It took everything I had to push myself to my feet. The dense smoke was everywhere, and it wasn't until I managed to stagger closer that I could see the Ant's body—blown in half. Beneath the ruins of its body a new, secondary crater marred the black sand.
CAV. I hadn't exactly forgotten about him, but my ruptured eardrums and whatever other injuries the explosion had just piled on me had combined to scatter my thoughts in every direction.
Not anymore. I whirled, expecting him to be hidden in the smoke behind me. He wasn't, but I was right about how near he was. CAV-THRI-JARV, the final member of the XAR Hive, the only creature standing between my doom and my glory, was no more than six feet to my left.
He was faster than me by far, and my clumsy retreat was dealt with soundly. The pain that ripped through my legs was so swift and severe that I didn't even realize I was on my knees until I looked down and saw the clawed tips of CAV's legs pinning them to the sand.
The syringe slid into my neck and down my spinal cord without the slightest resistance. A dark amalgam of agony and euphoria swirled around my vertebrae as CAV began to take over.
I couldn't answer. My mind was not entirely my own.
I had nothing. No scheme. No plot or ploy.
The XAR's wavelength drowned Isaac out with ease.
I felt the proboscis envelop my nervous system and expand, pushing up to sip greedily at my memories.
There were a few long moments when our awareness was shared. I could sense him rifling through my thoughts even as I was inadvertently shown images of bioorganic spaceships aggressively overrunning planet after planet. I felt a hundred million eggs make their way through an ovipositor I'd never possessed. I drank alien concepts from a thousand foes like exotic wine, trying to understand their ways through the only form of adaptation I had access to.
CAV cracked open my psyche and saw me for what I truly was, a broken creature on a space station forever away from here—a member of a race that had barely made it to the moon and back. We were outmanned, outgunned, and hopelessly adrift amongst far more advanced races that could overwhelm us at their leisure.
The XAR owned me almost completely now. It understood the malignancy I'd been diagnosed with and knew that, while I may respawn here upon death, my true flesh and blood so many worlds away had an expiry date that was fast approaching.
And in the wake of all this knowledge, CAV made me open my own mouth and forced an awful, chittering laugh from it. He mocked me through my own throat, choosing to delay my assimilation long enough to torture me. The bond between us grew. I knew he was knitting a much sturdier bridge than he otherwise would have, allowing me to understand the limitless dispassion he felt for my fate.
He wanted to break me, once and for all.
Even though he was pawing through my thoughts, he clearly wasn't capable of realizing what the Citadel meant to me. This place was my second chance. Here, I had an opportunity to matter in a way that I'd always wished I could, and nothing he did to me would take that away.
CAV leaned down on me harder, driving the syringe even deeper. I felt him favor his right side, despite he and I having not had a chance to engage in combat. Why was he hurt?
I opened my senses to him even more and was further rewarded. The joints in CAV's legs were in open revolt.
The bridge worked both ways. He was suffering from the wounds I carried.
I tried to say something, but my mouth was now stretched almost wide enough to break my jaw, still making that grating laugh.
I couldn't stand. I couldn't even move my legs.
Whoever that guy was, he was a miracle worker. No sooner had the appeal left my brain than my hands were back under my own power.
I couldn't waste an instant. I reached up with one hand and grabbed a fistful of CAV's hypodermic, yanking it down even deeper into my spine. I fished the firerock from my pocket with my other hand and rammed it down my throat.
The pain became the only thing in the world, and then it became a whole new world all its own. It scorched my neurons clean of him, which gave me just enough control to swallow the rock down and grab the syringe with both hands.
Skill: Stratagem
Sometimes the thing you pull out of your bag of tricks is exactly what the situation requires.
Base Score - 33
New Score - 34
Death roared up from the abyss and took its sweet time obliterating me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"You're back on Save Point Station, Adam," someone said. Her voice was vaguely familiar, though the way it crackled into existence only inches from my ears wasn't. The words echoed, which made them blurry and difficult to concentrate on. "Try and lie still. I've got Dr. Kyun with me. He's already pushing the good stuff through your veins."
"You will feel pain like a blanket," a man said, presumably Kyun himself. "Everywhere at once."
"Is that supposed to be a good thing?" I croaked.
He chuckled. "Much better than the alternative. Especially right now."
I'd been ready to lump him in with all the other lying doctors I'd seen the last few months, but it only took a couple of seconds for me to admit that he hadn't been making up the blanket thing. Thanks to him, every part of me now managed to hold an equal amount of agony.
I'd had more than my share of experience with hardcore painkillers, and whatever he'd given me smeared the source of the anguish across a multitude of receptors instead of blocking it altogether just like they did.
It was far from perfect, but it gave me a little room to think. Enough of my senses had come back online by now that I was finally able to realize I had yet to open my eyes.
When I did, the blackness didn't fade.
I panicked. I tried to sit up, only to discover that my arms and legs were tightly strapped to whatever I was lying on. They'd even thrown restraints around my chest, midsection, hips and knees for good measure.
That sent me off the deep end. My reaction was purely involuntary, a violent thrashing and flailing that probably made me look like a fish flopping on a riverbank, but I didn't care. I wasn't in control of my body, and I didn't at all like the fact that it felt somehow normal to not be the one behind the wheel.
"Let me go," I shouted, my voice incredibly loud as it boomed uncomfortably back at me. "I did what you wanted, now let me go!"
Kyun put a strong reassuring hand on my shoulder. "You cannot yet walk. We need to move you from this place and get you to the ward. Please let—"
"What did you do to my eyes?" I gasped, opening them over and over without any change in my lack of vision. Panic became dread, and I managed to lift my head a couple of inches off whatever I was strapped before something pressed me flat again.
I hadn't felt a hand on my face, but the sensation had been of someone shoving me down. The back of my head struck the surface with a metallic, hollow bang, though I was surprised not to feel any new pain from the collision.
I'm still in the damn helmet. The sound it had just made reverberated through my skull and brought my previous memories roaring back with a vengeance. Save Point Station. The Labyrinth. The way the glass dome they'd screwed over my head had been blacked out before the speakers blared the uneven disharmony at me.
No wonder I couldn't see and my ears were ringing. I was clearly in dire straits, and they hadn't even bothered to let me out of the cage within a cage they'd
put me in.
"Your eyes are undamaged," the woman told me. "Once we get you into the elevator, we'll clear the helmet's glass and you can see for yourself."
I was so dizzy that even the thought of trying to sit up again brought a wave of nausea crashing over me.
I didn't want to stop fighting, but I didn't have the strength to keep battling. "Neve?" I had an image of her floating in front of me, even if it was only in my mind.
"No. It's Evelyn. Do you remember me?"
I felt one corner of my mouth go up in a smirk, but even that hurt. "You saw my ass..."
Kyun laughed again. "For a theoretical physicist, you appear to have quite the bedside manner, Evelyn."
"Not now, Kyun. Adam, once the good doctor has your condition stabilized, I promise I'll give you all the answers I have."
I didn't respond. She was either telling me the truth or she wasn't, and I was too deep in a quagmire of pain and confusion to decipher one from the other anyway.
True consciousness was returning slowly as I became better able to process the sounds around me and match them up to the tactile information my body was starting to receive.
I tried to shut the commotion going on around me out and take stock of my injuries, but it was a difficult thing to do. With so many nerve endings dumping useless, pain-filled information into me at once I didn't have any bandwidth left to try and scan for the worst of my body's grievances.
Finally, I grit my teeth and set the cacophony of scrapes, scratches and scorches to one side, focusing on the injuries that required the most attention.
I was ninety percent sure that both of my ankles were broken. I tried to gingerly flex my feet to be sure and was rewarded with the sharp taste of bile in the back of my throat and a wave of blackness that almost took me with it.
My right knee was torn up, the joint dislocated.
I could feel an uncomfortable pressure on my hip, as if something was no longer aligned the way it should be.
In their haste, the people wheeling me briskly along accidentally banged the bed into something. I think I heard half a dozen people cuss at once as the impact unleashed a cascade of suffering, slamming a red wall of torture around my efforts to logically assess my damage.
My hands folded into fists, though the left one was so pulverized that it felt like a swollen, useless bag of sticks.
I heard beeps. Hospital equipment, no doubt. They had been in the background the whole time, but now they started whooping and hollering in alarm.
Dr. Kyun took charge without hesitation. "Engage the brakes. Very good. You, hand me those scissors. Thank you. Now, everyone who is not me take two steps back and keep your thoughts to yourself."
Someone, presumably the doctor himself, began cutting roughly at the neck of the suit they'd made me wear. I was beginning to float away on a current crafted solely from the drugs they'd already given me. I heard him grunt with the effort of getting through the fabric, and my chemically induced mood made me giggle and scold him. "Careful now, medicine man. They told me this suit was expensive. I'm not supposed to damage it."
He was calm, despite his efforts. "We can replace your garment. We cannot replace you, Adam."
That got me laughing, which got me back to hurting again. On top of everything, a few of my ribs were obviously cracked. "Well, you better start working on that. I'm not long for this world, no matter how good you are at the Humpty Dumpty shit."
"I am aware," he said, finally wrenching away a scrap of fabric with a loud tearing sound. The cold, sweet press of air rushed in at the base of my neck, and I shivered.
"I was hoping the cancer would kill me," I confided, "but you guys seem to have a way faster method in mind..."
When he answered, his voice had the distracted tone that all doctors get when they're measuring out a dose. "Your current affliction is indeed a problem. Your previous physician was overly generous with his prescriptions. Your body has already grown accustomed to some of what we've given you. I'm going to have to step up your pain management, which will include a few things we've developed up here. Sadly, this time I'll have to inject it straight into your spine."
I smiled broadly, even though he couldn't see it. "CAV-THRI-JARV's already beat you to it, a time or two. But, if you don't mind a mosquito's sloppy seconds, do your worst."
"This will hurt. I am sorry."
He didn't give me time to respond before it felt like he pressed the barrel of a gun to the exact same spot the XAR had inserted his dangerous syringe. He triggered whatever was in his hand, and it was far, far worse than what the alien had done to me.
I howled like a banshee and fought at the restraints, throwing all of the strength my battered body could muster at them until whatever he'd injected me with reached unceremoniously down and pulled my plug.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I could probably have woken up when they removed the restraints and dragged me out of the suit, but I didn't bother.
Later, there was a new and more intrusive pain as they pushed in their IVs and set up the catheter. The unwanted intimacy of what they were doing scraped my mind out of that haze and gave me a chance to return to my surroundings but I fought my way back into the bliss of unconsciousness, dragging it around myself like the blanket Kyun had mentioned earlier.
It wasn't until the food started arriving that I found any interest in returning to the land of wakefulness at all, and even then I doubt I would've made the effort had my new doctor not waved a ball of something that smelled incredible under my nose.
"Eat," Kyun said. It was an offer and a command all at once, but I didn't dig my heels in this time. My mouth was watering and my eyes opened up on their own volition, if only to see what marvelous temptation he had in his hand.
"Bulgogi," he told me. "And as much as you need of it."
"Chopsticks."
He produced a pair from the tray set up in front of me but smiled sadly. "Between the cast on your left hand and the wires and tubes hooked up to your right arm, I am hoping you will permit me to feed you."
"I can manage."
"Please."
I shrugged, which was a mistake. The cracked ribs flared up, and the pain made me flinch, which produced a domino effect. Every movement of my body set off another little bomb that I wasn't ready for.
The doctor had good aim and impeccable timing though, and he shoveled a mouthful of the Korean food into my mouth as soon as he had a chance.
As soon as it got there a little of the pain faded into the background. It wasn't gone, but the simple act of tasting, chewing, and swallowing gave me something else to concentrate on.
Kyun didn't miss a beat, and the moment my mouth was empty he practically forced more of the marinated godsend in. "Thirteen days is a long time. Too long. When they asked me if I could modify the suit's delivery system to maintain you for that length of time, I lied and told them I could not. It was only when they seemed hell-bent on putting you in the Labyrinth anyway that I disgraced myself and relented. Forgive me."
I swallowed again. "The suit gives me food and water?"
"In a manner of speaking. It supplies the mandatory caloric intake and rehydrates you through a complex system of reverse osmosis membranes and condensers of my own design."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You seem okay, but I've got a migraine that feels like it could split my head right down the middle any moment. Dumb it down for me, huh?"
He nodded. "Sorry. Yes, the suit gives you food and water."
"Then you've got nothing to be sorry for. If you hadn't changed it, they'd have found someone else who would have. At least you feel bad about it. That's something..."
Kyun shrugged and kept on feeding me. He was happy not to talk, having gotten that burden off his chest. That was fine with me, because I was happy not to have to listen right now. I was too busy taking in my surroundings.
If not for the fact that everything around me looked like the next generation of the equipment I was used to seei
ng, I could have been in any of the dozen or so hospital rooms I'd frequented over the course of my diagnosis. Sure, this one was warmer and better appointed, but there was no disguising the antiseptic scent or the wiped-clean surfaces.
I was wearing what passed for a hospital gown. Someone, probably Kyun himself, had set the top part of my bed at an incline so that I could eat. That let me look down the length of my body at the horror show I'd become.
True to his word, my left hand was shrouded in an air cast. Both of my ankles had been splinted and then treated in a similar fashion. A compression bandage had been wrapped around my damaged knee, and at least a dozen places were strapped, dressed, or otherwise bound in gauze and surgical tape.
"Kyun, you're my doctor, right? So this is the part where you tell me what the fuck happened to me."
"No," he responded reluctantly. "This is the part where you eat this meal and take the time you are given to come back down. Try not to forget that you are not the only person to return. Yes, thirteen days is by far the longest, but we are experienced in caring for the travelers when at last they come back."
"Do the others come back like this?" I asked, glancing down at my numerous injuries.
"No. Never."
I had a sudden urge to knock the plate out of his hand, but wasting good food would be stupid, especially considering how weak I was. "How did they get you here?" I asked him instead.
"Who?"
"All of them. The people that run this place."
"I believe in what we do here, Adam. I hope that you do too, one day soon."
"Is the pay good?"
The bulgogi was gone now, and he set the empty bowl on the tray before placing the chopsticks alongside it. "I do not expect you to understand, Adam."
"Good. When they wanted my help, they kicked down my door. Nobody asked for my cooperation. I was bagged and tagged, and then dumped into a new world without even the pretense of what I was getting into."
Upload Page 17