This short story takes place before Bloodhunters v1: Bad Blood. If you enjoy it, please consider purchasing my other books here.
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“She’s not going to make it,” the male voice said.
“I’ll call it,” the woman’s voice answered. “Time of death at… wait…”
Yeela gradually became aware of the heart monitor, beeping by her left ear. First it was slow, but it gradually picked up the pace.
“Looks like she’d going to live after all,” the man said. “Good work, doctor.”
“You know this means you owe me five credits,” the woman answered, and both voices laughed. “Let’s stitch ‘er up.”
Yeela shouldn’t have been hearing any of this. The anesthesia should have kept her out for at least another two hours. But part of her condition prevented her body from processing drugs consistently. Fortunately the anesthetic was still working against the pain – this time – but she could still feel the pressure of the tools moving around in her chest, and it seriously creeped her out. She wanted to scream, or at least politely ask for a stronger dose of anesthesia, but she was paralyzed.
This wasn’t the first time she’d come back from the brink of death. Yeela had been dying for more than three years now. This was her third operation this month, and she’d woken up during every one of them. When she’d told the doctors of her experience, they’d laughed it off, and told her she’d dreamed it. The last time, after the operation was complete, the staff had used her seemingly-unconscious body as a teaching aid for some gynecology students. The memory still had her fuming, but she had no legal recourse. She was getting these operations for free, and part of the agreement involved signing away most of her rights. She could either be a prop, or she could die. There were no other options.
Karouc’s disease was so rare that Yeela was only the third identified case. The other two victims, including Karouc herself, were now dead, and Yeela didn’t expect to reach a ripe old age either. As her bodily functions took turns shutting down, her cyborg implants took over. The doctors were excited to have a living test subject, so they could try out their newly-designed implants. Having her around meant the hospital received tons of grant money. It was dehumanizing, being treated more like a lab rat than a patient, but at least the hospital had a vested interest in keeping her alive.
Until they didn’t.
“I’m afraid we’re terminating your contract,” Director Leem said, not an ounce of emotion in his voice.
“My contract?” Yeela asked, incredulous. “I’m not some blastball player having a bad season. Your treatments are the only thing keeping me alive.”
“Our investors are no longer interested in researching a disease that has so far only affected three people,” the Director said. “They’d rather funnel their money into more… marketable cures.”
Yeela wasn’t sure what to say. Her skin went cold, and she felt like she was no longer actually present, but rather watching this discussion on a medical drama. “What am I supposed to do?” she heard herself say, though it was more to herself than to the Director.
“There are other research centers on Cytrine Delta,” he said. “I’m sure if you send out enough requests, one of them will be happy to take on your case. And if not, they might be interested in buying your body for research purposes, once the disease runs its course. Do you have a next-of-kin who could use the credits?”
Once again, Yeela was speechless. The conversation felt so surreal. Director Leem spoke as if they were talking about a broken-down hovercar. Yeela couldn’t look at his impassive face anymore, or she’d break down in tears. She glanced around his lavishly-decorated office, as if hoping the answer to all her problems resided on a knick-knack on Leem’s bookshelves. He had a lot of baubles, and some of them looked more expensive than Yeela’s most recent operation.
She’d known she was dying for a while now, and she’d thought she’d come to terms with it. She’d gotten used to being on borrowed time, living operation to operation. She tried not to entertain too much optimism, but deep down, a little ball of hope lived in her heart. Logically speaking, if a cure was possible, it would eventually be found. Every day she lived, the doctors were one day closer to finding that cure. All she had to do was keep breathing until then.
But that was ten minutes ago. With the breaking of this contract, there would be no more research into Karouc’s disease. As of right now, Yeela had an expiration date.
Or did she? Yeela stood up, a look of determination forming on her face. “I want every bit of data you have on my disease,” she said. “Every test you’ve run, every bioscan.”
“That’s your right,” the Director said. “I’ll have my secretary get you a data drive. But Yeela… you really should just accept the inevitable.”
Yeela glared at him. Her eyes were wet, but there was fire behind them. “Not on your life,” she said.
Yeela spent an hour every day looking up research centers, and sending them requests for consideration. Within a month, she’d contacted every medical facility on the planet. When there were no more options on Cytrine Delta, she sent requests to labs on other planets. She only got a handful of replies, and most of them started with the words, “We regret to inform you…”
But that was only an hour a day. She spent the rest of her waking hours studying medical textbooks. Yeela had been a mechanical genius all her life. Once when she was six, she stripped her father’s hovercar for parts so she could build some anti-gravity skates. That hadn’t gone over so well with her parents, but they’d still spent her youth encouraging her to learn more about computers and engineering.
Her parents were gone now, as was the family home. Yeela lived in her father’s old business, an auto repair garage, sleeping on a cot. Though the building had once belonged to the family, she was basically squatting in it now. Fortunately, no one seemed interested in buying the property, or any other property on the street. Most of the buildings in the area had been claimed by squatters, and with the amount of time Yeela spent at the hospital, she’d had to rig up an elaborate security system to keep the garage from getting claimed by someone else.
She earned a meager living doing minor repairs on hovercars and small appliances, making just enough credits to buy food. With all her ailments, she just didn’t have the strength to operate a full-time business. She was going to have to tighten her belt even further now, because she intended to put all her energy into conquering Karouc’s disease.
She already had implants that manufactured the chemicals her body was no longer able to produce. Having studied the schematics of these implants, she could easily upgrade them. She wasn’t going to cut herself open to install them, but she was more than willing to attach new devices to her skin, where they would be easier to tinker with. She’d look like a cyborg, but she was long past vanity at this point.
When you got down to it, the human body was just a squishier kind of machine. She’d spent her youth learning how engines and circuits worked, now she’d have to apply that knowledge to biological systems. Sure, the sight of blood made her nauseous, even after all her operations, but she’d just have to start thinking of it as bright red coolant.
As time went on, she would have to add more devices to correct for her loss of motor skills, and to replace any other functions her body could no longer do. If she reached the point that she was too weak to walk, she’d graft an exoskeleton onto her body. If her hands began to tremble so much that she was unable to perform her own upgrades, she’d build helper drones. As long as she had a functioning brain, she’d survive.
She’d do whatever it took. It was her only choice. She was only seventeen, and realistically, she probably wouldn’t live to see twenty. But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. All she needed was data and time.
Well, that and credits. She would need lots and lots of credits. But she had a plan for that as well.
Villip Leem, Director of Operations at Starpoint Medical Innovations Hospital and Research Center, prepared for bed in his luxurious home. He’d inherited most of his wealth, and he’d used those credits to become a controlling stockholder at SMIHRC. In his self-appointed position as Director, he’d managed to steer the company away from financially unsound decisions, and damn the bleeding hearts who accused him of being “cold-blooded.” His subordinates often praised him for his ability to make difficult decisions, but he didn’t find the decisions all that difficult. The hospital was a business, not a charity, and a business had to keep its eyes on the bottom line in order to keep its doors open. Especially on Cytrine Delta, where so many companies went belly-up every day.
Dressed in his Kalaran silk pajamas, Leem slipped between the imported sheets of his emperor-sized bed and turned off the lights. He would sleep well tonight, knowing he’d spent another full day maximizing company profits. Just as he was about to drift off, he heard a crash from downstairs. He jumped out of bed, grabbed the comm unit off of his nightstand, and ran down the stairs.
As he reached the first-floor foyer, he heard buzzing from every direction. Dark shapes flew past his head, the size of birds. He turned on the light, and shrieked at what he saw. His house was swarming these… things. They looked like flying spiders, but much larger. As one flew past his head, he panicked and ran back up the stairs. From the second floor landing, he watched the creatures, ready to run if any came upstairs.
It was hard to get a good look at them because they were so fast, but the more he watched, the more details he was able to discern. They weren’t bugs or birds, but many-legged drones. They looked like flying skeletal hands, with several jointed fingers hanging from a single Levatech ball.
As he watched, these intruders flew around the house, picking up expensive knick-knacks and carrying them away. They didn’t appear to be armed, and they hadn’t reacted to his presence earlier. Now feeling a bit safer, he called the police from his comm unit and carefully stepped back downstairs.
The drones swarmed past him, altering their flight paths to avoid his head, but none acted in a threatening manner. He followed their route into the dining room, where he saw a broken window. Why didn’t the alarm go off? he wondered. He’d have to worry about that later. Drones continued to fly in through the broken window, while others flew back out, carrying valuables.
“Clever,” Leem said out loud, standing up straighter. Whoever set this up had to have been a genius. Part of him wanted to hire this person for his innovations department, but he wasn’t that forgiving. They’d be lucky if he didn’t have them killed.
Stepping back into the foyer, he grabbed an umbrella from the stand beside the front door. Swinging the umbrella like a club, he tore through the foyer, trying to bring some of the intruders down. However, they were too fast for him, easily dodging his clumsy swings. Then he ran into the dining room and opened the umbrella, using it to block the hole in the window.
The drones paused for a moment, recalculating. Then Leem heard another crash from the other side of the foyer. The drones turned and headed for the living room, where another window had been broken. Now livid, Leem ran to the kitchen, where kept an energy pistol in the pantry. He returned to the foyer and started firing at the swarm.
He was a lousy shot, but he managed to bring a couple of them down. As soon as the first one hit the floor, new drones stopped coming in through the windows. The remaining drones fled the house, regardless of whether they currently carried any valuables.
Now out of breath, Leem sat down on the foyer steps and examined one of the downed drones. If its software was hackable, the police would be able to find its point of origin. And if they couldn’t do it, Leem’s own people could, guaranteed. Still breathing heavily, he set down the drone and waited for the police.
For all its flaws, Cytrine Delta had a decent prison system. Sure, the cells were cramped and the food was bland, but they had an excellent educational program, allowing inmates to learn new skills that would help them get decent jobs once they were released. If there were any jobs left by then, anyway.
But more importantly, at least to Yeela, was their medical program. Under planetary law, prisons were required to provide inmates with the highest level of medical care. They weren’t allowed to cut corners, even if the prisoner had special needs or rare diseases. Yeela was put back on an experimental research program, with around-the-clock care. This time, her caregivers wouldn’t be allowed to break the contract. As long as Yeela remained in prison, the treatments would continue.
Yeela sat in her cell, reading a book on rare diseases. She’d been given an eight-year sentence, and she wondered if she’d live long enough to see the end of it. Just in case, she was already considering ways to blow her parole hearings, and contemplating petty crimes that would put her back in prison. She didn’t love prison life, but at least it was life.
And really, when you got down to it, how much freedom had she actually had before?
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