The Vanished Specialist

by K. Webster

  “It will only feel like a pinch,” I assure her. “I am going to draw some blood so I may test it.”

  She gives me a sleepy nod. Once I have taken the blood and bandaged her up, I drag over the oxygenating machine. This machine delivers air for longer periods than the simple breathing apparatus. Her hands swat at me, but I am firm with her. The rattling in her chest is ever-present and I want to make sure she does not suffocate. I put the mask around her nog and affix it so it stays in place.

  “Rest, lilapetal,” I urge, running my fingers through her silky tresses. “Let me work so I may try and help you.”

  Her eyes shine with thankfulness and then she flutters her lids closed. I get right to work creating different tests from her blood sample so I may look at them under the micro-viewer. I would like to test some of our older medicines that the microbots long took over in hopes to maybe find something we have overlooked. Perhaps the microbot technology is too advanced for the humans’ bodies. As I work, my mind drifts to when I was a young mortling, playing in my father’s office.

  “Sector 1779,” Father says to his apprentice, Lox. “We need to take him to Sector 1779.” Then, Father begins packing his bag with his supplies and work essentials.

  “Sector 1779?” Lox asks.

  I look up from the glass bottles I had been pretending to fill with magical medicines to heal my imaginary ailments. “What is Sector 1779, Father?”

  “Not a place for young mortlings,” he says. He turns to Lox and pulls off his glasses to rub at his eyes. Father works so hard and is always so tired. “Lox, ready the patient. We will take him to Sector 1779. They are the only facility with a surgical bot.”

  “Surgical bots are outdated technology, sir,” Lox argues.

  “Not everything gets better with newer technology,” Father tells him. “The microbots do what they are programmed to do. But if they don’t know what they are supposed to do, then they cannot do it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lox mutters.

  “It means I need to do it myself. I will man the surgical bot and do exploratory surgery. It is the only way.”

  “Sir!” Lox cries out. “Such procedures have been forbidden for years!”

  My father clasps his hand on Lox’s shoulder. “Our patient will die unless we figure out another way. Pack our things and ready the patient. We will leave at nightfall.”

  “Where is Sector 1779?” I ask.

  Father walks over to me and ruffles my hair. “It is about three solars’ worth of a treacherous journey across The Graveyard to the other side of Bleex Mountain. Too far for a youngster like you to travel. Perhaps when you are older, I will take you there to show you the dusty old surgical rooms. It has long been abandoned, but certainly not forgotten.”

  A banging on the door startles me from my work. When I drag my eyes from the micro-viewer and my sample, I see Commander Breccan glaring at me from the other side of the glass.

  Rekk.

  Ignoring him, I tweak the magnifiers by 1000 to study the biological code of her blood cells. I do not find anything right away and my intuition tells me it is not so simple as finding a deformity in her blood cells and reprogramming the microbots. I wanted to rule it out nonetheless.

  With a sigh, I run some more tests on her blood, until I hear an obnoxious clanking. Jerking my attention to the door, I am annoyed to see Oz. If Oz is here, that means Breccan is going to have our faction’s mechanic try to dismantle the door.

  I do not need this distraction.

  “Good solar, Calix,” Uvie chirps, despite my manual override to shut her down. I open my mouth to tell her silent mode again, but Sayer’s familiar voice takes over. “What the rekk are you doing, Calix?”

  “What I have to,” I grumble. “Silent mode.”

  He chuckles, his voice echoing over the speakers. “You can’t silence me, you piece of rogshite.”

  “Then go away. I am working.”

  “Breccan is not happy with you,” Sayer tells me, as if I do not already know this.

  “I am aware,” I snap back. “Silent mode.”

  It goes quiet for a moment, and I let out a breath of relief that maybe I have gotten him to go away for at least the time being.

  Rolling away in my chair, I slide over to my cabinet with my father’s old notes. I pull open a drawer and start thumbing through the files. I hunt for Sector 1779, but nothing is labeled by that name. Closing my eyes, I try to remember any details about the patient that sent him that way. What was his name? What was he ailing from?

  Belin.

  It comes to me just like that and I quickly locate Belin’s file. Once I flip it open, I find mountains of notes. Belin, twenty-two revolutions old, suffered from an adverse reaction to a sticky fernus. The plant, when in contact with, emits a pink powder. If ingested or breathed in, the powder changes its molecular structure, turning into a sticky paste. Galen has managed to create a substance from its powder that we use when patching our equipment, facility windows and cracks, and our minnasuits. He removes the harmful toxins in the powder form by sifting out the tiny pink crystals and then turns it into the paste. But in the past, before modern technology, the sticky fernus was a problem for Belin. My father took him away to Sector 1779, the mort struggling for air and on his deathbed, and when they came back, Belin was a new man.

  A sawing—metal against metal—jerks me from my thoughts. Emery wakes from her nap and stares at me with confusion in her eyes.

  “I need more time,” I grumble, running my fingers through my short, unruly hair and tugging.

  “You don’t have much of it,” Sayer tells me out of thin air, making Emery jolt in surprise.

  “It is just Sayer,” I assure her. “He is trying to…actually, I am unsure what it is he is trying to do aside from annoy me out of my rekking nog.”

  “Good solar, Emery,” Sayer greets her.

  “Eh, hello,” she whispers back.

  “Are you well?” he inquires. “Calix isn’t hurting you?”

  “Mortarekk—”

  She cuts me off as she replies sharply. “I am fine. Leave us be.”

  “Very well,” he says with a sigh and then says no more.

  She reaches out her hand and I abandon my chair to prowl over to her. I kneel beside her and hold her cold, weak hand in mine. Tears well in her pretty blue eyes—tears I want to lick away. Instead, I watch them cascade down her pale cheeks. I pull her palm to my cheek to warm it against my flesh.

  “I don’t want them to get in,” she rasps through her mask.

  I turn and inhale her scent from her hand. “I will do everything in my power to keep them out until I can heal you.”

  More tears roll from her eyes. “This isn’t something that can be healed in a few hours, Calix. I’m not sure it can ever be healed.” She makes a sad, choked sound. “I can feel it. I’m going to die here.”

  A growl rumbles through me and I shake my nog. “You will not die,” I assure her even though my words sound like lies. “I will not let you.”

  Her fingertips flutter against my cheekbone. “It’s not your choice. There was a design—by a higher being—and I’m being erased from it.”

  I do not understand her words, but I feel them in my bones. I do not like them. So final and sure. As though she does not think she belongs breathing the same air as everyone else. As though her time was always limited.

  I’ll give her all the time I can, even if it is the last thing I do.

  I can hear Breccan calling to me over Oz’s work, but I ignore him. My focus is on healing her and keeping her comfortable. Releasing her, I make my way over to the refrigeration unit. Often, when immersed in work, I will stay locked away and never make it to the nutrition bay. I keep some rations here for those times. Pulling out a bowl of dried vin-fruit—a sweet delicacy we were rewarded on one of Galen’s most recent successful harvests—I make my way back over to Emery. The morsels are round and wrinkly. The vin-fruit was fascinating to watch grow in the la
b. Vines overgrew the containers they were planted in and tiny balls filled with orange-colored juice grew all over. They are bitter eaten right from the vine, but when you pluck them and let them dry out, they wrinkle up and become sweet. Galen claims they are packed with important nutrients, but they taste too lovely to be good for you. His bitter green bunches certainly are not tasty and they are incredibly nutritious.

  “Eat,” I instruct, resting the bowl beside Emery. I pull away the oxygen mask to let it hang around her neck and pluck a vin-fruit from the bowl. Obediently, she parts her bluish plump lips and accepts the nutrients I’m offering.

  “I like these,” she says, a smile ghosting her lips. “Great idea for a last meal.”

  I scowl at her. “It is the first of many.”

  Her eyes grow soft at my words. “Thank you for trying.”

  I nod my nog at her and offer her more morsels. She eats them all and then eyes the bowl with longing.

  “I will procure more later. For now, get some rest,” I say as I pull the mask back over her mouth and nose.

  She frowns. “What will you eat?”

  “I am not hungry. My studies await me.”

  I start to pull away, but she takes my hand. Her hand squeezes mine tightly. We share a long stare before I reluctantly pull away from her. The sawing outside the door has intensified. I rise to my feet and stalk over to where they’re working.

  “Go away,” I bark at them.

  Commander bares his double fangs at me. “Open the rekking door, Calix.”

  “Let me work in peace. I am trying to help her,” I bite out.

  With a door between us, it is easy to not cower under his domineering glare. Perhaps the desire to protect my mate overshadows all senses.

  “We can help her together. Locking her away solves nothing,” he says, his voice not as harsh.

  “She is frightened of you all.”

  “That is why she belongs with Aria for the time being.” His eyes drift past me. “Have you…touched her?”

  I think about the way she felt as I brought her pleasure. Her taste. Her sounds. Her scent. “She is safe with me,” I growl, ignoring his question. “Leave us be. She chooses to be with me.”

  His eyes widen slightly before a scowl takes over. “I make those choices,” he grunts. “I am the commander and you need to remember your place. What you are doing is grounds for punishment. There is a reform cell with your name on it if you do not open this door now.”

  “I am sorry,” I say as I retreat from the window. “I cannot obey, Commander. Not when my lilapetal’s life hangs in the balance.”

  I don’t wait for his response and settle back in my chair.

  “I get what you’re trying to do,” Sayer says again, making his irritating presence known. “I respect that. Just know that Aria doesn’t approve, therefore Breccan doesn’t either. It’s in your best interest to open that door.”

  “And it is in your best interest to go the rekk into silent mode.”

  The piece of rogshite laughs at me before going silent once more, giving me a chance to look at my father’s notes.

  The notes are detailed. So many notes. Greedily, I read over every question in the margin. Every calculation. It is evident from the notes and the drawings, that Lox and my father took Belin to Sector 1779 right away. The traveling to Bleex Mountain was treacherous, but they eventually managed to get around it and to the building. It took some searching, but they prepped one of the old surgical rooms and booted up a surgical bot. Father explained how he had to clean and sterilize everything, including the patient. He and Lox wore protective clothing and they used something called Haxinth—a detailed formula he notated—to administer to Belin to make him what Father called a “living corpse.” Belin, under the influence of Haxinth, became unfeeling and unaware of pain. He said it was imperative that Belin not be awake and with his senses during the exploratory surgery.

  Lox stood by Belin while Father sat in the desk with the controls. The surgical bot was mounted on the ceiling and Father controlled it from across the room. His notes said the bot was more precise than a mort’s hand. Together with the surgical bot, Lox and my father cut open the “living corpse” and made incisions in his lungs. With a tool attached to the bot’s “hand,” Father was able to soak up the sticky fern secretions that clung to the mort’s lungs. According to his notes, so much time passed that they were starved and dizzy, yet they kept going until they had cleaned out every bit of it. Father used the machine and some microbots to close the incisions and then the larger one on his chest.

  Belin must have reacted to the Haxinth badly at first, though, because they could not rouse him for many solars. His wound from the surgery healed, but he remained lifeless, although no longer needing respiratory assistance. My father and Lox traded shifts watching over him. Talking to him. Injecting him with nutrients and different medicines in hopes that something would wake him. On the twelfth solar, Belin woke. His voice was scratchy and raw, but he was able to sit up. They had healed him.

  My mind whirs at the possibilities. What if Sector 1779 holds the key to Emery’s health and survival? What if I can heal her like my father healed Belin?

  I am jolted from all thoughts when the door is smashed open and a very angry commander storms in with several equally infuriated morts at his back.

  “I tried to warn you,” Sayer mumbles from above me through the comms system.

  “Get out!” I roar at Breccan, standing from my seat and taking a protective stance in front of Emery.

  Commander shakes his nog in disappointment. “Draven, I want him bound and taken to a reform cell.”

  Before I can fight, Draven pushes past Breccan and pounces on me. The mort is half crazed and stronger than a sabrevipe. He shoves me against some shelves, sending precious instruments crashing to the ground, and jerks my arms behind me. I am cuffed with a zuta-metal clamp and unable to move a muscle.

  “Calix,” Emery whimpers from behind the mask, her blue eyes alight with fear.

  I struggle against Draven’s hold to no avail. “This is not over,” I vow to her. “I will find out how to heal you. Stay alive for me.”

  Breccan tries to comfort her and she scrambles from his touch. It makes me blind with rage, forcing me to charge at my commander to protect her. Using just my shoulder, I shove him away from her and tackle him to the floor. My fangs are bared and gnashing near the vein in his throat, desperate to make purchase. Before I can tear out the pulsating vein with my teeth, I am jerked away. Avrell walks in with a syringe dripping with something.

  “No!”

  His eyes are apologetic as he pushes the needle into my arm. Everything goes black almost instantly. The last thing I see is a flash of yellow hair and wide, panicked blue eyes before I am thrust into nothingness.

  5

  Emery

  Being torn away from Calix is even worse than when I woke up in a strange world surrounded by even stranger beings. If I’d had a doubt about my fate, it’s erased as the commander called Breccan wraps his powerful arms around me to keep me from struggling free. Not that I have the energy to do so.

  “Calm yourself, young one. My apologies for Calix’s behavior. Isolating you like this was reprehensible and he will be dealt with accordingly.” The words are meant to be reassuring, but they merely cause my chest to tighten even more.

  I struggle for breath. When I speak, the words are faint and wheezy. “I asked him to,” I tell him between heaving breaths. “He was helping me. He didn’t do anything wrong. Please don’t hurt him.”

  My vision contracts to a pinpoint and at the center is the stern face of the commander. I don’t know how Aria puts up with him. Unlike Calix, who is always so comforting, calm, and composed, this alien’s expression is uncompromising and stern. My already racing heart thumps double-time in my chest. Standing up to this beast of a man is a testament to how much Calix has already affected me. I’ve never stood up for myself before.

  As my lungs
struggle to work, I nearly laugh at myself. The one time I’ve shown defiance may be my last.

  “We’re not going to hurt him,” comes Aria’s voice from behind me. “If I’ve learned anything from Breccan and my own actions it’s that we can’t let one person’s motives or impulsiveness go unchecked for the sake of the whole faction. Breccan is a fair leader and Calix will be fine. For now, we are taking you to the medical bay where Avrell can make sure you’re safe and healthy.”

  I fight in Breccan’s hold at the thought of what they may do to Calix. “Tell him to put me down,” I demand to Aria as she comes into my line of sight. My face flushes with heat, both because I’m embarrassed my orders come out as a squeak and from anger that my body fails me even now when it’s so important.

  Aria sends me a pitying glance, which only makes me angrier. At least Calix didn’t look at me with that sort of fake sympathy. He is the only one here who cares about me and they took him away and are treating me like less than human.

  “We’re almost there,” Aria says.

  “I said put me down!” The shout burns through my throat and doesn’t help the tightness in my chest. Anxiety can worsen asthma attacks. Getting worked up won’t help anything, but if I’m going to die here in this strange place, I want the one person who cares about me to be with me. Frustrated tears leak from my eyes and I knuckle them away with a bruising swipe.

  “No,” Breccan interrupts Aria’s response. “You are ill and aren’t making any sense. We will get you to Avrell where you will be safe and you’re going to stop this nonsense before you hurt yourself.”

  My voice is little more than a croak now. “You may be the leader here, but I deserve to have a say in how I’m treated. That’s my right. If I want to refuse treatment, you should respect that.”

  Breccan’s gait doesn’t change, nor does his expression. “Each life on Mortuus is precious. I will not risk anyone’s safety, not even yours and not even if it goes against your wishes.”