One Good Turn

Carbon didn’t respond to him immediately. She fished the first cannister of drugs from the dispenser tray and loaded it into an injector. She winced as she pressed it to her arm, holding it in place until it beeped empty. When she replied, her voice was ragged and tired, teeth tinged a dark red already.  “Eight hundreds. One thousands. Between.”

Alex didn’t know what unit she was using. Definitely wasn’t Gray, which would have rendered her dead a few times over. Roentgen? Could be. Probably some Tslao measurement he’d never heard of. “That’s a lot.”

Keystone

Alex didn’t find sleep quickly. He spent hours staring at the ceiling, only able to turn his eye far enough to see the clock on the wall. When he did, the dream came almost immediately.

He pushed himself up out the the cockpit of the simulator, blinking in the bright lights of the sim bay. He had a stupid sort of grin on his face, an enthusiasm that permeated the whole of his being. “If that’s what the next generation of Waverider drives is going... I can’t wait to get my hands on the real thing.”