Excerpt: The Institute

Meet Pablo. I hope you like him, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of him given that he’s the hero of this story. He’s currently lying on a cold metal table, with a sheet covering him up to his chest (we’ll have no nudity just yet, thank you). The more observant among you will have noticed his unhealthy pallor. The more astute will have deduced from this that Pablo is in fact dead, and will be wondering how he can possibly be the hero in that case. Is this to be a zombie story? Are we about to go back in time and cover the events leading to his death? You’ll just have to wait and see.

“Everything is catching-”
“Yes?”
“Everything is catching on fire.”
He gazed levelly at the flustered man in the doorway. “Everything?”
Panicked noises floated down the corridor. “Everything within a thirty metre radius of the new device. Even things that shouldn’t be flammable. We pressed the red button and everything just burst into flames.”
“An auto-combustor? Interesting. Have the sprinklers activated?”
“Yes, but there’s a lot for them to deal with.”
“They’ll manage it. No need to panic. Just make sure the device is switched off now or you’ll never get the fires out.” He closed the door and turned back into the room. “Honestly. You’d think they’d be able to deal with things without having to run to me all the time. How’s the patient?”
His colleague didn’t look up from the bank of machinery she was studying. “Still dead. But I think we’re about ready to start doing something about that. As long as we’re not about to have to evacuate, anyway. It sounded like the fire was pretty close to us.”
“We’ll be fine. We’re outside the auto-combustor’s radius, and there’s nothing easily flammable down here to let the fire spread. Let’s start bringing him online.”

Don’t worry. The mysterious man’s assessment of the fire is entirely correct. It won’t reach the lab or interfere with the process of bringing Pablo (for he is the patient) ‘online’. In fact, just at this very moment a man in a shiny silver suit is approaching the auto-combustor. He’s going to discover that the blue button not only switches the device off, but also instantly douses all of the fires. So we’re not about to have a crispy roasted hero before we’ve even started properly. Now, let’s see how Pablo’s getting on.