Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

gry still, of course. Furious even. How could he think that what they had could be snipped in two and so easily ended? Had it meant so little to him? Then there was the sorrow and the empty loneliness of it all, the vacant feeling she couldn't seem to shake.

But most of all was the worry. The fear that he was dead somewhere in China. He was right at the center of it. Of all the places in the world to go, the Formics had landed there. And not just one lander, but all three.

She had seen him pull the boy from the mud. The press was still playing it over and over again. When she heard that the Formics had landed in China, it was as if her heart had dropped out of her chest. She had glued herself to the feeds, hoping to see something that would reassure her that he was all right.

And then there he was. Right on the screen. Right in front of her. Right there in the mud and thick of it, right at the epicenter. And she had burst into tears.

That had been twelve hours ago, and since then no word. She wasn't sure what she expected. A call from him? A message of some sort, reassuring her that he was all right?

Her wrist pad vibrated. She was getting a call, and for an instant she thought it might be him. Then she looked at the photo and saw that it was the front desk. She considered letting it go to her message box, but then she realized it was her ticket out of the meeting. She got to her feet, smiled apologetically, and left the room.

Outside in the hall she put in her earbud and tapped it. "Dr. Arnsbrach," she said.

The voice on the line said, "Sorry to bother you, Doctor. It's Marnie at the front desk. I've got another one of those misdirects on the line. It sounds urgent. What should I do?"

Kim sighed. Misdirects were calls intended for doctors but which were misdirected to company headquarters instead. Early versions of the Med-Assist device were to blame. They had included a feature that the company couldn't sustain: If the Med-Assist saw that it needed outside help for a procedure, it would make a sat call to a switchboard. That switchboard would then connect the Med-Assist to a real doctor within the Med-Assist network. The doctor would then stay on the line with the soldier who had the device and help him complete whatever dicey medical procedure he was trying to perform.

The problem was, the contracts to build the network of doctors had fallen through at the last minute. So there were no doctors taking live calls. There was nobody.

The company had removed the sat-call feature from subsequent releases of the device, and an update of the software had erased that feature on those devices that had originally had it. Yet every so often an old Med-Assist device surfaced that hadn't been updated. And when it tried to contact the nonexistent network, it failed and called headquarters instead.

"Where's the device?" asked Kim.

"The boy says he's in China."

Great, thought Kim. China. That meant it was probably a device that had made its way to the black market. The company didn't have a contract with the Chinese military. What else could it be?

"Should I tell him we don't offer that service? He's a kid. He's clearly not military."

"No," said Kim. "I'll take the call. Patch him through."

Technically she had no responsibility for whoever was on the line, and there were all kinds of shaky legal issues here. But it was a living, breathing person who needed help. And wasn't that what she was missing?

"Hello?" said a small voice.

"Hello. I'm Dr. Kim Arnsbrach. Who I am speaking with?"

"My name is Bingwen."

"You have a Med-Assist, Bingwen?"

"Yes. I found it. You have to help me. My friend is hurt. We've been following the instructions, but we had a problem and it called you."

"How old is your friend, Bingwen?" If the patient was a child, Kim would alert one of the pediatricians on staff and get them involved.

"I don't know," said the boy. "Does it matter?"

"Is there an adult there I can speak with?"

"I'm the only one who speaks English."

"Where are you?"

"In a farmhouse. South of Dawanzhen."

That meant nothing to her. "Okay, Bingwen. Maybe I can help you." She was moving back to her office. "I'm going to talk to the device now for a minute, all right? I'm going to download some information from it and see what the problem is. Stay with the device. I'll be with you in a minute. Can you do that?"

"Yes. But hurry. He's hurt bad. No one thinks he's going to live."