by Allen Ivers
She sounded oddly chipper for the assortment of words in that sentence.
“Maybe I just tell you about my dog?” Aaron gurgled out.
She hummed, choking back a laugh, “You don't have a dog. You've never had a dog. Maybe you can get a dog? It’s not a complex procedure, but it is delicate. So we’re going to be putting you under for it. Do you have any allergies or medical conditions?”
It was harder to concentrate, the passing lights glowing brighter and brighter with each successive pass, like they were swinging overhead on a string and getting closer and closer to his face.
“I’m squishy and full of blood. Try not to spill me on the floor.”
He had a very limited view of the world from his bed, but he could make out the moment the cement pavers overhead dressed themselves in white and black paint. The lighting softened, diffused, like it was leaking through a thin cloud layer. And there was that acrid smell that reminded him of a cold shower, of the disinfectant the prison wardens used when clearing a new inmate through quarantine.
Machinery hung from the walls, with express purposes lying somewhere between medical miracles and medieval inquisition.
He pressed against his restraints as they swung the gurney into position. It shuddered as they clipped into place, metal clamps onto the legs raising it the half-inch needed to keep it from rolling off.
“I have to confess,” Womack murmured, before leaning up into view, her medical mask failing to conceal the morbid flicker in her eyes, “We usually only perform this on cadavers.”
“Well…” Aaron’s eyes fluttered, fighting the blanket that cajoled his mind into silence, “I like doing… new stuff.”
That flicker slipped away, a wisp of sadness peaking at the corner of her eyes. Or was it pity? “You’re used to your cage now, aren’t you?”
Perhaps she was quick off the draw, or he was now slower than he believed, but a new wave of cold crept up his arm before he could answer her pointed question. It inched up the length of his bicep and across his shoulder before worming into his chest, where it exploded in him. He was warm and cold all at once, relaxed but something troubled him.
It felt like a brick sat on his chest, compressing his ribs and squeezing his back against the bed. His own weight felt like it might crush him, unless he were to sink into the mattress and slither away.
He blinked. And he could no longer open his eyes.
They had been frozen shut, captive to whatever drugs Womack had forced him with. Despite the bewildering sensation, he could still hear them chatter amongst each other, muffled laughter and casual requests. It was as though he could hear them through a thick wall or with a pillow pressed around his face.
The dull whine of machinery filled his ears, dwarfing all other sound. At first, it sounded like it came from within his own head, but he realized it was in two places: one above and one below. It reminded him of the drill bits on the Mining Rigs, a kind of industrial grind coupled with the cry of a dying animal.
It pulled closer and closer in a delicate approach that might deafen him for life. He tried to pull away, to no avail. That weight on his chest kept him locked in place.
They hadn’t put him under. They’d paralyzed him.
No restraint could keep him from twisting at the wrong time, but they still needed him… alert.
That’s when he felt the first pressure on his lower back. And when he heard the first gunshot. The drills retreated like frightened rats and the doctors cried out.
Perhaps the Wall was being hit? No. That was close by. He’d have heard the Thumpers and the Repeaters sing their brutal arias before any rifle fire on the barricades.
Each successive drumbeat of high caliber gunfire was accompanied by the ring of an escaping brass cartridge, a harmony he was very familiar with.
Voices shouted and soon he felt hands upon him. A new voice -- a woman’s, muffled but shrill -- shouted: “What did you give him?!”
That voice. Could it…?
A lyrical interlude that could only be Dr. Womack’s deceptions responded with some incomprehensible chemical compound.
The demanding voice was not amused by the answer. “How much?” No response. The shrill voice demanded again, “How much, Dr. Haircut?!”
Womack tried to declare her superiority with an unusually haughty tone, “I have a Doctorate from Osiris Medical College--”
“I was a nurse in Detroit’s Lower Wards and you have the medical malpractice of a first-year bartender! Look at it -- His BPI is 80 over 50, his kidneys are giving out, and he’s suffering acute nervous shutdown! That's alarming enough, but hypotension? He should be clockin' on all cylinders ready to blow a gasket! And that's because you OD'd on your paralytic, you colossal moron!"
Womack tried to interject some excuse, of this being expected, and the new voice was having none of it. There was a tinkling of glass as someone lifted a needle. “If you don’t give me what I want to know, he’ll go tachycardic in less than a minute. After which -- I guarantee –"
Another interruption from Womack and the voice was out of patience, turning almost to a growl. "How much did you give him?!”
Eden. He'd heard that voice in labor, in war, in play and in her sleep. It really was her.
Through Aaron’s weakening hearing, he could barely make out Womack’s defensive muttering, something and the number “Ten.”
Eden cursed, before cupping Aaron’s head in her rough hands, “Aaron, I don’t know if you can hear me, but there is an immense amount of pressure on your brain, and if I don’t relieve it, you will wish you were dead.”
Several voices grunted out indistinct commands.
Eden was having none of it, “Nora, with me! Solomon, Keira on the door!”
A familiar gravely voice bellowed over the din, “Alright! You heard the lady and you know your places! Jensen, barricade that window! I don't want to see any more pretty pretty sunlight! Huah?”
"Huah, Gunny!"
It was the team. They had come for him?
He could hear their voices, even smell their sweat. He wished he could see their faces.
But there was a blinding pain, white hot, right behind his eyes. It was so deep he could swear it was coming from somewhere outside of his body, from the gurney he was laid upon. It wasn’t a spike of pain like a sprain or even a broken bone.
It was more akin to being boiled alive.
He could see those two blue eyes staring at him through the cloudy darkness. They stared a single commandment into his very bones.
Stay alive.
Nora huddled somewhere overhead, “What do you need me to do?”
“I need your hands,” Eden barked, “Give me what I say, when I say it.” Womack started to speak, but Eden promptly drowned her out, “And if this one says another gulaw word, put two in her fra ti forehead!”
“Eden, you’ve got three minutes tops!”
“I’ve got one minute, old man. Knife, now!”
He felt the slightest tug on his forehead, just under his hairline. Perhaps it was the chemical nightmare he was experiencing, but he could swear she was getting ready to scalp him. He could feel the edge of the blade slice through skin and meat, before it slicked against his skull, like a bowstring across a violin, playing a sour note in his ears.
“Give me that drill!”
That dull whine sang out again, this time in front of his face. She must’ve pivoted the rig and now lowered it down against his skull.
Aaron felt himself try to tense up, somewhere inside that chemical prison, while his body lay limp on the table. It was the most surreal feeling, like a lucid dream where he knew he could move but couldn’t make it happen.
And all the while, that burning pain, scorching behind his eyes straight through him.
The Queen’s stare grew brighter with each second, as if urging him to run faster and faster when he couldn’t even lift his fingers.
What good was he?
The drill scraped against his
skull before finding purchase and biting into the bone. That pain lit up like someone had doused his entire body in gasoline. It should’ve blown him away, reduced his sanity to shattered glass.
But he had felt pain like this before, he had weathered it. Those blue eyes told him so. The fires that fell from the sky and sanitized a planet was a pain far more impressive than this. He carried a thousand more scars than this horror could possibly inflict. He was made of steel now, wrought in an inferno and forged in a crucible that rendered mortal pain a shadow of real agony.
He survived the wounds of an entire species; he could survive this.
“Got it!”
The drill pulled back and Aaron could feel his forehead dampen, as though a cool cloth had been draped across his brow, dousing the painful fires and wicking away the heat. He tried not to linger on the notion of his brain's fluids were now exposed to the world and slicking his face, albeit through a very tiny hole in his head.
“Eden, we have to go! Now!”
Two quick straps of a tape locked some gauze over Aaron’s head wound, “I’m done! Jensen! Ruck up!”
Jensen. Eden. Nora. Solomon. Keira. Even Bray.
Where was Carmona? Why wasn't Car with them? He should be barking orders. He should be leading.
His restraints flipped away, and his body slipped to the side, like a bag of sand.
The fall felt without end, an hour or a lifetime of free fall. It was a solid minute before he realized that someone was carrying him on their shoulders. They did their best not to jostle him, but no matter how small, the rhythmic roll of steps banged on the inside of his skull.
“We are mobile! I’ve got anchor. Solomon, Keira -- let’s get deadly!”
They related their heroics to him later with a unique touch of horror. Three army regulars were killed in the exchange of gunfire, and Keira sustained a burn to her left leg.
Their initial plan had been to break in, secure him at his cell, and exfil by land cruiser to an arms depot to resupply. With Aaron mid-surgery, they had to delay their escape and were ultimately cut off. They reversed directions, with Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Bray now leading the insurrection -- technical term. Gunny insisted they call it that.
Apparently, the Gunny was marching to a different beat these days. It must have been his gravelly-voiced shadow that visited a few days before. Perhaps he read the Doctors’ reports or looked at an advance schedule.
Whatever he had turned up in the weeks of Aaron’s captivity had urged a career veteran and loyal Imperial to turn terrorist hand-in-hand with Capital criminals.
Bray and Nora had disabled the nearby Repeater towers while Jensen and crew secured a land cruiser. Unfortunately, it was on the wrong side of the Wall. The team had to beat feet into the open Savannah.
Eventually, the small arms fire stopped and the Wall receded over the horizon. They had no supplies, no food, one working vehicle, deep in Jergad territory. And they had just launched the first attack in Vanguard’s rebellion -- sorry, insurrection.
The cruiser was still rolling when Aaron was finally able to open his eyes, staring up at Eden’s soft face.
She inspected his head wound with a confident smirk, “I do good work.”
“Scale of one to ten, Gunny -- how jacked are we?” Nora was never one to mince words.
The crew huddled near the land cruiser, afraid of every little crack in the ground. Instinct and memory told them what to fear, how to protect themselves. They had no concept for how far their fall was bound to be.
Aaron stood out in the open desert a good dozen meters from the illusory safety of the cruiser, half hoping that a pair of bifurcated jaws might surge up from the ground to pull him to his due.
Everyone urged him to come back to their little campfire summit, but no one had the bravery to step out onto the hostile clay to retrieve him. They had sieged the single most impressive fortification on the planet, but they still feared the very ground they stood upon. The contradiction almost made him laugh.
Gunny threw a glance out at Aaron, “It won’t be long till the LADAR satellites pick up our silhouettes out here, at which point a brisk orbital strike from Thor’s Hammer will... obliterate us. It’ll hit ya so hard, it’ll be like you never existed.”
“Can we camouflage ourselves, top cover or-?” Eden asked, to an audible scoff from Keira. Eden glowered at the woman twice her size, “Unless you got a better idea?”
Bray shook his head, “It’ll buy time, but the satellites are thorough. Unless we can get back inside the Wall -- where they’re too nervous to drop kinetics -- we’re just targets downrange.”
“What does the Hero think?” Solomon hissed, throwing a wry smirk out at Aaron.
“I think you all screwed up,” Aaron said without missing a beat.
Jensen shifted in his seat, rocking the whole cruiser, “Aaron, we saved your ass.”
“Did you now?” Aaron sneered, “I look real safe to you?”
“Bray said--”
“I heard what Bray said,” somehow the weakness in Aaron’s voice, just the smallest squeak betraying his pain, was enough to quiet all objection, “And I know you believed him. But... Riley was right. The safety of the people has to come first.”
Bray stiffened like Aaron had just burned an Imperial flag in front of the Ministry of Cultural Observance. He may as well have spat on a grave. “You really think that kid gives two shits about 'the people.'"
"He cares about keeping 'em alive."
Bray's eyes went dark, his voice like a knife's edge. "No, he doesn't. He never did. He just wants medals, merits, heroics. And you don't get those by following rules."
"Gunny, if we followed the rules," Aaron began, "You would have personally executed every one of us and thought nothing more of it."
The half a beat told him he'd struck true, but Bray was used to taking hits, "Riley is a country mile over the line. I'm a soldier. He’s a monster.”
“Doesn’t make him wrong,” Aaron spat back, “He’s thinking about the big picture.”
“That why they were gearing to crack you open? Jus' big picture?” Nora scoffed.
Aaron tongued his cheek, “Carmona would agree with me. Maybe that's why he's not here right now.”
“Car is dead,” Jensen’s face had paled, a burden remembered. He paused without breath, pushing the words out of his mouth like he might gag on them, “Riley killed him. Because of me.”
"How does that even—"
"They left you on that mountain, we had something to say about it!" Keira snapped.
Somehow, Aaron’s frustration only grew. The bodies just kept piling. Because of him. “Maybe next time, keep your heads down and your mouths shut.”
“Aaron--” Eden started.
“Shut up. Okay, just shut up!” Aaron’s voice echoed over the plains, like the very planet joined him in his objection, “I'm not worth all this! I'm dead, then I'm dead. Leave me there! You guys rocked up – I'm not that important, to risk yourselves like that. I'm not worth your lives! None of this matters unless you get – out – alive! If Car's dead, that's on him being stupid!”
Nora met his challenge with one of her own, “You haven’t seen what we’ve seen, Aaron! You had your own little spirit walk, and that’s fantastic! But we’ve been knee deep in this for a lot longer than you!”
Her voice scratched as she blinked away the angry tears, “Riley has been draining us dry. Not because he needs us, not because he has to. Because he likes it. He's starving us, hell marching us. He's one minute away from just setting up a battle arena to entertain the mob. He likes playing warlord, he gets off on it.”
She paused to pull down air, sniffing away her outburst, “Bray told us there was a chance for peace. And Riley would rather throw us into the grinder for one last gasp of glory than even look a bit closer at it! Car is dead, Quinn is dead -- how many more?! We're supposed to die? To save them?! Those sadistic bastards?!"
Nora clambered to the other side of the cruis
er, getting whatever distance from Aaron she could, setting herself down on the far edge to glower from the shadows, let her fire burn out.
Eden spoke up, ever the kind, "We came for you because we were willing to die to know one thing: are you for real?”
Aaron chewed on her words, his head hanging low. It was a long moment before he could bring himself to respond, “You don’t even know who I am. I’m nobody.”
“You’re our friend,” Jensen grunted.
“But why?” Aaron asked.
Eden considered him a moment, she hopped off the cruiser, her boots dusting up a small cloud from the cracked ground. Jensen almost dove to catch her, as if she might sink right through and down out of sight. But once Eden was out of reach, no one dared follow.
Eden marched over to Aaron, her heart clearly racing from the many horrible possibilities beneath her. But she marched on anyway, right to Aaron’s side.
After a sharp breath, she whispered, “I wasn't going to leave you behind. That’s my choice.”
Aaron studied her almond eyes for any sign of weakness, any breach in that facade. She did not blink, scanning his face for the rest of the story he had dared not share. The midnight sky painted her eyes a soothing blue, almost pulling a river of tears right out of him, as every last string was cut.
He lowered his head, “I’m not worth...” His voice cracked again, hard, halting his objection.
“Nobody is,” she said, “But we want to be. Huah?”
Huah.
Aaron swallowed hard, looking up toward the cruiser full of eager soldiers. They waited with bated breath like they were about to hear a prophecy bestowed from a blind desert wanderer. “I don’t know if she was telling the truth,” he murmured, “I just… know what she said.”
Bray shifted his weight on the cruiser, making the whole thing bounce like a rickety old spring. “And we ain’t had any attacks on the Wall since your little excursion. So two plus two, Aaron…”
He was right. The Queen held up her word.