If Alexander thought his day would be easy, the first patient he encountered shattered that delusion. He had seen his dad work in the past, tending to patients had never seemed to be a very difficult task. You asked them how they felt, if anything had changed in their recent patterns, and you seemingly pulled a diagnosis from thin air. Most of the time the source of their discomfort was quite obvious. A leg bent at a wrong angle, a large slash mark across their chest, a strange tinge to their skin. Alexander had even helped his father, or at least been around to perform some small task. Handing him tools or chemicals, allowing the man to focus on his work.

Alexander had been expecting the same with Nicholas. He would barely have to pay attention, and would only need to focus on whatever small task was handed to him. He quickly learned the bat had a different idea of their relationship.

The first patient the visited was a thrall. A middle aged woman with an arm bent out of place, seemingly from an accident at work the day before. Nicholas talked to the free man who stood next to her, presumably the foreman that had led to her injury in the first place. He asked a few pointed questions, and made his payment very clear to the man beforehand. Whoever reigned over the crew of workers, whichever bat had the free man under his sway, would have to pay Nicholas a certain sum.

It was a type of blackmail, and a complicated one. Evidently the true master and customer wasn’t available for negotiations, so he left it to his human aide. Nicholas could not ask for too much, or he would simply be turned away. Even though the man had called and set up the meeting the night before, Nicholas wasn’t the only bat skilled in healing. Many others lived not too far away, and if the price was too high the man would simply call another.

They could not discuss the price very much either. The human Nicholas was talking too only had access to a small amount of funds, and was not trusted to deal with anything larger. Any wavering on the price was closely monitored, as the free man knew if he made a mistake here his master would be very displeased.

Alexander was unused to the negotiation before him. Terms he was unaware of were tossed about. Prices were not in physical goods, but in coins. Before this Alexander had never had any contact with money. Nobody in the wastes had much use for it. Physical goods were all that held value. Sure you could always find someone who would willingly trade something useful for some kind of bauble or trinket, but to Alexander those people were idiots. The only meaningful trade was done between people with equal use to each other. A doctor would heal for few meals. A hunter would trade part of a deer for a few bullets. Everything had to have a use.

So when Nicholas agreed to a price of five gold coins, Alexander visibly grew confused. He had no frame of reference, and though he had seen some trading in the market with the currency, he wasn’t sure why Nicholas would even bother with it. He didn’t know that the price that had been agreed upon was a bargain, and that Nicholas had been playing a very deft political game the entire discussion.

Nicholas couldn’t afford to offend those above him in the hierarchy. He couldn’t afford to ask them to pay exorbitant amounts for his services, not only because they probably wouldn’t pay him. It could be seen as rude, or offensive. And though surely the bat who led the crew of thralls wasn’t that much higher than Nicholas, an offense was never something done lightly. A bargain on the other hand, could be seen as a favour. Something that could be called upon at a later date.

So while Alexander found himself bored and confused, Nicholas played a dangerous game. He sold his services at a price that would help him the most in the confusing web that surrounded them. Camp politics was something the young creature was already steeped in. He needed to be if he ever wanted to move upwards.

Once the price was agreed upon, Nicholas and Alexander got to work. Nicholas taught as he tended, and refused to do things twice. He asked for tools and supplies from Alexander, and growled whenever the boy made a mistake. He asked for something once, held out a hand, and expected it to be within his grasp a moment later. Alexander soon found himself enjoying the dynamic. It was almost a game, the object simple enough. All he had to do was try to predict what tool the creature wanted before Nicholas extended his hand to receive it.

Alexander even got quite good at it, earning an appreciative grunt from the creature whenever he succeeded. His eyes watching the nimble claws sliding a joint back into a socket, even as his hand worked its way into the bag in search for the next tool he expected the creature would need.

When they finished with the thrall, they moved on without another word. The next patient had a similar injury, and by now Alexander had a good idea of the system. He noted the finer details that Nicholas performed, handing him what he needed almost before the creature could ask for them. Alexander discovered he almost had a knack for this kind of work. Maybe it was the experiences he’d had with his father training him to do this, or similar work when his mother worked on cars, but he slowly discovered his skill at it.

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Alexander found some small pleasure in it as well. In watching a human slowly being repaired and brought to full strength. Broken bones, dislocated shoulders, pain in one body part or another, small things that seemed to always pile up in the world that surrounded him. That he had any positive influence at all over the world was something he found himself enjoying. He could ignore the creature teaching him, he could push away horrible memories, as long as he kept to his work. As long as he continued to learn.

That feeling disappeared the moment they made their way to their third patient that day. Nicholas and the foreman there seemingly argued for ages, the blank eyed thrall sitting between them in a state that made Alexander wince. The poor man’s leg was completely mangled. A gory stump barely held onto the frayed remnants of a shin bone. A half done bandage was wrapped around the end of the stump, still leaking a deep coagulated mush that seems only to seep into the dusty ground below him. That the man had even survived the night with an injury like that was a miracle, and one that Nicholas wasn’t happy about.

The price he kept repeating was evidently too high. The man would not agree to it. The thrall sat with his life on the line, impassive as ever. He simply didn’t seem to acknowledge the wound on his leg. His blank eyes merely stared out into the street as his fellows worked behind him. Nicholas repeated every little thing that could go wrong, every part of the man’s injury that needed to be fixed, but the foreman kept shaking his head.

Alexander simply looked on with an expressionless face. A deep, brooding anger started to form within him at the scene playing out. It was directed towards all involved.

He hated Nicholas for being stubborn. The bat was dealing with a human life here, and had the tools and skills to save it. But he was refusing to do so. He wanted a certain price, and was sticking to it. He deemed the thrall below him not worth his time unless he was paid to care otherwise. The work he was doing to fix and repair the world, something Alexander had begun to enjoy now seemed rotten to him. The fixes a taint that seemed to only make the world worse now.

Alexander also hated the foreman for even debating the price. He too was putting a human life on the line, simply debating the price was doing so. Alexander could see it in the burly man’s eyes. A cool calculation as he weighed the life beside him. Whether the price was even worth it for a now less useful thrall. Both Nicholas and the foreman were regarding the situation as though everything involved was just a number. A probability of success and profit. Alexander also knew that the man was only doing this to save his own hide. He knew that if he displeased the bat above him, he may just as well be the next patient on the list. It was a mix of self-preservation and greed that ran through both of the entities, and Alexander despised it.

His hate didn’t stop there, as he regarded the thrall in much the same way. He viewed the bleeding human as a willing participant in the situation that he now found himself in. The human was only injured because he had pathetically joined up in a society that allowed it. His parents made the same choice, and as Alexander viewed the man below him he grew angry at that decision once more. Human life meant nothing in the camp that surrounded him. In fact it didn’t mean anything anywhere in the wastes. Alexander had watched families slowly starve. He had seen people shot, or exiled for mistakes that could be easily solved. He watched people fight over small differences in the muddy hell that they now called home. The thrall below him was just another casualty of a world that no longer cared about humans. It was a symbol of that world, a representation of what Alexander found himself growing to despise.

When Nicholas turned and left the thrall to his fate, Alexander was left with a sickening taste in his mouth. The joy that he had gained from healing, from tending to the wounded was tainted now. A gross sensation that seemed to grip him at every point in his body. It didn’t abate when the moved onto the next patient, or the one after that. Alexander had only been in the camp for a little over a day, and the experiences he’d had already had ruined it for him.

He didn’t see what his parents saw. He didn’t see the safety that the community offered. He didn’t see the order or the stability in a chaotic world. He didn’t see it as an oasis of civilization, of salvation to many. He didn’t see the hundreds of humans around him, all living together without fear of the mutants around them.

No, what Alexander saw was a dystopia. A system that crushed and feasted upon the very humans it cultivated. Where his parents saw their only chance to save him, he saw the doom they had thrust him into. Alexander saw his loss of independence in very real terms. He saw the crushing weight of all the humans around him, the responsibility and culpability ruining everything that they said they stood for.

Everyone else, including his parents, in this camp had been worn down. They had once been proud, wild, and independent. But the price of that life cursed them and made them weak. It forced them to turn to another, to living in this horror. They had been tamed, because life was easier that way. They gave up their wings and allowed themselves to be fed and tended too.

Alexander grit his teeth as he and Nicholas moved down the street. In that moment he made a promise to himself. A vow, that he would never lower himself to their level. That he would never find himself as that thrall. That the society he found himself in would not crush him. It would not tame him. It could not.

As he left the thrall behind him, he left all chances of a peaceful life behind as well. A life without pain or strife, a quiet, civilized life was now out of his reach. He would not allow himself to buy into the lie that surrounded him.

Stopping suddenly, he forced the umbrella to barely shade Nicholas, prompting the bat to look at him. Eye’s narrowed as the creature noticed the boy’s expression, before it spoke, “What?”

“My sister.” Alexander began, struggling to keep his anger in check, “Where is my sister.”