Nyx
Nyx held a soft hand on Matthew’s shoulder. As one of the True Blood, her ‘face’ was an entirely artificial construct, meaning that the agony of compressing a fragment of her being into a form that could ‘touch’ something never registered on her features.
He was troubled, fidgeting in his seat, bouncing one foot off the ground with nervous energy. Even for Nyx, who found human emotions an irrational and needlessly complex knot of self-defeating inputs that was sometimes nearly impossible to untangle, it was not difficult to understand why.
Samantha had one foot in the grave already, and was sliding more in that direction with every passing minute, her breaths coming as shallow whistles through pale, bloodless lips. She'd hit Level 5 during that last match, going by the new crystal that had poked through her skin some time ago, and Nyx could only hope the woman had had enough sense to put more points in Toughness. She'd need them.
Nyx had already done all she could to set everything in order, short of making a contract to restore Samantha to health. She guessed that Matthew was not quite that desperate yet, and she wouldn’t have made the offer even if he was. All he stood to gain or lose by this entire endeavor was ‘money’, after all—that, and his personal pride, she supposed. But human currency was easy to come by, and ‘pride’ was an even more abstract commodity.
She thought it fairly adorable that Matthew was trying to make something of himself. However, if Samantha died and he lost all his funds, she would see him through it safely.
He was, after all, the ‘chosen one’. The one she had chosen. The lowliest, laziest, most repugnant scoundrel she had ever come across, human or otherwise. Of course, she had met ones that were more powerful, more villainous, more charismatic, but they did not interest her. It was his utter absence of self-awareness that made Matthew so fascinating. He was like some sort of evolutionary joke—a refutation that there was any sort of divine spirit or spark of ingenuity inherent to mankind, that they were anything more than dirty animals squabbling in the mud.
He was the greatest joke ever told, and she would make sure he stuck around to deliver the punchline. She could not think of a better way to spit in the eye of the so-called ‘goddess’.
Luckily, the Laborer laid out on the floor was still drawing breath when the tent flap was thrown back, and the man Nyx had sent for entered—a tall, wiry Level 11 Physician with a bloody leather apron slung over one shoulder. His hair was cropped short, all snow-white except for a mustache yellowed from frequent tobacco use. He wore an eager grin that looked permanently frozen to his face, a charade for the customer’s benefit that had been kept up for so long that his mouth no longer remembered another configuration. The expression was twisted with weariness and an accumulation of life’s little bitternesses so that it more resembled a constipated grimace.
“All right,” the man said through the butt of a mangled cigarette pinched between his lips, “who here needs cutting open?”
“Master Hacksaw, I take it?” Nyx asked.
“That’s right, ma’am—John Hacksaw, MD. My humble personage is fully and enthusiastically at your disposal.” He eked out a bow made awkward by stiff joints, and his grimace widened into a baring of teeth that bordered on a deranged rictus.
Matthew stood to shake the man’s hand. “Matthew Caldwell, esquire,” he said, with a grin that nearly matched the newcomer’s. “Charmed.”
Hacksaw laughed—a stilted ‘ha ha ha’ more spoken than anything. “A fellow man of civilization, I hear. That’s music to my ears. And we’re of a level, too, would you look at that.”
He clapped Matthew’s arm amiably before breaking the handshake, and sidestepped him to approach Samantha. If he was alarmed by the chimps milling about the tent, he made no outward show of it. “I take it this is the patient I got dragged out of bed for?”
“That’s the one,” Matthew replied.
Hacksaw squatted low beside his patient with a long groan and a crackling of old joints. He regarded her for several long moments, then used Examine on her, which produced no visible effect except a brief flash lighting up his eyes. Then he slowly shook his head and clicked his tongue with displeasure. “Yeah, it might be best to write this one off. She’s dog food at this point.”
“C’mon, man,” Matthew whined, sounding desperate. “There’s got to be something you can do.”
“Hmm. I could buy her if you want. The torso’s no good, but she’s got some solid limbs I could graft onto another lucky customer.” He hoisted a limp arm and turned it over at various angles, inspecting the musculature. “I’ll give you three hundred for the cadaver.”
“Three?” Matthew squeaked. “Try a thousand, at least.” Then he caught himself, and cleared his throat sheepishly. “Besides, uh, we’re not interested.”
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“We need her alive,” Nyx cut in. “She’s due to fight in an hour.”
“Can’t be done,” Hacksaw replied with a weary, put-upon sigh.
“It’s the task I brought you here to do.”
“All right. Still can’t be done.” The Physician took a last drag off his cigarette, looked around briefly for somewhere to put it out, then stubbed it against his apron and flicked the butt aside to litter the floor.
“You came highly recommended, Master Hacksaw.”
“I’m overjoyed to hear it, but it still can’t be done.”
“And yet, you will do it. The messenger I sent was instructed to make plain my relationship with the holder of your considerable debts. Was he unclear in some way?”
Hacksaw’s grimace did not slip a hair, but his eye did twitch with unease, and she caught his throat bobbing. “Um, well, yes. I believe the fellow may have mentioned something of that nature.”
Nyx folded her hands before her and produced a ‘smile’ by modulating the composition of her form just so. “Then get to work.” It was quite difficult to get the exact parameters correct to produce a natural-looking human expression. They would never appreciate how much effort her kind went through to put them at ease.
Hacksaw threw up his hands. “Shit, fine. I’ll do my best, I guess.” Then, under his breath, he added: “Waste of fucking time, but whatever.”
“Your best is all I’m asking for.”
He opened an Inventory and produced a compact medicine bag from the circular black void, of a similar kind to the one William carried with him everywhere. Matthew sent his chimps outside to give the man space to work while he strapped on his apron and cracked his gnarled fingers every which way to limber them up.
He used Identify and flinched at what he found. “What sort of freak am I working with here?” he asked, glancing back at her and Matthew. “She’s got way too many attribute points for a Level 5.”
Matthew began to answer, but Nyx spoke over him. “Trade secret,” she said blithely, and made a small shooing gesture indicating that he should get on with his work.
Hacksaw ran his tongue over his teeth, then gave a half-shrug. “Well, with that much Toughness, I might just be able to work something.”
Then he squatted back down and held his hands over the young woman’s flattened chest, palms down and fingers splayed. With a muttered: “Life Thread,” thin strands of luminous green webbing extended from his fingertips. They dangled down until they met singed flesh and sank straight through, meeting zero resistance as though Samantha were one of the True Blood.
He moved his fingers subtly, manipulating his threads like a master puppeteer putting on a performance only he could see, tongue between his teeth.
“What are you doing?” Matthew asked impatiently, peeking over the healer’s shoulder.
“Un-fucking Sleeping Beauty’s ribcage, currently.” He moved one finger, grunted in displeasure at the result, and cursed under his breath, then moved the digit back toward its original position by slow fractions. “Almost…” Then, with a “Ha!” of triumph, he balled up his fists and gave the threads a sharp yank.
With a delightfully crisp crunch of shattered bone, Samantha’s chest lifted an inch or more, and she immediately sucked in a deep breath, her lungs no longer squeezed by the weight of her own body.
“Well, that’s step one,” Hacksaw muttered. He raised his arms over his head to extract the green threads. Once they were clear of Samantha’s flesh he shook them off his fingers, the filaments breaking apart into drifting fragments that quickly dissipated into the air. “Now for the fun part. I—”
Samantha’s eyes shot wide open, and she let out a pained gasp as she began to thrash, trying to sit up.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Hacksaw said. Realizing that trying to hold her down was a futile endeavor when he was nearly tossed on his behind, he instead reached into a bag and produced a bottle of clear solution that he soaked a linen rag with, pressing it firmly over the young woman’s mouth and nose as she fought furiously. “Go to sleep, precious,” he said in a strained voice, working desperately to keep clear of her flailing arms. “Go to sleep now. That’s it. Night night for you.”
In seconds, Sam’s eyes lost their manic energy, and the lids began to flutter shut. She strained against the soporific for several moments, head jerking up and down, fists clenching and unclenching, before she finally drooped down and went still again.
“Era’s head on a pike,” Hacksaw said as he gave a long, relieved whistle. “This fishie’s quite the jumper, isn’t she?”
With the most immediate issue solved, the healer set to work on his patient. First he wielded steel, putting all his strength into making incisions in her stone-hard skin to extract pieces of rib that were threatening to poke holes in her lungs, then stitched her up again with another use of Life Thread, the glowing sutures knitting her flesh back together and leaving puckered, pink scar tissue. Then he used gentler means, casting Regenerate as he put one or two or three fingers to various parts of her torso, a soft green glow alighting from his digits as the skill worked to regrow bone and fuse fractured ends back together. Occasionally, he used Life Thread to shift a rib this way or that so it lay perfect before Regenerating it.
When he finally sat back, he had worked through all his AP, and his nose dripped with sweat. His dubious grin looked more forced than ever, and his fingers were jerky with skill fatigue. “Well, I did what I could,” he said. “She’s still in rough shape, but I reckon she’ll live.” He struck a match off the side of his boot and lit a cigarette, puffing eagerly at it. “Damn fine work, if I do say so myself.”
Nyx bent down by Samantha to confirm. Her breaths came easier now, and most of the visible damage that had been done to her torso was sufficiently ameliorated. “Yes,” she said with an approving nod at the Physician, “well done, Master Hacksaw.”
His grimace widened a hair. “Then, my debts…?”
“Consider them erased.”
“Ha. Well, now I’m almost happy I got out of bed.”
“Will she be fit to fight in an hour?”
“Uh, no. I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“Will she be fit to stand in an hour?”
Hacksaw considered it for a moment while puffing thoughtfully on his cigarette, keen eyes trailing up and down his patient. “Maybe if you juice her up to the gills, but it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”
“I don’t need pretty.”
Hacksaw shrugged. “Then just say when, ma'am, and I’ll throw everything but the kitchen sink at her.”