Thea was trapped, somewhere between life and death. Her mind could only see gray, she could feel nothing. She tried to reach out with her mind to her body, to her surroundings, to another person, but the part of her that might have once known how to do that was dead.
She felt small and alone, deaf, mute, and blind, trapped in some sort of purgatory with no way out. She prayed for death, but it wasn’t to be. At some point, Thea’s awareness of her state diminished, and she felt that she was in a small, gray room, curled up in the fetal position, waiting for nothing.
***
“Dad, I’ve fucked everything up. Thea’s in a coma, and I’ve got to go in and try to get her out.” Josh talked fast on the phone, filling his dad in as quickly as possible about what had happened in the doctor’s office.
“Wait until I get there, Josh. You know it isn’t safe for you without someone close by to monitor you.” Josh knew his dad was right, but that would mean that Thea would stay trapped alone for at least another hour. He knew far too well what it felt like to be in that strange limbo of coma, and he also knew that she could easily go insane and be lost forever if he didn’t get in there and find her.
“It’s already been an hour, Dad. If I wait much longer, she could be lost forever. I can’t lose her again. I have to go.”
“Give me thirty minutes. I won’t lose you again, either.”
***
Michael Critchlow was heading to Hopeton on his private jet to do damage control. He hated these kinds of calls, but there was nothing to be done for it. A nurse had apparently lost her mind and tried to kill one of the mods. She had been taken care of, but the mod’s caregivers needed to be briefed, and Michael wanted to see if the unit might be saved.
The fact that she was still alive was a good sign. [drug name] usually killed the mods within minutes. He had been working with some of the scientists on brain regeneration, and this might be a perfect chance to experiment on a human, well mostly human, subject. Even if the unit had to be scrapped completely, she might be of some use before he was finished.
***
