A light blinked on Angela's leftmost screen. She slipped her ear bud in, clicked the light, and spoke. "Hello, this is Doctor Merilyn."

"Hi, Doc. This is Andy down at the ER."

She clicked a few links on her communication screen, returned to her drafting as the unneeded information scrolled by. "I remember you. Are Ellen's lungs doing better?"

"On the days I can convince her to take it easy, yeah. That's not really important right now, though. We need you."

Angela paused her drafting, brought up her alert queue. The intake at the ER had been normal for the past eight hours, although they'd had an ambulance arrive recently from outside the county. She pulled up the security feed from the ER doors. The sides were too dirty and scuffed up for her to get a good look at the originating county, but the damage told her enough; this particular truck had come from, maybe even through, one of the urban zones heavily damaged by the Rain of Fire. Still, the doctors remaining at the ER all had more experience than she did.

"Did something happen to one of the other doctors?"

"No, ma'am, I didn't mean we need you in particular. But we kinda do. I meant we need Blue Bloods. Something weird is going down."

Angela checked the Blue Bloods duty roster and shook her head. Charlie needed to rest. Jack and Flex were dealing with the new recruits. Drew would be on patrol tonight solo, so she needed her sleep as well. That left one person other than herself. She pinged him with a quick text.

'Meet me at hospital, ASAP - Doc.'

His reply came back so fast she knew he'd been standing around playing with his phone, rather than patrolling like he should. 'Bossy bitch. CU there - Axe'

She shook her head and spoke into her ear bud again. "What's going on?"

"We just got an ambulance in from, get this, Dade County, Florida."

"And?"

"Well, the guys driving are currently under observation. They hadn't eaten right for like two weeks. Junk food and snacks while looking for... well, you, I think. They kept muttering about needing a special doctor for their patient."

Angela rolled her eyes. No one ever got to the point.

"So, who's their patient?"

"That's why we need you guys. We can't tell. The back of the ambulance is one solid block of ice."

***

Steve stared at the back of the emergency vehicle, trying to get some sense of what lurked inside. Since the Rain, he'd been able to smell and hear things far beyond the human norm, but his sense of sight hadn't improved. It's not like he had bad vision, but compared to what he could hear, could smell, it just didn't measure up.

Before he switched gears and tried smelling for things, he gave the ambulance a once over. Florida plates, bright yellow-green paint scheme, lower half obscured by a thick coating of sandy mud, and practical off-road tires all spoke of a vehicle adapted for pulling folks from beaches, marshes, and other inaccessible places and getting them to a hospital. The guys down in South Jersey had similar setups, but they didn't use chartreuse paint. They didn't have Florida plates, either.

He tried the passenger side door; it opened smoothly. The paramedics had left it unlocked. He leaned in to check the inside of the truck, but half a step back from the front seats a solid wall of ice obscured his vision. The afternoon's heat still hadn't worn off, so the cool air rolling off the ice felt good, but he wasn't here to feel good. He had to figure out how to get the patient out of the back.

He closed his eyes, cleared his head, and sniffed. It took a few moments to ignore the scent of the driver and his partner; both male, both rank after two weeks without showers. Whoever they had on ice wouldn't smell like that. He inhaled again, deeply. The salt and rot of the sea assaulted his nostrils; a good chunk of that ice came from ocean water. He scraped a nail across the surface and touched it to his tongue. After a moment swearing quietly at the sudden pain of an ice cream headache, he confirmed the salt in the water.

Of course, that told him why he'd gotten an instant cold headache as well. Salt water melted at a much colder temperature than pure, and the stuff in the back of the truck had as much salt as the stuff he'd occasionally gotten in his mouth down at the beach. He got out, closed the door, and wandered around to the back of the truck. The handles on the back door wiggled, as if unlocked, but the ice inside had infiltrated the mechanism. It wouldn't turn far enough to let him swing the back open. Instead, he settled for sticking his face up against the crack and inhaling.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The security guard at the door of the hospital, a local rent-a-cop, not a real cop moonlighting for some extra cash, gave him a funny look, which he ignored. The two from the front seat had been past here, but not for the past few weeks. Faintly, he smelled something else. More ocean rot. Female sweat. Something else, something he associated with Angela and Jesse and Drew and... Charlie?

He pushed away from the back of the truck, shaking his head as he did. "Hey, speed bump."

The guard didn't reply, didn't even acknowledge he'd spoken. Steve shook his head, shrugged to settle his stylized, bright blue fireman's coat a little more squarely, stuck his hands in his pockets and walked over to the guy.

"Is the hospital so short on funds they've got to hire deaf security guards?"

That's when Steve noticed the emblem on the security guard's shirt; a stylized chess piece, the symbol for Gerard Security's far more numerous 'normal' division. The guard nodded to him politely but didn't say anything.

"Yeah. Don't talk much, do you?"

The guard didn’t even look at him when he replied. "Didn't know you were talking to me."

"Right. Sure. Whatever. I'm going to need a hose."

The guard just stared at him.

"Well?"

"Do you have a security related concern, sir?"

Steve hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and cocked his head. "Well, I'm not sure it's security related, but if someone like that Centurion guy rolled up in the back of an ambulance, I might want to at least loosen the snap on my taser, if you know what I mean."

The guard blanched, taking an involuntary half step backward and resting a hand on his weapon. "Centurion's in there?"

"Yeah, no. Somebody like Centurion. Somebody like Kronos. Or, if you want to get down to brass tacks," Steve smiled maniacally, "like me."

"Uh... Okay. Thank you for the warning, sir. I'll call for some backup."

"Yeah, you do that. While they're on the way, have them haul the fire hose out here."

The mulish look crept back onto the guard's face. "Why don't you just get it yourself?"

"Hey, no problem. I'll leave you out here alone with the unidentified super powered guy in the back of the ambulance. I'm sure he's a good guy, and not going to be disoriented from whatever put him in an ambulance in the first place." The mulish look wavered. "Besides, even if it's some kind of rampaging ice beast, you can heal it when he rips your arms off, right?"

The mulish look evaporated like spit on a griddle. The guard backed toward the entrance to the ER. "Yeah, can you keep an eye on my post while I run in and get the other guys and your hose for you?"

"Yeah, why don't you do that?"

The guard walked into the building, pulling his walkie talkie from the case on his hip. Under his breath he muttered, "He didn't have to be such a prick about it."

Steve called out, "Yeah, but being an asshat is one of the best perks of the risking-your-life-for-others business."

***

Rain bounced off the metal of the roof. So long since she heard it last, but she remembered it perfectly regardless. Perfect pitch, perfect recall, she still remembered her mother singing to her before she could walk. Off key.

Unlike those days so long ago, the rain brought no respite from the heat. Just the opposite, the longer the rain droned on, lashing the roof so hard it must fall off, the hotter the shack became. The covers absorbed the impact, but the damp cold against her skin told her she would wake to soaked sheets, soaked bedclothes, and a soaked mattress.

Grace hoped the rain would stop in time for her to dry the mattress. She hated when they mildewed.

***

Angela pulled into the parking lot on automatic, her brain already racing to figure out the method behind Steve's madness. That one existed, she didn't doubt, but the details often eluded her. The worst part, of course, came when he explained, and she felt like an idiot.

She hated feeling like an idiot.

Without looking she backed the bright blue Smart Car into a spot, set the emergency brake, and gathered up her gear from the passenger seat. She spent a few moments standing beside the car, settling things in place on the support mesh, still staring at Steve as he hosed down the ambulance. Dirt and sand covered the edges of the spreading pool he'd created, but she couldn't bring herself to believe he'd decided to wash the paramedic's vehicle for them.

Without calling out, she walked slowly toward him. When she still had fifty feet or so to go, he angled the hose at the driver's side rear door, braced it against the side of his body, let go with one hand and tried the passenger side door handle. It opened, although from the way he tugged at it she thought the door might be stuck.

Once he had one of the twin doors open, he shifted around until the hose rested under his other arm. That aimed the stream of water in through the now-opened door and let him work the driver's side door open the same way he had the passenger side. He kept the water spraying into the back of the ambulance. Angela couldn't see any sign of a fire, and the water continued to gush out the back in any case.

When she reached conversational distance, he still hadn't noticed her. She opened her mouth to speak and got a mouthful of water as Steve jerked the hose to one side, staring at something inside the ambulance.

"Dammit, Steve! I did not want to drink from the fire hose!"

"They all say that before they realize how much pineapple I eat," Steve muttered. Out of the line of the hose Angela recognized Steve's autopilot banter and disregarded it. Trying to civilize him could wait, the patient couldn't. Before she got close enough to grab the hose, he darted into the ambulance and back out, redirecting the hose inside the moment he got clear.

Of course, he soaked her twice more with that one brief spurt of movement.

"Steve, if you don't stop spraying me and tell me what's going on, I'm going to recommend monthly colonoscopies, just to be sure your head isn't stuck up there again."

Steve's face had gone blue. Angela took a step back, because only something beyond the pale could make Steve blush. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. Twice more he tried to explain, all the while gently sweeping the geyser erupting from the hose through the vehicle. Finally, he gave up, shrugged, and reached his hand out to Angela, palm up.

A bright blue star rested in his hand, a phosphorus flare in the shape of a blood sample vial.

***

From the end of the infinite, intimate tunnel eternity spoke to Grace once more.

Time to wake up.