Cryonic by Travis Bradberry

in the white coats were too focused on their work to pay us any attention. He loosened up a little.
    â€œAre you serious?”
    â€œSorry, doctor .”
    â€œLook, this is something very serious. Shhh, shhh, hold on a second—” Alex paused.
    â€œYou speak Chinese?” I whispered, as if that would somehow allow him to listen to me and still hear them.
    â€œShhhhh! Just a minute. Let me listen.” Alex hung on their every word. “The virus is eating away at their brains. It has specialized prions that are selectively destroying the areas responsible for higher-order thinking.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œIt means the lights are on, but nobody is home.”
    â€œHow did you pick all that up?”
    â€œIt’s what the doctors are saying.”
    â€œYou speak Chinese?”
    â€œOf course I speak Chinese. I’ve been living under their rule for ten years. If you don’t pick it up, you don’t do so well around here. Wait a minute, something else is going on.”
    The men in white coats were gathered around Elliott, and two were locked in an intense argument. They called Alex over. He fiddled with the dials on the machine and explained something to the group. The entire group began debating. Alex slipped out from the middle of the fracas and came back over to me.
    â€œWhat is that all about?”
    â€œHis oxygen levels are so low that they thought something was wrong with the machine. I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t believe he isn’t—” A long shrill beep from the same machine interrupted him.
    It was a sound I’d heard before. Elliott was flatlining. The men in white coats panicked. They tried desperately to revive him, but it was no use. Then Janet’s machine went off. The entire team save two men ran to her bedside. Theyweren’t working on Janet for two minutes when Barry’s machine went off. Half the men at Janet’s bedside ran to work on Barry. It was complete chaos.
    Alex ran over to help with Barry, though he kind of just muddled about waiting for instructions from the men in white coats. The doctors gave up trying to revive Elliot and joined the efforts at reviving Barry and Janet. Several minutes passed while I sat in my bed watching the bedlam. I was mostly watching the men in white coats working on Barry. His bed was adjacent to Elliott’s, and it looked like they were going to give up on him as well. That’s when I noticed something moving in my periphery. Elliott’s arm rose slowly from the mattress
    â€œHey look, look, he’s still alive!” I yelled across the room. I pointed and gestured maniacally in Elliott’s direction. No one paid me any attention.
    The same arm reached over and grabbed hold of one of the men in white coats. Elliott pulled the man backwards until he fell on top of him and then he wrapped his other arm around the man and held him tight. Once Elliott had a good hold on him, he took a vicious bite out of the man’s neck. I ran over to Elliott’s bed on instinct, more for Elliott’s sake than anything. If he wanted to maul our captors, that was fine with me, I just wanted to make sure they didn’t retaliate.
    The doctors ran to their colleague’s aid. He screamed and flailed, kicking his legs in the air as he struggled to break free from Elliott’s grasp. Blood came gushing forth from his jugular in rhythmic pulses, splashing on the men’s lab coats. As soon as they got the victim loose, they held Elliott down and activated the restraint system, which held Elliott firmly in place. Alex froze in horror.
    Elliott looked mental. A thick glaze dulled his eyes, and his pupils were hyper-dilated. He was taking hurried shallow breaths, and strained to lift his head as high off the mattress as the restraints would allow. Saliva gathered around the perimeter of his mouth, and anytime someone came near he groaned at them and