“Let me out of this thing.” He sloshed around again. "Come on." His arm, red and raw like the rest of him, banged on the edge before Cordelia could move it out of the way. “Jesus,” he shrieked.
“Kieran, stop.” Hoepe came and pressed something into his neck. “You need to rest. You’re seriously injured.”
“I haven’t been doing anything but resting. I want to help!”
The drug hit him and Kieran stumbled back, half sitting against the wall of the tank.
“Sorry,” Hoepe said.
He blinked heavily.
Thomas came and patted him on the head — the only part of him still sticking out from the goop. “You’re worse than Sarrin.”
He caught Rami staring at him again.
“We’ll call you if we need anything,” said Thomas. “We’re going to go in fast and hard and get them out. Shouldn’t be more than an hour”
Kieran nodded. And then Cordelia wrapped him completely in the blue gel, drowning him as he slipped under the heavy sedative.
* * *
Hoepe fiddled with a set of controls, adjusting a view screen he knew nothing about.
“What are you thinking about, Brother?” Leove asked him.
Hoepe grunted. “Just preparing.”
Leove’s facial expression — easy to read because it was the same as his own — belied that he didn’t believe him.
“He’s worried about Kieran,” whispered Cordelia.
“Ah. Because he’s backsliding,” Leove surmised. “He has been making incredible progress. Far beyond what we ever anticipated for a non-Augment. We can’t be disappointed if his healing has some ups and downs.”
“I know that,” Hoepe nodded. After all, they had been trained the same way. Almost. Except Hoepe had been alone, his memory somehow wiped of anything before. Leove had remembered. He had been able to see and know their parents up until they too died from the Red Fever. He had even known Hoepe existed, while Hoepe stumbled around looking for some part of him that he didn't even know was missing.
They were identical. But they weren’t the same at all.
Leove sighed. “I know you do.”
“What does that mean?” he snapped, regretting it instantly.
“It means I know you know healing is never an exact process. I am concerned about Kieran’s wellbeing too, but I think this is can’t be considered unexpected. Especially now that Sarrin’s gone to the planet.”
“Sarrin? What does she have to do with it?”
Leove licked his lips, his face serious, like he was deciding how to broach a complicated subject.
The comm system pinged. “We’re on the surface,” came Thomas’ voice. “Preparing to go in. We’ll keep the line open.”
“Understood,” said Leove. His jaw clenched tightly.
“Understood,” copied Hoepe.
There was a shuffling across the line. The sound of doors slamming open. Feet running.
Leove gripped the back of a chair, until his knuckles turned white.
Thomas’ breathing came heavy.
“Relax, Brother,” said Hoepe, even though his own teeth were clenched together. No doubt they had both patched up their share of injured Augments in Evangecore and during the war. “They’re superior soldiers. They’ve faced worse than this many times.”
“I know that,” Leove said through his own tight jaw.
Hoepe raised an eyebrow. “I know you do.”
“Isuma’s down there.” Leove closed his eyes, his shoulders drawing up to his ears, and he blew out a tense breath. "I just wish we had more information about what they're running into."
More running, the squeak of boots on shined UEC compound floors. Hoepe could nearly visualize the path they travelled through the standard design UEC base. Their training in Evangecore mandated they all memorize the schematics for each of the standard building types. They probably never guessed they would use the knowledge like this.
“You don’t look well,” said Hoepe. “You should let me examine you.”
“I’m fine, Hoepe.”
“You suffered in Junk the same as the others.”
Leove didn’t answer.
Across the comm, another door, running, thumping, thunking.
Then Thomas stopped. “There’s no one here,” he said under his breath.
Leove shared a skeptical look with Hoepe.
“What do you mean?” Hoepe said.
It took Thomas a minute. “There’s no one here. No soldiers. Anywhere.”
“What about the others?”
“We’re headed to the basement now. We found the secret door, same as Junk.”
The sound of boots descending stairs.
“Oh no.”
“What is it?” Leove leaned forward, shouting.
There was the ruffle of rapid hand signals, then, “Cordelia is going to bring them straight up.”
Hoepe frowned, “What?”
But there wasn’t time.
Three bodies arrived in the hospital area around them. They weren’t moving. Hoepe had to look closely to see the one breathe. Leove rushed forward. “They’re dehydrated.”
Hoepe’s training exploded into action, cutting off everything else. “Colloids,” he ordered. Already he was holding off a vein on the one, trying to place a catheter. Impossible, he was so flat. Still, he pushed the thin plastic into the arm, the dry tissue making it drag.
He fiddled until he felt the needle pop through the vein wall, and then secured the thing. Next he grabbed an IV bag and connected the line, letting it run in as fast as possible.
Leove already had the other two connected.
They glanced at each other knowingly, nervously. Dehydration this bad was almost always accompanied by a host of electrolyte and biochemical imbalances, heart arrhythmias, and organ damage that could be difficult if not impossible to overcome.
Hoepe drew a blood sample from the man’s jugular vein in his neck, the only one large enough to access. The blood was nearly black and thick as oil.
Leove said a little prayer, tapping his five fingers to his chest and then his forehead.
The far wall of the infirmary opened, melting away to reveal a newly created room. In it stood all the Augments, those in battle armour holding up the others they had rescued from the facility. They shuffled forward together, angling to the rows of treatments beds that had suddenly sprung up from the floor.
Hoepe gasped, rapidly assessing and triaging, feeling like his body wanted to run in all directions at once. They all stumbled, weak, their eyes sunken. Their bones stuck out, all angles beneath nearly translucent skin and cachexic muscles. All of them on the brink of death.
Leove ran forward into the onslaught, helping one of the rescuers maneuver their charge onto a bed. Isuma pulled off her helmet. Leove touched her cheek tenderly for just a second, then turned his attention downward. His hands flew quickly as he worked. He muttered something and Isuma disappeared.
Hoepe turned to the nearest bed. Female, mid-twenties, severe dehydration and hypovolemic shock. He struggled to push the catheter through the skin. “Plasma-lyte solution,” he ordered.
The Augment standing next to him fidgeted once in his combat suit. “Sorry?”
Hoepe pointed to the far cupboards and repeated himself. The Augment left to look, and Hoepe found himself frustratingly paused. He looked across the bay, seeing his brother move from patient to patient, Isuma trailing behind him, connecting IV lines.
The Augment finally returned with a bag of IV fluids — not the Plasma-lyte he’d requested, but good enough. “Hook up the IV,” he ordered, “500-mil bolus.”
The Augment gave him a funny look, but Hoepe was already on his way to the next patient.
The blood analyzer dinged softly, letting him know his sample was finished. He bolted over to check the results. “Leove,” he called.
His brother joined him, trailed by Isuma. Hoepe fought the urge to tell her to leave, but there wasn’t time. “Advan
ced ketosis, uraemia, hyperglycaemia.” A deadly build-up of toxins in the blood stream.
“Hypernatremia, hyperkalemia — his heart could stop at any minute,” finished Leove.
Hoepe nodded. “Insulin CRI. Shock-rate fluids. Renoprotective and restorative cocktail.”
“Agreed.”
“He’s seizing,” said Isuma, looking into the chaos of beds and Hoepe’s patient convulsing wildly on the bed.
The brothers looked at each other, sharing a split second look of terror, and ran. Leove drew up anticonvulsant drugs and injected them through the IV. Hoepe attached a neuro-monitor. Isuma held the man in place, grunting as he shook and writhed on the table.
The seizure stopped as soon as the drugs had a chance to circulate.
“That won’t last long,” said Leove. “Just the benzodiazepines holding it at bay.”
Hoepe nodded. “We need to correct the electrolytes and glucose.”
“I’ve never seen dehydration this severe before, have you?”
Hoepe shook his head. “How did it get so bad?”
“This isn’t days,” said Leove. “This is weeks.”
“There wasn’t anyone there,” said Isuma. “It was completely empty. Abandoned.”
“Abandoned?” said Leove.
“They just left them there, without food or water.”
“Why?”
Hoepe shook his head. “We need to get to the other facilities as fast as possible. They may have been abandoned as well.”
“Agreed.”
“You’re forgetting something.” Cordelia suddenly appeared, looking stressed.
“What?”
“The fluids you’re using. They’re here because you wanted them. But.”
“Oh no,” said Hoepe.
Leove shot him a questioning look.
Hoepe blinked back the rising panic in his chest. “None of these medicines are real. Cordelia won’t let them integrate into the cells. Too hard to keep her self separated.”
“You mean?”
“We can’t treat them, not with what we have. Or if we do, they’ll go back to this way the minute Cordelia pulls back.”
Leove turned to Isuma. “Was there a hospital wing?”
She nodded. “There always is.” Then, “We’ll go down. See if there’s anything left.”
Leove put a hand on her shoulder and flashed a grim smile. “Thank you. Be careful.”
She smiled back. “I always am. They need it. I hope they left something.” Then she turned away, calling to others in the crowd as she went. Cordelia followed, sucking them away, back down to the planet’s surface.
The strained look returned to Leove’s face.
Hoepe reached a hand out. “We have to keep going, stabilize them the best we can.”
Leove recovered, still paler than he should have been. "Of course. It looks like our battle has just begun."
SEVEN
HALUD SAT ON THE SMALL cot, letting his head drop against the wall over and over. Eighteen days of incarceration in the rehabilitation ward, and he’d given up trying to influence the guards. There was no escape. There was no way to warn Sarrin. Hap’s torture had been precise, and Halud had nothing but time to brood on the imminent death of his sister.
The door to the anteroom opened, and he leapt to his feet. A familiar, terrifying, grey with black clad figure stomped in briskly. The commandant waved the guard from the room.
“Here to take me to Hap again?” he asked as she opened the thick permaglass door to his cell. The First Speaker had summoned him a handful of times, it seemed for no other purpose than to gloat.
“Hardly.” She crossed the distance between them almost too quickly for Halud to see, her hand wrapping around the old pendant around his neck and tugging sharply until the thong broke.
“That was my father’s!” he snapped, reaching out futilely.
“Then may you rot with him when this is all over,” she said. She spun on her heel, turning to the door.
“What do you want it for?”
She paused, her eyes narrowing as she turned just enough for him to see the smirk that crossed her features. “005478F has been seen in the city.”
005478F — Sarrin. “She’s here?” His voice stuck in his throat, coming out no more than a hoarse whisper. She had come for him, just as Hap had predicted. He straightened himself. “What’s Hap going to do?”
She turned, her wicked grin continuing. “He doesn’t know she’s here. He sent me to dispatch a rally in the city — something about folk with blue woven into their uniforms.” She glanced at the pendant in her hand and the blue jewel set into it, frowning. “One of the surveillance drones was destroyed, so I took it and examined the last seconds of footage myself. It’s her, I’d recognize that face anywhere. I have no interest in menial crowd control, the Augments need to be destroyed. Hap seems to have forgotten that I am his Augment hunter — not that pathetic fool he gave my warship to — and I will serve her to him on a platter.”
“You’re going to capture her?”
She tensed, fortifying herself as much as her stance. “I failed once, but I will not fail again.”
He recalled the first time she had taken him to Hap, the flash of softness and the prayer she had sent up when he told her about Sarrin. “You know what they’ll do to her,” he said. “It won’t be kind.”
Her lower jaw jutted out. “She’s an Augment. An animal.”
“You care about her, about Sarrin. I saw it in your the other day.”
She grumbled deep in her throat, her eyes narrowing, predatory and cold, a piercing blue. "You have no idea what you saw." Then she turned, the permaglass door sealing behind her as she strode from his cell.
He pressed against the glass. “Amelia, stop.”
Surprisingly, she did, whirling around.
“Why are you here?”
She flashed the pendant at him, all of her viciousness levelled in her gaze. “I am the hunter.” And then she was gone.
Halud sat back on the cot with a thump. But the commandant, the Augment hunter, had blue eyes. Not unlike his own. Not unlike Sarrin’s. It couldn't be. A hand over his mouth, he sat back, mind racing. But it was no trick of the light, he was sure of what he saw. The commandant had Xenoralia. There was no other explanation.
EIGHT
SARRIN WATCHED AS GRANT KNEELED down and peered around the corner of the tiny alleyway. He turned back and nodded at them. All clear.
She unfurled herself from the wall, drawing the hood up over her face. Beside her, Alex and Luca did the same, tugging grey scarves over the damning barcodes on the backs of their necks. One by one, they stepped into the main street, joining the early morning stream of workers and folk already bustling over the stone walkways.
Luca and Grant crossed to the far side, Sarrin and Alex staying to the near, spreading themselves out so they could hide amongst the folk, avoiding the suspicious eyes of drones and soldiers.
Contrary to what Gal seemed to think, they weren’t fools.
And they weren’t fool enough to take Rayne with them either.
There was a pang of regret for leaving the XO behind, but her father was General Oleander Nairu, and she seemed determined to go to him. Whatever Rayne’s intentions, things couldn’t end well.
Sarrin paused to watch a large vid screen on the side of a building.
“You okay?”
Startled, she turned to see Alex. They were supposed to stay apart, but she didn’t mind the company. The screen played through the morning cycle as they watched. It hadn’t changed that much over the years — there was a new segment added, thanking the Gods for providing this home when their Earth had been destroyed. The other segments were the same as they had been when they had made them watch in Evangecore: the story of the Gods, the history of their descendants, a celebration of the Speakers.
Only Fred Lansford had been replaced by his son, Hap. Other than that nothing had changed.
The cycle finishe
d and started from the top.
“We’ll find him,” said Alex. “I know it.”
She nodded once. They had to find Halud, there wasn’t another option.
“We’ll find a clue at the hospital. We know he was there, in the research labs, a few times. I’m sure we can find something.”
She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak as she stared blankly at the moving images repeating on the screen. Halud had given up everything for her, and while they knew he had made it to Etar alive, there was no telling what had happened after that or what shape he was in. The hospital was the best lead they had.
“What is it?” he asked when she hadn't moved after a minute.
She realized she was frowning. “I didn’t see it.”
“See what?”
“That he was going to leave.”
He smiled, a little confused.
“When he left the ship. I hadn’t said a single word to him. I couldn’t.” She sighed, dropping her gaze to her hands, the hands that were not hers anymore but constructs of the Central Army. “I can see everything, every permutation of every fight, the way these folk would scatter if a gas bomb landed here or here. But I didn’t see that my own brother was going to leave and throw himself into this.”
“Ah.” Alex rocked back on his heels.
“You all came with me, but you shouldn’t have. I don’t know where he is, or what’s going to happen. I’m not even sure if we’ll survive. I’m not what you think I am.”
He paused, staring across the crowd until he cleared his throat. “I had a brother in Evangecore. He died — like really died. They took him out of the arena and he never came back.”
She searched him.
“I thought the same thing was going to happen to me,” he said. “But it didn’t. You stopped it. After you tore apart the observation tower, we didn’t go into the arena anymore. No one had to kill, or be killed. I don’t know what you think about yourself, or why you think we’re here, but we knew the risks.” He shrugged. “Without you, most of us might not be here — might not have survived the arena. Might still be trapped in Junk. Might have been blown to the stars by the warship. You saved my life, and now I’m going to help you save Halud.”
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