“We had to put her in a net restraint,” the officer said, shaking his head a little absently before he blinked purposefully a few times and refocused on Mr. Warren’s question. “She’s heading to St. Agnes,” he finished, referring to the hospital just a few miles from the school.
The officer looked around the room again shaking his head at the splatters of oil and debris from the smashed Sweeper droids.
“That’s where we need to take you,” the nurse said with a nod to me. “If Lauren is the girl who bit you, you’ll need some tests. Don’t you watch the feeds? People are—” she stopped herself, but I knew what she was going to say. People are going Feral out there.
“I—no, I’m OK,” I said, knowing full well there was no way my aunt and uncle could afford a hospital visit, even with the discounted rates we got since I was a student and they were gainfully employed. It would still wind up costing years of life in legacy debt that they’d either have to slowly pay back with actual money, or…not, and I didn’t want that on my conscience. “I really have to go finish my internship applications.” I lied. “I’ll be sure to tell my aunt and uncle when I get home. I’m sure they’ll take me for a follow-up.” The nurse narrowed her eyes at me. “It already stopped hurting…” I lied again. “Whatever you did fixed me right up. Thank you so much.”
Her dubious expression finally started to lift, and I quietly exhaled in relief that it didn’t seem like she was going to keep insisting that I go to St. Agnes’s.
“If you start feeling the slightest bit off, I want to know about it. Let me know what the doctor says after you’re seen,” she said with a slight nod, which I interpreted to mean she was going to trust me. I made a mental note to stop by her office—on her way to lunch so she wouldn’t ask too many questions—to tell her everything was fine.
And I really hoped it would be fine. The burning was getting worse, and it was all I could do to keep the pain from registering on my face.
“I’ll stop in, for sure,” I replied, then grabbed Max’s arm and maneuvered around the wreckage to get to the outer door.
“Halsey!” Mr. Warren called after me, but I pretended not to hear. I just needed to get outside before I actually started screaming and crying like a baby with the pain in my arm now spreading up into my shoulder and down into my hand.
Max and I were halfway down the hall before I just couldn’t keep up the façade anymore, and hot tears flooded my eyes. I held my arm tightly to my chest and turned to Max.
“Do you know a Grind medic?” I asked. “I can’t go to St. Agnes’s. How’s your hand?”
“It’s fine. Your arm is not fine? You said it didn’t hurt.” Max looked confused.
“I told the nurse that so she didn’t haul me off to the emergency room,” I said impatiently. “That would cost like, six years minimum.”
“Halsey…” Max rolled his eyes. “You can pay that off with actual money.”
“Look, can we argue about this later? This really hurts, and it’s spreading,” I said, looking around to make sure no one was listening. With both of our internship applications turned in, I didn’t feel one bit obligated to try and figure out how I would make it through the rest of the day like this. “Just come on,” I said, hitching my backpack over one shoulder as I pushed through one of the outer doors.
Chapter Six
Max and I made our way to town without issue, which was a welcome relief. The spreading pain in my arm was about all I could handle.
“We could ask Mr. Warren if the school would pay for treatment since it happened there?” Max suggested, but I shook my head.
“I don’t even want to bring it up again there, OK?” I insisted. “I’m lucky the nurse believed I would go to an Authorized doctor on my own. How much farther is it?” I asked, my head starting to hurt now since I’d been clenching my teeth.
“Up the street,” Max answered. “The medic’s place is behind Raphael’s Tea shop.”
I exhaled slow, controlled breaths to try and keep my composure in check. I’d made it this far, I could go another block without a full-on pain-inspired panic attack.
Twenty steps to the giant pots…ten steps to the front door… I thought as we made our way as inconspicuously as possible to the entrance. I could smell the citrus blooms from the potted trees and different flowering shrubs a good six feet before reaching the door. Inside, the smell of spices and florals seemed to weave in and out of each other with every step we took toward the front counter, which was almost completely hidden by large, round baskets of loose teas. Greenery and giant paintings of mountains and sunbursts covered nearly every square inch of the walls, and to the side were about a half-dozen sets of small tables and chairs.
“Do we just ask at the counter?” I said, losing any patience I had left.
Max shook his head quickly and abruptly. “Ni hao!” he called over the counter.
“You speak Chinese?” I managed.
“That’s all I know.” He smirked, and after a few more seconds, a young Chinese woman peeked at us from behind the beaded curtain doorway. She took a look at Max, then looked me up and down before waiving us back through the curtain with her. I briefly wondered how Max knew about the Unauthorized medic here, the illegal practice punishable by nearly a few decades of legacy fines if any of us were caught. That would be doubly bad for me since they’d also tack on an additional cost to undo whatever illegal procedures this medic would perform. But, that’s if we were caught. Taking the risk right now was the only option.
We moved quickly through a winding corridor, and then through a few rooms before we finally reached what looked like a basement, though we hadn’t gone down any stairs that I could recall. The floors were concrete and the walls were painted, white cinderblock, interrupted only by the hanging metal cabinets and metal countertops along the perimeter of the room. In the middle were two metal gurneys without padding, a huge lamp contraption that mounted to a rolling cart, and a tray that extended from the long lamp stand.
“You lay,” an older Chinese woman said in a thick accent as she gestured to the gurney table. I climbed up, but didn’t lay back. The younger Chinese woman who had waved us through the curtain earlier came into the room and looked me up and down, then met my eyes.
“What happened to you two?” she said with no accent whatsoever as she studied us.
“I’m fine,” Max gestured to his bandaged hand. “She’s not, though. Tell her, Halls.”
“My arm feels like it’s on fire,” I started, but the words were cut off by a fresh wave of pain.
“Someone bit her,” Max finished for me. “There’s a weird black fluid from the bite mark. It turned white.”
The woman’s face contorted in confusion, and she moved to unwrap the bandage. “Here?” she asked, then started cutting the gauze when I nodded.
The bite was clearly marked by an angry red outline, the skin broken in places and oozing more of the black fluid Max had mentioned. Once it hit the air, it turned a milky white again like it had back in the Ice Box.
“Huh,” the woman said, raising a feathery eyebrow.
“It really burns.” I pushed the words through my teeth. “Can you make it stop hurting?”
“I’ll try,” she said, opening a cabinet behind her and pulling out a white can without a label. “This will be really cold.” She nodded and sprayed the bite wound. The shift in sensation—from seething to freezing—in my arm was almost immediate, and I nearly cried in relief. “That should have helped,” she asked, but I was too choked up to answer with actual words. I nodded again and felt the hot tears spill down my cheeks.
“Halsey?” Max looked hard at me.
I shook my head. “It’s OK. It stopped for a second—that spray stopped it.”
“The pain is coming back already?” the woman asked, and I nodded again. She sprayed the wound again, but this time, also injected something into my arm just an inch or so from the bite mark. I didn’t feel a thing.
“What�
��s that?” I asked, trying to resist the compulsion to pull my arm back.
“It’s like an antibiotic, but not,” the woman said. “A human bite is worse than an animal bite, so this will kick up your immune system,” she added, scrunching up her face.
“What’s the black stuff?” Max asked. “And why is it turning white?”
“I don’t really know,” she answered. “The only other thing I can do is swab a sample to run some tests. My guess would be maybe it’s just your body’s way of pushing out the infection that’s trying to take hold? Blood mixed with white blood cells—puss, you know? When did this happen?”
“Maybe an hour ago,” Max answered.
The woman’s face blanched, and she quickly masked the expression with a neutral one.
“Well, that’s a little fast for an infection to have taken hold. Maybe it was something whoever bit you had in their mouth at the time, and your body is expelling it.”
I could tell that not even she thought that was remotely probable, so she clearly was out of guesses about the fluid. I needed to stop thinking about it because there was literally nothing else that could be done to fix it other than what I was currently doing: sitting here in this illegal medical office getting illegal medical treatment from an unauthorized, illegal doctor. Now that the pain had subsided, the fear was starting to set in.
“Jen, the person who bit her was—” Max started. “This is going to sound crazy, but she turned into this… I don’t even know how to describe it.” He looked at the floor and shook his head. “Like she was halfway to becoming a grasshopper or something. She just crouched down on the table with her arms and legs bent in the wrong direction.” He shook his head and closed his eyes, apparently to dismiss the image.
“Sorry?” Jen tilted her head to the side. “Her legs and arms were hyperextended on purpose?” She turned to me. “Is that when she bit you?”
“No, it was before she…changed,” I answered, trying to be careful with my words so I didn’t sound deranged. “I didn’t see her, but all the blood drained out of Max’s face when he did.”
Jen gave us both a dubious, but curious look and grabbed an empty syringe. She turned back to me and took my wrist so my inner forearm was exposed.
“I’m going to take a blood sample and run some tests for pathogens. Then, I’m going to re-bandage that bite wound. Come back tomorrow and I’ll know more,” she said, drawing the blood from the bend in my elbow. I winced, compared to the pain I had been feeling, the needle prick was actually barely noticeable.
“Thanks, Jen,” Max said, pulling out his wallet.
“No, I’ll—” I started to protest.
“Don’t worry about it yet,” Jen said, waving away the cash he pulled out. “We’ll settle up when we find out what’s wrong.”
Max insisted on walking me all the way back to my aunt and uncle’s house just in case the guy with the little vials reappeared. My arm had started to hurt a little again, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before.
“What happened to Lauren?” I asked once we were far enough away from the people in town. “How did her arms and legs do what you said without her screaming in pain?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what I was wondering. She didn’t walk in like that,” he added. “She got up on the table though, and—I just don’t know…” He trailed off, still seeming to be in a state of disbelief about what he saw. We stopped at my front gate, and Max darted a glance at my arm. “Do you know how you’re going to explain that?” he asked.
“Nope. Not to mention where I’ve been all afternoon if someone from the school has already called.”
“Tell them you decided to hand out extra résumés to the businesses that hadn’t come to the school today,” Max suggested, which wasn’t a bad idea, but if it were up to my aunt or uncle, I’d just apprentice at the water treatment plant where they both worked.
Let’s see, fielding customer requests all day like my Aunt Alice, or adding sludge-eating microbes to the waste water like my Uncle Ray? Neither, thanks.
I shrugged, suddenly too exhausted to care what either of them had to say. I pulled my sleeve down over the bandage and half-heartedly counted on them not even noticing.
“Thanks for walking me home,” I said through an unexpected yawn. “But now you have to walk all the way back to work.”
Max shrugged. “I like walking. You look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet.”
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” I said with another yawn. “Maybe it’s the antibiotics.”
“Maybe.” Max looked me up and down, his brows darting together. “I’m off tomorrow, so I’ll go with you back to Jen’s.”
I nodded. “Thanks for all your help today,” I said, fighting another yawn. It was almost getting too hard to keep my eyes open.
“Halsey!” My aunt’s disembodied voice hit my ears so sharply I felt it in my teeth. She came bounding into the front room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Care to explain why your name came over the Sweeper reports today?” she asked, her wiry, gray hair sticking out of her braid. I would have rolled my eyes at the knowledge that she was listening to the police radio chatter again, but I didn’t have the energy.
“Why do you even listen in on that thing?” I managed, too tired and dizzy to worry about how I must have sounded after the incensed look she gave me.
Her voice got quiet and menacing. “One of these days people in The Grind will get fed up enough with those pompous asses behind the wall and start rioting. Do you think the politicians who control the newsfeeds are just going to allow reports about what’s really happening on the streets then?” she said defensively.
Normally, I would have at least attempted a few rounds of arguing about her paranoia that everything would fall into anarchy sooner rather than later, and that only the people like us who could live off the grid, independent of the Citadel-controlled water pipelines, grocery stores, and electrical services in The Grind, would have a chance of surviving. But not this time.
This time, things just started going black, slowly at first, then quickly. I barely had time to glance at Max before I nearly fell through my bedroom door, promptly passing out three seconds after it abruptly closed behind me.
Chapter Seven
The fermented smell of cabbage and what could only be hot garbage filled my lungs even before I opened my eyes, and I coughed at the shock of it. What actual demon was my aunt trying to summon in the kitchen?
I hopped out of bed, thoroughly motivated by the idea of opening my window, and was a little surprised at how much energy I had. My arm didn’t hurt at all anymore, and when I checked the bandage with a wince at what I was sure would be the gruesome state of the bite Lauren gave me, I had to sit back down. The bite mark was totally gone. There wasn’t even an outline.
I double checked the bandage, which was still stained with blood and other discolorations I didn’t even want to know about, but my skin was perfectly smooth. It didn’t make sense. What kind of antibiotics had Jen given me yesterday?
I took a quick shower and got dressed, hiding the bandage in my jeans pocket since I figured it would be better to throw it away somewhere else rather than risk my aunt discovering it somehow in the trash. I touched my temple to queue Max.
“Hey, I’m on my way,” he said, the 3-D image of him appearing a few feet from my face. He was walking, but he didn’t have his surround vision connected, so I could only see a white background behind him.
“I dreamed I was being swallowed by a garbage monster,” I said, leaning on my window sill. “Then I woke up and realized my aunt was just making her cabbage stew. Or she’s trying to reanimate corpses because I promise you, Max, not even dead people could be around this smell. I’m about to throw myself out the window.”
Max laughed. “Well, it sounds like you’re feeling better at least.”
I nodded. “About that…” I said, holding up my arm to the 3-D screen project
ion in front of me. “The bite is totally gone.”
Max’s brows crashed together. “Gone?”
“I don’t understand it either,” I added. “It’s like nothing ever happened. And I feel like I slept for a week. What kind of antibiotics did Jen give me?”
“Standard issue, I guess?” Max shrugged.
“How’s your gash?”
“It’s fine. Barely know it’s there,” he smiled. “I’m about to knock on your door. Just come down so I don’t have to come inside—I can smell the zombie juice from here, ugh.”
I tapped my temple again to close the comm queue and took one last, deep breath of fresh air before shutting my window and heading into the foyer.
“I’m going to check up on my internship applications from yesterday, Aunt Alice!” I lied so I wouldn’t have to answer a thousand questions as I was trying not to breathe. Max knocked on the door in the time it took me to walk to it, and I’d never been so grateful for his fantastic timing. I swung the door open and took in another deep breath.
“Oh my god…” Max said, his expression crumpling. “It’s the smell of actual death,” he added, pulling the front of his shirt over his nose and mouth.
“I told you. Come on,” I took a step out the door, but stopped in my tracks when my Uncle Ray bellowed my name.
“Halsey! Come in here!”
“Please no.” Max shook his head. “No, Halsey.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed his shirt, dragging him into the house with me, despite his pleading and whimpering.
“Alice is digging up some potatoes for the stew out back. Gonna need to double down on the immunity this winter against that wasting sickness that’s on the rise again, and now they’re saying those Ferals in the valley have an actual disease. Calling it Red Fever.” My uncle rolled his eyes. “Just people fed up with oppression is all that is. Just people starting to lose their minds and take to violence. This whole place is going to hell,” he added, his already narrow eyes nearly disappearing under his bushy, gray brows as he glared at me. “You lost your mind now too, did you?”
Academy of Magic Collection Page 59
