And wouldn’t it be? This was 2074, the most advanced the world would get before the mega-quake took it all away. It was right that Dorothy felt intimidated.

She looked over at Roman and saw that he had one hand pressed to his front shirt pocket, fingers anxiously tapping his chest.

She frowned. “Everything all right?”

Roman dropped his hand, like he was worried about giving something away. “Yes, of course,” he said, but there was a rough edge to his voice that betrayed much darker emotions.

Dorothy swallowed, uneasy. She didn’t know whether she should push Roman or let him keep his secrets. Every question she could think to ask was a version of one she’d already tried.

“All right, then,” she said instead. “Let’s get this over with.”

Roman had planned this con on his own.

“I wouldn’t even call it a con,” he’d told her. “The hospitals were a mess in the years after that first earthquake; there were too many patients, too many injured, not enough doctors. A child could’ve snuck inside.”

“I hope your plan is a bit more advanced,” she’d said.

A roll of his eyes. “We’ll go in through the morgue. No one’s going to look twice at two emergency responders returning with bodies. It’ll get us through the door, at least, and that’s the hardest part. After that, we just need to work quickly.”

“B-bodies?” Dorothy had asked, her voice thick.

Roman had only grinned at her. “Body bags,” he’d corrected. “And don’t worry, they’ll be empty.”

Empty though the body bags may be, they were still heavy. They weren’t actually bags but hard, plastic cases attached to stretchers. Dorothy gritted her teeth as she pushed hers before her, careful to hold it steady as the wheels crunched over gravel and concrete.

They crossed the parking lot in silence, carefully avoiding eye contact with the other medical professionals swarming around them. Roman had procured the body bags, and uniforms, which were the same odd metallic scrubs that the other hospital workers were wearing. They didn’t have an ambulance, and Dorothy had been concerned that this would look suspicious. Now she could see that it had been foolish of her to worry. There was chaos in the parking lot, so many people rushing into the hospital that it was impossible to see where they were all coming from. She and Roman blended in easily.

They reached the sidewalk that wrapped around the hospital’s main entrance, and the uneven ground beneath the wheels of her stretcher became smooth pavement. Her heart thrummed anxiously. She glanced at Roman, but he kept his eyes trained ahead, jaw tensed in concentration.

The front doors whooshed open, releasing a blast of cool air. Dorothy smelled the sharp, antiseptic smell of the hospital; she heard phones ringing in the distance and the mechanical sound of someone speaking over an intercom. She had to remind herself not to look shocked.

A young man with a clipboard stood just inside the doors. He appeared to be checking people’s credentials.