She gives me a sleepy nod. Once I have taken the blood and bandaged her up, I drag over the oxygenating machine. This machine delivers air for longer periods than the simple breathing apparatus. Her hands swat at me, but I am firm with her. The rattling in her chest is ever-present and I want to make sure she does not suffocate. I put the mask around her nog and affix it so it stays in place.
“Rest, lilapetal,” I urge, running my fingers through her silky tresses. “Let me work so I may try and help you.”
Her eyes shine with thankfulness and then she flutters her lids closed. I get right to work creating different tests from her blood sample so I may look at them under the micro-viewer. I would like to test some of our older medicines that the microbots long took over in hopes to maybe find something we have overlooked. Perhaps the microbot technology is too advanced for the humans’ bodies. As I work, my mind drifts to when I was a young mortling, playing in my father’s office.
“Sector 1779,” Father says to his apprentice, Lox. “We need to take him to Sector 1779.” Then, Father begins packing his bag with his supplies and work essentials.
“Sector 1779?” Lox asks.
I look up from the glass bottles I had been pretending to fill with magical medicines to heal my imaginary ailments. “What is Sector 1779, Father?”
“Not a place for young mortlings,” he says. He turns to Lox and pulls off his glasses to rub at his eyes. Father works so hard and is always so tired. “Lox, ready the patient. We will take him to Sector 1779. They are the only facility with a surgical bot.”
“Surgical bots are outdated technology, sir,” Lox argues.
“Not everything gets better with newer technology,” Father tells him. “The microbots do what they are programmed to do. But if they don’t know what they are supposed to do, then they cannot do it.”
“I don’t understand,” Lox mutters.
“It means I need to do it myself. I will man the surgical bot and do exploratory surgery. It is the only way.”
“Sir!” Lox cries out. “Such procedures have been forbidden for years!”
My father clasps his hand on Lox’s shoulder. “Our patient will die unless we figure out another way. Pack our things and ready the patient. We will leave at nightfall.”
“Where is Sector 1779?” I ask.
Father walks over to me and ruffles my hair. “It is about three solars’ worth of a treacherous journey across The Graveyard to the other side of Bleex Mountain. Too far for a youngster like you to travel. Perhaps when you are older, I will take you there to show you the dusty old surgical rooms. It has long been abandoned, but certainly not forgotten.”
A banging on the door startles me from my work. When I drag my eyes from the micro-viewer and my sample, I see Commander Breccan glaring at me from the other side of the glass.
Rekk.
Ignoring him, I tweak the magnifiers by 1000 to study the biological code of her blood cells. I do not find anything right away and my intuition tells me it is not so simple as finding a deformity in her blood cells and reprogramming the microbots. I wanted to rule it out nonetheless.
With a sigh, I run some more tests on her blood, until I hear an obnoxious clanking. Jerking my attention to the door, I am annoyed to see Oz. If Oz is here, that means Breccan is going to have our faction’s mechanic try to dismantle the door.
I do not need this distraction.
“Good solar, Calix,” Uvie chirps, despite my manual override to shut her down. I open my mouth to tell her silent mode again, but Sayer’s familiar voice takes over. “What the rekk are you doing, Calix?”
“What I have to,” I grumble. “Silent mode.”
He chuckles, his voice echoing over the speakers. “You can’t silence me, you piece of rogshite.”
“Then go away. I am working.”
“Breccan is not happy with you,” Sayer tells me, as if I do not already know this.
“I am aware,” I snap back. “Silent mode.”
It goes quiet for a moment, and I let out a breath of relief that maybe I have gotten him to go away for at least the time being.
Rolling away in my chair, I slide over to my cabinet with my father’s old notes. I pull open a drawer and start thumbing through the files. I hunt for Sector 1779, but nothing is labeled by that name. Closing my eyes, I try to remember any details about the patient that sent him that way. What was his name? What was he ailing from?
Belin.
It comes to me just like that and I quickly locate Belin’s file. Once I flip it open, I find mountains of notes. Belin, twenty-two revolutions old, suffered from an adverse reaction to a sticky fernus. The plant, when in contact with, emits a pink powder. If ingested or breathed in, the powder changes its molecular structure, turning into a sticky paste. Galen has managed to create a substance from its powder that we use when patching our equipment, facility windows and cracks, and our minnasuits. He removes the harmful toxins in the powder form by sifting out the tiny pink crystals and then turns it into the paste. But in the past, before modern technology, the sticky fernus was a problem for Belin. My father took him away to Sector 1779, the mort struggling for air and on his deathbed, and when they came back, Belin was a new man.