* * *
Sydel tried to keep her breathing even, but her body thudded with adrenaline. Her stomach burned with anxiety. She crossed her arms over her midsection, heading for the latticework gates. They were open, just enough to let someone slide through.
The grasslands stretched before her, dark red and shimmering from the rain. To the left was a round stone building, its whitewash luminous, even with no moons to reflect off it: the medical clinic.
And by its doors: two black silhouettes, struggling.
“Get away from him!” Her voice was shrill in the night.
The shadows stumbled backwards. Then one face came into the light: Yann.
Sydel made the connection via Eko. Are you all right? Should I call for help?
No response. The other silhouette, an incredibly tall man, loomed behind Yann like a specter. Sydel gripped the sleeves of her nightgown, torn between running away and doing something, doing anything to defend Yann.
“Do you work here?”
The question came from the stranger. His voice was low and liquid, with a slight drawl to it. A foreign accent.
Sydel opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
The man jerked his chin towards the clinic. “You have a patient.”
The moon broke through the clouds. The right side of his shirt caught the light, dark and shiny. Wet with blood, Sydel realized. His? Or someone else’s?
“No,” Yann interrupted her thoughts. “Take that woman and leave. I refuse treatment.”
“You can’t,” the stranger corrected. Even with the moon’s appearance, Sydel still couldn’t make out his face. “You’re Jala. You people follow your chosen paths for life, working in total devotion, righteousness and perfection. So if you’re a healer, you can’t refuse a request for help.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think you know,” Yann sputtered. “I refuse to help a criminal.”
Sydel gaped at Yann, and then the stranger. Criminal?
The man shrugged. “Fine. Then she dies. I’ve done my part.”
And the tall man began to walk away, Yann scampering after him like a desperate puppy, yelping: “You cannot do this! What if retribution follows?
“It won’t, if you keep her here in Midland and hidden for the next week,” the man said brusquely. “If she dies, do whatever you want with the body.”
Sydel stared at the clinic door. Someone was in there. Someone was dying.
A rumbling sound. Engines and sweet gasoline in the air, a stench Sydel secretly loved, but hardly ever encountered. Yann’s silhouette stood at the crest of the low hill, gesturing wildly.
Then a shimmer of lights, as something large and metal rose from the grass: a ground rover, not rusted and rattling like the one in the Communia, but sleek and nearly silent in operation. It skimmed the desert rocks, neatly navigating the rise and fall of the landscape, until it finally disappeared into the night.
Once again, the world was silent. The wind picked up again, like an afterthought, and swirled Sydel’s hair around her face. Sydel pushed it back and waited.
Yann’s huffs came to her ears, coupled with the sound of his lumbering, angry gait. As he drew closer, her mind rolled with questions. Who was that man? Who was inside the clinic? Why in the dead of night?
“Master - ” she began.
“Not now,” Yann snapped, sweeping past her. “Inside.”
He stomped on each step, bursting through the clinic doors.
After a few seconds, Sydel followed.
The florescent lights burned her retinas. Then the white walls grew clear; with its simple, open concept design; the clinic was only thirty feet in area, but well stocked, and immaculate. The linoleum floor glimmered with red drops of blood, smeared blood, and brushed by footprints. Up ahead, a squirming body lay on the gurney.
Yann was pulling on gloves. “You always wanted something exciting, Sydel,” he spat at her, in a tone she’d never heard before, his eyes rimmed with pink, his bushy eyebrows raised high. “You were bored with vaccinations and blisters, well, here you go.”
Hurt and bewildered, Sydel held her tongue, and snapped her own gloves on. As Yann cut through the patient's shirt, Sydel helped to pull it free. Underneath, there was blood everywhere, dried and brown, all over the left arm and torso.
“Gunshot wound to the left lateral chest,” Yann announced.
“Gunshot?”
Yann ignored her shock, probing the patient’s ribs.
“But -” Sydel sputtered. She couldn’t stop shaking her head. “How could - who would -”
Her voice died as the patient writhed under Yann’s hands. It was a woman, Sydel realized, underneath all that jagged blue hair. Then the woman’s head jerked back, and Sydel could see her sharp, pinched features: how the patient’s eyelids were rimmed with heavy black, her lips the color of a deep bruise.
Before her, Yann’s shoulders dropped. “Superficial,” he sighed. “See? Looks like it glanced off the rib. We can handle this.”
Sydel forced herself to look. He was right. It wouldn’t take much repair to stop the blood flow. Oddly, she felt a little disappointed. The word ‘gunshot’ was not something she ever expected to hear; as scared as she was outside, there were still little visions of possibility playing in the back of her mind: surgeries, complex repair work, bringing hearts back to life.
“Strip her. Check for other signs of trauma,” her master instructed. “This shouldn’t take long. Then we need to talk about next steps.”
As Yann began to work, Sydel went to the foot of the gurney. The woman’s black boots were knee-high, worn leather, tied with difficult knots. Finally, she managed to yank one off. As soon as she did, something tumbled out. Sydel caught it before it fell to the floor.
A thin cylinder made of metal, one inch long.
Sydel looked over the planes of the woman’s body. Yann was still absorbed in cleaning the wound. The cylinder lay in her palm. There was a tiny engraved sun on one end, a little button at the top. Beautiful.
Sydel slipped it into the neckline of her nightgown. She felt only a pinprick of guilt at the sensation of cold against her collarbone as she pulled off the other boot. Then she cut off the woman’s pants, and bundled all the stinking, chemical-laden articles into a bin.
Retrieving the handheld ultrasound, one of the few modern devices that Yann allowed in Jala Communia, Sydel swept it over the woman’s legs, then her arms. No breaks, no other signs of immediate injury. There were so many scars, though, lines crisscrossing the woman’s arms, some still pink, some long since healed over and white.
Sydel forced herself to concentrate. The patient’s heart rate was rapid, but not dangerously so. Blood pressure was acceptable. Then Sydel put a stethoscope to the woman’s chest, listening. The lungs were constricted. Strange. Not drowning in fluid. Why was her breath so strangled, then? Sydel glanced at the woman’s mouth, but she couldn’t see the true color under that artificial dark. She picked up the woman’s hand. The fingernails held the faintest shade of blue. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
“Something else is wrong,” Sydel announced.
Yann looked up. Sydel leaned over and fit her stethoscope in Yann’s ears so he could hear for himself.
He listened intently, his bloody gloves hovering.
Suddenly, the floor was a sea of glittering tools, the table upturned, wheels spinning. Jumping back, Sydel almost slipped on a pair of scissors. On the gurney, the patient thrashed. Yann grabbed at her wrists, but the woman’s naked arms were frighteningly muscular. With a sudden burst, she shoved Yann, and he slammed into the countertop, a loud crack echoing through the clinic. The woman tried to roll off the stretcher, her hair sweaty and sticking to her face, her arm wrapped around her bloodied ribs, her feet searching for the floor.
If she weren’t retrained, she would kill herself, or the both of them, Sydel realized. She didn’t have the physical strength to hold the woman down.
&nbs
p; But she could shut down her body.
Sydel leapt over Yann’s groaning form. Darting behind the gurney, she grabbed hold of the woman’s head, her fingers pressed into her temples, and concentrated, searching for the part of the brain that controlled sleep.
“Don’t!” Yann cried from the ground.
But she couldn’t break through.
Stunned, Sydel tried again. No, there was a barrier there, as sturdy as the stone wall of the clinic.
How could that be?
Then the woman’s head went heavy in Sydel’s hands. Strained, sucking breaths came from that dark mouth.
“Please,” Sydel said, working to keep her voice from trembling. “If you can hear me, you need to stop fighting us.”
The woman’s inhalations grew shuddery and wet, like she was on the verge of tears.
Surprised, Sydel eased her grip. “Trust me,” she whispered. “Let me help you.”
A tap on her thigh. Yann had silently crawled over, a fresh syringe in hand. Before the blue-haired woman could react, the needle was embedded in her thigh, the contents injected. Within seconds, the stranger’s head lolled. She was unconscious.
Only then did Sydel let go. Wobbling, she put a hand to her brow. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead and hung wet behind her ears. A headache encircled her skull, pressing and pounding.
How dare you, Sydel.
She looked up. Her master slumped into a chair. His face was back to a normal color, but his mouth twisted with anger.
Using Eko on someone like that - what did you hope to achieve? What were you trying to do?
Even her thoughts were stuttering. I don’t know - I was just trying to s-s-stop her, protect you.
If we are discovered, everything will be destroyed. Time and again, I’ve told you this, and still you defy me.
The rush of angry words in her head made her lightheaded. She held onto the edge of the gurney.
“Enough,” Yann spoke out loud. “Go to the chamber, restore your focus. Come back in the morning, when you are in control.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. She didn’t have the strength, or voice, to argue.
Outside, Sydel welcomed the cool wind on her flushed face. No sign of the stranger, in any direction. No stirring of life in the Jala Communia, either: the doors to the men’s ward, the women’s and the children’s, were closed, all the shades drawn. But there was something in the air. Fear rippled across the landscape, like a swarm of bees. People were awake. People were afraid.
If we are discovered, everything will be destroyed.
She had heard those words so many times, growing up in Midland: a thin, ragged state in the center of the continent of Osha. The Midland was sparsely populated, occupied by those who rejected government and modern society. People in Midland established their own schools, communes, monasteries, ways of life and business; separate, but equal; poor and often scrounging from year to year, but free to do as they pleased.
Yann told her, time and again: they were lucky to have found the tiny, devoted Jala community, in desperate need of a healer. It was their saving grace, and they could never do anything to jeopardize it. She and Yann had to remain quiet, obedient, devoted to their independent paths. And no one could know about their secret.
But, he admitted when she began as his apprentice, to keep their secret, she had to learn how to control her Eko.
So, under his watchful eye, and in the privacy of the clinic, she practiced. And every week, her abilities grew. She could hear thoughts; see people’s dreams, the energy pulsing through their skin. She could see through Yann’s skull, into the hazy gray parts of the brain, the spots that triggered sleep, happiness, sadness, and memory. Sometimes she longed to touch them: with what, she couldn’t quite pinpoint, but the longing was there.
Every evolution seemed to add more lines to Yann’s face. “Remember,” he cautioned her. “We have to stay hidden. We have to be content with a small life. Our chosen destiny. I know it’s difficult to understand, but it’s the only way.”
Now, those words were like knives in her brain.
So Sydel focused on her trek: stepping heel to toe, concentrating on the feel of gritty, cold sand on the soles of her feet. There was a pinch on her shoulder, under her nightgown. The cylinder. She withdrew it and kept walking. Why had she stolen it? She grazed her thumb over the slim metal, coming across a little button. There was a tiny click. But there were no lights, no change in its appearance. Sydel sighed. She’d give it back to the woman as soon as she went back to the clinic. Yann never had to know. More important to do as he asked and make amends for her behavior.
In the corner of the courtyard, behind a privacy wall of rocks, the metal cylinder came into view. Technically, sensory deprivation was open to anyone in Jala Communia, but for a long time now, Sydel was the only user.
Sydel stripped off her sweaty, blood-smeared nightgown. The water was freezing. She didn’t care. Every shock, every shudder, it drove her thoughts off-course, suffocated them, forced them into the background.
Finally, with a gulp of air, she submerged her whole body, pulling the hood shut after her. Her head shrieked from the cold, but she gripped the handles on either side, installed just below the surface to keep her from floating up. Slowly, her brain grew numb. Her nerves went still. Her body tightened with resistance, but finally relaxed.
One more minute, she chanted, exhaling a stream of bubbles. One more chance to prove myself.