If he’s wrong, I guess nothing will matter once all is said and done.
Because we’ll all be dead.
The elevator stops and a leaden weight takes up residence in my stomach. Avrell, however, doesn’t seem to have the same affliction. He strides into the Medical Bay, his broad shoulders squared and his gait confident, if not a little measured. At his desk, he takes a seat and begins to take measurements: his temperature, a vial of his blood for analysis, then he notates his symptoms and the time.
I leave him to it, for now, because helping him at this point would make the situation all too real and honestly, I could use a little ignorance is bliss for a moment. While he studies his blood under the magnascope, I check on our other patients. Two of them are sleeping soundly—I think they’re going to make it. The other two writhe with fever. I give them another dose of fever medication, even though I doubt it’ll do any good. These angry blisters on their skin are mottled against their complexion.
It won’t be long before Avrell is the same. Until fever steals his mind, his big, beautiful mind and boils and sores cover his skin.
The medicine miraculously quiets the two—for now, and I close their isolette doors behind me. I press my back against them and squeeze my eyes shut. It will be over soon, that’s what I have to keep telling myself.
It’s what I’ve told myself since I was sentenced to the prison.
It will be over soon.
I hadn’t expected to live this long. In truth, I thought death was the answer to my mantra. By “it” I mean my life. I was too much of a coward to take it, but I figured the alien planet would do what I didn’t have the courage to. Instead, I found a home I never thought possible. Disease and war may try to steal it from me, but we are strong.
We’ve overcome so much already. I know we can overcome this too.
We have to.
I have to have faith in Avrell.
Which I never thought I’d think, let alone do.
Lyric was right. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, even if it makes me want to peel my skin off. The only way we’ll solve this is together, especially if I want to keep Avrell from dying, too.
As he observes and notates his thoughts on his symptoms, I care for the patients, treating them and tending to their needs. Hours later, I finally get everyone to sleep and collapse onto a cot I store down here for when I’m too tired to go back to my room. Soon, I find myself falling into a fitful sleep plagued by nightmares.
* * *
It’s dark.
Inky, black darkness. A complete void of light.
It consumes me.
I shove myself into a sitting position. Is this another nightmare? A memory from the first days at the prison? Or maybe the overthrow had been a dream. Maybe none if it happened at all and a guard will show up, ready to drag me to whatever horrors they have planned. In my world it isn’t the monsters you have to worry about…it’s the humans.
A siren blares. The same one that had gone off during the first breech. A red light begins to flash, momentarily illuminating the isolettes, the Medical Bay. This is real. It’s real.
Avrell.
I think back to our briefings on the disease. What if he’d progressed more quickly than anticipated? He could have gone mad while I’d been asleep and gone on a rampage.
I’m such an idiot. I should have insisted he isolate himself as well. I’d been so certain he wouldn’t be a threat to me, but I didn’t consider what would happen to everyone else if the fever drove him out of his mind. We should have chained him up as a precaution.
I get to my feet, wishing I’d brought a weapon. There didn’t seem to be a need when the most violent person in Exilium was gone and the rest were too sick to be a threat. I’d been too worried about Avrell to think about anything else.
Through the red haze thrown by the emergency lights, I’m able to pick my way across the office to Avrell’s desk where he’d been working last. He’s not there. My heart drops to the floor. Where could he be? What is causing the emergency lights and siren?
I retrieve a flashlight from a stash of emergency supplies and flick it on. The beam illuminates a face—at least I think it’s a face—of fangs and drool. A stench the likes of which I can barely comprehend wafts from its open maw, making me gag. It smells like it came from the pits of hell. Devil’s breath. It has the body of a dog five times the normal size and a face with no eyes, only teeth.