"The essential characters of the species are derived, firstly, from their completely plantigrade walk, the whole sole being applied to the surface on which they tread ; secondly, from their claws, of which they have five on each foot ; thirdly, from the form and arrangement of their teeth, consisting of the usual number of incisors and canines, the later being very robust and prominent ; and lastly, from the spur on the hindmost feet of the male of the species, which is capable of envenomation causing the severest of suffering."
"This has got to be the worst detail ever," Kate complained. "Three dogs behaving strangely, two rabid raccoons…"
"And a sick partridge in a pear tree?" the Big Guy said, guffawing.
"Ha ha, very funny." Kate stuck her tongue out. "I was about to say - and a million psychotics with head colds!"
"Fourteen is not a million," Will responded, "although it sure felt that way!"
The three were sitting in the back of the van, taking a breather after a long day and evening of chasing empty leads.
"Didn't Magnus say this was a long shot anyway?" Kate asked. "The eggs are all probably dead by now."
"Yeah, but we can't take that chance." Will answered, passing Kate a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. "A few more hours, and hopefully we can call it for the night."
Back at the Sanctuary, Henry's monitoring program beeped an alert, rousing Magnus from a text she was studying. She distractedly scrolled through the data when a number of words jumped out – sudden onset dementia … fever … she gave the report her full attention, then called Henry.
He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he climbed into the sedan next to Magnus. She was already at the wheel with the engine running. "Why are we going out on this? Isn't the rest of the gang screening the hits?" He asked as they pulled out.
"They're meeting us there," Magnus looked grim. "This one is too perfect. It could still be nothing, but all the symptoms fit infection with Bennett's Protelean, and the patient lives two blocks from where we captured the creature." She gestured to the print-outs on the seat between them. "Let's hope we aren't too late, this time."
They pulled up next to 'the van' outside a small community hospital. "Will and I are going in," Magnus directed, "We'll get the patient's room number from admitting, and pay a visit as consulting physicians. If there is an infection, and time to remove the eggs, we'll try and arrange for the patient's transfer to Sanctuary. If not, we'll be calling you in to back us up – try and stay out of sight, there shouldn't be too many people around at this hour, but we want to avoid any unnecessary questions. Understood? Let's go."
A quick visit to the admitting desk and they were on their way through quiet halls to the patient's room. "Keeping our fingers crossed," Magnus muttered, mostly to herself. Will nervously fingered his concealed sidearm.
As they approached the room, Magnus gestured for Will to fall behind her, as she cautiously approached the open door and glanced around the corner. Pulling back, she whispered to Will, "Double occupancy, first bed is empty. Curtain's pulled around the second bed, be careful." He nodded.
They moved quickly into the room and around the back side of the curtain to find a very ill-looking elderly Chinese man matching the description of Wang, Robert. "Damn," Magnus' face betrayed her tension, as she moved in to check the stats on his monitor. "We're going to have to make this quick. Call the others, there's no time to wait for official paperwork. This man need to be in my surgery, now."
"What happens if we run out of time?" Will asked, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Magnus looked grim. "The young will hatch inside his body, and eat their way out."
"Sorry I asked…"
Nearby…
"Larry, don't make me tell you again!" Molly called out, walking down the hospital hall, a few hours into her shift. The older man had wandered every night this week, shuffling behind his IV pole.
"You don't have to sleep, but you can't be out in the halls at this hour," she said, not unkindly, taking his arm. "Back this way, let's see if we can't get you settled."
Other than Larry, it had been a quiet night. "Crap…should never even think the q-word!" Molly shook her head as she tucked the sheets around him.
Walking back to the nurses' station – a generous title for two tiny desks and a coffee machine – something made Molly stop short and turn. At the end of the hall there was something… or someone? It was a shadow, a darkness near the floor.
"Hello?" She called out. Her footsteps echoed in the dim hall. The shadow moved, like a person lightly sighing. "Larry, is that you?" There was no response, no sound but her own breathing. She swallowed hard and covered the distance quickly, moving forward, reaching down…
The shadow twisted, resolving into a grotesque form, a mockery of a human body with grinning teeth and a piercing shriek as it turned on Molly.
"Oh, shit!" Molly recoiled in shock, her hand still extended as her brain fought to process what it was seeing. And in that moment the thing struck. Adrenaline coursed through her body as she pulled back, scrambling backwards to get away, barely registering that she had fallen to the floor. The sunken eyes and grinning teeth loomed over her. The creature salivated, and Molly screamed as the droplets fell on her chest and a searing pain shot through her leg. She lay back with her eyes closed, and waited for the end to come.
But instead of the bite of jaws, Molly felt herself suddenly crushed under the weight of the creature, her face smothered into its stinking carcass. She couldn't breathe. It seemed like she should be doing something about that, but strangely it didn't matter. She was just floating…
With the unfortunate Mr. Wang sedated and packaged on a stretcher, the team moved swiftly down the empty corridor. "Magnus," Henry called in an undertone, glancing down at his pad, "I'm detecting movement ahead. Approximately 20 meters around this corner."
"Alright everyone, keep moving and let me do the talking. We don't have the transfer in order, but we can't wait." Magnus nodded at Kate, "Kate, keep your sidearm concealed, but be ready to stun if there's no other alternative."
They turned the corner, but instead of encountering hospital personnel, they were startled to see a full-grown Bennett's Protelean, snarling at their sudden appearance. "Take it down!" Magnus' British accent rang out in the hall, followed closely by Kate's stunner. Two direct hits.
"Well done, Kate!" Magnus breathed a sigh of relief, glancing back down the hall. "Let's get it bagged and out of here before we have to do any more damage control, these wards won't be unattended."
"What's another one doing here?" Henry asked, perplexed.
"We caught the female, but it didn't occur to me that the male might play a role in tending the eggs. I suspect it was drawn here after the host was…"
Will interrupted, "Uhh Magnus, you're going to want to take a look at this!"
Magnus hurried over, Kate already rolling the creature out of the way and into an opaque carry bag. Will was kneeling next to a middle-aged Asian woman in scrubs, feeling for a pulse, the pallor of her face clear under her dark skin tone. "Bloody hell," Magnus cursed. He looked up, "She's breathing, but slowly. Pulse weak and irregular."
Magnus stepped in to perform a quick head-to-toe. The woman's eyes fluttered briefly, but she remained unconscious. "There's a visible bite wound on her right arm, but I haven't found any other evidence of trauma to explain her level of consciousness," she frowned, continuing her investigation.
"Shock perhaps, can we leave her at emergency? This is a hospital after all…" Will suggested.
"Hmm, that's…" she trailed off, her hands at the woman's calf, pulling up the scrubs to reveal redness and swelling. "What is this?"
Will shrugged, looking over from his place at her head, "A sprain?"
"I don't think so, Will," She paused, thinking. "Some monotremes are venomous, it's possible the Bennett is as well." Magnus stood up. "She'll have to come back to Sanctuary until I better understand her condition." She sighed, looking around. "We're going to need another stretcher."
Back at Sanctuary, Magnus had her hands full with the two patients in an isolation room. While the Big Guy and Will played nurse, Magnus changed and scrubbed for surgery.
Returning to the bedsides, she filled the guys in on her plan. "Okay," She began, taking a deep breath. "Will, you will be in charge of the woman. Until proven otherwise, we'll be treating her as if she has been envemonated. If the venom behaves similarly to that of other monotremes, it's unlikely to be fatal. However, we need to be on the lookout for hypercoagulapathy, so let's do some labs and get an anti-coagulant on board if needed. Watch her breathing and blood pressure, and start marking the height of the swelling on the leg so we can track the progress of the venom. Let me know if anything changes." Will nodded.
Magnus moved over to assess the elderly man, already intubated and prepped for surgery. The Big Guy looked up, "He's not doing so well, Magnus."
"Then we'd better hurry," she replied. "The first step is to locate the eggs."
"Can we just x-ray him?" the Big Guy asked.
"I'd rather not. That might affect the development of the Bennetts…" She stopped at his look. "They are our responsibility as well! Ultrasound will be just as fast and less dangerous." They quickly located four eggs in the abdominal cavity. "This isn't good at all…" She looked again at the images. "Bloody hell, we're too late." The screen showed a writhing, wriggling form moving free of its shell, just as the monitors beeped to indicate an alarming drop in blood pressure.
"I'm going in, scalpel." Magnus accepted the tool from the Big Guy and started her incision. "Will!" She called, not stopping.
"Yeah Magnus?"
"Get a unit of blood going, and have more ready please."
"I'm on it."
Magnus reached the first of the eggs. "This one's whole," she said, pulling it out and carefully placing it in the container proffered by the Big Guy. "I'm going in for the hatched one, keep that container ready…" Probing further into the abdomen, she came up with several large pieces of shell, followed by a small, squealing Bennett, which she placed with the unhatched egg. Feeling again for shell fragments, she cursed softly as blood began to fill the abdominal cavity. "Suction please, Big Guy. Will, keep that blood coming." They worked quickly and quietly, but didn't appear to be making much headway. The monitors showed dropping blood pressure and bradycardia.
Magnus' voice was tight as she filled in the team. "There's a rupture in the abdominal aorta. The hatchling must have ripped it while trying to exit the shell, or the body." An alarm brought their attention to the monitors, which showed a flat line.
"Resuscitation, Magnus?" the Big Guy asked.
"No." She replied, her hands still feeling in the abdominal cavity, "There's nothing else to be done. The aorta is dissected and the rupture is too long for a repair to be successful. If only we could have gotten here sooner…" She trailed off.
Will reached over to switch off the monitors. "It's not your fault Magnus. We've done everything possible."
"I know, I know." She replied, "Let's get this done. There are still at least two eggs in the body." She located and extracted the remaining eggs, turning them over to the Big Guy. "Get those under a heat lamp. If one has hatched, the others won't be far behind."
She ran the ultrasound over the body one last time, and found no remaining eggs. She then covered the body with a sheet and cleaned up the worst of the mess around the operating area before stripping off her gloves and surgical gown. Will came to check on her as she was washing up. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Of course, William," She gave him a tired smile, "I have lost patients before. It's never easy, but it does happen. I'll tend to our other new arrivals, and then do the autopsy."
Will smiled sympathetically, "I'm just saying, if you need anything…"
"A born psychiatrist…" She winked at him.
"Gee, thanks," he replied.
"Let's check in on our patients, shall we?" Magnus dried her arms on a towel.
Across the lab, the Big Guy was sitting in front of the container holding the hatchlings, glowing under the heat lamp. Two of the last three were fully out of their shells, and the third shell was rocking as its occupant struggled to make an appearance. The Big Guy looked up as Magnus approached. "They're hungry," he gruffed.
"How can you tell?" Will asked, leaning in for a closer look.
"Watch." The Big Guy stuck his hand in the top of the container.
"Whoa, are you sure that's safe?" Will cautioned.
"Sure, see?" The closest hatching began nuzzling the fur of the Big Guy's arm, trying to find a place to nurse.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Magnus said, reverently, "A quintessential abnormality, right before our eyes. A warm-blooded animal which hatches from an egg and is nourished by milk. People used to believe the platypus was a hoax, you know. But it's actually part of a much larger family… Anyway, enough reminiscing. I want to do a few simple measurements while we wait for the last egg to hatch. These are the first young ever to be born in captivity, and as far as I know, they've never been studied closely by anyone other than Bennett himself. This could significantly advance our understanding of the species."
The Big Guy grunted. "At what cost?" His gaze moved to the covered figure.
"There is always a cost. But the best we can do now is learn as much as we can from this experience, to give his death a little more meaning, and prevent further deaths in future." She replied, grimly.
The Big Guy gestured to some equipment on the table, "I know. I've been videotaping the hatching. Figured this was a moment to preserve."
Magnus laid her hand on this shoulder. "Thank you, old friend. Now, let's get back to business."
