Persistence and patience would take her through this morning. An unnatural sense of urgency woke her up in the early hours of the day, with Argos already waiting by her bed, stretching and whimpering in a welcoming way.

Prometheus seemed as quiet as ever, even with her stowaways, as she liked to call them in her mind. Last night's market was pleasing and cheerful for her, and it tired her out, as it seemed to do for them too. Without wasting any time, she quickly showered and got dressed in her normal casual outfit: beige trousers and a sand-brown jacket that had hidden synthetic leather compartments for all of her computerised equipment and a discrete holster for her ancient gun that still used projectile ammunition instead of the modern energy weapons—a family heirloom she thought would save her life when the day comes in the future.

The hangar wasn't any different from the ship's interior—quiet, almost asleep, with very few people moving around. Pax said good morning to the security crew who were sharing their first coffee of the day. They answered sleepily with a half-smile. The spaceport was only a short travel distance by maglev from the Glencoe centre. She had the time to calm the storm in her mind on the way there, watching as the sky brightened somewhere behind the mountains. The city only began to wake up when she reached the local hospital, which was nothing like the one on Iapetus. The colony was all about practicality and the use of technology as an ally for day-to-day life. The hospital here was much more old-fashioned, with large airy corridors, and rooms connected to balconies and terraces for the patients to stretch their legs. It was built with the mentality of providing a cure for both body and soul.

An old-looking nurse, with a face sculpted by the winds and local moisture, welcomed her warmly. Her hazelnut hair, thick with grey strands, danced freely when she moved, adding to her polite smile and cautious pale eyes.

"We have been told about your arrival. It's a blessing, more for me than for the patients. We have so little things happening here." She took her full name and gave Pax a holographic card with her details, stating she is a visiting doctor, then passed her a dark grey and white asymmetric overcoat to wear. "It's a very old style, but it holds well and frees the movement of your main hand, doesn't it?" Pax had to admit it certainly did; she might have to get one or two like these for Kidaria. The nurse kept talking all the time; her voice was cheerful and pleasant, and Pax didn't mind.

"The explosion that took place days earlier was a shock to the system. Doctors scrambled like mad, but the people, ah... the people didn't make much of it. You will see. It's bizarre."

As they entered the ward, Pax was hit with nothing but lightness of spirit and happiness. People in bandages, plasters, and those immobilised in beds were talking to each other, laughing, and behaving like they had lost many years of their age. Someone must have opened the glass doors to the balcony, and the morning songbirds filled the air together with the first rays of the sun. However, as soon as they saw the women, the patients calmed down and returned to their beds without much complaining.

The first patient, a lady in her 50s, greeted them with a smile, like an aunt welcoming her nieces she hadn't seen in a long time. She was passing the building when the explosion happened, the woman said. The shockwave threw her across the park and into some bushes. Her body was bruised, with some minor lacerations from branches and two broken ribs. Nothing life-threatening. She was pleasantly talkative and compliant during the inspection. Another patient wasn't so lucky during the accident. A man in his late 60s suffered a head injury when the collapsing rubble hit him. He also had some serious face and arm burns. The doctors had already provided a skin graft, and all they could do was let his body heal naturally. Pax discussed with the nurse to give him some additional localised sedative for the head and anything else for the skin if the pain became too much.

"The dermal layer seems to be regenerating quite well," she added, putting away the medical instruments and relying on standard visual inspections. "The graft seems to be behaving well, no complaints there. The new skin over your burns will be a bit thin at first, but then it will return to normal."

"He is new." The man noticed, imploringly showing off his teeth, some of them missing, probably as a cause of the injury.

"Well, aren't you observant?" The nurse teased him. "Doctor Inthem is a visiting doctor.

"Oh, she is doing the work? So lass, what have you done?" The man jabbed gently, sucking on his lip and lowering his voice.

The nurse shook her head in disapproval. "She is also investigating the bombing that took place. You can answer some questions perhaps?"

He nodded slightly. "Perhaps, but what did she do, eh?"

"Today, for you, I'm a doctor. I'll be investigating later. But if you must know, the communication from the fleet never reached Earth, but I have a crew that's more than happy to cause trouble if you want, and I can do my share too." Pax finally replied, teasing him with a wink of an eye.

The man showed off his teeth again, amused. "There isn't much to it." He tried to recount. "There was a noise, the ground shook for a moment, and things started to fall suddenly. People screamed. And everything went dark for me. When I woke up, my face felt numb, and I felt blood in my mouth. But I was alive. Gods are damned, I was alive."

"You preferred to die?" Pax implored cautiously.

The man looked up to her. "Yes. Everyone probably does." He slowly inhaled, thinking. "Living here is like standing on the edge of the black river in a paradise forest. You know it's coming, but you can't cross, not yet. You have the Trojan storms, the Kakodaimones, and the moon and its red eye looking at us. But the One-Year King will bring us the glory we want. Did you see the bright star that's venturing into the night's sky? They are one."

"The moon's red-eye? The Kakodaimonos?" Pax questioned, looking for an explanation, while ignoring his babbling about Halley's comet. But the man only sneered back. She knew the conversation was over. The nurse again shook her head in disapproval.

The women went to check on another patient, and another, all of them with just minor wounds. Ready and eager to go home. None of them cared about the explosion; it seemed like it wasn't more than a broken window somewhere to them. Pax only reviewed the patient records of each of them, checked the dose of medicines, and discussed if they had any other symptoms or problems they may need to look into. But other than that, she felt quite useless.

"You should talk to Nyx." The crazed man giggled when they passed him on the way out of the ward.

Pax stopped intrigued. "Nyx?"

"Don't be stupid; she can't talk to her!" Another patient interrupted.

"Why? What's wrong with her?"

The people looked at each other confused, as if it was common knowledge about what happened.

"What's wrong with Nyx?" Pax asked again slightly louder.

"She is dead, ma'am." Someone answered. "She is the charcoaled corpse in the morgue. Nyx owned a small shop on the ground level of the building that had the bomb in it." After this, nobody wanted to speak anymore.

The second and third ward Pax visited went uneventful, except one patient who barely kept his vomit from spraying on her shoes. Other people were tending to the patients and her work was minimal. Similarly to the first ward, people seemed uninterested at all in the bombing. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Nurse seemed to have an"Akese," Pax said, appreciating the woman's unmoved spirit. In the end, Pax thought of asking her name, which didn't seem appropriate earlier, and then it just slipped her mind.

"Akese," the woman replied with a shrug. "Don't worry about it." She added when Pax explained why she didn't ask earlier. "Those are strange times, and people get weirder and weirder."

Pax nodded when they got back to the reception area. "I'm surprised they would welcome death over waking up from an accident."

"Apparently, but it's not the same for all. What keeps you afraid of dying?" Akese asked after a moment of thought.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Pax was shocked slightly but not by the question but its implications. She had to think for a minute, under the curious eyes of the woman. But her gaze felt so safe and welcoming she didn't hesitate to answer when one came to her.

"The void of space and unresolved mysteries. Maybe justice for others?" Pax took a deep breath. "In my line of work, I see the fragility of life every day. It scares me to the finest threads of my soul when I can't do anything about saving others. That reminds me of appreciating my own life, and maybe being afraid of living a bit more."

Akase nodded silently, and after a moment, she added, "I understand. This is what we choose to do, these jobs, and it is extremely brave to do it. I see this every day, and I worry about those poor souls as if they were my children since I have none. But, you need to understand. These people live in a cage, a beautiful, golden cage. Many of whom I know are adrenaline junkies, ready to die a glorious death, as they call it. We had so many alarms for the Trojan storms and those damn Kakodaimonos that people stopped being afraid. That's why we celebrate life as much as we can because most of us think - Today is the night we die. Truly, our lives are so much more beautiful and calmer since we don't think about petty things that plague other cities. When your mind is healthy, you think life should be lived, enjoyed, cherished, and then death, like the night, will come, and you have the most amazing story to tell. But when the mind is sick, you will await and welcome death at every step as it's more important than anything else."

"What are the Kakodaimonos? That crazy man mentioned it earlier."

Akase resumed touching her face and then her hair. "Part a story, part reality. They are the kidnappers that steal your soul, some say; others will tell you those are some invading forces that attack the colonies. But we never actually saw them. Over the years, people disappeared, but everyone thought they just went crazy and ran into the wasteland or tried to settle away from Glencoe."

Pax gave her a shy smile. "Bit like my aunt who lives in Mallaig-Morar. I have to find her after all this."

"Gods bless you get there safe; they closed all of the maglevs going out of the city." Akase turned away from her to greet a couple coming in to visit one of the patients. Pax looked at her graceful movements when she used the hospital's data system and then wrote something down on a piece of paper. She had to smile to see how old-fashioned the nurse was. The couple thanked her for her help and wandered off to find the person they were visiting.

"I can imagine you probably would like to see the body in the morgue since that was mentioned," Akase predicted.

"Only if that won't be a problem."

"Why would it? Listen, I'll make you a coffee before you go, and you can examine the cadaver. I'm not going to go down there with you because I need to stay here in case anyone comes."

Pax nodded and thanked her.

"If you see an intern with a bad attitude in the morgue, remind him I'm the one in charge here," Akase called behind her when Pax started down the stairs.

The morgue was two levels below. The staircase was lit with natural light by the window panels built into the front of the building. With each step, she took down, the voices from the main reception area were going quieter and quieter. The adjacent corridor at the bottom of the stairs was flooded with bright surgical light and frozen in unnatural silence. The morgue she knew on the colony seemed different in her memory—sterile, not as scary or perhaps because she was used to it from experience. This place unsettled her in ways her mind and senses could not comprehend. Maybe it was the bright sunlight playing through specks of dust with the shadows and the lack of sound due to the structure of the walls itself, or perhaps because there was an exit to a temple chamber further down the corridor. It felt profane to pollute this holy space between worlds. Nevertheless, she continued after a moment and entered the corridor, disturbing the holiness. As she pushed the door to the morgue, she hesitated, turning her head towards the temple entrance. A whisper called to her, a longing or something she couldn't name.

The chamber opened into a sphere with a reticulated ceiling creating an intricate pattern that started at the outer edges of this sphere and travelled to the circle opening within the central part of the room. Within the centre, there was a platform with an olive tree surrounded by a small patch of grass and wildflowers. The tree was in flower, and a slight perfume filled the air moved by a light breeze that travelled with the light through the openings in the roof.

There were no seats here. People would bring a piece of cloth or pillows. Pax wandered around for a while, admiring the temple, touching the tree's leaves and flowers. It was pointless, but she was able to concentrate. On her way out, she stopped and just so slightly turned her head and barely voiced.

"I hope you can help me make amendments."

She left with a voice hanging in the air, but there was nobody to listen to her in the temple. Only the olive tree.

The morgue doors opened with a metallic creak, and she was welcomed by a small archive and computer room adjacent to a second large square room basked in a cold blue light, sterile, with a nonexistent nauseating smell of death itself lingering in the corners, with one of the walls taken by the freezer cabinets that contained the remains. There was also a third room used for dissecting and autopsy. Without any sign of emotion, Pax approached the antiquated computers and began a search using the touch screens. The system was cumbersome but easy enough to navigate without extensive training, and after a few minutes, she found the medical records for two bodies present in the morgue, one of them being Nyx. The data was scarce—names, minimal health and life history, the suspected cause of death, but no post-mortem autopsy findings were reported. Meaning she will have to get her hands dirty and do the bulk of the work. The computer system was directly connected with the freezer cabinets. Once the patient records were accessed and a command was given, a light symbol appeared on the door, and a mechanism sound and low hiss filled the room.

The cabinet was open.

Nyx was waiting for her.

"Hello there," Pax murmured as she approached the cabinet table. Some small part of her felt guilty for disturbing this poor woman, but she shook it off. Slowly lifting both arms, she examined the structure of the charred skin, fingers, and hands. Pax tried to be thorough, using minimally invasive methods for now. But, at this moment, there was nothing she could find. The skin suffered extensive damage, quite probably, the victim was enveloped in a cloud of burning gas which completely destroyed the clothing, leaving deeper burn marks in the areas they surrounded.

Upon further inspection, she found severe burns to the tongue, pharynx, and was sure the same would be seen with the larynx and tracheobronchial tree caused by the inhalation of burning gases. Pax suspected Nyx collapsed in shock and died almost immediately. However, the cloud must have only lasted for a few seconds, meaning the internal tissues and organs, to some extent, may provide her with more data. She was prepared and produced a small metallic needle from her side tool pocket. It was a medical probe they used on Iapetus; it was never designed to scan dead bodies, but Pax had to adapt, the same as they had to adapt with the mining scanners used for the police investigation.

These probes were usually used in accident victims to measure their vital signs, scan the body through various methods in search of tissue damage, radiation poisoning, and provide minor antibiotic doses to prevent septic shock until appropriate medical attention is possible. But right now, Pax was going to use one of these probes for a long body scan to find anything that may be suspicious.

She lifted the body as gently as she could, holding it on the side. Her free hand pushed the pin in the skin, feeling a disgusting crunch, the probe was in place in the back, between the kidney and spinal cord. After that Pax slowly laid the body back on the table. There was nothing she could do for now. As she was closing the cabinet a noise disturbed her slightly.

A man walked into the computer room and stopped, surprised to see her. He was tall, wearing a similar coat as her. Pax deduced he was the "annoying" intern Akese mentioned. His face expressed contempt and a hint of arrogance that polluted his strong masculine lines.

"What are you doing here?!" His voice beamed angrily, and without a second of waiting for Pax, who tried to explain, he called in the main reception area.

"There is an unknown woman in my morgue! I need an explanation immediately!"

The intercom stayed silent for a few uncomfortable seconds.

"I know. Doctor Inthem is checking on the explosion victim. I let her," Akese's voice felt like a balm to Pax right now. The man seemed hostile, and she didn't want to be here any longer than needed.

"This woman is a visiting doctor; she has no authorization to be here. How am I supposed to work here if you let any stray medicine student into here!" He kept shouting into the microphone.

"You report directly to me, and if I let the woman investigate, I don't expect you to conflict any further with this situation. Is that clear, doctor?" Akese wasn't going to let the man have his way. Pax thought it was time for her to go while he was preoccupied and slip out of the room to the main corridor. However, the man quickly turned and grabbed her arm as she was leaving.

"Where on the black river do you think you are going?!" His face expressed pure hate, one she didn't deserve but was ready to defend herself if necessary.

"I was doing your work for you," Pax replied slowly, trying to calm her voice so as not to agitate him further.

"I am well capable of doing my job without a glorified nurse from a backwater colony!"

"Obviously, you are not, since the victim hasn't had an autopsy since the explosion. Your medical records have no data, and I would expect even a nurse to do the basics." She sharply released her hand from his grasp. "First warning, next time I won't be this nice." Pax turned around and left the morgue, quickly heading back upstairs. She finally took a breath when in the reception area.

Akese eyed her for a minute, trying to read what happened.

"How much trouble was he causing?" Akese asked with a note of irritation echoing in her voice.

Pax shrugged it off almost immediately. "Not really, he seemed like an idiot with no respect for personal space."

"Oh? Do you want to file a complaint? Be my guest. That man has been working my nerves since last week." Akese handed her the coffee she promised earlier.

"No, it's fine." Pax took a sip and enjoyed the warmth in her mouth for a second. "I used a medical pin on Nyx's body because there is no autopsy data. Hope you won't mind?"

The woman was silent for a moment.

"It's not the usual protocol, but as far as I am concerned, I don't mind. As long as you send us the data for the medi

cal records."

Pax smiled and gently knocked Akese's cup.

"Deal. Just don't tell your intern." The nurse didn't reply, only winked with a smile.