I can feel my heart beating as I open the door and chuckle at myself; I’ve been in so many situations more dangerous than this, and yet… the tension inside me feels thick. I peer left and right inside the sterile hallway, conflicted inside myself about this mission. Saint Marianne’s isn’t as quiet at night as I thought it would be. In fact, although it's subdued compared to the day, there’s still a lot going on. I walk respectfully down the hall to my right toward the main part of the hospice with most of the residents and see a wide variety of late night activities. Insomniac residents sit up watching screens, though some have so much equipment hooked up to them I wonder if they’re taking any of it in. A few play card games with each other, their bodies hunched over on wheelchairs pulled up to tables. Some of them slowly shuffle by me in the hallways and give me a nod, but nobody talks to me. One sturdy old lady wearing a gown even floats by, her feet a foot off the ground and her medical equipment trailing behind her. Perhaps the night is time for quiet pursuits? For some reason the hallway is dim, possibly to add to the mood. There are a lot of doors closed too. How am I supposed to be at the right place and time to reclaim Soul Sparks if I don’t know what condition everyone is in?
As each resident passes by me I wonder if they can get a sense of what I’m thinking. Do they know that I see them as people, but I’m also wondering when they might die and how many Soul Sparks they might have? I feel guilty, but I want both - for these people to live out the rest of their days in dignity with respect, and for me to reclaim more Soul Sparks. The tension inside me isn’t dissipating. Hopefully there are no resident psychics or mind readers who are still lucid enough to raise an alarm.
The constant beep and hum of machinery is only interrupted by the occasional ‘bing’ that sounds out repeatedly when a resident who qualifies for more serious care needs a nurse or something extra. One ‘bing’ sounds and I wait, holding my breath, to see if more action begins because it’s something serious, but a nurse just passes me walking calmly to a room. Nobody seems to question the fact I’m wandering around in the middle of the night, even though in my mind I feel like I’m acting like a starving vampire. I shake my head and reset my head to focus on what I’m doing.
Gentle red lights and the glow of screens give everything a faintly eerie feeling that’s somehow still friendly. Another two prompt and efficient staff members rush by me to a room where a ‘bing’ is coming from, which I guess makes sense when you’re dealing with people who are sometimes not totally in control of their Powers. I glance at the door and see that the resident has a strength-based Power so even if the Power is weak, two people to restrain him seems sensible. There’s no panic about the situation and nobody is raising an alarm, so I keep wandering.
At the entrance, the front door is locked with a bar across it and nobody is behind the desk when I emerge into the reception area. There have been a few ‘bings’ in the last couple of minutes so probably they’re all dealing with residents. I take a glance up and down the halls as well. Right now, empty. Auntie V is going to show up in a few days and I need to be here when she gets here, not fired for violating Saint Marianne’s policies, but I decide to quickly whip around behind the counter to look at the notification screens they have available to them.
I find exactly what I’m looking for.
One large screen shows a rough map of the rooms; each one is a rectangular box with curved corners. Each rectangle has just five pieces of information which are easy to decipher: a name, a time for their next check in, and the resident’s Level, Power Tier, and Power type. There’s also a colored line around each box. Most of the lines are green, three are yellow and blinking, and none are any other color. It doesn’t take a genius like me to decode their system and I assume if something serious happens the box turns red. I hadn’t realised there are so many residents here; there must be nearly a hundred, and I quickly scan all of them.
As expected, most of the residents are below Level 50 and have Sparks or weak Minor Powers. There are only two residents with Tier 1 Major Powers and Jacinta is one of them. Her next check is in an hour and her box is colored green. I look closely at the ones in yellow and quickly memorize the room numbers using some of my study tricks, then see if anything else interesting is laying around for me to look at.
Too soon, I hear something from down the hall as some of the attendants or nurses start to return and I slip quickly to the side and rush to the public bathroom, then close the door as silently as I can behind me and lock the door slowly with a grimace at the loud click. Focused on the task ahead now, I wait a couple of minutes until I’m sure that I hear people back behind the reception desk and nurses’ station. With some purpose I flush the toilet, run the water, use the hand dryer, and open the door.
An older, slightly heavyset nurse I haven’t seen before with dark skin and a kind smile looks over at me and assesses the situation.
“You must be Calrik,” she states, and I nod to confirm it.
“Your toilet broken?” she asks, sounding curious. The other nurse who’s been noting something down in a notification window stops what she’s doing and looks over to hear the answer as well.
“No,” I answer with as genuine a grin as I can muster. “I was just stretching my legs and decided to use it.”
“Ok,” says the lady. “My name’s Teresa if you need anything.”
“Thank you Teresa, I really appreciate that,” I say, and I mean it.
Potential blocked up toilet disaster or distraction from what they’re doing averted, both of them return to their work. My paranoia is slightly elevated, but I clamp down on it quickly. After all, they don’t know I’m out on a scouting mission to find out which one of the residents might be on the edge of death so I can reclaim their Soul Sparks. The best way for me to attract suspicion would be to act like a total weirdo.
With everything calm again at Saint Marianne’s, I decide that nothing dramatic is happening to any of the residents at the moment. Somehow I don’t really want to return to my room in case something happens. Instead, I sit back down on the chair I used earlier today and flip through a few more of the magazines on the table. I’m not really interested in cars or gardens and so just pretend to skim through them while I consider what to do next. Teresa and the other nurse don’t ask me what I’m doing or seem to mind that I’m hanging around.
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After about twenty minutes another person that’s definitely not a resident emerges from one of the rooms and plops down on one of the seats a ways to my left. He’s middle aged with a receding but tidy hairline and the look of someone who used to be fit. At the moment, his eyes are about as much of a mess as his clothes… which used to be business casual, but are now rumpled and fully untucked. He sighs heavily and rubs his face with thick, hairy hands then rests his elbows on his knees and stares at the ground. I keep pretending to look at my magazine, unsure if I should say anything. The nurses don’t. I wonder what his situation is. Son of one of the residents? I’m interested enough to pull his information.
Luke Horlie (Fire Mage)
Level: 34
Power: Flame Touched (Tier 3 Minor)
Conditions: Unstable
Whoa! Gaining superhuman Perception has also given me some insight into what looks like their Class in addition to their Level, Power, and Conditions. This could be super useful and I’m immediately happy with my allocation choice.
Unstable makes sense, he seems distraught.
After a minute or so, he decides to say something which surprises me. I just assumed he would get up and leave or do something else.
“Comes fast at the end, doesn’t it?” he asks. I look up from my magazine and see he’s looking at me, looking for some kind of a connection with someone. After a couple of seconds he looks back to his hands. Small yellow flames flicker and roll between his fingers as he uses his Power and stares at it. The flames are weak right now but he clearly has a high degree of control over the output and a Tier 3 Minor Power of the right kind can do some damage. This guy could be dangerous with a Power like that if he’s unstable, although the nurses aren’t paying much attention. I can’t help but wonder if it’s just the bystander effect or they actually have discounted him as a threat. Everyone who enters is scanned for Power Rating, but who knows? Me sitting here is case in point there are exceptions. I shift in my seat.
“It sure can,” I agree, and not just because I’m worried he might lose his temper and light the whole place on fire. My parents' disappearance was a surprise I wasn’t expecting. Not with their Powers, especially Dad’s. Maybe the sincerity in my voice is apparent by the way he presses his lips together and starts nodding, then looks back down at the ground while small flames dance around his fingertips.
I’ve barely returned my non-attention to my magazine when a frenzied beeping emerges from the room the guy just left. He leaps up and so do the nurses and they all rush into the room. For a moment I sit, paralyzed, because it seems so wrong to do what I want to - but then I get up and drop the magazine on the low table. I rush to see what’s going on.
Inside the room, the two nurses are rushing around the bed of an old woman while the man is bent over the figure there. From where I am, I can see he’s clasping her right hand and has one hand on her forehead. She looks in pain and she’s gasping like she can’t get any air despite the tubes that are hooked up to her. I’m no expert at stuff like this, but it doesn’t look good. The two nurses quickly center on one of the machines and start pressing switches. The frantic sounds coming out of the machines continue.
Geraldine Horlie (Fire Mage)
Level: 51
Power: Flame Touched (Tier 3 Minor)
Conditions: Distressed
“Something’s wrong!” Teresa says to the other nurse who is checking all the connections of the tubes.
“Help her!” the man bellows and I can feel my blood pressure rising. Is she going to die right here? Am I close enough to reclaim her Soul Sparks?
“We’re trying!” snaps the other nurse, but it’s clear nothing they’re trying is working. I stare at them for only a second more after hearing a sound I think I recognize and then I rush fully into the room and around the bed, then bend down behind the main machine that’s been beside her.
“What are you doing?” Teresa yells at me. I ignore her and swing the panel open that shows all the tidy machinery, tubes, and cables behind it. I run through most likely scenarios in my mind rapidly, tracing the mechanisms, then flip the vent’s exhalation valve cap and see that inside, the thin silicone flapper is split. I look around frantically then grab a box of gloves from the nearby counter.
“Scissors!” I yell, and for some reason another nurse who’s entering the room turns around.
“Got it!” one of the nurses calls out and I kneel down behind the machine again. I look around and grab the water bottle sitting on a table next to the bed. The nurse comes back in and chucks me some scissors while Teresa berates me. She doesn’t stop me, though. I quickly kneel down and cut a circle from the glove cuff and set it over the valve seat. The retainer clicks back so I blow into the port and it lifts and kisses shut. Good enough. I stand and look around, trying to find some plastic tubing. One of the woman’s intravenous drips is almost done so I quickly cut a length of tube and blow into it to eject any fluid, then jam one end of the tubing onto the valve’s exhaust and the other end into the water bottle. I check it over quickly and look up at Teresa.
“If it bubbles, it’s working!” I exclaim at her. The bottle answers with a soft, steady burble and the frantic beeping from the machine subsides. The woman starts to breathe easier and rests her head back onto the pillow as I also let out a big sigh of relief.
“Get it fixed as soon as you can,” I tell Teresa. “It probably won’t last more than a few hours.”
I stand up now the excitement’s over and I calm my mind back down after putting myself in hyper focus to assess and fix the situation.
“How’d you do that?” one of the nurses asks as I check to make sure the woman really is fine and then try to leave the room, but before I can get there Luke is standing in front of me.
“Thank you. Thank you!” he says with all the emotion in the world. He steps toward me to give me a hug and I don’t even pull away, I just let him do it. I know what it’s like to stare into losing your parents. Maybe I’ve got a lot of walls up and unresolved coping mechanisms, but I can still connect with a human who needs it. The guy buries his head into my shoulder and gives a couple sobs. In the emotion of the moment I somehow can’t help but think that the end is near for his Mom anyway, and I hope he finds a way through that can help him navigate it without tearing his life apart.
I’ve lost the appetite for reclaiming Soul Sparks for now, so I decide to head back to my room. Everyone stares at me as I leave which feels uncomfortable, but I think I need some time to work through what just happened. There’s no question I want more Soul Sparks and to grow in Power. I want it more than anything. Except, I’m not ready to stand by and watch people die just so I can get more Soul Sparks, no matter how desperate I am to find out where all of this can take me. I guess that much is clear, for now.
