by Azalea Ellis
While we were making travel plans, Gregor Shadowed through a wall, and, when he came back, led us to Blaine’s vehicle storage room.
I gaped, along with the rest of the team, as we looked at the row of bikes, lined up one after the other.
“Why don’t we just ride these?” he said.
“He had these all along?" Adam said, scowling. "Why didn't he let us use them? These could have been—”
He cut off when the boy glared at him. “Uncle Blaine would have been caught if he let you guys use these, since he owned them legally and they’re traceable back to him.” He turned away, muttering something that sounded like, “ungrateful cretin,” under his breath.
Birch ran forward and settled himself in a sidecar, ears perked up.
I stifled a chuckle. “They will be more maneuverable than a larger vehicle. That might come in handy."
"I'd prefer to take it safe in an armored van or something," Gregor said. “Too bad those didn’t fulfill Uncle Blaine’s ‘need for speed.’”
Jacky picked Gregor up, setting him atop her shoulders. "You're basically wearing an armored van, kiddo." Gregor had been gleefully fascinated by the kinetic dispersal technology of the armor Blaine had created when he was still working for NIX, and had taken over the lab to create his own, making pieces to protect his entire body from harm with a zeal that bordered on obsessive.
Zed laughed. "So where exactly are we headed? All I've heard so far is 'north,'" he said, as we returned to the lab.
"All we know is 'north,'" Adam grumbled.
"The pull from my Skill has been growing stronger," Torliam said, pulling up a large map on one of the unbroken smartglass screens of the lab. "However, it is giving me direction only. I do not know how far away our destination is."
Zed frowned. "So we're just going to go north in a general way, and you'll know if we end up passing our destination?"
"The information my Skill gives me increases over time, if I stay continually focused on the same target. Perhaps there will be more, later."
Sam crossed one arm over his chest, gripping his opposite elbow. "The roads are filled with people," Sam said. "There's been a mass exodus from the cities, and you know there's a huge city directly north of us."
"We'll take the backroads," I said. "They should be less crowded. It might take a while longer because it's not a straight shot, but I think that's our best option. Besides, we need to meet NIX at their military base up north, so we’d have to go that direction anyway."
We talked a while longer, planning out our route more specifically, and then started carefully loading our packs and the bikes.
We left the next day, early in the morning, before the sun had started to rise. I wore a shemagh to cover some of my facial features and the crystal at my throat. The chill air woke me up, but the scent of smoke from the fires all around put a damper on any cheer I might have felt. We were riding into mayhem.
Chapter 15
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
— Alan Watts
We drove through the smaller mountain paths and backroads, heading north as directly as we could. Adam rode lying down in a heavily cushioned sidecar attached to Sam's motorcycle. They rode ahead, and Adam navigated for us by sending instructions through Windows.
Despite the normally unused nature of the roads we traveled, we passed a lot of people going the opposite way, along with the occasional abandoned or wrecked vehicle.
People stared at us as we rode past. We were a mixed group of adults and children, heavily armored in a blend of medieval and military-looking gear, riding the wrong way—toward the city of Mordsmouth instead of away from it. Maybe we weren’t as inconspicuous as I had hoped. The two-lane roads grew more and more crowded as the hours passed, and more than once we had to maneuver around vehicles using our lane to travel the wrong direction, in too much of a hurry to stick to their own side. Still, it was pretty smooth traveling till we came to a junction where several of the backroads crossed. There had been a bad wreck involving several pods and a couple large vehicles, and the roads were completely packed in all directions, unpassable. Smoke still rose from some of the pods, which meant the wreck was fresh enough the vehicles hadn't had time to suppress any chance of fire with retardant foam.
We slowed to a stop, and I lifted the visor of my helmet, examining the wreck and the woods to the sides of the road.
"The bikes will get stuck," Adam said, as if reading my mind. "We can't just go around. We're going to have to find a way through."
Jacky squinted. "Is there even a path through, Eve?"
I searched with Wraith, then shook my head. "No. I guess that means we're going to have to make one."
Torliam sighed, climbing off the biggest bike, which he still dwarfed. "Jacky, you may help as well," he said, as if doing her a favor.
We all dismounted, weaving slowly through the stopped pods, some of which had wrecked into others. When necessary, Jacky and Torliam would lift and move them, opening a path between vehicles for us and arranging them so people would be able to drive again, once there was somewhere to go.
People stared.
Near the center of the junction, the wreckage was particularly bad. Some of the pods wouldn't be drivable any longer, and a few were even crumpled together or stacked atop one another after apparently flipping through the air.
Adam let out a long, low whistle.
Sam nodded. "It's a good thing we're here," he said. "Otherwise these people would all be trapped, or have to abandon their vehicles."
A few pods away, a woman with blood running down her side tore at the passenger door of her tiny pod, somehow managing to pry the damaged thing open. She reached in and gently withdrew a smaller form. It was a child, a boy whose leg was obviously, and badly, broken, the bone jutting out of his skin.
He cried out when his mother moved him, clenching the front of her shirt as she laid him on the ground.
"Is anyone here a medic?" she called out. "I need a medic!"
People milled about, some watching in guilty concern, while others outright ignored her, more focused on their own situation, or already busy helping others. No one volunteered.
Zed looked around. "Is no one in this whole mess a medic? I'd help, but I really only have first aid training. I never had a chance to…" he trailed off, turning to stare at Sam.
Sam was already glancing between the child and me. "Err, I could…"
I let out a deep sigh. "Come on, Sam. Let me do the talking.”
We stepped forward, and the woman looked up at us. "Is one of you a medic?" she asked, her hands trembling as they pushed the boy's hair away from his forehead, which was beading with sweat despite the chill in the air.
"We can help," I said loudly. "We'll need somewhere to take him. Somewhere we can work without disruption." Normally, I would never volunteer to reveal Sam’s Skill, but the world as we knew it had all but ended, and I didn’t see NIX managing to find out or come after us out in the middle of nowhere, even if they were inclined to piss us off by doing so.
"I've got a camper pod," an older man said. "It's not a sterile room or anythin’, but we can clear off the table and put him on that. I've got some alcohol, too. For the infection, I mean. To make sure he doesn't get one." He shut his mouth very deliberately, and pointed to a large camper pod parked a few hundred feet down the road, a flush spreading across his cheeks. He was a bit overweight, and had dirt and a bit of blood smeared on his hands and arms, probably from helping to get people out of the wrecked pods.
On Sam’s advice, we found a chunk that looked like it might have once been a piece of roof from someone’s pod, and laid the boy on it so he wouldn’t be jostled. Then we followed the man to his camper pod, carrying the boy.
The man explained the situation to his wife, and she hastily cleared the small table and wiped it down with some antibacterial cleaner, shooting glances at Sam and me when she though
t we weren’t looking.
Once the boy was settled, I turned to his mother. “We can fix his leg, but there’s a cost. A trade-off, of sorts.”
Her mouth tightened, and she glared at me for a bit. “I have a few thousand credits.” I shook my head, but she continued before I could speak. “You don’t want credits? They might be useless soon, the way the world is going. How about gold, diamonds?” She held out her hand. “My wedding ring. You can have it. It’s got to be worth the cost of an operation.”
I shook my head again, holding a hand up to stop her from continuing. “It isn’t that type of cost.”
“Eve—” Sam said.
I raised an eyebrow, and he closed his mouth, frowning. “We don’t have power to spare,” I said. “If she wants the kid healed, we can help. But we have to get the same amount in return. We’re going to need it, later.”
Sam clenched his jaw rebelliously, and sent me a Window.
—It’s just a broken bone. I still have some charge left on Harbinger’s healing side. It’s a kid.—
-Sam-
—Don’t bullshit me. I know you haven’t regained a fraction of all the healing you’ve given out since you got that Skill. You’re on the brink of not being able to absorb more injuries. You don’t have to offset the damage on the kid, but this broken bone could be the difference between one of us being able to run away in the next Trial or dying, and we have no idea the next time you’ll get a chance to recharge.—
-Eve-
“It’s only fair,” I said aloud.
Sam glared at me, but didn’t respond.
The older man wiped at his hands with a rag. “What kind of price are you talkin’?”
I turned to the mother and the older couple. “Injury for injury. We can heal the boy, but the damage can’t just disappear. It needs to go somewhere. We’ll change the form it takes, so it won’t be so debilitating,” I said, nodding to Sam, who nodded back reluctantly. “Someone needs to volunteer, or if you’ve got a live animal we can use that.”
“Is this some kind of magic juju?” The mother sighed, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “I thought he might be military, with the outfit and everything. And even you look kinda…” she trailed off, looking at my armor, which wouldn’t exactly fit in with the military, unlike Sam’s. “I need a real medic,” she said, turning around.
“Stop,” I said, and the crystal at my throat vibrated with the word. Everyone froze, even the little boy on the table who’d been whimpering quietly. I sighed. I hadn’t meant to do that. “What we can do really will heal your son.” I softened my voice a little, to make up for the earlier command. “I’ve experienced it myself.”
The man and his wife were both staring at me, and the mother turned around slowly.
I held up my left arm. “His skin won’t end up looking like mine,” I said. “A broken bone is much easier to heal.”
She stared at my hand, its six fingers, the honeycomb-scales that disappeared under my sleeve at the wrist. “I’ll do it,” she said after a long pause. “What are you going to do? Cut me? Chop off my fingers?”
I couldn’t help the little chuckle that slipped out.
She glared at me in a way that said clearly she didn’t appreciate being laughed at.
“The pinky toes,” Sam said. “You don’t need them for balance.”
She paled a little, as if she hadn’t expected the trade of injuries to be real. “Oh. Okay.” She took off her shoes.
The man brought her a clean rag to bite down on, and turned to Sam and I. “You’re not going to be cutting off her toes for nothin’. I haven’t ever heard of a medic who needs to hurt people before she can heal someone else. But…I haven’t ever met someone who can make me go still with a word like that. Or who has their skin made outta diamonds,” he said, looking to the symbol at my throat, peeking out above my shemagh. “The world is a stranger place than I knew a couple weeks ago. I mean, there’s aliens everywhere.” He stepped back slowly, his gaze on mine.
Sam’s head jerked around, his eyes widening as he processed the implications of the man’s words. “We’re not—I’m human. And so is she,” he said. “We’re not aliens.”
The man nodded slowly. “Of course not. You’re humans. And you can do healing magic that transfers wounds.”
I rearranged my shemagh and rubbed the back of my neck, trying to release the rapidly building tension.
“We won’t say anything,” his wife said, speaking for the first time. “I mean, you’re helpin’ that little boy.” Her fingers twisted in the cloth she’d used to wipe down the table, white-knuckled.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” I said. “We really are humans, and we’re not going to hurt you even if you say differently.” I realized that I didn’t know how true my words actually were. Was I still human enough to be considered one? But then again, Estreyans and humans weren’t so different, except for the Seeds. Being born on Earth should be enough to qualify me as human. Probably. “And he’s the healer, not me.”
“Brace yourself,” Sam said to the woman, lifting her right foot into his lap. He held her pinky toe between two fingers, and she started to scream.
She bit down on the cloth between her teeth, muffling her cries, and tried to jerk her leg away from Sam. It was probably an involuntary reaction to the pain.
Her son turned to her in alarm and began to cry, yelling for Sam to stop hurting his momma.
Sam pulled his hands away from the woman’s foot, and, where her toe had been, a lump of sharp red crystal remained, spiky enough to cut the adjacent toe. His face was pale, and he sent me another slightly resentful look.
She took a few shuddering breaths. “It’s okay, baby,” she said, laying a hand on her son’s arm. “It hurts a bit, but it’ll be over soon. And then your leg is going to be all better, too. It’s like eating your vegetables. Sometimes you don’t want to do it, but once you’re finished you realize it wasn’t so bad after all. I just need you to be brave for a little while longer.”
He continued to cry, but nodded, lower lip trembling. He whimpered again when Sam moved to her left foot, closing his eyes and covering his ears with his hands.
After both toes were crystallized, Sam returned to the first one, pinching the base of the toe, where the crystal met flesh. Her flesh melted under his fingers, and the crystal lump fell right off, hitting the floor with a sound like glass. When he took his hand away, the skin was healed over the stub, raw and tender looking. “It doesn’t take much power to fuse the skin together, not much more than healing a cut. If I just left the toe like that, or the wound open, it could get infected,” he explained, clenching his jaw as if daring me to reprimand him. “This is still a power gain.”
I nodded acceptance. “Of course. It wouldn’t make sense to leave her with an open wound, when there are no other medical facilities around.”
He relaxed, and did the same to the other toe.
Everyone in the camper pod stared at the woman’s four-toed feet for a moment.
Sam moved on to the child, first numbing his leg and then shifting and fusing the bone back into place, before finally healing the muscle and skin. Like his mother’s missing toes, the boy’s wound was left looking raw and tender. “He shouldn’t walk on this for a while,” Sam said. “The bone isn’t completely healed. It will probably hurt for at least a couple weeks, while his body finishes up the rest of the healing.”
The boy moved his leg, whimpering. “It feels funny. Bad.”
“That’s the numbing. It’s quite unpleasant, but the pain would have been worse. It will wear off in an hour or so.”
The woman stared at her son’s leg, leaning close to it but carefully not touching the pink scar as she examined it. “You healed his leg,” she said aloud.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes. In exchange for your toes.” I hoped she wouldn’t get too excited about it.
She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “Thank you,” she said. She took a few
deep breaths and swallowed, the tears receding from her eyes. “Do you need anything? Food? I have some supplies in my pod, still. Some water, too.”
Sam shook his head. “No, we don’t need anything. Keep your supplies, you’ll need them yourself.”
“Just don’t go yelling about it to everyone who will listen,” I said. “We need to move on, as soon as the rest of my squad has cleared the road. We don’t need people begging for help if they happen to believe you.”
“Of course not,” the man said, opening up a box of protein bars, and handing them out. He hesitated, with his arm outstretched to me. “Do you eat…protein bars?”
I took it from him and started to eat it. “Of course.”
He nodded, seeming relieved. “Since you’re human and all, and dressed like that, does that mean you’re fightin’ against the aliens? Is that where you’re going?”
I didn’t say anything, silently chewing my protein bar. The civilians shared a look.
“We don’t like what they’re doing,” Sam finally said.
“And…hypothetically,” the man shared a look with the other two again. “You might use your…powers to do something about it?”
I frowned. “We’re not going to be getting ourselves killed by flashy heroics,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.” I left the camper, going to help Torliam and Jacky finish rearranging the cars around the intersection.
Behind me, I heard Sam say softly to the people in the camper, “We might be able to do something. Don’t lose hope.”
I sighed, and strode off to get us back on the move.
It took us over an hour to clear the road enough to travel, and Adam had grown a constant scowl as he waited, eyes locked on the link he’d scrounged from Blaine’s lab. “There’s a map site where people are posting information and warnings about certain locations. The main road we were heading to is blocked off. There was some sort of train accident that spilled over onto it, and a fuel leak caused a fire. Which spread.”