He finally looked at her with his blue-glowing eyes, ready to cry.
“And right now I could really use your help.” Her limbs were beginning to tremble. The dragon’s snout was inching closer as the strength and stamina in her functioning limbs dwindled. If she could just use her right arm...
“Rox, I can’t help you. I don’t have healing powers. I can’t touch the dragon or alter the events of your nightmare.”
“I don’t care about all that. Just be strong for me.” This felt horribly reminiscent of that morning Grandma had cried on her shoulder in the bathroom. Adults were supposed to be the figures of control and composure. Yes, they were just as human as her, Aigis or not, but now Roxie felt like she had to give up the role of teenager and be the adult. She was going to have to grow up one day, but she really didn’t want it to be right now.
Too late for that.
“Aerigo, if I die in this nightmare, do I die in reality?”
Aerigo thought a moment. “There’s a good possibility. But if you do, I don’t doubt you’d be in much more than a permanent torpid state in the waking world.”
Roxie envisioned Aerigo having to feed her baby food because she was too far gone to feed herself, she staring with vacant eyes and him slipping a plastic spoon between her messy lips. The sight sent a repulsive shiver up her spine. She shook her head. “Well then,” she said. “That makes my list of options simple. I’m going to live... and make a full recovery.”
“Please live,” Aerigo said. “However, the doctors don’t think you’ll regain use of your right arm.”
Roxie stared in disbelief. “But I need both my arms!” Her whole body was trembling now. She looked at her useless arm and willed it to move.
* * *
Jenna sat in a hover chair facing Roxie’s gurney, while Donai was doing research in the archives, and Skitt was in one of the labs, analyzing Roxie’s blood, along with the darts that she’d been stuck with. She leafed through a digital medical book entitled The 31039 Complete Guide to Poisons and Venoms 100th Edition. Dragon venom was so rare that maybe once every hundred years, one hospital or another saw such a case as Roxie’s. According to the book, half the victims died from the dragon’s bite, having bled to death. It used to be far more than that, but Kismet had found ways to produce rapid skin grafts, along with repair major arteries before it was too late. Right now, she was trying to figure out the stages of poisoning from black dragon venom, but she’d gotten sidetracked by all the neat tidbits of trivia in the beginning of the section.
Something beyond the rim of the book’s two-foot span caught her attention. She looked up to see Roxie’s poisoned hand spasm twice.
Jenna got to her feet and dropped the square device on her hover chair. She’d already read the part about what dragon venom universally destroyed, and nerves were one of them. Jenna stood by Roxie’s shoulder and put a hand on her forehead so she could read the girl’s energies. Blue lines formed along her hand and up her forearm, following where her veins were. The girl was barely eighteen, strangely powerful--there was a huge well of energy within her--and so close to death. The poison in Roxie’s body translated to an intense nausea in Jenna. She let go and caught her breath. There was nothing in what she’d felt that said Rox should be able to twitch her hand.
Jenna stood before a grid of doctors’ names, swiped at the air in front of it to leaf through the digital pages until she found Donai’s, and jabbed the plastic button. “Donai--!” The power went out. All the technology fell silent, the hall and ER went dark and people gasped and let out startled exclamations. Jenna backed up a step.
A loud series of thuds whumped one floor at a time as the hospital regained electrical power, sounding like a giant thumping up an eleven-step ladder. Jenna looked up. She stepped forward and jabbed Donai’s button again. “Donai, this is Jenna. Report!”
No response. The button hadn’t even lit up.
“Great,” she said sarcastically. The lines had short-circuited or something, and she didn’t have time to wait for the Techs to reboot it all.
Right as she turned for the door, she was hit by a gush of air. At first, she didn’t think anything of it, but the sensation was so odd that she stopped and turned around. One hand on the door frame, she stuck her head in the room, and sure enough it felt like a heavy breeze sweeping through an open window. Odd. She stood in the doorway and the warm wind sent loose strands of her chestnut hair dancing.
Jenna opened her awareness to her Sensor powers, making auras as visible as bands of a rainbow, and each person’s energies as tangible as swishing a hand in water. Her powers were invaluable to all doctors, protecting everyone from misdiagnosis. She was a living, breathing x-ray machine into a person’s energies. Her powers were rare, yet common enough for colleges to offer classes to train Sensors in all medical fields.
As soon as her Sensor awareness was fully open, she felt the need to run out of the hospital. Instead she grasped the door frame harder to steady herself. A funnel of air tinted a pale yellow was pouring into Aerigo’s chest and abdomen. It was a vast well of power, and quite lethal if uncontrolled. But it was in control at the moment. Aerigo’s aura was a bright, fear-filled yellow, with splotches of green and blue all around his upper body. The ice packs she and Skitt had wreathed around him were getting thrown to the ground, and loose papers and medical paraphernalia were getting blown around. Roxie’s aura was thin and full of deathly black, but a determined red encircled her head.
* * *
“Rox, I have to go,” Aerigo said. “I’m sorry.” He stood.
“Where are you going?” Roxie didn’t want him to go, but the immediacy in his voice conveyed his need for action.
“Back to my own body and mind. My body’s begun to recharge. I have to control where I collect the energy from.” His body began to fade. “Beat the dragon for me, Rox.” And then he was gone.
Roxie stared at the dragon’s jaws and mentally searched for Aerigo’s presence. He was absent from her nightmare. Wherever he was, she hoped he was nearby in the waking world. Roxie glared at the dragon, fed up with fighting it and not being able to use her right arm.
* * *
Jenna hurried towards the basement, where the archives lay. The whole hospital was dimly lit and full of confused staffers, however the staffers put on brave faces and assured patients that all would be well. They assumed it was just another storm, despite not knowing why the backup generators were struggling to keep the hospital running this time.
It took five minutes of running down halls and stairs to make it to the archives. The whole way was dimly lit. Staffers ambled about without much concern for the electricity struggling to stay on.
Jenna hurried down the last set of cement steps and slipped between sliding glass doors that led into the archives. The room was massive with a low ceiling and scant windows. The room spread almost the whole girth of the hospital. There were clumps of computers arranged in square formations, with cubical walls dividing them. And row upon row of books, boxes of discs, tablets, and other storage devices filled up all the open space like a rank and file military squadron. Somewhere among all that was Donai.
A couple dozen people milled about, doing research, adding to the database, or chatting quietly while off the clock. Soft music drifted in from the ceiling speakers, which was intermittently interrupted whenever the lights flickered. The archivists, men and women in pastel colored vests and white dress shirts underneath, looked a bit harried as they rushed from computer to computer, making sure none of them had been harmed by the power surge. She stopped the nearest archivist, asking if they’d seen Donai. The archivist had no idea who that was, even after she described him.
Jenna closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “Donai!” Rox didn’t have the luxury of time for Jenna to observe common courtesy in a public space. Right now she was unobserved because Jenna had been so shocked by Rox moving a hand that such protocol had flown from her mind. This was good enough to get h
er fired.
Everyone in sight looked at Jenna, and then she heard her name and looked to her left. A man wearing a white lab coat and a head topped with dark hair was waving an arm. She jogged over and took a moment to catch her breath. “Have you found all the information you need?”
Donai let out a derisive laugh. “I’ve found nothing so far. And now I can’t get the computer to turn back on. The power surge did something to it.” He tried the power button just below the monitor.
“You’ve been gone half an hour! What have you been doing all this time?”
Donai gave her an incredulous look. “Trying to figure out which key word to use for ‘Aigis.’ I’ve tried all seven of the Twelve Commons I know, and I’ve even turned on other languages and put the word in. Nothing comes up.”
Jenna put her fists on her hips. “Are you spelling it right?”
Donai opened his mouth to retort, then thought a moment. “I think so. I-j-i-s, right?”
Jenna opened her mouth to speak, but found herself at a loss for words for a moment as well. “I don’t know. And that variation is going to work for Kintish only if it’s right.”
“And nothing comes up.”
“Alright.” Jenna scanned the lines of bookshelves.
“We’ll just have to ask Aerigo when one of us wakes him to drink some water.”
She looked at Donai, who gave the computer a frustrated stare. “Donai, I’m not sure that’ll be a good idea. About five minutes ago,” she added hurriedly as he tried to voice protest, “I opened my Sensor eye to him, and he’s doing something really strange. He’s gathering energy into himself. At least that’s what it felt and looked like. I have a feeling he caused the brief power outage.”
Donai stared at her a moment with his hazel eyes, then turned back to the lifeless computer and reached out to it with curled fingers. “Give me the information I need!” He yelled in a tight voice, then dropped his hands in his lap. He looked around the archives. “Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get answers soon. Let me go see what’s up with our two Aigis.” He stood and they both headed back the way Jenna came. As soon as they passed through the sliding glass doors, Donai stopped, then spun in place and looked inside the archive room. “When we come back, I’m looking up Aerigo’s name.”
“Do you know how to spell that?”
He thought a moment. “No. Either I’ll figure it out, or I’ll phrase search ‘glowing eyes.’ The latter oughta produce something. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner.”
“You were so focused on making your spelling work. That’s all. You get tunnel vision like that from time to time. That’s one of the reasons why you have me and Skitt.”
Donai nodded his agreement. “And my wife.” He turned back for the stairs and led them back to the ER. Partway through their trip, the regular power took back over. The lighting was a bit dimmed, but every last piece of equipment, including elevators and pagers, was back in working order. When Donai and Jenna got within arm’s reach of room 102, a warm breeze greeted them. Donai flinched.
“This isn’t a vent leak, is it?” he asked, examining the room’s ceiling. All the lights and white panels were intact and in place.
“No. I told you, it’s Aerigo.”
“You forgot to mention the... wind.”
“Sorry.” Aerigo and Roxie lay asleep, their heart rate monitors beeping away, and oxygen tanks humming as they attempted to pump in a mixture that would clean out their lungs. The girl’s monitor was still beeping dangerously slow, and Aerigo’s rapidly. Ice packs were all over the floor and his gurney.
“We need to get Aerigo covered back up in ice. Are you game for a little windy adventure?”
“Lead the way.” Jenna shuffled closer and put a hand on the back of Donai’s shoulder. He defensively raised his arms and took a few cautious steps into the room. As soon as they both were inside the room, they noticed that the air current was stronger from their elbows up. They crouched and began collecting ice packs off the floor, then Donai sidestepped to the drawers and retrieved some surgical tape.
“Hold the packs down while I tape them to Aerigo and the gurney.”
Jenna nodded and joined her boss on Aerigo’s right side, and began taping down the ice packs. They were still relatively cold, but they’d need to be replaced within another half an hour if Aerigo hadn’t cooled down enough. His whole body was still burning.
As they taped down a fourth ice pack to Aerigo’s right arm, the air funnel died down. Aerigo opened his eyes and shot an arm in their direction, then stopped with his hand, fingers curled like claws, inches from their faces. They both flinched and held up their hands, letting the tape and ice packs fall onto the gurney. The red glow in Aerigo’s eyes faded and he covered his face with the hand that had reached for them.
“Go back to sleep, Aerigo,” Donai said gently. “We’re just treating you.”
Aerigo nodded and draped his left arm over his stomach, and closed his eyes.
“Oh, wait! Before you fall asleep, tell me how to spell your name first.”
Aerigo didn’t move, although the air resumed swirling.
“Or not.” He looked up. “Hey, the lights are working properly again.”
The air wasn’t swirling as strong as it had been a moment ago, but the two doctors resumed taping down the ice packs. When they were done, a laugh escaped Jenna’s throat. “Donai, he looks so ridiculous. I hope he cools down before he wakes up.” He had asymmetrical strips of white surgical tape all over his arm, legs, neck and head. He looked semi-mummified with all his organs packed away in little plastic pouches, and wreathed around everything but his boots.
Donai laughed. “Gotta do what it takes to keep ‘em alive. Now for Rox.” He finished recording Aerigo’s vitals on a digital clipboard and turned to the girl.
“Damn it! Where’s my brain today?” Jenna circled Roxie’s gurney and took a look at the girl’s poisoned arm. “The main reason I went looking for you. Rox moved this hand.” She pointed to the swollen, bruised appendage.
Donai stared wide-eyed a moment, thinking. “Either it was an Aigis thing, or just a spasm. That arm looks too far gone to be optimistic, though.”
“So what now?”
Donai rounded the gurney and gave Roxie’s poisoned arm a good, long look. “Jenna, since you’re the Sensor of the team, would you mind staying behind to keep a constant vigil? Rox is in an advanced stage of the poisoning. Look at her eyelids.”
“She’s dreaming.”
He nodded. “And more than that. Keep up a regular injection of antivenin and corticosteroids. She’s still deep in the red. Page me if anything happens.”
Chapter 9
Roger finished ironing the last pleats into the left sleeve of his BDU, then donned the rest of his uniform, enjoying the warmth the iron generated. The sensation brought back memories of childhood, the mornings where he’d waited for his adoptive mother to finish ironing his clothes before he headed off to elementary school. It was a simple, comforting memory to have, and all the more cherished, since his sister had been alive then.
He fastened the last button and crossed to the modest bathroom of his dorm room stationed on the USAG Stuttgart base in Germany. His uniform looked to code, but his face still looked like he’d seen a ghost. He held out his hands in front of him. At least they weren’t shaking anymore. He left the bathroom and plopped himself in front of his MacBook on the other side of the dorm, then picked up the letter Baku had left him.
Roger--
Sorry to shock you once again, but I never actually took your physical body from Germany. I only moved your soul. I do suggest grabbing the soonest plane ticket to home you can find, so you can say goodbye to the rest of your family in person. You and your fellow soldiers don’t have much time left before I must mobilize you. Your family will give you the strength you need.
Take care.
--Baku
He flicked the letter aside and flipped open his comp
uter, still unsure of what to think about what had happened to him.
If it was true, then his soul had spent hours away from his body, across the Atlantic. He could have sworn he’d physically been there. He had touched and felt the world around him, smelled the conference room’s stuffy air. There hadn’t been the slightest clue that he wasn’t there, that his body was still lying in bed in the middle of a German afternoon. It was almost night now on base.
Roger went online and bought a one-way ticket to D.C. that departed in four hours. Plenty of time. He closed his laptop and began packing. His motions were mechanical and swift thanks to his military training. All his shirts, pants and boxers were rolled, socks balled up, and toiletries tucked into their respective slots in a small zip-up bag. He stacked everything into his duffle bag, and packed his laptop, money, ID badges, and iPhone in a simple laptop bag that had two pockets. The only things he lacked were deployment papers from his NCO, but he’d already been emailed by the Sergeant to just hurry up and get his ass to where it belonged. Wherever that was. Apparently, according to Baku, it was in D.C. Hopefully his family wouldn’t make a big scene over his first time being bumped up to active duty.
Roger double-checked to make sure he had his phone, wallet and keys, then shut off all the lights and locked the door behind him. A few fellow soldiers marched along the barracks’ hallway, but paid him no mind. They had no clue what was going on.
Courage Page 9