I never thought that radiation sickness could be cured in a few hours. To be honest, I had never thought about how to treat radiation sickness before. Yes, it was in my country that the largest nuclear disaster in the world occurred, and it was in my country that we were threatened with nuclear weapons almost every day for the last year, but all this was too far for me.
Although I did not deliberately study the topic of radiation sickness treatment, I still had basic knowledge and understood that it was impossible to cure it completely in my condition, and it was very difficult to survive with my level of radiation exposure. But here I am, for the fourth hour out of the five appointed to me, I am lying in a medical capsule of some incredibly advanced space civilization and in an hour I will be completely healthy. Well, not completely healthy, but almost healthy.
Liya's great-grandfather did a good job, and it was almost impossible to restore my shoulder. Why almost? Because it was impossible in the conditions of this clinic, as well as in this sector as a whole, there were second-generation medical capsules, but in the central sectors, according to rumors, there is even a seventh generation, and no one here knew about the limitations of those. The intern who was preparing us for the capsules was salivating as he talked about the medical capsules.
In general, medical capsules were a fantastic invention, they were treated with the help of special nanobots that eliminate abnormalities at the cellular level. According to the intern, the seventh-generation capsules could turn an old man into a young boy. In my opinion, this was definitely a fable, but I still allowed for this possibility.
Despite the fantastic properties of medical capsules, not everyone could use them. These capsules were produced by aliens and sold to locals at a very high price, and the medical cartridges that were needed for their operation were very expensive. Only in the central sectors was there one factory that produced cartridges for second-generation medical capsules. Higher generations had to be purchased from aliens as well. So the prices became clear. That million ksars or ten thousand credits in foreign currency was equal to two or even three months' salary of a middle-class person.
And while I was thinking about the fantastic medical technology, my treatment session ended. The green gas in front of my eyes began to be sucked into the capsule, and a few minutes later the capsule lid lifted. Feeling slightly numb, I tried to turn around and almost instantly heard a scream.
Immediately after the scream, I heard a few steps away from me, and in a few seconds the owner of the voice turned to me.
"Well, you scared me," a man of about forty-five said, holding his heart defiantly, "You woke up so quickly, very unusual, usually a person takes thirty minutes to recover from a capsule. The man began to explain to me and helped me to sit in the capsule, after which he took out a device from his pocket and moved it around me, his face becoming more and more incomprehensible with each passing second.
"Doctor, is something wrong?" I was already worried.
"Well, how can I tell you, young man, judging by the readings, you were conscious all this time. Is that right?" he asked me, putting the device on the table next to the capsule.
"Yes, but isn't that how it should be?" I didn't understand what the doctor was getting at.
"Have you ever been in a medical capsule before?" the doctor asked, although he already knew that he hadn't.
"It was the first time," I told him.
"I need to check something, according to the records my subordinate made here," the doctor tapped me on the shoulder covered with metal, "there is various scrap metal. But I have suspicions that there is something else here, and if I am right, then your relatively normal condition after the huge radiation exposure becomes understandable."
"Doctor, can I hope for medical confidentiality?" I asked the doctor. I didn't know what Lia's great-grandfather had done to me, but I really wanted to know. I just didn't know if I could trust him.
"Young man, forget about medical secrecy," the doctor waved the question away, "Only in movies are doctors honest and not bribable. Everyone is for sale, and I am too, but my price will be higher than many others," the doctor smiled, "and I doubt that I will be offered as much for you as I would like to part with my reputation.
"You haven't convinced me, I don't know your reputation, but I believe you for some reason" in fact, I just wanted to get information about what was wrong with me.
Without a word, the doctor went to a safe in the back of the room and took out a device the size of half a hand. Coming to my shoulder, he put it against the metal surface and turned it on. For a second, it was as if something extremely cold was poured into my hand, and the next moment the device in the doctor's hands crumbled to dust and covered my shoulder in a moment. Before I could get scared, the next moment all the dust disappeared, as if it had dissolved into the metal.
"What was that?" I asked the doctor in a trembling voice with fear.
"That was minus fifty thousand of my own credits," he said a little slowly, and then nervously started walking around the medical capsule with me. "To be honest with you, Zack, I was expecting something else. "
" Does this threaten me with anything?" I asked, not understanding anything that had happened.
"If they are properly configured, you are not in danger.
"Who are they?" I asked him.
"Haven't you realized yet? You have a colony of nanobots in your shoulder. I thought you had been planted with a colony of medical nanobots, similar to the ones in the medical pod. I took a nanobot neutralizer from the emergency kit of the medical pod. It was supposed to disable the surface layer of the nanobots for a moment, but the nanobots from which the neutralizer was created were overrun and absorbed. I don't know what type of nanobots you have, but it's definitely something military, and that's the reason you're in relatively good state compared to your friend. Military models of nanobots can neutralize threats to their owners. "
"Can it be dangerous for me?"
"Of course, like everyone else around you. Did you see how they took control of the aliens' technology? Oh, I don't know what else they can do, but I wouldn't let you near computer systems now. " The doctor joked, almost trembling with fear. It was obvious that he was very scared to be around me, so I decided to ask him what he was afraid of.
"Why are you so afraid?"
"The one behind them. I'm sure that right now, everything in this room is infected with your nanobots and..." he took a deep breath of air, "And I'm not sure that they won't start devouring everything at any moment.
"I think you're exaggerating a bit," I decided to end the conversation, and then an idea came to me to make him keep quiet, "If everything stays between us, I'm sure that no one and nothing will start working," I winked at him as I said the last word, getting up from the medical capsule. The doctor nodded to me mechanically. And that's where we decided not to touch on the topic of my shoulder, although I wanted to learn as much as possible about it, but judging by how scared the doctor was of both the nanobots and those who could have put them on me, it was not worth continuing.
For the next half an hour, the doctor explained to me the problems that arose during the treatment of Leah. Unlike me, she had already partially used up the regenerative potential of her body cells, from which the doctor concluded that she was often treated in medical capsules.
And the limited regenerative potential of the cells was only part of the problem. Another problem was that there were a lot of different implants in Lia's brain, and the doctor did not know what they were supposed to do, but they were there, and because of this, the non-organic part of the brain had to be deactivated by another method, which in turn led to an increase in treatment time. But that's not the worst thing, the worst situation was with the reproductive organs, where banal decontamination was not enough, treatment had to be long and serious. And it could take a year or more, if you use second-generation capsules. But with the seventh generation, it was possible to cope in a week.
But there was not a single seventh-generation capsule officially available on the entire station. They were only unofficially available in the central sectors in private clinics that served the Xarlex elite. Just in case, the doctor created a treatment program without a medical capsule, which did not guarantee a hundred percent recovery, but in seven or eight years, Leah could regain her reproductive functions if she strictly followed the treatment plan. Honestly, I did not know how Leah would react to this, from my own experience with women I knew that the ability to have children is very important to them, but honestly Leah did not look like someone who wants to have children. I took the doctor's notes just in case, and at that moment a woman burst into the room.
" Mes. Signor, there's a police unit at the entrance. " She began to speak from the doorway, "They say that we have some criminals from the Inter-Sectoral Investigation among our patients. I told them that the gate was jammed and we were waiting for a technician. But we have no more than ten minutes.
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"Thank you, Mio, you can go on playing the fool, you're very good at it," the doctor sent Mio out of the room and turned to me.
"Do you have another way out of the clinic? Is it possible for my friend to leave the capsule?" I asked him, realizing that the problems had found us again.
"What do you take me for?" the doctor said offended, "Of course there is a back door, and a secret one at that," he winked at me. "About your friend. It would not be desirable, but it is permissible. Here's a Tyrex seven hundred and forty," the doctor took a syringe gun from the safe, "Inside are field medical nanobots. They are not as effective as in the capsule, but they work at the level of the first generation. In an hour, you need to make an injection in the heart, so they will disperse throughout the body as quickly as possible," he said, packing the gun. At this time, Leah's capsule was opening. "You'll have to carry her, she doesn't have the same strain of nanobots as you," the doctor began to fuss a little.
"I understand," I answered and began to quickly pull on my overalls. And then on the unconscious Liya. Finished in a minute, I threw her over my shoulder. Unlike five hours ago, when Liya subjectively weighed at least a hundred kilograms, now she was a kitten, that's what a healthy body means, not weakened by radiation sickness.
"First, I'd like to ask you to pay for our services," the doctor pulled out a portable terminal from his pocket before continuing. "Ksars or credits?"
"Credits," I grumbled, and after putting Lia on the floor, I took the card out of my pocket.
Only after the card was charged twenty-nine thousand credits for our treatment and Tyrrex did the doctor go to the secret passage from the clinic. The secret passage was behind the clinic's backup power reactor. I was surprised and frightened that an ordinary mid-ranking clinic had its own fusion reactor.
It took up a whole room of two hundred square meters, but it was still very small by Earth's standards. Of course, I couldn't find out the details, because it wasn't the right time, but it was very strange, and when Leah came to, I would have to ask her a lot of questions, but for now we had to get to a safe place. In about three minutes, we reached the reactor room, where a technical tunnel for reactor maintenance led under the reactor itself. And that's where we had to go, but before going any further, I decided to ask the doctor a question that was bothering me.
"How did the police know about us? Only three people saw us, you, Mio and that inter..." at that moment the person I was talking about burst into the room, and he was not alone, but with some man. They were holding military rifles.
"And where are you going..." the intern began to say in a voice full of superiority, but before he could finish, the doctor quickly pulled a small pistol out of his pocket and a second later both men fell to the floor.
"That's where the answer comes from!" The doctor said disappointedly, kicking the intern, "You go, and I'll work on them, the last week will definitely be erased from their memory," the doctor smiled bloodthirstily, and I only noticed that he didn't kill them, but just knocked them out with some non-lethal weapon.
I didn't say anything and went down the tunnel they pointed out to me. I can't say it was easy to go down to a depth of seven meters with Leah behind me, but I managed to do it.
As soon as I reached the floor, I heard the lid of the tunnel begin to close, and fifteen seconds later I heard very muffled screams overhead. We managed to hide just in time, just in time. But we couldn't stop, we had to get out of here as soon as possible.
I pressed the combination the doctor told me on the combination lock and waited. About thirty seconds later, something clicked in the wall opposite me and a passage to the corridor opened in front of me. On the floor of the corridor there was a medical trolley on wheels, well, I was lucky, it would be much easier to walk. Putting Leah on the trolley, I started pushing it. As soon as we got a couple of meters away from the entrance, it closed almost instantly. That was it, now the way was only forward.
To be honest, I didn't know where to go, the doctor only managed to explain that this corridor led to the basement of the largest market in this sector. But I had no idea where to go next, especially with Leahs unconscious.
So when ten minutes later I came out of the exact same passageway in a room filled with boxes of half-rotten food, I decided to stay here and wait for Liya to come to.
Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long. In a few minutes she woke up, and almost immediately I could feel panic and fear in her eyes, I didn't immediately understand what it was about, and when I did, I immediately began to calm her down.
- It's okay, the doctor warned me, because of the emergency interruption of the treatment process, you won't be able to move for the first couple of minutes after waking up," I hugged Leah and started whispering in her ear, and almost immediately the panic and fear began to recede. But a minute later I noticed that tears began to flow from her only organic eye, and a few seconds later I heard sobbing. - Well, it's over, you're alive, I'm alive, and we're almost healthy and in a more or less safe place.
– T-t-t-h-h-h-a-a-a-n-n-n-k-k-k y-y-y-o-o-u-u,- she barely managed to say, trying to stop crying. It was hard for her to control her body, but gradually she was getting back control. In ten minutes she was able to sit up and immediately hugged me, crying. I've never liked women's hysterics, but I knew one rule: if you don't know exactly what to say, just keep quiet and hug tight. And it worked this time, too. After about fifteen minutes, Leah calmed down and said, "Tell me."
"I'll tell you about it, but first, here's some Tyrex, the doctor said it should be injected into your heart because you haven't finished the treatment." I took out a gun with medicine.
"Yeah, medicine," she said sarcastically, looking at the gun with her artificial eye. "Instead of medical nanobots, it's a parasite. It multiplies in the body and then begins to influence thoughts. Although it really heals," she said, "We'll keep it, we can sell it for five thousand. What a shithead this doctor is, and I started to believe him."
"Maybe it's time for us to change our location," I asked Leah.
" I am, but tell me more on the way," Leah got to her feet, still shaking, but holding on. So we're going down," she smiled.
" The bottom?" I asked Leah again.
"Yes, we are going to the dump of this sector. It's where those who can't afford anything better live. But first we need to get our bearings," she turned on her communicator, "We're relatively lucky. We'll only have to make two transfers, let's go."
For the next hour, I told her about everything that had happened to us since she lost consciousness. When I finished telling her about how I called an ambulance, she stopped and hugged me tightly, saying only one word, "Thank you." And although it was just one word, you could feel a lot of sincerity and emotion in it.
At this point I interrupted the conversation because a passenger flyer arrived. It was about the size of a double-decker bus, and it was an ordinary flying bus. Well, not for me, but for the hundreds of people who were in it besides us, it was an ordinary bus that people use to go to the store or to work. To be honest, I was excited about the bus ride. Leah didn't understand why I was smiling so much during the whole flight, she even asked me if I was okay, but I wasn't going to tell her that I was just amazed by flying transport. Yes, I flew a speeder, but this is different, a speeder does not rise above three meters, but the flyer was not limited in height. After flying into the central tunnel, similar to the one in which we received a lethal dose of radiation, we changed sides of the sector and landed at another large stop.
During the flight, I could not concentrate on the story, so I started the second part of the story after we got off the first passenger flyer and started waiting for another one to get to the dump. The second part of my story consisted of what had happened to us since I was released from the capsule and the doctor's story. Although now I was no longer sure that everything he said was true. When I started talking about my shoulder, Leah just smiled and said that her great-grandfather was in his spirit.
"What do you mean?" I asked her again.
"I don't know exactly what he did to you, but I guessed there were surprises when my eye couldn't get through the shielding on your shoulder. " She replied, "It looks like the doctor didn't lie to you too much. Except that what you described was not a medical nanobot neutralizer, there is no such thing, it was a military neutralizer that, in addition to neutralizing, captures neutralized nanobots to gain access to them. There is no such thing on the free market at all, my great-grandfather has one, and that's why I recognized it. Apparently, he didn't want to check, he wanted to take over your nanobots, but the opposite happened. What a tricky one. Tell me what happened next."
From further conversation, I learned that the rule of self-interest reigns here at the station. If the gain is greater than the loss, the local people are capable of anything. Do you have to kill to get a million? No problem, if a local thinks that the chances of being found by the police less than the benefits that a person will receive for a million, he will kill the person. It's nothing personal, just personal gain.
You can only trust a very limited circle of acquaintances and friends with family. It was because Zach was such a friend of Leah's that she did not abandon him after he was injured during the police chase. And according to Leah, she was glad that she didn't leave me even when I admitted that I didn't remember anything, even though logic told her that she should has.
To be honest, I was very pleased to hear this and almost shed a tear, but then a second passenger flyer arrived and took us towards the dump. In ten minutes we reached a stop near a large gate guarded by three soldiers.
"Here we are, just outside this gate," Lia said and went straight to the military. To be honest, I didn't understand it, but maybe she knew better. "Hello, soldier, how much money from us?
"You?" the man looked at us very carefully, barely turning his head. "It's a tenner each way, five hundred each way, so think carefully about whether you should go there," he smiled, hinting that it would not be so easy to return from there.
"Catch, send me your contacts, I want to pay you a thousand next time," Leah transferred twenty credits to his card through the terminal of his communicator.
"Here," the soldier replied, dumping Leah's contacts onto his communicator, "If you agree to dinner, you don't need a thousand," he offered.
"That's a good suggestion, I'll definitely consider it in my free time," Leah replied, heading toward the gate that had already begun to open.
"Why do you do this? I would have said that I would not wait," the soldier was indignant, "but I will wait."
"That's why I said I don't know," Leah winked at the soldier a second before I crossed the gate to the dump.
As soon as we entered, the gate immediately began to close, and I began to look at the picture that opened before me in the semi-darkness. And there was a lot to see, as far as my eyes could see, there was some kind of equipment everywhere, both flyers and small household appliances, and there were mountains of it in the literal sense of the word.
"Zack, we need to find a place where we can rest, monitor the environment around us," only now I noticed that hundreds of pairs of eyes were now looking at us.
- "Oh-ho, where did we go..." I said, activating the pistol, it immediately began to decompose around my right hand, and it was not superfluous, out of the corner of my eye I noticed how one pile of garbage stopped moving as soon as I activated the pistol.