by Cooke, Chele
Georgianna had once asked why Beck didn’t have his own section cornered off; it was his home after all. Lacie had explained in his stead that the Belsa marshall rarely slept long, and even when he did, he felt guilty keeping space to himself that he didn’t need. Instead, he would sleep on the chairs used as his work space, covered only in a tattered blanket if Lacie saw fit to throw one over him.
“She’s gone already, said she was heading over Medics’ Way,” Beck explained.
Georgianna knew that she should be surprised, but she couldn’t say she was. Lacie spent a lot of her time in Medics’ Way, especially recently. The arrival of a young man with injuries he had suffered from his Adveni owner had sparked interest in the sixteen-year-old.
Glancing past Beck, she looked at the other man in the car. His lips were split into a broad smirk, revealing a line of white yet uneven teeth.
“Alright, George?” he asked.
“Morning, Wrench.”
Wrench shifted the strap of his weapon against his chest and glanced at Beck. Wrench was a large man, easily a head and a half taller than Georgianna and half again as broad. Beneath a tattered shirt, his chest heaved and he let out a slow, resigned breath. He reached up and rubbed his hand over his hair, cut so short against his scalp, that against his dark skin, he almost looked bald in the low light.
“We about done, Marshall?”
Beck nodded.
“Guess I should go make sure Lacie doesn’t kill anyone,” Georgianna teased, stepping back towards the door.
“Go easy on her,” Beck chastised.
She nodded. It was the same advice Beck gave her every time she came to collect Lacie. Each time, she rolled her eyes and told Beck she wouldn’t promise, though he knew from experience that Georgianna was one of the more easy-going people to help Lacie in her hopes of becoming a medic.
She’d already jumped down from the train car, heading out towards Medics’ Way when she heard the crunch of his boots. Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled when she saw Wrench jogging down the line to catch her up.
“Everything alright, Wrench?”
“Oh it’s nothing,” he sighed as he fell into step with her. “Si was meant to take over the shift before sun up. Never showed.”
“Do you know why?”
“Marshall says he ain’t seen him, but thought I’d head over to Medics’ with you and ask Jaid.”
“Well, if anyone would know…” Georgianna left the suggestion hanging in the air. She knew Si’s wife Jaid much better than she knew Si himself. He did sometimes stop by Medics’ Way when he was off duty. He was always kind to her, Georgianna liked him.
“You coming from Zanetti’s?”
“Compound.”
Wrench wrinkled his bulbous nose into a grimace at the mention of the compound, but it was quickly replaced with a smirk.
“He was pretty sour when he got called in to take over the shift down Guard’s Sight,” he answered. “Figured you may have been keeping him up last night.”
“He been bragging?” she asked, shaking her head.
Wrench cocked his head to the side.
“Were you expecting him to keep your virtue intact?”
It was clear from his tone that he already knew that the answer was no. Keiran Zanetti may not have been the type to go shouting his business around the tunnels. However, that didn’t mean he hid things, especially when it came to women, and especially not from Wrench. She knew the two had grown up together within the Nerrin tribe and their friendship remained strong, even after Keiran had been promoted to sergeant above Wrench.
When she didn’t answer, they fell into a comfortable silence, their footsteps keeping them company on the walk to Medics’ Way. She felt bad for the guys on guard duty. It couldn’t be easy, sitting on your own in a tunnel for hours on end, with nothing for company except the darkness and the familiar rest of a weapon on your back. The guards were necessary, she knew that. They couldn’t leave the entrances from the main tunnels unguarded, not when sweeps of the main tunnels by the Adveni were so regular.
The entrances into the deeper tunnels were hard to find from the outer passageways, even when people knew where they were. Branching from the walls of the main lines, yet hidden by bricks built up to look like any other section of wall, the smaller tunnels had remained remarkably private. However, sometimes people stumbled in and needed to be turned back. It was, admittedly, only luck that the people finding their way in by accident had never been Adveni. The guards would also help if the unthinkable did happen. Georgianna knew how far an echo could carry within the tunnels; the sound of gunfire would alert those down the line to the problem.
Luckily, apart from Si’s mysterious absence, the day seemed calm in the Belsa tunnels. Beck probably would have said something if someone had been taken down to the Way for treatment. Though, she supposed she wouldn’t really know the state of Medics’ Way until she got there.
“It sure is odd,” Wrench mused. “Si not showing up like that. Not like him at all.”
Georgianna shook her head. She’d been working for the Belsa long enough to know that they rarely missed shifts, and Si was no exception.
“No, it’s not.”
***
Medics’ Way, while still part of Belsa territory, was almost counted as a separate area of the tunnels. To get there from the main Belsa encampment involved going through another check point and into a less protected region. Not many civilians dared go into Belsa territory—not if they didn’t have to, so the Way had become a neutral area to allow them safe passage for treatment if they couldn’t find a medic out in the camps. Out of all the tunnels, Georgianna easily spent the most time there.
A wide tunnel running north-west to south-east, Medics’ Way used to hold one of the busier paths underneath the city. The actual section used for treatment was only short—a section of tunnel that had been blocked off by a cave-in a couple of years before, burying three tunnel cars.
The tunnel cars, now in various states of dilapidation since the arrival of the Adveni, had previously been used to ferry people and trade through the larger underground tunnels in the city. Pulled by horses, the large metal shells stood on thick wheels that rolled them along the line. When her father’s work had been more productive, he had used the tunnel cars to move larger furniture from one place to another. Lyle Lennox didn’t make many larger pieces for trade anymore, his body not being what it used to, but Georgianna remembered sitting just inside the sliding door, watching the people pass her by as her father led the horses along.
Since the arrival of the Adveni, all the cars had fallen into disuse and disrepair as a mode of transportation. With the air attacks and fighting above ground, many Veniche people had needed somewhere to hide from the onslaught of the conquering Adveni. They had taken to the tunnels, and the cars had been pulled into disused areas, to be used as shelter and storage. Those rebelling against the Adveni had quickly been referred to as “Belsa”, which Georgianna understood to be an Adtvenis word for “rat”. Despite the insult the Adveni placed upon the word, the rebels stood behind it, and within the space of a single heat, Belsa had been scrawled all over the city as a warning that the Veniche would continue to fight against the invasion.
Sticking her head in through the doorway of the first car, but not climbing up, Georgianna waved to Jaid, one of the other medics, noting that her cropped auburn hair was sticking up in every direction above Jaid’s thin, pointed face. As usual when working on the Way, Jaid had set herself up in the car they used for simple injuries, where people could be treated before being sent home. She could always tell how busy Jaid had been during a shift by how spiky her hair had become. The older woman had a habit of running her fingers through it and twisting short locks around her fingers while she thought. Her moss-green smock was stained and two buttons at the hip had come undone. Apparently, it had been an incredibly busy shift. Jumping up from her position on the floor, Jaid came towards them and thrust out a sheaf o
f papers.
“You on for a while, Georgianna?”
“Yeah, planned to be here all day, but I got a call and…”
“It’s alright,” Jaid interrupted. “But I’ve got to head out for a few hours. Si’s not come home.”
She squeezed Georgianna’s shoulder briefly and disappeared back into the car.
Georgianna glanced at Wrench, raising an eyebrow.
“So you’ve not seen him?” he asked, stepping forward to look into the car.
Jaid reappeared at the doorway, tugging a jacket onto her shoulders.
“You’ve not seen him either?”
Wrench frowned and shook his head.
“He didn’t show up for guard’s.”
Jaid looked between the two of them as she chewed on her bottom lip. Reaching up, Wrench held his hand out for Jaid to grasp as she jumped down from the car.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’m sure it’s nothing. He probably just forgot, you know how guard shifts are being changed all the time.”
“Si doesn’t forget things like that.”
“Not usually, but if you’re really worried, I’ll help you look.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Come on, let’s go.”
The sigh that slipped past Jaid’s lips was not believable as relief, not while her eyes darted from Georgianna to Wrench and back again. Georgianna wasn’t sure that she trusted the casual calm in Wrench’s expression either, though he was far more convincing than Jaid.
“Good luck,” she murmured.
She watched as Wrench and Jaid set off down the line, two hurried steps of Jaid’s to match every one of Wrench’s long strides. Shaking her head, she turned and ambled down the Way towards the last car where she suspected she would find Lacie Cormack.
4 Down the Way
Georgianna grasped the side of the open door and hauled herself up into the car at the end of Medic’s Way. Inside, patients who needed more permanent care could get more peace than the comings and goings of the other cars. The lamps were turned low, and it took her a moment to locate the slim girl kneeling on the floor at the end of the car. She was bent over an unconscious man on a bed.
Georgianna held the papers under a nearby lamp and flipped through to the man’s notes, reading them quickly. Out of all the protocols required on Medics’ Way, the notes were the one Georgianna found hardest to complete. She was great at working in an emergency and even figuring out what to do if they didn’t have the correct supplies, but by the time she remembered to make her notes for the next medic on shift, she’d usually forgotten what she’d done throughout the day. Luckily, where she failed, Lacie was brilliant at keeping track. Maybe it was a natural attention to detail, or perhaps an effect of living with Beck, who had notes everywhere. Either way, the girl was a wonder at helping her keep everything up to date.
“He spiked another fever,” Lacie muttered, her wide blue eyes fixed on Georgianna through the murk of the low lamplight. “Miss Oaks gave him something to help him sleep.”
Georgianna lifted her head, glancing away from the notes for a second. Lacie’s round face gazed fretfully at her, her long, red hair pulled back and braided down between her tiny shoulders. The girl was much smaller than most of her age, an almost boyish frame that had yet to blossom fully with the flowers of her gender.
“How does he feel now?”
For a moment, Lacie hesitated. Her hand hovered above his forehead for a few seconds before she pushed back a fringe of unkept curls and placed the back against his pale skin. Georgianna found it sweet how Lacie could now dress wounds with relative ease yet still felt nervous checking a temperature.
“A bit better,” she murmured, looking to Georgianna for confirmation.
She made her way over and, careful not to place her hand down too quickly and risk waking him, she pressed her skin against his own.
“Yeah, feels like it’s going down,” she agreed.
She glanced at the wound Lacie was redressing, a nsiloq mark half uncovered, red and sore. Georgianna frowned. She felt a twinge of sadness every time she saw the young man, Jacob. From what she knew, Jacob had been sold as a drysta, a slave to an Adveni, not long after the Adveni arrival, and as a young teenager had been submitted to systematic abuse. She had seen a lot of torture over the years, she had healed a lot of different wounds, but this young man was different.
Jacob Stone was barely twenty-one years old, and yet he’d been beaten, whipped, and given five different nsiloq marks, a pattern drawn into the flesh by a laser of Adveni design. Every Adveni had a nsiloq, a test to prove themselves ready for adulthood. Georgianna knew it hurt more than anything, and she couldn’t imagine how the young man had endured five before he snapped and made a run for his freedom.
It wasn’t common for Veniche to be given a mark, not that Georgianna had seen. She’d heard stories whispered amongst the Belsa that the Adveni sometimes used the nsiloq to torture on an invisible setting. It caused the same pain and brought the same screamed confessions, but left no trace of ever being used.
That was not the case with Jacob. Every design stood bright on his flesh. Swerving lines of blue over his calf, a geometric pattern in red on the front of his shoulder, circles and spikes in red and blue on his torso, stretched over his ribs. The red designs reminded her of burned flesh when it scarred. The blue marks, on the other hand, shone in his skin. The nsiloq laser didn’t put ink into the skin the way Veniche marks did. It was molecular, or so she had been told during one of her shifts behind the bar at Crisco, where she worked, by a particularly drunk Adveni. The laser targeted the cells and changed their design, creating a change of colour in the skin. She hadn’t really understood, not having had the technology to study the building blocks of the body, but she couldn’t deny that the effect was beautiful. Well, it was beautiful when it wasn’t forced on a young drysta because his owner wanted to hear him scream.
Reaching out, she kept her hand against Lacie’s, stopping the girl from re-bandaging the most recent mark. Against his almost ghost-like flesh, the design was an angry, dark red, the lowest setting on the nsiloq laser. The design was shaky, unlike the smooth lines of an Adveni nsiloq, and it was clear that Jacob had been held down while it was administered, probably writhing and begging to be released. Georgianna frowned and leaned closer. It wasn’t bleeding; the laser didn’t produce blood, but it was certainly causing the young man a lot of pain, even weeks after its application.
“Leave it open a while,” she instructed.
“But, but it hurts him!” Lacie complained, looking desperately up at the older woman. Georgianna released Lacie’s hand and rubbed her fingers into her eyes.
She wanted to be kind to Jacob and leave Lacie to wrap the wound, she wanted to be nice to all the patients that came through the Way, but she knew that even if she had to be the bad guy, it would help them more in the end.
“Just a short while, I promise.”
Lacie frowned, looking between Georgianna and the unconscious Jacob before nodding and undoing the bandage she’d been wrapping over the mark.
Checking behind her to make sure there wasn’t a patient in the bed, Georgianna slid down onto it, dumping her bag next to her and slipping the strap from her shoulder. Lacie had been with her, training to be a medic, for almost a year. Most Veniche started training for their profession by their twelfth birthday, but Lacie’s capture by the Adveni and her years spent as a drysta meant that, by Veniche traditions, she was a long way behind.
Beck Casey, the leader and marshall of the Belsa, had found Lacie, fourteen at the time, beaten half to death and starving in a back alley of the Oprust district. It had taken quite a bit of coercion, Georgianna had heard, getting Lacie to trust him enough to carry her down to the Way for treatment. Since that day he’d treated the girl like she was his own, and from what Georgianna saw between them, Lacie loved him as a father in return.
While the going had been tough in the beginning, earning the tr
ust of a skittish young woman, she could not have asked for a more attentive student. Then again, it wasn’t as if she had taken a student before. She didn’t know exactly how well Lacie should be doing at this point. She’d been only sixteen when the Adveni invaded, only recently accepted as an adult within the Kahle herself, not in the position to take on a new trainee. Now, at twenty-six, Georgianna had yet to take on a new medic. She didn’t feel safe bringing a young student down to the Belsa territory with her, and she couldn’t have expected the student’s parents to be okay with her affiliations: not until Beck had asked her to help Lacie in exchange for a few coins a week.
They managed about twenty minutes before Lacie broke down and begged that they dress Jacob’s wound. Georgianna, unable to watch the forlorn look on the girl’s innocent face any longer, nodded and allowed Lacie to redress the nsiloq mark. She didn’t know what dressing or keeping it open would do, it wasn’t often that she treated nsiloq marks. The Adveni had their own medics, their own systems, not to mention that they’d been dealing with the marks for decades, maybe even longer.
When the Adveni had arrived on Os-Veruh, in their big, impressive ships and with their fancy technology, it had been like something out of the stories her father used to tell her as a child. Almost everyone knew the story of the meteor and the floating ships, how they left before Os-Veruh’s seasons changed. As her father also told stories about talking coyotes and bears, however, she had begun to wonder about the truth in the history as it had been described to her. Her father said that the story had been passed from one generation to the next for over five hundred years, but even as a child Georgianna had known far too much about how a story changed with each telling.
It had been just after her sixteenth birthday when they arrived. Scouts from within the Kahle tribe had travelled ahead to check the trail as they did every season, and returned with news that there were large shining clouds above Adlai. The tribe had travelled onward, wanting to see the phenomenon. When they arrived, it had seemed like all of her father’s stories had come true. The Adveni, as they called themselves, used to call Os-Veruh home. Having found another planet to inhabit after leaving in one of the ships, they had flourished, but the desire to return to their home planet had always been great. Scouts had been sent, and upon seeing that their home world remained, they had come back, and they planned to stay.