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Rekk, please don’t hurt her.
“Not too deep,” I remind him.
Lox laughs. Dark and maniacal. I wince when he presses the blade into her pale flesh. Crimson swells from the incision. I waste no time and use the handle on the machine to direct the robotic hand toward the incision.
Time passes too quickly, but the constant, steady beating of her heart that echoes from the machine keeps me focused. It takes more incisions on Lox’s part to grant me access to her lungs, but once I’m given entry to the lungs, I’m able to see what it is that plagues my sweet mate.
Her lungs are pink and swollen, but that’s not what has alarm ringing through me. It is the webby nodules clinging to the flesh that has me worried. Once, as we lay in bed one night, Emery explained asthma to me.
This…
This is not what she explained.
This is something I understand. Pathogens. Disease. Foreign masses in the body.
Using the clawed end of the robot hand, I carefully hook one of the gray webs and pull. It flickers opaque as though to hide, and it makes me wonder if this is why they did not show up on the previous scans. The unknown parasite tries to cling to her precious lungs, but with tedious tugs, I’m able to free part of the web, sending a splatter of blood across her gown. Perspiration trickles down my temples as I focus. This is nothing like I have ever seen, which makes me wonder if she picked it up on the vessel she was on in space, or perhaps from her own planet. Slowly, I’m able to pull one of the webbed masses from her lungs and to where Lox can grab it with his tool. He tosses it into a container with a splat, sending more blood splattering on him and the floor. Normally, I would be going insane with the mess, but not now. Now, I am solely focused on getting these things out of her body.
One down, only approximately forty or fifty more to go.
I don’t have time to analyze what these things are, only that I want them gone.
“It moves,” Lox tells me, a slight tremor to his voice. “Slowly, but it is rekking moving.”
“Keep a lid on it,” I instruct.
Hours and hours pass.
My head pounds, my hand is cramped, and my own lungs are on fire from holding my breath so much. Eventually, I pull the last one free.
“Microbots,” I bark out to Lox. They’re programmed to heal abrasions, and there are many from where those parasites had leeched onto her. “Now that those masses are gone, I think they’ll work.”
He begins work using the microbots while I step away from the robotic machine and stretch my back. I make sure the lid is tightly secured on the container holding the parasites that I will study later, and I move it to a table along the wall. He finishes his work and then I take over the delicate task of closing her up. As I’m stitching her, Lox drops his tool and it clatters to the floor, splattering more of her blood. When our eyes meet, his pupils are tiny. The whites of his eyes have nearly taken over, giving him an eerie look about him.
“You’re dead,” he hisses, taking a step away from us.
I drop my gaze back down to Emery as I continue my stitching. “You need a break, Lox. Take a walk.”
“No,” Lox barks. “No!”
Panic shoots through me, but I attempt to stay calm. I cannot have him losing his ever rekking mind right now. “Lox,” I say slowly. “Why don’t you get into my pack and help yourself to some rations?”
He grabs at his unruly white and black locks and tugs. “I sent you to The Eternals. Why are you still here?”
I snap my nog up to glare at him. “What?”
“When you found out I had been using the Haxinth, you told me I couldn’t have it anymore. You said you’d put me in a reform cell. To let me detox,” he snarls, fury making the sub-bones in his spine snap as he takes a threatening stance. “I needed it. You wanted to take away what I needed.”
My blood runs cold as realization rushes through me. Lox. It was Lox. He killed my father and left him to get picked over by predators. It wasn’t the elements or illness or a wild beast. It was him. A friend.
“Lox, I am Calix.”
He shakes his nog and then tugs his hair in a crazed way once more. I quickly tie off the last stitch and set to wrapping Emery in a medical cloth. Hopefully the microbots will do their job on her external wound because I am afraid I do not have time to monitor them. As soon as I drag the gown back over her bare breasts, I rise to my feet.
