CHAPTER ONE - SOLE SURVIVOR

 

Detective Sean Harding flew through Winter Haven Memorial's emergency room's doors.  He strode past the nurse on duty with a flash of his detective’s badge and a curt nod.  The badge was a necessity. As an undercover operative for the Winter Haven Special Taskforce and Narcotics Unit, known simply as the Unit, he didn’t look the part of a police detective even when he wore a suit like today.  His dark brown hair was long enough for it to begin to curl and brush the tops of his shoulders and he had a perpetual five-o’clock shadow.  His olive-toned skin spared him from looking vampire-pale despite long hours spent on night-darkened streets and in the windowless rooms of clubs.  And despite having been up for over 36 hours straight, Sean’s green eyes still looked sharp and clear.

 

He hadn’t stopped moving since first hearing about the drug that was known simply as the Powder.  Everything surrounding the drug was shrouded in darkness.  Where it came from, who was behind its manufacture, even what its actual chemical makeup was were all unknown.  The only thing that was certain was that it killed everyone who tried it.  And that fact made Sean fear there would be a holocaust of drug users unless he could locate the source of the Powder and choke off its flow.  The first solid lead he had came tonight from a phone call from Dr. Olga Vostok, a good friend and emergency room physician at Memorial.

 

“Sean,” Dr. Vostok had said. “We have a survivor.”

 

“Are you sure?” His heart rate rose.

 

“Yes.  He’s a young man.  More like a boy.  He took the Powder and he’s here.  Alive,” Olga said, her voice rushed and strained.

 

“Keep him alive, Olga.  If he says anything – I mean ANYTHING remember it,” Sean responded.  He put on the sirens and lights to get to the ER in record time.

 

And now he was here, in the hospital, feet away from the boy that could turn his investigation around.  Sean brushed aside the curtain that ringed the boy’s hospital bed.  He skidded to a halt.

 

Too late.

 

Sean recognized death when he saw it.  His gaze riveted on the red blood oozing out of the boy’s unseeing blue eyes.  The blood looked especially vibrant against the child’s chalky white skin.  Sean swallowed the bile that rose in his throat.

 

“His brain liquefied.  We will need an autopsy to confirm it, but I am sure already.  Just like the others,” Dr. Vostok’s Russian-accented voice came from behind him.  Startled, Sean spun around to face her.   His first thought was that she looked as deathly pale as the boy.  “Didn’t mean to scare you, Sean.”

 

Sean waved it off even as his heart still thundered in his chest. “How long ago did he die?”

 

“Moments after I called you.  So there is no need for guilt.  You couldn't have gotten here in time no matter what you did.”

 

Dr. Vostok walked over to the boy’s bed. Her dark blonde hair gleamed under the fluorescent lights.  The lines that framed her mouth deepened as she looked down at the dead boy.  She lightly placed one of her hands over the child’s forearm.  Sean noticed that her nails were bitten to the quick.

 

“He took the Powder just once,” she said softly.  “Just once and this was the result.  He looks all of fifteen, doesn’t he?”

 

“Any ID?” Sean asked, his police instincts kicking in even as his shoulders slumped in exhaustion and disappointment.

 

“No.  He didn’t even have on shoes or a shirt when he wandered in the ER,” she said, patting the back of the boy’s still arm.

 

“Did he say who he bought the drug from?” Sean asked.

 

She shook her head. “He would only speak of what the drug showed him.”

 

“So it causes hallucinations?” Sean asked wearily.  He expected Dr. Vostok to assent to his question quickly, but she was silent for so long that Sean felt almost a trickle of fear. “Olga?”

 

“I don’t know,” she said then shook herself.  “I mean most probably.  Yes, definitely, it causes hallucinations.  He couldn’t have been really seeing what he claimed he was.  It’s quite impossible.” The last was said softly, almost as if Olga were speaking to herself.

 

Sean moved and grasped Olga’s elbow gently.  “What is it?  You look unnerved.  I’ve never seen you like this.”

 

“Unnerved?  That’s a very good word to use to describe how I feel.” She wrapped her arms around herself as she added, “This drug, Sean, it isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen.  If you had heard what he said!  His voice is still in my mind.”

 

“Tell me,” Sean said.

 

“He said that I should think of reality as a Matryoshka doll,” she said, her hands flying up in the air as she already guessed his confusion.

 

"A Matryoshka doll?" Sean asked.  The word felt alien on his tongue and not like something a fifteen-year-old would know.

 

"It is the Russian word for a traditional nesting doll," she explained.  "You know the wooden doll where when you open it there are other dolls inside.”

 

“Oh, I’ve seen those,” Sean said, his brow furrowing as his confusion grew with the explanation.  “And he used the word ‘Matryoshka’?”

 

“Yes, it is strange, isn’t it?” Olga said.  “And what’s even stranger is the fact that I believe he used that word just for me.  Just so that I would understand.  But if he had been speaking to someone else, he would have used a different word.  A word that would have resonated for that person.”  She wrapped her arms around herself again.  “He was dying, Sean.  His brain was literally becoming soup in his skull, but he was thinking at such a level – I cannot explain it.”

 

“Did he say anything else about this – this nesting doll metaphor?”

 

She nodded. “He said that I should imagine that the outermost nesting doll is the world as we know it.  This doll is the reality we can see.  But the drug, the Powder, has the ability to pull that doll apart and show us what is inside.”

 

“And what does inside look like?” Sean asked that earlier trickle of unease becoming a torrent.

 

“Beautiful and terrible,” Olga said.  “He told me that just one layer down from here, just one, and things get a whole lot more interesting, but if you continue on, you will find ..." She suddenly stopped and let out a nervous little chuckle.

 

“What do you find?”  Sean asked, resisting the urge to shake her.  The desperation to know anything about this drug rose up in him.

 

Her eyes were bright, glassy with fear, as she said, “You’ll find that we’re not alone.  But having seen who we’re sharing all of this with, you’ll wish we were."

 

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