03
Fásach breathed a deep and sudden sigh, scrunching his nose as a raging headache pounded its way into his skull. Blood squeezed his temples and the base of his ears like he’d been suspended upside down for hours, and the light beyond his closed eyelids was too bright and clean.
Where the hell was he?
The yiwreni mover rolled his tongue around his mouth, counting his teeth. All accounted for. He definitely wasn’t wherever Turj holed up. This place didn’t smell like sweat and dirty leather. Actually it smelled nice, like citrus or cleaning products… It was the sort of sterility that reminded him of impeccably maintained colony ship dorms and cleaner drones that buzzed through the passageways of the ship he and his mother had boarded all those years ago. When the nosebleeds and over-sensitized skin had nearly driven him mad because of the hum of the ship and the constant barrage of electrical signals that scrambled his senses.
But there wasn’t any place like that on Huajile except for HXBI. The only thing close was the guild complex and–
“Scocite!”
Fás jumped to sitting, tangled up in a bleach-perfect white sheet on a low tactical cot, light pucks hovering in the corners and center of the room. He snapped his teeth together and cursed again as his headache spiked, stumbling off the cot in his bare feet. The sheet trailed behind him, caught between his ankles as he backed into his own boots like a clumsy pup. Hopping on one foot to dislodge the cursed sheet, he pulled up his holotab.
He swore with even more fervor, grabbing and pulling on his furry ear until it stung. He was in one of HXBI’s prefab triages after all, not the guild’s lab.
“Hello, sir, how was your rest? Would you like a vitals update?”
A hjarna nurse doll rounded the corner, perfectly hospitable and taciturn. The doll blinked his eyes in perfect sync, set in a powder blue skin tone that conveyed absolute calm and trustworthiness for his originator species. Rather than the natural ridges and familial marks of a biological hjarna’s head crest, the doll’s crest had been branded with its serial number and a bold white stripe to indicate its caregiver protocols.
“Before discharging you from the triage, I must perform a concussion protocol. Please, take a seat.”
With a heavy huff, Fásach sat on the edge of his hospital cot. The nurse doll crouched before him and tapped on a light embedded on the end of one long fingertip. He followed the light, claws digging into the thin mattress on either side of his thighs as the doll tested his pupils for dilation and tracking.
“I got hit on the head, yeah?” he asked, licking a fang, dreading where this line of questioning would lead.
“Yes, sir. Can you tell me your name and place of birth?”
“Fásach Daen. Byd Farrwell, evacuation zone Bora-08?. How bad is it?”
“You suffered a grade-two temporal concussion accompanied by hairline fractures of the lateral zygomatic and parietal bones. I administered a mediplasma and have monitored your progress. You have been deemed fit for discharge from the triage after thirty-seven turns and eighteen beats.”
Hot terror spiked through Fásach’s heart. Not only had the doll administered an extremely expensive cure-all, but he’d never listed the girls as next-of-kin to keep them under the radar. They’d been alone, and though they’d talked about what to do in this kind of situation, it had never actually happened before.
Heart in his throat, Fásach opened his holotab to find several messages, all from Safia. He began typing, frantic fingers shaking clumsily as the sedative wore down to nothing.
08:03, Fásach: You an dMisi okya?
Safia could read between the spelling errors, right?
“Could you please recite the name of our mother planet?”
“Piaoguo,” Fásach mumbled.
08:03, Safia: We’re okay. Are you?
08:03, Fásach: I’m okay. Stay with Auntie until I call for you. No school.
08:04, Safia: Got it.
“Thank fuck,” he sighed. He scrubbed his face, elbows on his knees. “Chorus of the heavens, thank you… What’s my bill?” Fásach asked, shoving his feet into his boots.
“Six-point-four-three cache.”
Fásach actually snarled, baring his teeth before the predatory response whittled into a whimper of despair. His ears fell back as he grabbed his jacket and rummaged around inside. Predictably, nothing was left. Turj had cleaned him out of every last shiver sticker in his inventory. Maybe one of the secret bags he kept in the lining had survived? Enough to barter for food, anyway. He picked it up and his jaw dropped. The thermophobic fabric was slashed open, hanging in tatters from its seams.
Without that jacket to protect him from the heat, he couldn’t move his product. Without his product, he couldn’t afford a new jacket. Or food. Or school supplies. Or medicine…
He was fucking ruined.
“You are exhibiting symptoms of anxiety. Shall I prepare a mild sedative?”
“No, but I’ll take water and a painkiller.”
“Of course. Excuse me.”
The doll left, sliding past a milky white curtain. Fásach swallowed hard, staring at his krol’s comm details. He’d needed help from the guild more times than he could count since Quiopha had died, and no matter how many years he’d been a member, he still felt like he’d never be able to repay his debts. Clearing his throat, he tapped Novak’s severe advenan features, and waited for their linguitors to connect.
“Commlink inaccessible,”his holotab intoned in his ear.
Fásach’s brow creased. He tried Vindilus. Also unable to pick up. He checked the guild’s secure socials. Mijka’s icon was on do not disturb as well. All three of them had been on the same job involving Imani James and the Conrad.
Maybe their job went sour. If the guild was losing ground on Huajile…
It would explain why Turj was confident enough to attack him on neutral ground. Novak had been gone too much, yielding his guild responsibilities to his obsession with the human dollhouse and its players. Mijka had been running things for months, so maybe the guild’s competition had started to take notice.
“Your medicine, sir.”
Fásach blinked at the hjarna doll, holding out two plas cups, one filled with water, and one with a gel shot of pain reliever. He took the gel first, squeezed it into his mouth, then chased it down with one cool gulp of water.
“Upon leaving the triage, your cache will be charged, so please take your time. And on behalf of the Huajile Xenobiology Institute family, thank you for putting your trust in our services.”
Fásach didn’t spare the doll an empty farewell but pushed out into the triage’s central hall. It was a prefab like every other neighborhood triage on Huajile. Marginally cooler than the exterior and insulated with photonic silver lame to keep the heat at bay, just like the lining of his jacket. Most triages were filled with elders fighting heatstroke and were as quiet as a library, punctuated only by the soft beep of vital decks and cool steam misters.
Which made the clatter of a barrier in front of the exit all the louder as Fásach ran into it, expecting the doors to slide open. He stumbled back, ears upright and at alert.
“Apologies, sir,” another doll, this one lavender and female, said as she approached. “It appears you do not have a cache suitable for the payment required. Would you like to open a line of credit? We make automatic payments streamlined and simple.”
“What? I should have at least enough to split the—” Fásach punched open his accounts, and despite how hot the air was on the other side of those doors, his blood ran cold.
Turj had hacked his holotab and drained him of every cred in his name.
Fásach swallowed hard. If the yog ransacked his accounts, he would have seen his address. Turj might not make a house call today, but someday after Fásach had his feet under him again, he’d come knocking.
Which meant he couldn’t keep Safia and Misila there anymore.
“Yes, I’ll open a line of credit,” he said with a hollow voice. The hostess took his biometric signature, and the doors opened into the scorching air of the Pipes, the weapons bazaar where waves of volcanic tubes born from ancient eruptions formed a protective wall between the market streets and the lava seas of the Volcage. He stepped out into the ashy, dark afternoon as heat lightning snapped across the infernal cloud cover and made a direct left turn towards home.
The minuscule progress he’d made towards getting those girls a place in their clan was gone now. Probably forever. And the guild could only do so much. The complex dorms were full and only housed the barracks anyway. Best he could hope for was to hop between empty safe houses. Maybe a shelter where they wouldn’t need to register for a bed…
Whatever the solution, Fásach just needed it fast.