8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
In the quiet of the infirmary, Kieron glanced at Elenus’s vitals for what felt like the hundredth time since he’d gotten the man in there.
Stable. Normal. His brain function was fine, his blood chemistry was fine …
Looking at him now, you’d never guess that less than an hour ago, he’d been on the verge of a fatal hematoma to the brain after also suffering two broken ribs.
Apparently, one of them had come perilously close to puncturing one of his kidneys.
Great. Just great. Kieron had nearly killed his boss. Fan-fucking-tastic.
The urge to sink into a familiar well of despair called to him, but he fought it off and used his implant to query the larger computer database.
He directed the results to be sent to his tab—reading for too long inside his own head made him dizzy—and began to read up on humanity’s issues with Regen and how they could manifest.
The most common issue with Regen was rejection, either in the form of simple allergies or a perilously complex inability to use the technology at all.
The allergies could be cured with time and a lot of genetic exposure therapies, but people who couldn’t use Regen at all—dubbed naturals—were shit out of luck.
They didn’t get the benefits of Regen: the slowed aging and increased health and massive boost to healing.
They simply lived like humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years before Regen existed, and they died that way too.
Elenus wasn’t a natural, that was clear. In the modified Regen tank, his body was taking the therapy very well if in a highly targeted way. The healing fluid was only allowed in contact with the parts of his body that had been damaged—everything else was left alone.
Okay, that was a clue. Kieron did a little more winnowing.
Not an allergy … probably not the result of a strange drug interaction …
probably not the result of the guy getting on the bad side of an organ harvester …
gah. There were just too many results to go through.
The universe was a big place, and the reasons for Regen to fail were growing all the time, thanks to new generations of genetic modification and—ah.
[AI, show Gania-specific, population-wide, Regen-related diseases.]
Aha, there it was, right there at the top. An autoimmune disorder expressed by five percent of the male population of Gania, point two percent of the female population.
Elfshot Disease. That’s a fanciful name. Ganians, Kieron was slowly learning, were a strangely fanciful people. At least, Elenus was.
Back to the description. Random internal attacks …
weakening of cell structures … periods of intense decline and equally intense improvement …
inability to undergo full Regen submersion …
Oh god, the pictures of the Ganians who had been fully submerged in Regen were hideous, their bodies growing out of control as their capricious immune systems misinterpreted “healing” as “assault.”
When the therapy was targeted and carefully controlled, though, the Regen worked exactly as it was meant to. Apparently, there was a damage threshold in there somewhere although the text said it was different for every one of the afflicted.
Kieron was grateful he hadn’t gone over it. Bad enough he was going to be tossed out into space after assaulting his boss so badly that the man had to get fucking Regen for it, he’d really be dead if—
No. He needed to calm down. There were extenuating circumstances, and those were firmly on Kieron’s side.
Elenus had been out of control, so focused on finding Catalina that he hadn’t cared about the damage the Lizzie was taking.
Much deeper into that asteroid field and the ship would have been too damaged to make it back to Cloverleaf, and then they’d have had the distinct displeasure of dying of radiation together once the Lizzie’s shields failed if they weren’t pulverized by asteroids first.
Kieron could argue that to a court. He had visuals, he had data, he had the ship itself as evidence.
He can’t get rid of you yet. It should have felt reassuring but sitting there watching the purplish-blue bruise he’d put on Elenus’s temple slowly vanish under the effect of the Regen, all Kieron felt was guilty.
He hated that he felt emotionally invested enough to feel guilty, but there was something about Elenus that seemed to sweep Kieron along with him.
He was so … lively, and to a person who’d been expecting to spend nearly half a standard year by himself out here on the station, that liveliness was both obnoxious and thrilling.
“You stare as loudly as you speak,” Elenus said.
Kieron startled right out of his chair. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head that he’d missed the signs that treatment was ending. His pulse raced, and half a dozen questions fought their way toward his lips.
What the hell was going on out there? Why didn’t you tell me you have Elfshot disease? Do you realize you could have gotten us both killed?
In the end, “How do you feel?” was the one that came out first. Kieron was a little disappointed with himself for that.
“Practically perfect in every way,” Elenus quipped, staring down at his body, so carefully arranged in the modified Regen tank. “It looks like you did an adequate job of getting me back to fighting fit.”
“Your ribs won’t be a hundred percent for another day,” Kieron said without inflection.
“Ah, well, ribs. Always a little tetchy, those.” Elenus turned his head to look at Kieron and smiled. “Calm down, would you? None of the terrible things you’re thinking about are going to happen.”
What?
Fortunately, Kieron didn’t have to ask that question out loud. Elenus seemed to read it right off his face.
“Look, this was my fault. I get that. I went too far out there, and because I hadn’t told you about my condition, your reaction ended up causing a bit more of a mess than it needed to.”
“A bit more of a mess?” Kieron echoed. “I almost killed you. You were bleeding into your brain, you—you had two seizures on the way back to the station, you could have had a stroke, this could have been fatal.”
“I’ve almost been killed over fifty times since I was first diagnosed,” Elenus said blithely, detaching the headpiece and sitting up in the tank. “Once more doesn’t really qualify as an emergency at this point.” Liquid sloshed around him, and he blinked down at his body. “You kept my shorts on.”
“I wasn’t about to strip you naked,” Kieron retorted.
“Aw, too bad. Anyway, the point is, I should have been more forthcoming about myself, and I wasn’t, and for that I’m sorry.
But look!” He grinned at Kieron. “Here we both are, no worse for wear, with several mysteries solved and a firm goal ahead of us. I’d say the day has been a complete win.
” He held up a hand. “And before you think about hitting me or grabbing me or anything else again, I ask that you remember I’m a fragile flower in need of gentle treatment.
” His eyes sparkled. “Two near-death experiences in one day is a new record for me, after all.”
You … I … this …
Kieron startled himself by laughing. He hadn’t intended to.
A diatribe about personal responsibility had been right there, on the tip of his tongue, and instead he was laughing so hard he was almost gasping, laughing like he hadn’t laughed for years.
It was the relief. The stress. It had to be—Elenus wasn’t that funny.
But whatever it was, Kieron welcomed it.
He didn’t even flinch away from Elenus’s featherlight touch to his shoulder.
“There you are,” he said with satisfaction. “Now move so I can go clean up and get into some fresh clothes. Then we’ll talk. And eat, I’m starving.”
Kieron wiped his eyes, fighting down the urge to hiccup. “I’ll get out a pizza,” he said.
Elenus’s mouth dropped open. “You told me there were no pizzas!”
“I lied.”
***
The pizza, sitting at the back of the station’s industrial freezer, had been there since time immemorial.
Kieron honestly wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out after he put it into the oven and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty delicious.
Of course, he’d grown up on soldier’s rations and whatever he could scrounge off the ground when he was a child, so anything digestible fell into the “good” range for him.
Elenus, presumably, had a more refined palate.
The fact that he was eating the pizza with every sign of enjoyment as well was a bit of a relief.
“So,” he said in the middle of his third slice, “first things first, we repair the Lizzie. That shouldn’t take me too long—she’s not as good at self-repair as Catalina is, but she’s light-years better than the human-centric hulks most people fly. Then, take two, we head out again and—”
“Probes,” Kieron cut in. “Those come next. Now that we’ve narrowed down your ex-partner’s location, we’ll do a lot better with a new round of probes to update the maps.”
Elenus pouted. “Boring.”
“And after that,” Kieron continued, like Elenus wasn’t being obnoxious, “I’ll be the one going out in the Lizzie while you stay here and keep recovering.”
“Oh, no.” Elenus shook his head and put his slice of pizza down. “No, no, no. The Lizzie is my ship, I’m the one who does the flying.”
“Not when you’re recovering from broken ribs, you’re not.”
Elenus made a pssht sound. “What, these old things? They’ll be fine by tomorrow!”
“They’ll still be very fragile. One wrong move could have you writhing on the floor of your ship again at a crucial moment.
It’s a serious safety issue. For me too,” Kieron added when he saw Elenus open his mouth to object again.
“If you really want to get this done as quickly as possible, then you’ll let me take the Lizzie out tomorrow while you monitor from here.
This is just going to be another prep mission, mostly working with probes and sensors, so it’s not like you’ll be missing a lot. ”
“But what if it’s more than that?” Elenus’s voice had gone low and intense, his eyes feverish. “What if you find my baby? What if Catalina reaches out to you, and you don’t even realize it, because you don’t understand her?”
“It’s not like I’m going halfway across the galaxy,” Kieron said with an eyeroll. “We’ll be within transmitting distance. You’ll hear and see everything that I do.”
“That’s not—”
“This is the reality,” Kieron insisted, abruptly done with negotiating. Fuck, he was so sick of Elenus pushing and pushing and pushing all the time and never taking a moment to step back and realize that in fact, maybe things would have gone a little better if they’d taken it slow.
You know things are bad when you’re being the voice of reason.
“You can either suck it up and watch from the station, or we can send probes in from here, probably lose half of them on the way, and not go out until I’m assured that your ribs aren’t going to poke through your chest wall or impale one of your organs,” Kieron continued.
“But I’m not going to risk your life just to get to your ship a few minutes or hours or even days earlier.
And if Catalina is as impressive as you say, and she loves you as much as you claim, then she wouldn’t want you to do that either. ”
Elenus sat back, a pensive expression on his face. “Why do you really care?”
“Why do I care about what?”
“About my health. It’s not the safety issue; you could just knock me out again. If it’s about the liability you’d face, there is none. My condition is well-documented, and you won’t incur any sort of penalty if I were to die here.”
“I don’t want to have to knock you out again. And you realize that you just cleared the way for me to kill you if I want to,” Kieron pointed out. “That’s not very smart.”
“You’re not going to kill me,” Elenus replied.
“You’re not even tempted to, which puts you in pretty rarified company when it comes to people who have to be in close quarters with me for any period of time.
I have to say, it’s … surprising.” He tilted his head.
“Weren’t you raised to be a killer? What’s keeping you from doing it, especially now that there’s no fear of retaliation? ”
Kieron wasn’t sure if he felt angry, sick, or hurt. Maybe a mix of all three. He dropped his own piece of pizza, pushed the serving plate toward Elenus, and got to his feet. “I’m done. Put whatever you don’t want in the recycler. Let me know when you’re done with repairs.”
“Kieron, c’mon—”
He didn’t even pause on his way to the door. “Also, fuck you.”
“Kieron.”
But he didn’t stay to hear it. He didn’t want to listen to the first person who knew the truth about his origin in so long—since Zakari—ask him why he wasn’t a heartless murderer.
Because of course, what else could come from a place as awful as Hadrian’s Colony?
What else could grow there, on the surface of that dark planet, barely illuminated by the distant, cold dwarf star that had kept them in a perpetual autumn?
What was there to do for anyone from that awful place except fight against all comers in the race to be the best?
The coldest, the cruelest, the most ruthless. Someone like his grandfather.
Someone like his mother.
“Kieron!”
No. He wasn’t ready for more yet. He had to paper over his weaknesses first. He entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, enabled all the locks, and turned on the soundproofing.
Maybe a few hours of meditation would help.
Or a few days’ worth.