K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

"I'm calling security." The nursing supervisor turned and strode toward the central station.

"That's not a good idea." He interrupted his setup procedure, reaching behind himself and taking the gun out from beneath the scrub shirt. A click of metal was enough to stop the woman in her tracks, her eyes widening as she looked over her shoulder and saw the small black hole pointed at a spot just below the front edge of her white starched cap. "Why should we bother them?" He backed her up against the counter of the central station, the gun's muzzle then just an inch away from her forehead. With his other hand, he reached past the younger, even more terrified nurse sitting behind the counter, picked the phone up, and yanked its cord free from the wall below. "Since there's really no problem here, anyway. Unless you make one." His smile broadened as he took the gun away from the supervisor's face and used it to point toward the station's other chair. "Have a seat."

He walked back toward the bulky device squatting in the middle of the maternity ward's floor. The eyes of all the pregnant women had latched on to him; a couple of the less tranquilized had started to weep softly, pulling up the thin sheets of the gurneys and trying to hide behind them. "Ladies… you're beautiful just the way you are." He held the gun by his own head, pointing it toward the speckled acoustic ceiling. "Just stay like this. Real quiet." He turned, sweeping the beam of his smile across them. "And then we'll always have this moment together. Won't we?"

The mothers-to-be stayed frozen in place, just as he wanted them. He glanced over his shoulder at the women back at the nursing station. "I'm keeping an eye on you, too." With one hand he pulled out the last of the device's struts and jacked it into place. "So just relax. This'll only take a moment."

In the breast pocket of his green scrub shirt was a remote with two red, unmarked buttons on one side. Taking a pace back, he fished the metal box out. This was serious enough business to erase the smile for a moment. He hit the top button with his thumb.

A two-second delay gave him enough time to turn his face away, ears shielded with his upraised hands, remote in one and gun in the other. The shock wave from the blast rolled over his back like a heated ocean wave, with enough force to send him stumbling a few steps before he caught his balance.

The silence that followed was broken by the muffled sobs of the pregnant women sirening into full-out wails. That and the patter of atomized structural material, falling in a rain of white dust and charred metal across his shoulders.

Already in motion, he ran back to the device he'd wheeled into the ward. The thrust of the shaped explosive charges had dug the bracing struts another inch into the floor. He gazed up at the raw-edged hole that had been ripped through the ceiling above. Its center was filled by the hydraulic ram that had sprung like a jack-in-the-box from the device, the oil-glistening metal shoving aside the scorched, twisted girders.

Strapped to one side of the device was an attache case of chrome and molded black neoprene. flicking the remote back into his scrub shirt pocket, he pulled the case free and started climbing, the wrist of his gun hand catching the holds riveted to the side of the ram.

On the floor above, the hospital staff and security guards were still stunned by the blunt prow shape that had erupted in their midst. Jagged metal scraped along his spine as he emerged partway into the smoke and settling dust. A quick look around, with the case pulled through and flopped down onto the hole's buckled perimeter; he saw the heart-and-lung patient right where he'd planned on, the railed bed surrounded by the whispering machines. The monitor screens had flipped, the explosion having sent the beeping lines into sharp-pointed spasms and trilling alarms. Letting go of the case's handle but not the gun, he pushed himself up and onto the edge of the hole

The doctors and nurses, the ones left standing, had been shoved by the explosion against the walls. At least one had been hit by a bit of flying shrapnel; blood formed a bright net across his face and surgical gown before he collapsed onto his knees. The patient on the bed, at the edge of anesthetized consciousness, stirred feebly inside the web of hoses and tubes.

"Hey, buddy-" The smile returned to the man's face, his eyes brightening, as he called to the guard dragging himself toward the rifle that had landed a few feet away. The words were enough to stop the guard, his fingertips a fraction of an inch from the butt of the rifle. The hesitation was more than enough; the guard raised his head and the smiling man fired. One shoulder hit the rifle as the bullet's impact tugged the guard by his shattered skull along the floor.

He could hear the alarms shrieking somewhere else inside the hospital. Time dwindling now — he pulled the remote out of his shirt pocket and hit the second button.

In the vibrating sunlight outside the ward's high bank of windows, a brighter spark moved, metal struck by fire. As though it were a piece of the sun, fallen into an orbit low among the city's towers. It grew larger, closer, summoned by the tight beam from the remote in the man's hand.

Which he was done with — he tossed the small metal box aside. He scooped up the attache case by its black molded handle and strode quickly toward the bed.

"What…" Not even a whisper, not a sigh, but a few molecules of exhaled breath. The heart-and-lung patient's eyelids fluttered open. "What… are you doing…" A red bubble trembled in the cloudy plastic tube inserted in his trachea.

"Take it easy, pal." The man's hands were flying as he leaned over the bed. Yanking and pulling, tubes and ridged hoses flipped up from the heart-and-lung patient's blood spattered abdomen. "Just lie back and let me do the work." He'd laid the gun down on the nearest equipment cart, scooping up the sharp-edged tools and sterile white tape he'd known he'd find there. "Funny, that's what she said last night. Don't laugh, you'll bust a stitch."

Pure oxygen hissed as he jerked the largest hose from a Teflon socket at the breastbone's center; a wobbling bag of Ringer's solution burst on the floor like a prankster's water balloon as his elbow knocked over the IV-drip stand. He worked faster, the attache case open on the bed beside the patient. Security alarms shrieked in dissonant chorus outside the ward; he could sense through the floor the tremor of distant running. The quick, faint noise of ammo clips being shoved into place touched his ear; he didn't look up. He'd already measured the exact amount of time he needed. A spear of reflected sunlight hit his face. Glancing up, he saw the spinner, a modified light-cargo model, approaching the window bank. No one in the pilot seat; the program triggered by the push of the remote's button guided the spinner closer, the steel-reinforced nose gleaming a meter away from the glass, then less.

With a sweep of his forearm, he pushed the disconnected machines away. Another chrome rack toppled, sprawling the loose tubes, spastic octopus. With the roll of surgical tape he spliced the smaller lines from inside the attache case, snugging them tight to the implant connections that studded the patient's torso.

"Let's go-" He flipped the switch beneath a glass square set in the case's lid; a fiat green line coursed across the monitor. "Son of a bitch. Come on!" Smile into angry scowl; a fist struck the densely packed machinery; a miniature bellows sucked and gasped through a mesh filter, but the green line remained a perfect horizon. Both fists doubled, he struck the man on the bed, hitting the narrow target between the throat and the red-edged tubes hard enough to partway jackknife the man's knees toward his chest.

"Jesus…" An agonized whisper. One of the heart-and-lung patient's hands came free, from where it had been bound by the wrist to the bed's chrome rail; he feebly tried to fend off his attacker. "Jesus Christ… get away from me…"