Circle 5. Sylvia (part 1)

Sylvia wasn't there anymore. That had been apparent for several hours, but it wasn't easy to believe.

"She's not brain-dead," said McKenzie, without much conviction.

"She's not any sort of dead," Lane sat down and stared at the figure on the other side of the glass.

"Not she," said Addrey, "It."

There was a silence in the room. They'd called Addrey in to say goodbye; and he'd cried on Sylvia's hand as she'd faded slowly away, and they'd had to pry his hand out of her cold, salty fingers several hours afterwards.

And she'd turned, and her heart beat eleven times as her grip tightened and she'd spoken.

"Mark pick up lost now way on car."

Her brain activity had spiked. Everything had been recorded, and Addrey had spent several hours staring at the graphs. He was better at it than McKenzie, and much better than Lane. They'd both known that Sylvia was gone as soon as those words came tumbling out, but they'd lied for nearly two days, while Addrey went through every last scan and proved that his wife was gone.

"It doesn't mind the light anymore," Addrey noted. McKenzie turned off the lights on their side of the glass, and the figure's hand dropped.

"We should restrain her - it," said Lane. The thing wandered aimlessly away from the glass and stopped in the middle of the room.

"We should have restrained it was she was still there," said Addrey, "It's no use now. How's Palmer doing?"

"He said he was feeling fine," McKenzie flicked the lights on again, "but he was showing signs of photophobia. I don't think he's going to make it."

"We have no evidence to suggest that he won't," Addrey stood up and walked over to the glass, "A single patient cannot be taken as a representative sample."

"Addrey - Mark," McKenzie hesitated, "are you alright?"

He wasn't. Of course he wasn't. Eleven years as a medical professional and countless mandatory seminars to improve his bedside manner, though, and McKenzie could only think of three ways to cope with Addrey's presence now. He couldn't very well ignore him while they were confined to the facility, and it didn't seem appropriate to say he was sorry for his loss when, really, Sylvia was still standing there on the other side of the screen.

Something like Sylvia, anyway.

Circle 0; The Dig (part 1).

"I found something"

It wasn't the words; the last seventy-six times Carol had heard it, it had turned out to be six hundred years of decay on a dog, at the very most interesting. At least a dog was a sign that someone had at least been close by at some point. 

But this was different.  Every time before, there had been excitement in the voice, but something had still been missing. Something that was there, now.

Carol picked up her trowel and headed over to the call. It was repeated, with a note of uncertainty - which might have removed the promise of an interesting find, but there was a note in the uncertainty that somehow reassured that whatever it was, it was worth seeing.

She turned her head torch back on and stowed the electric lantern in her tool-belt. Three students had gathered around the caller, and the other dozen or so were converging from points around the cave.

"Let's see," said Carol, a touch less gently than she'd intended. It had been an order, but she'd meant it to sound like a request. Regardless, the girl moved.

Carol pulled on a glove as she crouched, and stared down at the surprisingly fleshy shoulder revealed in the cave floor.

"It moved," said the student who'd called out, 'I swear it moved.'

Carol glanced at the student, one of the twins. By the fact that her face wasn't glowing in the dark from a beyond-liberal application of spray-on tan, it was probably the more level-headed Amy. 

"It may have," Carol returned her attention to the shoulder, and traced her finger along the seam where earth met flesh, "it did. It's been held in place for centuries, by the look of things, and has lost a good deal of mass since it first got here. Lewis?"

Her most useful PhD student always put her in mind of a spaniel when she called to him; bounding chaotically over with no regard for anything other than serving his master. She waved a hand vaguely at the body, and left him to it. It wasn't just that he knew precisely what she needed him to do in this long-awaited situation; she loved that it was possible to date samples based on pollen and radioactive carbon isotopes collected at the site, but the actual processes involved were dull and alien to her. Dull enough, even, to get her to discuss the find with undergraduates rather than participate.

"Who can tell me what Lewis is doing?" she asked the group in general. One hand went up. "Yes, Amy?"

"He's collecting a sample of the surrounding humus for comparison to known samples, so that the bacteria-rich layer associated with the initial decay of animal tissue can be identified with reference to the plant pollens abundant at the time of the arrival of the body, and within the broader context of the island, the find can be assigned to one of the bands."

"Are you done?" Carol asked. She would have preferred to have Francesca - Professor van Dein - explain this to the students, but Amy always seemed to retain the information perfectly, even from Francesca's information-heavy sessions.

"He will also collect a minimum of three tissue samples for carbon dating, and soil samples from all surfaces that touch the body, which Professor van Dein will then use to give us a more specific and seasonal picture of when this body got here, and confirm the date of death based on the predictable decay of radioactive carbon isotopes. Stomach contents, if accessible, will typically be collected  -within the laboratory environment, to avoid contaminating the samples."

"Lewis, did you get all that?"Carol turned to the PhD student. Lewis laughed appreciatively at her wit - it grated. He always laughed.

"Lucan, as I recall, you were partnered with Amy for today. Tell me, which band does this body belong to?"

Lucan looked blankly at her. It wasn't that he didn't know. For the first semester, she had labelled him as an administrative error in admissions, and assumed he'd be gone soon enough, but when the exams came it was clear that he had heard and engaged with everything she'd said; what he didn't know was how to express anything at all verbally.

"Three." He said once his mouth stopped opening and closing like a goldfish in a net. She left the discussion there - trying to get him to explain his deduction out loud was futile - but made a mental note of his answer, and kept her own to herself. She wasn't going to contradict him and find out later that he'd been right all along, not again. She'd lose all credibility if she did that twice in one academic year.