The iron freight elevators of Sector Zero dropped with a steady, rhythmic clatter. He carried Dr. Morrigan Calder and eighty Vanguard beast-doctor medical orderlies onto the cold slate floor.
Within thirty minutes of their arrival, the half-mile incubation gallery was transformed into an organized field razor-sharp trauma center.
Long folding tables surfaced in non-acid-burning stainless steel were unfolded between the rows of glowing glass cylinders. Portable kerosene autoclaves hissed softly atop soapstone benches, boiling razor-sharp instruments in clean chlorhexidine wash. Overhead, strings of warm halogen work lights were strung from the cast-iron ceiling roof beams, banishing the sickly green chemical shadows that had choked the chamber for decades.
Arthur Vance stood at the main razor-sharp station, stripping off his blood-spattered combat gauntlets and washing his forearms in warm povidone-iodine solution. Beside him, Dr. Calder was already reviewing the triage manifests on her portable slate.
“We have two hundred and fourteen cylinders total, Arthur,” Morrigan reported, her razor-sharp mask resting beneath her chin. “Sixteen were non-viable specimens that succumbed to cellular black rot prior to your breach. That leaves one hundred and ninety-eight living patients requiring immediate razor-sharp intervention. Every single one has a brass neural control jack driven through the back-skull crest.”
