38. Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
~Kitari~
I came to in a fury, thinking only of Bryce. Where was he? Was he still alive? I was in some kind of pod made of a hard green material. My hands were shackled behind me and attached to the floor at the base of the back wall.
I could feel him through the bond, indistinct, weak, but still there.
After they had taken Bryce, I had fought for him. I needed to get him home, I needed to fix him. I would have torn through all of them to get to him, but the wound on my leg slowed me down, and before I knew it, a blast of fizzing had loosened my muscles and knocked me to the ground. I had blacked out for a time. I supposed I should have been glad they did not kill me.
And now it was too late to get him home. He was dying. Our bond was withering away on the dawn of its creation. We were too far from home now, we would never get there in time even if we left now. Staying here was Bryce’s only hope of survival, as long as they gave him the correct care.
Indistinct voices of the humans drifted in from outside. From this distance, and at the speed they spoke, it was difficult to make out the words, but I could understand just enough.
“Whatthefuck was going on withthat thing?”
“Idunno, but it reallywanted Gunner.”
I pulled at the metal bands binding me, but they were sturdy. I needed to get out. I needed to get to Bryce.
“You don’tthink…it’s thesame thing that happened to Clay doyou?”
“I have no fucking clue.”
The sound of another approaching.
“How is Gunner?”
“Not good. Hewon’t wake up. We can’t figureout what it did to him, but it doesn’t lookgood.”
“Shit.”
“Do youthink it can understand us?”
There was a long pause, and when they continued, they spoke in a different language. It sounded blunt and abrupt, possibly what Bryce had called Ingleesh?
I ground my teeth. “I can help him,” I called as clearly as I could in Panlin.
There was another long pause, a few words, and then two figures appeared at the entrance to the pod. Both had their helmets retracted, and I recognized the older one from when I first found Bryce in the jungle, with his gray facial growth. He glared at me with narrow eyes, while the younger one next to him stared with wide ones.
“He was stung by the kapion , he will die very soon if he is not healed.”
They withdrew and went back to speaking in their blunt language. It sounded like they were arguing.
I growled in frustration. Why were they standing around talking when Bryce needed help? “He does not have long left,” I shouted.
They reappeared, looked at each other, exchanged a few more words, and the younger one hurried away.
“You are wasting time!”
It felt like an eternity passed, Bryce becoming fainter with each passing second before the younger one returned and spoke to the older one again. The older one was not happy, and he scowled at me as he approached, while the other aimed his weapon at me. He reached behind me and released my cuffs before jumping back and raising his weapon.
“Stand,” he said in Panlin.
I did, grunting when the muscles in my leg ground together. Then I was on my feet and free. Even wounded as I was, it would be easy to kill this old human, disarm the younger one, and escape. But that would not help Bryce. I allowed the old human to re-cuff my hands in front of me.
“I will need supplies.”
“Ok—” said the younger one, quickly cut off by the older.
“You can do it with what we have,” he growled.
“You might not have what I need,” I said.
“I can go get them,” the younger one said.
“If you want to help Bryce, you will do as I say,” I said.
The old one scowled but didn’t protest as the younger one nodded, and I described the items I needed in as much detail as possible; the plants and roots that would soothe the sting. It would work to delay the reaction, but I would have to hope they had the medicines necessary to heal Bryce.
The young human took it in and then hurried away. I turned to the older one who was glaring at me with suspicion clear in his eyes. I returned the look.
“Take me to him.”
***
As soon as we entered the pod, I broke and ran to his side. The sight of him made me feel physically sick, and I had to breathe deeply to stop my hands from shaking. Bryce was bloodless, lying limp on a small, hard bed. His usually tanned skin was pale and slick with sweat, his parted lips already bleaching. He was so still. I had never seen him like this in our time together; he was always moving, always so alive. Even when he slept, he was animated, twitching in time with his dreams. But now it was as if any life held within his bones had leached away, and he was empty. It hurt to see him like this.
I was so fixed on Bryce that I did not notice another human already there. This one was of a larger build, his face stubbled with dark hair, and angry. He shouted and raised his weapon. I snarled, held my cuffed hands up in front of me, and gestured to Bryce. Could these dense humans not see that I was trying to help him? If he fired, he could easily miss me and hit Bryce instead. He seemed to realize his stupidity and lowered the weapon slightly, but still kept it pointed in my direction.
It didn’t look like they were going to release my hands, so I knelt and pulled the dressing they had applied from the wound. I hissed. The skin was already black and crumbling, viscous fluid oozing from the opening, which had grown to five times its original size. It smelled of acid and death.
Moons above, do not let me be too late. Please.
My heart hammered as I rummaged through the medical supplies next to his bed. The young one came in with the things I had asked for, and I took them from him.
“Bring me all you have. Everything.”
He nodded again and ran out. I chewed the plants as I had earlier and spat them into my palm, using it to cover the wound. Then I went back to sorting through their supplies. Bandages, creams, tubes, scissors, wipes, and packets. All rudimentary and nothing I could use to fight the poison.
I rounded on the human with the weapon. “Where are your medicines? These are useless.”
He blinked at me, taken aback by my tone, and gestured to the pile. “This is the first aid kit. We don’t keep anything else here.”
“This is not good enough.”
He looked angry but also concerned. “What else does he need?”
At that moment, the young human came back, breathing heavily. He carried a heavy, metallic case and set it down on the floor next to me. He was followed by another human with another case, who spoke to me.
“These are all the medical supplies I have. What do you need? O’Neill told me you said Gunner had been poisoned by something? I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”
This must be their healer.
“Yes, he was stung by a kapion . The venom is strong; it is already shutting down his organs one at a time.”
The other humans looked at each other. They had obviously thought it was me who had done this to Bryce.
The healer was already opening and unpacking one of the cases as I did the other, fumbling as best I could with my cuffed hands.
“We have an antidote that works against it. Something that will raise his temperature, increase his heart rate, and flush his system. Do you have anything similar? ”
“But his heart rate is already elevated—”
I did not have time to explain. Bryce was dying. “It does not matter,” I snarled. “Do you have anything?”
He hesitated and then pulled out a syringe and a glass bottle of clear fluid. I would have to hope it did the same job. I snatched them from him and attempted to fill the syringe, but my cuffed hands made it impossible to handle both.
“Let me help you.” The healer took the bottle from me, and I had to suppress a snarl. He was trying to help Bryce too.
I allowed him to hold it while I filled the syringe and then hunched over Bryce. I inserted the needle at the base of his neck, praying that human physiology and anatomy were similar enough to Aldarian.
I emptied the syringe and sat back on my haunches, letting out a long breath. There was nothing else I could do but wait and hope it would work.
The angry-looking human with dark hair looked between me and Bryce.
“Is that it?”
“That is all I can do for now. His temperature must be kept high and his—”
“What the fuck is that doing in here?” A taller human slammed his way into the pod. His face was scarred and his hair thin. The other humans straightened.
“He knows how to help Gunner,” the old one said.
“I didn’t give clearance for this. Get it out of here right now.”
“But, sir—”
“That is an order!”
A hand landed on my upper arm; I shrugged it off. I needed to make sure the medicine was working. If it didn’t, I would need to try something else. The hand returned, this time gripping hard. I threw it off, putting my weight into it, and making the angry human stumble back and collide with a pile of boxes in the corner.
The next thing I knew, the cold hardness of a weapon was pressed between my shoulder blades. I spun, snatched the weapon from the human’s grasp, and raised it over my head. The old human staggered back as I brought it down over my knee, shouting with all the fear, anger, and guilt I had inside me. The weapon snapped in two, and I flung it down.
The humans stood frozen, the young one holding his own weapon in shaking hands. I could easily have killed them all, torn them apart with my hands and teeth, and the moons above knew I wanted to. But instead, I bared my teeth.
“He cannot die,” I snarled.
I turned back to Bryce, placed my hand on his chest, and waited for one breath, two. And then I felt it. His chest moved, and a small spark rekindled inside me. The bond didn’t strengthen, but it stopped withering. My shoulders sagged, and I almost collapsed with relief.
I worked my fingers through his hair, slick with sweat, brushed it out of his face where it stuck to his forehead.
I stayed like that until the scarred human barked an order and a weapon was back in my face again. I snarled. But now the fight had gone out of me, and I felt exhausted. It would not do Bryce any good if I was killed or harmed in some way. He needed to be strong, to come back to me.
I rose. The scarred human, who appeared to be their leader, was watching me, his eyes moving from me to Bryce, and back again.
For his sake , I thought. For Bryce’s sake . I allowed myself to be led away, casting one last look at him, pale and broken on the bed.