Ruins by Dan Wells

link data slammed into Samm like a moving truck. The newly opened eyes were wild with terror, and Samm felt the same terror welling up in his own gut—a numbing, crippling, overwhelming sense of wrongness, of helplessness, of boundless fear. Samm raced to sort through his thoughts, trying desperately to separate his own mind from this irrational fright before the link overwhelmed him; he closed his eyes and repeated every comforting detail he could think of, one after the other like a mantra.
    You’re safe. We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you. You’re safe. He realized the soldier probably thought he’d been captured, waking up abruptly with none of his companions nearby and no officer to reassure him; any of his squad mates he could sense on the link would be broadcasting the same catastrophic confusion that he was. We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you. You’re safe.
    “Help.” The soldier’s voice was painful to hear, as if the words themselves were bleeding. “Arm.”
    “What does that mean?” asked Calix. “Does his arm hurt? Why did he say ‘arm’?”
    “He knows he’s unarmed,” said Phan. “He’s afraid.”
    “He’s still waking up,” said Laura, shaking her head. “He’s not rational. Give him time.”
    “He might never be rational,” said Heron. “We don’t know what kind of brain damage he’s sustained from being asleep for thirteen years.”
    “You’re not helping,” said Calix.
    “I could shoot you again,” said Heron. “Would that help?”
    “You’re safe,” said Samm. “We’re your friends. We’re protecting you. We’re healing you.”
    “Hole,” said the soldier. “Blood.”
    One of the hospital’s few nurses burst into the room. “One of the others is waking up.” She looked over her shoulder, listening to a distant shout, then turned back with a frantic mania. “Two of them.”
     
    Five of the nine were awake before morning, though all but one of them had to be restrained. They seemed insane, mad and squalling like superpowered children; Laura thought their minds had been destroyed by Vale’s enforced coma, while Calix, more charitably, suggested that their minds were simply still asleep, and only their bodies had awoken. Samm thought about it just long enough to decide that he didn’t have enough information to decide, and that his course of action would be the same no matter what was wrong. He helped to hold their thrashing limbs while the nurses tied each Partial down with sturdy leather cords.
    He worried, briefly, that the damage to their minds was his own fault, having somehow harmed them when they disconnected the Partials from their life support systems, but he pushed that thought away. There was no turning back now, and nothing he could do. He could only solve so many problems at once, so he would spare no time worrying about things he couldn’t change.
    When the sun rose and the next shift of nurses arrived at the hospital, Samm briefed them in full before sending the night shift back to their apartments. He murmured his thanks as they left, but stayed himself; there were still four Partials set to wake up, and while they had been preemptively bound, he still wanted to be there when they woke up.
    I don’t want them to wake up and think they’re in prison, he thought. Phan urged him to get some sleep, but Samm was fine—fatigued, yes, but not overly so. He had been designed for far worse physical punishment than a single sleepless night. Emotional punishment, on the other hand . . .
    That was another problem he couldn’t solve, and so he pushed it away. Others could help the Partials as they awoke, whispering and soothing and calming their unfocused agitation, but only with words. He was the only one who could speak to them through the link, and so he stayed. The air itself, thick with the link data of nine traumatic disasters, hung around him like a poison. He sat in the room of