by Lydia Hope
“Blood and fighting?” From his tone, it was evident he struggled to grasp her problem.
“I was scared for you when you fought them,” she explained. “And I didn’t expect that much blood.”
“What did you expect?”
She blew out a breath. “I don’t like seeing people hurt. Even bad people.”
He was silent for a few seconds and then said with quiet conviction, “You are scared of me.”
She hung her head. The newly found dichotomy between Simon she had been caring for and Simon who ripped heads off because it was the most effective way to incapacitate an enemy had thrown Gemma off balance.
“You humans are fragile in every way,” he sounded frustrated. “Why am I bothering with you?”
The elevator arrived. Gemma raised her dry eyes to his.
“Why are you, Simon?”
Chapter 20
Perali bodies were discovered in due course, and the news of the aliens killed within sight of the prison, of all places, spread around the City like wildfire, generating a buzz and adding to the general sense of unrest.
“They say it was one brutal mess,” Ruby whispered to Gemma the next day. “I spoke with Marigold, and she’s heard there were twenty dead Perali, laid out in a cross pattern, all missing their private parts, and with their large intestines draped around their necks like scarves. She says it’s a sacrifice to appease alien gods. But that’s Marigold. I think someone is giving alien scum on Earth a warning.”
The same news quickly permeated the prison, never mind the complete lack of communication devices on the premises. Here on the third floor, it was met with a marked absence of the usual loud discussion and crude jokes about the incident. The mood among the aliens was subdued.
And prison life went on like it always did.
If Arlo or Ruby had some inkling about hers and Simon’s involvement in yesterday’s events, - several times Gemma caught them looking at her speculatively - they never asked. Just in case, she stayed away from Simon’s cell to avoid fanning their curiosity.
If asked, she’d have a real hard time explaining how Simon, a supposed dumb cripple, tore apart - literally - four strong males while on his wheelchair outing. It would prompt some looking into. At best, their outings would stop. At worst, the word would get out to Dr. Delano about a Rix held within the prison walls, and that Gemma couldn't allow.
At the end of the day, Gemma was tired and emotionally exhausted. Nevertheless, she dreaded going home to the McKinleys. Even prison appeared more hospitable than her tiny cold room.
But she couldn't stay in prison overnight.
Her path home lay by the spot where she and Simon had encountered the Perali. She hurried on past, walking as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
The boys were at home, playing, and paid little attention to her arrival. Herise wasn’t due back yet. Drexel’s bedroom door was firmly closed discouraging interaction. Gemma was fine with that.
Leena bustled about the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” Gema volunteered. “Let me put my things down.”
“You aren’t needed,” Leena responded smugly. “Mother has started teaching me how to cook. You know, so I make a good wife to a nice wealthy man.”
Gemma paused. “Is that what you want to do?”
“Yes,” Leena smiled coyly as if she knew a secret that Gemma didn’t. “I’m pretty enough. If I am a good housekeeper, I can do alright by myself.”
“Great if you do. But what if you won’t find that nice wealthy man? It’s best to rely on yourself.”
Leena scoffed. “That’s what all ditched old maids say.”
Gemma’s brows rose. “Fine. Call me when the food’s ready. And the scrub for the pots is in the old jar behind the towels.” She went into her room and slammed the door.
She stretched out on her bed, but her relaxation was short-lived. A soft knock sounded, and Desh called her name from the other side of the door.
“Father asked to remind you about his doctor’s appointment.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
Crap. Desh was right, it was tonight. It completely slipped her mind. Frantically checking the time, Gemma threw her coat back on. What a perfectly rotten end to the day - spending the evening at Dr. Delano’s.
“Is he ready to go?” Gemma referred to her uncle.
“I think so.”
She sent Desh to check on Uncle Drexel’s preparedness. She hoped he had had time to dress. If he whined and required valet services from her, she was liable to strangle him with a scarf.
The trek to the clinic was excruciatingly long. Uncle Drexel, swaddled in blankets in the manure cart, broadcasted his complaints loudly, on occasion digressing into the specifics of repairing space freighters. Gemma blocked him out and didn’t respond, which, sadly, hadn’t deterred him. He was heavy, and there was nothing wrong with his legs, and she privately thought that taking an occasional walk outside would aid significantly in his recovery.
At the sight of the hospital, a dark feeling settled in Gemma’s stomach. The prospect of coming face-to-face with the evil who had tortured her beautiful Simon and electrocuted him for the sake of the so-called science filled her with fine-tuned, murderous rage.
They settled to wait next to a couple with a relentlessly wailing infant.
The talk in the waiting room, or what Gemma was able to hear over the baby’s cries, revolved around four Perali dying violently the other day. Short on sympathy toward the slain aliens, people were actively speculating about who could have killed them. The consensus seemed to lean heavily toward agri-sector migrants armed with galvanized steel finger weeders. Those things were a menace if you knew how to wield them right.
Amazingly, another popular theory circulating the waiting room was the Perali murder-suicide. It made no sense but the patients in the waiting room seemed reluctant to let it go.
The speculations followed Gemma and Uncle Drexel to the examination room.
“Have you heard?” the nurse asked and tsk-tsked. “What has the world come to?”
Drexel glared. “Why are people so concerned over a handful of dirtbag Perali aliens who went and got themselves slaughtered?”
The nurse was taken aback by the vehemence. “It was senseless and mysterious. People want to know who killed them and why, Mr. McKinley. Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I say, let them all perish in senseless and mysterious ways.” Uncle Drexel shook his injured arm and winced. “Look at my arm! Just look. I have to make a living with it. An asteroid can fall out of the sky and wipe out alien life on my planet without a trace - I’ll be grateful and say Hallelujah! Enough is enough.”
“Your anger is understandable. Adjusting to life after an injury takes time, Mr. McKinley,” a suave voice intoned from behind them and Gemma’s insides turned to rocks.
It was him, Dr. Delano, the monster disguised as a healer by the lab coat and polished glasses. Now that she knew him for the black-hearted fiend he was, she could discern the cold, calculating gleam in his eyes where before she’d seen them as sharp and professionally unemotional.
“But my arm hurts!” Uncle Drexel whined in a tone so childish that Gemma cringed. His dignity was evaporating by the day.
“Now, now,” Dr. Delano placated, “we aren’t finished with our healing process. Keep your spirits up and the end will be in sight. The happy end, I mean.” He winked at Gemma.
It took all she had to respond with a polite smile.
Dr. Delano bent his head low to assess the progress Drexel’s flesh was making in healing, and she stared, imagining him bending his head in just this fashion down to another patient, the unwilling one, his tall body chained tightly to a gurney. She could see Dr. Delano cutting him up and watching the bluish blood flow out of his veins. He must have personally supervised the electrocutions, measured Simon’s body responses, signaled to the orderlies to increase the voltage.
Pressure circl
ed her head with a tight band.
“I take it life is treating you kindly?”
It took a second for Gemma to understand he was addressing her.
“Yes, quite,” she managed.
“Your prison made it in the news today with Perali. You’ve heard, of course?”
“I have.”
“What a grisly sight.”
“I imagine.” Did she ever. “They say the aliens have been badly mangled.”
“They have been. I can attest.”
He surprised Gemma. “You’ve seen the bodies?”
“We have the City’s only morgue.” He gave her a tight smile. “I took a few minutes to walk down. Professional curiosity, you know.”
She didn’t acknowledge his comment. She had major issues with his professional curiosity.
One of the nurses looked up. “Have they done an autopsy, Dr. Delano?”
“They aren’t going to. Alien deaths aren’t a concern.”
“Oh, but we want to know what killed them.”
“That’s easy. A steel pipe killed them. Someone very strong beat three of them to death with a piece of conduit. The fourth one was beheaded. There won’t be an inquest. But the force with which the bodies were damaged gave me pause. I suspect the killer wasn’t human.” He pricked Uncle Drexel’s arm with a small syringe and Drexel yelped. “I am sorry. Did it hurt?”
Drexel’s eyes bugged and his mouth opened and closed in a fish-out-of-water style. “It stings like hell!”
“My apologies. I’m injecting the serum into the wound now. It shouldn't hurt too much longer.”
“Ouch,” said Uncle Drexel and slumped into a faint.
The nurse caught him but not fast enough. His shoulder hit the tray with medical equipment and overturned it. The metal instruments, the liquid medicine, suction cups, and cotton balls - everything flew to the four corners of the room.
“Nurse!” Delano barked.
“I’m on it, doctor.”
The nurse laid Uncle Drexel out on the cot and went to pick up the supplies off the floor. Gemma wanted to help but was politely instructed not to touch anything. Biohazard and all that.
She took a step back to stand by the wall. It took her away from Dr. Delano and she was glad. She was afraid she’d lose it and go berserk and stab him in the eye with the used syringe she spied under the examination table.
She anchored her eyes on Simon’s picture, passing time while the nurses worked to restore order and revive Uncle Drexel with a strong-smelling solution.
“I’ve noticed you’re curious about Rix.”
Dr. Delano moved closer again and Gemma had no option but to respond. “Yes, I admit, they seem like an interesting race.”
“That’s one way to describe them. Interesting.”
“Didn’t you say so yourself, doctor?” She sounded… angry.
“I did, didn’t I?” Dr. Delano didn’t notice her suddenly sharp tone. He smiled his condescending smile. “We need to know more about them. Pity, Rix don’t visit Earth.”
“You’ve examined one,” Gemma pointed out helpless to keep accusation out of her tone.
“That one time was a lucky accident. A damaged Rix ship landed here at the docks several years ago. It never asked permission to land, never sent a distress signal, or gave any warning at all - it just fell out of the sky. The ship was in bad shape but the crew was spunky. In what we now know as a typical Rix fashion, they refused to come out and play nice, provoking a military stand-off. Even dock workers couldn't approach their spacecraft. Rix attempted to perform repairs themselves but they never finished.”
Gemma shivered. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened? The people of this City didn’t care for Rix’s display of attitude. The magistrate mounted a militant suppression with orders to kill the unfriendly crew. Outnumbered and in disrepair, Rix attempted to leave but the ship blew up at takeoff. Its pieces are now on the bottom of the bay.”
“And this was the only survivor?” Gemma pointed at the picture.
Dr. Delano nodded. “He wasn’t on the ship. He stayed behind to provide cover.”
“Alone?”
Dr. Delano chuckled. “He, alone, wiped out half of the City’s militant force before they finally cut him down.”
“He sacrificed himself.” Gemma’s heart ached at the thought.
“I can’t say if he sacrificed himself or was ordered to stay behind. Either way, he hadn’t expected to survive.”
Oh, Simon.
“From the first time I saw him,” Dr. Delano continued, “I was intrigued. He should’ve died ten times over from the wounds he had sustained, yet he was still breathing when we got to him. That’s when I realized that Rix's physical attributes far surpass ours. I hadn’t known such species existed.”
“You admit they are superior to humans.”
He scoffed. “Superior? No. They’re aliens. They can’t compare to us in cognitive development or societal complexity. But they have traits we could benefit from.”
Gemma frowned but Dr. Delano didn’t pay attention to her changing expression as he continued, “Besides being immune to most human diseases, they have a phenomenal tolerance for pain. They require a ridiculously small amount of food to survive. They regenerate tissues we don’t.”
“They’re simply different,” she said rather sharply, “What is the point of all this?”
“Genes! If only I had another chance to study a Rix, I could then isolate their genetic sequences and work to implant them in humans. Did you know that their natural lifespan is over two hundred years?”
“No, I did not.” She never asked Simon how old he was.
Dr. Delano became ecstatic. “Imagine living that long! This alone is worth everything, Gemma. Everything!”
Oblivious to Gemma’s hard stare, Dr. Delano kept rambling about genes and lifespans, waxing poetic about the future of humankind if only Simon’s bone marrow could be harvested and re-planted to grow in a Petri dish.
Gemma stopped listening repelled by his absolute lack of concern for Simon. To Dr. Delano, he amounted to no more than a lab rat. The doctor believed he found a fountain of youth in the face of a Rix alien with his strong body and long lifespan. He’d become consumed with the desire to take Simon apart to the molecular level in hopes of appropriating that what he was never meant to have.
“What happened to this Rix?” Gemma pointed at the illustration.
Dr. Delano folded his arms across his chest and his expression became guarded. “We couldn’t cure him.”
“Cure him from what?”
“Wounds. Deep wounds.”
“All’s ready for you, doctor.” The nurse approached them holding a new set of gloves. “The patient’s up and waiting.”
Uncle Drexel was indeed sitting up, eyes open and alert, lips tight and pale, and, thank God, silent.
Dr. Delano snapped the new pair of gloves onto his hands and turned to finish Uncle Drexel’s procedure with Gemma standing sentinel under the reproduction of Simon.
“There are no Rix aliens in the prison, you said?” Delano asked casually when she and Uncle Drexel were on their way out of the door.
“Not that I know of,” Gemma said with restraint.
“The damage to the Perali bodies is indeed unusual…”
“Doctor, the Perali were killed outside, not in the prison.”
“Yes, yes,” he didn’t sound reassured. His eyes were searching. “Strange situation. Very strange. Would you let me know if you hear a rumor about a Rix here on Earth? You spend time with aliens, you may hear something.”
Gemma’s eyebrows rose. “What would it accomplish?”
“Your name could be linked to breakthrough research that cures people like your uncle. The technology to isolate the right DNA and implant it already exists. All we need is a Rix and a right angle to market my strategy. Who knows, we may even get to travel to Meeus if things get going.”
She tried to look
interested like he no doubt expected her to. “I will let you know, doctor.”
Uncle Drexel’s arm was visibly bothering him. He cradled it close to his chest.
“I don’t think the treatments are working.” He appeared on the verge of crying.
Annoyance flashed behind Dr. Delano’s smart glasses. “Healing takes time. You have two more sessions. With your wounds, I advise two more on top of them.”
“For an extra charge?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And then what? Will my arm be back to normal?”
Dr. Delano leveled a serious glance at Gemma’s subdued uncle. “Mr. McKinley, much as I’d like to be, I’m not a magician. Your arm will never be the same as it was before your injury. What we are doing here is working to stop Perali poison from spreading so you get to keep your arm. I can always amputate it. Much cheaper that way.”
Drexel’s spine snapped straight and his eyes got round. “I’ll come back. We’ll pay.”
Dr. Delano nodded. “I’m glad you’re seeing reason. Everything that medicine can do for you is being done. But our bodies have limits. We aren’t Rix.”
Chapter 21
In the morning, before going up, Gemma managed to snag a few moments alone with Marigold to get the word out that she was looking to rent a cheap room. Marigold didn’t know of one herself but gleefully promised to ask around. Gemma’s request armed nosy Marigold with a perfect conversation starter. She now had an excuse to pry personal details out of people. She loved that.
Gemma rushed upstairs and stumbled onto the third floor when Ruby and Arlo had concluded the roll call. Ruby smiled in greeting. Arlo threw her a typical Arlo look that told her to go screw herself.
“Since you have all the time in the world, how about it’s your turn to haul hot water? We’ll wait.”
Gemma shrugged off his snark and went to get the water. She didn’t mind. Let Arlo be miserable and angry. She refused to play into his bad mood.
When the water arrived, the three of them orchestrated the “breakfast” as usual.
The Birdies ignored the offering as they sometimes did if the stress level in the air was too high for them to handle.
