38. RIEKA
38
RIEKA
F ear overtook the medic’s scent. She pulled at the sleeve of her coat. “You honour the creature with your presence.” The mistress then addressed the other medic. “Kodee, please proceed with the examination.”
I watched the young Organic walk towards Sal and take her shackles in his hand. Sal flinched at the contact. From the corner of my eye I could see the smirk rise on Collector Alvera’s face.
Kodee as he’d been called, addressed Sal slowly, his Kensillan barely any different from my own. “I’m going to take your shackles off. We have a Collector with us so running away will be pointless. Nod your head if you understand.”
I translated to Deogn as per our ruse and Sal nodded, trying to ignore the way Alvera’s eyes trailed over me as I spoke.
“I need you to remove your clothes.”
I repeated Kodee’s orders whilst my inner voice asked her if she was sure about this.
“This was my plan. I can do it.”
An old memory started to crawl its way up from that dank cavern I’d buried it in. Flashes of gossamer fabric and milky water threatened to infiltrate my senses as my skin began to recall the rough texture of coral sponges and the slickness of scented oil.
I forced them back down as Alvera, hands clasped behind her back, a shocklance hanging from her hip crossed before me to circle Sal.
The mistress cleared her throat. “I’ll leave these three in your capable hands Collector. Kodee, I’ll be in Procurement when you’re done here.”
“Yes, mistress,” the young Organic replied, all life drained from his tone. Then the mistress was gone and fear in the room was overpowered by Alvera’s mere presence. She had the same scent as the Nomen from the alley. Alvera wasn’t just a slaver—she was a predator.
Sal continued to strip off her clothes whilst I could do nothing but stand with my back against the wall and watch as this woman, this Collector circled Sal’s increasingly naked body. Which in and of itself was not uncomfortable for someone who’d lived on the train their whole lives, privacy was hard to come by. But even I could tell Sal was ill at ease. Alvera stared at her like a hawk did a mouse. A viper waiting to strike.
Kodee shifted uncomfortably under Alvera’s gaze, the scent of disdain and hate ebbing off him in waves. “What of her health?” Alvera asked, almost sweetly.
She hadn’t even had the scar tended to. Just the eye, as though she thought it made her look like some kind of hero.
“Peak health. No injuries internal or external,” he replied without looking at her.
“Except for her eyes,” Alvera corrected him as she rounded behind Sal.
Kodee apologised. “Forgive me, Collector—except for her eyes.”
“You’re so new at this how can you be certain she is entirely healthy?” Alvera took a step closer to Sal, a move which made Kodee’s scent spike. This was not a good sign. I lifted my gaze slightly and found the woman bent before Sal, her face inches away, as if her only desire in life was to breathe the same air.
Her words came out in a manner befitting one giving a gift. “I will break her in.”
Kodee stuttered. “But Collector, w-we don’t know what she is. She needs to be registered, classified, and collared.”
With deathly precision, Alvera straightened her posture and looked over her shoulder at the young Organic. Her expression was as ice cold as her voice “Are you insinuating a Collector is incapable of making those judgements?”
“No.” Kodee swallowed. “Collector.”
“Wonderful,” Alvera said in a terrifyingly cheery voice. “Dress her and we’ll be on our way.”
I needed to stop this. But my thoughts were going too fast. Think Rieka. Think.
Kodee!
I reached out to the young man praying to the Eldertides, because there wasn’t a god that I knew that would aid me.
“Kodee, where is Alvera taking the girl?”
The Organic froze by the cupboard where he was fetching a medical robe for Sal.
“Think about this voice and speak back in your mind.”
His inner voice shook. “Are you a god?”
I contemplated revealing myself to him, but it was safer if he just thought I was a disembodied voice. Less chance of being discovered. “Far from it. I witnessed you in the camp before here, I saw you save that Terrestrial from death. You are a good man. You must now do the same here. Save that girl.”
“I cannot. Alvera has claimed her. She is as good as dead.”
“Then aid the Serf. She will deal with Alvera.”
He gave me a quick glance over his shoulder. “It’s impossible. There are Toxicant Traps throughout this entire building. She won’t be able to use her taint.”
Yet he could?
As Kodee turned back around, the robe in his hand, I noticed the item swinging from his belt. A little round cylinder. Identical to the one which the mistress wore. There must be something in there that counteracted the traps already in the building. That must be why his blessing worked in here.
“You let me worry about the Serf. Are the traps built into the walls?”
“No. They hide them. It makes it easier if they need other Serfs to use their taints inside. They just remove them from the rooms in sealed containers.”
“Where’s the one in this room Kodee?”
Alvera suddenly snatched the robe from his hands and started dressing Sal herself, eagerness dripping off her like a burning wax candle. Sal flinched from the contact, her hands moving to cover her breasts only to be grabbed by Alvera and forced into the robe, her hands making long overly zealous strokes of Sal’s arms.
“Now, Kodee!” I shouted. He flinched but responded. “The top drawer by the Serf, but it’s locked.”
I spun around just as Alvera had begun to drag Sal towards the door. Reaching for the draw, I grabbed hold of the top and began to pull back, feeling the metal bend and warp as I did.
I heard Alvera stop and turn as I reached into the hole I’d created in the filing cabinet.
“Just what do you think you’re doing Serf?” Alvera sneered as I pulled the cylinder from the barren drawer.
She saw what I’d taken and still holding onto Sal, dragged her petite form across the small space trying to reach me before I reached the sink. But she was too late. The moment my hands passed beneath the faucet, a sensor was alerted to my hand’s presence and the water instantly turned on, pouring into the open cylinder, destroying the solution inside.
“Now Sal!”
An angry guttural scream ripped from the tiny woman as her free hand reached for Alvera’s scarred face. A thousand tiny worms wriggled under the Collector’s skin, the sudden sensation causing Alvera to release Sal entirely.
I watched in awe as Alvera’s eyelids fused closed. Where her lips had once been now only skin was seen. Like a wooden doll whose features had not yet been carved, the woman clawed at her face. But with every tear, the skin re-fused, until her muted screams turned to strangled cries. When Sal finally released her, Alvera fell to the floor in a limp dead heap.
She never even reached for the shocklance.
I unclasped the weapon from the dead woman’s hip and called to Sal. When she didn’t answer I called out to her aloud.
“Fern ” was her mission designation. Mine was White Wolf. No real names were permitted on the raid.
“I’m fine,” she replied, her hands fidgeting with the seam of her robe.
Kodee moved, causing Sal to react, the much smaller woman crossing the room in four strides reaching out to the other Organic. Both their hands were outstretched, an unusual scent filling the room that reminded me of rotten eggs.
“Fern, Kodee helped us!”
She straightened abruptly, then asked for her clothes. Kodee immediately lowered his own hands and gathered them up, tentatively placing Sal’s clothes in her outstretched arms.
“I don’t know how much help I gave. That’s an executable offence.” His face paled upon looking down at Alvera’s featureless one. “That Sergeant outside would have seen her come in.”
I noticed Sal’s fingers still on the buttons on her shirt at his words.
“When she doesn’t come out, he’ll wonder why. Then we’re all dead,” he quickly added, his face beginning to blanch as he continued to stare as Alvera.
“Kodee, how many people are in this building?” If he’d been telling the truth about this place being Void trapped I couldn’t tell. I’d felt nothing crossing into the building. I’d just have to hope he won’t lie.
“Just us, the Sergeant and Medic Mistress Ceroy,” he answered.
“Why didn’t Ceroy come when Alvera screamed?” Kodee averted his eyes at the question. That told me more than I needed to know. The scream was a normal occurrence when it came to Alvera.
I changed the subject. “That sergeant, go get him.”
Kodee retreated a step. “What? No.”
I locked my eyes on his. “Do as the Serf says,” I ordered him.
Kodee departed the room leaving me to help Sal. I wasn’t of much help though. Sal was already pulling her boots back on by the time Wade came into the room.
“All Steady?” he asked Sal after noticing the dead body on the floor.
“Steady,” she replied, though I doubted very much that was the case. Feeling the need to change the subject, I turned my attention to Kodee.
Upon returning to the room with Wade, he’d backed himself right into the corner, his gaze jumping between the three of us and the dead body.
I called his name, causing his head to snap up in surprise. “Where is Mistress Ceroy?” I asked him.
“In Procurement but I don’t have access, only she does.”
“Won’t need it.” Wade, now holding an antique timepiece, began counting down.
“Three, two, one.”
The room went dark as every mechanical device in the building came to a resounding halt.
The raid had begun.
The lights in the room turned red, signifying the facility’s backup system had been initiated.
As much as I didn’t like the man, our survival now depended on our working together so I told Wade about Medic Ceroy and after speaking with Kodee, Wade decided we needed to wait for her. There were too many ways the plan could go wrong if we got caught out in the open.
We didn’t have to wait long. I heard a set of doors mechanically open a minute later, followed by a pair of heels clicking on polished stone. The card reader beeped and a moment later she entered. Ceroy barely got a word out before Wade used his blessing to immobilise her. He ripped the air from her lungs, the act causing her to fall to the ground in an unconscious heap. Wade placed the cuffs on her wrists, then took the shocklance from me and struck her with it for good measure. My body recoiled at the memory of that feeling.
“You two go and find the supplies,” Wade ordered. “I’ll keep the medics here with me. You might trust him but I don’t.” I didn’t like the way the Pneumatics’ hands twitched at his sides so I sent Wade a private message.
“Sal is safe because of him Wade. You should know that before you plan on killing another innocent man. Sal’s only alive because of Kodee.”
I tried not to give the young medic another thought and left the examination room with Sal and Medic Ceroy’s key card in my hand.
We found two more examination rooms to our left and a larger one that smelled like it had just been chemically cleaned. There was a flatbed, silver trays, a Bright-light over the bed and steel cupboards. Sal asked me to describe what I saw in the drawers. When I did, she said we should take it all.
I stacked everything I could on the bed and wheeled it out into the hall, hoping I didn’t miss anything.
Still not having found the supply room, we headed back in the direction of MedBay .
“This one.” I led us to the door directly to the left of the one Wade was in.
“How do you know?” she asked me as she swiped the key.
“It’s pungent.”
Sal felt her way through the door not even waiting for me to aid her. She paused a moment and then began feeling her way around the aisles of shelves not even asking for my help, at least with the contents of the shelves. All she asked of me was to find her a trolley or cart of some kind. There was a large one by the door so I pushed it towards her. I gave her my best estimate on the length of the aisles as well as the distance between each one so she would be able navigate the room. Without much effort, she did just that. Sal walked down one aisle, hand hovering in the air before the shelves and stopping whenever she located something that she wanted.
There were jars of dried herbs and seeds in neat rows. One entire aisle was just plants growing in small pots, some larger. Satchels, powders in jars, vials of every size full of liquid. Some were so large that it looked like the medics were attempting to pickle the object inside.
I left her to her work, promising to come back and help her locate any medical equipment she needed after I had searched the other rooms.
The corridor shone red from the emergency lighting, reminding me of a depiction of the Dark Sphere I’d once seen on Artist’s Row. The small slit window on each door had the same red glow, except one. The double doors we had passed on our way in bore no light at all.
When I finally stood before the doors I realised why. They had no windows. But the room wasn’t empty. I could hear the humming of machinery on the other side.
The stripe on the keylock was red, meaning the room was high level access only. A small sign over the door written in Kensillan read “Procurement.”
I slid Ceroy’s key card through the lock.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as the door slid open. The scent of people, of Blessed drenched the air. The desk ahead of me sat empty with nothing but a flickering tech board to show anyone had been there. There was a high-pitched beeping noise to my right coming from the same direction as the stench. A rotting, wounded smell coming from behind a heavily drawn curtain.
The drum of a dozen heartbeats called out to me. Some stronger than others. I pulled back the curtain and found over a dozen occupied beds.
They were all Blessed. Every single occupant. All hooked up to machines that mimicked the heartbeats I could hear. They were all unconscious. And for good reason. Parts of them were missing. A leg, an arm. Someone’s hand was missing three fingers whilst another had no skin on their chest. The Brutes were stuck in transition, antlers missing, the membranous skin off a Drake’s face flayed.
I swallowed the bile that rose to my throat.
In the bed in front of me, strapped down lay an Aquaticus, the scales on his legs sheared off in a long sheet that hung over a rack across his bed, the sheet still attached to his abdomen.
The sight just got worse the closer I got. Someone had removed his beautiful piscine eyes. My hand shaking, I reached for his. He gave no recognition of the contact, though I suspected sakror root may have been the culprit. There were traces of it in the room.
I found his mind and spoke.
“Hello, can you hear me?”
A thousand voices screamed all at once, tearing into my mind, clawing at it, pulling it to pieces all saying the same thing.