Massive Disaster Interlude: Dr. Adele Martineau

The extranet feed loaded with a flicker of compression lines, stabilizing into the clean, overly sterile interior of a rented conference room. Plain walls, plain lighting, two chairs separated by a polished white table. Across from the interviewer, Jal D’Vorah—a slick Asari Matron, smile honed to corporate precision—sat Adele Martineau, just twenty-one, wearing a thin white coat unbuttoned over dark civilian bodyweave. The cuffs of her sleeves were rumpled, the fold-lines visible. The glow of her omni-tool idled faintly at her wrist like an old streetlight.

She looked like she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Not just the shadows under her eyes, but the posture—shoulders pulled tighter than the coat she probably forgot to press.

“Doctor Martineau,” Jal started, voice pitched for just the right balance between familiarity and reverence.

The good doctor attempted a smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You can call me Adele. The doctor bit is… it’s still new to me.”

“Of course, of course,” Jal responded, “thank you for making the time to be here. You’re a busy woman these days—getting your degree, then headlines, panels, the launch of Medigel-V. How’s the spotlight treating you?”

Adele’s smile shifted from insincere to short and practiced, her gaze not leaving Jal’s face “I… didn’t exactly plan on any of it. Zedd is one of my closest friends and he trusted me enough as his personal medic to assist me in… expanding my prospects. I guess he saw something in me, that I could do so much more,” she said, voice steady, but pressed a little flat. The vowels stretched faintly Québécois around the edges. “I figured I’d be patching up heatstroke cases somewhere. Not…” she flicked two fingers vaguely toward the empty space between them. “Whatever this is.”

Jal nodded slowly. “You’re something of a sensation on the extranet right now—some are calling you ‘the new face of colonial medicine.’ How does it feel?”

Adele adjusted her lab coat, leaning back slightly. “Feels weird. I didn’t… really plan on any of this. I just wanted to help people, y’know?”

Jal leaned in just slightly, omnipresent smile tightening. “Victory Innovations is calling Medigel-V a paradigm shift. Triple the regenerative speed, faster sealing, better tissue outcomes. That’s not just an improvement—that’s rewriting triage care. How’d you manage a breakthrough that big, that fast?”

The young doctor’s shoulders hitched ever so slightly, Adele raising them in something that wasn’t quite a shrug. It was almost like she was bleeding pressure from her system with the movement. “I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough. More of an… innovation.” she said.

“…funny.”

Adele raised an eyebrow, blinking over at the Asari sincerely. “What is?”

Jal blinked. “I…”

“Anyway…” Adele continued past, not even letting the matron continue as her words came slower not but firmer, almost like she was reciting a line she didn’t believe. “Sometimes you just… look at the right things the right way. Stop treating the body like it’s a busted omni you can patch up with omnigel. Start helping it do what it was already trying to do.”

Now Jal’s smile shifted, spreading across her face slowly, the alien’s technical experience making her eyes light up with recogniton at the concept being described. “An organic catalyst model?”

Dr. Martineau tapped her knee, two fingers in a quick unconscious movement, before she tightened her hand into a fist under the table. “Well… not too far past something like that.”

“Some critics,” Jal went on, smoothing her dress with a deliberate casualness, slow and careful without her eyes looking away, “have gone so far as to point that Medigel-V is only cleared for human use. No adaptations for turians, salarians, even asari. Was that a conscious design choice?”

“Biology has never been one-size-fits-all. Everyone in the galaxy’s aware of that and to say otherwise is… to ignore reality,” Adele responded, voice cooling by half a degree. “Early models were… aggressive. Faster wasn’t always better. Starting with humans was the safest way to control variables.”

Jal’s smile widened, catlike. “Some outlets are speculating the real source of the breakthrough wasn’t Victory’s R&D team at all. Some are saying—”

“People love a conspiracy,” Adele said, cutting across her, the words too fast to be casual. She smiled again, thinner, showing teeth she hadn’t meant to. “God forbid a girl with a med degree pulls something off without an old man holding her hand.”

The interviewer held up her hands in mock defense, chuckling lightly. “No accusations here. Just reporting the buzz. Some have also suggested that the breakthrough came… suspiciously quickly. You went from med school graduate to miracle innovator in under a year. How do you respond to those accusations?”

Adele didn’t answer right away. She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out a NicStic, sleek and metallic, tapping it once against the table edge with a soft, mechanical click. The sound cut oddly loud against the sterile silence.

“Uh—Doctor, sorry,” Jal said, half-laughing, half-coughing, “building policy, no smoking.”

Adele struck a match against the side of her omni-tool anyway. The flare snapped bright, harsh, the kind of light you felt more than saw. She lit up, dragging a slow, deliberate pull, and exhaled a plume of smoke toward the ceiling like it owed her rent.

“Guess I’m adding it to the list,” she said, voice dry enough to scratch paint.

Jal laughed again, less smooth this time, coughing lightly as she waved the smoke aside. “Fair enough. Last question,” she continued, either ignoring or unaware of the fact that Adele hadn’t answered the previous one. “Five years from now—where do you see yourself?”

Adele took another drag, slower this time, like she was buying herself a second she already knew she couldn’t use. She flicked a delicate arc of ash off the cigarette’s tip, watching it fall without expression.

“Still working,” she said finally. The words came quieter, the edges worn soft by something heavier underneath. “Maybe sleeping more. Maybe somewhere nobody asks who built what, or why.”

Her mouth pulled, not into a smile, not exactly into anything. She just sat there, smoke curling around her, the city’s neon leaking thinly through the wall behind her like an old wound refusing to close.

The feed ended on a still frame of her leaning back slightly, face half-shadowed, the glow of the city barely seeping through the thick walls behind her.

– end of broadcast –