"Really?" Jack asked. Did Madison mean she knew her from this jail, or from somewhere else?
"Yeah, she’s in my cell block. Just got here a few days ago. She’s actually talked to me a few times, and she seemed...different. She has this presence, like she owns the place, but also isn’t looking down on anyone. It was weird, but I felt like I could actually relax when we were talking, like nothing bad would happen while she was near."
As Madison was talking, Jack looked over at the woman. The guard had just left and as he watched; he saw the man make some kind of jerking motion, like he’d just slapped her hands or something. The woman flinched, said something, then slumped over like she’d just passed out.
Holy shit! He thought. What was that? He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the woman looked shocked or angry or scared just before she slumped over. Was she dead, or just unconscious? Did the man just slap her hands, or did he jab her with something like a syringe?
His instincts were telling him something bad was going down, and he didn’t like being a powerless observer. So he took a snapshot, then his soul space self maxed his time ratio. Maybe he could figure out what had happened by examining the snapshot.
In his soul space lab, where he spent most of his time, he summoned the snapshot sphere he’d just created and zoomed in on the man in the room next to Jack and Madison. He found the man was still holding a pen in his hand, but when he look more closely, he saw that a small needle was sticking out of one end instead of a ballpoint pen tip.
Oh shit! Is this an assassination?!
This shit happened in movies and novels, not in real life. Not right in front of him.
Something in him screamed, "Hell no, not on my watch!"
It wasn’t that he had a hero complex or felt any connection with the woman, but he didn’t like the idea of just watching. Besides, if it succeeded, he might be implicated. Maybe the perpetrators might decide he needed to be silenced.
He was in the most advanced chemistry laboratory in the world, with the very best in chemical analysis equipment. So the first thing he did was templatize the injector pen and instantiate an instance.
Then, as he called to Nora, he also templatized the woman. He wanted to know who she was and why someone might want her dead.
If the man had injected her with a fast acting poison, there was probably little he could do, but if it was something else, then making her template early would capture her physical state before the injected substance had a chance to do much damage.
Nora walked over and asked, "What’s so urgent?"
"Here," he handed her the injector pen, "this was used to inject something fast acting. We need to figure out what it is, fast."
She didn’t ask questions, just took the pen and started disassembling it.
While she did, he returned his attention to the snapshot and looked inside the man’s clothes and briefcase.
In the man’s briefcase, he found several pens and mechanical pencils, and one of the pens was a second injector pen.
On a hunch, he templatized that pen as well. Then, after instantiating a copy, he started disassembling it. He wanted Nora to analyze what was in it as well.
A few minutes later, about thirty seconds in outside-world time, Nora said, "damn, this is Somnusol!"
"What’s that?" Jack asked.
"It’s a soporific agent. It’s super fast acting and metabolizes almost as fast."
A sleep agent? Why would the man inject the woman with a sleep agent?
"How quickly would a woman wake after being injected? Is there a counter agent?"
"For the small amount the injector contained, it would take maybe ten, fifteen minutes for her to regain consciousness. And no, there isn’t a counter agent. It metabolizes so fast, there’s no need for one. Jack, what’s this all about?"
"Sorry, no time. Here, analyze this as well. Please hurry."
He handed her the injector portion from the second injector pen.
He wasn’t sure yet if he was going to do anything about what was happening, but he wanted as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, just in case he wanted to act.
It was possible the second pen contained more of this Somnusol but what if it was some kind of poison? If it was a poison, then the man could have already injected the woman with it. Even at his max time ratio, almost a minute had already passed in the outside world.
He synched his memories with his physical self. At time ratios above 1:2 he could not run continuous memory sync, but he could still trigger a manual memory sync.
From the sync, he learned that his physical self was uncertain if the man had done anything or not. But he had seen the man bend down, like he was getting something from his briefcase, so it was possible the man had already injected the woman with the other pen.
While he waited for Nora to complete her analysis, he created a new small room in his soul space, put a wood table and two wood chairs in it, and then instantiated the woman.
He wasn’t sure if it would do any good, but he wanted to at least try to learn why someone might target her.
He also wanted to know if she was worth saving, assuming that was even possible. If she was innocent, then he’d probably try to help her. If she was a murderer, he’d...try to make sure he and Madison didn’t get implicated in whatever the man was doing.
He didn’t need to be in the room when he instantiated the furniture or the woman. He could watch her on his soul space mini-map.
While he waited for the woman to wake, he watched Nora work.
Analyzing the injector substance wasn’t as simple as putting a drop into a machine and waiting for it to spit out an answer.
She had to prepare several samples, feed them to several machines, feed the results from those machines into a computer program and then check to see what known substances might match. If there wasn’t a match. She might need to run several reactions to narrow down the possibilities.
A few minutes later, she exclaimed, "Mein Gott! This is Herzbrecher!"