“A couple months back, Lopé found the Angel,” Nina said. “Dr. Howle said it was Eastern ‘Demptists. He wants to be called Paul now.” Nina spoke the name with palpable loathing. “It’s like someone swapped his brain out for another one.”
“Beast’s teeth,” Heggy said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Like Eastern ‘Demptists, the Marteneisses were of Trueshore stock, born and raised. Close ties with the capital kept the family Angelical while the whole east coast went Irredemptist in protest of Lassedite Agan’s after Hilleman’s revolution. The whole denomination was a nest of Norms wearing smiling masks. Trueshore pastors could be positively vicious when it came to pursuing new converts.
Heggy cleared her throat.
“I know what’s happenin’ to your son,” she said, as coolly as she could. “I assure you, Mrs. Broliguez, to the best of my knowledge, Lopé…” But here, Dr. Marteneiss paused. She chose her next words carefully. “Your son is not going to die.”
Now came the hard part. Director Hobwell might have been dead, but his words were still fresh in Heggy’s mind: Keep it on a strict need-to-know basis.
Unless and until ALICE or one of the higher ups said otherwise, Hobwell’s orders still stood. Yeah, she had the discretion to choose how to enforce them, but orders were orders.
Heavy hung the head that wore the crown.
The decision of whether or not Mrs. Broliguez learned the details of what was happening to her son fell squarely on Dr. Marteneiss’ shoulders. Heggy almost wished Miyali was a Type Two case like her son. At least then, she’d have a solid legal argument for keeping mother and son together, though, then again, that would be at the cost of separating Mrs. Broliguez from the rest of her family, and, as a mother herself, Heggy knew just how much of a poison pill that proposition was. Also, you didn’t need to be a combat vet to realize that things were gonna get ugly if Miyali learned the truth about Lopé’s condition and wasn’t equipped to handle it.
To be fair, Mrs. Broliguez didn’t look like she was gonna get up and start running down the hallways screaming about transformations and psychokinesis, you could never be too sure. Type One patients had a frightening tendency of getting out of bed in the later stages of the disease and wandering the hallways, spreading death and misery. Dr. Lokanok had mentioned that perhaps that behavior was incipit zombie-ism, only it wasn’t going through to fruition—though, for what Angelforsaken reason, Heggy didn’t know.
All of this had to be nipped in the bud, especially now that Vernon and his men were here, and doubly so, considering the shit they were doing.
Maintaining stability was paramount when your allies were experimenting on people against their will. When things were as FUBARed as this you had to keep the civvies as calm and compliant as possible. Solidarity won wears, and nothing made mincemeat of solidarity quite like panic. Besides, if learning the truth did make Mrs. Broliguez freak out, she’d have to be sedated, and, in all likelihood, by the time she came to, she’d be in a coma. She’d never see her kids again, and Nina and her brothers wouldn’t get to see their mother again, and Heggy didn’t want either of those things to happen.
The world was a shitty place, filled with more pain than anyone deserved. Heggy didn’t know why the Godhead let that happen, just like she didn’t know why They’d prepared her little girl to die before she’d even come into the world.
Vernon’s prodding eventually revealed that the military had used Agent Yellow in its fight against the Constranak drug cartels, during the years she’d served. As a result, any kids Heggy had would be dead on arrival.
Just like Sarah was.
Beasteaten teratogenic defoliant, she thought.
Like me, Heggy knew the pain of losing a child, and though that pain could never be justified, it cultivated empathy within her. It was the rare person who could sympathize with people who suffered pains they themselves had never known.
And, having suffered, Heggy’d be damned to let that pain strike anyone else. Not if she had anything to say about it.
She sighed. “Mrs. Broliguez,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you some personal questions?”
Miyali stammered. “What?” Her hair-bun shook to and fro as she shook her head. “What does that have to do with—”
“—Please, just bear with me,” Heggy said. “It’s important.”
Like any good commander, Heggy wouldn’t make a judgment call while she still had a chance to gather more intel. She needed to know as much as she could, for her own sake, as much as for Miyali’s, Nina’s, and Lopé’s.
“Tell me about your son, Miyali,” Heggy said. “May I call you Miyali?” she added.
The woman nodded, and then spoke her piece. “He’s the other half of my heart,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.
Nina turned to Dr. Marteneiss. “He’s her little gem,” she said. “They’ve always been close.”
“Stop it, miha,” Miyali snapped.
“It’s true,” Nina said.
“You don’t understand.” Miyali coughed. “After you were born, Nina… while you were still a baby, your father and I tried to have another kid. But it was disaster after disaster. Three broken children in a row—all of them miscarriages. And not early. No, late term. Late term.”
A shiver ran down Dr. Marteneiss’ spine.
No, she thought. Please, Queen, no…
“What…?” Nina said, slack-jawed. “You… you never told me that.”
Her mother wept.
“Because it hurts, Nina. It hurts. I’m getting older. Soon, I won’t be able to bring any more bundles of joy into the world. When I went to Amelia, the bruha on 26th Street, to get a charm for a safe pregnancy, she said my womb was cursed.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What in the world…?” Heggy sank onto a stool.
“Do you know what it felt like, miha,” Miyali said, “to be told that I am cursed—a failure of a woman?” Miyali cried. “The first was eyeless.” Her voice skipped and scratched like a broken record. “The second died of… of some disorder, I don’t remember the name. The third…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. “We didn’t try for many years after that. But we didn’t give up. We tried again, and Lopé came to me, and he was perfect. A miracle.”
With a gentle kick of her foot, Heggy rolled her stool close to Maryon. She placed her hand on the tortured woman’s shoulder and held it there, squeezing with just a bit of tightness.
Miyali inhaled sharply, as did Dr. Marteneiss.
“You’re not alone, Miyali. You’re not.” Heggy let out a long sigh. “Before I worked here, I was a combat medic. Three tours in the Costranaks, fighting in the goddamn Drug Wars. Insurgents, terrorist drug lords, you name it.”
Nina gasped. “The Drug Wars? That means…” She brought her hand to her face.
Heggy nodded solemnly. “Agent Yellow. This was before news of the scandal went public.” Her eyes grew misty. “I had a daughter, once.” Heggy smiled tenderly, batting her eyelashes. “I was gonna call her Sarah,” she whispered, lowering her gaze. “The fetus came out premature, lookin’ more like a misshapen spider that got in a tussle with a tumbleweed than a human being created in the image of the Angel Himself.” Heggy shuddered. “Sarah lived for a week. It was the worst week of my life, and the worst week of hers’, too. Though, to be fair,” Heggy added, with a bitter smirk, “this past week might have it beat.”
Miyali tried to speak, but she couldn’t find the words.
Heggy made the Bondsign.
“I still pray to the Angel every day about her, that He might see it fit to let her into Paradise, and let my little girl finally get to be a little girl. But, even more than that, I beg Him to let her know how much her mother loves her.”
Try as she might, Heggy had never mustered up the courage to tell her folks that Sarah was the real reason she’d shoved off for civilian life.
That was more weakness.
Heggy could have convinced herself to keep going, despite the PTSD, if she’d known that she had a little girl waiting for her at the military base, every time she came in from a mission, a little girl who was happy and proud that she had a mom who had “making the world a better place” in her job description. She didn’t even need Jeb to raise her. Whether it was this life or any other, Sarah would be the best thing that cheating bastard would ever do with his life. But Heggy’s dreams had died before they were even born, and that had sapped her will to press on. She couldn’t continue. That’s why Heggy had become Dr. Marteneiss. It was for all the Sarahs of the world. And knowing that her folks wouldn’t understand hurt Heggy beyond belief.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Miyali muttered.
Heggy nodded. “And I yours.” She exhaled. “Miyali… would you describe yourself as religious?”
Sniffling, the woman nodded. “I keep the old ways.” She looked over Heggy’s shoulders to her daughter. “We all do.”
“You’re not Lassedile, then?”
“Only my son is, Dr. Marteneiss,” Miyali said.
Heggy thought of making the quip, “Some people would say Irredemptists aren’t Lassediles,” but decided against it.
“Do you believe in demons?” Heggy gulped. “In the Norms?”
“Snakes are not evil,” Miyali said, mustering the slightest of smiles.
Hearing that, Heggy decided to take a risk.
“Miyali… Lopé is turning into one of them; one of the Norms.”
“W-What?”
“Mama… it’s true,” Nina said.
“W-What?” This time, it was Heggy’s turn to be surprised.
Nina nodded. “Dr. Howle explained it to me. He took me to see him. To see Lopé.” She started crying. “Mama… he’s not human anymore. He’s one of those things.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Miyali coughed and shook her head. “Nina, why would you do this to me? Why—”
Nina coughed. “—It’s no joke. He doesn’t have a mouth anymore, Mama, he can’t talk. But… I think he’s still in there. He’s still who he was.” Nina stared blankly at her bedsheets as she shook her head. “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
Miyali’s breathing grew unsteady. She gasped and gulped, trying to speak, but she could only manage groans and half-started thoughts. Then her ECG began to shriek.
“Shit!” Heggy hissed.
As always, there was no rest for the weary.
— — —
Around itself, time did coil; static kissed the memory-fragment’s edge.
Ani didn’t know Dr. Skorbinka very well. He was a latecomer to the fabric of her memories—a mere blip in the grand scheme of things, though, certainly, a potent one.
After Mistelann’s collapse, Ani had wheeled him into the ICU all on her own, only to leave him in Nurse Kaylin’s flabbergasted hands as she ran back to 3Ba1 to finish the mycologist’s work for him. It was the most difficult challenge Ani had ever faced, which made the reward for completing it that much more satisfying: a refrigerator car filled with ampules of a murky fluid the color of ash and spoiled beer.
She’d barely finished loading the thing when the call came in.
Ani dashed over to the console by the door.
“Yes, this is the matter printer lab,” she said.
“D-Dr. Lokanok?” The call was audio only.
It was Dr. Marteneiss!
“Where’s Dr. Skorbinka?” Heggy asked.
“The ICU,” Ani replied. She coughed and then cleared her throat.
“I’m picking up the slack.”“Is the mycophage ready?” Heggy yelled.
“Yes!”
“Then hang up, and get the hell over to Room E17, pronto!” Heggy barked.
Ani moved as fast as her legs could carry her.
Around itself, time did coil; static kissed the memory-fragment’s edge.
Heggy pressed the defibrillator paddles to the portly woman’s chest.
“Clear!” she yelled, as the current flowed.
“Mama!” the girl cried, coughing up a storm.
“Quiet, Nina!” Heggy snapped.
The woman on the bed in the family room was in cardiac arrest. Heggy described it as a case of “broken heart.” The family—the Broleepezes, or something?—had managed to get to the head of the line of test subjects to receive the first batch of the mycophage, but that wouldn’t matter if the mother died of heart failure before the treatment had taken effect!
“Get the doses ready, Dr. Lokanok,” Heggy said.
“She might not make it,” Ani said, “and I can’t put the dose back in once it’s out.”
“Miyali is in line to get it,” Heggy replied, “as is the rest of her family. Just do it!”
While Ani pulled an ampule of mycophage out of the refrigerator cart, Heggy smeared a little more electroconductive gel on the defibrillator pads.
“Clear!” she yelled.
Once more, blips hopped along the ECG’s line. But this time, they stabilized.
Heggy stowed the defibrillator in their case, hung the case up on the wall, and slumped into the chair beside the woman’s bed. “Thank the Angel,” she huffed,
“Mama!” Nina yelled, with fresh alarm.
“Dr. Marteneiss!” Ani said.
“Shit!” Heggy leapt back to her feet. “She’s seizin’!”
The mother jostled in place, flicking the sheets off her bed.
“Hold her still,” Ani said. “Her arm! Keep her arm still.”
Heggy tried her best, but it was difficult. Miyali wasn’t a small woman. Dr. Marteneiss held one of Miyali’s arms by the wrist, while pressing her other hand down on the woman’s stomach.
Heggy looked up at Ani. “It’s now or never.”
Ani nodded. As she stepped up to the Miyali’s bedside, Ani noticed out of the corner of her eye that Nina was on her knees on her bed, with her eyes closed and one arm pointed toward her mother. Suddenly, Ani felt something like a breeze brush against her, and the next thing she knew, Miyali’s body went stiff, as if an invisible hand was holding her torso in place.
“Dr. Marteneiss?” Ani asked.
Heggy shook her head. “I don’t know what the fuck is happenin’. Just give her the damn shot!”
“Right,” Ani nodded again.
She leaned in and made the injection.
A moment later, Nina let out a soft groan, and then her mother’s seizure returned with a vengeance, eventually petering out over the next thirty seconds or so.
Ani looked Nina in the eyes. “Did you do something?” she asked.
Nina averted her eyes.
“Alright,” Heggy said, loudly, and with a sigh, “let’s give it to the rest of them.” She turned to Nina. “You’re sure you, your father, and your brother want to try this?”
Nina nodded.
Heggy returned the nod, and then glanced at Ani. “You heard the woman. Let’s get crackin’.”
Around itself, time did coil; static kissed the memory-fragment’s edge.