Had this thought never occurred to him, I would have seen a flicker of surprise or perhaps even astonishment in his gaze. I saw neither. On the contrary, he pulled his cheeks back and drew himself up pretentiously with his eyes still storming as he replied dismissively, “Venan’s actions are not your consequences to bear.”
There were a number of things about that sentence that irritated me, not in the least the way he said, “Venan’s actions.” I bristled.
“I am not talking about taking responsibility in place of Venan,” I spat. “I am talking about the Council’s belief that I would prove a nuisance, if not a vigilante, should I be allowed to continue roaming freely whilst my brother is in your prison. And, while we are hovering near the topic, Venan’s actions were nothing more than an attempt to protect his Elder, which resulted in an accident.”
“It was quite an accident,” Sevani commented.
A snarl leaped from my throat, and I felt my lip curling. I had never cared much for Sevani, but I had never loathed him the way I did now. Rage was flowing through me as swiftly as my blood, and my ability to restrain both my words and my body was rapidly declining. Luckily, Vi’den chose that moment to extricate himself from the group around him and strode over to us.
“Zuran,” he greeted me with a downward tilt of his chin. I reciprocated in kind, though my lip continued to curl and I only briefly swung my gaze from Sevani to the kinder of the Elders.
“Hello, Elder Vi’den.”
“I trust all is quite well here?” he asked, looking pointedly between us.
Sevani swelled further, the chest of his robes puffing out and his shoulders rolling back. “Actually, Vi’den, it seems Zuran has concocted quite the story in his mind about why he was chosen to join this team,” he said icily.
Vi’den turned his attention to me. He did not look at me with anger or judgment or curiosity. Rather, his expression was one of open-minded understanding, a silent invitation for me to explain my thoughts without interruption or consequence. I shot Sevani a glower, bidding him to refrain from interjecting, and explained, “It occurred to me, at the suggestion of another, that I was assigned here to ensure the Council could monitor my actions while Venan is awaiting his trial. Maybe the Elders believed I would attempt to free my brother, or maybe they simply thought I would be infuriated about his arrest and wreak havoc on innocent civilians. I cannot be sure, and, as I have said, this is just a theory. It just seemed to me to be the most plausible because I have no medical education or experience.”
Unlike Sevani, Vi’den did not become indignant or flippant. He continued to look directly at me as he said, “It is not a far-fetched theory you have developed, Zuran. The Council agreed to your appointment for several reasons, the first and foremost being your position as Interplanetary Affairs Officer. It is critical you maintain a presence and have personal knowledge of the Novai status until we are able to rid them of this disease. Should it spread to the races of A’li-uud and human, you will be one of several public voices, and you must have a thorough understanding to address the Albaterran people.”
“That is reasonable, and I take no issue with it,” I told him. “But that is only one part of the Council’s decision. What were the other catalysts for my being here?”
“The Council felt Venan’s legal standing would be difficult for you,” Vi’den admitted. “And, as I am sure you will not deny, your own legal history is less than flawless, particularly in times of turmoil for your family. We felt it would be in your best interest, and ours, if you were provided a task that required great focus to relieve you from idle concern for your brother. I can assure you he is well-cared for while he is at P’otes-tat Ulti, but seedlings of doubts can often fester at the worst of times, and we did not want you to fall prey to those negativities.”
I felt a mixture of emotions at his explanation. The first was smug vindication for having guessed their intention before I could be told, despite Phoebe having been the one to make the suggestion for their reasoning in the first place. The second was anger and self-righteousness; what right did they have to preemptively decide how I would react? The third and most powerful was defiance, an emotion I was all too familiar with. In so many words, Vi’den had explained the Council’s decision was a choice intended to control me, to keep me under their collective thumb and prevent me from impeding them in any way.
I did not like to be controlled.
“Thank you, Elder Vi’den,” I said. My tone was polite, gracious, and I bowed my head for the first time. “I appreciate your candor.”
“Sevani, I believe we should speak to some of the humans before we gather everyone together again,” he said after smiling cordially to me. His aged fingers tugged on Sevani’s bell sleeve. “Come.”
As they walked away, I stared after them, focusing especially on Sevani’s tied ponytail at the base of his skull. I was not seething as I would have expected. Rather, my insides were churning, and the heat I felt was slowly simmering venom. I had flown against the Council before. More years of my life had been spent as a criminal than a supporter. Maybe it was time to revisit my past.
Chapter Eighteen
Phoebe
We were back in the conference-style room where I had first been brought when I came to the hospital. The entire team was gathered around the table, occupying all of the chairs except for one at the very head. No Elders were sitting; instead, they were standing at the front of the room in a group. Vi’den, again, appeared to be taking the lead, which I was glad about because his presence soothed rather than alarmed me.
“You have only been given a glimpse into what will be happening here in the coming weeks,” he said sagely. “It is time you are provided with further detail.”
I was sitting beside Antoinette and across from Dr. Griep. Zuran was in the same chair he’d been in on the first night, nearly all the way on the other end of the table close to the Elders. He looked different somehow. His teeth were clenched, and the muscles in his jaw were tight, but his eyes were more relaxed. I’d seen him speaking to Sevani, then Vi’den, and I wondered if his conversation with them had been helpful or if the expression he wore now was a mask to cover something more sinister. I didn’t know him well, but I had a feeling it was the latter.
“As you have been made aware, the Novai have contracted an unusual illness,” Vi’den went on. He was somber as he spoke, but he didn’t give away any anxiety if he had some. “The Pentaban healers made the first attempts to treat them, but it quickly became clear they could not do it alone. This brings us to you and your purpose here.”
Antoinette was hunched over the table with the edge pushing into her belly so she could lean around me and see the Elders. Her fingers were knitted together so tightly that her fingers had turned white. I didn’t know if she was still skittish around the Council or if she was beginning to feel some fear now that we were on the topic of the disease, but I wasn’t able to ask her. I resolved to bring it up later.
“The first thing we should discuss is the illness itself: the symptoms, the observations healers have made thus far, and failed treatments.” An Elder with a face as young as Zuran’s, who stood behind Vi’den, rolled his shoulders as if ridding himself of a creepy-crawly feeling as Vi’den talked. He had the same kind of facial expression as Zuran, with a shadow of a smirk always lingering beneath everything else, though his eyes were much more serious. I tried to turn my focus away from him and back to Vi’den.
He extracted one of the silver discs—the imaging holograms—from beneath his robes and placed it on the table. A blindingly bright cyan light emerged from the center and fanned outward until it reminded me of a futuristic fern, then the glowing pixels morphed into a graphic.
“The onset of the disease brings with it first behavioral changes. Here, we see the brain of a newly-affected Novai.”
I gaped at the image. It was nothing like a brain, at least not like the picture of a brain I had come to know. Like humans, it was rounded in its
overall shape, but it completely lacked the ridges of gyri and grooves of sulci. It was just smooth, completely smooth.
Dr. Griep raised his hand. If the topic wasn’t so serious, it would have been comical to see him behaving like he was in class. “Excuse me,” he interjected, “but I’d like to know if there’s an image of a healthy brain from a Novai who has never contracted this disease.”
“I am afraid we do not,” Vi’den informed him ruefully. “And, at this point, it may be impossible to acquire such as most, if not all, of the Novai have now come in contact with the illness or someone infected. Do you have a concern we could perhaps address for you despite the lack of your requested image?”
“It’s just that it appears the patient was either born with or has developed lissencephaly, and the distinction could be important.”
The Elders exchanged looks, and most of those around the table—human and A’li-uud included—glanced at one another in confusion. Zuran met my eyes, and his lips twitched with a grin. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back.
“Could you explain lissencephaly to us, please?” Vi’den asked with interest, focusing intently on Dr. Griep.
The doctor seemed uncomfortable in the spotlight, but he explained as bidden. “It’s a brain disorder in which some or all of the brain is smooth, resulting in severe developmental delays and oftentimes a stunted life expectancy. It’s very rare, but those patients who have it are born with it as it occurs in womb during the second trimester of pregnancy. I’m curious to know if all Novai brains are smooth or if this Novai in particular suffers from lissencephaly. I’d be surprised if he developed it after contracting the disease, but I guess it’s possible since we’re dealing with an entirely different race.”
Vi’den was beaming at Dr. Griep, clearly impressed. “We will be sure to get that information for you as quickly as possible, Doctor, and may I say we are honored to have you as part of this team.” Dr. Griep nodded in acknowledgment, and Vi’den again began to speak about the brain scan glowing in front of us. I peeked down at Zuran again. He noticed and winked, and I felt my face grow warm.
“As many of you know, the Novai tend to be a caustic race, and aggression of sorts is not unusual for their kind. Aggression associated with the illness, however, has some unique differences observed by the Pentaban healers in the initial patients, such as…”
Vi’den jabbed his finger into the image.
“…a loss of recognition for logic and reason…”
He jabbed again.
“…a willingness to injure oneself if the act will also injure or kill the opponent…”
Jab.
“…and a sudden lack of individual personality.”
He withdrew his finger from the graphic, and the lights resettled themselves into place again, reforming the solid image of the Novai’s brain.
“The second stage of the disease brings forth physical changes that, for many of you, will be rather alarming,” he said. He touched something on the hologram base, and the glowing brain picture flashed before becoming a new graphic. This was a face, a terrible, demonic visage with ridges and lips and sharply-cornered eyes. At the center of the eyes were slits, narrow and vertical, like a snake or a cat. If I’d been asked to sketch a picture of what I imagined Satan to look like, this would be it. “As you can see, the Novai are not eyeless as we have believed for some time.”
There were not only murmurings but outright exclamations at this. One of the A’li-uud healers spun in his chair to gape at his neighbor, and even Zuran was staring at the hologram as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Novai eyes are covered by a thin layer of skin, rather like the skin of their cheeks has been stretched up to meet their forehead. As the disease continued to develop in the first patients, that skin began to deteriorate.” Vi’den circled his forefinger around the appropriate facial region. “The healers observed scab-like lesions in the center of the covered sockets, which were unresponsive to standard topical treatment. Instead of growing into large masses, however, the scabs migrated out in circles and left the patient without skin completely in the middle. I believe one healer compared the phenomenon to setting a fire at the center of a blanket.”
I thought back to the Novai who had gotten loose in the palace the day Kharid died. His eyes had not been visible. There had been no round scabbing in the blank divots. If he had been ill, it had clearly been in the earlier stages of the disease, which explained his reckless attack. An Elder died because of this illness.
Zuran looked contemplative, and I wondered if he was recalling the very same memory I was. I wanted him to see me watching him so I could figure out what he was thinking, but he was so lost in his own mind that he seemed not to notice while Vi’den described further.
“After the eyes are exposed, the rest of the skin begins undergoing change,” he said. A third image appeared in the hologram’s glow, and I saw a full-body picture of a nude Novai stretched out on a table, apparently restrained by the wrists, ankles, and neck. While the light was still cyan, the pixels constructing the Novai’s body started to saturate. “This is a time lapse over seventy-two hours. You can see the skin tone darkening. Observations have ranged from discolorations of pale gray to beige, but the only patients who have entered this stage of the disease have done so quite recently. It is fair to expect mild to drastic discoloration as time goes on.”
“I’m sorry.” I interrupted before I could stop myself, and all attention turned to me. Vi’den didn’t look annoyed at all by my verbal intrusion, but a handful of others glared at me like I had done something horribly offensive. I shrank back momentarily, reconsidering speaking, but Vi’den nodded reassuringly at me and silently encouraged me to continue. I took a breath and asked, “I’m not saying this isn’t a serious matter, and it doesn’t need to be dealt with or anything, but why is there so much urgency to prevent this spreading? It doesn’t sound fatal…”
My voice died off as Vi’den became solemn. “Unfortunately,” he said sorrowfully, “it is fatal. The first three patients to contract this disease perished en route to this very hospital.”
Chapter Nineteen
Zuran
We were operational in a matter of days.
On the one-week mark of living at the hospital, a series of Pentaban warriors arrived in groups, each bringing with them a Novai. By the time they left and only the patients and members of the designated team remained, I counted six ailing Novai, twelve determined A’li-uud, eight nervous humans, and myself.
As I had absolutely no value medically, I was left to myself for the better part of a day. Everyone else, it seemed, had become engrossed in analyzing each and every Novai in painstaking detail down to a single twitch of a finger. From my observation, those who were brought to us were in what Vi’den had described as the first stage: aggressive, hostile, but still eyeless and disturbingly pale. If the disease fatigued them at all, it was inconspicuous, and they fought their ankle and wrist restraints with vehemence. When a healer approached them, they roared the very same roar I had heard from the escaped Novai in the palace, and I understood with visceral clarity now how imperative Venan’s brutality had been, though it did not diminish the disastrous outcome.
I had not spoken again with Phoebe since our morning on the cot, primarily because the Elders’ illumination on the disease had sent the team into a frenzy of preparation. The hospital became a flurry of activity as kits of essential diagnostic instruments were assembled for convenience, beds were rearranged to establish better patient isolation, and A’li-uud healers flooded the human doctors and nurses with information about the more advanced equipment in an effort to expedite efficiency. I helped where I could, of course, but my motivation was chiefly to contrive moments of interaction with Phoebe, and, thus far, there had been none. She was a victim to the tornado of activity, always spinning about and racing from one room to the other, and I had to find myself content with watching the way her tender cheeks pinkened a
nd her fair hair coiled in her haste.
In my many hours of spare time, I was free to wander outside of the hospital. I did not recognize my surroundings, though it was evident we were still in Dhal’at as massive dunes and an endless sky could be seen in every direction, but I had always considered myself familiar with every inch of my kingdom, and I was frustrated to discover I was not as familiar as I had thought. Ignorance about my location would make my new plan more difficult to carry out.
After the Elders had departed, I had been furious. The level of control they were exerting over me was more than I could tolerate, and their insistence I remain separate from Venan’s predicament was insulting. He may have been annoyingly perfect, always the ideal son and warrior and Dhal’atian citizen, but he was my brother nonetheless, and I knew he was struggling in his prison. I was certain he felt he was rightfully incarcerated; he had been so staunchly devoted to Kharid that he likely felt he deserved nothing less than prosecution to the fullest extent of the A’li-uud law. But I knew differently. I could not let my twin waste away for a crime that was, in my eyes, hardly a crime at all.
Breaking into P’otes-tat Ulti was impossible. It was heavily guarded by both massive walls, impenetrable gates, and more guards than any kingdom across Albaterra could boast. Getting a message into P’otes-tat Ulti, however, was far from impossible. I had done it before, and I would do it again. Of course, the last and only time I had managed to do so was for an accomplice in the black market trade who was jailed for a petty crime, and it was highly likely Venan was kept in a cell of maximum security. To succeed would be a feat in and of itself, but I was determined to try. Regardless of Venan’s feelings about himself in the present, it was crucial he knew what he did was not only well-intended but obligatory, and I was now in a position to prove it.
Zuran: A Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 6 Page 8
