by Luna, David
Neil’s internal debate suddenly subsides as three men, led by a Hustler, block their path.
“Where’d you find this one?” the Hustler says as he inspects Inna’s figure. “We could make good use of her,” he adds creepily.
“We’re here to see Sage,” Neil says as he steps in front of Inna and puffs out his chest.
“I give you a trade, ya?” the Hustler continues as his men surround Inna. She swats them away.
Just then Neil grabs Hustler by the throat. “We don’t have time for distractions from some lowlife thugs,” he threatens.
Immediately the other men each flip open a polished switchblade, at the ready to defend their leader. Hustler stares at Neil eye-to-eye, unfazed. “No girl? No Sage,” he taunts.
Neil notices the moonlight glistening off each of the sharp switchblades. Weighing his options and how this would most likely play out, he releases the man. What Neil isn’t aware of is that another Large Man has been watching him and Inna from afar ever since they entered the bazaar, curious as to what these strangers are doing arriving while everyone else is leaving. As Neil grabs Inna’s arm and pulls her away from the Hustler and his cronies, they immediately collide directly into the Large Man’s stomach.
“Come with me,” the Large Man orders. He is so large and so tall that Neil’s eyes don’t even reach his shoulders.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“Man. Woman. Here together. Means only one thing,” the Large Man explains. “Well?”
“You’ll take us to her?” Inna asks.
The Large Man doesn’t confirm nor deny. He merely turns around and waddles further down the stone corridor. He leads Neil and Inna towards a back corner, then once there, directs them through a beaded entrance to a shop.
Smoke from burning incense fill the air with checkered smoke, one of the few remaining items left unboxed inside the shop as the rest is already packed up. The room is part of an old post office lobby before the flood ate away at the building’s foundation. Sitting on a pillow in the center of the room and dressed in a colorful garment similar to some of those sold outside in the market corridor is Sage, a mysterious and exotic woman in her thirties. The beads in her hair match the beads dangling from the front entrance. She runs her fingers through a bowl of clear water in a slow methodical rhythm until the Large Man whispers to her. Her eyes remain closed and continue to feel the water as the Large Man then moves to load the last boxes onto a cart outside the beaded door.
“Sage?” Neil asks, breaking the spiritual silence.
“Each drop holds a piece of our ancestors, a piece of those who have gone before us,” Sage says cryptically as water drips from her fingers. “We are all part of nature’s circle. Those who sacrifice themselves preserve this for those who live.” She scoops another handful.
Neil and Inna watch the clear water trickle into the bowl. “We need papers,” he says, hesitating before adding to the request, “and a transfusion. For both of us.”
Sage pauses, then looks to Neil and Inna for the first time. “A death dealer now running from death. Who else knows you are here, Neil Vaughn?”
“You know who I am?”
“Sage would not have survived this long if she didn’t know her enemies,” Sage replies in third person, only further adding to the mystical aura in the air.
“We’re not your enemies,” Inna chimes in. “You have to help us.”
“There’s no time.” Sage runs her hands through the water and gazes at the flawless drops. “Much like theirs, our stay here has come to an end. We reconvene in a few weeks. If the stars allow it, come find us then.”
Inna kneels in front of Sage. “Please…,” she says, her eyes begging.
Sage takes Inna’s hands and dips them into the bowl. “Can you see them? Can you feel them?” Sage asks. “Why should I help you when no one helped them?”
“A lot of things have happened that we can’t control,” Neil jumps in. “But we’re in love. And one way or another we’re getting outside that Wall.”
Inna rises and latches onto Neil’s arm, two souls with nothing to lose. Sage nods after assessing the situation.
“It comes with great risk, a transfusion,” she warns. “It is only for the desperate. Desperation, however, often renders risk invisible. Do you find this to be true?”
“We’ll do what we must,” Neil replies without hesitation.
“Then you must hurry.” Sage motions to the dust outlines on the floor where boxes once were, everything now all packed up. “The doctor leaves at dawn.”
Further down three more stone corridors and around a bend, beyond the abandoned classrooms and past the old library with the cracked bell still affixed atop, Neil and Inna weave through the back end of the black market where the sound of market activity fades in the distance.
Their eyes scour the front façades of the passing structures as they search for the discreet indicator Sage whispered for them to seek out, except the water-damaged buildings all look similarly abandoned.
Finally, they spot a torn Agency flag pinned above an old wooden door, the white “C” surrounded by faded black. Neil and Inna exchange glances. This must be it. They slip inside, leading them to a dingy, grungy workshop where a rusted medical chair with dried blood staining the floor is prominently located in the center of the room. Webs of clear tubing dangle above, connected to a mechanical pump, while electrical sensors are draped from a display screen. It’s eerie, unsanitary, torturous.
“I can’t do this,” Inna cowers.
“We’re in the system. He won’t stop,” Neil reminds her.
She looks up and nods, finding the resolve to go on.
Just then a man in his forties, dressed in an impeccably clean suit, prim and proper in contrast to his environment, rises from a wooden table littered with needles and other medical utensils.
“Dr. Campbell?” Neil asks.
Dr. Campbell throws on an apron before extending his hand. “We’ll get started right away.”
Within a few minutes, Inna finds herself strapped in the crusted medical chair. She squeezes Neil’s hand to help mask her fear.
“I could go first?” Neil offers.
She shakes her head no. “Neil, if anything should happen…,” she gulps.
“Don’t think like that.”
“I’m glad you came into my life,” she says. Neil kisses her forehead.
Dr. Campbell sifts through a large storage freezer against the wall. He loads pint-sized bags of blood into a bucket before sliding it over.
“Who is that?” Inna asks.
“Her name was Sophie Garrett,” Dr. Campbell responds. “Young. Like you.”
“How’d you get it?”
“Some sell their lives to the Agency. Others donate them here so people like you have a second chance,” Dr. Campbell explains. “Let’s begin.”
Dr. Campbell pops open Inna’s shirt, pausing to look longer than he should, before hooking up the sensors to Inna’s arm and chest. As her vitals spring to life on the display screen, he then injects her with a needle, and her eyes flutter as she falls unconscious. Her vitals remain stable until he inserts a three-pronged needle device connected to three tubes into her chest, aimed at her heart. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Her vitals fluctuate as the needles penetrate her skin.
Turning on the pump, blood from Inna’s body trickles out into a collection bag, while simultaneously Sophie’s blood from the freezer bag seeps into her body. A saline solution pumps through the third tube on the three-pronged device.
As pressure builds inside the lines, blood leaks from a loose connection where the tubes attach. Dr. Campbell tightens a clamp with a rusty wrench to secure the loose tubing, then kicks at the motor powering the pump to reduce its excessive vibrations. Both the process and troubleshooting tactics are far from the sterile operations most patients are accustomed to.
Neil remains by Inna’s side and continues t
o hold her hand, her unconscious grip lessening. After a short while, SWOOP SWOOP SWOOP, the pump suddenly runs dry as the supply bag becomes empty. Dr. Campbell swaps it out with a new one, then loads the bucket with a fresh bag from the freezer.
With the procedure seemingly stabilized, Dr. Campbell moves to the foot of the medical chair and admires the web of tubes protruding from Inna’s chest. There is a strange glimmer of excitement in his eyes, the grim practice his natural fetish. It wouldn’t be surprising to find a smile behind his mask, decorated with spats of blood.
“Is it permanent?” Neil asks.
“No, her body will produce new red blood cells and her old self will take over. Be sure to pass through any sort of check as quickly as possible.”
Neil looks to the display monitor as Inna’s heart rate slows.
“You might want to take a walk,” Dr. Campbell suggests. “This’ll be awhile.”
Neil passes the last remaining squatters hidden in the shadows while his mind remains on Inna, hoping she’ll be all right, hoping she’ll pull through. He’s seen a lot of underground activity during his tenure as a Collector, but Dr. Campbell’s workshop might be the strangest and most unsettling. He doesn’t plan on going too far from Inna while she’s unconscious. He just decided to take the doctor’s suggestion and take a walk in order to get fresh air and wash out the smell of dried blood from his nostrils.
Just then, as he passes an archway leading to the old town square, a group of shadowy mounds on the cobblestone floor catch his attention. Moving closer, Neil sees that these shadowy mounds are actually people on their knees in the middle of a silent memorial service. Some mourners have candles lit beside them, while others spread out Agency black flags with pictures of their loved ones. They all face the same direction and pray to the remains of the Strasburg Dam, illuminated by moonlight on the edge of the mountain looming directly north of the Sector.
Neil is compelled to join them, though he isn’t exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s guilt. Or perhaps it’s pure compassion. Regardless, Neil crouches and bows forward, face to the ground, when suddenly Sage kneels beside him.
“Disheartening, is it not? So many strangers all connected by loss,” Sage comments.
“We were told this was abandoned after the dam broke,” Neil says. “Do they live here?”
“Some, but most do not. They travel with us. Invisible inhabitants to the city,” Sage explains. “When we’re here we like to pay our respects. The dam changed everything.”
“Do they think they can hide forever?” Neil asks. “You’re bound to get caught.”
“Do you think you can run forever?” Sage counters. “Everyone’s time comes to an end.”
Neil and Sage rest upright on their knees. Sage completes her ritual with a foreign hand gesture, then turns to Neil. “Do you pray for that girl?”
Neil nods. Sage reaches into her pocket and hands him two fake ID Cards – one for SOPHIE GARRETT and the second for JASPER QUINN, along with two forged travel visas.
“Jasper Quinn?” Neil reads.
“Pray for him too since it is his blood you are taking.”
“What about you? What do you pray for?”
“I made a deal with the devil,” Sage confesses.
Neil glances out to the service. “I can’t help feeling that if this were another life, we could’ve had it all. I know running won’t fix our problems, but it’s the only way we can be free.”
“Escaping the city is not the only way,” Sage counters. “Remember, those that we pray for are already free.”
“That may be what it comes down to, and it might be what I deserve, but I’m still going to try. I can only hope,” Neil says.
Silence falls, leaving only murmured prayers from the memorial.
“I don’t take sides, Neil. I do business with everyone. But there’s something I must tell you.”
Simultaneously out of the corner of his eye, Neil spots a hulking figure slip across the square. He recognizes that it’s Slayter, disappearing into the shadows as a pair of gypsies flee his path.
“It is you I pray for,” Sage continues, “for as I said, I made a deal with the devil long ago.” Her words confirm it – Slayter is the reason the market has survived for so long. “All of us do what we must to survive,” she says. “You know this most of all. I’m sorry.”
Neil’s eyes go wide as only one thought crosses his mind, not Sage’s betrayal nor Slayter’s Black Market transgressions, but rather, “Inna!”
He bolts to his feet and races back to Dr. Campbell’s workshop, his muscles pumping harder than ever to get there before Slayter unleashes his wrath.
******
Don’t Stray
I saw a stray dog today. It’s been three months since the last time I’ve seen one, but sadly the same thing happened...a Security Enforcement Officer shot it…
If only there were more water, I hear dogs make good friends. Doesn’t the city need more friends?
-Quado
23
The table Dr. Campbell eats at is covered in black stains. The dried blood caked onto the surface doesn’t seem to bother his meal, nor does the slurping suction sounds of Inna’s blood being pumped from her body. He is a man who enjoys his work, no matter how torturous, but that enjoyment is interrupted when suddenly, ZOOK ZOOK ZOOK, the pump spins dry as one of the tubing ruptures. The doctor quickly yet skillfully grabs a new peristaltic tube from a toolbox, then switches the pump off and removes the ruptured tubing. Blood spews out from built up pressure just as simultaneously, BEEP BEEP BEEP, Inna’s vitals plummet.
Moving faster, Dr. Campbell limits the leaking while he installs the new tubing, soon flipping the pump back on. It whirs to life and continues where the transfusion left off, though Inna’s vitals remain low.
Dr. Campbell moves to Inna’s side and hovers over her. He brushes the damp hair from her eyes, noticing beads of sweat forming across her brow and the color beginning to escape her skin. The procedure naturally takes a toll on the body, and the burst tubing and resulting loss of blood only adds to the physical strain. Dr. Campbell leans in to smell the scent of Inna’s hair while caressing her cheek with the back of his hand, relishing in the moment to admire his patient near death, inhaling a deep long breath.
“Get her up!” Neil shouts as he suddenly barges in. “Quick, wake her up.”
“What’s the matter?” Dr. Campbell asks as he wipes Inna’s sweat from his hands on his apron.
Neil shakes Inna’s body. “Inna, wake up.”
“The process isn’t done,” the doctor protests. “I can’t predict the reading of her blood.”
“Just unplug her.”
Dr. Campbell shuts off the pump mid-transfer, then disconnects the three-pronged device from Inna’s chest. Her vitals spike as blood leaks from the disconnected tubes. “I don’t understand your rush,” Dr. Campbell exclaims.
Neil buttons up Inna’s shirt while Dr. Campbell injects her with a solution. Within moments her eyes open, disoriented.
“Inna,” Neil shouts. “Inna, can you hear me?”
“Normal recovery time is at least a couple hours, preferably a day. It’s dangerous if she exerts herself,” Dr. Campbell warns. “She could faint. Or worse...”
Suddenly, WHAM! Slayter kicks down the wooden door and storms in.
“Who are you?” Dr. Campbell asks as he whips around, seeing Slayter gripping the tattered black flag.
Neil swings Inna’s legs over the edge of the medical chair. “We gotta go,” he tells her.
“Neil?” she responds groggily.
He wraps her arm over his shoulder and carries her towards a back door at the rear of the shop. She sweats more than ever.
Slayter continues on his rampage. He smashes Dr. Campbell into the medical chair with his shock baton, then stabs him in the neck with the three-pronged needle device. “You know how I feel about traitors, Neil,” he taunts as he tosses the bla
ck flag over the doctor and switches on the transfer pump as he lumbers by. Dr. Campbell gurgles and gasps for air as the device siphons his blood from his neck while pumping in the remainder of Sophie’s blood from the storage bag until it runs dry.
Neil latches the door shut in the back room of the workshop, then tips over a tool chest to further barricade it closed.
He helps Inna along into what appears to be an old auto repair shop where more toolboxes and workstations line the shop walls, while pumps, generators, and other half-assembled machines crowd the remainder of the space.
Scouring for anything of use, a ray of moonlight illuminates a canvas covering a bulky object in the center of the shop. Neil yanks it off to reveal a motorbike. He leans Inna on its seat to rest.
“I don’t feel right,” she says as she keels over coughing up blood.