19. Cassia
CASSIA
The trouble starts at the water station.
I'm refilling canteens in the breached wing of the clinic, the old storage building we cracked open recently, now packed wall-to-wall with pallets and patients and the unclear murmur of a hundred conversations held in whispers because nobody has the energy to speak above a hush.
The morning light filters through a row of narrow windows near the ceiling, throwing pale rectangles across the dusty floor that shift with the smoke drifting from fires still burning somewhere in Sector Nine.
My hands ache from twelve straight hours of stitching, wrapping, injecting, and improvising.
The cut above my eyebrow throbs under the butterfly closures Rhykor applied, though Wen assures me it looks worse than it is.
Garrow's water station occupies the midsection of the wing, a makeshift distribution point built from overturned crates and salvaged piping that was rigged to connect to the clinic's main supply line.
With the same merchant's instinct he used to run his market stall, Garrow runs it through fair portions and a calm voice.
He permits no arguments. His granddaughter sits beside him on a folded blanket, drawing shapes in the plaster dust with her finger while Garrow fills cups and greets each person who steps forward.
The line is mixed. Human and Kraaj stand together and shuffle forward with the patient shuffle of exhaustion.
They have spent enough hours crammed against each other in a crisis to stop flinching at the proximity.
A Kraaj mother with jade-green skin holds her infant against her shoulder while a human teenager steadies the cup for her because her hands are full.
An elderly human man with a bandaged arm leans on a Kraaj laborer's shoulder to keep his balance.
These are small acts of cooperation that would have been unthinkable a month ago, performed now with the unselfconscious ease of survival shorn of politics.
I notice the group at the end of the line before the shouting starts.
Five of them, four men and one woman, all human, cluster near the entrance to the wing in a formation closer to a patrol than a queue.
They're in civilian clothes, but the clothes are too clean and too intact, and the boots are the heavy-soled military surplus type I've seen on anti-Kraaj militia members in the outside settlements.
The tallest of them, a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head and a scar that runs from his left ear to his jaw carries himself like he's used to giving orders, not taking them.
He watches the mixed line with an expression I recognize, one of disgust sanding smooth into an artificial calm.
The Kraaj teenager I stitched yesterday steps up to Garrow's station, awkwardly holding his cup with his one good hand. He keeps his eyes down with the caution a child develops after learning that visibility invites violence.
Shaved Head storms the distance in three steps, grabbing the kid's arm. He yanks him backward out of the line. The cup hits the ground and shatters. The boy stumbles and catches himself on his injured shoulder. He chokes on a cry of pain that he swallows hard enough to make his jaw tremble.
"This station is for humans," Shaved Head announces, loud enough for everyone in the wing to hear. "Kraaj line up outside or they go thirsty."
I'm moving before the sentence finishes, cutting across the wing in five strides. Planting myself between Shaved Head and the teenager, I shove the man's hand off the boy's arm hard enough that his fingers peel away one by one.
"This station is for everyone," I snap, pitching my voice to carry. "Everyone in this clinic gets water, gets treatment, gets shelter. That's how it works."
Shaved Head looks at me. His dull, scrutinizing eyes drop to the pulse pistol at my hip.
They shift to the med-pack on my shoulder before looking back to my face.
Recognition dawns, and the shift happens in real time with the flicker of identification and the reassessment.
A curl of contempt replaces whatever baseline respect my clinic credentials might have bought me.
"You're the medic." He says it like a diagnosis. "The one who's been sheltering Kraaj. Treating them and working with their commander." His mouth twists. "Sleeping with him."
The accusation drops into the room like a stone into still water, and the ripples spread fast. Heads turn and all conversations die.
The line of humans and Kraaj freezes in place, all eyes swiveling toward the confrontation unfolding at the water station.
Garrow pulls his granddaughter behind him.
The Kraaj teenager scrambles backward, cradling his shoulder.
"What I do and who I do it with is my business," I fire back, holding my ground between the extremist and the boy.
"What's yours is the fact that you're standing in my clinic, harassing my patient, and disrupting the only functional water distribution point in three sectors.
So you can get in line, take your cup, and drink like everyone else—or you can leave. "
"Your clinic." Shaved Head's companions fan out behind him—a slow spread that covers the exits and blocks the line of sight to the main clinic entrance.
The woman among them has her hand inside her jacket.
"This used to be a human district, filled with human buildings and infrastructure; now look at it—aliens in all of the beds, alien soldiers on the perimeter, and a human medic playing house with the monster who helped conquer this planet.
" He raises his voice, addressing the room now, performing for an audience.
"How many of you lost family during the occupation?
How many of you watched Kraaj soldiers burn your homes, kill your neighbors, drag your parents into processing centers?
And now you're standing in line next to them?
Sharing water with them? Because one collaborator medic decided the aliens deserve the same treatment as the people they crushed? "
The wing goes very quiet. I feel the shift in the air, the fragile, hard-won cooperation of the last two days trembling on a fault line while a man with clean boots and a rehearsed speech tries to crack it open.
Some of the humans in line look away. A few nod.
The Kraaj mother with the jade-green skin pulls her infant tighter against her chest, and the human teenager holding her cup steps back, uncertain, looking between the extremist and me like someone trying to figure out which side of a closing door to stand on.
"You're right about one thing," I say, dropping soft enough that people have to lean in to hear it.
"My family was lost during the occupation.
Both of my parents died when Kraaj soldiers destroyed everything they built during the frontier expansions decades ago, and later, the bureaucratic neglect of your people during an AI outbreak finished the job.
I spent twelve years in this district's gutter learning to hate your kind for it. "
The wing holds its breath.
"But the Kraaj teenager you yanked out of line lost his family three days ago when Legion-infected droids tore through his residential block and killed the adults in his building.
The Kraaj woman behind you is nursing an infant she delivered alone in a collapsed corridor while infected machines hunted the survivors.
The laborer who carried that man"—I point at the elderly human with the bandaged arm—"carried him four blocks through burning streets because it was the right thing to do, and he did it knowing that half the humans in this district would spit on him for the effort. "
I step into Shaved Head's personal space, close enough that he has to look down at me, ensuring each syllable hits.
"You want to talk about betrayal? Kraaj military command authorized a purge of this entire district.
Orbital bombardment with the sectors, buildings, men, women, and children standing in this room—human and Kraaj alike—written off as acceptable losses because it's easier to burn us than protect us.
That's a kill order signed by the same officers who are supposed to keep us safe. "
I let each sentence arrive, one by one, watching them hit the faces around me. The uncertainty cracks and the anger redirects, while the terrible math of survival realigns in real time.
"The man keeping this district alive right now is a Kraaj commander who refused that order.
Who got branded a traitor by his own military because he chose to protect the people in this room instead of burning them.
Who has spent every waking hour flying supplies, organizing evacuations, and fighting infected machines while his own government puts a kill order on his head.
" I scan the room—every face, both species.
"You can hate the Kraaj. I understand that, and I lived it.
But if you turn on the people standing next to you in this room, the ones who've been bleeding and fighting and sharing water with you while the world falls apart, then you're finishing what the purge was created to do.
Tearing us apart from the inside. And I will drag you out of my clinic by your collar before I let that happen. "
The tension holds for three heartbeats.
Shaved Head tracks my expression with an unblinking intensity that turns the moment into a vacuum of suspended expectations.
Holding his gaze, I refuse to back down.
Though I am only five-foot-four and one-hundred-twenty pounds against someone built for pure violence, I am entirely, immovably resolute; should he take one step toward the boy behind me, the oath I swore to do no harm will be broken.
He reads it on my face. Whatever math he's running behind those distant, pale eyes reaches a conclusion, and his hand moves toward his belt?—
The clinic's main entrance darkens.