Behind her came a tall, lanky man with long brown hair gathered in a tie at the base of his neck. He wore a goatee, like Jathem, but it was longer than Jathem’s by half an inch. His face was narrow, his cheekbones high, with slight hollows underneath. An aquiline nose, thin and straight with a hooked end, added another angled element, making him seem almost stern, with the narrow countenance of a hatchet.
His eyes—a strange combination of one blue eye and one brown eye—blazed as they looked over me, and an all too vulnerable feeling crept over me as he took me in, like he could drink up all my secrets. He stepped in behind the woman, and stopped as she stopped, just a few feet away.
“I’m assuming this is Raevyn Hart and Devon Alexander?” I said, after the silence had grown unbearable. I kept my tone light, hoping to put the two newcomers at ease.
“Head Farmer Raevyn Hart and Knight Commander Devon Alexander,” MacGillus said nervously, clearly correcting my bad manners, and I nodded, deciding not to speak for a minute.
“You’re certain they landed on top of the Green?” the woman, Raevyn, said after a moment, turning her head toward Jathem. She didn’t even seem to notice my blunder.
“Wait, you have The Green here?” I asked, blinking in surprise.
MacGillus blinked at me, confused. “I’m not sure—‘the Green’ refers to the Greenery, a place where—”
“Do not address her,” Devon commanded in a stern voice. “And answer HF Hart’s question.”
There was a small pause as Jathem seemed to collect himself. He and several others reported the same occurrence.
“HF Hart,” said Devon, his voice flatly stating the fact. “There is no reason to doubt the claim.”
“They could be undocs,” she retorted. “Very smart undocs, from Mechs, or possibly the Loaners. They could’ve built a ship… It was an oversight not to have surveillance outside of the tower.”
“Scipio reports that it’s not an oversight. The heat outside is too severe and would burn out the cameras by the hundreds. Daily.”
“Who’s Scipio?” I asked, and everyone stopped and looked at me, as if suddenly remembering I was in the room. I looked at Jathem and added, “That’s my third question, but if you don’t want to answer it, then my next one is: are the colors you’re wearing to identify your role in the tower? Is it crimson for knights, green for farmers, white for medics… oh, oh… are the Mechs and Loaners other… departments, or whatever you call them?”
“Dear lord, KE Dreyfuss,” breathed Raevyn at Jathem. “Whatever did you tell this girl?”
“Madam Councilwoman,” said MacGillus, his voice humble and soft. “She asks a lot of questions, too many to be an undoc. And I was with KE Dreyfuss. I can testify that he did not give any answers that might put the tower at risk, only ones that might increase her understanding of our defensive capabilities.”
“But not our offensive?” asked Devon, his voice holding a note of warning.
“Never, sir.” Jathem’s voice held a note of mortification.
I sighed and leaned back against the wall, folding my arms across my chest. It was difficult with the cast, but I managed. They were bound and determined, it seemed, to ignore me, and it was a little frustrating. I mean… I was the newcomer amongst them. Why weren’t they as curious about me as I was about them? I’d figured at least one of them would have a little less self-control, or something.
A sharp rap sounded on the door, interrupting the argument. Knight Commander Devon stepped out of the way just as it swung open, admitting an elderly man wearing a white uniform.
“Chief Surgeon Sage,” Raevyn said, inclining her head.
Chief Surgeon Sage was in his sixties, if I had to guess, and had snow-white hair and a bushy white mustache. In spite of his age, he stood tall, and his physique was surprisingly muscular, as if he could go out jogging at any moment. He smiled at Raevyn, a dimple forming in his cheek, and his eyes danced around the room until they landed on me.
“Is this our little alien girl?” he asked, stepping into the room.
“I have doubts about the assertion that she is an outsider, Marcus,” Raevyn said bluntly, folding her arms across her chest. “She could be part of an undoc cell trying to leave the tower.”
The older man’s smile broadened as he stepped around her, drawing closer to me. His eyes were a dark green, and crystal clear. “Well, young alien woman, what’s it to be—alien or undoc?” He sat down on a stool and rolled over a few feet, coming to a stop beside me. “Personally, I’m hoping for alien.”
Immediately his eyes went to my cast. He examined it closely, a wild grin on his face. “My father told me this was how our great ancestors healed broken bones, but never in a million years did I think anyone would still implement it. Isn’t that nifty!”
“Wait, you’re saying that was the technique for setting bones in the past?”
Sage nodded at Raevyn’s question, rotating my arm so he could examine the cast further. “Indeed. If she is an undoc, someone has access to old medical books or journals that are extremely out of date. I want them.”
I smiled, unable to stop myself at the hungry quality to Sage’s voice as he laid claim to some imagined medical documents. He pressed something to my finger, scraping gently, and then moved it away, inserting the narrow device into a port in the wall. The panel glowed white, and then faded. He leaned forward and tapped the screen, and the next thing I knew it showed blood cells, flowing their way through my body. He tapped another button, and I saw a double helix sitting there, sections of it automatically lighting up with flashing text. Looking down at my finger, I realized he must have taken a sample of my genetic material.
“Well, forget about the texts. She’s definitely not from around here!” Sage announced with a clap of his hands. “We’ve got ourselves a genuine alien girl!”
I knew the way he kept calling me “alien” should’ve bothered me, but for some reason, it was hard to be upset by the cheerfully pleasant man. His eyes twinkled like he was in on some joke that he wasn’t sharing with the rest of us, and I found it both enigmatic and intriguing. Maybe he would be someone I could glean some answers from.
“That’s not possible,” Raevyn exclaimed, taking a step forward. “Nothing can sustain life outside this tower. The ecological reports alone tell us that!”
“Hey, that’s what our people thought too,” I said. “You’re the first sign of human life we’ve ever encountered.”
“Young lady,” said Knight Commander Devon, his gaze falling squarely on me. “You will tell us where you come from, and how your flying… gyroship works.”
I swallowed and looked around the room. “Um, sorry, but I’m not so sure I want to tell you that, just like I’m sure you don’t want to tell me if I called it on the uniforms.” I leaned over and stage-whispered to Sage, “But I totally called it on the uniforms.” The old man gave a bark of laughter, his shoulders shaking, and he looked around the room, grinning broadly.
“She’s funny,” he announced cheerfully to the otherwise somber room. I couldn’t help but smile as he tugged my cast over.
I shifted a little as Devon crossed his arms, his eyes disapproving and dark, and I sighed. “Look, all jokes aside—and let me have that, I’m a little nervous—I have every reason to consider you all as big of a risk to my people as you are assuming I am to yours. This is the first contact any one of my people have had with anyone in The Outlands, and I’m also in uncertain waters. I definitely didn’t think I’d be meeting other humans this morning.”
“The Outlands? Is that what you call the Wastes?” asked Raevyn.
I opened my mouth to reply, just as Devon asked, “So your people have explored The Outlands before?” and I nodded.
“Yes to both questions. Parties have gone out… They haven’t come back. No one ever comes back from The Outlands. But honestly, our coming out here wasn’t even intentional. Our ship was damaged, and we’re… we’re just trying to make our way back home.”
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“I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough, Miss…”
“Bates,” Jathem supplied for Raevyn, and she nodded absentmindedly.
“Bates. We have no guarantee that you won’t return with your people in a whole fleet of those gyroships with who knows how many weapons. Frankly, for you to think we can allow you to—”
There was a sharp crack, cutting Raevyn off, and I looked down to see CS Sage pulling the sides of my cast open. Immediately I felt the urge to gag as the smell of unwashed, dirty skin and old sweat wafted out from under the cast, my face flushing with embarrassment.
Sage wrinkled his nose, clucked his tongue, and pulled a small silver spray can from his pocket, spraying it all over my arm. The mist was cool, but not uncomfortable, and my skin began to tingle as the smell all but evaporated. He took a tissue out of a box and wiped at the skin, the white material quickly turning black, and my blush deepened.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and he shook his head.
“Not at all, but that is why these are more primitive methods. Your skin can mold or get an infection or irritation. I bet it has been itching a lot too.”
“It really has,” I replied, thinking of all the times I had almost lost a pen trying to use it to scratch under the cast.
“Not surprising,” he said, tossing the tissue aside. My arm continued to tingle, the aching pain of the break fading away, and I gave it a considering look.
“Is that it?”
“Ha! Hardly. I think we can do a bit better than that.”
He reached up and pressed something on the screen. Immediately a small section of the wall opened, and a thick plastic sheet came out, feeding through some kind of dispenser. Sage let it run and then tore it off. Indicating for me to lift my arm, he carefully wrapped the plastic sheet around it, looping it around and pressing it down against itself. He held it in place for just a moment, and then let go.
Amazingly, the plastic stayed in place, and I almost sagged in relief at how much better my arm suddenly felt. What was more interesting were two things: the first was that it was incredibly lightweight and left my hand completely free and useable. The second thing I noticed was that the plastic was actually comprised of dozens of hexagonal shapes, seemingly filled with some sort of gelatinous substance.
My hand still had stitches in it from where Tabitha had driven a knife through it, but the skin was almost completely healed, and CS Sage was already snipping and pulling the stitches out—after giving the area a quick blast with that silver canister again. I gasped involuntarily as he yanked at the thread, but the expected pain didn’t come. Maybe the silver canister contained a pain reliever as well as a disinfectant? It seemed to do everything at once.
“The material will allow your skin to breathe while simultaneously pumping in the necessary ingredients for rapid bone growth and recovery,” CS Sage said, noticing my scrutiny of the plastic wrapping. “On a fresh break, it would take about twenty-four hours, give or take the severity of the breaks. Since this is older, it should take less time.”
He finished the stitches and placed a bandage over both sides of my hand to absorb the blood. “This is a knife wound,” he stated flatly. “Easy enough to spot, and even easier to heal, but I’m a little curious as to how you came to get it, young lady.”
“Someone stabbed me,” I replied dryly, and he grinned, showing no sign of annoyance at my sarcasm. “Listen, I really appreciate you taking a look at me, but would you mind also taking a look at my friends? A few of them are in even worse shape than I was in, and it would really mean the world to me if you could help them.”
CS Sage was now tsking over the scab covering up the hole in my head. He moved so quickly for such an old man, it was hard not to be impressed with just how filled with vitality he was. Soon another piece of that gelatinous material was pressed against my head, and immediately the dull ache I had been carrying there for weeks was gone. I hadn’t even been aware it was there until it disappeared.
“Before we can even begin to discuss what to do with your shipmates,” announced Raevyn matter-of-factly, her arms still crossed over her chest, “we have to decide what to do with you.”
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“She’ll have to remain here,” Devon announced casually, his hands clasped in front of him. He looked around at the other councilors and shrugged. “She and her companions both. We’ll have to… integrate them into our society. They’ll be given the net, of course, but after that we’ll be able to begin dissecting their gyroship. The ability to achieve flight would be of… great use to us.”
I felt a trill of alarm at the hungry tone of his voice, like he was excited by the prospect of kidnapping three women in order to get his hands on the heloship. In fact, we were obstacles to his goals. I could tell he thought he was being gracious by even offering us a life inside the tower, and who knew if he was even telling the truth about that? I didn’t like the way he’d said “integrate;” what did that even mean? What net?
I, for one, was not grateful, and, as CS Sage let go of my arm, I slid my right hand down to my pants, where my gun was still tucked.
Sliding it out, I settled it on my lap and kept a tight grip on the stock. It felt amazing to be holding it in my right hand again, but there wasn’t any time for me to savor that feeling of rightness.
“My friends and I are not going to agree to that,” I announced softly, and the Knight Commander looked over at me, his brows drawing tight over his mismatched eyes. I met his gaze head on, my jaw going up a few inches. “I have a family and a fiancé back where I came from. They have families as well. So we will not be staying with you. We won’t be getting integrated—whatever that means—and we won’t be letting you touch our… gyroship.”
“You really aren’t in a position to argue,” Devon sneered, and I lifted the gun, pointing it right at his head. For once in the past few weeks, the movement was smooth, as if I had practiced it a dozen times just moments before, and I felt myself start to smile at how perfectly aimed I held it. It was solid, steady, no tremors.
His eyes took in the handgun, but he made no other reaction to it. “Is that supposed to scare me?” he asked, his hand already reaching for the black baton dangling through his belt.
“Enough, Alexander,” spat Raevyn. “You know that I, WTS Callahan, and CS Sage won’t agree to integration anyway. It’s too big of a risk to the tower. She would inevitably talk—they all would.”
“There are ways to prevent people from talking. IT Sparks and CL Mueller will back me,” Devon calmly replied.
“Which means it will be up to Scipio to break the tie,” Raevyn shot back smugly. “And per protocol—”
“It’s all moot. We are still waiting on Scipio to formulate an opinion as to whose jurisdiction they fall under,” announced Sage, his eyes completely on my gun.
His fingers reached out toward the gun, and I pulled it away, dropping my bead on Alexander and giving him a confused look. His eyes twinkled merrily as he took in the device, even going so far as to turn on the scanner and attempt to scan us both. His frown indicated that he hadn’t succeeded, but it didn’t seem to stop him from wanting to inspect it from all angles, coming around me to stare at it curiously.
“You don’t have anything like this, do you?” I asked, as Raevyn continued to argue with Devon behind them. I kept an ear to their conversation, but they were heavily debating some sort of sub-sub-section of a charter to each other, and it was enough to make me want to cross my eyes.
“What does it do?” he asked, nodding at it.
“It…”
I trailed off as I saw the Head Farmer puffing up her form, getting nose to nose with the Knight Commander. She was not intimidated by him at all, and, given the red in her cheeks, she was furious.
“Just like a Mech to only see the immediate problem and not understand the big picture,” she argued, her hands clenching. “You keep treating
her like an isolated problem—she’s not. Her people are out there; they might come looking. Oh, sure, she says that they’re alone and isolated, but for all we know this could be a scout ship, or they could all be some sort of royalty! Regardless, the possibility exists. How do you want to greet a potential threat to the Tower? By treating their people with respect and some civility, and not getting caught with our hands in their cookie jar.”
Sage followed my gaze and chuckled, crossing his hands across his chest. “Cogs and Hands do not get along,” he whispered conspiratorially to me. As if I understood what that meant.
“Are they going to hurt each other?”
“Oh no, too proud to throw the first blow, those two. It’s a shame, the damned Cog should know better—he’s in an entirely different department now.”
He said it so chidingly, like a disapproving grandfather, that I couldn’t help but smile. “You know half the things you said are complete nonsense to me, right?”
“I know, hopefully it confuses our little alien girl. Do you have any words that might defuse the situation? They are discussing what to do with you, after all.”
“Just that my people aren’t likely to come after me,” I said after a moment. I had contemplated a lie, weighed and measured it, but decided it was better to come clean. They wouldn’t appreciate threats, and I had nothing to back them up with.
“Raevyn? Devon?” Sage’s voice carried over the argument with a politeness that abbreviated the harshly hissed syllables coming out of Devon’s mouth. I wasn’t even sure when he had started speaking—I was too wrapped up in the oddity that was CS Sage.
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