“There’s still one
experimental dose of the antiserum in the emergency cabinet.”
Khai Minh came sharply back
to himself.
“The original protocol only
issued one dose, for whoever handled the sample directly. The backup vials were
moved out of Vinh An long ago. If we can find it, we might live… Are you
listening to me?”
An Nhien nodded with
effort.
“Read the labels in the
cryo-sample room.”
“You….”
“Stand up. I’m coming with
you.”
He pulled her to her feet.
This time, his hand clamped around her wrist not to be led, but to make certain
she was still there.
The glass door opened.
White cold spilled out. An Nhien swept the flashlight across the frost-coated metal
cabinets, her eyes beginning to sting, but she forced herself to read every
label.
“D-17… reaction files…
control samples…”
“Is there a cabinet with a
four-digit lock?”
“Yes. At the end of the
row.”
She leaned on him to keep
moving. Before the lock, Khai Minh laid his hand on the watch his mother had
given him. The metal face was cold beneath his fingertips, and the four numbers
that had followed him for six years finally meant something.
“Nine, seven, three, five.”
An Nhien keyed in the code.
The lock sprang open.
Inside was a small metal
box. On the lid, the lettering had faded but was still legible.
MK-2 Antiserum. Trial
dose.
An Nhien checked the seal,
the expiry, the route of injection, and the warning line on the label. This
wasn’t a full cure, only an emergency counter-dose to buy more time alive.
She lifted the box. Inside
sat a single vial and one packaged syringe. One dose. That was all.
She looked at Khai Minh.
He couldn’t see her face,
but he heard her breathing weakening, heard her fingers trembling against the
box.
“Inject it.”
An Nhien faltered.
“You take it.”
“No.”
“You’re the only one who
can drag the truth out into the light. If you die, then your parents, and every
D-17 patient, will have no one left to demand justice for them.”
“And you?”
“Dong needs you to keep
your promise about his treatment.”
“Dong needs his sister
too.”
“Don’t argue with me right
now.”
Khai Minh caught the hand
holding the vial, his voice hoarse but clear.
“I lived six years on the
fact that I left someone behind in the fire. I’m not doing it a second time.”
An Nhien bit her lip, tears
breaking loose, from fear, from suffocation, and from those words.
“But if you die….”
“Take it. Please.”
“Khai Minh.”
“This isn’t an order from
your master.”
He stopped, his hand gripping
tighter.
“It’s me, begging you.”
An Nhien looked at the
single vial of serum in her hand.
One dose.
Two lives.
One person who had survived
six years since a horrific crash, and was fighting to drag the truth into the
light. One person with a sick little brother waiting for her out there.
In that instant, they both
understood that the choice in front of them wasn’t only about who got to live.
It would also decide what kind of person each of them became after tonight, if
either of them ever walked out of this room.
“Take it.”
Khai Minh’s voice rang out
again over the blare of the alarm, so hoarse it nearly cracked apart. He still
held An Nhien’s wrist, but the strength in his grip had visibly drained. The
cold from the cryo-room bled through her thin clothes, and the mist called MK-2
crept along the floor like a shapeless poison, coiling slowly around their
legs.
An Nhien looked at the vial
in her hand.
A vial so small it made a
person’s heart go bitter.
“Give me your arm.”
Khai Minh immediately shook
his head.
“I said I’m injecting you.”
“Don’t waste time.”
“I don’t need you to
sacrifice yourself.”
“And I don’t need you
turning yourself into some noble martyr.”
The words had barely left
her when An Nhien broke into a violent fit of coughing. She had to brace a hand
on the edge of a cabinet just to stay upright. The red dots on her wrist had
spread up to her elbow, her breath scalding, as if every inhale dragged a thin
blade across her chest.
Khai Minh groped out, found
her shoulder, and pulled her close.
“An Nhien.”
“Listen to me.”
She fought to swallow the
tightness in her throat, still gripping the syringe.
“The label says the serum
only delays the acute reaction for thirty minutes. It’s not a full cure. If you
inject me, I still can’t open this door. I don’t know where the vent is, I
can’t hear the echoes the way you do, and I don’t have the strength to break
through a steel grate.”
“You’re forcing my hand.”
“No. I’m choosing the
one who can get us both out.”
Khai Minh fell silent.
That line was nothing like
comfort. It was cold, clear, and merciless as arithmetic. Which was exactly why
he couldn’t wave it away. An Nhien wasn’t asking to die in his place. She was
betting on what he could do.
She closed her eyes. In
that moment, her brother’s face rose up with heartbreaking clarity. Tran Dong,
who so often hid his pain by turning his face to the wall, afraid his sister
would see it and go borrow money again. And her father, the man who had once
knelt in the middle of a corridor for his son, was somewhere out there right
now, pounding on a door until his hands bled.
An Nhien was afraid to die
too.
She had never been so noble
as to feel no fear. She feared Dong waking to find his sister gone. She feared
her father left alone to care for a sick child. She feared she’d only pass
through a brief sliver of a life and then vanish in a room no one even knew
about.
But even inside that fear,
she understood: if the two of them kept struggling over this, the thirty
minutes wouldn’t even begin before both their lives ran out.
“Khai Minh.”
“No.”
“Can you listen to me just
once?”
“No.”
“Then I’m sorry.”
An Nhien suddenly seized
his arm, snatched the needle from the tray, drove it through the skin of his
thigh, and pushed the plunger all the way down.
Khai Minh cried out, startled,
and then the two of them crumpled to the floor together.
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