Chapter 8 #4
“Get back to our deck,” Iris shouted and cut off a vine, wrapped tightly around his ankle.
Without another word, Ishtan turned back around and ran through the double doors and out into the corridor.
One of the vines lunged for the opening, but froze midway when Iris sliced it in half.
He stumbled towards the doors, only to be knocked down again.
This time, pain flared in his left shoulder, only now it was sharp and fiery.
Inconsequential. Iris sliced cleanly through the vine embedded in his flesh.
Adrenaline and fear were enough to dull most of the pain.
Without looking, Iris swung back, severing whatever it was that was pressing him into the dirt, and with another three steps, stumbled through the double doors into the corridor.
He hit the cool, hard floor with his left side, winding himself.
Safe. Just barely, but safe. Wasting no time, Iris scrambled to his feet and took off running down the corridor.
VIFAI projected a map of the ship, and Iris followed it without glancing back.
After a few turns, he allowed himself to slow down and nearly collapsed against the wall.
How did you do that? he asked again, this time forcing a connection with VIFAI, so it had no choice but to respond.
I have access to your memory. I have access to your motor cortex, it said, its voice rushed and exuberant.
Nothing precise, but I have been with you long enough to know how you fight, how your brain tells you to fight.
I see things faster, react faster than you.
We had no time. I had to do it for you. The adrenaline helps.
By the end it almost sounded apologetic.
Iris pressed the aching side of his face against the cool metal of the wall. “Thank you. When did you know you could do that?”
I didn’t. It was an instinct.
The pain in his left shoulder was climbing. “What a perfect time to figure it out then. Thank you again. I am in your debt. We all are.”
VIFAI said something, but this time Iris didn’t hear it.
His vision swam, half occluded with the blood that now covered most of his face.
With a soft moan, he pushed himself upright and staggered towards the orchard.
The pain in his left shoulder spread until it became a dimension in and of itself.
It painted every other thought, muffled every sensation that reached any other part of Iris’s body. He hadn’t felt this worn out in years.
It was easy to scold himself for being too soft, for giving his body so much attention and yet so little discipline.
If only he had trained harder these past six months.
If only he had been diligent with his eating and his stretching.
If only. Instead, he had somehow become the liability of the group.
“I’ve never seen vines move,” Iris whispered, letting his mind fixate on the idea instead of the pain. “They’re strange, like everything else here. They can’t move like that.”
You mean they shouldn’t.
“Nothing moves like that.”
Iris stumbled and steadied himself against an apple tree.
The engineers were gone, screens and tools scattered on the ground.
They must have left in a hurry, spurred into motion by Riyu’s cries.
Iris prayed that Ishtan had made it back safely.
Before he could reach the double doors at the far end of the orchard, a new kind of pain doubled him over and tightened around his already empty stomach.
The burning in his brain stem grew unbearable, and he dry heaved beneath a tree.
I’m sorry, VIFAI said, and it sounded genuinely contrite.
Residual current. Having no energy to speak, Iris waved his hand in an it’s fine gesture, and pushed himself forwards and through the double doors.
By the time he reached the communal space, he was effectively blind, following the map by memory alone, with only marginal help from VIFAI.
Their little stunt had been taxing on his inorganic companion as well, and it hummed softly, relying only on featherlight impulses to communicate.
At some point, Iris stumbled and lost his balance.
He fell forwards, into the darkness, but never hit the floor. He didn’t remember anything after that.
Waking up was resurfacing through a tidal wave of pain and nausea.
Gritting his teeth, Iris forced his eyes open.
Cracked ceiling tiles swirled and swam against an ocean of steel.
He had no recollection of how he had ended up in the cargo bay, nor if he had met anyone on his way here.
Someone must have carried him. A flush of embarrassment stained the tips of his ears red.
He gingerly patted down his body and was relieved to find his bloodied robes untouched.
What good was a Vessel if it had cracks?
And this encounter would surely leave a crack.
Iris clenched his hand into a weak fist and raised it high enough to see. His forearm trembled with exhaustion, his fingers ached, there were cuts and scrapes along his knuckles, a few of the deeper ones opening as he tensed. This was the exact sort of crack he had spent years avoiding.
When the initial jolt of panic subsided, hushed voices reached Iris from the corridor.
“We need to do something. He’ll bleed to death or get an infection,” Tev said.
“We can’t touch him,” Ishtan intervened. “I am telling you. He would rather die than have one of us violate him in such a way. This is beyond your understanding, Tev.”
Iris politely disagreed with that particular sentiment.
It was Riyu’s voice that reached him next. “We can’t just let him die. He saved us.” Her voice was small, muffled, as if she’d been crying continuously and gone hoarse from it.
“Well, what if he wakes up?” Jesi asked.
“If we give him the med-kit, can he do it himself? Would that be OK?” By the sound of it, they were all gathered in the corridor just outside the cargo bay, huddled together and whispering about the best course of action, frightened, anxious, and far too loud.
Iris desperately wanted to know exactly how he got back to the cargo bay, but hearing Ishtan’s and Riyu’s voices was enough to settle him.
He had done something right. Jesi and Tev were there too, and safe. He relaxed into the moss with a sigh.
“Fuck it.” There was Yan. “I’ll do it. He already hates me. What else is he going to do anyway? Just give me the med-kit.” A wave of muffled protest erupted in the corridor.
“I really would advice against this,” Ishtan’s voice rang out above the others. “Yan, he won’t be—”
Iris sprang upright, but a blistering stab of pain in his shoulder sent him right back down with a wheeze.
He stared at the ceiling in utter horror for what was to come.
Even with the thick moss cover, Yan’s heavy footsteps reverberated through the corridor and into the cargo bay.
The door slammed, and the engineer drew closer.
Silently, Iris cried out for VIFAI, but it was dormant, completely spent from their joint fight. The footsteps stopped beside him.
Yan knelt by Iris’s side wearing what could only be described as an apologetic expression.
“You’re awake. OK. That complicates things.
Look, you don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this,” he said, eyes looking just to the left of Iris, just far enough that he wouldn’t be accused of staring.
“But if I don’t bandage you up, you’ll probably get an infection and die. ”
Still staring directly at the ceiling, Iris said, “I do appreciate your concern, engineer Yan, but I assure you, I can take care of this on my own.”
“No, you can’t. You haven’t seen your left side. It’s a bloody mess. Literally.”
Iris closed his eyes and with a hiss, propped himself up on his right elbow. “Engineer Yan, I understand you are not a practicing man, but you must understand that for someone like me, vows are sacred. You must understand professional integrity.”
“I understand more than you give me credit for, Vessel. Heard enough of your kind’s vows at temple to last a lifetime.
” Yan opened the med-kit and began setting out gauze and scissors on the moss.
He didn’t give Iris the space to interject.
“I also know you saved Riyu’s and Ishtan’s lives—all of our lives in a way.
There might come a time soon enough that you will need to do it again.
You have a responsibility to the Starlit, I understand, but now you also have a responsibility to these people.
” Yan was using the same tone with Iris as he had in the maintenance room.
He was being calm, collected, and a hue patronising.
If not for the tone, Iris might have agreed to be helped. “My responsibility is to the dead,” he blurted out with latent rage.
“There it is.” With a solemn nod, Yan cut a piece of gauze and soaked it in iodine. Without a warning, he pressed the gauze to Iris’s temple where the skin was split. Iris recoiled with a hiss.
“So much for that monklike discipline,” Yan laughed and pressed the gauze to Iris’s temple again, this time, locking Iris’s head in place with his other hand. “Stop flinching, it will only take longer.”
The last hand to touch the nape of Iris’s neck in such a way had been Mother Nova’s, but even that had been years ago.
After another failed attempt to rid himself of his physical condition, she had brought Iris’s lips to a bowl of water as she muttered soft mantras under her breath.
Her skin had been hot against his, soft and comforting, nothing like the calloused fingers now forcing their way on him.
A white-hot anger ignited in the pit of Iris’s empty stomach.
“I will tell you just once, engineer Yan,” Iris pushed past his clenched teeth. “Do not touch me.”
“Fine,” Yan said in the same patronising, level tone and sat back on his heels. “Show me that you can bandage your own shoulder, and I will leave you to your demise.”
Gaze unwavering, Iris forced himself upright, crossed his legs, and reached over his chest towards his left shoulder. He made it as far as his clavicle before his skin stretched too much, and he doubled over with a small cry.
“Amazing.” Yan reached into the med-kit and produced a small can of bio-sealant.
Applied to a wound, the sealant expanded and bound to the organic tissue to promote healing.
A medium-sized wound could be healed in a matter of days.
Every med-kit stocked at least two cans.
“If you stop flinching, and I stop having to explain myself, we can have this done in a few minutes. Then I’ll leave you alone to brood for all eternity and will never speak to you again. Deal?”
Iris gave a begrudging nod.
Yan would have to be the one to undo his robes.
This would be fine. It was all fine as long as Iris didn’t think about it at all.
He found a particularly white skull in the pile of bones and focused on it.
All of this could be managed with some controlled breathing and emptying his mind.
Iris was good at meditating, at managing panic.
He could do this. When Yan’s hands reached for the first knot, Iris stopped breathing completely.
To his relief, the engineer worked fast, and soon, the outer layer of the robes lay discarded. Iris took a long, shuddering breath.
“Stop talking,” Yan ordered.
“I am as silent as the space between planetary systems, engineer Yan.”
“You are reciting the Dying Twin-Star Sutra like a broken record.” Yan undid the top button of Iris’s collar.
No longer caring, Iris resumed reciting the sutra through clenched teeth.
He unwound the mala from his wrist and mechanically passed the beads through his fingers.
The rising smell of sandalwood did little to settle his nerves.
Then, without any warning, his skin was brushed by the humid air of the cargo bay.
Iris stared right ahead and braced himself, falling as silent as the aforementioned space between planetary systems. The very exchange of oxygen between his cells ceased in that moment.
But Yan continued to work silently, just as he’d promised, saying nothing about the pale splotches of scar tissue spanning the entirety of Iris’s back.
He said nothing of their ugly shape, nor their prominence, nor how they curved around Iris’s shoulders, how they climbed just above his cervical spine, and how they trailed below the band of his trousers.
The only indication that the engineer had noticed anything at all was the slight trembling of his hands as he carefully peeled the undershirt away to reveal the jagged-edged wound just below the shoulder blade, still oozing blood.
Without a word, Yan filled the wound with the bio-sealant, pausing only to let the mixture settle.
Then he placed a large, square patch to cover the sealant and gently ran his fingertips along the edges to activate the adhesive.
When he was finished, Yan draped the undershirt over Iris’s shoulders.
He didn’t have to. It wasn’t standard procedure to dress a patient after one was finished tending to a wound.
“Done. You’ll have to check it for infection periodically, but I won’t torment you anymore. You can do the checks yourself.”
Iris nodded. He passed the mala beads between his fingers, back and forth, back and forth. The skin Yan had touched pulsed to the rhythm of the mala beads. No words came to him.
Yan packed up the med-kit but left it on the ground. “In case you need anything.”
Iris nodded again.
Without another word, Yan disappeared into the corridor, shutting the door, and Iris allowed himself to fall apart for the first time in twenty years.