by Martha Carr
It was all the drow halfling could do not to laugh at that. “Yeah, and trust me, I already know how much it hurts to try finding whatever’s in my shoulder by myself. Not a very good angle, either.”
The doctor just closed his eyes and sighed again.
“But if you really can’t just take a look,” Cheyenne added, “could you at least get me a pair of surgical tweezers? Maybe a scalpel? I’ll buy those too, no problem. ‘Cause I’m definitely gonna need something better than anything I could find at CVS—”
“Okay, stop.” Dr. Andrews lifted a hand, his eyes still closed. “At-home surgery with convenience-store supplies is gonna give me nightmares.”
Cheyenne and Ember grinned at each other. The halfling jerked a thumb toward the doctor and muttered, “That’s professional dedication right there.”
“And I’ll vouch for him. He’s really very good.”
Dr. Andrews let out a bitter chuckle and shook a finger at the halfling—not enough to look completely pissed about the situation but aggravated beneath the amusement. “If I take a look, you have to promise me you won’t go poking around in there again. And if it doesn’t get better, you’ll go see a doctor the right way and get them to look at it. Deal?”
“Absolutely. Thank you.”
“Okay.” The man shot her a sideways glance, then shook his head and headed toward the door. “Give me about ten minutes to raid the surgical supplies. And no one else hears a word of this, understand?”
“Crystal-clear.” Cheyenne nodded.
“Like it never happened.” Ember mimed zipping up her lips.
Dr. Andrews studied them both with a smirk. “Yeah. Just know I’m doing this for Ms. Gaderow. She’s gonna need a friend like you for support when she gets outta here, which you won’t be able to give if you nick a vein or that shoulder goes septic. Don’t let that happen.”
Cheyenne just nodded, and the doctor slipped out of the room, shaking his head.
“Did you actually try digging a tracking device out of your own shoulder?” Ember’s raised eyebrow and crooked smile hovered somewhere between admiration and condescension.
“Come on, Em. You know I don’t lie to you.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Dr. Andrews had pulled the desk away from the wall on the opposite side of Ember’s hospital room, which he’d covered with a sheet of that crinkly paper doctors put over exam tables. With the desk covered in unopened packages of surgical tools, rolls of gauze, a box of gloves, and sutures pre-threaded through a much larger needle than Cheyenne had bought, the man gently pressed his gloved hands against the halfling’s raw, red, torn shoulder. She gripped the edge of the chair with both hands and waited for him to start.
“You wanna tell me what put two holes like these in your shoulder?” Dr. Andrews peered at her over the rims of his glasses.
“You really want me to tell you?”
“Fair enough.” The man gently cleaned her shoulder with a sterilizing wipe, then pulled a capped syringe from the pocket of his coat. “Local anesthetic. Not sure how much it’ll—”
“You can put that thing away.” Cheyenne wrinkled her nose at the syringe and pulled away from the man just so he knew she was serious.
“You have a thing about needles, huh?”
She stared at him for a moment, then pointed at her face. “I used to have a dozen more piercings in my face. The only ‘thing’ I have about needles is that they were part of a weird phase I went through.”
The doctor pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. “Then this one will be a piece of cake.”
“Not really. Local anesthetic doesn’t work on me.”
His eyes widened again, and he glanced behind Cheyenne at Ember sitting upright in the hospital bed.
“Don’t look at me.” Ember shrugged.
“Just trying to save us some time, here, doc.” The halfling nodded at the syringe. “You’ll waste that on me, be totally baffled about why it doesn’t work, and then we’ll argue about your thoughts that maybe I just need more. By that time, you could be done with this.”
Dr. Andrews sat back in his chair just in front of her and cocked his head. “It sounds like you’ve been in this situation a time or two.”
“What, like getting surgery off the books in my best friend’s hospital room? No, this is a first. But I saw a lot of doctors when I was a kid. The anesthetic conversation gets old pretty fast.”
“I really hope those doctors weren’t looking at wounds like this when you were a kid.”
The halfling smirked. “This one’s a first, too. I fell out of a lot of trees growing up.”
Plus, we don’t need to talk about all Mom’s private physicians and what a kick they got out of Bianca Summerlin’s medical marvel of a daughter. This guy thinks I’m human.
“I see.” The doctor capped the syringe again and set it back down on the paper-covered desk. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
“Sure.” She gripped the edges of the chair again and turned her shoulder toward him. “Let’s do this.”
Neither of them said anything else while Dr. Andrews got to work. He looked up at her once in the beginning, surprised to find Cheyenne watching him poke around in her shoulder, but he kept going. She’d learned her lesson from the troll healer at Rez 38—never look away, no matter how much it hurt.
And it hurt. A lot.
After five minutes, the halfling could no longer feel the metal frame of the chair clenched in both hands. She had closed her eyes after the first warning flare of heat blooming at the base of her spine. Just think about the woods. And the deer. Don’t go all drow berserker on the guy who’s just trying to help.
When Dr. Andrews cleared his throat and leaned closer, she knew he was trying to hold something back.
“What’s going on?”
“I think I found what got stuck in here.”
“Great.” Cheyenne nodded. “Get it out.”
“You sure there weren’t any bullets involved?”
She pressed her lips together and stared at him. “I’m pretty sure a bullet wouldn’t have disappeared in my shoulder without going through it.”
“Clearly.” The doctor dabbed her shoulder with more gauze and shook his head. “This looks like shrapnel.”
“Just get it out.” She’d said it sharply enough to make both of them pause. “Please.”
“Uh-huh.”
When Dr. Andrews dug in again, Cheyenne growled and clenched the chair even tighter. A small squeak of denting metal rose from beneath her hands, which had acquired mottled splotches of her gray-purple drow skin. You know how to keep it down, so keep it down.
“Almost got it.” The man hmmmed in confusion, the tug inside Cheyenne’s shoulder sent a burst of fire racing down her arm, and then the hospital-grade tweezers rose slowly from the much bloodier hole in her flesh. A tiny square of thin silver metal was clenched in those tweezers, two bloody wires like thick hairs dangling from the bottom of it. “What the hell is this?”
“Hey, yeah.” Cheyenne waited for the man to drop his find onto the white paper covering the desk before she snatched the slippery, blood-covered tracking device. “That’s where I put this thing.”
“What?” The man stared at her as she leapt up from the chair and went toward the window for her backpack. “Now wait just a minute—”
“Thanks, doc. I owe you one.” The halfling slung her backpack over the other shoulder and shoved the tiny FRoE tracker into her pocket.
“What did I just take out of your shoulder?”
“Something that didn’t need to be there.” Leaning over the bed, Cheyenne put a hand on Ember’s shoulder. “I gotta go. Thanks for the chat.”
“Yeah, thanks for coming over.” Ember stared at her friend, on the verge of laughing, then glanced at Dr. Andrews and muttered, “I think you broke my doctor.”
The man stood beside the desk, blinking in surprise. Cheyenne just shrugged before walking around the bed again tow
ard the door. “Call me if you need me, Em.”
“Yep.”
“You need to sit back down,” Dr. Andrews said, pointing an unconvincingly weak finger at the chair. “Let me suture those—”
“I already took up enough of your time. Seriously, though. Thanks. I’m good.”
“Well at least let me cover it.” He held out folded sheets of gauze, and Cheyenne approached him just long enough to take the gauze from his hand and the roll of medical tape from the desk.
“Yeah, good idea. Have a good night.” She lifted the supplies in a hurried salute and marched toward the door.
“Wait, you can’t just… You have to keep it clean!”
The halfling waved him off before she disappeared. Dr. Andrews frowned, scratched his head, and turned slowly to look at Ember. “I don’t suppose you know anything about that, huh?”
She smiled and tilted her head. “About what?”
He chuckled in disbelief. “Yeah, that’s right. Like it never even happened.”
* * *
Cheyenne made it back to her apartment half an hour later. Her shoulder, now covered with the gauze she’d taped down in her car, felt a million times better already. Or maybe it was just a placebo effect. “Mind over matter, right?”
She dropped her backpack beside the half-wall of the kitchen counter and headed right for Glen and everything her desktop setup had to offer. The thought of Sir or Rhynehart or some other FRoE operative looking for her on the side of the freeway where she’d tossed the tracking device out her car window made her smile.
The main monitor of the two on her desk blinked on when she woke it up, and the halfling had something else to smile about. “Bingo. The Bunker is still reigning champion.”
Her reinforced decryption program had done exactly what it was supposed to do with the massive file gu@rdi@n104 had sent her yesterday. Cheyenne clicked out of the notification alerting her to the finished process and froze.
“You gotta be kidding me.” She sat in her executive desk chair, rolled it toward her keyboard, and scanned the file the Bunker had taken over twelve hours to unwrap for her.
It was a whole bunch of nothing. The file didn’t even make sense. On the surface, it looked like a large text of simple CSS code formatting, except for none of the commands were closed off, and what would have been words were just more broken lines of code with no apparent ending. One more layer of encryption, and she didn’t even know where to start breaking this down. Good thing she had friends in hacker places.
Cheyenne logged on to the Y2Kickass server and pulled up a private message to her old friend Todd.
ShyHand71: Hey, buddy. I have another favor to ask.
The halfling sat back and watched for a response. Todd was usually pretty quick about getting back to her. She had a feeling the guy stayed in the server all the time to keep an eye on things after GRND0 kicked the bucket. She was right.
T-rexifus088L: Okay, you know I love you. But if you’re trying to send me another one of those files that sits around on my network like a grenade with the pin pulled, you can suck it.
Cheyenne laughed and typed her response.
ShyHand71: I said sorry for that one, didn’t I?
T-rexifus088L: Briefly.
ShyHand71: It’s not anything like that. Somebody who might turn out to be a friend sent me on a little scavenger hunt. It’s stupid, but it’s kind of the only option I have to get what I want. I decrypted the first layer, but there’s something else keeping me out. Code that looks broken but somehow isn’t. Think any of our friends could take a look and tell me what it is? Or at least where to start?
T-rexifus088L: Weird. Maybe. I can ask. Any particular way you want me to sell it?
ShyHand71: Just tell them I can pay. With real money. If that makes a difference.
T-rexifus088L: Real money? What’s that?
ShyHand71: Haha.
Cheyenne shook her head. The members of GRND0’s Y2Kickass team hadn’t branched out much since the halfling had come aboard as a new wannabe hacker over six years ago. These people weren’t looking for paid work. They hung around, just like Cheyenne did, in case one of the others pulled something up that looked remotely interesting. Maybe offering to pay someone to decrypt something she hadn’t seen before wasn’t quite enough.
ShyHand71: And throw in an extra little gift, I guess. Say I’ll owe them one.
T-rexifus088L: Yeah, that might get somebody to take a look, at least. I’ll let you know if I get any bites.
ShyHand71: Thanks.
The chat window closed from his end, and Cheyenne logged out of Y2Kickass to keep that part of her life separate from what she was about to get into next. Sure, she had complete faith in the VPN she’d set up and her tight firewall layers, but there really was no such thing as being too careful on the dark web.
One more jump through the site titled Third Quarter Projections and onto the Borderlands forum. The hidden site was one giant, virtual hangout for the magicals on this side of the Border trying to find a little bit of solidarity in a world where no one knew they existed. Where no one could know, except for other magicals and the FRoE. There were a ridiculous number of new post topics at the top of the screen, but she ignored them all to find the one and only post she’d made so far—that she was looking for the orc named Durg.
That was the most important thing on her list right now, especially while Todd talked to their pals about decrypting the rest of gu@rdi@n104’s stupid treasure map. gu@rdi@n104 leaving the very first—and only—comment on her post had definitely scared all the other users away from even trying to talk to her about it. gu@rdi@n104 had staked his claim to the information, apparently, and now the halfling’s only option with that was to play along with the guy’s ridiculous game.
She skimmed back through the newest topic threads, and the post that caught her attention next made her pause. “Woah.”
It was titled Someone Needs to Murder That Skaxen, which would have been intriguing enough. But the real kicker with this one was that a new topic started at 1:47 this morning already had over thirty thousand comments. It was titled, What happened here?
Cheyenne clicked into the thread and started reading.
Laird4Quad: Okay, guys. So I have it on good authority from a cousin at Rez 38. They bagged one of their trouble residents yesterday. A Skaxen named Q’orr Wakka’an. And this guy, 100%, is the source of all those bloodeater potions and Cthulhu charms making their way through Virginia. They got him.
PWNpalACE420: Good news if we had any proof. Not sure a cousin at any rez counts as “good authority.”
MeadLaquer: O’gúl Crown damn the motherfucker! Finally somebody put him away. Thanks for posting this, @Laird4Quad. My sister’s kid got into one of those fell-gotten “truth” potions a few weeks ago. Damn near killed him, and I know he’s one of the lucky ones with that shit. Most kids don’t make it from what I heard. Whoever tagged that Skaxen piece of shit can have a whole barrel of grog on me.
FreddyKrugerrand1oz: @PWNpalACE420, I heard the same thing from another source inside Rez 38. Heard it was a drow who put this Q’orr guy away, too. Maybe instead of automatically doubting the OP, you should be looking for what pieces of the story actually fit together.
GraceNFrankly: @FreddyKrugerrand1oz A drow, huh? Anybody know if this is our friend D or just another one running under FRoE directives? Not sure how I feel about mixing the two if it’s the same guy. But I can’t really complain. Whoever it is, they put that scumbag away so we can start clearing his black-magic shit off the streets and keep our kids safe again.
PWNpalACE420: @FreddyKrugerrand1oz Maybe instead of believing everything you hear on the fell-damned dark web, you try using your brains. Unless you don’t have any left after whatever rez you came from finished brainwashing you. Good luck making it Earthside with the rest of the fucking sheep.
ToriBrowzr45: Yes! I had to come up with a serious reason to tell my daughter she’s grounded for the next month just
to keep her away from that awful place down in Carytown. That’s one of the distribution points for those potions and charms, and I’ll throw myself on the death torch before I let her step foot in that place. Hopefully it gets cleared out now that the traitor killing our flesh and blood is locked up where he belongs. @MeadLaquer So glad to hear your sister’s kid made it through. We’ve seen a lot in our circles who couldn’t be saved in time.
PWNpalACE420: @ToriBrowzr45 You ever think it’s gaoler magicals like you who make their kids wanna go out and find some black magic? We came Earthside for a better life, not to be imprisoned by our own parents. #letthekidhavealife
SLUMberJac: @PWNpalACE420 Troll!
FerrisMedals82: Good news. We’ll keep an eye on things however we can. @Laird4Quad Thanks for putting this up. We’ll keep adding as more info comes in. Seriously, @PWNpalACE420, I am this close to hunting you down and giving you a piece of my mind. If you can’t quit clogging up these threads with your bullshit, get off the wagon.
PWNpalACE420: @FerrisMedals82 You couldn’t track me down if you had a goddamn tracer spell and a piece of my tusk. And I bet you wouldn’t last two seconds in a fighting pit.
orcsOVERwives: Keep the info rolling, people. We’ll build the best picture we can of what’s happening with our kids and how to get the rest of that crap off the streets now that the supplier’s out of the picture. Making this world safe for all of us, right? That’s why we’re here. @PWNpalACE420 Careful about picking fights here, man. I know at least five magicals on this forum who could find you in half an hour, VPN or no. Then you’d have your face plastered all over the Borderlands for everyone to see.
PWNpalACE420: @orcsOVERwives Bring it. Maybe the rest of you Earthside-lovers have forgotten where you came from, but I won’t think twice about building a fucking pipe bomb and blasting your ass all the way back to Ambar’ogúl. #earthsideproblems
FreddyKrugerrand1oz: @gu@rdi@n104 Flagged.
GraceNFrankly: @FreddyKrugerrand1oz Thank you. I was about to do that myself.
