[b]Saint-Nazaire, France[/b]

	He was in too much shock to feel the pain. In a mess of sparking wires, ruptured pipes, and twisted metal, Mohammad clutched and clawed at anything that might get him out. Electricity, tinged an unfamiliar green, arced across open conduits and liquified whatever got in the way into hot molten flows. His glasses had been broken and scattered across the deck and he couldn’t move the left side of his body. He flailed and whipped his right arm, seeking something firm to hold onto as he felt the catwalk collapse under his body.

	The metal snapped, the deck swinging downwards a few degrees and sliding him into the warped remains of the safety railing. He felt his body impact the rail and stabilize, barely hanging on from what seemed like an abyss below. He remained there, his head too jumbled to form any cohesive thoughts as he passed out.

	He awoke to the touch of something grabbing underneath his arms and sliding him into a basket of some sort. A haze of the encroaching pain darkened the edges of his vision as he grunted and groaned. Through the blurriness, he saw a masked figure in a bright orange suit clip a carabiner onto a series of ropes above them. The figure waved, and Mohammad’s body lifted off the ground. Through the maw of jagged metal, he emerged from the darkness as the person on the basket raised his hand up to grab onto something. Hovering high above the deck of a ship, a helicopter was painted the same shade of orange as the suited figure.

	Limp and hazy, Mohammad felt the whupping of the helicopter blades in the air upon his body. The orange suited man stepped over him, head ducked low, through the open side hatch of the craft and pulled Mohammad in by the shoulders. He rolled out of the basket onto what felt like a canvas stretcher parallel to the helicopter’s open bay where another masked, orange-suited man hurriedly rushed back and forth between blinking machines and pulling medical instruments from brightly color-coded pouches secured to the wall. Two straps were secured across his legs and his torso to tie him down during the movement as the helicopter lurched forward and sped away.

	In the cabin, the two rescuers got to work. Their orange armor, a civilianized version of the military’s CED suits for hazardous Langium contamination, bore nametags on their breastplates and [i]Gendarmerie Maritime[/i] emblazoned across their backplates. The simple black-and-yellow anchor insignia of the [i]Gendarmerie[/i]’s coast guard service adorned their left shoulder. A painted red and white paramedic’s cross was situated on the other. Their helicopter had been dispatched from a littoral search and rescue station thirty minutes previously after police in Nantes had reported a large explosion from the [i]Chantiers de l’Atlantique[/i] shipyard.

	Mohammad was, so far, their first patient. The fires on the ship, now listing in its drydock with subsequent explosions sending rippling aftershocks through the shipyard, were only growing. The scope of the accident was only beginning to manifest as additional first responders being scrambled from across western France. Helicopters, both civil and military medical evacuation craft, buzzed past the [i]Gendarmerie Maritime[/i] bird on its way to any hospital that would take it. The pilot and copilot talked hurriedly over the emergency frequency in the cockpit, their thesis remaining the same: “We have a Langium-contaminated patient and we need immediate emergency trauma aid.”

	Mohammad groaned as the pain grew on him. He was now acutely aware that the entire right side of his body was hot and burned. He tried to struggle against the restraints in an attempt to writhe from the flashes of sharp pain shooting through his body while the flight medics injected him with needles. The medics, using large syringes, had a pharmacy of medications that they needed to apply. The first shot inhibited the growing amount of harmful Langium contamination spreading throughout the body by delivering an impotent and harmless NLC compound to be absorbed by the important organs. The medical theory, at least, was similar to iodine treatments in radiological incidents: the organs would be saturated enough by Langium-based compounds that they would not take in harmful contamination.

	The next round of treatment focused on the immediate external burns, which proved to be the most painful for Mohammad. The burns were an ugly cross between electrical and chemical burns, leaving the arm and torso of the engineer blistered and bleeding. A strange green and grey coloration had developed in the burns: a deeply unsettling sight even to the flight medics, who had been trained only on years of conventional injuries. The pilots repeated their request for immediate first aid, adding in that the patient was now a major burn victim.

	A hospital at Nantes confirmed that their facilities were cleared for Mohammad’s arrival and a receiving team was readying for the helicopter. Mohammad was their first call for severe NLC exposure, and they knew that the night was still young. Their best efforts were the standard treatment of water and loose bandages across the exposed skin. Blood and fluids still seeped endlessly into the cloth. The medics endlessly rotated out these bandages when they became too saturated, throwing them haphazardly into a biohazard bag in the corner of the cabin. The medications delivered became more specialized, a cocktail of Langium-based substances to desperately combat the increasing severity of the contamination.

	The flight lasted another ten minutes. As the life support machines messaged readouts about Mohammad’s health and status, the medics adjusted accordingly. As his oxygen level lowered, the lead medic made the decision to hook the patient to a flight ventilator for supplemental oxygen. More bandages were applied to the burns, and more stabilizing medications were applied. Laying on the stretcher, fading into unconsciousness again, Mohammad was now kept alive by a myriad of machines and technology. He never felt the helicopter touch down on the helipad of the [i]CHU de Nantes[/i] university hospital.

	The flight medics slid open the door of the still-running helicopter and the pair hoisted Mohammad’s stretcher onto a waiting gurney attended to by a cadre of trauma doctors and nurses. One of the flight medics identified the lead doctor on the case and rushed over to her, handing a document case full of the extensive treatment log that they had kept of medications applied during the flight. Over the roaring chopping of the helicopter blades, he asked her if she had any questions via the CED helmet’s loudspeaker. She had none. As quickly as the [i]Gendarmerie Maritime[/i] had come, they had to leave as well. Another radio call came in for a dockworker who had been severely wounded in the explosion. The orange-suited medics rushed back to the helicopter which wasted no time taking off again.

	The dockyard at [i]Chantiers de l’Atlantique[/i] was ablaze as electrical fires caused systems explosions and conventional fires in the surrounding buildings. Fire engines from across the region had arrived to combat the flames. Dozens of trucks searched for any fire hydrant they could find, attaching to the water main in Saint-Nazaire and throwing foam and water onto the fires before they could spread any further. Workers, engineers, and staff fled the scene in wild crowds. The police at the shipyard, still dressed in their riot gear from their earlier encounter with protestors, had been redeployed to herd the panicking workers into safe zones far away from Langium exposure.

	A train of emergency vehicles crowded outside the shipyard as French leaders were awoken with news of the developing disaster. The local police and fire, desperately trying to battle the otherworldly flames from the ship, placed calls to the only people they knew with training: the Paris Fire Brigade.

[b]Paris, France[/b]

	In a Parisian apartment, the landline in the kitchenette rang suddenly at three in the morning. In bed, sleeping face down into his pillow, [i]Commandant[/i] Alex Lejeune reacted by putting another pillow on top of his head. He was alone in his apartment; his wife and kids having gone to visit their grandparents for the weekend while he stayed behind and rested from a long week at work. The phone rang again a few minutes later and Alex was awoken by the lighting in his bedroom slowly turning on. In the corner, a monitor flickered to life and cast a ghostly green glow over the dim room.

	“[i]Monsieur[/i] Alex,” said the soft female electronic voice of the apartment’s digital assistant through the room’s speakers. “The telephone has rung twice, and the number is the BSPP charge of quarters. I am programmed to alert you to a potential work emergency.”

	Alex rolled over again and stared up at the lights as the telephone rang for a third time in the other room. He muttered a curse to himself as he got out of bed in his undershirt and boxers and stumbled to the hallway. He still felt the previous night’s whiskey: a small nightcap, but he was getting middle-aged now. The apartment’s assistant, whom he called Francine, turned on the lights automatically as he grumbled his way into a bathrobe and walked to the kitchen. He pulled the phone off of its dock and groggily answered: “[i]Commandant[/i] Lejeune speaking.”

	“Sir, we received an emergency telefax for an industrial accident at [i]Chantiers de l’Atlantique[/i]’s drydocks. Initial reports indicate that a Langium-reactor has suffered a huge explosion,” said the firefighter on the desk. “They’re working the coordination piece but they’re calling the [i]sapeurs-pompiers[/i] along with our NLC response teams.”

	“Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered. “Okay, give me an hour to get ready. I’m coming in, we’ll start dispatching our on-call companies.”

	The duty firefighter acknowledged and hung up. “Francine,” he called. The AI blinked a light on the kitchen’s monitor in response. “Forward all calls to my work number,” he commanded. “I’ve got to go in for something. And can you start a cup of coffee while you’re at it?”

	Alex headed into his bedroom and opened the closet where his dark blue and red-striped firefighter’s uniform hung. In the kitchen, the coffee maker whirred as a cup was rotated on a revolver-like platter to the nozzle of the machine. He quickly threw his pants and shirt on, taking a second to throw some deodorant on in lieu of a shower, before lacing up his boots. On his way out the door, he grabbed his duty belt that hung by the door and checked his pager: eight more messages from different officers in the Paris Fire Brigade, all telling him to call them. [i]Commandant[/i] Lejeune would have to wait until he got into the office.

	The headquarters of the [i]Troisième Groupement d'Incendie[/i], the on-call subordinate unit of the overall Paris Fire Brigade, was already a hive of activity when [i]Commandant[/i] Lejeune arrived at the gate. After hurriedly scanning his ID card through, he parked and rushed into the office with a slight jog. Officers were beginning to appear, each of them called in by the charge of quarters, and were making arrangements to dispatch their emergency fire services. Some were coordinating with Nantes to find out more about the situation and who was already there: nothing was worse than creating a traffic jam by sending too much equipment through all at once.

	The [i]Commandant[/i] arrived at his office and hung his jacket up just as the phone began to ring. It was the first of many phone calls that night as the [i]sapeurs-pompiers[/i] loaded up their equipment and readied their vehicles for convoy operations. Outside his window that looked into the motor pool, he could see the fire engines lining up at the gate while police vehicles from the [i]Gendarmerie[/i] flashed their lights and sirens to clear traffic in the early morning rush hour. In other parts of the city, helicopters were already being spun up to deliver the most critical aid and personnel while the fire engines were on their way.

	It was a historically frenzied operation, one that [i]Commandant[/i] Lejeune had never heard of before. But something told him that a reactor accident in Nantes was going to be a very complicated call. Deep in his gut, he felt that they simply didn’t know the full extent of the damage and this was going to be a very bad day. He kept working anyways, running the phones through to the different companies that were being dispatched. It would be noon by the time the first BSPP assets arrived at [i]Chantiers de l’Atlantique[/i].