Liam knocked on Duncan’s office door. “Got a minute?”
Duncan sighed and looked up from his computer screen. “Sure. What’s up?”
Liam swiped his tablet screen a few times before settling on one, laying on Duncan’s desk. “Since Ryan’s Tribunal, I’ve been pouring over the timeline logs to see if there was something -anything- there that could help him. I found something very curious. Look at this log chart. The current timeline skew started back in the 1980s and has been skewing continuously.”
“Why didn’t our equipment pick it up?”
“Our equipment can only sense radical skews in the timeline. This skew has been gradual up until recently when we finally detected it.”
“Explain that one more time,” Duncan said, puzzled as he looked over the charts.
Liam tapped the chart, tracing the red line which gradually moved upwards as it traveled across the page. Black vertical lines indicated the years as they were passed. “I have no clue what’s causing this, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say we have a temporal causality loop on our hands.”
“Unfortunately, since the effect precedes the cause, they’re hard to pinpoint, let alone prove. This could possibly help Ryan. Find out everything you can about this and let me know as soon as you have something.”
Just then Duncan’s secretary burst into the room visibly upset. “I just got a call from the prison warden.”
“Oh jeez now what?”
“It’s Ryan. He’s been raped, stabbed several times and beaten. He’s in critical condition.”
Liam and Duncan exchanged brief looks before rushing out the door.
₪₪₪₪₪
Doctor Thomas looked out of his office window at the raging snowstorm, thankful that the emergency room was eerily quiet. He had a considerable amount on his mind trying to figure out Ethan’s mysterious condition. One of the interns working on the case knocked on the open door frame and entered the office. “Here are the results of the latest blood workup on Ethan Evans. I took the liberty of expanding the workup to include every blood panel test we have.”
“And,” Doctor Thomas prompted.
“Everything is one hundred percent completely normal.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” the intern replied, as baffled as the Doctor himself. Handing the tablet over he said, “There’s no trace of any disease of any kind. No HIV antibodies, nothing. It doesn’t make any sense.”
After looking over the blood workup results for several
minutes, he sat down, grabbed a turned to his computer and started entering
orders. “I want a micro-cellular scan run on Ethan Evans immediately. Look for
anything, and I mean anything, out of the ordinary. I don’t care if it’s a dust
particle. I want to know about it.”
“Yes, Doctor.” The intern left to carry out the orders.
Doctor Thomas looked at the blood work results again. What in God’s name is going on with this kid?
₪₪₪₪₪
“Where is he; the prison Life Sciences Center or County Memorial?” Duncan practically yelled at his secretary.
“Memorial.”
“Okay. I’m heading over there. Liam, keep working on the causality loop scenario. If we can prove it, it might just get Ryan’s sentence commuted. Send Larry back to check on the kid. Nobody says anything until I get back,” Duncan ordered as he rushed out the door and headed towards the Life Sciences Center.
Duncan arrived at the Life Sciences Center twenty minutes later and rushed into the emergency room. “I’m Duncan Ross. I’m here about a patient that was brought in a little while ago. His name is Ryan Edwards.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Yes. I’m his cousin.” A lie. “He has no close family. He was an only child and his parents died a few years ago from natural causes.” At least that much was true.
The nurse typed at her computer a moment when her lip curled in disdain. She snarled, “The criminal is in the intensive care ward. I’m happy to say that it will most likely not survive,” she said, gleefully with a huge smile.
The fact that she referred to Ryan as ‘it’, not ‘he’ was not lost on Duncan. “Now you listen to me, Nurse…” he paused to look at her name tag, “…Santola, you keep your opinions to yourself. It just so happens that there is irrefutable evidence proving his innocence. Lose the attitude or I will report you to the Director of Nursing who just happens to be my sister!” Again, truth. “In fact, I’ll just give her a call right now.”
“No need, Duncan,” Teri, his sister, came around the corner and gave him a hug. She turned to the nurse. “You are hereby suspended for two weeks without pay for conduct unbecoming effective immediately. While you are on suspension, I suggest you reexamine your Nightingale Oath and review the Life Sciences Center code of conduct.” As soon as the nurse left in a huff, she returned her attention to Duncan. “Is that true about the evidence supporting Ryan?”
“I hope so. Have you ever heard of a temporal causality loop?” Duncan asked.
Teri frowned for a moment. “Isn’t that where some kind of effect happens before whatever caused it to happen?”
“Yes, essentially, that’s what we’re currently investigating. My theory is that the doctor who is treating the person in the past that Ryan gave the drugs to is the same doctor who invented the universal STD vaccine and the HIV cure. If that’s the case, then Ryan is in the clear. How is he? Can I see him?”
“Let’s sit over here.” When they sat, she continued, “He’s extremely critical. They had to remove his right kidney, right lung, spleen, gall bladder, part of his stomach and small intestine. He has four broken ribs, a shattered right eye socket, both arms and legs have multiple fractures and he has bleeding on the brain. If he survives it will be a miracle.”
Duncan ran to the nearest bathroom and lost the contents of his stomach.
Previous chapter | Chapter index | Next chapter
No comments:
Post a Comment