by Tim Kaiver
He managed to lift his arm and crashed cheek into elbow onto floor. A loud crack and the shattering of something hard sounded next to him. As far as he could tell, it wasn't him. But his food was trashed.
What's happening to me? Suddenly his excitement at being an ultra flushed out like a bad virus.
"Emmit?"
He looked up to the concerned expression on his mom's face as she ran toward him.
He wanted to lift a hand to stop her, but found he couldn't. Better to rest his head on his arm. He could sleep here.
Her touch on his elbow helped ground him to a place where everything might not be falling apart.
People stared, backing away. Whispers voiced concern. "Reject" came in through his mental net.
Reject?
His mom looked him in the eye, then moved her hand to his forehead. Her touch jerked off his skin right away. "Oh, honey. You're hot. Someone!" she shouted. "Captain Re!"
"Is he sick?" a woman asked, though at a proximity that suggested self-preservation more than concern.
"I'm coming," Captain Re said, his words jostled by his rapid strides. "What happened?"
A second hand landed on Emmit's back, strong and assuring.
"Emmit. What's wrong?" he asked.
"He's burning up," his mom said.
Emmit wanted to brush them off and find the nearest secluded corner or hallway, but his head was awash with all kinds of strange sensations—tingling, cold, hot, heavy, fluid, sticky, thick.... He was at the mercy of whatever was wrong to run its course, and hopefully leave him alone when it was done.
A wailing noise erupted from the air around him, mechanical and ear piercing like the klaxons at Setuk. What's happening?
Another hand reached under his leg, and combined forces twisted and lifted him toward the ceiling and Cullen's face. Cullen carried him. His eye contact and confidence helped soften the moment for Emmit, then he scanned for a path and carted him off somewhere silent and still before the up and down motion flipped his stomach inside out. Closing his eyes felt like his best and only defense.
***
Ehli tracked the urgency of the people running from the cafeteria and, taking their place, soldiers entering with rifles ready.
"Don't move," shouted one.
Cullen stopped, turning to shield Emmit. He spotted Ehli, then cocked his head backwards. "We're guests of Ocia."
The siren shut down, leaving them in the silence between Cullen and the soldiers. From behind them came the chirps of shoes making sharp steps on tile.
"We know who you are. Please stay right where you are. Doctors are on the way."
"Okay. Good," Cullen said. "But why the weapons? Ocia invited us inside."
Doctors in yellow plastic suits, sealed airtight with see-through visors on their hoods, pushed a stretcher on squeaky wheels into the dining area.
"The cart's for the boy," the soldier said, "but the rest of you will follow him in. We're not taking any chances."
The three doctors pushing the cart parked it behind Cullen and surrounded him. They didn't have the height or girth to evoke such confidence, but that's probably where the soldiers and their guns came in.
"Yeah, Ocia," Cullen said, after tapping his earpiece. "Three doctors are here to take Emmit and the rest of us somewhere." Cullen put his hand out to stop one of the doctors from taking Emmit.
Ehli stood one step behind Cullen. She was unsure if she should take her boy back, but felt Cullen had it covered.
"Okay," Cullen said. "His skin is pretty warm." Cullen moved toward the stretcher and gently lowered Emmit like she had when he was young enough to need naps. Cullen waved to the soldier. "You can put that down. We'll come. Ocia's on his way and will meet us."
The soldier looked down, nodded, and lowered his rifle. He patted his hand down to the rest of his group. They lowered their weapons in turn. The lead soldier, a thin man with a long neck and a no-foolin'-around stare shared one last glance with Cullen, then led his group back to the entrance through which she and the others had entered.
The doctors took over pushing the stretcher, while Ehli jogged to keep up. Emmit squirmed on the bed, groaning.
Adi, Jolnes, and Nassib joined them. "What's wrong with Emmit?" Adi asked Ehli.
"I'm not sure, hon. These doctors will help us find out."
They made it to the intersection and turned left. The soldiers, eleven in total, gave them a wide berth, but kept their attention on them. Cullen turned right, spotted something, and beckoned someone.
Ehli followed his gaze to see Ocia running down the hall toward them. His appearance helped lessen her anxiety, if only a little. She waited for him to catch up, deciding Emmit was in okay hands if Ocia wasn't contesting. She wanted to hear his news. "What's wrong with Emmit?" she asked when he was close enough to hear.
Ocia shrugged. "I don't know. We'll find out, though."
She looked behind him to Cullen, an eyebrow raised.
He held up a finger as though requesting a moment. "What's with the military escort?" he asked Ocia.
"Past mishaps have led to extra security," Ocia said. They all jogged after the stretcher, passing through a double door at the other end of the hall. "They're just doing their jobs."
"They say they know who we are," Cullen said, slowing as Torek reached the door in front of him and held it open, "but they still felt the need to raise their weapons?"
On the other side of the doors was an extension of the clean, sterile environment, but with more doctors, and numbered doors—mostly shut—leading off the hallway at regular intervals. Emmit had been pushed into one on the right.
The lead soldier stood outside that door, watching their approach with his rifle held across his waist, pointed at the floor.
"Sergeant Chino has lost men to some of our past... mishaps." Ocia extended his hand toward their group. "These are our new guests: Captain Re, his co-pilot Torek, Jolnes, Nassib, Adi, and Ehli, mother of our sick young man."
Ehli didn't like the look Chino directed at her. Finally, the wiry soldier broke his gaze and addressed Ocia, pointing to the door across from the one Emmit had entered. "We have beds ready for all of you. Lie or sit, I don't care." The last part was directed, no-foolin', at Cullen.
"What's going on, Ocia?" Cullen asked. "I'm not moving until I know why we'd need beds."
"They just want a blood sample and to check a few vital signs."
"Why?" Cullen asked. "What kind of mishaps have you had?"
"With all the people we've rescued, we've learned to have medical evals as soon as they arrive. I was going to carry them out, but figured there'd be no harm in letting you eat first." Ocia's comment was directed first to Chino, then Ehli, and finally back to Cullen. "I'm sure that whatever’s wrong with Emmit is something simple that some rest and fluids will resolve." He raised a soft hand to Ehli's arm. "They'll figure it out, whatever it is. Would you all ease Sergeant Chino's mind and accept a quick eval to show you've not brought an epidemic onto our soil?"
He said the last part with a grin that tried to make a joke out of the situation, something Ehli was in no mood to laugh over.
"You can take some blood," Ehli said, "but as soon as I'm done, I'm sitting at my son's side."
"Of course." Ocia gently guided her to the open doorway, and the doctors and nurses waiting alongside the beds beyond.
Ehli didn't like their stares. It felt as though they were somehow accusing her of bringing the plague. It made her fear that, somehow, even if she had no idea how, she had.
8
A heavy-set man with faint patches of red hair on his face extended his hand toward the bed, indicating for Cullen. Cullen took a seat on the edge. He dipped his head at Cullen's wristcom. "Take that off, please."
Cullen turned his palm upward and pressed thumb and forefinger into the adjacent edges of the strap around his wrist, unlocking it. The faceplate on the other side of his wrist doused its screenlight as the sensors quit reading his pulse and the
frequencies emitting from the chip implants under his skin. The chips Torek had taken him to the frozen tundra of Yrie to get.
"You're doing a great job, by the way," Torek told his nurse, who looked the right kind of pretty to be on his radar. He winked at Cullen while she rolled her eyes.
Cullen set his wristcom down in his lap and rolled his suit sleeve up past his elbow. The male nurse stepped to Cullen's side and glanced across the aisle at Ehli, a subtle look, but not for the first time. Was it a crush? Ehli was attractive in a catch-you-before-you-know-it kind of way, even if she could use a bath. He watched Patches until the nurse looked up... and as he waited, he wondered if Torek would make a comment about Cullen staring. He didn't, and Patches noticed. The man started a bit, looked down at the blood he took from Cullen's arm, then back up.
"Are you feeling okay?"
Cullen raised a brief nod at Ehli. "You want me to introduce you?" Cullen whispered, his voice not carrying over the chatter Torek made with the pretty nurse he'd been assigned.
"What are you talking about?" Patches took the vial of Cullen's blood and stuck a label on its side. He pressed a cotton wad on Cullen's wound, then took a marker out of his pocket and bit the cap off. "What's your name?"
"Squirt," Torek said, answering for Cullen before he could, "but his friends call him 'You're Excused'."
Adi snorted. The boy's nurse leaned forward to adjust the vial on his arm.
"Thanks, Herp," Cullen told Torek, then grinned as the nurse slowly lifted her hand from Torek's arm. "That's what his friends call him."
Adi made a half honk, half laugh that faded with the lack of understanding showing on his face.
"It means Torek's more famous that he realizes," Cullen told the boy, knowing the added joke would fail to clarify.
"Okay," Adi said, pretending he got it.
"Fart jokes win again, Herp."
"No one's ever called me that," Torek said in a lower tone to his nurse, who'd turned her back on him to write on the vial of blood she'd taken from him.
"That's Herp with a capital H," Cullen said to her.
"Shut up, Squirt."
Patches looked at Cullen as if two more minutes of this would equal ten hours of licking concrete. "What's your name?"
"Shut up," Cullen said, pointing at Torek.
"Come on, you know he was joking," Torek said to the nurse leaving with his vial of blood. "I'm not like that. I'm a romantic."
Four of the other nurses walked out of the room with Ehli—which Patches noticed. Torek's nurse didn't give him a second glance.
"You started it," Cullen said.
"His name's Cullen," Torek told Patches. "He's the best."
Patches wrote the name, eyes on the vial and thick lips a chasm away from lifting a grin. "Thanks so much." His sarcastic smile lifted his cheeks high enough to almost close his eyes, and then he walked toward the door. As he passed Torek, he said, "Later, Herp."
Cullen laughed. "My man, Patches."
"Patches?" Torek said.
Cullen squeezed his two-day scruff on his chin.
"Oh, you're smart," Torek said. "Hey, Blue," he said to the male nurse in blue scrubs finishing up Jolnes's vial of blood. The tall nurse did not react.
"See," Torek said. "Smarts so much it hurts."
"She knows I was kidding," Cullen said. "Don't be such a sore loser."
"I know." Torek slid off the bed and rolled his sleeve down, tossing off the cotton ball with the dab of blood. "So where to now? Think they'll stop me if I walk out?"
Adi watched without blinking. Cullen checked Jolnes and Nassib for a reaction, though neither seemed to have answers.
Until Nassib said, "We're not prisoners, but I doubt the guards are far from that door, open or not."
"So where do you come in?" Cullen asked Nassib. "Have you known Ocia long? Before Setuk?"
Nassib shook his head and rolled down his sleeve over his muscular forearm. "Nope. On Setuk. He gave me a second chance, and offered me more if I helped him while he was there."
"Helped with what?" Torek asked.
Nassib shrugged. "Whatever. Ensuring Ehli and Emmit stayed safe. Making sure his ship was taken care of, keeping his stuff from getting stolen when he was gone, anything he wanted."
"How—?"
"I don't want to talk about it. I may not have been a prisoner, technically, but...." Something caught his attention and he stood, walked toward the door, and cocked his head to see beyond the doorway. "Let's just all be glad we made it out alive." He stopped before reaching the door. "Yes, sir."
Torek and Cullen shared a look, and stood. Cullen hoped it was Ocia speaking to Nassib, and....
Nassib turned and waved them on. "Ocia and Lieutenant Huls would like to see the three of us."
"What am I supposed to do?" Jolnes asked.
"Keep an eye on Adi," Cullen said, and walked into the hall with Torek and Nassib.
They walked around a bend in the hall to the far end of the floor, and entered a boardroom in which they found Ocia and Lieutenant Huls seated at the far end of an oval wooden table. Two tablet computers lay between them, screens lit with text and images Cullen couldn't decipher.
Ocia took a sip from a steaming cup.
Huls extended a hand toward the seats on Cullen's side of the table. Three backpacks stuffed to the zippers stood upright on the table in front of three of the seats. Cullen guessed the packs weighed twenty kilos apiece.
Ocia lowered his cup and swallowed. "Our timetable has jumped forward."
Cullen's complete lack of any Ancient texts alerted him against a sudden departure. He needed a plan to find them, and the best place seemed to be wherever the leader of Saemera was.
"Please." Ocia motioned for them to sit, and they obeyed.
Cullen examined the bags. The shoulder-support packs looked military issue like he'd had in training as a teen, when thirty-two kilometers with an extra twenty-eight kilos meant for grueling days. His back ached just looking at the packed bags.
"Those have the provisions and tools you'll need for our hike," Huls said.
"Where to?" Cullen asked.
"To the original site of your father's colony, Fel Or'an," Ocia answered. "Our monorail was knocked off the magnets by a fallen tree, and the only way to the facility is by foot. We have a crew working to repair the train and tracks, but something has come up that needs our immediate attention. As I said, our timetable has been shortened."
Fel Or'an… The meaning of the name came back to mind. It meant "Found hope" in Veltuk, the language of their first generation—the one given to them by the Ancients. "Originally, it was a city of the Ancients." Ocia tapped a key on his laptop and rotated in his chair as a hologram, a live image of a jungle from a bird's-eye view, rose behind him.
On the map, partially hidden within the thick dark green foliage, was a series of connected circular stone buildings that appeared many stories tall. A flock of birds took wing from one of the sharp spires that topped all the tallest buildings. In the background, where the buildings with partially crumbled stone domes ended, was a village that formed a buffer between the Ancient architecture and a pond dotted with small boats.
Dad must have swallowed his tongue when he found that.
Ocia expanded the view to show the vast jungle surrounding the Ancient city, then scrolled north.
"Seventy kilometers north through the Jehu Jungle is Mera, our main shipping port. Jehu has an unprecedented wealth of medicinal treasures and research specimens, but is difficult to travel through, considering the hunting prowess of some of the specimens and the natural defenses of the species living there."
Ocia tapped a section of the rail that connected to Mera. The screen zoomed in to where trees and train tracks had been swallowed by a mini abyss.
"That happened a month ago," Huls said to Cullen's side of the table, "otherwise we'd have had you pull to Mera, then take that rail south to Fel Or'an. Right now, our contact and his team are cut off and we d
on't have time to rebuild our infrastructure."
"We'll be coming, too," Ocia said, and tapped another key. The hologram switched to a collage of animals and plant life, ranging from a white tiger in the top corner to various smaller creatures and colorful fauna.
As he looked over the collage, a Cipher box framed one of the plants. The furry-stemmed plant with dark blue, sharp ridged leaves separated from the group. Cipher text scrolled out beside it:
*Task to provide nutrition for ultras – Updated.*
Collect waver plant for ultras, to restore their powers.
"A large team will draw too much attention," Ocia continued, since he had no idea the Cipher was communicating with Cullen, "but it will be the best we have."
Cullen pulled his focus from the Cipher text and it disappeared.
"I've updated your tutorials," Huls said, "so you can read up on these during your trip. We're counting on your experience tracking bounties across various terrains."
Cullen nodded. This wasn't the hardest-looking job he'd taken. Well, what they thought was the job.
"We've been cooped up for a week at Larpenter," Torek said, "so the fresh air and life-threatening tigers will be a pleasant distraction."
Huls looked at Torek as if the man had a leak coming from his brain, and he didn't find it funny. "Our mission at Fel Or'an is far more than a distraction."
"You know what I mean," Torek said. "I'm bored. Give us your best shot."
"It's okay," Ocia said to Huls, then directed his attention to Cullen. "The purpose of this meeting, Captain Re, is to give you a picture of what you've walked into."
"I appreciate that. Will our tutorials include any Ancient texts found here?"
Ocia frowned, seeming to not track why he'd ask.
"We're not going to have much time for—"
Ocia put up a hand to stop Huls. "We lost access to those when our transmitters went down."
"I want locations on those, and if you have lexicons or translation guides, I'd love 'em." Cullen typed on his wristcom to open an airsync connection. "I'll take whatever you have." Then to Huls, "Trust me, this is part of my mission, but won't impede on yours."