by K. T. Hanna
Sai recoils a little. His words feel like a slap. Part of her wants to hug him, like the hugs she got when he accompanied her on those horrible GNW missions, but the other part of her wants to run and put as much distance between them as she can manage because the line of trust they had is shattered.
“I’m not your responsibility anymore,” Sai snaps. Using mainly upper body strength, she levers herself up over the bed and wills her legs to obey, focusing completely on how they should be when standing. There’s a slight buzz and a click in her head and suddenly she is standing, with just a hand on the bed to steady her.
“What the...” Sudden drowsiness threatens to send her crashing to the ground again. Dom scoops a hand under her elbow and guides her to sit on the bed instead of revisiting the floor.
“Focus long enough for it to learn. There will be trial and error, but adrium isn’t stupid. It’ll learn if you let it. With some intelligence to guide it.” Dom shrugs and rolls his shoulders.
Sai snatches her elbow back from him. His face blanks over, expressionless.
“I wish I could take this back.” He gestures helplessly at her legs, gaze lingering momentarily, and pauses as he looks back up at her. “I really am sorry, Sai.”
She can hear the sincerity in his voice, but doesn’t feel the emptiness until he’s already gone. “Damn legs,” she mutters, pretending the cold in the room isn’t the sudden loss she feels at Dom leaving.
“That they are.” Mathur lays a hand on her shoulder. “But we will have you up and phasing in no time.” He glances at her pale face. “Or at least, in a few weeks. You do realize your own healing can help speed the process up a bit, right?”
Exhausted and wondering why she didn’t think of healing herself first, she clings to his words instead. “Do we have a few weeks?”
“Of course, little one,” Mathur says, his face crinkling into that fond smile he wears so well. His expression softens as he watches her maneuver herself back into bed, much more independently than the previous days. “We just won a victory, after all.”
Sai glares at her legs as she dangles them over the side of the bed. It’s taken a few days, but her reflexes are getting better, even though some things are still sluggish. Like deliberately swinging her legs back and forth. The reaction time is always a little off from what she wants.
She sighs and wiggles her toes, happy with their response. Her mobility is severely limited, and it irks her. They need her in this fight, for what she has the power to do, and the longer it takes her to adapt, the less time they have to prepare. She doesn’t blame Mathur for making himself scarce the last few days because her temper may be a wee bit erratic, but it might have been nice to have someone to talk things over with.
Even now the floor is impossibly far away, but the more she stands, the less it will exhaust her.
With a grimace, she lowers her shiny new feet gently to the ground and barely notices the now-familiar click in her head as her legs shift to support her. They not only look smooth, but feel it in her head. Yet at the same time, it’s a totally alien sensation. Sai admires them for a second, steadying her breath, and then she moves, slowly walking to the bed on the other side of the room. It’s only a few steps, but it drains her energy and it’s all she can do to cling to the bed and stay upright, careful to avoid any buttons or levers that might lower it accidentally.
“I told you she wouldn’t take this lying down.” Iria’s bright voice suffuses the room, and Sai groans at the pun.
“Really?” she mutters. She maneuvers her way around to leverage herself onto the bed but stops short. Iria isn’t the only one in the room. Sai checks her shield and frowns. Perhaps she’s just out of practice. A couple of weeks in a comatose state will do that.
“Hey, Sai.” Aishke smiles briefly and looks down at the floor, while Marlena, in a crisp white uniform, walks toward her.
“Remember me?” she asks, blonde curls bobbing gently as she moves.
Sai nods and tries not to be envious of those curls. Curls should be illegal.
Marlena’s eyes soften as her smile reaches them. “Time for me to patch you up.” She busies herself with the small monitor in her hands, and as she waves it around Sai’s head and chest, the numbers on the screen scroll from white to red, setting off a low rate of beeps that seem to berate Sai with their intensity.
The nurse frowns. “You’re exerting yourself too much. It shouldn’t be taking you this much energy to adjust to the grafts. I’ll go get Jeffries.”
Sai instinctively reaches out a hand, grabbing Marlena. “Jeffries? What does he have to do with this?”
Marlena blinks, her brow scrunching in confusion. “Jeffries operated on you. With Mathur’s help. He took the life-saving patch-up Dom did the rest of the way.”
“Jeffries.” Sai crosses her arms. “You’re trying to tell me he helped me live?”
“Yes.” Marlena shakes her head. “Why on earth wouldn’t he?”
“Long story there!” Iria pipes up, slapping the nurse on the shoulder. “You go get him if you need. I’ll help Sai walk a bit. Can’t have her down for too long now, can we?”
For once, Sai is grateful for Iria’s exuberance. It replaces the severe lack of her own. With Marlena gone, she breathes easier. “Was she joking? Did he really fix me?”
Iria shrugs and sits on a chair, her wide and ready grin gone. “He did what needed to be done. And don’t worry, I don’t think he sabotaged you.”
“Tell that to my legs.” Sai glares at them again for good measure.
Aishke walks toward her but stops off to the side. “They’re pretty.”
“Really?” Sai raises an eyebrow. “You think they’re pretty?
Aishke nods. “Yeah, they’re shiny. And you’ll never have to worry about lazering the hair.”
“Good girl, Aishke!” Iria laughs, but it sounds more forced than Sai remembers. “Find the bright side. Literally.”
Sai laughs despite her obstinate mood. It feels good to talk to friends she didn’t realize she’d missed until now. Though she knows they won’t be able to do anything if the tenuous connection to her legs fails, Aishke and Iria still make a show of helping her walk around the room slowly.
The more she walks, the easier it is for Sai to understand the movements she needs to encourage for her legs to function and use up as little of her energy as possible.
“Good to see you up and about.”
Jeffries voice startles Sai, and her legs lock up. She almost topples over, but Iria and Aishke anchor her.
Sai glances over at the doctor, trying to glean his true intentions. “Sure. Yeah. Need to get back on my feet.”
He nods and gestures to the bed. “Marlena mentioned you’re exhausting too quickly. Let me take a look.”
Sai’s cheeks suddenly flush hot. Even though she now knows he’s seen pretty much all there is to see of her, she doesn’t want to be awake when he inspects her legs.
“I’m fine, really.” She holds up her hands to wave him away as she leans against the bed.
Jeffries raises an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t seem fine. If you don’t take care of these fusion points, your cells will deteriorate. And if you don’t get control of your impulses and instructions, the synaptic functions we reinforced will fry out and you won’t have very much to say ever again.”
Sai gulps and runs through his words in her head, before maneuvering herself back onto the bed.
“Much better,” he says as he helps get her legs up on the end and pushes her to lie down.
It’s comforting not to be left alone with the man who hated her at first sight when she came over to the Exiled. She glances at Iria and the faint crease in her brow. At Aishke and the stubborn set of her jaw. Her friends have been worried, taking on who knows what sort of responsibilities while Sai was out. The guilt threatens to crush her chest, and Sai turns her attention back to Jeffries. He makes a few noises in the back of his throat as he examines the fusion joints. She has
to fight the urge to scream at him, at the world.
Soon though, he’s done and straightens. “You’re tougher than you look. Has Mathur or Dom showed you how to adapt your own healing to the fusion spots?”
Sai shakes her head.
“I’ll get Mathur to come visit you then.” He jots some notes down on the reader at the side of her bed. “You have a long way to go, but your body is adapting better than I’d hoped.”
“Hoped?” Sai can’t stop herself from asking. Did he actually want her to survive?
Jeffries eyes her for a long moment before speaking. “I misjudged you, and you proved me wrong. Of course I hoped you’d adapt well, but I haven’t completed a procedure as complex as this before. I had no way of knowing for certain.”
Sai blinks at him, his words an echo of similar ones from Bastian that seem so long ago now. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You’ve got a long road. When you’re back to your tenacious self, you can thank me. But right now, I’d say we’re even.” He nods briefly and walks out the door before Sai can say another word.
“That’s a pleasant surprise,” Iria says, her dark hair swinging as she walks over to the bed. Her bounce is gone, and Sai frowns at her.
“Something you need to tell me?” she asks, irritated by the quiver in her voice that shows up on the last word.
Iria’s dark eyes rake over Sai without meeting her gaze. She tugs at a loose strand of hair and opens her mouth for a moment before shaking her head. “Not right now. Now, we should walk some more.”
The look of insistence Iria levels at her is so strong it lends a bronze overtone to her dark skin. Taken a little aback, Sai forces her own laugh. “Of course we should. The more I practice, the sooner it’ll click, right?
The next morning, a knock at her door rips Sai out of her sleep. She sits upright, blinking as the lights activate when Dom walks into the room. There’s a cold rush of air that follows on his heels and reaches her before he does. Sai pulls the blanket tight around her and notices even her legs have a chill to them.
She scowls, pushing the monitor wires on her head out of the way. “Why are you here at this hour?”
He watches her, his face expressionless. “Jeffries told me to go over the healing with you.”
“I’m sure he told you to do it in the middle of the night,” she snaps, her breath coming quicker, her head spinning slightly.
“It’s early morning, and I leave shortly. You can’t leave the hospital wing until you know how. Now or after I get back?”
That catches her attention, and Sai shrugs, her sudden anger washing away. There’s this cold feeling in the pit of her stomach every time she sees him now. “Now would probably be better.”
Dom almost smiles, but the expression freezes a fraction of the way there and Sai feels that same pang of emptiness at the lack of his emotions. “This won’t take long.”
Sai catches herself feeling disappointed and scowls again. “Just tell me what to do.”
He shakes his head. “It’s easier to show you...if you’ll let me.” The last few words are spoken so softly she strains to hear them, and for a moment she wants to scream that they—especially they—should not have this awkwardness. But they do. So, she just nods, and he takes her hands in his cool, smooth ones.
Though she’s tried to delve in to see just what makes adrium the compound that it is, not knowing where to start usually stops her before she can. But Dom knows exactly where to begin and how to guide her.
He begins with her legs, where the joints fuse with her skin—where the Adrium becomes a part of her body, latching onto her flesh and suffusing the connection with tendrils of life.
“Never give it too much. Never push it to be more than is necessary,” he cautions in a low voice that seems to echo through her mind. “Just the right balance.” He demonstrates a slow flow of her healing ability, encouraging it through the lines of connection, giving her legs a renewed energy. It trickles through the veins, connecting at the top and disappearing into the expanse that is now her lower body, leaving a trail of electricity that buzzes gently in her head, like the hum she’s heard so often before from Dom.
He follows the line of adrium up the rest of its connectors through her body. It weaves into small deposits along her spine, where she can feel the slight itch of what was once an incision. Then the power spirals up to her skull, where the shaved remnants of her hair surround the sealed cap. The reinforced synaptic connections to her brain are far more complex than Sai anticipated. They’re delicate, thin strands weaving through her sulci and are reinforced intrinsically with the strength of the alien metal. She can feel the sweat beading her brow as she learns from his deft examples.
Dom’s presence in her head has a subtle difference she can’t place. It’s something she’s never noticed in him before, a sort of void that winks in and out, like it’s trying not to be seen. As soon as she thinks it, though, he draws her attention away, pushing her gently to allow the power to flow through and heal, strengthen, and complete the tender links between adrium and synaptic connections. Something else tugs at her, something darker, like the determination that wells up when she’s feeling overwhelmed. Except this has a seductive pull that sends ominous chills down her spine. She backs off, unsure.
“Can I handle it?” She can feel him nod, though her eyes are closed.
“You can handle most anything, Sai.” He guides her awareness through all of it again. Encouraging her, teaching her. “Help it heal, help it fuse, but do not feed it.”
“Feed it?” She can hear the tremor in her voice.
“That darkness, that subtle beckoning you feel?”
She nods.
Dom pauses, a slight hesitance evident where his fingers press on her own. “Adrium is a parasite. It feeds off electricity—in this case, the electricity in your body. If you’re not careful, if you’re not wary, it will slowly take you over. Always remember that.”
Sai shudders as he says the words, suddenly feeling like maybe it’d be better not to have these legs. “Just how dangerous is it?” She opens her eyes as his hands fall from hers.
He shrugs. “It’s a parasite. It leeches off its host. You don’t share your whole presence, your whole being with it, so you should be okay. But it’s hungry, and it wants to survive. Sometimes your instincts might not be your own.”
Dom looks sad for a moment, but then the blank expression reappears and he steps away from the bed. “I have to go.”
But Sai doesn’t want him to, not yet, not with the parasite in her, not before they’ve sorted themselves out. “Where are you going?”
He glances at her, the colors in his eyes whirring for a few moments. “I have to go to Central. There are things I need to take care of.”
“You seem...different.” Because he does, and not just from her accident. There’s something off about him now.
Dom shrugs. “Not different, just not damaged.”
“You won’t rainbow anymore?” Sai asks, relieved at the prospect.
“Not like that.” He half-smiles and heads to the door, then pauses without looking back. “Do you think, maybe one day, you’ll forgive me?”
The tone in his voice wrenches at her, and tears well in her eyes. He’s waiting, poised at the door for an answer. “Definitely. One day.” It’s all she can choke out.
His shoulders relax, and he murmurs a quiet “thank you” as he exits the room.
Even though the sun isn’t up yet, Sai can’t sleep, and she stares at the door for a long time. One day can’t come soon enough.
The salad from Joe’s tastes fresh, with a slightly salty grit underlying the tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce. The green leaves shine rebelliously against the mostly white and light grey surroundings, and the red of the tomatoes pops like artificial blood against the backdrop. Both are almost a distraction from the fact that Sai’s still in the infirmary. But it does taste better than anything she’s had since she woke.
“So,” she asks as she munches her food, “how did they rearrange the Mobile to fit in the larger hospital wings?”
Iria shrugs and chases her food around the plate with her fork. “You know, Mathur. A bit of tweaking here, a bit of tweaking there, a few families moved around, a few shoved onto another Mobile, and—voila! Enough hospital space for about seventy-five people.”
Sai raises her eyebrows, her mouth too full of food to speak.
Iria barely manages to keep a straight face, but the smile still doesn’t make it to her rather apathetic eyes. “There’s another section over on the opposite side. Takes up half as much space and houses the criticals.”
Sai straightens up and blinks. “How many people did we lose?”
“More than anticipated.” Iria’s words are soft, tinged with sadness, and her usual brightness is dulled.
Sai puts down her fork and reaches across to put her hand on Iria’s, balancing precariously on the edge of her bed, the sudden weight of her legs nagging at the back of her mind. “Iria. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” She focuses on her food and laughs. The sound crackles a little, like splintering glass, frail and insubstantial. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”
Sai chooses not to speak and instead just sits back with her hands on her lap, one eyebrow raised, waiting for Iria to look up. It doesn’t take long.
“What?” she says, a rare scow marring her face.
“You’re not being yourself. Talk to me. Please? Maybe I can help.”
Iria barks out a harsh laugh this time, filled with self-derision. “That’s your problem, Sai. You always help. Even when you shouldn’t. You put everyone in front of you, and we almost got you killed...” She pauses, sighing so deeply her chest rises and falls in an exaggerated manner. “I almost got you killed.”
“Is that it?” Sai asks, unable to keep the incredulousness from her tone. “That’s what you’re so upset about?”
