Chapter 20
The Hopeless had a doctor. Did I say Hopeless? I meant Soulless.
The Soulless had a doctor.
One of their own.
She had been caught twelve years ago, the eldest of the Soulless and who had survived every Execution Battle since her imprisonment because she was the only Soulless who was a doctor and the Soulless wouldn’t kill the only doctor who gave them medical attention.
Her current abode was Haver prison, which meant her annual ten-day office hours were very busy as she attended to all four hundred inmates from the other two prisons during the Execution Battle, including her own inmates if they came in with injuries.
After successfully faking a connection with another Soulless she was able to get through medical school. Her face was slapped on the front page of a newspaper for completing an impossible surgery.
She also did a lot of illegal organ harvesting.
This became her downfall.
“Is Doctor Death accepting patients without appointments?” I wasn’t sure if I had spoken, or if I had fainted and was currently dreaming.
Blood slicked through my fingers as I endeavoured to hold myself together. The world moved in front of my eyes as if it were dancing and the man in front of me turned black and white like an old movie. He stood armed with his comrades in a pack of guards to keep the hospital free of corruption.
This year they had set up in a gymnasium and had drawn the line of blood around the building in the dirt.
This line was an uncrossable line.
One side was the Execution Battle where rules and laws did not apply, on the other side was the hospital.
No one was allowed to fight in the hospital.
More Soulless code, just like their white flags for trade.
Once you paid for medical treatment and received it on the other side of the line, no one was allowed to come inside and attack you.
The evil bastards had given themselves at least some order.
A man hung out the front with a noose around his neck. His chest had been cut down its centre by a surgical scalpel and opened up like a story book. His crime read above in his own blood on the brick wall: Improper Payment.
Doctor Death would only see you if you could pay.
“Get in line,” the man said. “She’s currently doing a skin cancer check.”
They were not officers, but personal guards of Doctor Death.
She was paid exceptionally well by the inmates and in turn paid certain Soulless inmates to be her personal guards.
A fantastic business as evidenced by the line of at least a hundred waiting out the front of the gymnasium. Luckily, two people in line decked into a fight and one killed the other out of irritation and so now there were only ninety-nine waiting in line.
I turned back to the man. “Excuse me, but I would like priority. I am currently dying.”
“Try to die slower.”
“Oh, yes, I will. Thank you for the advice. But is it at all possible to book an emergency appointment?”
“Sorry. She’s booked up for the rest of the Battle.”
“I have payment.”
“We don’t want any more food.”
I held up my packet of cigarettes.
Doctor Death also had a nicotine addiction.
“You’re dying.” Doctor Death lit up a cigarette and blew smoke in my face.
Oh. I was dying. My diagnosis had been accurate. Maybe I should have gone to medical school.
“Can… can… can you… do… anything about it?” Black spots consumed my vision. My hands shook.
“Sure.” She blew more smoke in my face.
I focused on breathing—on staying breathing—and fell back into the table which she was using as a bed for patients.
The gymnasium was huge and void aside from Doctor Death, her wheely chair, the table and a small tray of supplies that were sterilised with a bottle of vodka. There was also a pink fluffy teddy bear. Not sure why, but I liked it.
“I’m going to have to operate.” She tapped ash on the floor. “But I don’t have any anaesthetic so it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
“I can handle pain well.”
“I do have some aspirin. It will cost you a kidney.”
“No thank you.”
“After, you’ll have to let the stitches heal, if you go out there and start running around, they will open back up and you’ll bleed out.”
“Stay home and watch TV.”
“This pack.” She inhaled the tops of the cigarettes. “It will buy you two days. Then, I’m kicking you out and you are ripe fruit for picking whoever is on the other side of the line. Got it?”
“Yes. Please heal me. I can see my grandmother.”
I woke up after fainting from being operated on without sedative help and found that I had slept for almost two days. Blood loss and lack of a transfusion had given me a momentary coma.
Day six.
Over halfway of the Execution Battle.
I wondered if Tommy and Fiona were holed up safely in a home. I wondered when Magnus was coming.
One of Doctor Death’s assistant guards gave me a glass of water and I sat up on my bedtable, rubbing my head, yawning to the window.
“Gah!”
No, it was not Dig Graves.
Vil.
The mountain man. The one whose brother was killed by my brother apparently.
Not exactly, but people were dramatic. From out of the window, he stood just outside on the edge of the line, narrowing his eyes in on me and where I had slept.
At his back stood a cluster of other inmates twitching with irritation and training their weapons on me.
“Don’t worry.” The man who handed me the water patted my shoulder. “They can’t hurt you in here, they know the rules.” Relief sunk down my shoulders. “Not for another four hours.”
“What?”
He pointed to the clock upon the wall that ticked. “You got four hours until your time is up.”
Tick. Tick. “Four hours?”
“Yup.” He chucked his thumb to the door. “Then we throw you out. Unless you got more cigarettes?”
“I know knock-knock jokes?”
He left.
Tick Tick.
“You’re no longer dying.” Doctor Death crossed her leg on her wheely chair.
“Well, you are dying, we all are, but you’re not quickly dying.
” She eyed the mob just outside who had come with sharpened weapons all directed at me.
“Well, not for another three hours. I have fixed you. They might undo you.”
The wound on my side was patched with a menstrual cycle pad. The stitches let me know of their agony every time I moved. “Thank you.”
“You need to stay lying down, at least for another day or two. You’ve lost a good amount of blood; you’ll faint pretty damn quick.”
I sprung up my brows. “You’re saying I can stay here for another day or two?”
She laughed and lit up a cigarette. “Hell no, I’ve done my job, there’s no reason for you to be in here. You know the rules. In three hours, you go out there and you make it your own problem.”
I knew I could not argue Soulless rules and so I did not. “Thank you again.”
“By the way, I had to take out your clode implant. “
“Clode implant?”
“The blade in your arm was right next to it. When I pulled it out, the implant came out too.”
“What do you mean clode implant?”
Clode.
The drug for ceasing a connection. Highly illegal and banned in most countries, including Uandra. It was unnatural for stopping two souls from finding each other.
Clode administered a hormone into your body to tame your heartbeat, stopping it from thumping and guiding you to its Soulmate.
It also did not allow you to connect to your Soulmate.
You could take it in pill or powder form, or if you were especially serious you could get an implant embedded into your arm that would slowly release the hormone over time.
It used to be legal, long, long ago, when people preferred to fall in love with someone who was not their Soulmate and so they stopped their connection to another.
Those types of relationships never lasted.
Your soul was only in love with a Soulmate, there was no other.
This caused a lot of complications and messy affairs, also it was difficult to tell who was a Soulless and who was not.
Uandra eventually banned it, solving all those issues.
Doctor Death blew out smoke. “A clode implant is—”
“I know exactly what it is, what I’m asking is…well…I don’t have a clode implant.”
“Yes, you did.” She laughed as if I were her favourite comedy show. “A really old one.”
I frowned and was about to argue when she pulled out the tiny piece of metal from her pocket, showing me.
The wound on my arm ached.
“What…” It took me a moment to take in what I was seeing.
“You dumb ass rich kids.” Doctor Death stuffed the implant back into her pocket and sucked on the end of her cigarette, butchering the white paper with her red lips.
“Trying to stop the connection illegally. Let me guess, you didn’t like your Soulmate?
Tried to stop the connection, probably get them killed in hopes you’d connect to another?
But it took too long so they mistook you for a Soulless and now you ended up in this shithole.
” She laughed again, a long crackling laugh which turned into a cough. “Serves you right, idiot.”
“I did not put that in me!” I pointed to her pocket, panic shaking my hand. “I would never!”
Her coughing finished and she eyed me, realising I was speaking the truth. “Huh. Well, the hormones should wear off pretty soon.”
I pressed my hand across my chest, replaying her words in my head. “Wait… are you saying I might not be Soulless?”
She shrugged. “You’ll find out if your heart starts going crazy looking for its Soulmate.”
I waited for my heart to leap.
Nothing.
“Though, I doubt it will.” She yawned. “I heard recently they’ve found out if you’ve taken clode long term, it eventually turns you Soulless. Your implant was old. You’re Soulless now.”
Her words hit nails into my skull.
“Who put clode in me?” I asked her if she would know. “Why would they do this?”
She found my dilemma interesting, tapping her ash on the floor. “I don’t know. Someone who hates you? Wanted you to end up here?”
“That is a great many people.”
“Well, it’s an old one, so it probably would have stopped working at least a few years back. It will keep working if you get top ups of the hormone.”
“I do not take clode, I never have.”
She bobbed her head from side to side. “You’d only need a bit here and there. You know anyone who’d be sprinkling that shit in your water?”
I frowned. “Wouldn’t I be able to taste it?”
“Chocolate hides the flavour of it pretty well.”
“Hm.”
“Cocoa too.”
I flicked my eyes up. “Magnus.”