Touch Her and Burn

1. Cassia

CASSIA

The bullet is still inside him.

It grinds against the edge of his fourth rib each time he breathes, a jagged little souvenir from whatever alley fight sent him stumbling down my stairs clutching a blood-soaked rag to his side.

The scavenger, Tomek, I think his name is.

One of the regulars who runs supply drops through the south corridor, groans through his teeth while I probe the wound with forceps I pull from the antiseptic tray under the table.

The solution in that tray is more water than alcohol at this point, stretched so thin I can barely smell the sting anymore.

My last real supply shipment got intercepted two weeks ago by syndicate runners who decided medical supplies counted as luxury goods, and nobody's been willing to trade since the Kraaj doubled patrol routes through the market.

"Hold still." I flatten my free hand against his chest. His skin is clammy and gray-tinged from blood loss. "You keep jerking like that, and I'm going to nick something I can't fix."

"Easy for you to say," he hisses. "You're not the one getting—shit?—"

The forceps catch metal. After some twisting and pulling, the bullet clinks into the dented surgical tray beside me. Tomek sags against the exam table like a puppet with its strings cut, and I pack the wound before he can bleed any worse than he already has.

Above us, the ceiling shudders. Dust trickles from cracks in the concrete, a thin, continuous rain that coats all surfaces in my clinic with grit that no amount of scrubbing will ever fully remove.

The shaking comes from the streets overhead, a consequence of the boots and bodies, raging above with fury.

Another Kraaj patrol beating is happening, the third one this week if the shouts filtering through the ventilation shaft are anything to go by.

Somebody up there is screaming about a kid getting his arm broken.

Somebody else is throwing glass. It's been like this for weeks now, ever since a string of droid malfunctions tore through the district—maintenance units turning violent and attacking food lines before anyone managed to shut them down—two civilians didn't survive it.

In typical fashion, the Kraaj respond with their usual brutality—more soldiers and heavier boots pressing down on already bruised necks.

On Luvon, however, human reaction remains consistent regardless of the force applied.

Faced with nowhere else for their rage to go, the locals fight back with a blind, ragged defiance that refuses to break.

I keep my hands moving, repeating my process of applying gauze and pressure before taping it down.

Repurposed from a sub-basement at the bottom of a narrow flight of exterior concrete stairs, the clinic sits directly beneath the hollowed-out shell of an abandoned surface building.

It is falling apart around me, and I mean that literally.

The backup generator, which I've repaired six times this month, wheezes in the corner like a dying animal.

Half my supply shelves are empty. The exam table Tomek is lying on has a cracked leg that I've rigged with scavenged pipe and electrical tape, and when someone heavier than a child climbs onto it, I hold my breath waiting for the whole thing to buckle.

Three of my regulars stopped coming last month because the walk through contested streets became too expensive, and two more stopped after word got out—again—that I treat Kraaj patients.

Fewer patients should mean less strain on supplies, yet supply strain persists.

The ones who still come are sicker and more desperate, carrying much worse injuries.

"Gonna get worse out there," Tomek mutters, wincing as I cinch the bandage tight. "Heard they're cracking down hard through the market after those droids went haywire."

"Droids go haywire every other week."

"I’ve never seen this before, Ward. Someone coordinated these strikes. Went after a food distribution line like someone programmed to do it." He watches me with bloodshot eyes, suspicious and searching all at once. "You hear anything about that?"

"I hear a lot of things." Stripping off my gloves, I toss them into the overflowing biohazard bin before nodding toward the corridor.

"You're done now. Keep it dry for two days, and don't let anyone pour bootleg antiseptic on it.

I mean it, Tomek. That stuff will rot your skin off faster than the infection will. "

He slides off the table and limps toward the doorway, pausing long enough to drop a handful of bent credits on the counter. After pocketing them, I call back toward the curtained-off section behind the main room. "Wen, I need the next one."

My assistant, a tired-eyed woman somewhere north of fifty who never talks about what she did before the occupation ended, pushes aside the stained fabric partition and lowers her voice. "We have a problem."

How she says it tells me everything I need to know.

I follow her past the curtain and into the cramped storage alcove where I keep cases unsuitable for the waiting area.

A figure huddles on the floor between shelving units crammed with expired painkillers and salvaged tubing.

They are young, maybe sixteen. Skin is the color of dull copper, mottled with the faint scale-patterned markings that crawl across the shoulders and neck.

The teenager is Kraaj, and his left arm hangs at a grotesque angle, clearly broken in at least two places.

Dark violet blood, thicker than human blood, almost syrupy, drips from a gash above one of the small horn nubs just starting to curve from the skull.

The kid looks up at me with wide, terrified golden eyes and flinches backward so hard the shelving unit rattles.

"Please," the plea spews out through a swollen lip. "I was minding my own business when they jumped me near the?—"

"Stop talking." Crouching down, I reach for the broken arm. The kid hisses but stays in place. "Wen, get me the bone setter. And close that curtain."

Wen hesitates, her hands clenching at her sides. She lived through the darkest years of the occupation, and expecting her to treat a Kraaj—even a child—is asking a lot. "Cassia, the waiting room is full. If they see?—"

"I don't care," I say, my voice softening just enough for her to hear the plea in it. "He's just a terrified kid; please, Wen."

After dumping the sack on my counter with zero ceremony, she grabs my arm and hauls me sideways.

From beyond the partition, voices rise in protest. Mismatched chairs line my waiting area—a glorified hallway stinking of rust and old blood that overflows with patients tonight.

Human scavengers and day laborers crowd the mismatched chairs, along with a woman cradling a feverish toddler.

They all see Wen escort a Kraaj teenager past them, and the air in that hallway turns brittle the second those copper-scaled shoulders come through the door.

"Ward!" A man's voice, barrel-thick and furious, punches through the fabric curtain. "You treating one of them back there?"

I ignore the things he says. My fingers work the bone setter into position along the fracture line while the kid bites down on the strap I shove between those small, still-developing fangs.

"I asked you a question!" As he steps closer, I can hear other voices murmuring behind him, feeding the anger and stoking it until it becomes a threat.

"My cousin lost three fingers last month because some Kraaj patrol crushed his hand for looking at them wrong, and you're back here patching up their young? "

"Everyone bleeds in here." Snapping the setter into place, I keep my eyes down. The Kraaj teenager whimpers, tears cutting tracks through the grime on copper-toned cheeks. "If you've got a problem with that, there's a door behind you and a long walk to the next clinic. Which doesn't exist."

"You know what, Ward? I'm done keeping my mouth shut about this.

" He speaks uglier now, more deliberate, and I can hear the warning wrapped inside the threat like a razor blade in a bandage.

"Plenty of crews around here would love to know which medic's been stitching up the enemy. All it takes is one conversation."

The threat ends up exactly where he means it to.

I've heard variations of it a dozen times over the years—traitor, collaborator, alien-lover—each one a little sharper than the last, each one reminding me that the line I walk between species gets thinner daily.

Anti-Kraaj groups run deep through the outer settlements, and getting named as a sympathizer to any one of them is a problem that ends with your clinic burned and your body floating in the drainage canals.

There was a time, early on, when insults stung enough to make me second-guess myself.

That time is long gone. Now I only catalog the voice to file it next to all the others, keeping my hands moving.

A chair scrapes violently against concrete, and heavy footsteps stomp toward the exit.

Two more sets of feet follow. The word traitor lobs like a grenade right before the outer door slams hard enough to shake the walls, and then the waiting area falls into that particular kind of silence people make when they're choosing between staying and running.

Wen returns with gauze and a grim look. "Three just left. The others are quiet, but they're watching."

Finishing the splint, I wipe the violet blood from my hands onto a rag that used to be white about two hundred patients ago. "Can you walk?" The teenager agrees, trembling. Gratitude wars with terror across features still too young and too soft for the world above us.

"Back corridor, service tunnel exit. Don't come through the front again. And find someone who can check that arm in three days. If the swelling gets worse or you see black lines spreading from the break, you come back here, regardless of the hour."