Part 1
Hospital
Seventh circle of the Empire
Oasis
I woke up to the sound of screaming outside.
I opened my eyes to the lights that were always on, feeling in my nostrils a familiar smell that I hadn't felt in a long time... A smell that was like a drop of water on the tongue of a thirsty desert traveler, after living countless adventures that ended so badly.
I took a deep breath. That was the aroma of mineral engulfed in flesh, like blades dipped in...
Blood.
And a type of blood I knew very well, from all the times when valleys opened up in the paleness of my own skin...
Human blood.
That human screamed so loud that even as he walked away down the hall, I could still hear his voice. Maybe he too had gone through a journey that had a bad ending... At least one that was worth the effort of those screams.
I should have been used to this sound by now, since it was such a big part of my job, but tolerating it was a difficult art... Especially when some soaked into me as deeply as scars and gave my imagination pains I hoped I would never feel.
Each and every noxdiem I woke up to welcome the unfortunate - or the stupid - and spare them the pain that caused those screams. Deep down, they were all just unlucky to be here, - some even with the misfortune of being stupid - but I couldn't help but wonder what made a creature put itself in a suffering like that... What took a being to experience so much pain that nothing could be left of it but the screams, echoing down empty corridors and begging for some kind of anesthesia for pains that were beyond the body?
It didn't matter how many years I had been working there... I still wanted to keep away from those screams.
But, this time, I felt compelled to follow them.
Not because the pain was being felt, but by who it was: a rare type of unfortunate traveler in that portion of the Interstellar Empire.
And one I've been waiting for a long, long time.
• • • ֍ • • •
Clover was already late to her job interview and her ride had also decided to take its time. Her foot was furiously tapping on the ground while her eyes flew down the chaotic street, but there was no sign of the car she waited for. Clover was starting to feel her head heat up... When the vehicle finally came around the corner.
The girl got into the car and closed the door harder than usual, what the driver pretended not to notice. He got back into the frantic flow of the street and, a few yards later, the Artifact plummeted from the sky and smashed into the car in front, saving Clover's life by a 2-minute delay.
She gave him 5 stars.
I don't really know if that's exactly how it happened, but that's the way the movies told this story. Maybe there never even was a Clover (when was there such a lucky human?) but many people, with various other names, witnessed the real arrival of the Artifact on Earth.
• • • ֍ • • •
I got up off the floor among the cleaning supplies and hit my head on one of the shelves, making a noise almost as loud as the screams outside. Damn it! I had hidden in the janitor's room to take a secret nap, after all, and the last thing a secret needed was to be discovered. Not everyone in the Oasis had to get as much sleep as humans, so they didn't understand how unproductive we were if we didn't spend a few hours being unproductive; so I needed to hide if I wanted a sleep half decent.
I silently walked out into the hallway and followed the distant echoes of the screams to a white room door.
I went inside and stretched up on my tiptoes to try to see the confusion beyond the frantic iatric staff, but I couldn't find the patient's face. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, so wild and animalistic that, for an instant, I doubted he was really human. His body thrashed in a mess of arms and legs, clawing and kicking everything that got in his way. Maybe he wasn't just in pain... Maybe he was trying to get away. Didn't he understand that we wanted to help him? Or did he not want help at all?
The iatrics ran from side to side, preparing the room, controlling the human and trying to take his pain away. One of them wrapped tentacles around the stranger's limbs and secured him to the hospital bed with chains, while another iatric jabbed a huge stinger into the back of his neck, injecting a sedative. Slowly, the stranger's screams turned to incoherent whispers as his agitation faded away and, in the blink of an eye, he was plunged into darkness.
"His leg is injured." The supervisor of the iatric team informed me, a tremulon. He didn't pronounce words like me, since his gelatinous body didn't have the consistency to support vocal chords, but he emitted a specific vibration that the translator implanted in my brain interpreted as language, something fundamental for a professional in an interstellar hospital. "Stitch him up. At least this those fingers of yours can do." His body shuddered when talking about the subject of fingers... Apparently tremulons were disgusted by them.
At first I wondered how he could be our supervisor. He didn't have members, so he couldn't do anything; he was arrogant, so he didn't please anyone; and he wasn't one of the smartest species in the galaxy, so he made mistakes. But, over time, I realized it wasn't a matter of deserving. He was our supervisor because his species was one of the oldest in the Empire... So he was respected.
"And use one of the worst suture lines." The tremulon turned to me to say, as if he had forgotten the most important detail. "Don't waste a good one on him."
And humans were one of the newest.
The tremulon left with the team and I was abandoned with the unconscious human. His blood leapt from the depths of his body like the source of a river, painting the hospital bed with chaos. If I didn't do anything, he would be drained to death. Apparently the other iatrics had been more concerned with keeping him trapped than alive.
I gloved my hands and picked up the newest, most technological and most efficient of the suture lines. He was lucky that other beings didn't find a human worthy of being treated by anything other than another human; and he was lucky that our species had stood for millennia on pillars of empathy, compassion and... Selfishness.
I was going to patch him up like a doll that a child was unable to discard, and then I was going to get something in return. That's not how I used to treat my patients, but as much to my eyes as to the hospital's, before patient, he was human.
All I needed was a sip of humanity.
And I was thirsty for a long time.
I slowly approached his sleeping face... Peaceful, now that he didn't feel pain; quiet, now that he wasn't afraid; serene, now that he didn't have to wonder what would happen at every moment of his life. He looked about my age, young to the point of thinking he was smarter than he really was and old enough so he could no longer forgive some of his own choices. But maybe he still did... And that's why he was there, in the same place I suffered for my own.
Framed by waves of dark hair and a jaw square like the edges of a canvas, his face rested between the familiar and the unknown. I had never seen him, of course, but there was something familiar about him... Something that mirrored what was in me. Among so many exotic creatures I ended up learning to appreciate the beauty in what I knew.... And it wasn't hard to find it in him.
I wouldn't have looked at that stranger with such curiosity if I'd been in a hospital on Earth, where he wouldn't be novelty, but just another causality. Here, however, he was the key to my locks.
I wondered at the inert facade of the traveler what had brought him so far from home...
And how had I let myself end up so far away as well?
When he opened his eyes, the suture line was already halfway through the cut. He blinked, processing the universe as if seeing it for the first time, and then thrashed against the handcuffs, since the first thing that crossed his mind was to run away. We are predictable, we humans... And I missed that.
I stared for a moment at those eyes as green as they were frustrated and quickly turned my attention to my work.
"How are you feeling?" I asked casually. He broke into a tired smile and, with the husky voice of someone who hadn't spoken for an eternity, he whispered:
"As someone who should be dead..."
"Apparently the universe has other plans for you..." But they probably weren't very good, as the iatrics insisted on handcuffing him so tightly. "What is your name?"
"I thought iatrics should already know."
I stared at his face, where a raised eyebrow challenged me, and then he pointed with his eyes to the chart on the table beside him, his face filled with a little smile that made me want to stick the suture needle in his leg. I checked the time on the ID card on my bracelet and focused back on the cut, moving in and out of the edges of the skin with the thread in a continuous seam.
"And when, yelling through the halls, would you have given your name to be in the chart, in the first place?"
"If you release me, I'll write down all the data for you."
"Like they would let a human do it... Besides, I'm too busy sewing you to worry about it right now."
"So my name isn't all that important for you." He concluded, as if my work and I were as impersonal as a band aid. "But I wonder... Why is 'sewing' my leg so much more important than my name if I can't even use it?" He pointed with his eyes to the handcuffs around his ankles.
It was charming his expectation that I would notice the contradiction and let him go... But even if I trusted him, those chains wouldn't open before I had what I wanted.
"Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?"
He broke into a slow smile and his eyes roamed across the room until they landed on me again, realizing that there was no escape but through me. His voice melted out of his lips in a magnetic threat:
"They arrested me for something..." His eyes bored into me, hiding his motives. "And I want to go back to it..."
I was speechless for a moment, intrigued by the danger in his eyes and outraged that he was unable to answer a single question of mine. Still, I dove into his game and leaned forward with a smile on the cliff edges of his bed, feeling the adrenaline flow through my body in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.
"You did something very wrong, didn't you?"
His lip razor tore a lascivious smile on his face.
"That depends on the point of view." He purred. "And, from mine, the mistake was being captured."
"And what did you do to get to that?"
He opened his mouth, tempting me with the truth and letting my imagination explore everything he could have done to end up there, trapped like a hungry beast, as if I should fear him... But he probably thought I still didn't deserve answers.
"I could break your neck as easily as I did to those creatures..." He hissed, chills invading my skin. I was supposed to back up and run away, but all I did was lean farther forward, barely balancing on the cliff.
"I doubt your ability to do this with these handcuffs..."
"You can doubt mine..." He purred. "But don't doubt his."
I leaned back.
"His?"
"The parasite's."
What?!
My hands released the needle as if it were on fire. The interstellar parasites were the worst... They took over the body the fastest, drained the strength the quickest, and definitely were the hardest to get rid of.
Were my gloves thick enough?! Was I already contaminated?! Damned iatrics who didn't give me a crumb of information!
"The guards told me I did some things that... I shouldn't..." He muttered. "And I've heard stories of parasites that make people act like that."
And, just like that, my fear evaporated. I rolled my eyes.
"I don't think your inability to take responsibility for your own actions is enough for a diagnosis."
"But assuming the crimes they're accusing me of were really the parasite's fault... Then would I be free?"
"Possibly."
"So what do you need to diagnose me?" A smile full of expectations crowned his features, stimulated by the challenge of convincing me and telling me more about him than his name would ever have said.
"For starters: a complete story of how you may have become infected." My hands on the hips didn't intimidate him.
He cleared his throat theatrically and opened his mouth in a determined way that made me want to hear:
"It all started in the morning..."