Courage (6 page)

“Wait, you brought me here just to say goodbye?”

“I know that after the death of your sister, goodbyes have become very important to you. This is the least I can do.”

Roger thought a moment, emotions playing over his face. “Thanks.” He pulled out a fresh tissue and thoroughly wiped his face and nose. “Am I presentable?”

“That you are,” Baku said with a crisp nod.

Folder in his left hand, Roger opened the door leading into the Oval Office and stood at attention in the middle of the navy blue carpet with a golden eagle on it. Under the eagle’s golden claws was sewn “IN GOD WE TRUST.”
How ironic
, Baku thought as he silently closed the door behind Roger and let time go back to its normal pace. He vanished from the White House.

* * *

Roger stood at attention and hoped his uncle would refrain from ordering his bodyguards to shoot him. Their eyes widened and their hands zipped to their holsters. To his relief, the president exclaimed his name in disbelief and surged from his chair. Standing didn’t make him much taller than sitting. His uncle, though born and raised in New Jersey, had a lot of Italian in him. He had a powerful voice and quite the temper to make up for being only five-five.

“What on Earth are you doing here? And why did no one tell me you were coming?”

Roger searched for words. He couldn’t just up and tell him that God had magically placed him just outside his office. He still felt a little wild-eyed about his sudden change in location, but he had more important things to think about right now. His uncle was also his adoptive father. His biological parents were alive, but they’d done a poor enough job of raising him and his sister. Uncle Chris had stepped in and saved them from a life of drugs and abuse. If Roger was about to die as well, a heartfelt farewell would mean a lot to both of them. Perhaps he would tell his uncle the truth, but only if he trusted him not to dismiss him as some nut job who belonged in an asylum. “I’m being bumped up to active duty.”

“This is out of the blue.” President Alcadere rounded his desk and crossed to him.

“I wasn’t expecting it either.”

The president stopped before him and raised an eyebrow. “Where are you being deployed?”

“I don’t know yet, sir.”

The president sighed. 

From what Baku had said, it was clear that he and the others weren’t warring on Earth. It was buyable--strange, yes--but with the universe being so endless, how improbable was it that there wasn’t other life out there? Ironically, Roger found himself not wanting to mention meeting Baku. It honestly generated more questions than answers.

“You know more than what you’re saying,” the president said in a low voice that conveyed controlled anger. “You and I are going to have a chat alone, and you’re going to tell me everything you know, right now, and everything you say is going to be one hundred percent the truth. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” To his depressing humor, the words “god help me” crossed his mind.

Chapter 5

“We’ll take you in immediately,” the receptionist said to Aerigo. She rushed to the wall and pressed a button below a black speaker built into the cream white wall. The button lit up. “Attention Nostrum Hospital staff,” she began authoritatively, her voice ringing loud and clear throughout the vaulted lobby and hallway, “will Donai Vernidelli and his team please report to ambulance drop off one, stat? I repeat: Team Vernidelli to ambulance drop off one. Thank you.” She let go of the button.

A male voice sounded from the speaker, soft and clear. “Capera, this is Donai. My team is headed there as I speak. What’s the situation?”

Capera pushed a different button to the side of the speaker, one with a handwritten label beside it. “Poisoned woman, doctor. Poison unknown. I need to tend to the man carrying her. He knows Kintish. He’s only half-dressed and looks like he’s about to collapse.”

“Go for it.”

Capera turned to Aerigo and waved him over. “Come here, sir. Help is on the way.”

Aerigo willed his stiff, aching limbs to carry him over. Capera headed a short ways down the hall and pressed a hand-sized chrome panel. A portion of the wall slid aside and a large rectangular object slid out of the waist-high gap like a drawer. It was a hover gurney.

“Lay her on this, please.” Capera patted the white bedding.

Aerigo lay Rox down as carefully as his shaking arms could manage and leaned on the gurney for support. Roxie’s face was an alarming red, and her cheeks and neck had gotten all swollen and puffy. Hurried footsteps rounded the corner at the end of the hall and pattered closer. Aerigo had little hope for Rox, and would probably have even less once he learned what kind of poison was killing her. Maharaja had foreseen him losing more than he could bear. Losing Rox would be exactly that. Maybe no amount of medical treatment could change the fate he’d caused. Aerigo feared what he would become if Rox died. He could feel his rage waiting from a distance, ready to burst forth at the next opportunity. He was torn between leaving the hospital in hope of avoiding a repeat of Drio, or staying at her side in hope that she’d live. She
had
to live. Her right arm, now a vast array of sickly colors, was swollen to double its normal size. Her exposed skin felt hot and sticky to the touch, and her breath was coming in slow, ragged gasps. Capera tapped Aerigo on the shoulder. She held a scrub top open for him to stick his arms through. Aerigo shrugged off the packs and let the receptionist dress him. The shirt was a midnight blue with planets and pinpricks of stars coving it.

The double doors swung open. He looked up.

Three medical professionals, two men and a woman, let go of their red emergency aid bags. The bags stayed suspended in midair at waist-level but, unlike the gurney, jostled around as they reached in for supplies. Each of them donned a pair of latex gloves on their purple hands. Aerigo clasped Roxie’s left hand and silently willed her to survive. Her hand was hot and sweaty, and so devoid of life.

“Sir, please have a seat,” Capera said to Aerigo, gesturing to a sleek wheel chair that had what looked like a palm-sized computer clipped to one handle. He shook his head and turned back to Rox.

A black-haired man in his forties, who had a friendly complexion accented by character lines, took Roxie’s injured hand and examined it. “There aren’t any puncture marks on the other side of her hand. It doesn’t look like an animal bite.” He looked up. “My name is Donai Vernidelli. I’m the lead poison specialist. What has she been poisoned with?”

Aerigo tore his eyes from Rox, cursing himself for not having the wit to tell anyone sooner, and laboriously reached for his back pocket and pulled out the darts. His throat felt incapable of speech. He carefully handed them over.

Donai gingerly held the darts and inspected them. Only then did Aerigo notice the dragons etched into the glass cartridges, along with the fact that the needles were made out of diamond. Diamond had the least trouble piercing an Aigis’ tough skin. Donai twisted off the needle end of one dart and wafted up a scent. He held the dart away and wrinkled his nose. “Ugh! Dragon venom.”

Aerigo caught a whiff of sulfur and acid.
Oh, gods. They might as well give up on her now
. No wonder the assassins hadn’t bothered charging in to secure the kill. Why bother ruining a blade on an Aigis when poison worked so much better? Aerigo had survived many hits from bullets, receiving nothing more than bruises from lower caliber guns. Armor piercing rounds were powerful enough to make him bleed, as he’d learned the hard way. A well-aimed armor piercing round could kill an Aigis. The damage sustained from explosives depended on how close and what type, but were generally best to run from. Poisons depended on their potency and the size of the dose. Even dragon venom was survivable. But the amount Rox had taken? Aerigo bowed his head and squeezed Roxie’s hand.

“Skitt,” Donai said, “page poison control for a whole case of dragon antivenin.” He reassembled the dart and handed it to the female doctor, who pulled out a plastic biohazard bag from her emergency aid bag and tucked the packaged darts in it.

Skitt, a young man with short bristly brown hair, pale eyes said, “Which species?”

“Black. It smells too acidic to be anything but Black.” He fished out a clear plastic IV bag and hung it on the steel pole attached to the hover gurney. “And tell them to send it to room one o’ two.”

“You got it, chief.” Skitt touched his ear bud and began talking to some far off person.

Donai helped the female doctor hook Rox up to an IV as they noted all of her symptoms and vitals. Her skin resisted the needle before allowing it jab through to a vein. Hopefully the trace of their tough hides in her was a good sign. However, her blood pressure was dangerously low, even for an Aigis. Donai shouldered his bag once the IV was set up, then positioned himself at the head of the bed. “Ready, Jenna?”

Jenna, a tall, slender woman with a fair complexion, accented by her purple features, and chestnut hair tied into a ponytail, nodded. She still looked very feminine in her teal scrubs.

“Hey! Why are they getting attention first?” some lady yelled. Aerigo looked towards the reception desk and saw a short, rotund woman with messy dark hair glaring at him. “My husband and I have been waiting for two hours in your stupid, posh waiting room.”

Donai ignored the intrusion and nodded to Jenna. They started moving down the hall, Aerigo with them and Roxie’s limp hand still in his.

Capera intercepted the unhappy guest and spoke firmly. “Ma’am, please calm down.”

“No! This is discrimination!”

Capera’s voice drew closer. “Ma’am, your husband isn’t dying; the woman is.”

Aerigo lacked the empathy to care about anyone’s plight at the moment. His universe was imploding; however, two pudgy hands yank his right arm. Fearing an attack, he spun on his assailant with a raised fist. At the same time, he realized he was about to punch a human. The almost violent reaction sent a wave a fear through him. His eyes responded to his emotion.

The short lady only managed to say “How
dare
you--?” by the time she noticed Aerigo’s glowing eyes. She let out a gasp and her mouth flew wide open and ran back to the waiting room.

Aerigo bowed his head and covered his eyes as he groped for the hover gurney, leaning against it until the wave of fear passed.

“Oh wow, his eyes glow,” Donai exclaimed. “Where have I heard of people like that before?”

“I’ve never heard of such people,” Jenna said. “Let’s go.”

Donai gently placed a hand on Aerigo’s arm. “Sir, we need to move.”

Aerigo removed his hand from his face and looked at him. The doctor gazed back with open wonder. At least this person wasn’t afraid of him. Aerigo straightened up and stepped back. As much as he wanted to stay in contact with Rox, he would only get in the way and slow the doctors down. It was his fault Roxie was in this condition. The last thing he wanted was for it to be his fault for not letting the doctors do their job.

“Skitt, grab those.” Donai nodded to the backpacks on the floor. Donai and Jenna guided Roxie’s gurney down the hall, with Aerigo and a laden Skitt in tow.

Along the top of the walls ran three tracks of a delivery system with cubical objects zipping back and forth along them. The cubes had rounded edges, most were transparent, and a few kept their contents confidential as they veered off one track or another and into a hole like a rabbit scurrying into its burrow. Aerigo hoped the cube containing Roxie’s dragon antivenin would show up quickly.

A left at the end of the hall and a quick right through the second doorway brought everyone into emergency room 102. Donai dropped all the bags in a far corner of the smallish room, and pulled out a clipboard and what looked like two square metal sticks clipped together. “Sir, what’s your name?” An acorn-shaped robot the size of a head pushed away from the wall and flew to Donai.

Aerigo told him, but his voice came out so thick and hoarse that he had to repeat himself twice.

“Where do you want me to bring Aerigo?” Jenna asked. She tapped a few buttons that beeped along with her prodding, and the gurney made a loud click.

“Nowhere. He’s probably going to be our next patient real soon. His voice sounds like he’s suffering from air poisoning.”

“Yeah, but this is an ER.”

“Just trust me on this one.” Donai handed her the clipboard, then pulled apart the metal sticks. A colorful screen flickered to life in the eight-inch space between them. “Swab me a sample from the poisoning site. Skitt, get two EKG’s and cans of oxygen hooked up.” Both aides did as ordered. Aerigo turned down his own EKG clip but held the oxygen mask to his face. Of course he had air poisoning. He’d spent way too much time in Kismet’s foul air. And despite his growing dizziness, he refused to sit down.

Jenna stuck the cotton swab in one of the screen’s metal sticks. A loading bar took three agonizing seconds to fill up, and then a mixture of sickly green, brown and black appeared in a rectangle in one corner. “That is some potent stuff,” Donai said, a hint of worry in his voice.

A metallic clack by the doorway caused everyone to turn. A flap popped down and a rounded cube with a cardboard box inside slid into view. Skitt finished taping Roxie’s EKG to a finger on her good hand and collected the box of antivenin.

“Skitt, give her... four doses, one in each shoulder and two through the IV. That’s probably not enough, but I need to see what that’ll do first.”

Jenna sterilized Roxie’s shoulders as Skitt delivered the first two doses through the IV port, then the other two in each shoulder. Jenna collected the spent needles and discarded them. Donai held his screen over Roxie’s bad hand. Something like an x-ray image formed on it, the outline of her hand a psychedelic pink, and the palm all black with swirls of green and brown all throughout her fingers. Donai scanned up her right arm, which was all black, brown and green, passed across her collar bone and sternum, which had less black, but abundant brown and green, and then scanned down her left arm. Aerigo didn’t have to be a doctor to know that what they were seeing wasn’t good.

“Okay, give her two more apiece in each shoulder. The first four aren’t showing up anywhere.”

As soon as Skitt reached back into the antivenin box, Roxie’s EKG flat lined. Aerigo froze and his eyes heated with a fearful yellow. He ached to rush to Roxie’s side and perform some sort of magic that would get her heart going again. But he stayed put. His magic, his hands, were that of a fighter, a killer. The flat line wail almost sounded like Sandra’s voice the night she’d screamed his name right after the fiery boulder hit their home. The green line on the EKG was a spear aimed at his heart, ready to deal a fatal blow as soon as the doctors pronounced Roxie dead.

Donai dropped the scanner on the foot of the gurney. “Jenna, the AED!” He barked orders to the robot and it snatched an alcohol swab packet and some scissors out of a drawer, then handed them to the doctor, who cut Roxie’s tank top open and sterilized a patch of skin over her heart. “Skitt, don’t bother with more into the shoulders. Just hand them to me one by one.” Donai took one look at Aerigo and told him to leave. Aerigo shook his head. He couldn’t bear to watch, but couldn’t close his eyes. All he managed was two steps backwards.

The lead doctor shook his head, then delivered another four doses of antivenin straight into Roxie’s heart. The flat line toned blared away. Donai taped gauzed over the puncture marks, then climbed onto the gurney and kneeled over Roxie’s chest. He strategically placed his hands over Roxie’s sternum and began administering CPR. Jenna straightened Roxie’s neck and watched Donai rapidly pump Roxie’s chest, putting all his weight into each push.

Aerigo watched helplessly as Donai mumbled through counting the number of times he pumped Roxie’s chest. Aerigo tried to count with him, but his awareness of the flat line overwhelmed everything else he heard.
Not her, too.
Please not her, too.
The moment he’d tried to administer CPR to Sandra rose to consciousness, the feel of the jigsaw puzzle collection that was her sternum and ribs. Aerigo backed up another step, expecting the doctor to recoil from Roxie.

Donai continued CPR.

Aerigo looked at the floor, unable to watch Roxie die right in front of him. He sorely wished he had the power to save her, but all he had was destructive powers. He wanted Nexus dead for all this. His rage inched closer. He clenched his fists, shattering the oxygen mask in his grip.