The girl's mouth hung open but drew no breath. Wrapping an arm around her middle, she rolled her seizing body onto its side. Ari checked the street again, but her attention returned to the girl as she drew in a rattling gasp. It was choked back as she gagged, heaving blood from what must be left of her mauled stomach. She continued to throw up until the blood was replaced by another liquid. After a few more heaves, she was able to take long, deep breaths.
She wiped tears and blood from her face, rolling onto her back with a wince. It took her a few seconds to realize she wasn't alone. Still struggling for breath, still tense with pain, she managed a dark glare and swore spectacularly.
"I'm going to get you some help," Ari stammered.
"Don't..." She broke off, but Ari was too focused on avoiding the puddle of sick to register why until she felt a cold tickle at her throat.
The girl was still trembling but managed to keep a firm grip on her blade, now hovering dangerously close to Ari's carotid artery. "Leave me be," she insisted. "I don't need help."
Ari stopped. "You have holes in your stomach and ribs..."
"Exactly—" Her face crumpled up in pain, and she struggled to finish her sentence, "don't touch me. You go."
Ari put her hands up in submission, hoping she would put the weapon down. "Okay. I'll go get help. Just don't die!" She waited until the girl dropped her sword and her head fell back to the ground, clutching her stomach as she gasped for air.
Though she had no idea where she was going, Ari ran. There was no way that girl could be in decent shape, and Ari wasn't about to let her die if she could help it.
"Ari!" A boy called her name. Ari slid to a stop, her boots leaving tracks in the snowdrift. She couldn't see anyone, but someone had clearly called her name. Changing direction, she cut through an alley, weaving around buildings in the direction of the call. The buildings ended, and she found herself standing on an empty strip of snow separating the town from the forest.
"Ariana Kana!" She turned to see two people running towards her. Relief flooded her body at the sight of Lutz and Robie. They were alive!
"You failed to follow orders!" Lutz demanded.
"Orders were to get everyone out of the café. I couldn't leave until she left." At the mention of another person, Lutz's brow rose in surprise.
Robie gently pulled Ari's shoulders to face him. "Where are you injured?" he asked, slipping a long, pointed knife into a holder on the back of his belt.
Ari shook her head, pushing aside Robie's gesture to help brace her if she decided to collapse. "It's not mine. There's a girl who needs medical attention." She turned on her heels and ran back into town without another word, not even bothering to check if they were following. Right now, the important thing was to get back to that girl. It wouldn't take long for wounds like that to bleed out, even if the girl had been able to pull herself back from the brink of death.
Ari frowned at the memory.
It didn't take too long to get back to the café street, and Ari anxiously rounded the corner with the boys close at her heels. All three froze as they entered the street.
Robie and Lutz stared at the massive corpses, and Ari stared at nothing.
The girl's body was gone.
- - - -
Ari sat on a thin slab of cement which Robie called a curb. The borrowed coat around her shoulders had been beaten and ripped. Mud and wet spots across her body muted the crimson color of blood. Robie had run clean snow through her bangs, leaving her hair wet but free of the horrifying traces of the battle. Yet, the thing that had Ari's full attention was her precious ship component, which rested in her lap.
When the three of them emerged from the alley, the first thing Ari saw was a pool of blood and the rust-tinted piece of metal. Smooth and shaped in a form Ari had imagined it had looked before the explosion, which is why she almost missed it.
Recognizing it, Robie scooped it up and quickly shuffled Ari away. Seconds later, the street was swarmed by uniformed officials. They roped off the corpses and set up blockades. Still dumbfounded, Ari allowed herself to be pulled along by Robie and Lutz.
"Let's keep you off the radar," Lutz said quietly. She was ushered down the sidewalk until they came upon an open space. A long white curb crossed in front of the open expanse. A crowd of civilians had gathered toward one end. Everyone was scared and confused. Except one man.
He walked with great posture, a sturdy build but light on his feet. The scruff around his mouth was trimmed neatly, proving the look wasn't done unintentionally. Though he wore light clothing, he didn't shiver nor did he stumble across the obstacles dropped around the open lot. He attempted to strike up a conversation with bystander after bystander; each one immediately treated him like he had some sort of disease and walked away. After several attempts, his frustration was almost palpable. Whatever he was trying to get, he had no luck.
Lutz and Robie escorted Ari away from this scene and placed her at the opposite end. Alone and quiet, she now sat oddly obedient.
With a few brief instructions, the two young men rushed off to find a way to sneak Ari out without catching anyone's attention. But Ari only vaguely remembered watching them dart off into the crowd as her mind raced through each event again.
How would she tell Trevon? She ran her fingers through her wet bangs. Her brother would be out of his mind if he knew what she had just gone through. Still, she would have to tell him. Ari swallowed a stressed chuckle. She would have to tell him everything since the horrible was mixed with the amazing. She was on a planet where there were Mages—people who wielded magic. They are capable of doing extraordinary things, with colors emanating from their bodies. Just like him.
These people could teach him about his ability, about what he could do. And he was not alone in the universe. That girl's color had been a brownish-red, like her eyes. Trevon's was green. Ari wondered if the color had something to do with what each person could do. Trevon could heal skin and body. That girl had taken a metal door and easily bent it into her hand, shaping it into a sword.
A nice one too.
Ari gasped. "That was transmutation." Ari's eyes rolled back, and she dropped her head into her hands as she remembered why she had come to Melvin in the first place. "Why'd she have to die?"
"Someone died?"
Startled by the female voice at her side, Ari's head snapped around to see a woman sitting on the same small bit of curb. She looked dejected, with shoulders hunched and arms draped on her knees.
Compared to the rest of the crowd, she was dressed formally, bundled in a thick woolen coat over slim black slacks and a cozy sweater, with a few delicate pieces of jewelry adorning her ensemble, barely noticeable under her layers. It was the killer heels on her boots that caught Ari's attention. The only purpose those towering heels could serve was to inflict large puncture wounds in a fight. Walking? Ari thought. Yeah, right. Who could walk in something that elevated them five inches off the ground?
"I didn't mean to startle you. I was worried you might pass out, so I sat beside you when your friends ran off. My name's Samantha," the woman said.
Hesitant to engage with another stranger, Ari swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded politely.
Samantha smiled softly. "Your friend was a Mage?"
"What?" Ari replied.
"The one that died," Samantha clarified.
Ari nodded, "Within seconds, she melted metal door and formed it into a sword." Ari searched the crowd for the dead girl's face—not expecting to see it, of course, but slightly hopeful. Perhaps she was a usual resident of the town, though something about her made Ari second-guess that notion.
"She must have been very talented. That's not easy to do," Samantha said gently.
"Are you...?" Ari asked, trailing off. The woman had said the word so easily, but Ari wondered if it was a topic she was supposed to avoid.
"No," Samantha answered, recognizing Ari's hesitation. "I'm not. My partner and I have done a lot of research on the relationship between Mages and the Military. Conspiracies are a side hobby of ours, and the government hush about magic falls under that category."
Ari unintentionally smiled. She was friends with someone who loved conspiracies and couldn't stop the subtle pull of familiarity with this stranger.
"Oh," Samantha said, her face flushing pink as she realized something. "You poor girl, this was your first time on a planet, wasn't it?"
A surge of defense bubbled up inside Ari. "No. Well, not really. I was born on a planet. I don't remember it. I was young when our guardians moved my brother and me to the station. But this really isn't my first time on a planet." The words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush, surprising even herself with their spontaneity. Perhaps her longing for conversation with Farris had left her more eager to engage than she realized.
"It's okay. Just remember this isn't a normal day on planet. So don't let it scare you away," Samantha explained with a reassuring smile.
Ari felt a wave of relief wash over her at Samantha's understanding words, though they oddly fueled her desire to converse even further. Her hands absently stroked the contraption in her lap, verifying it was still there.
"You seem very focused on that. What is it?" Samantha asked.
"I forgot what it was called. But it's the reason I came here. I was on a ship and I broke it. Turns out the ship can't go anywhere without it. So I came to find someone who could fix it...a Transmutation specialist." Samantha's eyes flickered with understanding. "Then, in the middle of all the chaos, I met one. I didn't even know her name. She transformed it into a weapon and promised she would put it back the way it was when she was done. But now she's gone."
Samantha shook a confused look from her face. "It doesn't look broken."
Ari was uncertain. "By the time those things were done with her, she wasn't in the condition to fix it." Ari swallowed hard at the memory. "But I don't know how magic works, so I can't tell what she did."
Samantha sighed softly. "Here's what I know about Transmutation. Metal has a memory. It remembers the first thing it was molded into after coming out of the ground. If your friend tapped into that memory with her ability, then she quite literally made it like new."
Ari's chest filled with fresh oxygen for the first time in hours. Rotating the object in the palms of her hands, she saw it with more confidence as a whole. Before she knew it, Ari was on her feet, unsure which direction to go.
Samantha gently touched her arm to stop her. "Where are you going?"
The happiness made Ari's voice sound foreign. "If it's fixed, I have to get this to Farris before something else goes wrong."
Samantha's hand wrapped more securely around Ari's arm. "Your friends were determined to keep you from drawing attention to yourself. Considering how you look, it might be best if you waited here for them." Ari looked back at the crowd. More uniformed officers were beginning to circulate among them. There was a quick tug inside her chest that told her Samantha was right. Tucking the completed component into what remained of her duffle bag, Ari returned to her spot on the low curb.
Feeling slightly self-conscious, Ari instinctively crossed her arms in a feeble attempt to conceal the less-than-ideal state of her attire. "Thank you...?" she said, having forgotten who she was talking to. In her defense, there were a lot of firsts happening, and it was hard to keep them straight.
Samantha smiled politely. "Samantha Murphy." She absently touched a white, laminated ID card clipped to her lapel. Angled in a way Ari couldn't make out the words, she recognized it as a public ID tag. Samantha Murphy probably had a job that required her to constantly interact with new people. "And that's Chad Ling," she added, pointing as the man Ari had been observing approached. Embarrassed, Ari quickly looked down at her hands.