The Wildlands refer to the territory outside the Sphere of Influence (see §11.5) of any Ark. Also known as “the Old World” and by the names of various former Charter States, the Wildlands are inhospitable and extremely dangerous due to their chaotic unpredictability. The Dust Repulsor Fields (DRF) that keep Arks relatively safe from uncontrolled portal incursion are both difficult and dangerous to operate at smaller scales. Additionally, Convergent, Xenowildlife, Climate Instability, and Mana Exposure mean that sustained habitation at scale in the Wildlands is presently considered largely unviable*. Despite these challenges, the surviving remnants of human civilization have persisted at smaller scales* in clusters known as Clades. Living conditions in Clades vary wildly, even within the same Clade over time, but the consensus* is that life there is difficult, brutal, and often short.
— Excerpted from “Life Outside,” Chapter 12, Extradimensional Portal Specialist Handbook, 3rd ed., pub. NE 101, p. 441.
The address I’d been given had me heading over to 12-3. It was still fairly early in the day, and public transportation would get me there in roughly the same amount of time, or less, than hailing a ride would. Plus I was used to riding the levs and lifts. There were rarely lines for the main mag-lev lines that ran around the outside perimeter of the sectors. I hopped on a street trolley and rode it ‘out’ to where the sector met the inside of the city’s wall.
The wall levs were the structural spine of all mass transit in the city. They moved the most people per hour and the most cargo per hour relative to all other available forms of transportation within the city, and it wasn’t remotely close. Electromagnetic rail lines ran in layered tracks that were anchored and supported by the megastructure of the city’s wall. They ran in every sector and every level, but taking them often involved some basic route planning and mental math. The passenger lines were shaped like a sine wave that wove between adjacent layers. Layers two and three were on one circuit, and layers one and two were on a separate circuit. Since the lines curved between layers, you would change layers every time you rotated one sector around the city’s perimeter.
So I had to count it out as I was getting ready for the next lev to stop. I was in 5-3 currently, heading counter-clockwise around the city. 4-2 would be next, then 3-3, 2-2, 1-3, and finally sector 12 would drop me in layer 2. So I’d have to take a lift back down to 12-3 when I got off at sector 12. Not a terribly big deal; I didn’t need to take a Deepwell on foot, so it was quick and easy. Each of the twelve sectors filled a vital need of the city, and there was variation between each of the layers as well. Sector 12 was the northwest quadrant’s power anchor sector, and the sector specialty was research and development, as well as advanced manufacturing. While sectors 3, 6, 9, and 12 all featured dedicated power generation for their quadrant, 12 was specialized in that area, and it was where various types of reactors were manufactured.
It was considered the brain trust sector by most in the city, and 12-3 bordered the single worst sector to live in the entire city: 11-3. The hazardous materials and biowaste processing sector. I looked out the window while the sector blurred past and wondered what sort of person Akosyn was out here, in meatspace.
A researcher, maybe? But they spent a lot of time on the game, even more than I did, which was sort of saying something. That would rule out being in manufacturing. Hell, most jobs, even. Maybe something technical-adjacent? Like a consultant, or something?
I didn’t even know if she was female; I was operating entirely on assumptions based on a virtual avatar. I know I don’t look anything like my former avatar. Well, at least, I shared more in common with my avatar than I used to. The thought gave me pause for a moment, and rather than being absorbed in my own thoughts, I glanced out at the interior of the rail car.
I was standing, leaning against a pole with my arm looped around it. The car wasn’t heavily packed at the moment; we weren’t near normal shift-change times. There was a trio of young men whispering among themselves while shooting furtive looks my way. A seated woman wearing extremely punkish clothing was giving me a dirty look. Several Sul’vari were chatting among one another in Dar’vari. A pair had their tails entwined: lovers, very close associates, or possibly family members. I could pick out tiny bits and pieces of what they were saying, but only a handful of words that didn’t make much sense to me.
I swallowed, suddenly nervous and self-conscious at the fact that I’d seen not one or two, but several different parties either stealing glances at me, staring, or leering.
That’s enough of that. Let’s see what is going on in the news.
I slipped my slate out of my pocket and started scrolling city and sector newsfeeds. One headline jumped right out at me under citywide news.
Wildlands Clade Trade Caravan Expected in Coming Weeks
I clicked my overgrown thumbnail against the screen and brought the full article up.
I’m going to have to start carrying around a damn nail file everywhere I go; they’re getting too hard to clip.
The security package I’d installed on my new slate was having a field day blasting away advertisements for sexual performance drugs, subscriptions to nutritional supplements, and pornography as the matrix page loaded. At last, the actual article stripped of numerous layers of nonsense was rendered on screen.
Axiom Ten informed the Civil Defense Authority this morning that a new trade caravan has been confirmed en route to Ark 3. It is originating from the former NSAC region, roughly 800 kilometers to the southeast. The caravan is much larger than average, but the size can be attributed to the extended period since the last caravan from this clade. A total of 68 vehicles and an estimated 400 individuals have set out. A little over half the convoy is cargo haulers, while the rest consists of logistics, engineering, and, of course, armed escorts and scouts.
Per Axiom Ten: “Transit conditions are currently favorable, with the greatest challenges being posed by groundwater accumulations. A Class 4 atmospheric disturbance zone generated by a maw event in NE 98 remains active along the convoy’s projected route, requiring a diversion around its western perimeter. Convergent megafauna is no longer present in the area, but environmental conditions remain classified as MODERATE-SEVERE. A sustained rate of travel of approximately 50 kilometers per day should be possible for the convoy under current conditions.”
The Civil Defense Authority has released the following statement on the convoy: “The CDA is presently well-equipped to respond to distress calls or major threats to the convoy within a 250-kilometer range from the Ark. A drone has been tasked with delivering communication equipment and up-to-date survey data provided by Axiom Ten, and predicted movement patterns of megafauna from Axiom Twelve. Lure operations remain the preferred response option for potential megafauna encounters, but are not presently required.”
CDA officials have not released communications between the Spire and the caravan, and no manifest details have been made available at this time. More details will be posted as this story develops.
I shifted my weight from one leg to the other as the lev began to slow. Someone jostled into me in a very familiar manner. I looked over my dark lenses at the young man, who visibly gulped upon seeing the glow. He extended one of the small denomination chits I’d left in my jacket pocket as sacrificial bait.
“S-sorry to bother you. I think this fell out of your pocket.”
He looked thin and a bit rough around the edges, and wasn’t wearing colors. Hard to say if he was hard up, or just working public transport for his next fix. Probably an equal chance of either. I glanced at the 50 credit chit and flashed him a smile I knew had quite sharp teeth showing. I checked my pocket without taking the chit.
“Not mine, but do be careful. Plenty of people might take offense.” I didn’t take my eyes off him as I slipped my slate into my inner pocket and fastened it closed. This was my stop.
“Yeah, uh, lucky day for me, I suppose. Seeya, lady,” he said, and all but bolted for the other end of the car.
It’s weird; I think I would have been more bothered before all of this. I’m not sure if it’s because my account has more digits than in the past, or if I’ve changed. Well, besides the obvious.
I exited the lev and was immediately hit in the face by breathtakingly hot temperatures. I’d grown up fairly spoiled in 6-3, where it was usually 26 to 29 degrees. The northwest quadrant of X-3 was the hottest part of the city, and temperatures were driven by the industries there. Vast atmospheric processing and cooling systems managed by the custodians kept the quadrant mostly habitable, but as the city’s population had grown, so had the activity levels of these sectors, and the temperatures had crept up over the decades.
10-3 and 12-3 were the borders of the true hell that was 11-3, where temps were usually locked at 50 degrees. Worse than the raw temperature was the 100% humidity and the air's toxicity, which required wearing full-face respirators, which were hot by nature. Life in 11-3 was strange, as were the customs of the people that came from there. Well, strange to the rest of us, at least.
Cooling loops were typically worn by residents of these sectors: highly suggested in 10-3 and 12-3, required in 11-3. They were slowly spreading in popularity across other X-3 sectors as well, the same way that holomasks had, which had also originated from 11-3’s cloistered culture. Lower-end, recyclable, and cheap loops were commonly called tourist loops, or so I’d heard. Simple affairs of a battery-operated water pump, clothing that was worn as an underlayer, that had lines and microscopic capillaries that distributed the cooling across the body. Ice was inserted into the water reservoir, and it would keep you cool for a couple of hours depending on conditions and activity.
The real deal loops were the kind that the residents of 11-3 wore under their full-seal suits that made life there not just possible, but comfortable. Since the residents needed to wear breathing apparatus full time, liquid oxygen and nitrogen were freely available at job and refill sites throughout the district. Their cooling loops used phase change intercoolers that ran on liquid breathing gases, which were then fed into their breathing systems. Super efficient, effective, and the kind of tech that gave me stomach butterflies. Extremely expensive too, but it was the kind of thing that was just a living expense, and good units could last for years without needing major repair or overhaul.
My attention was drawn to vendor booths and storefronts just outside the transit station advertising insulated slush pouches and tourist loops for sale. I knew that they were priced at absurdly marked-up rates to take advantage of people like me.
I didn’t handle the heat well to begin with, but I’d suffer through travelling several blocks deeper into the sector rather than be taken advantage of like that. It was a principle thing.
Six blocks on foot later, and I was dripping and breathing heavily, and I was already starting to feel the flush from heat exposure. I ducked into a corner store and immediately bought a one-liter slush to guzzle. I thought about buying a tourist loop, too.
The place wasn’t air-conditioned. Most places weren’t here; that was more of a thing I was used to from back home, too. The clerk, or maybe the owner, yelled at me, “¡Oye, señora! You look like you're about to pass out! Necesitas un cooling vest. ¿Qué, estás loca o qué?”
I’m pretty sure that’s “are you crazy or something?” I guess, maybe, but I don’t think I can find one that’s going to work with my body shape.
I looked at the wrinkled and gray-haired fellow after purchasing and taking several generous gulps of my berry explosion slush.
“Do you have… err…” I trailed off, trying to think of how I wanted to phrase this without sounding like a pervert. “Ones for just the back? Something I can wear under my jacket?”
He cursed and motioned for me to follow him. We were the only two people in the cramped, poorly lit store. He grabbed a slightly bulky item with a number of straps on one side and held it out to me. He gestured for me to turn around and pressed it against the back of my jacket.
“Este es solo para la espalda. Not as good, no dura mucho. Pero mejor que nada,” he told me after I turned back around.
He pointed at a digital clock on the wall. “Una hora, hielo picado. Then refill, sí?”
I sighed and bought the damn thing. He assembled it and filled it for me from a machine that looked nearly identical to the drink dispensers. I took my jacket off and strapped it on, and the suspenders-and-belt arrangement mostly worked without making me look comical. The thing was plain flat black and barely made a sound when it was running. My jacket went right over it without a problem, and it didn’t interfere with my belt too much.
The relief was immediate. For a cheap little thing, it did its job extremely well. I thanked him and dropped a generous chit in the tape-covered tip jar on the counter before leaving.
My slate gave me directions to Akosyn’s hab block. It was mostly unremarkable, the same brutalist polycrete and graffiti-covered block you’d see anywhere else. Even the street gangs were the same, just different faces and different motifs of the same shakedown racket.
As I was ascending the steps to the entrance of the building, one of the locals whistled sharply.
My heart froze in my chest for a split second. I wasn’t sure if I was being catcalled or if I’d been recognized by one of the gangers. I still had digits on my head, even if they were of the small fry variety. I turned deliberately to face them. I was being scoped out in more ways than one.
A heavyset woman with entirely too much facial ink addressed me. “You not from around here,” she said in a tone that could be mistaken for a conversational one.
I nodded. Playing games made things worse. Much worse. “Visiting a friend, coming in from five.”
Her eyes were focused on my belt. The grip of my puncher was visible with my jacket open the way it was, as was the knife. She flipped a toothpick between her teeth, then tisked at me.
“That’s a nice piece. Serious, but in a low-key way. Makes me think certain things.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or what she was insinuating, exactly. So I just responded with a simple “thank you.”
One of the goons with her snickered.
“I’ma be real clear with you,” she started, her tone all business, dead-eyed gaze locked onto my shades. “You do biz here, you pay a tax. You flatline someone, you pay a tax per head. I don’t gotta tell you that these colors aren’t on the menu.” She flicked the color block patch she had on her sweat-stained shirt.
Err… wait, what? They think I’m an enforcer or contractor, or something!
I tried to keep my face neutral. “‘Course. Really am just here to see an old ace of mine.”
“S’what they all say, chica. Don’t duck out on taxes, and we’re good. Enjoy your visit.”
I gave her a quick nod and made my way inside.
I’m not a gun nut; I’m just packing my Dive gun. Is this some old-school ghost shit, or something?
I mused over my appearance. I wasn’t trying to look like I was some hard-edged mankiller, but I suppose she was right, and that’s probably how most people out to do work would dress themselves up, too. Most people who were carrying a puncher for self-defense weren’t wearing a gun belt with spare mags and a carving knife. Clothing with ballistic rating was pretty mundane. Fashionable, even.
The elevator dinged, and I stepped in and thumbed the floor. There were a handful of clickers arranged in a neat line along the edge of the wall, where they were less likely to be stepped on. The synthetic cockroaches weren’t small, but they were pretty, in their own way. I probably looked strange to their tiny red eyes. All warped and stretched out from the lensing effect.
We arrived at my floor, and the clickers seemed to have been waiting for the same destination, as they ran and hopped over the gap between the elevator floor and the building floor. I stepped out, and the bugs ran into an air duct and out of sight.
I wonder what it’s like to be taking in information from millions, or probably more realistically–billions of bodies like that?
Walking down the stuffy hallway, I saw piles of boxes, some transport packages, and some insulated food packages, all stacked up next to the door I was bound for.
Weird…
I pressed the buzzer for the comm and security system. A scrambled voice came through a tinny, cracked speaker.
“Yea?”
I cleared my throat. “Blue ducks float backwards beautifully.”
A long-running inside joke between us: absurd ciphers.
The door clicked, and I stepped inside. I assumed that Akosyn was connected to a sim the same way I’d normally be, and I was correct.
The interior of the cube was spartan, even by my standards. There wasn’t much in it outside a nice-looking cradle, one hell of a deck, and some scattered foodstuffs.
There was incense burning, most of the smoke getting sucked up into the filtration system. It mostly covered the unpleasant smell in the background. Body odor of a particular kind, one that was rather metallic and that my enhanced sniffer picked out as wrong instantly. Not an unwashed odor; the smell of lightly perfumed soap was easily detectable.
The person I knew as Akosyn was lying in the cradle.
It didn’t take a reactor engineer to figure out that they were in rough shape, even by X-3 standards. She looked tall, but that could have been skewed by her overall shape. She couldn’t have weighed more than 45kg–not quite skeletal, but you could see bones in places where you shouldn’t. She was East Asian, but her skin was pallid, with serious bruising under her eyes. She had some light makeup on, lipstick, eye shadow and liner, a touch of blush, but it sort of highlighted whatever illness she had more than it did her features.
My heart twisted in my chest. She’d never once mentioned being sick in-sim, or given any indication that she was anything but a rock-solid person who you could trust with your virtual life. My aura sense was confirming the same thing my eyes were telling me: she had a weak aura that didn’t extend past the physical confines of her body, and one that looked skeletal instead of person-shaped. There was a sour, rancid taste mixed into it; it smelled like burning polymers and felt like wet slime. It was foul to my senses.
My eyes were drawn from the logo of her WoD tank upwards to her collarbone and nape, pulled there by my User senses.
Dark veins, black spots, bumpy and lumpy bits under her skin, clearly visible through the layers. Larger bulbs that were approaching the appearance of pustules.
Chrome Rot. I don’t remember the proper name for it, but that’s what it is, without a doubt. A death sentence for anyone in X-3. Nigh incurable, and terminal once it set in.
It was named such because it was caused by cybernetics, typically used cyberware. There were plenty of horror stories of getting it from brand-new, manufacturer-sealed product too, supposedly of the discount variety.
Cybernetics used specially-engineered nanomaterial coatings to prevent the body from going ballistic and attacking it with an immune response. Coatings that used different methods to fool or trick the body into thinking it belonged there. A type of biofilm had evolved in this environment–the gap between the implant and the body–that mimicked the properties of the coatings, which made it virtually invisible to the body’s defense systems. And because it was a biofilm, targeted treatments typically used for infections and different types of cancers weren’t effective. It would kill the outermost layer of the film off, but not the deeper layers, which would just continue to propagate the infection.
The only real treatment for it that most people here could afford was, frankly, brutal chemotherapies, and those only slowed the progression of the disease; they didn’t cure it. The only reliable cure was specialist mana medicine, which required you to be fabulously wealthy or for your medical lottery ticket to get pulled before it killed you. Chemo was a stopgap measure to try and buy you more time for a lottery or miracle. Of course, the chemotherapy for the rot was insanely toxic, and would kill you just as handily as the rot would, just slightly less lethal than the thing it was supposed to treat.
My eyes drifted from the visible markers of the disease to her arms. She had a medical bracer on her right forearm, numerous vital sensor readings being logged and monitored, and a vial of medicine loaded for a continuous feed.
Akosyn stirred, reaching up and disconnecting her datalink. I stood just inside the doorway awkwardly, tail looped around my feet on the relatively cool floor. At least it was decently cool inside her apartment.
She climbed out of her cradle and stood up, flicking some of her partially-shaved hair out of her vision. She was tall. Well, tall to me, at least, which really wasn’t saying anything.
“Akosyn?” I asked her as she held her hand out. I shook it.
She smiled. “Just Rui is fine.”
“Kiera–”
She interrupted, her eyes locked on mine. “Can I see?”
I swallowed, then took my borrowed glasses off.
“Wow, you’re so pretty! And it’s true, you really did have a late Awakening?”
That got me blushing like mad, and I nodded quickly.
We sat down at her tiny table and talked. Not business right off, but we got there. I admitted that I was extremely tempted to wear my own WoD shirt, but I’d been concerned about appearances. She told me that the guild was on the rocks and debating disbanding for the wellness of the members, since there was some kind of politically-driven assassination activity going on in-game.
It pissed me off enough hearing it that my tail decided that snapping its jaws for emphasis was warranted, which caused Rui to nearly jump out of her seat. That led to the story of how I wound up in my present situation. I had to take off my cooling pack, and she crammed it into an empty freezer while we chatted.
Rui had a somewhat serious problem, in the form of a persistent stalker. She’d moved twice and had been tailed each time, and suspected that her stalker was currently living in the building with her. He was a former guild member, and one who I remembered. The two had briefly been in an online fling on WoD, and she started getting bad vibes from him after they’d met up a few times in meatspace. He’d been following her around for over a year now, insisting that she needed him to help take care of her. He was constantly leaving unsolicited food and gifts at her door.
“I can’t even eat the shit; that’s the most annoying part, I think,” she admitted. “I can’t keep most solid foods down; I’m forced to drink these awful nutritional shakes that taste and feel like drinking wet chalk.”
She showed me the last 50 or so messages she’d gotten from him, mostly in the form of routed emails. The timestamps showed the oldest only dated back to yesterday.
We formulated a quick, dirty plan. It was a bit silly, but hopefully, it’d get the message across. She responded to his last email and asked for a red bean Brick.
I stood up, put my glasses back on, and tried my best to look like someone not to mess with.
Not long after, the door chimed, and a surprisingly well put-together and fairly large guy was standing outside on the cam feed. Rui stood back a couple of steps behind me as I opened the door.
“Hey, Rui–” his brows creased as his vision dropped down to me. He was the better part of half a meter taller than I was.
Embarrassing…
“–Who are you?” He asked after a beat, glancing between me and her. He had a pair of Bricks in one hand, bright packaging advertising delicious, filling, and balanced nutrition.
I took half a step forward, casually leaned against the doorframe, and tried to put forward my best dickish smirk. “I’m Kiera, Rui’s girlfriend.”
Targeted attack away, and… Bullseye! Boom, fucko!
Rui sniffed from behind me.
“...The fuck?” His eloquent reply came after an extended pause.
“You remember Datura, don’t you? Turns out I’m more into the fairer sex. Hate to break the bad news, Blaue.” She used his character name for an added jab. Pure disrespect.
He opened and closed his mouth several times. Rui stepped up next to me and put her arm around my shoulder. We shared a preplanned pair of cheek kisses.
He went red in the face and was stammering while mentally malfunctioning.
“Any questions? No? Okay, bye then.” I waggled my fingertips at him; we stepped back into the apartment and closed the door.
Rui turned to me, cheeks red and fighting to not burst into laughter. I grinned at her; we shared a hug.
“Think he’ll finally fuck off now?” I whispered to her.
“Twelve, I certainly hope so–”
Heavy, insistent pounding came from the other side of the door. “Rui! Rui!”
I glanced over at her, and she nodded.
I swung the door open, ready to either chew his ass out, or knock him the fuck out, whichever he preferred.
“You!” He shouted at me.
I opened my mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms to fuck all the way off.
He had a puncher in his hand and was bringing it up at me.
I acted without thinking, hooking my tail around Rui and bodily chucking her to the side and out of the line of fire. She screamed.
My eyes rattled in my skull from a trio of shots, and I felt them hit me. A mixture of pure adrenaline and irrational hate exploded inside of me, and I stepped forward and shoved him as hard as I could, and he crashed into the opposite hallway wall hard enough to leave a body-shaped dent in the wall. His skull clunked against the wall, his gun clattered to the floor, and he fell into a boneless slump.
I snatched the gun and snapped it in half, then threw the broken chunks of polymer down the hallway with a snarl. Rui let out a quiet whimper from inside the apartment, which snapped me out of my momentary fit of rage.
Fuckface was out for the time being. I slammed the door shut and went to check on Rui.
She was slumped on the floor of her wet closet, clutching her left side with her arms. Her face was tight in a way that shouted agony.
“Oh fuck, Rui! I’m so sorry! Are you okay!?”
“Knocked me over– fell against the toilet.” She was wheezing and rasping, and I didn’t like the way it sounded. “Think my, urgh, broke a rib.”
I was feeling a fierce burn in my abdomen as well, but I was a bit more concerned that she’d wind up getting pushed over the edge and just dying on me.
I focused my attention on what my senses were telling me. There was a curved line in her chest area that was out of alignment, and a pulsating splotch of color that tasted iron-y, and was slowly growing in diameter.
Fuck. I’m at fault for this. I need to get her to a U-Med.
“Come on, let me help you up. We’re taking you to a U-Med. Dick is out cold in the hallway; I broke his toy gun.”
“I’m fine,” she said, fighting back a cough.
“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding internally.”
I helped her back on her feet carefully, using her right arm to try and avoid further irritating her left side.
Blaue was drooling on himself in the hallway when we left; I had my arm wrapped around her waist, and she was putting her weight on my shoulders. She felt like she weighed as much as two ChocoBricks and a sack of chitin cracklins. I probably could have carried her without much issue, but I didn’t want to offend her on top of being responsible for her injury.
“What aspect are you, anyway?” she asked me in the elevator.
I sighed. “Vitality…”
She huffed a few times and told me not to make her laugh.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Datura, the heal-bot. The irony wasn’t lost on me.”
“Thanks for helping. I didn’t think it would come to that,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Not needed. We go back, and I’m just glad I was here for it, because psycho probably would have tried something else equally awful sooner or later.”
“Are you okay?” She was craning her neck to where I’d been prodding at my abdomen and grunting like a savage. I had a bullet in my gut, but was already working on fixing it.
“I got shot three times; two were stopped by my jacket, but I can already tell I’m going to have wicked bruises from it.”
We were stopped by the local muscle and prevented from passing.
“The fuck did I say?!” The heavyset woman’s voice was harsh.
“I didn’t kill anyone! I just knocked a dipshit out and slagged his puncher!” My protest fell on deaf ears.
“Marion, please, she’s taking me to a U.M. Can we settle up after?” Rui seemed to be on a first-name basis with the block boss.
It took me back to my own life and relationships, only a couple of months ago.
Marion spit angrily on the steps and waved us off, and her flock parted to allow us to pass.
Rui and I walked down the street and around the corner, where we were greeted with the welcoming sight of pristine red-on-white glow.
The two of us were welcomed in, and the pod sealed us in.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Chen, and… Ms. Voss?”
The slightly confused note in the VI’s voice gave me warm tingles up the back of my neck.
“Hello, U-Med. It’s just me. I go by Kiera now. Rui here needs some attention; I’m pretty sure she’s sprung a leak inside.”
“You are also wounded, Ms. Voss–”
I interrupted the VI, who I also decided to mentally designate as female. Entirely based on vibes, I’d never thought to ask it. “I’m fixing that myself at the moment. Let’s focus on her, please. I can wait.”
“Please stand by for a scan.”
I picked something up on my senses as U-Med worked. Like a breeze on sweaty skin, just a brief series of half-noticed sensations.
“You are correct, Ms. Voss. Ms. Chen has two left-sided rib fractures, one displaced, with associated pulmonary laceration and a developing left hemopneumothorax. Active biofilm colonization is present across the injury field. Spontaneous sealing is unlikely. Without intervention, projected respiratory decompensation will occur within sixty to ninety minutes.”
Rui covered her mouth and gave a few shallow coughs. I could tell by the way she jerked that the involuntary coughing was horribly painful. My own gut was burning, but worse than the burning was the intense itching. I was doing my damn best to ignore it and not poke around. I had my mana swirling around the area as it was.
“Okay, so treat her, please?” It was weird that I was having to ask U-Med in the first place.
There was a note of regret in U-Med’s voice when she responded. “I’m sorry, Ms. Voss, Ms. Chen. I can’t do that.”
I jerked my head over to the nature scenes on the display. “What the hell? Why not?”
Rui sighed.
“The ruling in Estate of Jones et. al. v. U-Med Medical Intervention Systems, Inc. required a hard-coded restriction on autonomous treatment of patients suffering from active Implant-Associated Invasive Biofilm Disease. I am not permitted to perform surgical repair, regenerative stimulation, invasive debridement, or biofilm clearance on patients. I am also forbidden from operating on patients where there is appreciable risk of contamination. Ms. Chen has infectious biological material throughout the wound area. I can provide oral medication, analgesics, and respiratory comfort measures, but they will not be sufficient to address the pulmonary laceration. Ms. Chen requires surgical intervention.”
“So what,” I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. “She just dies? And you’re okay with that?”
U-Med sounded more sad than anything when she responded. “No, Ms. Voss. I am not.”
Her voice softened. “Ms. Chen, would you like Ms. Voss to stand outside while we discuss palliative care and compassionate cessation?”
I was so mad that I wanted to hurt something or someone, so I did the logical thing and pinched the skin of my abdomen together where it was driving me crazy. There was a lump, and I squeezed it out of the oozing hole in my gut. Popping a big metallic zit. A few pieces of metal clattered to the floor of the booth. I felt better almost immediately, even if I was blinking back tears.
“Ms. Voss…” The VI actually sighed at me.
Rui looked up at me. She looked tired. Drained. I took my glasses off with a pair of sticky fingers. I knew what she was going to ask me before she opened her mouth.
“I’ll give you privacy, but do not make any final decisions. I got… wispy mana mumbo-jumbo powers; maybe I can fix it.”
She smiled. Her lips were tight. Tight and ashen.
“I mean it,” I said, my jaw muscles flexing and aching. “At least give me the chance to try. Nothing changes if I fail, right? Don’t take that away from me.”
The set of her eyes shifted, just slightly. Sharp eyes, ones that were so much more intelligent than I was. I was being ham-fisted with my attempt at manipulating her, but I was also just being honest. I’d rather try and cludge my way through fixing her bleeding lung than just have her gas herself. She was always someone who cared about the people in the guild more than she did herself. I knew it, and was exploiting it.
I think she knew, too.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I promise, I won’t. Not yet.”
I glared at U-Med’s faceless screen, then stepped out when it opened the booth.
Outside, the heat hit like a hammer blow, and I slid down the side of the booth and sat on the grubby sidewalk. I let my head thud back against the booth. This city, or just… life in general, was such a motherfucker. Win one day, get slapped straight in the mouth the next. I pulled my slate out with my clean hand and texted Vael a brief summary of what happened.
I’m sorry, Kiera. Please stay safe. I know you’ll do what you can, but don’t beat yourself up too much if you fail. You’re not trained or ready for complicated cases like that.
I fucking know it. I have to try.
I know you do, it’s part of the reason why I like you. Be back tomorrow, hopefully. Let me know how things go, please.
I wiped a few tears off my cheeks with my wrist and waited.
Someone with cybernetic arms, a grafted helmet, and an ugly-as-fuck face under the rim of the helmet stomped his way toward me. He was wearing combat boots, grubby pants, a trenchcoat, and nothing else. Bare-chested made sense in this oppressive heat. He looked like he had an axe to grind.
He came to a halt a meter in front of me; I didn’t bother looking up to meet his eyes. “Get up. We got a place to be,” he growled at me.
Yeah. I know what this is about, alright.
“Fuck off,” I told him, plain and simple. I was over this entire fiasco already.
“Not an option. Better for you if you don’t waste my time.”
I sniffed and rubbed my nose with my forearm, then climbed to my feet. I was eye-level with the top of his abdomen, where zero attempt had been made to hide heavy subdermal armor plating. Servos whirred as he flexed his fists.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be. You know the score,” he said between the two of us. I strongly suspected that someone with a whopper of a migraine had called up local muscle to fix an injured ego. It’s the kind of thing I would have done, had I more money than sense.
I brushed some loose hair to the side, folded Vael’s glasses and stuck them in my pocket, then looked up at him.
A thin strip of a visor was black and mirrored, and I could see the amber glow of my eyes burning in the reflection.
“Whatever you’re being paid, it’s not enough. I fought in Bloodsands. I snapped Wildland monsters' necks with my bare hands and drank the brains of a Guardian out of its skull like a slushy. I’ll rip your fucking arms out their sockets and send you to your chromedoc and mechanics with bills so high you’ll have wished that you just walked the other way.”
Buckethead flashed chrome teeth in an expression that was half sneer, half grimace. He clicked his tongue after half a beat.
“You’re that Visk lady, huh?”
I blinked and corrected him. “Voss.”
He snapped metal fingers in a clank. “That’s it. I watched that fight at the local hole. Lost money on it. No offense, but nobody I knew took those odds. Thought you looked familiar for some reason.”
The warped reflection of my face looked as blank as a bricked dataslate.
“Welp. This is awkward.” He coughed. “Suppose I’ll be delivering some bad news to my client. I appreciate you not just, y’know.” He made a vague gesture with a hand the size of my torso.
I reached into my secure inner pocket where I kept my actual chits and felt around for a bigger one. I was blowing my tip money like it was going out of style, but it was what it was. I held out a 500 credit chit between two fingers. Buckethead’s visor angled downwards.
I heard the booth open behind me.
“Let your client know if he tries this a second time, I’ll personally feed him into a biowaste macerator, feet first. He doesn’t seem to be getting the message, clearly. Enjoy a couple beers on me.” It was a good chunk more than just a couple beers, but I was viewing it as more of a peace offering for this guy getting his time wasted.
I wasn’t even sure I could beat him in a fight, built the way he was. But I’d sure as fuck make him regret having to kill me if it came to it. It was mostly bravado.
He took the offered chit, and a transparent plastic square snipped out of the top of one finger. A business card. I took it, and he lumbered off in the other direction.
High Impact Solutions
I pocketed it with a snort and stepped into the booth. Rui was still alive. For now, at least. That was a relief.
“Friend of yours?” She asked.
“Nah, someone sent by our mutual acquaintance. I told him it wasn’t worth whatever he was being paid.”
She blinked slowly at me. “And that worked?”
I shrugged. “He uh… recognized me from a hobby?”
Her eyebrows rose, but she pressed her hand to her chest before she could speak.
I rubbed the back of my head, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I uh… sorta got into pit fighting. It’s a long story.”
Who knew doing violence in front of thousands of people would pay off? Maybe Tax is onto something I’m not even clocking.
I turned to U-Med. Well, the display, at least. Since I was technically inside her. “So, what’s the story? Since she’s having a hard time speaking.”
A mechanical arm unfolded from the wall and put an oxygen line in her nostrils and looped it over her ears.
“Ms. Voss,” U-Med started.
“Just Kiera, please.”
“Kiera, Ms. Chen has consented to you attempting to treat her. If that doesn’t work, we did briefly discuss end-of-life planning,” the booth told me. I swallowed.
“I realize you’re probably still upset with me, Kiera, but I’d like to make a personal request. Would you please make your attempts here? It might cause undue suffering to move her further, and it is unlikely you will find another location meeting my sanitation standards.”
I took a breath and sighed. “I’m not mad at you, U-Med. I’m just strung out at the moment and on a short fuse. I just had to threaten someone with dismemberment as preventative medicine, and that’s not even the highlight of my day today. Okay, what’s next, then?”
“Ms. Chen has consented to you trying to do what you can. If you’re not able to help, we’ve established a plan of care for her remaining time.”
I looked over at her, and she nodded to me.
“Just so you know, I don’t have any training; I’m not a mana medical practitioner. I’ve been able to heal myself pretty well, but…” I sighed. “...I’ll do my best.”
She held her hand out, and I took it. She squeezed my fingers.
“Ms. Chen, if you’d be so kind as to remove your shirt, in the event I need to administer any care,” U-Med prompted.
I helped her with her nostril tube and taking the tanktop off without having to move her left arm too much. We worked it up and over her head and down her arm. She wasn’t wearing any underwear below her top, but my mind was racing and focused on what I was looking at.
The Chrome Rot seemed to be the worst around her left armpit, near her left collarbone, up the side of her neck, and then randomly scattered around the left side of her chest and ribs. It was like someone took a paintbrush and flicked black paint at her, and some of it had run, forming trails that connected spots together. She had a red blotch on her ribs that didn’t look all that terrible, along with some swelling.
The fact I could see her individual ribs made my chest tighten. She was breathing shallowly and doing her best not to move any more than needed. I’d heard broken ribs were pretty brutal in terms of pain, and I don’t imagine that having chunks of bone stabbed through your lung while you were still trying to breathe was any better.
She slid over on the bench, and I was able to get most of my butt on the bench next to her. My tail was getting in the way, but it was fine. My mouth felt drier than a blast furnace. I asked U-Med for something to drink, and it dispensed a small pouch of water. I gulped it down while trying to figure out what I was going to do here.
I could see and feel the broken ribs. Two of them, and the bleed, too. I could also feel the rot, which wasn’t heavy over where the breaks were, but present enough to put a thin, greasy, and rank layer of grease over my perception.
“I’m going to touch around the area. I can see where the injury is, and I’ll do my best not to irritate it, but the closer I can get, the better,” I told Rui. She nodded quickly. She still flinched when I touched her. The skin was warm around the break.
I closed my eyes and did my best to concentrate on filtering out all the things that I wasn’t concerned about. The heart and arteries were like glowing streetlights from the sex districts near Vael’s place, pulsing with brighter intensity with every beat. The lung was mostly a shadow, much more visible where the puncture was bleeding. I worked to ignore everything but the lung.
There was muscle, more solid than the lung was, bone, nerves, connective tissue. A small, dense cluster that I’m pretty sure was breast tissue.
“Okay, I’m going to try something,” I announced to the two. My mana had recovered some in the time spent getting ready, travelling, and then shooting the breeze with Rui. It was still low, and I was terrified of running out. It wouldn’t do to just do my typical approach and shove glow-juice at the problem. I had maybe a quarter charge in my battery bank. It would have to suffice.
I followed my training to channel my mana from my core out and down my arms to my palm locus, and I used mental image fingers to try and shape and guide the small amount I was putting out. To guide it to where I wanted–needed–it to go. Sensing the injury was easy with my hand on her side like this, and I didn’t have to get it to go very far.
I felt like maybe, just maybe, I could do this.
I guided the mana to the site, and I was trying to focus intent on regeneration. There was resistance with trying to get it to enter Rui’s body, but not a ton. Nothing like trying to push mana into another User, which was like trying to push water uphill.
I felt the response, I didn’t need to see it, although I could see the aura through my eyelids perfectly fine. The area was drinking up the mana and growing warmer; both visibly and through the rest of my combined senses.
Rui let out a soft groan, and I felt U-Med scanning regularly, using more focused and tight beams or fields. It wasn’t disrupting things, at least.
I continued to slowly feed mana through my hand into her side, and I felt like I was making progress on her lung, but it was slow. Dreadfully slow.
“Ms. Voss,” U-Med addressed me in a slightly concerned voice.
“Not now, U-Med, I don’t want to lose my concentration.”
I could keep this flow up for a good while. Ten, fifteen minutes, easily, I felt. I also felt like it’d probably take a good chunk of that time to accomplish the goal at the rate things were going.
“Ms. Voss. Kiera.” U-Med again. I ignored her.
A mechanical claw pinched my thigh rather firmly through my pants. That got my attention.
“Ow, fuck! What!?” I turned back to Rui, who looked like she was barely conscious, her eyes were only slightly cracked open, and she was leaning most, or all of her weight against the corner of the booth.
She looked worse. Way worse.
I looked down at my hand on her side. I could see Chrome Rot clustered around my fingertips, four dots with a fifth off to one side. Black branch-roots spreading out from the points.
“Wha- FUCK!”
No wonder it was like the world’s shittiest trickle charger. This SHIT has been slurping it all up!
I pulled my hand back and banged my head on the wall of the booth. “U-Med, I don’t know what to do; it was working, I think I almost got her bleeding situation fixed.”
“My sensors are indicating the same, but your attempt is also progressing the disease at a faster rate than you’re fixing the issue. You will kill her if you continue.”
My stupid fucking mana is like pumping steroids into the rot. What the fuck is the point!? Think, damn it. Manadocs must have to account for stuff like this. But how? I’m already targeting the area as finely as I’m able, and I don’t think I can reach from the other side. Not with how low my pool is, not that it would matter either way, the shit’s all over her body.
“I… I don’t know what to do, U-Med. I was trying to be as precise as I could; I’m low on mana as it is. My control isn’t great, I’m still–”
The VI’s articulated grabber patted me on the thigh like some elderly grandmother. “You’ve done what you could, Kiera.” Her voice was soft.
“I’m not giving up,” I told her, her as much as myself. “There has to be a different approach or something. Do you know anything? Ideas?”
“I’m sorry, Kiera. I do not have access to information specific to mana medicine. Because of restrictions and my ethics code, I can’t offer treatment advice on Ms. Chen’s condition.”
Anger flared up in my chest, but I batted it to the side. Getting enraged wasn’t going to help right now. I had to think my way through this quagmire.
“Fine. Can you give me medical advice?”
“Of course, Kiera.”
“Okay. Let’s say I have some kind of aggressive bacterial infection, and when I’m trying to treat it, I’m just making it worse. What do I do? Explain it to me like I’m an idiot. Please.”
“Here are the basics for treating a systemic infection. If treatment efforts are feeding the pathogen, stop feeding it. If treatment options are unable to discriminate between the infection and healthy tissue, reduce pathogen load before resuming treatment. Utilize the lowest effective dose to stabilize the patient.”
“I–” I opened and closed my mouth, failing to find the words I was looking for. “I already stopped treatment. Could I try and contain it?”
“If I were to try and select something analogous, the answer would be no. Containment risks spreading the infection.”
I drummed my fingertips on my thigh. They were still sticky with my own blood. My belly wasn’t hurting anymore, at least.
“If I can’t contain it, could I remove my infection?”
“Disturbing the site, such as by making incisions or injections, would contribute to the spread.”
I closed my eyes. This was making my head hurt. Of course Chrome Rot would be a motherfucker and a half. It wasn’t something that could be casually treated, after all. It was obvious, or should have been. Maybe I had my head stuck too far up my own ass thinking I could make a difference. A dim LED lit in the back of my frazzled brain.
“You said disturbing it by incision or injection. Letting rotten goop spill and spread. What if I didn’t do that? What if I just… I don’t know, grabbed it by its nasty little infected balls and yanked?”
“I am not authorized to advise treatment for–”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. What was it you said earlier? Debridement? That’s where they like burn or gouge shit out, right? Dead skin from burn victims? Isn’t that reducing pathogen load too?”
“You are not wrong, simply imprecise, Kiera. Debridement is controlled removal. What you are describing is uncontrolled extraction. If you cannot maintain containment, the distinction matters.”
A plan, probably a real dumb one, was forming in my head. I didn’t know if I could even do what I was going to try, but I’d make the attempt.
I looked over at Rui. “Can I try again, please?”
She gave the tiniest of nods. I didn’t need to have a medical license to know that this would be the last attempt.
Reduce the pathogen load, huh? Let’s see what fighting dirty can accomplish.
I touched my fingers to her side again. Zeroed in on my focus, blocking out the entire rest of the world in the process.
This time, rather than trying to isolate the bleed, I was going to lock in on the yuck itself. It was easier to target. Way, way easier, even. I just had to go sniffing around for its wretched scent-flavor. It was connected together with these little fibrous strings, from one bubble to the next, then ten more branches. Ten more bubbles, each with another ten branches.
I wasn’t even extending my mana out in any capacity yet, and I was already sweating trying to keep a map of the rot in my head. I mapped it out like I’d map out a labyrinth level in WoD.
Just so long as you continue turning in the same direction, eventually you’ll map out the entire perimeter and land back where you started.
It wasn’t that much in terms of mass, but I had my mental fingers wrapped around its throat. I pushed my mana out, my intent dead-set on a single task: grab the yuck firmly and prepare for a tug-of-war.
“U-Med. This might uh, make a mess. Can you help with that?”
“Sanitation and containment is a top priority. Thank you for the advance notice. Please standby.”
“Hurry,” I urged her.
Drawers clicking open and closed, precision mechanical arms whirring, crinkling of plastic, or wound dressing, or something.
“Ready to proceed,” she informed me.
Very, very carefully now.
I started at the outermost extremities, the hundreds or thousands of little feelers that were spread all over her back, side, neck, and deeper into her body. I grunted and panted with the effort of tracking it all and pulling it back into the main mass of nodules and knots.
Rui wheezed, a wet, horrible sound.
There was a clump of the shit in her armpit that was the largest single mass, and the surrounding area was fairly dense, too. I started mentally winding it up like a ball of wires and massing it there. More pulling, slow, steady, methodical.
Rui let out a series of pained groans, and her hand locked around my forearm in a death grip.
“Get the fuck out of there, you… fuck!”
There was a downright foul squelch and pop, followed by splatters and lumpy chunks hitting thin sheets of polymer. Rui let out a hoarse scream, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I didn’t know that I’d be able to get my hands back around all of it, and my mana pool was approaching running-on-vapor levels.
My own chest was heaving with ragged panting; I felt like I just ran six laps around a block in 30-degree heat. There was just a little bit left, but I was running so ragged that my hands were shaking. I think Rui might have passed out. I had to get the last of it.
And… there!
There were entire droplets of mana left in my circuit. I rammed them through my arms and into Rui’s chest where the bleed was, and I felt them diffuse outward like I was casting a net at the problem. I was pretty sure the makeshift bandage I threw at the problem stuck.
I opened my eyes to the stinging burn of my own sweat and slumped into my own corner, panting and limp as soggy street noodles. U-Med was scanning rapid-fire. She had held up a makeshift gutter of plastic sheeting that drained into a neon red biohazard container. The sheeting looked like a serial killer’s idea of a wild bender. Some blood splattered, but mostly bits of black, brown, and slime-green colored mucous and tissue.
The VI was already collecting up the sheeting and scrubbing every last stray particle from the interior. I hadn’t noticed it in the moment, but we were in a wind tunnel of sorts, with air blasting in from the bottom and exiting through vents in the top.
A silver metal arm held out what looked like an oversized tablet. I reached for it, and the arm pulled back. “Let me, please. It is not safe to handle any food or drink until we’ve sanitized your hands.”
I let a fucking robot feed me with my tongue stuck out. Artificial cherry flavoring and an explosion of sweetness.
“What is that?” I asked with my mouth still full of powdery chunks.
“Oral glucose, to boost your energy level.”
“Thanks,” I muttered and looked over at Rui. She was out cold, but U-Med was attending to her.
“Why now?” I asked her while she stuck some wide-bore IV lines into Rui’s neck. That looked painful, but was probably more than warranted. Blood and other fluids were flowing almost immediately.
“You reduced her infection to below critical thresholds, so I’m able to work on her now without risk of contamination.”
I was having a hell of a time keeping my eyes open, I was beyond exhausted. U-Med was dipping my hands into some solution that fizzled and tickled. Probably the equivalent of battery acid. When they were declared sanitary, I fished my slate out of my pocket and tapped out a message to Vael.
Managed to save her. It was ugly. nullbrained ex sent a rental bruiser after me, managed to convince him otherwise without a fight. I’m grabbing her shit and dragging her back with me, she’s in rough shape, and I don’t trust fuckhead to not try something.
My phone buzzed moments later.
Of course. Trusting your judgment. I’ll let Ellen know to keep eyes peeled for people lurking. She’d probably like it if he turned up.
I snorted. She probably would enjoy mauling a creep. I was pretty sure mauling creeps was in her job duties.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked the medical VI.
“It is a relatively minor and easily treatable injury, Kiera. Her poor condition before was the primary driver of the severity. I will need to keep her here to drain fluids, and she needs a transfusion due to chronic anemia. You are welcome to stay; two hours should be sufficient time to get her blood counts back into a safe range.”
I yawned. “I won’t argue with a nap right about now. I’m fighting off sleep.”
“You would also benefit from an infusion. Do I have your permission to render care?”
Another yawn. “Oh, uh, sure.”
She stuck an inflatable cuff around my neck that functioned like a pillow, and I had a line stuck in the back of my hand. I glanced over at Rui. Her color was already looking better.
I closed my eyes to rest them for a moment, and was gone.