Heavy tires slammed into a crater in the surface street. The transport jolted, throwing Caleb against the metal bench in the rear cabin.
He braced his boots against the floorboards. Thick gauze covered the cut beside his right collarbone and reached up the side of his neck. Each jolt shifted the dressing. Pain pulled through the damaged shoulder whenever he tried to hold himself still.
A First Division field medic steadied himself against the wall and stripped the wrapper from a bag of nutrient fluid.
"Hold your arm still," the man ordered over the diesel engine. "You lost two pints on the platform. I need to push a stabilizer before you go into hypovolemic shock."
He uncapped an IV needle.
Caleb watched the bag swing from the medic's hand. The hunger under his ribs tightened. He had felt fuel go into rebuilding bone before; he had no way to predict what this much would do to the open wound.
If the muscle started closing while the man held his arm, Caleb wouldn't be able to call it a bad scan.
He knocked the medic's hand aside and pulled his left arm against his stomach.
"No artificial coagulants," he rasped. "Lower-sector reaction. I'll vomit all over your deck."
The lie came out rough enough to sound like an effort.
"Your blood pressure is dropping." The medic kept hold of the needle. "Give me your arm."
"Wrap it tight. I'll drink a ration shake at the barracks."
The truck hit another hole. Caleb clamped his good hand over the dressing before it could lift.
The medic looked from that hand to the blood already drying on the bench. He dropped the needle into the plastic bio-bin and pulled compression tape from his rig.
"If you bleed out in the waiting room, it goes on your own file."
He wound the tape across Caleb's collarbone, pressing hard enough to make him bite the inside of his cheek. Caleb let him. The pressure kept the wound from opening further.
When the man stepped back, Caleb rested his head against the vibrating steel wall. The repaired ribs held, but the shoulder still ached and the cold under his sternum kept spreading. Refusing the bag hadn't made any of that easier.
***
The transport slowed at the security gates of the First Division medical compound. Its engine settled to an idle. The medic climbed out to flag down a triage team.
Caleb reached for the cracked helmet beside him with his left hand. He tapped the visor, bringing the ledger through his optic implant.
It was the first of the month. Whatever happened in the ward, the collection notice at home would still be due.
One hundred and fifteen thousand viewers had watched the tunnel broadcast. After the Guild's twenty-two percent streaming tax, the engagement settlement came to more than eighty thousand credits.
The banking page opened in pale blue.
[TUNNEL ENGAGEMENT SETTLEMENT: 84,200 NET; CREDITED]
Caleb opened the family debt account. The transfer control worked.
He entered fifty thousand against this month's interest and confirmed it with his left thumb. The receipt cleared. Thirty-four thousand two hundred remained from the tunnel payment.
He checked the account again. The interest notice was marked paid. His mother would not have collectors at the door over that installment, and his brother's machines would stay where they were.
Caleb let his head fall back against the wall. His breath fogged the glass.
He had dragged himself through the mud, strained his arm, and nearly bled out for that money. The fight had bought his family time. He kept the receipt open until the transport doors clattered apart.
Two orderlies brought a gurney to the truck. One supported his left side while the medic kept pressure on the dressing. Caleb tried to help them move him and got no useful strength from his right arm.
They lowered him onto the mattress and wheeled him into the compound.
***
The paper gown left most of his arms bare. Caleb lay on the crisp white bed in the First Division recovery ward, shivering hard enough to make the IV tubing tremble.
The line in his left hand carried a slow maintenance drip. It did nothing for the hollow pull in his chest. His fingers grew cold against the sheets.
Nell sat in the steel chair beside him. Her scarred leather jacket hung over its back. She leaned forward in her dark-gray uniform, forearms on her knees.
"When it came back, there were wounded recruits and medics all over that platform. It passed them to reach you."
Caleb swallowed. The movement hurt along the side of his neck.
"I told you. It's whatever is inside me. It wanted it."
Nell rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"We ran the scans when you got back. Deep-tissue MRI, thermal, X-ray. Nothing we can identify as a second organism. That doesn't tell me why it wanted you."
"I felt it grab my bone." He turned far enough to look at her. "It used Barrett's voice. It took my blood. Then it called me fuel in a voice I hadn't heard before. Your scans are missing something."
"I heard it too," Nell said. "The doctors think trauma explains what you feel under your ribs. It doesn't explain the creature. I'm taking statements from the rescue team, and I want another blood sample before they give you anything else."
"He's a disposal worker in a uniform."
Suzu sat upright in the adjacent recovery bay. Her ruined white armor was gone. A carbon-fiber brace held her left leg straight beneath the blankets, and she had pulled her hospital tunic smooth across her shoulders.
"You're entertaining the delusions of a civilian," she told Nell. "I watched him on the platform. He didn't execute a defense matrix. He reacted the way he always does."
Nell turned her chair enough to face her.
"I'm looking at a recruit who walked away from the thing that took a division commander's leg."
"Because he bleeds like a stuck pig, Captain."
Suzu pointed at Caleb's shaking hands.
"Look at him. He's crashing from an adrenaline drop. One-percent yield in surplus gear. He's malnourished, injured, and buried in lower-sector debt. None of that requires a biological conspiracy."
Caleb kept his mouth shut. Weak and underfed was an explanation the ward already understood. He could let her give them that without agreeing that he had imagined the creature's voice.
Nell held Suzu's stare. Suzu lowered her pointing hand but did not look away.
Finally, Nell stood and pulled her jacket from the chair.
"I'll have them bring the deep-tissue scanner back in five minutes," she said to Caleb. "We run it again. If it comes up empty, you let the medics treat you for shock."
She waited until he looked at her, then left through the swinging doors.
***
Another shiver pulled at the tape over his shoulder.
Caleb wanted the scanner to find something. A shape, a heat source, anything Nell could point to instead of asking him to describe a sensation she couldn't feel. But wanting an answer from her wasn't the same as wanting the truck medic to watch a wound close under his hands.
He had refused the nutrient bag. Now the hunger was taking heat from his fingers and toes, and the cut still pulled every time he breathed.
The automated IV pump clicked beside the bed.
He opened his eyes. The small display had changed to nutrient infusion. Pressure moved through the tubing taped to his left hand.
Warmth crept up his arm.
Caleb watched the pump, then the dressing. The shivering eased a little at a time. The muscle beneath the tape drew tight; the wet edge against his skin stopped spreading. Nothing tore the gown open or pulled him off the bed. He could turn his head without the same sharp catch.
The hunger settled to an ache he could breathe through.
Green traces moved across the medical monitor: heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen. A line of purple text appeared among the rolling telemetry.
[??? : I changed the feed. Leave the line in.]
Two seconds later, it was gone.
Caleb looked across at Suzu. She adjusted the blanket over her brace, her eyes on the wall. Outside, a medical cart squeaked past the door.
The monitor gave him no name for the thing under his ribs. The pump had switched to nutrients, and the purple message claimed the change.
He tightened his left hand around the sheet, careful of the needle.
He couldn't prove who was watching. He could feel the bleeding slow.
Caleb left the line in and closed his eyes while he waited for Nell's scanner.