Read Chapter 17: The Doctor's Bag

Camille’s hand found the latch before she knew what she was looking for. Her father’s old doctor’s bag, scuffed brown leather, tucked behind a stack of yellowed National Geographics in the back of her bedroom closet. She pulled it out, dust blooming in the flashlight beam.

“I thought you cleared this place out,” Léa said from the doorway, rifle strap over her shoulder.

“I did.” Camille knelt and unsnapped the brass buckles. The bag smelled of antiseptic and old paper. Inside: a stethoscope with cracked tubing, a manual blood pressure cuff, a roll of gauze, a tin of bandages, and a small fold-out solar panel the size of a paperback, its surface scratched and faded. She’d forgotten he’d had that. And a vial, nestled in a leather pocket, labeled in his neat handwriting: *Insulin—R, exp. 2028.*

“Is that—” Léa stepped closer.

“Expired.” Camille held the vial up to the flashlight. Two years past date. The liquid inside had a faint yellow cast. Useless. She set it down anyway, with more care than it deserved.

Julien’s voice carried up from the stairwell. “Camille? You got a minute?”

“Up here.”

He appeared behind Léa, forehead slick with sweat. “Barricade’s holding, but someone tried the courtyard grate again. We need to reinforce the west side before dawn.”

“We will.” Camille unfolded the solar panel and turned it over in her hands. The connection port was dusty. “First, I need a radio.”

Julien blinked. “A radio?”

“There’s a HAM set in the concierge’s office—the old one behind the mailboxes. No one’s touched it because it needs power. This charges from sunlight, but it’s low. I’ll need whatever morning sun we get.”

Léa shifted. “Why do you want a radio?”

Camille didn’t answer immediately. She slid the solar panel into her jacket pocket, along with the expired vial—old habit, never leave medicine behind. “Because I’m tired of guessing. We’ve been running on flare codes and smoke columns. If there’s a functioning transmitter anywhere in this city, I want to hear what it has to say.”

They moved quickly. The concierge’s office was a cramped room off the main entrance, glass partition cracked, mail spilling from cubbies like white tongues. The radio sat on a desk under a taped photograph of a cat. Julien lifted it clear of debris and carried it up to Camille’s apartment, where the south-facing window caught the first gray light of dawn.

Camille laid the solar panel flat on the sill and connected it to the radio’s auxiliary input with a length of wire she stripped with her teeth. The panel’s cells were weak—her father had used it for camping trips, not emergencies—but the sunrise was clean, and within twenty minutes the radio’s needle twitched.

She put on the headset. Static hissed, broken by distant voices, fragments of French and Arabic and what sounded like German. She twisted the dial slowly, past a long stretch of silence, past a woman repeating a weather report from three days ago.

Then: a low, recorded tone, followed by words that cut through the hiss with eerie precision.

“—repeat. This is the controlled shutdown broadcast. Paris grid restoration is proceeding on a staged timeline. All residential sectors east of the Seine will remain offline for an estimated fourteen to twenty-one days. Citizens are advised to shelter in place. Do not approach power infrastructure. Do not attempt unauthorized repairs. The shutdown is intentional and temporary. This message will repeat.”

The message looped. Camille listened to it three times, pulling off the headset only when the panel’s charge sagged.

“Controlled shutdown,” she said slowly. “They’re not even pretending it’s an accident anymore.”

Julien leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “The gas leak story was always nonsense. But this—this is them admitting it.”

“Admitting what?” Léa asked.

“That it’s deliberate,” Camille said. She turned to face them. “That someone turned off the power on purpose, in stages. And that the east is scheduled to come back last.” She tapped the map spread across her table—Marc’s map, with the Q-4 substation circled. “Marc was heading west. Toward the restoration front.”

Julien’s jaw tightened. “Or toward whatever’s protecting it.”

The shelter-in-place directive meant nothing to the armed faction downstairs. From the courtyard came the scrape of metal, muffled voices, the occasional clang of a pipe against railings. Residents were building their own walls out of trash bins and overturned scooters. Camille watched them from the window for a moment. Her father’s bag sat open on the bed behind her, emptied and useless except for the solar panel that still hummed faintly on the sill.

“I need to get this radio to the hospital,” she said.

Léa frowned. “We already went. Sylvie barely trusted you with a whisper back. Showing up with a HAM radio and a story about a controlled shutdown? She’ll think you’ve cracked.”

“No.” Camille shook her head. “Sylvie’s smart. If I can show her the broadcast, she’ll understand what we’re actually dealing with—not a gas leak, not a cascading failure, a staged shutdown. That changes what the hospital can plan for. That changes everything.”

Julien uncrossed his arms. “And Marc?”

Camille glanced at the expired vial on the table, the one she’d brought back upstairs, labeled in her father’s hand. He’d always said: *Plan for the worst, but never stop looking for the exit.*

“Marc’s west of us,” she said. “The power’s coming back from the west. The hospital’s flares were pointing the same direction. If I can get to Saint-Vincent with this message, Sylvie might have information I don’t—about where the restoration actually starts, about where Marc would have gone.”

“You want to make another run,” Léa said flatly.

“I want to make it count.”

Before Léa could argue, a shout echoed up from the courtyard. Then a gunshot—single, sharp, close. Julien was already moving, rifle in hand. Camille grabbed the radio, still warm, and jammed it into her father’s bag. The solar panel followed, folded and tucked into the side pocket.

The vial of expired insulin stayed on the table. She left it there, deliberate. A reminder of what they still owed the hospital. A promise she intended to keep.

She reached the door and paused. The radio crackled faintly through the leather, still catching fragments of the loop.

“Controlled shutdown,” she murmured. “They planned it.”

And for the first time, she wondered if Marc hadn’t been chasing the answer—but running from the people who made it happen.