Chapter Four: Strain and Closure — Part 5

Robert settled in close to the monitor, reading the tiny glowing print through the muck-stained clear plastic cover. As was standard procedure for biological stasis units, the casket’s memory coil had the personal information of its occupant programmed into it. Stored in it was also basic physical condition of the individual, and a monitor meant to help determine if the person in question might somehow be alive. Loka in the casket had a lot in common with Robert’s Loka, but five years and a change in senses kept him from being absolutely certain. Robert read the information aloud.

“‘Loka 09812, Class Three Citizen: Humble Servant to the Satrap and her needs.’ There are a lot of Class Three citizens, and none of them have last names. If it is the Loka I know, they changed her number when they brought her here. That could be her face, though.”

“They always change the numbers, and the time of her internment matches up.” Susan said.

She activated the touch pad, and the life sign monitor brightened so Robert could see it better through the thin layer of gunk. The Casket’s monitor showed the life signs were in the ‘dead’ area of the rhythmic tester. An occasional flicker in the monitor suggested power disruption – or a very weak vital sign. Susan worked on the body, could feel heat building within it, though the heart was still too weak for even her senses to register. Still, something told her to continue working.

“She’s deceased, according to your sensors. Why are you doing this?” Robert asked.

“My guess is that the casket readings are faulty.” Susan said. “She’s probably very much alive.”

Susan worked across the sensors, being cautious enough to use a manual protocol: she didn’t want the computer’s revival systems to replace the efforts of her hands. Most people wouldn’t have cared, would have put her on the dead list and opened the casket quickly, which, if she were badly injured enough, would have killed her straight off. Loka’s heart began to sputter violently, and Loka’s nose and mouth started to exhale a continuous stream of mist as the pressure of her body stabilized with its surroundings. Needing to get in around to the other side, Susan pushed the casket lid back manually until it fell back and then sunk down to the ground. Now that she was breathing on her own, Susan was careful to remove the intravenous needles from Loka’s arms, legs, and face so the machines could no longer interfere with her healing.

What lay inside should have been dead. Her face was shattered; her eyes crushed and swollen closed. On Earth, those eyes would never have seen again, and the face that housed them would never have regained its symmetry. A chain had been brought against her chest and arms with such force that they had cracked the bones underneath, and tore the skin rather than just bruised it. The bruises caused by the links were visible and layered, as if she had been beaten over the course of several weeks. Underneath her skin, her bones were misshapen and distorted, and every little cut oozed yellow and white puss. Her wrists were a swollen conflagration of infected bruises and jagged bones. The edges of those bones hadn’t pierced her flesh, but had been allowed to heal and be broken again. Her shins and forearms were cracked and swollen, and every major joint had been dislocated at one point or another. She looked like a swollen and disjointed monster, lying naked in a casket that would not let her die.

Robert’s eyes went up and down her body, looking at cuts and scars with anger and disgust. He could smell her suffering and fear, and could smell that it was indeed the woman he had loved. His voice became clipped, his thoughts turning vicious, vengeful, and cold.

“It’s her.” Something in Robert snapped, and he wanted to kill Loka, to end her suffering, to end his own responsibility for her pain.

Susan ignored Robert’s self-loathing, and went to work. Loka’s arms, legs, and neck were still bleeding from chaff marks. Her festering wounds, most of which were caused by various implements of torture and restraint, were puckered at the edges. Several of Loka’s vertebrae were cracked, and Susan set her neck first, deftly, and with no consideration for the paralysis she might have caused. The cryogenic sleep had kept Loka from healing, and from dying. Angered at the inhumanity, Susan kept her thoughts on her duty as a physician, setting broken bones with super human strength and draining infected wounds of what felt like gallons of puss. Robert wondered at Susan’s efforts, and raised his hands in disgust. She put her hand in an unclosed wound, found a kidney missing. A quick scan with one of her instruments confirmed that the kidney was all that had been taken from Loka. All the remaining organs were intact, though some of them were badly bruised.

“Why bother? Let her die. Even if she lives she’ll need constant attention.” Robert said.

“For a time. The symbiont may yet save her, and heal her.” Susan said. “We are working on this. We are trying.”

“Why are you doing this?” Robert asked.

“It’s my duty to heal the injured and tend to the sick.” Susan said, putting a hand deep into a gouge, removing a piece of chain that had broken into the wound.

Robert let out a grunt of exasperation. “You’ll lose me to her, you know that don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you be happier for it?” Susan said, not looking up from her work. “Love isn’t so simple, anyway.”

Robert touched Susan’s face, and then put his other hand on Loka’s cheek, and he realized suddenly, exactly what Susan meant, and why Susan acted as she did. Loka’s skin, as if by Susan’s touch alone, had already regained a healthier color. It was more than touch, though that kept things moving smoothly. Susan was using her own, previously untapped powers to heal the girl, guiding the symbiont as it infected her tissues. Robert cried, confusion tearing at his soul. He had to have vengeance on somebody: he had to absolve his responsibility. He couldn’t find peace in any of his thoughts.

Robert went looking for the Satrap. She proved easy enough to find. Laura Ivanski fought against a horrible fever, and though she should have been delirious, her mind was keen enough to keep tabs on the reality around her. Because of her title and lucidity she was under strict watch. Robert snagged Laura up from her seat, dragging her palsied body to Loka’s side. Laura stared blankly into the casket, at the mess of a person Susan worked so fervently to heal. Feeling dizzy, Laura let her head fall forward, and her eyes involuntarily closed. They would have stayed that way, if not for Robert.

“Wake up, bitch.” Robert shook her back to consciousness.

“Be nice.” Susan warned.

“What is it you want from me?” Laura could barely talk, and was in no condition to fight.

“Her.” Robert said, forcing Laura’s head around to look at Loka. “Tell me about her.”

“She was just something nobody wanted. You can have her. She won’t be much good on this world to anybody. She’s a pretty one, isn’t she?” Laura said.

Susan wondered how anybody could see Loka as pretty, beaten and disfigured as she was.

“The Banks listed her as dead.” Robert said.

“They always do, and the ones that do live get their number changed, but you know this because Susan told you already. If they live, they get sent far away where nobody knows them. It keeps people from looking for their friends, and from hoping for their safe return.”

“It keeps people hopeless.” Susan said, more under her breath.

Robert tossed Laura aside, unable to be disgusted with her, unable to respect her.

“Fuck the Banks.” He said under his breath, walking quickly into the fog.

Laura smiled weakly, half buried in mud. “More power to you, ambitious young man.”

She might have drowned if Susan hadn’t reached back with her toes and pulled Laura’s face out of the muck it was slowly sinking into. At some point after that, people came and went, taking Laura with the others who looked like they were going to live. Susan lost track of it all, her entire focus, currently, on Loka.

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