“Reban, can you please find me an omni-tool?” Rhken asked.
Reban nodded and walked over to the tool bench and started looking for one. Rhken didn’t actually need an omni-tool, but she wanted to keep her sister busy so that she couldn’t think about their Dad. Rhken kept tinkering inside the access panel.
All of the connections were undamaged. Rhken didn’t know why there wasn’t any power flowing to the control terminal. Every other time the ship’s systems had shut down, that console had been one of the first things to reboot on its own.
“I can’t find an omni-tool!” Reban shouted from across the room.
“Have you tried the belts hanging on the wall? Sometimes Dad leaves… left… his in his belt.”
Reban went over to the belts hanging from the wall. She hesitated before grabbing her Dad’s belt. She brought it over to Rhken and handed it down to her.
“Could you please go and check the ignition primers in the engines? The EMP probably fried them,” Rhken asked.
Each of the four thrusters on the outside of the ship was run by an individual engine. Two engines sat on the floor of the engineering bay, and the other two engines hung from the roof above. There was a single grated platform between the two engines at the height of the room, and a steep staircase led up to it from the bottom of the engineering bay.
Reban nodded and climbed the staircase to the top level. She crossed to the right-hand side of the engineering bay. Rhken noted that it was the furthest that she could get from Veck. Reban opened the engine casing and inspected the ignition primer. She pulled the small plug out of its socket.
“It’s fried,” Reban said and held the primer up for Rhken to see.
The end of the primer should have been bright red, but it was burnt and blackened.
“The others will probably be the same then, but go check just to make sure, okay?”
“Okay.”
Reban crossed over to the other engine and removed the engine casing. “This one’s gone too!”
“Okay. I’ll check these ones down here,” Rhken said as she got to her feet. She would make sure Veck couldn’t get at Reban.
Reban stayed on the top level as Rhken checked the two engine blocks on the bottom floor. Rhken pulled one blown ignition primer out of the engine on the far side of the room, and then crossed the floor to check the last engine.
“Uh, sis? Is it just me, or is that huge ship getting closer to us?” Reban asked.
Rhken lifted her head from the inner workings of the engine and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. She smudged a streak of oil up her nose too. Her eyes widened as she saw how close the Metropolis Seven was now.
It had always looked huge, but it had never looked so close. She could almost make out the individual panels that made up the outside of the hull. She could even see the illuminated bridge. There was also a dark speck of something above bridge, but Rhken couldn’t quite make out what it was.
Then she wondered whether a ship that big would be affected by the EMP. Big ships often had multiple power sources, so if one source was out of commission, others could be used to in a reduced capacity to run the important systems until the other systems were brought back online. She wondered if Metropolis ships were the same, and if the EMP knocked out their engines too. If the Icarus’s engines were fried, but the Metropolis Seven was still going full speed, things could get a little dicey.
“You may be right. What if the EMP only knocked out our engines, and not the engines of the Metropolis Seven? How long would we have to get out of the way?” Rhken asked.
“Not long at all,” Veck replied calmly.
Rhken whipped her head around to look at Veck, who was now standing right beside her.
“You knew,” she said breathlessly.
Veck inclined his head, smiled slightly and said, “So once again girls, get to your tasks quickly and you both might just live through this.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Doctor Harris wheeled Ava into the emergency room on a gurney. Ava’s heart was beating so fast that she could barely discern the individual beats. Hospitals and medical facilities had always creeped her out.
When she was much younger, almost too young to remember all the details, she visited her mother in the hospital after she had come down with a sudden illness. One day her mother had been fine, and the next she had been hooked up to machines which breathed for her, ate for her and kept her heart beating.
It was her mother’s eyes she remembered most. Her mother couldn’t speak to Ava, but her eyes said everything. She knew that she was going to die. She knew that the doctors and nurses were just going through the motions. Making her as comfortable as she could be in her passing. In those last days her mother’s eyes were filled with fear, confusion, and anger.
Ava so desperately wanted to reach out and touch her mother. She wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay, and that the doctors were going to fix her. But she never could. The sickness had taken hold too swiftly. Within four days of being admitted she had faded away.
Ava took some of that anger she saw in her mother’s eyes and held it close to her heart. It had served her well.
In the emergency room on the Metropolis Seven, most of the beds were full. There were muffled moans of discomfort and outright screams of agony coming from behind closed curtains all around her. Ava could not see the patients, but she could see medical waste bins overflowing with bloody bandages and torn clothes. The bright fluorescent lights passed above her, and her breathing became shallow and rapid.
She focused on that anger in her heart. She wasn’t going to die here. There was no fucking way this was how it was going to end for her.
A hand closed around her good hand, which took her by surprise. Jaxon. He squeezed it gently, and she squeezed it back. She desperately wanted to see his face. She didn’t want to admit it, but she had started to feel something towards this time-travelling stranger. Without him, she and Vynce would have surely been killed.
She didn’t know what it was she was feeling.
It couldn’t be love.
She loved her guns, and she loved her Captain in a strangely complicated platonic way. Was it infatuation she was feeling? She wanted to laugh and scold herself for acting like a high school girl with a crush.
Her mind then turned to Vynce. She had feelings for him, but she could never see herself being in a relationship with him. He was fun. He was a distraction, but he’s not really the type of guy she wanted to be tied down to. She didn’t know if she really wanted to be committed to anyone, but Jaxon said that they shared something in the future together. Her future, his past.
He said that he had told her he loved her in his past, but the moment hadn’t yet arrived in her timeline. She wanted to see where that would go, which meant two things.
Firstly, she had to survive this ordeal. Whatever happened to her, she had to survive. How could Jaxon possibly have memories of her after her first memory of him if she didn’t survive the events of when they first met? How had he known that she was going to lose her arm?
Ava’s head started to hurt as she tried to understand how time travel could even be possible, let alone how she could be caught up in some kind of romance with someone at different points on her own timeline.
Secondly, there would be no future for her with Vynce. If there truly was a future with Jaxon, then she couldn’t lead Vynce on when he obviously had feelings for her. It would be better to be a little cruel now to him to save him from further heartache the next time Jaxon came into their lives.
Doctor Harris wheeled Ava into the operating theatre and brought the gurney to rest underneath what seemed to be the brightest light Ava had ever seen.
“We’re here. Now we’re going to need to cut you out of your suit so we can assess the damage to your arm. Do you understand?” Doctor Harris asked.
Ava nodded.
“Help me with her helmet,” Doctor Harris said to Jaxon.
&nbs
p; Jaxon came around behind Ava and gently lifted her head. There was the small hiss of air as the pressurization of the suit dissipated. Ava’s opaque faceplate was lifted away from her head. She tried to look up at Jaxon, but the light was far too bright.
Jaxon put two fingers to his faceplate, then to her forehead in a gesture of affection before splitting the rest of her helmet away from her head. Her head rested gently on the pillow for just a moment before Doctor Harris lifted Ava’s head and slipped a mask over her nose and mouth.
“We’re administering a general anesthetic right now, so you’ll start to feel yourself slip away from us shortly. I want you to understand now that we may have to take your arm.”
Jaxon held the side of her head and stroked her left ear gently. The light had started to get much brighter. The doctor was talking, but Ava couldn’t focus on her. Ava tried to lift her right arm, but it didn’t move. It would never move again.
“Do what you have to do, doc,” Ava said. Her eyelids had become leaden weights. She couldn’t keep them open any longer. She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.
“All right, she’s out cold. You there,” Doctor Harris said and pointed at Vynce, “I need you to go and get me some restraints. Head back out to Emergency and ask for Nurse Jones. Tell him you need a chest and arm restraint, and then come back immediately.”
Vynce wanted to protest. He didn’t want to leave Ava’s side. Why should Jaxon get to stay with her, while he had to go and fetch some medical equipment? It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Vynce left the room without voicing any of his thoughts and tried to track down Nurse Jones.
He didn’t like the way he was feeling. He was angry. It was the kind of directionless frustrated anger that you simply couldn’t allow to bubble over. It wasn’t Ava he was angry at, and it wasn’t even Jaxon although Vynce wished that he could have been angry at him. It would have been so much easier that way.
It should have been him that held Ava’s hand to comfort her. He wanted so desperately to be with her, to hold her, and to tell her that everything was going to be fine. But he knew that Ava had already made her choice.
It wasn’t him.
Vynce found Nurse Jones and grabbed the restraints. He rushed back into the operating theatre and immediately wanted to avert his eyes. Ava lay on the operating table, naked from the waist up. Her smartsuit still covered her from the waist down, and the swollen wreck of her right arm was still covered. Contained, he suddenly realized. Whatever was growing within her suit had been contained within it. And when they finally set it free, there was no telling what they might see.
“The restraints! Quickly!” Doctor Harris said.
Vynce brought them over and attempted to hand them to Doctor Harris.
“Well what are you waiting for? Restrain her! The big one goes around her chest, and the small one goes here, on the infected bicep. Just below the shoulder.”
Jaxon took the small restraint from Vynce and started to wrap it over her bicep, and thread it through the open spaces in the operating table. He tried not to stare at her breasts, but his gaze lingered for longer than he knew was decent. He scolded himself and forced himself to look away. Flashes of memory from their night of drunken passion came thick and fast. She had moved so confidently. So aggressively. Memories from that night played at odds with the woman lying in front of him.
“The chest restraint, now!” Doctor Harris snapped.
“Right, sorry,” Vynce said and fixed the restraint around Ava’s chest. It sat just above her breasts and threaded through the spaces in the operating table under her armpits.
“Are you both staying for this?” Doctor Harris asked.
“Yes,” Vynce said.
Jaxon just nodded.
“I’m going to ask you to make yourselves useful if that’s the case. Have either of you had any previous surgical experience?”
Vynce shook his head slowly.
“I’ve had some surgical training. What do you need me to do?” Jaxon asked.
‘Figures. Of course Wonderboy has had some fucking surgical training,’ Vynce thought to himself.
“Firstly, I’ll need you to cut the rest of her suit from her arm. We need to assess what kind of growth has begun, and how far the infection has spread. You’re in no danger now. The growth shares her circulatory and nervous systems, so it has been anaesthetized as well,” Doctor Harris said as she washed Ava’s shoulder with disinfectant spray.
Jaxon picked up a scalpel from the instrument tray next to Doctor Harris and began to cut the smartsuit from Ava’s arm. He weaved the sharp blade in between the plates of armor and took extra care not to cut too deeply.
“What about her blood? Is there a risk of contamination or infection we should be aware of?” Jaxon asked.
“No. The blood is clean. That’s not how the infection is spread. Once we excise the infected area, the infection won’t reoccur. From what I’ve seen so far, the infection only grows from area at the source of contact. It’s passed through muscle, bone and skin. Not through blood. Once the infected area has been excised and disposed of, she will be fine. It’s probably best for you boys to stay in your suit though, just in case,” Doctor Harris said.
“What about you, Doctor?” Vynce asked.
In response, she partially unbuttoned her top. There was a purple growth that sat just between her breasts. It was covered in a clear plastic adhesive.
“There’s no excising that. It’s already grown too deep into my sternum. It might not look like much from the surface, but it’s got tendrils winding around my ribs and in between all my internal organs. I already know that I won’t leave this ship alive,” Doctor Harris said.
“How are you still alive?” Vynce asked
“Injecting mild sedatives directly into the core of the growth,” she said and pointed to the clear plastic adhesive over the lesion, “It slows it down, but it won’t stop it.”
“Shit, I’m sorry doc.”
She held her hand up in front of her and said, “I’ve heard that so many times in the last seventy-two hours you wouldn’t believe it. It’s getting old. I’ll keep doing what I can until I can’t do it any longer.”
“I hear you. What do you need me to do?” Vynce asked.
“If you’ve got no surgical training, then you’re better off waiting outside until this is done.”
“But... I want to stay with her.”
“You’ll be of more use to her waiting outside. You won’t get in the way, and we won’t get distracted. And if you’re really concerned about her finding out you didn’t stay by her side the entire procedure, I won’t tell if you don’t. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get you,” Vynce said and stormed out of the operating theatre.
Never in his life had he felt more useless and out of place. He could infiltrate an enemy facility effortlessly and silently. He could take out a target from miles away with pinpoint accuracy.
But there was nothing in the universe he could do to help Ava.
He walked back through the emergency room and out into the medical center.
All eyes fell on him.
It was only then that he noticed that most of the people here in the medical center either had limbs missing, or bits wrapped in blood-soaked gauze. Doctor Harris had clearly been busy. The medical facility wouldn’t have looked out of place in a war zone.
An elderly man approached Vynce. He was bald. His left eye was bruised purple and swollen shut. His left arm ended in the middle of his forearm. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Vynce. I’m part of the crew of the Icarus. We responded to a code purple distress call, and we’re here to help get you back to safety.”
“Help? No son, you’re stuck in this tomb with us now,” the man said as he shook his head and walked away.
In the operating theatre, Jaxon began to peel the smartsuit away from Ava’s swollen, infected arm. The on her bicep skin there still looked pin and healthy. From the elbow
down was an entirely different story. Ava’s skin around her elbow had begun to take on a greyish purple hue. It looked bruised and dying.
A sharp unnatural piece of bone jutted out from the back of Ava’s elbow. Beneath that, her arm was unrecognizable. Jaxon carefully cut the rest of the smartsuit from Ava’s forearm and had to stifle his revulsion at what he saw. The inside of her forearm had been split, and hundreds of tiny tooth-like appendages had begun to grow on either side of the gash. It looked like the mouth of some alien predator. Flat scale-like protrusions covered Ava’s arm like the hardened osteoderms that grew on the back of a crocodile. If Jaxon had not been wearing his own suit of armor, his hand would surely have been shredded if he tried to touch the growth.
“Crafty little shits, aren’t they? When they first manifest, they make it so that the host wants to touch them. Can you see those dark spots under the skin there, between the scales?” Doctor Harris asked.
“Yes,” Jaxon said as he noticed darker colored patches underneath the skin.
“Don’t touch them. If the skin there is broken, they release spores in the air to infect even more people. It’s only natural that you would want to help someone who has been struck down with an affliction like this, and that’s what these sonofabitches use to their advantage. If you touch them, you risk infection. If you try to get rid of the growth by surgery, you risk even more spores getting out into the air. The only way to be completely sure is to get rid of the entire infected area.”
“Do you know anything about what they are? Where they came from?” Jaxon asked.
When Jaxon had first been on board the Metropolis Seven, none of his questions had been answered. He had escaped and made it back to New Earth, just as he had been instructed to, but he never heard anything more about the ship or the organisms on board. The ship was still officially listed as missing in his time, twenty years after the fact. He thought that for the first time, he actually had a chance at getting some more answers.
Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition) Page 20