James Darrow

 

The sound of hushed voices and hissing air greeted Ryan as he started to wake. He could only think that he was still dreaming as he tried to brush off the sounds. When the freezing cold air finally hit him, alarm bells in his head immediately started sounding.

Ryan cracked open his eyes, letting him finally look up at the team of four people that stood on the other side of the glass tube he lay in. His clothing was gone save a pair of underpants, letting him feel the freezing air all over. Despite the cold, his heart raced as fear set in. He shouldn’t be here, wherever ‘here’ was. “Sir, you need to calm down. Take some deep breaths,” one of the people outside of the tube said.

Ryan tried to listen, tried to comprehend, but it only partly worked. He examined the room outside of the tube, making out the details of a world that couldn’t be real. Everything he saw felt metallic, the cold steel of an unfamiliar world replacing the concrete and wood constructions he had always known. “Wh-where am I?” Ryan asked.

One of the people, dressed as what seemed like a doctor, looked at the others. “Before we can answer that Ryan, we need to ask you some very basic questions. Can you do your best to answer them for me?” the man asked. The doctor’s voice seemed eerily calm and reassuring, helping Ryan focus.

Ryan was shaking, the cold air biting at him as if he were swimming in the arctic. “Please, just get me out of this tube. I’m freezing in here,” he replied.

The doctor nodded at the other people around the tube. “Alright, let’s unseal him. Get me one of those blankets please,” the man said, running his fingers over his arm. As if on command, some kind of holographic screen appeared over the doctor’s arm. Only then did Ryan notice that the doctor’s arm wasn’t made out of flesh and bone, but metal.

The doctor noticed Ryan’s gaze at the metal arm. “Ryan, I know this seems impossible right now, but trust me, we’ll answer all your questions. Just bear with us, okay?” the doctor asked of him. Ryan could feel his heart beating extremely fast, but something felt wrong inside of him. He knew how his body felt on any other day so he knew that something seemed ‘off’ now.

Nodding, Ryan watched as the the doctor’s fingers ran over the display and the tube he lay in split in half. As soon as the space permitted it, Ryan sat upright and a blanket was wrapped around him by one of the nurses.

The doctor came over and shined a light in Ryan’s eyes, causing him to wince at the overbearing brightness. “Okay Ryan, I need to ask you some very simple questions. What is your full name and when were you born?” the doctor asked.

Ryan kept shivering, though he seemed to be warming up. “Ryan Yallo, born October 15th, 1985, in Seattle,” he answered.

The doctor nodded at him before turning to one of the nurses. “Make a note; it looks like the virus has fully embedded itself. We’ll have to watch and see if it reappears,” he told the nurse before looking back at Ryan.

By this point, Ryan was beyond tired of having no answers. What virus, and embedded in what? “What are you talking about?” he asked the doctor.

The doctor glanced at the display on his arm. “Ryan, listen to me. My name is Robert Shonet and, as you might have guessed, I’m a doctor. There are some things I need to tell you, but they won’t be easy to hear. Before I begin, I need you to tell me the last thing you remember, okay?” he said.

Ryan nodded, “Last thing I remember was…was…” he said, his voice trailing off as he lost his focus on the doctor. His memory seemed blurred at first, making the details hard to recall.

The doctor put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “Work your way back to it. Think of something clear and retrace your steps. Take it slow, this isn’t something you want to rush,” he reassured Ryan. The doctor’s voice and demeanor helped Ryan calm himself, especially as he acknowledged the metallic hand again. In the end, he finally recognized what he last recalled.

* * *

Ryan lay in bed, staring at the bedroom ceiling with wide open eyes. In his mind, he was sifting through the recent news of the dead police officers from his precinct. On the nightstand just next to him sat his patrolman’s badge, now acting like some haunting reminder of dangers he might face.

In the past two weeks, three of his fellow officers had been gunned down in the line of duty. One was shot and killed during a traffic stop gone wrong. Another, killed when breaking up a bar fight. The last, shot and killed during a narcotics bust. Too many lockers were being emptied out, too few familiar faces haunting the precinct hallways.

Some movement and a groan to his left told Ryan that he wasn’t the only one awake now. “What’s the matter, work bothering you?” asked a tired feminine voice.

Ryan turned his head to his wife, Karen, as he faked a smile. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it. Just go back to sleep, I’ll be right behind you,” he said softly.

The way that Karen looked at him was a mixture of worry and amusement. If there were such things as angels, Ryan swore they had to have faces like hers. Karen’s long brown hair and piercing green eyes further added to her beauty. The moonlight that shined down through the nearby window helped highlight her face in the night. “You’ve always been a terrible liar; what’s going on?” she asked as she moved in closer to wrap an arm around him.

Ryan hesitated, biting back the urge to continue saying it was nothing. “Just thinking about the guys at the precinct, what with the news,” he answered, failing to keep the nervousness out of his voice.

Karen was silent for a moment, never enjoying where these conversations led to. She was twenty six, only a month younger than Ryan, but they had a future planned together. Talks like these only served to draw attention to the danger of Ryan’s job as a cop. “Do you remember what you told me when we first moved in?” she asked.

Ryan nodded next to her. “I told you that I’d always be here to keep you safe, and that I’d always come home to you,” he replied.

In response, she brushed her hand along Ryan’s cheek, caressing the short cut hair and chin stubble. “You’ve never let me down either, and I have complete faith that you never will,” she said with a smile.

Before Ryan could think of what to say next, the sound of glass breaking could be heard from down the hall. Without a second thought, Ryan was out of bed and throwing a nearby pair of pants on. Before he moved over to the bedroom door, he reached into the nightstand and grabbed his service pistol.

Ryan turned on the light and grabbed the door knob before looking back at Karen. She sat upright in bed, her night dress and the sheets covering her. “Stay here, call 911. I’ll be right back,” he whispered. Taking comfort in the nod she gave him in reply, Ryan opened the door and stepped into the hallway, closing the door most of the way behind him.

Light from the street lamps outside and from the moon helped illuminate the hallway just enough for Ryan to see down the length of the single-story house. At the other end of the hall, just outside of view in the kitchen, Ryan could hear the sounds of footsteps.

A fire swelled inside him. The thought of someone breaking into his home and endangering his wife removed all fear and left only anger. “I’m a police officer, step out where I can see you!” Ryan yelled down the hall, stepping further out from the bedroom doorway.

From the kitchen stepped a man, his hands raised above his head. Ryan kept his service pistol trained on the man the entire time. The man wore enough rags and cloths around him that Ryan couldn’t make out any distinct features. “Get down on the ground, hands behind your head,” Ryan ordered, anger and authority lacing his words.

Before Ryan could see the man follow his orders, the sound of more glass breaking could be heard coming from the bedroom. “Ryan!” he heard Karen scream from behind the bedroom door.

Ryan turned his attention immediately back to the bedroom, back to his wife, as he turned around to face the door. A blood-curdling scream came from Karen on the other side of the door, followed by one deafening gunshot. “Karen!” Ryan yelled, his voice unable to be any louder. Just as he reached the door, another gunshot came. Only this one was from behind him, the bullet ripping through his chest.

Every ounce of strength that Ryan had and every breath of air in his lunges instantly left him, sending the patrolman down onto the carpet. Ryan gasped for breath, barely able to keep his eyes open let alone move. Behind him, he could hear the previous intruder walking past him to open the bedroom door.

Inside, Ryan could make out the broken bedroom window. He could see the second intruder, carrying a semi-automatic handgun. The empty shell casing was visible on the bedroom floor. His wife’s still body lay across the bed, streaks of red tracing down the sheets.

Unable to move his body, Ryan tried to call out to Karen, though nothing more than a moan escaped his mouth. His entire body had gone numb, rendering him unable to even move his hands. Despite the armed men in his house and the hole in his chest, the only thing Ryan could do as blackness consumed him was look at the body of his wife.

* * *

Realization came to Ryan as he sat in the opened pod and he instantly looked down at his chest. No bullet wound, no scar tissue, nothing. Looking back up at the doctor, Ryan knew his eyes were wide with fear and panic. “I-I was shot!” he nearly yelled out.

Robert, the doctor, now sat in a chair that was wheeled over so he could sit while Ryan recited what happened. “Ryan I need you to pay attention, okay? You weren’t shot, you’re perfectly safe,” he said.

“Bullshit! I felt that bullet go through my chest! I felt myself fall unconscious while I watched my wife-“ Ryan stopped mid-sentence as another realization hit him. “Where’s Karen?” he asked Robert.

“Ryan, you need to calm down. You’re perfectly safe, so please just take a couple deep br-“ Robert said, trying to dodge the answer.

“Screw that! Where is my wife?” Ryan yelled, panic and adrenaline driving him at this point.

Robert seemed to finally yield. “She’s fine, Ryan. She hasn’t been shot or harmed at all, she’s perfectly safe. Just like you, she was infected with the virus,” he said.

Part of Ryan was relieved to hear that Karen was fine. The other part, however, was instantly confused by what Robert was telling him. “What ‘virus’? What are you talking about?” he asked.

Robert seemed to hesitate for a moment, but he finally gave up answers. “Your name is indeed Ryan Yallo, but you were not born in 1985.” Robert said, watching Ryan’s reaction. “You were born in 2089, with the present year being 2115.”

Ryan was at a loss for words, barely trying to wrap his head around what Robert was saying. “The virus I’ve mentioned is a digital virus that infects people with neural cybernetic modifications. It connects people with its own server and writes a new layer of memories over the real memories they have. In short, Ryan, the world you experienced was nothing more than a program.”

Ryan started shaking his head as the words left Robert’s mouth. “No way, I don’t have whatever ‘modifications’ you’re talking about. I work as a police officer, I’m married to Karen Yallo and we live in a single-story house-“ Ryan said in response before Robert interrupted him.

“That’s mostly true Ryan. You are a cop, Karen is your wife and the two of you do live in a single story house. The virus uses those truths to make it easier to keep you contained in the coding. As for neural mods, everyone has them these days, especially officers like yourself,” the doctor said.

“No, this has got to be some hallucination or something…” Ryan said, his voice trailing off as he thought his situation through.

Robert simply sat back in his seat with a sigh. “Listen Ryan, I know you don’t want to think that the world you thought was real in fact wasn’t. I’ve seen many people who couldn’t cope with the truth, and I don’t want to see you be one of them.”

Ryan closed his eyes as his thoughts flashed back to Karen, hearing that terrible scream before she was shot in their bedroom. “I want to see my wife,” he said, his voice breaking up as he choked back a sense of grief. Robert said she was fine, all Ryan wanted was to know he was telling the truth.

Robert nodded, “Okay, I’ll have her brought in. She shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. In the meantime, I would like to talk about you physically.”

Ryan nodded. As much as he didn’t believe this was real, he didn’t see any way to escape it for now. Until he could get out, he was going to just play along. Just the same, maybe the doctor could explain why he felt ‘different’. “I feel kind of…strange. I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.

Robert nodded. “You understand how your body felt in the program, so the feeling of your real body is foreign. It’s the enhancements in your body, your mind isn’t used to recognizing them as a presence inside of you for now. It’s another reason we powered them down after you were hit by the virus,” he explained.

Ryan shook his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, what? I don’t know you’re talking about,” he confessed.

Robert adjusted his seat for a second. “Okay, you know how in the program, children were expected to get flu vaccinations?” Robert asked, Ryan nodding in reply. “Well, these days it isn’t the flu vaccine that people are asked to get, but an injection of nano-machines. They build a series of synthetic augmentations, and then are flushed from the body after they’re done.”

Ryan rubbed the temples of his head. “So you’re telling me that people are…modified? That we’re engineered like machines?” he asked.

Robert seemed to wrestle with words for a moment. “I wouldn’t go that far. Take neural mods for example; where you had cell phones, music devices, and computers, neural mods permit the same functions as all those things and more, but the person remains the same.”

“You’re saying that you people have tools in your heads, but nothing else about you is changed?” Ryan asked, trying to find the truth to all of this.

“Yes, but not just neural mods. Other mods that people have include some physique mods which improve people’s health. The common cold? Let’s just say that it’s not so common anymore,” Robert explained, a smile crossing his face. “There are even some mods that are built that correct irregular heartbeats and other conditions, even including Alzheimer’s.”

Ryan was about to ask another question, but pain suddenly swept over him like a migraine. It was sudden and throbbing, enough to render him barely able to see or speak. “Ryan? Ah hell, nurse!” he heard Robert yell, “Get the systems powered back up, we didn’t get rid of the virus!”

By this point, Ryan had collapsed backwards into the pod once more. Just before the darkness could consume him once more, a woman’s voice that he longed to hear once more filled his ears. “Ryan?” the voice asked, but he could no longer respond.

* * *

“Ryan? Can you hear me, Buddy?” a voice asked. Ryan finally felt the pain dissipate, letting him open his eyes. The metallic and synthetic feeling of the room with the doctor, Robert Shonet, was gone. In its place was a traditional hospital room, one he recognized as being from a hospital a couple miles from the house.

“Hey Man, welcome back,” said the voice again. This time, Ryan could finally focus in on the details of one of his fellow patrolmen; Daniel Rosrow.

“Danny? What’s going on?” Ryan asked, feeling indescribably weak. Looking down at his chest as he lay in the hospital bed, Ryan could make out the bloodied piece of gauze that must have covered stitches.

“Take it easy, you’ve been through a lot. You’ve been out cold for a few days, the doctors having been working on you for a good chunk of that time,” Danny said.

“A few days? What happened to Karen?” Ryan asked, his head swirling with thoughts and ideas.

At that question, Danny seemed to freeze up. Ryan knew that reaction, as involuntary as it was. That sudden freeze as someone has to tell you that the person that you loved was no longer there. “I don’t know how to say this, but-“ Danny said, pausing mid-sentence, “Karen didn’t make it.”

Unlike the confusion that overwhelmed him in the ‘other’ hospital room, grief was something Ryan knew well and could express. Now, it was like someone let open the floodgates. Tears streamed from his eyes, any words he had to say died in his throat.

Danny hung his head as he gave Ryan the news. “The best we can tell, there were two intruders and a getaway driver. One broke in the front door while the other went around to the bedroom window and-“ Danny said before his voice cracked apart. “Listen Man, I’m so sorry. I know what Karen meant to you…” he said.

By this point, Ryan couldn’t even think. He had promised her that he’d always be there for her, that she’d never need to be afraid. Now he knew that he had failed that promise, that he uttered it the same night that he lost her.

All the thoughts that had entered Ryan’s head about this world being some kind of virus had suddenly fled, being overwritten by grief and sadness. In his mind’s eye, he remembered times that he had taken Karen out to dinner, watched a movie together, or gone on a trip. Now, those were the only memories he would ever have of her.

A knock came from the doorway, making both Ryan and Danny look back to see one of the doctors come in. Danny then turned back around to Ryan. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” he said before getting up and leaving the room.

When Ryan finally got a good look at the doctor though, part of that grief gave way to confusion. The man looked like he could be the twin of the doctor he had seen in the hallucination, down to the seasoned look in his eyes. “Well, good to see you’re still with us Ryan. You’re pretty lucky to still be alive,” he said.

Ryan finally found the strength to hold back his grief, at least for a time, while he wrestled thoughts in his head. “That depends on your idea of luck,” he replied.

The doctor paused for a brief moment, hesitation clear on his face. “I take it Officer Rosrow told you then,” the doctor said, to which Ryan nodded. “Well then Ryan, let me say that I am sorry for your loss. Losing someone like that is never easy.”

Ryan slowly nodded, breaking eye contact. In a way, the more he looked at the doctor and saw the similarities between him and Robert Shonet from the dream, the more he wasn’t sure it was just a dream.

The doctor placed the medical chart down at the end of the bed. “Where are my manners, my name’s Tom Salef. I’ve been your doctor here during your stay,” the doctor said, reaching out with an open hand.

Ryan shook Tom’s hand, trying to grip it firmly but found that he couldn’t muster much strength. “How…how bad was I?” he asked.

Tom sat down by his side as he let out a deep breath. “I’m not going to lie, Ryan, it’s amazing that you made it here to the hospital. The gunshot wound you suffered caused a large amount of trauma, then the slug’s shavings caused a lot of internal bleeding. We’ve had you in surgery a number of times to patch up leaks.”

Ryan looked back down at the gauze on his chest once again, his brain telling him that pieces of him were missing underneath it. “It’ll take some time for you to heal up, Ryan. Until then, you’ll want to rest up as much as you can. If you need anything, just let me or one of the nurses know, okay?” Tom explained.

Ryan nodded, then watched as Tom got up and left the hospital room, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Outside the glass divider between his room and the hospital’s main floor, Ryan could make out Tom updating one of the nurses. The notion of déjà vu struck Ryan all over again, one of the nurses seemed like she could have been a twin to one from the dream.

Thoughts and doubts ate at Ryan as the day passed. Aside from nurses and Doctor Salef checking in on occasion, he was mostly left to his own devices. It gave him time to dwell on the loss of his wife, but also on some of the unsettling things happening around him. The similarities that his doctor and nurse shared with their hallucination counterparts deeply troubled him. Because of that, he found it was the assurance he had been given in the vision that Karen was alive that gave him hope.

When night finally came, Ryan was unable to sleep. Given what happened at his house, what happened to Karen, he found the idea of sleep distasteful. Tom finally came back to check up on him once more, only to decide to give Ryan a sedative to help him sleep. “To help the recovery,” he said.

As Ryan’s eyes grew heavier, so too did his guilt. As he fell asleep in this hospital bed, he was alone, and the possibility he was going insane crossed his mind. He rationalized that he had hallucinated the vision earlier due to what happened at his house, but the thought provided him no comfort.

* * *

When Ryan next opened his eyes, he was staring up out of the pod that was from his hallucination. Staring at the increasingly familiar ceiling tiles above him, he found himself not even wanting to look around, as if acknowledging this place granted it authenticity.

“Welcome back, Ryan,” said Robert Shonet, the doctor coming into view as he came around from a console. “We thought you had slipped entirely back into the program, but it looks like that wasn’t the case.”

Ryan closed his eyes for a moment before looking over at the doctor. As much as he didn’t want to think that ‘this’ was real and that the other place was an illusion, he couldn’t ignore his doubts. “What happened?” he asked, noticing how dry his mouth felt.

As if he was psychic or something, Robert grabbed a water bottle from an end table and handed it to Ryan. “We weren’t sure we had gotten rid of the virus in your neural mods when you woke up the first time. As it turns out, we didn’t, and the situation has gotten a bit complicated,” he said.

Ryan opened the bottle of water and downed a third of it in one go. He looked at Robert in a confused manner afterwards. “How could it get any more complicated for me than it already is?”

Robert took a second before he replied. “Put as simply as I can Ryan, the remaining pieces of code from the virus have embedded themselves in a way that stops us from removing it. The only way to get rid of it is for your mind to reject it.”

Ryan took a second to think it over. “So, what you’re saying is that I have to firmly believe that ‘this’ is real and the world I’ve known all my life is a fake?” he asked, to which Robert nodded. “Right, I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.”

Robert sighed. “The signs don’t lie in this case, Ryan. If you didn’t think or hope that this place was real, we would have watched you fall entirely back into the program. It was the doubts you have about the validity of the other world that kept you anchored here,” he retorted.

Ryan just stared at the doctor for a moment. Deep down, he knew that Robert was right about his doubts at least, and the thought perturbed him. “The doctor and one of the nurses in the other hospital where I am recovering from a gunshot wound look identical to you and your staff,” he admitted.

Robert spun the idea around in his head for a second. “What about Karen? Is she there, or do you know yet?” he asked, obviously testing theories.

Ryan was silent for a few minutes, watching Danny tell him about Karen in his head all over again. “She didn’t make it,” Robert nodded without a word, prompting Ryan to glare at him. “That’s all you can do? Sit there and nod?”

Robert’s expression changed ever so slightly. “It’s not that I’m trying to seem unsympathetic, Ryan, it’s that I told you before; Karen is fine. Judge for yourself,” he said, motioning with his arm over to one of the chairs along the far side of the room.

In it sat Karen, curled up with a blanket wrapped around her as she slept. Not a blemish was on her skin, her brown hair formed to her perfectly despite being disheveled. The sight of her, not seven feet from him, sent a chill down Ryan’s spine. He had been told by Danny that she was dead, told by Robert that she wasn’t, and here she was.

“Karen?” Ryan called to her. She shifted slightly in the chair, though she didn’t wake.

Robert made a motion to get Ryan’s attention once more. “Best to let her sleep, she’s been awake for nearly three days straight. It would be best for you to talk when you are both awake and lucid,” Robert said.

Most parts of Ryan’s mind screamed at him to ignore Robert’s advice, but he accepted it in the end. “So, if this thing was a virus, who made it and why did it affect us?” he asked instead.

Robert sighed. “It was made by non-augmented purist hackers who live outside the cities. They say it is to prove how a man’s body shouldn’t be changed by machines, but all they do with these attacks is just kill or destroy the lives of innocent men and women.

“They smuggle themselves inside the cities, setup in an area, then distribute the virus across our networks. Security is able to pin the virus down after a couple minutes, but that’s long enough for the virus to potentially infect hundreds of people,” Robert tried to explain.

“What I don’t get is how we supposedly woke up from that program,” Ryan wondered.

“It’s all about tweaking the program. In the simple version, we basically changed a slight bit of the virus’s code so that it killed you in the program. From there, it resets, during which time there is a window for us to pull you out and destroy the virus,” Robert explained.

“Wait, wait, you’re saying you supposedly changed this code so that two armed men broke into our house and killed us?” Ryan asked, anger entering his voice.

Robert definitely picked up on the emotions. “Listen Ryan, it’s the only way we could do it.” he explained. “Every other alternative winds up with innocent people like you or Karen living in vegetative states for the rest of your lives. Even I don’t like it, but that’s how it has to be.”

Silence crept over the room as Ryan went back to watching his wife. Inside, he could still remember looking at her lifeless body on their bed, her blood running down the sheets. Now she sat in a chair, sleeping like there was no concern. “So what now?” Ryan asked.

“Well, now you have a choice to make Ryan. What is more real to you; this world and your wife, or that program that you’re familiar with,” Robert explained.

“Or, on the flipside, this illusion with my wife, or the real world and loneliness,” Ryan countered. He noticed the look in Robert’s eye, the one that seemed almost like a plea not to make that determination.

“However you want to look at it, Ryan. Just keep this in mind: you fall asleep here, you wake up there and vice versa until you finally decide what world is real enough for you. When you decide which world is where you belong, your life in the other will end,” Robert explained. “I can’t make that choice for you, neither can Karen. Only you can decide where you belong. Once you do though, you’ll be stuck either there or here, whichever you decide is real.”

Ryan was silent a few more minutes as he looked back at Karen. “I need some time to think,” he said in acknowledgment.

Robert nodded, then stood up and headed for the door. “Holler if you need anything,” he said on his way out. Ryan only nodded in reply.

Ryan kept his eyes on his wife at first, before he turned his gaze to a medical chart that didn’t belong to him. Flipping it over to take a look at it, Ryan realized it was Karen’s chart. On it, it listed that she had all the ‘normal’ modifications like the neural tools and muscle enhancement, but also an additional one.

The mod was labeled as a retinal mod, detailing that her eyes were partially synthetic in order to counter a condition that caused blindness. Ryan felt stunned briefly as he read the description, but another glance at her told him that he didn’t care. Placing the chart back and laying back down himself, Ryan closed his eyes, realizing that he had already made his choice. All he needed to do was set it in stone.

* * *

Ryan woke up once more in the familiar hospital near his house. The sun had just come up, the morning finally creeping in. He enjoyed the view from the window as long as he could before he heard a knock on his door and Tom came in. “Good morning.” he said as he walked in.

“Morning, Doctor,” Ryan said, nodding his head.

“How are you feeling today, Ryan, any better than yesterday?” Tom asked, checking the chart for any new developments noted by the night crew.

Ryan took a moment, thinking back to his last experience. “Yeah actually, I think I do.”

Tom smiled, placing the chart back as he looked Ryan over. “Well that’s excellent news. No signs of any complications either, so it looks like we stopped all the internal bleeding,” he said. “Listen, I got to check on a few other patients. Is there anything I can have brought to you?” he asked.

Ryan thought for a second before nodding. “Yeah, there is one thing. I’d like it if you could have someone bring me a DNR form,” he said.

The statement made Tom stop in his tracks. “A ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form? Ryan, I know you’ve gone through a lot, but as your doctor, I feel I need to urge you not to do anything hasti-“ Tom said before being interrupted.

“No, Tom, you’ve honestly got no idea what I’ve gone through. I’ve made up my mind, and I’d like you to respect my wishes as a patient and have a form brought to me,” Ryan countered.

Tom opened his mouth to counter, but ultimately gave in. “Okay, I’ll have one of the nurses bring one in,” he said before leaving.

It was probably about twenty minutes before the form was brought in and signed. Once the DNR tag was added to his chart, Ryan felt a certain degree of finality in his plan. He knew where he belonged and no one could tell him otherwise. If Robert was right, and his life would end in the world he didn’t choose, he thought maybe the DNR might be the way to make his decision final.

Only then did Ryan look over to one of the tables in the room. Adorning the table’s surface was a massive number of cards, all written and signed by members of his precinct and from his friends and family. All of the cards wished him to get better, and they all expressed their sadness for the loss of Karen.

Throughout the day, he had numerous other members of the force come in and talk with him. Some were there to get his testimony about what happened at the house, but almost everyone came by to give their condolences for Karen and to wish him good health. The only one that stuck around was Danny.

“Listen Man, the doc tells me that you might make some…reckless calls. What’s going on?” Danny asked.

Ryan actually chuckled lightly. “Let me guess, he asked you to make me take it easy? Sorry Danny, it’s just some things I need dealt with,” he said.

Danny let his head sag slightly. “I know, I know. These recent events have hit you hard, but I just want to make sure you’re not going to do anything crazy. We’ve known each other for years and, when Karen died, I lost a friend too. I just want to make sure I don’t lose another.”

Ryan sighed. “I promise Danny; nothing stupid. I’m just covering my bases is all.”

Danny nodded in reply. “Okay, good enough for me. Anyway, I got a night shift coming up that I gotta get to. You get better, you hear me?”

Ryan laughed before pain from his stitches stopped him. “Loud and clear, Doctor Danny,” he remarked as Danny left.

The remaining hours in the day ticked by, leaving Ryan feeling both confident and nervous in the choice that he made. When night finally came and sleep crept up upon him, Ryan welcomed it with open arms. “I know where I belong, and it isn’t here. Not anymore,” he said before he fell asleep.

* * *

Ryan stirred slightly in the pod, finally getting a feeling of rest. “Ryan?” a voice called. It was a voice that he had longed to hear once more, one that he dreaded he’d never hear again. When he opened his eyes, he saw Karen standing over him, looking down at him with her green eyes. Eyes that, like the chart said, were partially synthetic, but they were hers none the less.

“Karen!” he gasped as he launched up and wrapped his arms around her. The two of them hugged and embraced like they’d been separated by years, when it hadn’t even been a week. “Oh god, I never thought I’d see you again,” Ryan could hardly breathe as tears flowed down his cheeks.

“After that man broke in through the window and I saw the gun, I thought it was all over,” she said, pulling herself back so as to look Ryan in the eyes. Only then did Ryan see the tears that flowed steadily down her cheeks. Despite the shifting and whirling of mechanical pieces in her eyes, Karen’s tears came naturally.

“That’s all over; we’re here now,” Ryan assured her as he ran a hand across her cheek. “I failed you at the house. I broke my promise to keep you safe,” he said, watching as her expression changed to one of grief. “I swear to you though, I will never let you down again. This is our second chance, and I swear to god I won’t waste it.”

At Ryan’s new promise, Karen smiled. “If that life wasn’t real, then you didn’t fail me. Besides, I have faith that you’ll keep your promise,” she said. Not but a second after finishing her sentence did Karen swoop down and seal it with a kiss.