“A countdown? To What?” Of all the things I had expected him to say, well I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.

“Now remember, this isn’t definite, however, it is why I’ve asked you to come in. The other 12 doctors have all got their patients with them, we’re going to all record the same 5 minutes of the heartbeat and compare them, starting at 1pm.”

After the recording I sat and waited while Dr. Fulk uploaded the file. After a while all 12 recordings were online. We could see the pattern the heartbeats had made. They were clearly identical.

“But, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“Well, I would have certainly said so, it looks like I would have been wrong though.”

“So, where do we go from here? Does anyone know how long the countdown’s got left?”

“We’re going to meet the others, we’re going to conduct tests and we’re going to keep this as far away from the press as possible. And yes, according to the guy who came up with the countdown theory, starting from 6pm you have just 13 days.”