My blood boiled when Sandra claimed that I was responsible for her being bitten. It made me sick. But it was also funny, in a way, and I found myself chuckling.
“What are you laughing about?” Sandra screamed. “What the fuck are you laughing about?”
“It’s just… so funny,” I said. “Now that you’re a Sickle, I can finally tell you the truth.”
“What do you mean, the truth…?”
“That you’re an ungrateful bitch.”
“What did you say?” Sandra screamed. The soldiers snorted in laughter as she rushed forward. “What did you say, you fucking parasite? I’ll kill you!”
“Don’t stop!” the doctor yelled to the soldiers. “Restrain her!” I grabbed my head again, feeling the dull throb pick up speed.
“I’ll have you executed!” Sandra screamed. “I’ll have you on that fucking crane by week’s end!”
The atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted when she brought up The Crane. Every injured Sickle present glowered at her with absolute contempt, allowing the guards to pull her down. Sandra’s arms marbled with goosebumps, realization bearing down on her expression, freezing her movements. Then the doctor put a needle into her neck, she dropped, and the guards threw her onto a cot to start Lepidogenesis.
I sighed, grateful for one less noise. It didn’t help much, but I needed it. I was going through minor Zerka—the red aether—withdrawal, and my shirt was drenched with sweat. My veins looked thick against my deflating muscles, and my breathing came out in choppy gasps. I looked like a starving vampire and felt even worse.
“Well that was charming,” a smooth voice said from beside me. I recognized her just by her scent, which smelled of fresh cherry blossoms or dollar store perfume (I could never quite decide which). It was Anisha White—my doctor and the closest thing I had to a friend, despite the fact that she was a Breather. She was just under thirty and looked as out of place in a warzone as Maggie Hart. She had a “cute” face, which was just to say that her cheekbones were rounded instead of contoured, giving her hazel eyes a gentle feel to them. It blended nicely with her ebony skin and half-ironed hair that curled slightly, a ton of effort for someone who wore their hair in a ponytail. And somehow, all of these calm and cute and comforting facial features had contorted into a stern scowl that was concerned yet unyielding.
“Can you scold me later?” I asked.
“I’m not scolding you,” she said, pulling up a chair to my bed and sitting down. “I’m just sayin’—if you said that to me, I’d ‘ve broken your nose.”
“Even if I saved your life?” I asked.
Anisha frowned and looked at Sandra and considered it. Yet she would never justify me insulting anyone, so she moved on, looking at the signs of scaling that pushed past my collarbone. “What’d they feed you this time?”
I rubbed my eyes. “They said it was Zeta something.”
“Zeta what?”
I shrugged. “Zeta… jerky?”
“Kei, take this seriously!” Anisha hissed, keeping her voice down. She put her clipboard down and wiggled a signal scrambler the size of a pen in front of my eyes. It cut the transmission to the earbud, which was recording my every word. For reasons I didn’t understand but did suspect (namely that my core was around my heart—which should’ve killed me), all recordings and records of my time in the Red Cross Medical Pavilion were scrambled. It was strange, but it allowed me to speak freely, so I didn’t mind it. “Kei,” she continued. “Zeta meat doesn’t give you hot sweats or migraines or make you scream and blackout. Those are rewrite symptoms, and anyone who saw it would know you ate Sena meat.”
“Who cares?” That dull ache in my head cracked, sawing through my brain. I ran my fingers through my sweat-soaked hair. “I’m already on trial.”
Anisha gripped the scrambler and pulled it against her chest. “What?”
“Article 86,” I said. “Saved that woman instead of showing up immediately. Toast.”
“Wait, you were being serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious…. Now can I get some medication or something?”
Anisha frowned and shook her head. “Sorry, but that’s not a headache, and nothing we give you will fix it. We can’t afford to waste medication like that.” Medication wasn’t just in short supply for Sickles—it was in scarce supply worldwide. If I wanted it, I’d have to get it elsewhere.
“Alright,” I said. Anisha and I sat in silence until the pervading quiet became as thick as a weighted blanket. Then she sighed and looked at my chest. “Off with it.”
“Ah-ight.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and exposed my chest, wincing, self-conscious of her seeing my body despite her being a doctor. My entire left shoulder and pec were covered in grayish-blue scales, which were closer to the way that clay cracks in a desert than something uniform. It was hard and inflexible, painful to move—a shield to protect the core that developed around my heart. It was “Darkscale”—the defining feature of Lepidosclerosis Cutanea, the disease humans got from rifter bites that denoted them as Sickles. I didn’t want to look because it stretched whenever Sickles consumed aether. Eventually, the scales reach the area over our heart and kill us or harden the spinal cord, causing spinal lepidosclerosis, resulting in paralysis and organ failure. Therefore, the more we used our powers, the sooner they killed us. I was a bit different because I survived coring around my heart somehow, but no one survived Darkspine. No one.
Surprisingly, Anisha wasn’t looking at the stretching—she was staring at my chest.
“What?” I asked.
Anisha didn’t answer; instead, she put on a blue latex glove and poked my skin. I thought I was in too much pain to care—I was wrong. The touch sent cold electricity pulsing through my heart. “What the hell was that?”
Anisha looked up and then at my chest again. “I’ll get a mirror.” She returned and showed me my reflection.
I had the same reaction she did. There, on the mass of Darkscale on my pecs, were sparkling crystals like morning dew on blades of grass. Chests weren’t supposed to have crystals growing on them. It made me sick, and I emptied my stomach into a nearby trash can. “What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“I… don’t know,” Anisha said. “Let me examine you.”
I let her. The examination continued for about an hour before she stood, letting me button up my t-shirt.
“You don’t want pictures?” I asked.
Anisha picked up the electronic scrambler and opened her mouth, seemingly deciding whether to speak when there was no one listening, but decided against it. Instead, she avoided the question. “I didn’t know you liked the color pink.”
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“I don’t.”
“Then why are you wearing it?”
“Because women do.”
“Read that in a book?”
“I’m reading it on your face,” I smirked.
Anisha raised an eyebrow with a mocking, threatening expression that expressed a pending harassment complaint rather than a compliment.
“See,” I said. “That’s the look.”
Anisha’s pursed lips curled into a smile, and she shook her head. “Boys….” Then her eyes turned dark. “This trial…”
“Yeah,” I said.
Her eyes welled with tears, and she swallowed. “Is there evidence that you tried to report in?“
I shrugged. “I’m not sure it’d matter.”
Anisha bit her lip. “When’s the trial?”
“I’m reporting to the Brig at 7. Who knows when the trial is.”
“Come here.”
Anisha hugged me in public, something that was socially illegal rather than a law. Yet no one cared. No one in the pavilion ever did.
“Listen, Kei. If you survive this, I’ll buy what you want, take you out, or anything. So don’t do anything stupid tonight.”
I fell silent. I didn’t want to make false promises. I could die tomorrow, and I didn’t want my last night to suck. So I was gonna go home, grab some savings, and play cards because—headache or not—there was no way in hell I was going to bed early if I was potentially dying the next day. Still, it wouldn’t matter. If I survived, it’d be fine. If it wasn’t, I’d never see her again. So I nodded to ease her mind. “I’ll take you up on that,” I said. “So don’t forget it.”
Anisha wiped her tears and walked away, but before she left the tent, she turned back. “Kei.”
“Yeah?”
“I do like the shirt.”
I smirked. “I know.”
Anisha huffed and walked away. Then, my smirk faded once she was gone, leaving me with nothing but the pain and my loneliness. I needed to escape the tent—it was time to get myself fixed up.
2
It took twenty minutes for me to make it up to my Marriott Waterfront Hotel room. I was on the “Sea Block,” which meant that my tiny room (which could barely fit a king-sized bed if the mattress filled the entire space) had a window view over Elliott Bay. While Maggie was convinced that the maws were right next to the water, the seaside window rooms on the first five floors were staring at a plain steel wall. But I was on floor six, so I could see over the wall and into the boiling writing mass of maws that soldiers were still fighting on Harbor Island.
I ignored the view, moved my bed, and used a knife to break open the baseboard in the corner, revealing a very small cubby with a few thousand dollars in classic US greenbacks I had worked, gambled, and bartered for. It was in a blue zip-up pouch you used to get from banks—and I was withdrawing today.
Let’s get you the fuck out of here, I thought.
I wasn’t going on a bender. It was just that I’d bet someone else’s mother that the military would raid my room and steal it, so I needed to hide it. So I put $300 in my pocket, shoved the rest into my crotch area, and then went to leave, determined to hide it. But before I left, I realized that the money wasn’t the only thing hiding. I swallowed and tongued the artificial molar on the right side of my mouth.
I had won five hundred greenbacks in a game of cards when the man offered me the tooth instead of the money. I got something better, he said. He double-checked that his crowd scrambler was working. It was an over-the-earpiece that used AI to trick our earbuds into thinking that the room was too crowded to hear. Then he pulled out the fake tooth.
What’s that? I asked.
It’s like a cyanide tooth—but it’s filled with gamma meat, he said. If you’re ever gonna die, chomp it. It’ll kill you, but it’ll fill you with so much zerk’ you could stop a tank.
So it’s a kamikaze pill?
You could say that?
How do I know it’ll work?
He opened up the fake tooth carefully, exposing a brown dot like a cavity. Touch it.
I did.
Now lick it.
I just won a shit load of money from you—I’m not going to eat poison.
He rolled his eyes, touched it, and licked it. His pupils constricted to the size of pins, and he grinned. Oh, yeah. This’ed fuck you up.
I frowned and licked my finger, and I was blasted with unimaginable power—just for licking trace amounts. Yeah, I could’ve probably broken that stalk’s neck if I ate the lot.
How do I put it on?
I gotta dentist that’ll do it.
This’s worth a lot more than five Benjamins. What’s the catch?
No catch, he shrugged. I was too much of a pussy to put it in myself, so….
You wanna see someone else do it?
Why not? Whether it’s you… me… whatever. It’s all the same. As long as someone runs around like Rambo, I’ll be satisfied, and you look like you’re crazy enough to do it.
I snapped back into the present and played out the situation in my head. Great headline, I thought. “Sickle eats gamma meat at his Article 86 trial. Kills the Four Horsemen and judge. Dies of happiness as Sickles cheer him on.” Classic.
The military would want answers on how I was able to kill that stalk, and finding traited meat on me was a one-way ticket to surefire execution. That said, an Article 86 court-martial was also a surefire execution, so if they actually wanted me dead, they wouldn’t bother with finding evidence. So I was probably safe, and if they laid down the sentence—I’d crunch that tooth. So I left it in my mouth and turned off my life, leaving $97 in the cubbyhole for the military to find. If they found nothing—they’d start searching.
3
Sickle Sam used a crutch to walk around the Marriott Waterfront like Tiny Tim in the Christmas Carol. He was around seventeen and had a hole missing from his calf, ensuring that he couldn’t run, and while he was a spotter for a sniper as his day job, he was terrible at it. He was also not easy to look at. He had blonde buzzed hair, a cleft lip, and a smile that cried for braces. But Sickle Sam was one of those robber barons from the Wild West, a man who went three days without water crossing Texas, nearly died of dysentery, survived the Apache, and ate their horse, but found an oil field and ended up a millionaire. Yep, he made a business in the bleak wasteland that was Sickle living, and the US Marine Corps kept him around because he helped to lower the chance of rebellion by allowing desperate Sickles to do what they’d otherwise fight to do. Talk to their families. Get legitimate medication. Obtain luxury. He was the inside man, and he was currently standing next to two burly-looking Sickles he was paying for guard duty. Usually, I could rip his throat out before the guards could kill me—which got me better prices. Now, I looked like a crack fiend desperate for sauce as I went to the basement hallway he hung out in.
“Kei!” Sickle Sam said with a wide smile. “What brings you here today?”
“I need some ibuprofen,” I said. “And whatever you’ve got for serious pain.”
“I don’t got ibuprofen. I got Tylenol.”
“I don’t got an apple, here’s a chainsaw.”
“Pain is pain.”
“Inflammation isn’t pa…” I sighed. “What do you got for actual pain?”
“Oh, I got the good shit.” Sickle Sam nodded to one of his guards, and he pulled out a bottle and tossed it to me.
-
Gabapentin
Tablets, USP
600 Mg
Quantity: 200
-
I scoffed and looked up. “What the hell is this?”
“Drugs,” he said.
“Drugs aren’t all equal, Sam!”
“Hey, the stuff works.”
“Works?” I looked at the back of the bottle. “Yeah, I’m sure it does—for seizures… and nerve pain.”
Sickle Sam raised his eyebrows, letting them drop as he smirked. “Like I said—it works. I could give you morphine, but that ain’t gonna touch what you have, friend.”
I grinned a forced grin. You should never show your dealer your ignorance because he was already going to fuck me super hard. “And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you’re lying,” he said. “So?”
“How much?”
“Fifty a pop.”
“Go fuck your mother.” I threw the pills back to the guard. I needed them—but sometimes you have to do things on principle. So I walked away.
“Thirty-five.”
I turned back to Sam. “I’m fuckin’ dyin’,” I said. “But there ain’t no way in hell I’m paying more than twenty for any pill unless it gets me high.”
“Well, we are friends,” Sickle Sam shrugged. “Twenty-five.”
I looked to the sky, annoyed at his grin that said, I’m okay with that, but getting you to break your words is a matter of principle. “You’re a sadist.”
“I’m a businessman.”
I counted out fifty and put it into his hand, and got my two pills. The moment they were in my hand, I popped the capsules into my mouth. It tried to walk away but he grinned.
“Trazodone?”
A guard pulled out a yellow bottle containing standard, non-addictive sleeping medication—a scarce and valuable commodity in a world where monsters exist and are definitely out to get you. And if there was anything that someone like me wanted to escape more than the rifters I could fight—it was the dreams I couldn’t control.
“Two a pop,” I said.
“Three,” he said.
I didn’t argue. I just paid him for twenty—proof I didn’t resign myself to dying during the trial—and hobbled off to Pioneer Square.
“Have fun now, ya hear?” he called out.
I flipped him the bird and moved on. The drugs worked.
Then, I took 1st Avenue down to Pioneer Square, waiting for an ideal moment. Then, I threw the bag of money into a bush, praying it made it inside and would stay hidden. In a world where the military is investigating you—and has a timestamped log of everywhere you move—even stopping a moment in front of the place you hide something is how you get caught. Instead, you toss it and have someone else pick it up unless you want to roll the dice with them not coming. I didn’t want to roll the dice. I just wanted a chance. So I threw hard and prayed, walking away, hoping for a good game and a mistrial. It was time to play cards and enjoy what could be my last night alive.