Chains of Loss (9 page)

Derek had been breathing heavily at the start of their run, but had quickly settled in.  He didn’t appear to be sweating, and his hair wasn’t even ruffled.  Mycah felt a stab of jealousy.  She was drenched, and her muscles burned.  She’d been living in the city for years; had she really gotten that badly out of shape? 

She ate a trail bar as Derek repeated his bizarre actions and made a new map.  She still had difficulty grasping what he was doing.  He had tools, he’d said—but they were impossibly beyond what she’d seen back home and were comparable to elder runes in scope.  And yet they had taken nothing out of him; after making the map he showed no signs of fatigue or even minor stress. 

The map showed them to be safe, and Mycah settled into a more sustainable pace.  About an hour later, they entered a strange, oblong clearing.  Her companion stopped short behind her. 

His voice was low.  “These…these are ruins,” he said. 

“What?”  She hissed back. 

“Under the ground here.  It’s hollow about a half meter down.  There’s buildings, and,” he paused to swallow hard.  “Bones.  Ancient ones.”

“You can see that?”

He nodded.  “Sonar...It’s like a tower was broken here…centuries ago.  Dirt covered it somehow and it’s overgrown, but it’s still there.”

“Anything in there we could use?”  The look he gave her in response drove her back a step.  “What?”

“It’s—they’re dead!”

“And they don’t need anything that’s down there anymore.”

He took a deep breath and let it out.  “No.  It’s all...I don't recognize it.  The bones...aren't human.”  He was quiet for a moment.  “I don't know what they are.  We should move on.”

“Okay.  Come on—” she jolted and staggered as something hit her in the back, knocking the wind out of her.  She was on her knees now, and something was poking her on the inside of the forearm.  She looked down and saw a barbed crossbow bolt sticking out of her chest.

“What was that?” Derek bent over her.  “Oooh.  That’s gotta hurt.”

For one crystal clear moment, as the pain started, Mycah truly knew what it meant to hate him.  Then her diaphragm reacted to the injury and she retched, filling her mouth with blood.  The bolt had gone straight through her lung; she was dead.  She was going to drown in her own blood; hopefully, she’d lose consciousness first. 

If he was smart, Derek would run.  If he was lucky, he might even be safe.  But he wasn’t running.  He was standing over her, pulling out one of those white cloths and spreading it over her chest.

She saw the second crossbow bolt hit him in the side.

***

Derek understood what was happening, in a detached way.  The thing that had hit Mycah was some sort of primitive missile weapon.  It had fractured four of her ribs, inflicting a perforating injury and puncturing a lung; without immediate medical attention, she would die. 

By the official Elysian articles of war, he was defeated also, since she would die without his care.  He was the only one surprised by the second projectile.  Fortunately for him, it had significantly less force than it required to penetrate his flight suit, so he ordered the suit to put a helmet up and ignored it. 

The medical shroud could save Mycah’s life on its own, but she would need more than just that.  He took her hand, bent down and whispered to her.  “Don’t you worry.  You’re going to be okay.  The pain will stop in just a moment, just focus on breathing.  I’m here, and I’m not going to leave you.  You’ll be just fine.”

He heard something; their attacker was approaching, and reloading the weapon as it moved.  The attacker who had violated the laws of war by firing at Derek as well…the attacker who, Derek corrected himself, probably didn’t
know
the Elysian laws of war and couldn’t be expected to obey them.  What were the laws of war here?

He wasn’t expected to surrender when his companion was injured.  Instead he was to be attacked again.  Okay.  He could wrap his mind around that idea.  But the attack on Mycah could well have killed her.  It
would
have killed her if he hadn’t been there.  Was their attacker not planning to take them prisoner? 

He slipped into the rush.  He might not be facing someone under the local terms of war.  This could be an unlawful combatant who would be court-martialed or arrested when the incident was discovered.  That was probably it.  All he had to do was stop his attacker from doing them more harm, then leave it for its own authorities.  That would work.

The attacker was only a meter away.  Derek looked up to see the crossbow already loaded and pointed at him.  He raised a hand and the wielder fired at point-blank range.  Derek impulsively saved the memory of the projectile shattering on his visor; it would probably be entertaining later.

He snatched the crossbow out of his opponent’s hands.  It was made of wood and metal, primarily some alloy of iron, and made a twang and a crunch when he crushed it.  He grabbed his opponent – an orc, he saw now – by the throat, and hoisted it off its feet.  The suit's gloves gave him full tactile sensation of the orc's windpipe; apparently its body had at least a few token similarities with that of a human.

Now what?  He didn’t know what to say! 

“Bad…bad orc!  BAD!”  He threw it to the ground.  That wasn’t enough, he had to make sure it wouldn’t follow them.  He slipped into the rush again and pondered his options.  He didn’t know enough of its biology; without that knowledge, he couldn’t aim precisely enough to stun it without potentially killing it.  If he just left it, it might get away and never be brought to justice for its violation of wartime law. 

A solution came to him; the orc wasn’t a cyborg.  It couldn’t possibly regenerate.  Anything that would have stopped Mycah without his help would also stop this orc.  He ended the rush, stepped up to it and kicked its leg.  The creature howled as its femur-analog snapped. 

“Sorry!  Sorry!”  It had seemed like such a good decision at the time!  Still, what else could he have done?  He paused just one moment longer and reached down to the orc, which tried to shy away from him.  Derek stuck a gloved finger in its mouth, collected a saliva sample and backed away.  He had to learn their biology if he wanted to avoid hurting them.

“You’ll be okay, all right?  I just had to stop you.  Don’t tell anyone where we went, okay?”  He kept talking to the orc as he walked back to Mycah.  She’d lost consciousness—possibly the mediceps’ doing—so he picked her up.  He took a moment to reorient himself, then paused.  She’d lost a rib fragment; he thoughtfully grabbed it, polished it and gave it to the medical shroud for cleaning and reintegration.  The orc's weapon was also made of potentially-useful metals, so he grabbed its remains and fed it into the industrial shroud.  That done, he set off in the direction they’d been going.

***

Mycah woke to light on her eyelids, but didn’t feel like opening her eyes.  There was no pain; no difficulty breathing.  It had been just a dream.  Still, why had she dreamed that Derek would say that, and why did it echo in her mind?  It was ridiculous.  Everyone left her.  One way or another, he would too. 

She opened her eyes and was unsure that she had really awoken.  Derek was carrying her, but his stride was so smooth she hadn’t had any sensation of movement. 

So.  She was dead, and he hadn’t survived being shot either.  Was it heaven, hell, or somewhere else?  If she was really dead, why did she still taste blood?

A story came to her suddenly; her father had told her once about how he’d seen warriors ignore pain and injury when at the brink of death.  Was she still just barely alive?  She reached an arm towards the exit wound and flinched.  The crossbow bolt was still protruding from her chest. 

Derek slowed to a stop and set her down on her feet. 

“You okay?”  He asked.

She swallowed.  Her mouth and throat were dry, but she still had no pain.  She had to keep her sentences brief; the more she breathed or talked, the worse the wound would get.  “How long?”

“Since you were hit?  About half an hour.”

“The orc?”

“He won’t be following, and I put a good amount of distance between us.  We should be safe for a while.”

Mycah took a deep breath.  It still didn’t hurt, and she wasn’t coughing up blood anymore.  She couldn’t explain the lack of pain, but the bolt had probably plugged its own wound.  She’d probably bleed out the moment it was removed. 

The bloodvials.  They were her only chance to remove the bolt before infection rendered their power worse than useless.  But if she used one with the bolt inside of her, it would get sealed in.  “Need to get this out.”

“The thingy?”

He didn’t know the word.  It didn’t matter.  Mycah was too intent to be annoyed. “Bolt.” 

“Okay.  Lemme just…”  Before she could stop him, he reached down and plucked it from her ribs.  It tugged a little as it came loose.

She stared at it in disbelief.  It had only extended about three centimeters into her flesh. 

“I’ll get the other side for you too.”  She felt another tug on her back and Derek offered her the remains of the bolt’s shaft.  Combined, the two pieces of the bolt were only about half what she had expected.  The ends had been melted away. 

Mycah was so stunned that it took her a few seconds to remember to check her wound.  There were two holes in her vest, in the front and back of her right side, where the bolt had passed just under the straps of her backpack.  There was no corresponding wound in her side.  She had been entirely restored.

“Derek…”  He waited for her to take a breath.  “Did you do this?”

“Sure.” 

She couldn’t keep the question in.  “Did it…cost you?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Did you have to give me…parts?  Like the eye?”  She found herself deeply disturbed.  If he had used his own eye when that had been all he had, might he have used
parts
of their attacker?

“No.  I just used the shroud.”

“And it healed me how?”

He looked puzzled for a moment.  “It just took what was in the wrong place and put it in the right place.  It bolted your ribs together, re-wove blood vessels and muscle tissue, patched your lungs and diaphragm, reinforced the appropriate membranes and extracted the bolt by the method it deemed least invasive and most advantageous.”

“Advantageous?”  The pieces he’d given her were too short.  There had to be some inside.  She tried to keep her breathing slow, to avoid hyperventilating, but the urge was strong.

“I had to do a bit of patching, but the bolt was actually kind of useful.  See, at first I assumed it was just steel, but it turned out to be made of a titanium alloy – low purity, but still something I didn’t expect to find lying around.  Titanium’s biocompatible, so it was ideal to integrate into your systems.”

“…integrate?”  She was feeling a bit sick now.  Did it mean what she thought it meant?

“Your cybernetics needed a source of material to work with.  Titanium’s ideal for some applications.  We don’t have enough of it for much unless we were to use your knife thingies.”  He was smiling as he spoke.  It was entirely matter-of-fact for him, but she still hadn’t understood.

“Where is the rest of the bolt?  Is it still in my lung?”

“Well.  A little bit.  The shroud broke most of it into microparticles and migrated it to deposits along your bones.  Your nanites will break them down later when they’re in full self-propagation mode.”

She shook her head.  “That still doesn’t tell me.”

“Hmm.  Well, then.  Let me do a demonstration.”  He reached in his pocket and pulled out the cloth again.  She stepped back, then steadied herself; she was still dizzy.  He took the remains of the bolt and placed them into the cloth, then folded it up.  “This is the industrial shroud.  It’s not really for use inside a person; more for making or fixing tools.  It’s the one I make the map out of.” 

She nodded.  She didn’t see any difference between that cloth and the other one, but she could trust that Derek knew about his own tools.

“Let’s say I want to make something out of the rest of this bolt.  It’s mostly iron, with some titanium; it’s an alloy, so they’re pretty well mixed together.  I tell the shroud to separate them first.” 

He opened the cloth again.  There were two metal bars there now, but they were definitely not made of the same metal.  “Making them into simple forms is easy.  Since I don’t want to use the iron right now, I’ll set it aside.”  Another fold and opening, and one bar was
gone
.  “I want to make something of the titanium.  I have just enough for what I want…”  He folded it and opened it again.  “Here.”

Mycah gasped.  The ring that sat in the cloth was exquisite.  She reached for it but Derek pulled away.

“Careful.  A side effect of this is that whatever I make winds up really hot.  Just so you know.”

She nodded, took the ring, and studied it.  The metal was formed around a single gem that formed the core of the ring; at any point she found, she could see a sparkle of light that shined between the metal bands.

“It should fit, by the way.”  Derek was beaming at her.