Page 61 of Veiled Vixen

The bot begins chirping excitedly. But she doesn’t respond. And all I hear from her is the continued heavy breathing.

“Is… everything OK up there?” I ascend a few steps and cautiously peek my head up to assess the situation.

Veila is leaning over. Palms flat on the countertop, head hanging low so that her messy silver hair is covering her face, panting.

“Are you OK?” I ask. Because she doesn’t look OK.

And she doesn’t answer me, either.

“Veila,” I call.

“Just shut up,” she spits. But then she leans over even farther and disappears behind the counter.

The bot begins beeping. But it’s not any beeping I’ve heard it do before. It sounds more like an alarm.

Something inside me shivers and a chill runs up my spine. I leap up the stairs, cross the room, and find her on the floor on the other side of the counter.

She’s still hunched over, holding her stomach with one hand and using the other to push the bot away. He’s hovering close to her, spinning back and forth to look at me, then her, blaring beeps out like crazy.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Veila shakes her head and says nothing.

But I know what’s wrong.

There is a puddle of blood between her legs.

“Shit,” I say, crossing the distance between us and kneeling down at her side. I look up at the bot and say, “Call her medical team. Quick!”

But the bot doesn’t move. It just sends out a series of sad beeps.

“Then just call someone! Anyone!”

But all I get in response are the same sad beeps.

“It’s no use,” Veila whispers. “I knew this was coming. This is how it always happens. I just figured I had…”

But I don’t hear the rest. Because she slumps over to the side and goes unconscious.

The bot begins screaming out beeps and rises in the air. I look up at it as it flies across the room, then stops. Beeps again.

“What?” I ask. Then I see Veila’s wrist band light up and words are translated as the bot continues to beep excitedly.

Pick her up and follow me or she will die.

I feel terrible for hesitating. Because there’s a part of me that thinks… Maybe Veila dying isn’t such a bad idea?

But there’s another part of me… the soulmate part… that would do anything to save her.

I grab her under her knees and back and lift her up. I scan the room for the bot, find him hovering over the top of the stairs, and then rush forward, following him back down the way I came.

He leads me down the hall to the large main room, then stops at a wall panel and flashes a light at it. The wall opens up to reveal a large state-of-the-art medical facility and a medical pod that isn’t pod-shaped but box-shaped with an open frame enclosure.

I realize it’s not a medical pod at all. It’s an autosurgeon.

I place Veila’s limp and now very bloody body onto the scanner surface, then back off as the autosurgeon comes to life with a flash of light. Plasti-glass walls shoot up from the bottom of the frame, sealing her up inside. And then the tech springs into action.

A wave of light scans her body and then robotic arms emerge from the frame and begin cutting her clothes. A few seconds later they are peeled back to reveal her body and the table splits in half, opening her legs and bending her knees simultaneously.