Chapter 10
The Horizon kept the air at seventy-two, like always.
I tracked rainwater and blood down the corridor, boots leaving a mess behind me.
Heddy was light in my arms, lighter than she should have been, all fever and shallow breath.
She twitched every time I moved, but she stayed quiet, even when my boots clipped the bulkhead at the last turn.
Taylor was at the med bay door when I got there, her hand on the panel, the light above her head blinking a warning yellow. “Atmosphere clean,” she said, then stepped aside and let me in first.
The medical bay was a narrow cell lined with composite, every surface white or glossy gray, half-lit from overhead by a ring of surgical LEDs that hit like a punch.
The table at the center looked more like a gurney than an exam bench.
Heddy fit on it with room to spare. I set her down as gently as I could.
The lights hit her fur, matted and yellowed from sweat.
The smell that came off her was thick and wrong, like fruit left to rot.
It hit the back of the throat and stayed there.
Taylor didn’t flinch. She moved to the wall and opened a bank of drawers, each one sliding out without a sound.
Inside, bandages, auto-syringes, vacuum-wrapped kits, all nested in rows.
She called over her shoulder: “You are bleeding on the floor.”
I looked. A scrape on my left arm, from the doorframe when I carried her out, had opened up without me noticing. Rain and a thin line of my own blood mixed on the floor. I wiped it on my shirt and let it go.
Taylor flipped a switch, and the LEDs ramped up to full brightness.
The table’s monitor came alive, numbers and diagrams unfurling up the wall in blue and green.
Heddy’s chest heaved once, then again, and her lips parted.
She tried to speak, but the only thing that came out was a thin, whistling rattle.
It sounded more like a kettle than a voice.
Taylor cut away the blanket, then the old bandage, exposing the wound.
The bullet hole, my bullet, sat low on her abdomen, left of the navel.
What surrounded it was ugly. The tissue was purple and black at the rim, then red, then yellow further out.
Underneath, the muscle ballooned, thick with fluid.
Taylor prodded it once, then nodded. “Septic necrosis. The infection has reached the lymphatic trunk.” She pressed her palm to Heddy’s temple. “Core temperature is 104.8 and rising. Pulse is weak; rhythm is irregular. She will not survive without immediate intervention.”
She snapped on a pair of gloves, the polymer stretching tight over her fingers, and moved straight to the table. “Hold her,” Taylor said. “Shoulders, both.”
I locked Heddy’s arms down. She barely moved. Her eyes rolled toward me, then away, tracking some light on the ceiling only she could see.
Taylor started an IV, quick and clean, then set the line in the crook of Heddy’s elbow.
She loaded a cartridge into the pump, then dialed a setting and let it run.
The fluid was clear, but the moment it hit Heddy’s bloodstream, her body arched off the table, rigid as a board.
Her head snapped back. Her jaws clamped shut with a dry click.
The heart monitor on the wall spat a string of numbers, too fast to read, then the alarms began: high-low, high-low, then a scream as the line flattened for a second before stuttering back.
“Stay with me,” I said. I pressed her shoulders down. “Heddy. Stay with me.”
She fought it for a moment. Her breath came back, each inhalation a rough scrape down her throat.
Taylor prepped the wound by pouring a jet of antiseptic over it, so much that it overflowed the edge of the table and splashed on my boots.
The smell of it blanked out everything else for a second.
She took a field scanner, held it over the wound, and watched the display as a 3D wireframe unfurled.
“The slug is lodged in the posterior wall. It has ruptured the descending colon. Abscess cavity is approximately 60 cc.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but the numbers sounded bad.
Taylor looked at me, the pupils of her brown eyes dilated so wide her irises vanished. “She is dying,” she said. “If I cut her now, she will die before I can close. If I wait, the infection will finish the job.”
Heddy’s hand found mine. I felt the claws dig in, then go slack. “Alpha,” she said. Her voice was barely there. “Don’t… let them go. My sisters. Protect.”
“I will,” I said. “I swear it. But you have to stay.”
Heddy’s face twisted, the features going slack, then hard again as the pain rolled through her. “Sorry. Sorry, Alpha. Was… pack, always.”
She tried to lift her head, to see me, but her strength failed. Her hand slipped from my arm and fell to the table. I gripped it, squeezed. I couldn’t tell if she felt it.
Taylor loaded a new cartridge, this one a fat, gold-tipped syringe. “Broad-spectrum,” she said. “It may work, or not.” She plunged it into the IV line, pushed, and the fluid pulsed up the tube and into Heddy’s arm.
This time, Heddy didn’t react. Her body just sagged, all the tension drained away.
The monitor flatlined again, then came back at half speed.
Taylor wiped her hands, then set to work cutting away the dead tissue, moving in quick, expert circles.
She spoke as she worked. “The bullet must be removed. The necrosis is severe. There will be scarring, but it is irrelevant. The probability of survival is less than 15% even if this works.”
I listened to her voice, listened to the numbers. None of it mattered. I watched the blood run, the fluid mix with it, and puddle at the table edge.
Then the seizure hit. Heddy’s whole body snapped, every muscle firing at once.
The alarm screamed. Taylor moved fast, hit the monitor reset with one hand, then started compressions with the other, right in the center of Heddy’s chest. The auto-table flexed under the pressure, yielding but never soft.
“Hold her,” Taylor barked. “Don’t let go.”
I braced Heddy’s shoulders and held her down. Taylor worked the compressions, counting under her breath. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Breathe.”
She clamped a mask over Heddy’s face and pumped air in, two quick breaths. Then back to compressions.
Heddy’s eyes flickered. Her lips parted, tried for a word, and failed. Her heart came back, barely, the line spiking then dropping.
Taylor pulled a device from the wall and stuck it to Heddy’s chest. The screen blinked: Ready. Taylor hit a button, and the shock ran through the table and into my hands, making every hair on my body stand up.
The heart restarted, slow and ugly. But it beat.
Taylor checked the wound, then the monitor. “The next seizure will kill her,” she said. “If you have prayers, now is the time.”
I had none. I just kept my hands on Heddy, kept her as still as I could.
Taylor hovered, her hands bloody, eyes fixed on the numbers. The rain outside was loud now, a steady drum on the hull, the only thing in the world besides the heartbeat on the screen.
Minutes went by.
Heddy’s hand found mine again. She squeezed, not hard, but enough.
I looked at Taylor. “Is there anything else?”
She shook her head. “I can only keep her alive as long as her body wants to live.”
I looked down at Heddy. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing had smoothed out, less ragged, more human. I kept my hand on hers, afraid to move, afraid that doing so would end it.
Taylor wiped down the table, cleaned the wound, and covered it with a sterile bandage. She reset the IV pump, loaded a new bag, and increased the rate.
She stepped back, stripped off her gloves, and let them fall into the waste bin.
“She is stable for now,” Taylor said, voice low. “If the drug works, she may have a chance. If not—” She shrugged.
I stood there, watching the monitor, counting each spike, listening for any change.
The room was cold, and my shirt was soaked through. My own blood was dry now, caked along the wrist.
I stayed like that for a long time, watching, waiting, every part of me braced for the crash.
Taylor didn’t leave. She watched, same as me, her face unreadable. I wondered if she cared, really cared, or if this was just another procedure to her, another broken machine to be fixed or written off.
Didn’t matter. Heddy was alive, for now. And that was the only thing in the world that did.
The rain beat on the hull. The heart monitor sang its hollow song. The wound was closed, for the moment, but the infection continued.
I held her hand and didn’t let go.
If I had another wish, would I spend it on her?
Or hold it back for a larger purpose? I didn’t know.
I wanted her to live, but I had others to protect too.
Her face stayed slack, chest barely moving.
I felt guilty. That was my bullet in her.
I did this, and I didn’t notice the infection.
I missed the infection. I couldn’t blame the CI Dyn for not patching her up right.
They worked with what they had, which amounted to extremely limited medical supplies and, at best, preindustrial knowledge.
“Hang in there, Heddy. You’re strong, you can make it through this.” I said the words, but I wasn’t sure I believed them. Even with the best of modern medicine, an infection like that could kill them.
The next interruption came hard and loud: the clang of the med bay door, echoing off composite, followed by the slap of bare feet and running shoes.
Joy entered first, her hair plastered to her face by the rain, her shirt streaked dark where water soaked through to her skin.
Autumn came in right behind, platinum hair plastered, face set with a look I hadn’t seen before, fierce, certain, cold as a switchblade.