Five:
He was going to lose his entire forearm this time; he just knew it. It had been bad before, but it was getting worse and worse, and with the pressure building he knew he needed to act now to minimise the damage. After all, he wouldn’t have access to free healing forever. Best to get help while help was still available, he told himself as he packed away his notebook and stood.
“Excuse me,” he said, slowly approaching one of the technicians monitoring the mana saturation levels of a chamber. The middle-aged-looking woman turned her head to glance at him, then returned her focus to her tablet.
“Ma’am, excuse me,” he tried, a little louder.
She sighed, looked up, and said, “What? These are very delicate processes, young man.”
“Yes, I understand. I need—”
“What?” she cut him off.
“If I could get an ice pack and some gauze?” he asked.
Her face shifted from contempt to confusion. “Young man, if this is some sort of prank or joke-”
“No, I have—” he tried to lower his voice.
“Speak up!” That caught the attention of some of the others in the room, standing and waiting their turn, mingling, or sitting in the provided seating. The next round of people were waiting to enter their chamber, waiting on him, he realised. He did not like this attention, and with his head throbbing, and his arm feeling like each cell was unraveling at a microscopic level while his bones were slowly ground to paste, he wanted to be in front of these people even less than they wanted him there.
“Ma’am,” he began again. “I have a condition. I just need an ice pack, please. And some gauze.”
She looked at him for a moment, then glanced back to her datapad, then up at the waiting students. “Do you require a healer?”
“I-” he took a deep breath. “I will. But not now.”
“What do you mean, not now? Speak plainly, you’re holding the line” she said, her voice acerbic.
“What’s going on here?” It was the man who had led them into the room yet hadn’t deigned to give any of them his name or designation outside of ‘I’m-the-guy-in-charge’. “Why are you disrupting the process, Mr.…?”
Leo watched the man’s right eye spark with something, a flash of iridescence. His stern expression twisted into a snarl. “Foster,” he said. The name was like a declaration and seemed to echo through the room like a gavel’s bang, sentencing Leo in the eyes of every other person there.
Leo might have had a different reaction to being outed as an orphan and ward of the sector, perhaps something between anger and shame, if he wasn’t in such incredible pain.
“Sir,” Leo said. “I need an ice pack and gauze. Please... and then I will need a healer. That is all,” Leo concluded. In response, the man scoffed, did an about face and made a circling gesture with his hand.
“Send in the next round,” the man said, Leo officially beneath his notice or mention. The next group of ten trouped in, and Leo’s knees nearly buckled when the room flooded, and sharp, pulsing waves of agony flowed down his arm. “Not now,” he begged, “not now, not now, not yet.” Deep breaths, he told himself, though he could barely pay attention to what the woman in front of him was saying.
“Sir,” Leo called out. Desperate, beyond exhausted, and a touch spiteful, Leo held up his right arm. On his wrist, a glinting silver medical bracelet wrapped manifested. “I invoke the Rights of Children.”
The room fell silent, save for the quiet, not quite natural humming of the ignition chambers at work. While not everyone was like Leo, and had memorized the laws and treatise signed between Earth and the Confederation, everyone, contextually, knew the gist of what it meant when someone invoked the Rights of Children.
In a world ravaged by war, the introduction of mana, and a sudden alien invasion, one of the few things all Earth powers could agree on was that if they wanted there to be a native population of humans on Earth, they needed to protect the future. The Rights of Children was one of the first charters that was written between the Coalition and the slowly re-building United Nations. The charter included many stipulations and provisions, but one of the major points was that no child (wherein for the purposes of the charter a child is indicated by the Coalition as any Earth born humanoid in under the age of 25 or who has yet to undergo a mana baptism or by the United Nations of Earth as any human under the age of 18 ) is to be denied access to competent healing when such healing is available and has been requested by the child or by their guardian. Or where such healing is required but the child has no guardian and is unable to advocate for themselves.
It was fairly comprehensive, but with just enough wiggle room that the people who truly wanted to get away with denying medical care to kids, could. That was why Leo’s bracelet was so important. It was an enchanted item. One he’d had since infancy. It was coded to his aura, his personal signature, and his DNA. It was rare, had been forged and enchanted by a 7th circle cultivator, who worked in one of the off-world sects that provided such items in bulk to various colony worlds. He probably wouldn’t have even been eligible to receive one if one of his legs hadn’t overloaded and blown off on the operation table of the healer’s hall he was being treated at. Exploding babies are a great motivator, it turns out, for giving lifesaving treasures to orphaned children.
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Now, the only way to remove the bracelet from him was for Leo to voluntarily disable the enchantment on it because even in death, the metal would simply dissipate. It was the most precious item he owned, and its presence on his arm meant that Leo had a recognized illness, and that as it pertained to the Coalition, the Confederation, and any Coalition allied territory Leo had the same rights as stipulated in The Rights of Children regardless of his age, his respective citizenship, or his cultivation status. Until he reached the 7th circle himself, he was entitled to free medical care from a competent healer. Most of the time the metal sat sunk below his skin, becoming a part of his body until he called upon it. But once called upon and witnessed, nobody below the 7th circle – certainly not this man – could deny him aid without violating the treaty and risking crippling their own cultivation.
So why not invoke this right before? Simple. If the reaction to his surname - ‘Foster’ – had been general disdain mixed with pity and self superiority, the reaction to his bracelet was even more stark.
Fear, repugnance, trepidation, disgust. The bracelets were rare and especially on non-elites they meant that there was something seriously wrong with the individual who was granted one. Something even the power hungry, resource hoarding, little-regard-for-life cultivators deemed awful enough to make them part with such an incredible treasure. In short he went from being treated like an undesirable to a plague victim by everyone without an ignited core, and like a homeless man halfway into the grave by the cultivators in the room whose bodies were unable or unlikely to contract anything from a mortal child. Finally, he it was never a good idea to force the hand of a person more powerful than you. People like that held grudges, and you being in the right had little to do with how they responded. This man was a prime example.
Leo watched as the man seethed, feeling nothing but exhaustion and anxiety. He needed the supplies, and he needed them now. The group of 10 stepped out of the chambers and were ushered away as the man had a war with himself. Eventually he came to some conclusion as he turned abruptly away from Leo.
“Medical supplies are over there, as is our apprentice healer. She’ll deal with you,” the man gestured in the direction of a wall panel on the side of the room. While Leo had never heard about anyone dying from a mana baptism, the room being as well stocked as it was indicated that perhaps the process of core ignition had been understated. Nobody mentioned anything about mana baptisms being dangerous, but that didn’t mean much when nobody really said anything about anything. Head down, feet shuffling, he made his way to the wall with the woman and the supplies.
The person he’d been sent to he’d originally thought was another young participant. Instead of the robes traditional of the sects and clans, this medical attendant was wearing a long jacket over jeans and a grey t-shirt. The only thing that indicated she was anything other than another young hopeful was the symbol on her coat that signified her clan and that she was a ‘Trainee Healer.’ Good, he thought, I won’t die today.
“Excuse me?” he asked her. She was young, probably his age, or slightly older. If he had to guess, she was probably someone who’d been able to afford ignition at an absurdly young age, like twelve or thirteen. Someone who had connections, prospects, a clear path to progress and power. He wasn’t resentful, just... sad.
Her bored eyes traced over him, and she reached out a hand in an almost automatic move to diagnose him. “No,” he swayed away, ignoring the annoyed look on her face.
“Didn’t you ask for a healer?”
“Just gauze and an ice pack. Please.”
“I know healing arts,” she said, defensive. “I’ve been training for almost four years. I can do a basic diagnosis spell in my sleep. Give me your hand.”
Again, Leo dodged away. Why did nobody ever just listen to him? It was his condition; he’d been living with it for years. Was it nor at least reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about? To give him the benefit of the doubt? Healing always made it worse; whatever reaction he was having to this room would only be exacerbated. He felt it, he knew it. If she tried to heal him, it would only make things worse. It would be catastrophic.
“Ice and gauze, please. Healing after.” He didn’t know how many times he’d repeated it, but he could feel his voice growing strained from the asking, the endless asking. If the woman had listened to him... if the man had just let him speak... if everyone didn’t assume they knew better than him.
No, he didn’t have time for that kind of thinking as he scrambled, one handed; to catch the gauze and the crystalline item she had lobbed at him, pull off his hoodie – one of only three he owned – and sink down against the wall closest to the healer while she watched him with a mix of annoyance and curiosity and disdain.
He didn’t dare pull off his shirt. Not with so many curious eyes, and not when he was running out of time. Just a little longer, he told himself as the pressure in his veins increased and his vision blurred as bolts of what felt like fire daggers pierced the space behind his eyes.
He wrapped his arm tightly, starting from where the pulsing was worst. His arm, from mid-bicep down, was as tightly secured as he could manage, strangling the blood flow. Though, by this point, it was moot. He grabbed the curious crystal artifact the woman handed him and felt it pulsing weakly with mana. An ice affinity mana shard. Leo pressed his lips together tightly before turning to address the girl. “Do you have normal ice?” he asked.
“Where do you think you are?” She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Do you not know how to activate a simple mana shard?”
He shook his head. The ice was a diversion, a delaying tactic. More to numb him than anything else. He’d gone without before. He would go without again. Then, he gritted his teeth, settled in, and waited.
It didn’t take long for the pulsing throb, the burning unraveling, to become an incessant beat in sync with his heart. Then the pulsing sped up and fell out of tempo. Faster and faster. He rummaged through his bag and pulled out a length of a long worn-through leather belt he’d chopped up for just this purpose. Then he bit down on it, despite the disgusted glances of a few of the onlookers and the amused glare of the healer girl. Finaly, when the crescendo of agony reached its peak, he felt his arm explode.
The explosion started from the bone, fragments shattering outward, tearing through muscle and sinew, and only prevented from spraying out of his skin by the tightly wrapped gauze.
He didn’t scream. Instead, his eyes squeezed closed, teeth buried in the leather strap. Horror flashed across the girl’s face, and on the faces of the technicians and young people who had been watching him. This wasn’t the first time, and honestly, he was more relieved that the pressure in his head was dying down than that he had an audience. Though on second thought, pressure meant his blood was in his body. Where it was supposed to be.
He looked up at the healer girl, his eyes bleary, his arm a useless mess beside him. “Healing,” he said. Then “healing,” he said louder when she failed to respond.
She looked into his eyes, hers filled with horror, and his with resignation and anguish.
“Please,” he asked, then he closed his eyes, exhausted and waited. They weren’t even halfway through the people, and he knew he was in the last batch. It was going to be a very, very long day.