All of Patriot’s collectors carried the title of “Phlebotomist,” a point of unvoiced contention for Willa, since she was the only one who’d ever actually been a genuine phlebotomist. Sure, the others could pull a blood bag, spot-check it for authenticity, and drop it in the preservation vaults, but they wouldn’t know the cubital vein from the cephalic. Especially Gena. Decades before the world went sideways, Willa had been trained in the old ways of venipuncture. Not that it mattered. True phlebotomy was an antiquated practice, irrelevant, like driving a car, another thing she used to be good at. The new ways were undoubtedly more efficient. It was for the best, after all. People in the Gray Zones needed the blood.

Willa’s first two donors, a man and a woman, stepped into the lanes and lowered their shoulder-zips, exposing ports in their skin onto which blood bags were connected through a small siphon and needle junction. She quickly removed and processed the man’s bag, then turned to the woman.

The man interrupted, “I got extra,” and presented a second full bag from a satchel.

“Where’d you get this one, Tillman?” Willa asked. He was in so often that his sourcing had to be black-market. Most likely blood muggings. The cash-for-blood trade had created an unseemly underground economy, and it was booming.

“It’s mine, reaper,” he answered with a devious grin.

He knew that she had to take the blood if it scanned clear. It was company policy to accept any blood offered, so long as the phenotype, or blood type, matched the donor’s profile. That didn’t guarantee it was actually the donor’s blood – far from it – but it gave Patriot a veneer of deniability if they were ever accused of being a market for questionably-sourced product. She ran it over the needle probe, which analyzed for phenotype, as well as other immunoreactive antigens and antibodies, the organism of origin, diseases, and the percentage of red blood cells in eryptosis, or cell death. If the readings were off, the bag would be rejected.

The probe cleared the unit and she dropped it curtly into her booth’s cooling vault. Tillman smirked and scanned his touchstone for credit. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

“You’d better not,” said Willa.

She rotated to the woman. “Sorry about that, ma’am.”

The woman was rough, wearing her thirty or so years like fifty. She held her sleeve open loosely, eyes drooping. Willa sighed and reluctantly removed the blood bag from her port. “Ma’am?”

The woman’s eyelids fluttered as she struggled to say something. Her head flopped forward and she collapsed against the stall, her thin legs and arms in a tangle.

“Claude! Gelpack!” Willa rounded her station into the narrow corral. “Ma’am?” She tapped the woman’s cheeks.