opinion. She shooed him away from the body, snatching her sponge and ladle out of his hands. She moved quickly, scrubbing away at the rest of the man's arm. Dried blood flecked away, joining the pool of red forming on the sheets beneath the body.

His arm was pristine.

The nurse frowned in consternation.

"No burns," the dark-skinned man announced, finishing his arm moments after the nurse.

"He's wounded somewhere. There's too much blood." She dropped a generous portion of solution onto the man's chest and scrubbed away, throwing her entire body into the motion.

Dan glanced around as they worked, searching for a way to be useful. He caught sight of the ground where the man had laid earlier, a smeared pool of blood acting as a marker. Beyond it, the sidewalk was fractured and melted, forming the wide mouth of a tunnel.

Dan turned towards the blue-skinned walking A/C unit. "You found him in there?" He pointed towards the tunnel.

A nod. "Aye. Samson had to break the concrete to get at 'em too. Poor fella' managed to get underground to escape the heat, but the street caved in on 'em."

He pointed out of the field. Dan assumed the man was pointing towards the sinkhole, but the blue sphere blurred his vision too badly to tell. "My guess is he tunneled his way over here to escape the boiling water. Didn't seem to help much. Or maybe it did. He looked damn well cooked, but what do I know?"

Dan nodded gratefully, glancing back into the tunnel. It was too dark to tell, but the direction seemed right. The man must have hid in the sewers during the initial blast, only to get trapped when the ground collapsed afterwards. He was fortunate to have an upgrade capable of displacing concrete. The tunnel had clearly been created through non-physical means, as the walls were smooth, precise. They almost glittered, in fact, tiny shards of glass reflecting the blue light of the sphere.

Something about that niggled at Dan's mind.

"Found it!" the nurse cried triumphantly.

Dan turned to her, quickly shifting gears back into an obedient peon. She knelt over the burnt body, sponge in hand. The man's chest was clean, his pale skin unscarred except for a small round hole near his stomach that bled lightly.

"He's been shot," the nurse explained, reaching for her duffle bag. "That's why the sheets kept getting bloody. We just couldn't see it past all that dirt."

He was shot...? Dan stared, uncomprehendingly, as the nurse produced more tools from her voluminous bag. She stared as she barked orders, as her companions moved about the area. He stared as she spoke to him, urging him to move.

The man had been shot.

Dan turned towards the tunnel. The walls were smooth. Too smooth. Not carved so much as melted. He could see the glittering glass that lined the walls, the result of sand scorched by heat. He stared past it, towards the sinkhole. He remembered the sewers, the direction that it led.

A straight path towards ground zero.

The man had been shot.

Who shot him?

Not all situations are what they appear to be.

Dan had forgotten. He had forgotten that he was playing by someone else's rules. He had forgotten that this world worked on the whims of a mad scientist who assumed the worst of every situation. He had forgotten that this world ran on a script.

Dan's head snapped over to the prone body, to the nurse crouched at the man's side. He opened his mouth to shout something, anything, a warning or a request or a desperate plea, because he knew that something was about to go horribly wrong.

The injured man's eyes snapped open, dark grey orbs meeting black clouds above. His hand jerked into the air, and fire answered his call.