He scooped up a fat, elongated casing off the sidewalk and showed it to me. “These are made specifically to carry a dose of synthetic antibodies meant to target the Ukruum virus and eradicate it in a matter of minutes.”
“There’s such a thing?”
“I’ve only seen this once before. In a proposal for a prototype that got shut down by the Forever Queen. But that was almost a hundred years ago.”
“You’re telling me there’s nothing we can do?” Adrenaline rushed through me at the idea of losing Ry.
“Ha!” Ry groaned in pain.
A spidery bruise spread across her skin as the poison leached through her veins. Ry was dying along with the Ukruum. I sat there frozen. My tears streamed over my cheeks and onto her gaping wound. On contact, luminescent sparks rushed through her silver blood. After a few beats, the strings of light puffed out and the exposed flesh turned dark red.
“Here.” She scratched her throat, pulling at the thin chain around her neck.
“What is it?” I asked.
She yanked at the locket she always wore around her neck and pressed it into my hands. “Take the memory chip in the locket. Protect the Prime Vector.”
“Ry,” Captain Weston whispered against her hair.
“Eli, promise me you will protect my sister.” She swallowed and winced.
“Don’t worry about that right now. We’re gonna get you some help.” He tapped on his wrist again.
“Eli, stop.” She took his hands. “Promise you’ll take care of her.”
“She doesn’t deserve it. Your love and this devotion. Why?”
“Please. For me?”
He sighed and nodded once. “For you.”
Ry touched her sticky fingers to my cheek and offered me a weak smile. “Sorry, Cat. I never thought we’d run out of time this soon.”
Was she giving up? They both had given up. “Help her. Ping the medical unit again. They can fix this,” I said to Captain Weston, but he didn’t move. “Until the blood runs red.” I recited the Immortal Oath to him. “We have to try.”
“They can’t fix this.” He stared at her, as if he couldn’t hear me.
I followed his line of sight and spotted a foreign object buried in her chest. The bullet? Would extracting the fragments help her? What other choice did I have? I dropped the necklace in the small pocket of my pants and wiped my hands on my top.
“Hold on. What are you doing?” He blocked me with his arm. For the first time ever since I joined the Mars Service Academy at sixteen, he didn’t treat me to one of his menacing glares. “Don’t touch her.”
“I have to get the bullet out. Look, her body is having a reaction to it.” I pointed at the infected flesh that looked dark red and somehow not alive.
“We don’t remove bullets. You could make it worse. Her body is not regenerating.”
His medical advice couldn’t exactly apply to Ry. We’ve never seen this kind of injury before. Immortal skin was impenetrable. Best practices couldn’t help us now. “It can’t be worse than what’s already happening. You have to get the casing out. It’s like it’s still leaking something.”
He surveyed my face for what felt like hours. We didn’t have that kind of time. “Do it.”
“Shouldn’t you do it?” I’d barely completed one class of first aid. He was the captain and had to be at least one-hundred years old. By anyone’s definition, he had way more experience than me.
He shook his head, furrowing his brows at the gaping hole on Ry’s chest. Unlike Captain Weston, she never blocked her emotions around me. I always felt what she felt. I didn’t need Captain Weston to let me in on how afraid he was. His face said it all.
“You’re scared? Why? You think if you touch her, you’ll lose your immortality too? She’s dying.” I raised my voice. When he shot me a glance that said he could bite my head off if he wanted to, adrenaline shot through me. “Sir.” I sat back on my heels and bowed my head, like a frightened sheep waiting for the big bad wolf to pounce.
“That’s a powerful antibody. Fuck.” He fisted his hands. “Help her.”
He could have denied it and told me QEC commandos weren’t scared of shit. Even the immortals had a weakness after all. They were afraid to die. I supposed if I had the opportunity to live forever, I wouldn’t want to give that up. My sister shouldn’t have to either.
“I’m sorry, Ry. But I have to try.” I dug my fingers into the gash.
The flesh around the pellet had a rough and rubbery consistency that had a tight grip on her heart. It didn’t come off when I pulled on it gently. This kind of injury would have killed a normal person instantly. Ry had a fighting chance. With a deep breath, I yanked at the charred capsule. When the muscle tore, she let out a screeching scream and then passed out.
The virus was trying to fight whatever agent had been released into her body. It had wrapped the bullet in skin tissue. We just had to keep her alive somehow. Just a bit longer to give the virus a moment to heal her. I took a big gulp of air and released it into her mouth to help her breathe. The wound oozed more of the glowing blood before a thin membrane of new skin generated over it.
“It’s working.” I breathed for her again.
I did three more compressions, took in another breath, and gave it to her. It hurt my lungs, but I didn’t care. Just like in my nightmares, I repeated the process over and over until Captain Weston stopped me and held both my wrists in front of me.
“Catita, stop.” He wrapped his warm fingers around my wrists.
Blood stuck to my hands and dripped down my arm. I swallowed the metallic taste coating the back of my throat. Ry was so still, her skin cold against my touch. The fragile skin that had regrown before was now dissolved. For the first time since we
