I could only watch, helpless, as Eveline let loose a furious screech, leaping at the panther.

They both leapt about, taking various swipes at each other, most of them missing. The action was so swift, even my enhanced visual cortex had trouble keeping up with everything. This went on for what seemed like eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, or even seconds. I had no idea. For all of Eveline's prowess as a fighter, even she was hard-pressed to stay ahead of the panther and out of his reach.

Then, at some point, he managed to connect a strike against her, cutting a fierce trail of claw wounds across her exposed abdominal region.

It didn't look too severe, though, and as she landed, she leapt forward again, claws extended. He in turn was leaping into the air, possibly looking to counter her move, maybe expecting her to swipe her claws at some part of his body.

Instead, she grabbed his wrist, pulled it hard as she twisted her body around, and kicked him hard in the ribs. She let go as they were both thrown apart by the force of her kick, and the panther was left on his back in the dust.

"You break his ribs," she hissed, though she sounded winded. "I break yours!"

She then leapt back toward the panther, letting loose another angry screech, just as the panther let loose a growl and was on his feet again, swiping at Eveline with his claws.

It was clear though, he was at a slight disadvantage now, but he was still a fearsome fighter. They continued to swipe at each other, Eveline able to get a lot more strikes against him, causing him to bleed slowly from an increasing array of cuts over his body. While he seemed complacent in his attacks despite being injured, Eveline appeared to be slowing down, her effectiveness in this fight dwindling, her movements becoming almost groggy.

I realised in horror, that she had been poisoned.

Desperate to intervene, I ignored the burning in my bones as I reached out to retrieve my knives, desperately marshalling some mental strength I knew I would need to fight through it, at the same time as I received a series of alerts from my nanocloud. The pain started to ease, but in this fast-paced fight, it was happening far too slowly.

The Panther leapt at Eveline in the next moment, but in her poisoned state, she could no longer move quickly enough, and to my utter terror, his next claw strike connected with her side, tearing a deep, horrific gouge out of her obliques and causing her to start bleeding profusely.

"NOOOOO!" I screamed, feeling utterly helpless as Eveline hit the ground hard, struggled to get up again, only to collapse.

She didn't move again.

The panther turned to me, shaking his claws off, then began to stalk over to me with a slight grin on his face... Only for his head to disappear in a cloud of red mist and bloody pulp.

I watched in fascinated horror, as the panther's body staggered, fell to its' knees, then fell forward.

Struggling to my feet, my ribs causing me agony, I staggered over toward where Eveline had fallen, holstering my combat blades without a thought.

ALERT: Incoming call from Rosalie.

Shit! What did she want? I instructed my nanocloud to pick it up.

"Rick!" Rosalie's voice reverberated in my subconscious, and she sounded tense. "Rick, are you alright? Is the Tango down?"

"Err..." The what?! Tango? What was that? "The panther? Dead."

"Stay right there. We're coming to get you both!"

The connection went dead, and I realised that if she didn't sound surprised by any of this, she must have been involved. Maybe she had been the one to kill the panther and save my life?

I continued to stagger to Eveline, my nanocloud reading my intention very clearly.

DANGER: Subject is in critical medical condition.

Subject's nanocloud attempting to preserve brain functions by inducing a coma.

DANGER: Bleed-out likely.

Wound sites need to be sealed.

DANGER: Severe abdominal and oblique muscular wounding.

Extent undetermined.

Medical intervention mandated.

I dropped to my knees. "No," I whispered. "No no no no no..."

ALERT: Distress detected. Deploying countermeasures.

I don't give a fuck about myself right now, I thought in fury at my nanocloud. It responded.

You need to think clearly if you are going to save her life. Pay attention to my next series of instructions. Time is of the essence.

I took a deep breath, then responded to my nanocloud.

Go.

Place your hand on subject's wound site immediately.

I did exactly what I was told.

Identify subject as Ev.

Designation accepted. Reading medical data from Ev's nanocloud.

DANGER: Poison compound detected.

Nanocloud unable to compensate due to insufficient resources.

DANGER: Bleed out detected.

Insufficient blood condition will be reached in less than 30 seconds.

DANGER: Insufficient nanocloud resources to seal bleed sites.

DANGER: Consciousness has been lost.

Diverting nanocloud resources to preserving host brain functions.

Engaging emergency protocols.

End of Ev's nanocloud report.

Recommend you cut your wrist open and hold it over the site of Ev's wounds.

I will concentrate nanocloud units in that region to seal the site of the wounds.

This is the last viable option for medical triage.

All of this data had been reported to my consciousness in less than half a second as my nanocloud worked with Eveline's own to get this data. My own nanocloud had managed to get me out of a panicked state and calm enough to handle this situation, but I was still terrified for Eveline, and losing her now was not a fucking option...

So I pulled out my combat knife and cut my wrist, holding it over her body near the bleed site, trying to hold myself steady as my own life-giving essence drained out of me, my own head feeling lighter by the second.

Then, after a few seconds, as I thought I might collapse, I received more notifications, and in a state of detached fascination, watched as my own wrist filmed over quickly with nanites and the bleeding stopped.

I then watched as my own blood mixed with Eveline's, and I noticed the nanites all scrambling to cover the site of her wounds, glossing over with a silvery-film effect that stopped any further bleeding. Curiously, some of Eveline's blood which was still pooling through the site near her wound, started to collect, as though the nanites were all trying to recover what they could.

ALERT: Priority message from nanocloud 14 seconds ago.

Let me see it.

I then saw as a message read itself in my consciousness.

Operation partially successful. Nanocloud AI capacity reduced. Basic AI functionality until nanocloud capacity has been restored. Instructions on this process to follow. For now, place subject's hand in collected nanocloud-treated blood for re-absorption back into subject. Message ends.

Blearily, I followed my nanocloud's instructions, realising, even in my state of seeming-intoxication, that this was key to saving Eveline's life. I then watched, fascinated, as Eveline's hand then seemed to ever-so-slowly drink from the pool of blood. The lips that had turned purple on her face, then slowly began fading to a pinkish olive, and then a much healthier colour. Her face, which had gone grey under her fur, was slowly regaining the tanned complexion she usually maintained, and then everything stopped once there was a small puddle of blood around Eveline's hand.

Her wounds all appeared to be sealed by a silver film covering, but they still looked frightful.

She wasn't out of danger yet.

"RICK!" I heard Dani's voice let out a screech as both she and Rosalie came running over the field, approaching the tree line. I looked up at her, feeling sick to my stomach, and more than a tad drunk from all the blood loss.

She slammed into me in an attempt to give me a hug, her face damp, her expression distressed and almost panicked. I let out a pained grunt, and her face took on an expression of horror.

"Oh my god, Rick, I'm sorry!" She said, her tone mortified. "Your ribs-"

"Never mind me," I said, feeling winded. "Ev needs help! Quickly!"

Rosalie was already kneeling next to the feline, a hand placed on her neck, apparently feeling for some form of access to her nanocloud. "Poison. And there are two nanocloud types in her body, one trying to maintain her brain functions, the other one seems to be doing everything else."

"Yeah," I said, feeling woozy. "Me."

There was a pause. "They don't seem to be in conflict with each other, that's a relief. Dani, we need a stretcher. The less we move individual body parts, the easier it'll be for that patch of nanites to maintain a seal over the wound sites and keep the blood contained inside."

"Yeah," Dani yelled out, standing up and leaping into a fast run back toward the north.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"And what the hell were you thinking?!" Rosalie shouted at me. "Cutting your own wrist and bleeding all over her? I never want to see Dani feel like she's lost her brother for as long as I live, and this could have killed you the day right after she realised you were still alive and she could have you back in her life again. You'd take that sort of risk? For this woman?"

Despite my drunken and near-delirious state, I glared hard at Rosalie. "Yes. If she..."

I couldn't bring myself to finish that sentence, so I looked away, my jaw grinding. The combination of anger and fear were all that were keeping me me conscious. I probably would have passed out from shock and blood loss, otherwise.

I also received a ton of additional alerts that I wasn't in the mood to deal with right now, though I was sure they all related to my blood loss and how to deal with it during convalescence.

Within minutes, Dani re-appeared, along with a canine-hybrid who looked strong and fit, his very humanlike face like stone, as he carried a metallic yellow stretcher with him. Both of them ran up to us, Dani looking tense but in control of herself, the canine looking murderous. "Who did this to her?" He demanded.

"The dead panther you see over there," I gestured to the corpse behind us, as I remained kneeling next to Eveline. "She was badly injured trying to save my life."

It was obvious that this canine fellow had a lot of questions, and hated seeing dead hybrid people, but he held his tongue, leaping to my opposite side and kneeling next to Eveline, looking up at Dani. "Hey, can you help me out here?"

Dani joined his side. "What do you need me to do, Mike?"

"We'll need to do this carefully to avoid disturbing that wound site over there. Whatever it is that's preventing her from bleeding all over the grass here, I don't wanna disturb it."

"Wait," Dani said, staring fixated at the site of Eveline's wounds. "Those are nanites. Rick, what did you-"

"Don't!" I snapped, feeling frustration and fear creeping back in. "I'm not losing her again!"

Dani's expression softened, before she turned back to this Mike fellow. "You ready with the stretcher?"

"Yeah," Mike said, looking at me with an odd expression I didn't care to interpret right now. "I'll slide it under her as best we can. You roll her slightly so I can..."

I tuned out the rest, as my world narrowed all the way down, focusing only on Eveline, the tiger-like cat-lion-woman who continued to lie there, breathing so slowly, the rise and fall of her chest barely noticeable.

"Where are we taking her?" I asked of no-one in particular.

"Rosalie?" Mike asked.

"We'll take her to Jacob Marcelle's place," she told everyone. "He's got a medical bed we can use, and we're going there anyway. I'm gonna place a call with him now."

She then stepped away from the group, as Mike finished strapping Eveline down where he could, to the stretcher. Then he stood to the rear, gesturing for Dani to walk up front, and in a well-rehearsed routine, the two of them had Eveline up in the air, walking her stretcher with them both, as we all then walked north-west, toward the tower I could still see in the background.

We soon found ourselves outside of a Tim Hortons that was attached to an abandoned petrol station, located at an intersection. No doubt in the old world, this was a good place to grab stacks of pancakes while filling up your car, but in the post-nanocloud world where private and regular vehicular transport appeared largely to be a thing of the past, the place had little utility.

I knew little about the history of this place, but I did notice the tower extended five times as high as the building itself did, and the lookout deck of the tower was reached via a ladder, the whole thing supported by wooden struts and some outer plank scaffolding. As unsteady as this seemed to me, a closer inspection with my visual overlay revealed that every piece of wood was teeming with nanites, no doubt reinforcing the structural properties of the wood.

The ability to call ahead was a major time-saver, and I was grateful that Rosalie was so forward thinking. It meant that when we arrived at the building itself, the doors were already open, and we could walk straight in with Eveline's stretcher. Rosalie directed Mike and Dani to a specific room in the basement of the building, and I followed suit, soon finding myself in a clean, if rather depressing room that had a medical bed in one corner, already prepared for a patient. Mike and Dani wasted no time, taking Eveline straight to the bed, placing her stretcher onto it, and then letting the straps loose so they could slide the stretcher out, which they did with careful precision. Once they were done, Dani took the stretcher and started to carry it off to one side, presumably to put it away somewhere out of the way.

To my astonishment, Mike stepped up to me, letting out a low growl. "I don't think you should be near her right now-"

"Mike," Rosalie hissed at him, stepping up to my side. "I don't know what game you're playing here, but she is Rick's travelling companion, not your personal plaything."

Mike didn't move, but continued to glare at me, as though by his sheer presence, he could intimidate me into capitulating to his prohibition.

Fuck that. Eveline meant more to me than this guy's threats ever would. I glared at him, refusing to give ground.

"She's a hybrid, like me," he barked at Rosalie.

"And first and foremost, she is a person, not a walking fleshlight," Rosalie growled. "Get the fuck out of his way now, before I break your arm."

Mike glared at her for several moments, then walked out, deliberately bumping my shoulder on his way out. I didn't have time for his bullshit, so I ignored him, walking into the room and to Eveline's bedside.

"Sorry about him," Rosalie told me, her expression contrite. "He always was a bit of an asshole, but we needed him because he's the nearest first-aid trained person I knew how to contact at short notice."

I shook my head. "Doesn't matter," I told her, approaching Eveline's bedside.

"Dani," I called to my sister, feeling choked all of a sudden, as I stood beside Eveline and took her blood-soaked hand in my own. Dani slipped her own hand into my free one, giving it a squeeze. "Hold on, Ev," I pleaded with her, in a whisper. "Stay with us."

My nanocloud connected with the remnants of my nanocloud in Eveline's body, and together, they performed the necessary task of allocating themselves as a secondary nanocloud to Eveline's own. The result was hopeful, as I received an indication that the nanocloud units that once belonged to me began transmitting their upgrade functions and hardware changes, which would hopefully mean that eventually, Eveline would have nanocloud capabilities that matched my own.

I ignored the notifications I received about Eveline's own nanocloud's unique functions. The only thing I was concerned with was making sure she would get well again, and that she would benefit from my nanocloud's accelerated healing.

Within a few moments, I received an update from her nanocloud confirming that every nanite in her body now belonged to her. I received confirmation that her brain functions had been protected, that she simply needed convalescence as well as a steady supply of nutrients while she was in the nanite-induced coma until the worst of the injuries had been repaired sufficiently to wake her again.

Some time had passed before I could no longer stay awake, I didn't know. It could have been minutes, but it felt like no time at all. Dani immediately walked me out of the room, refusing to take no for an answer, as she insisted I get to a bunk and lie myself down.

"You've sacrificed a lot of your blood and your nanocloud to keep her alive, Rick," she told me sternly. "She'll live, but you're pushing yourself, and you need to rest and get your blood levels back to normal."

"Dani, she-" I started to argue, but she cut me off.

"I know, Rick," her voice was soft, but stern. "I won't let anything happen to her. You hear?"

Weakly, I nodded, finally allowing myself to accept the inevitable. "I could use something sweet."

Dani smiled slightly, as she deposited me on the bed, running out of the room, only to return a moment later with a sealed bottle of some disgustingly-sweet fruit juice. I knocked that shit back without taking a breath, handing the bottle back to Dani, and reclining on the bunk she had put me in. "Alright, if she wakes up and I'm still asleep, you come get me!"

Dani nodded. "Get some rest. You'll be no good to her when you're out of it."

With that good advice, I drifted off into a slightly strange and dizzying state of somnolence.

----------------------------------------

Some time later, I awoke from a dreamless sleep. That reminded me to take a look at her wounds to see if there was an improvement. With difficulty, I dragged myself out of my bunk and stepped into the hallway, only to halt when I heard voices in Eveline's room.

"Those wounds look a lot better today," I heard Dani.

"That'll put Rick's mind at ease," That was Rosalie. "What about the stuff you saw when you read Rick's memories of his trip out here?"

Dani let out a sigh, and waited a moment to answer. "I don't know what to tell you yet, Rosie. I haven't had a chance to read Eveline's own memories to see what matches what he experienced."

I had no idea what was going on here, but it sounded significant.

Dani continued. "All I know is he had something of a rough road getting here."

"I can only imagine," Rosalie replied to Dani. "So, what happened to him out there?"

I listened as Dani told Rosalie a very abridged version of my travels from Eindhoven to Mary's Harbour, then a quick summary of my journey here. It all sounded clinical.

"To be fair, I'm not really getting across how it all made him feel," Dani told Rosalie. "And I don't know if I want to give you a direct read on those memories. He was really badly affected by what happened."

"How so?" Rosalie asked.

"Well... Her decision to push him away only caused him pain," Dani said with a deep sigh. "I get the feeling that she didn't mean to do that."

"Maybe you should just take a look and find out?"

There was a pause. "I'm worried," Dani eventually said. "What if her experiences were so traumatic, I'm affected by them permanently?"

"Remember Stan Woolly, from Ontario?" Rosalie asked, after a moment. "I watched as his family was murdered by bandits and thugs, and reading the reports, getting the imagery from investigators? All that stuff ended up being far more traumatic for you, than getting his actual memories, where he actually watched them die, knowing he could do nothing about it."

"That was rough," Dani acknowledged. "But I think you're right."

"And I'll be here to see you through it."

A sigh. "Alright," Dani said in muted tones. "Let's do this." The silence lasted much longer this time, for several minutes, until it was broken by an anguished wail, and hissing sobs. "She's devastated," Dani wailed. "Her heart is breaking!"

I could hear the soft words of Rosalie in response. "Is it because..."

Dani said nothing, giving vent to her expression of whatever she had seen while in Eveline's mind. I could hear the continuing sniffles, and decided that I should go in and see if I could encourage her to talk over what she had seen.

When I stepped into the room, Dani had her arms wrapped tightly around Rosalie's waist, her head buried in Rosalie's shoulder. Rosalie's face was grim, as she looked over at me. Eveline continued to lay on the bed, still unconscious.

"Dani?"

Dani pulled away from Rosalie, looking at me with an oddly-angered expression on her face. "I need to speak with you," she said, stepping past me and back into the bunk room. "Now!"

So, I followed her there, and she turned to face me, her composure mostly restored, though she had a grim expression on her face. "Close the door."

Sighing, I turned and closed the door. "What's going on, Dani?"

"You need to see what happened on your journey," she started. I was puzzled.

"I was there, Dani. I already know-"

"From Ev's perspective, Rick."

What? "I don't understand."

"She took on this whole journey for you! She risked her life... For you! She wanted to stay on this journey right to the end!"

"I was there. The first time she met me-"

"Yeah, she was pretty much hostile from the start. I saw that in your mind, and if all I knew was your side of the situation, I'd think she was being rather a bitch at the time," Dani told me, taking a breath. "But you've also had some good moments, where she had started to let her guard down. That's gotta count for something? And now that I've seen things from her perspective, I know a lot more about what motivated her to behave the way she did with you."

"Dani," I sighed as I made my half-hearted protest. "She tried to have some woman come along and seduce me. I don't know why, but I think she might have planned to walk in on us doing things together, so she could tell herself I was a-"

"Rick, her heart is breaking over this! She regretted it the minute she placed the call! The very last conscious thought she had before going into her coma, was that she wished she could do things differently, that if she had to die here and now to save your life one last time, she would still never be able to do enough to make up for her mistake."

I was already wavering on my last words to her, where I'd told her that I didn't want to speak to her again. I might have meant it at the time, and I was so angry with what she did, that it propelled me to put as much distance as possible for as long as possible, but in the weeks that had passed since, I'd had a chance to think on things. Her betrayal still hurt, and I still didn't know how to feel about the situation. I already realised that Eveline's issues caused her to behave in certain ways. Her fear of imprinting was a huge motivator in her actions, and drove her to do anything she had to, in order to avoid putting herself in a position of vulnerability.

The only thing I hadn't known at the time was just how far she had been willing to go to avoid facing that fear.

"Alright," I told Dani. "Just do it, before I change my mind."

And with that, Dani stepped forward and took a hold of my hand. In the seconds that followed, I felt the familiar low-level electrical current through my arms as my nanocloud took on a huge amount of data, transferring it into my on-board storage. Once that was done, my nanocloud immediately alerted me.

Replaying memory engram data.

At that moment, the room vanished, and my perspective shifted.