Title: Mutable: Chapter Nine, Part Two
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Chapter
Nine, Part Two
“Come on, let’s get you to
medical.”
Cas didn’t startle at the abrupt
change of subject, but it was a near thing. “Right now?”
“They’re the ones who’ll be able
to implant the identification chip in your arm.” Rone smiled and tugged the
edge of Cas’s badge. “No more lanyard. Plus we need to clear up the bloodwork
issue, and the sooner, the better. Otherwise the entire ship can be stopped
from landing on Imperia.”
“Oh.” Well, fucking damn it all
to hell.
No. You can do this. You’ve done it before, and it’ll go better now.
You’re rested, you’re fed, you’re already in space—what are they going to do,
turn the ship around and drop you back off on Leelinge if you don’t pass it?
But he had to pass it. Everything else depended on it. “Sure, let’s get it
done.”
“Don’t worry.” Rone took his
hand. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
And watching, no doubt. Cas felt confident that Rone was a good
man. He just wasn’t sure what else he
was. A captain of a ship with a crew, a member of the royal family, however
illegitimate. Was he a fair man, though? Did he value justice more, or honesty?
These were things that Cas needed time to find out, time to incorporate into
his strategies. And to get that time, he needed to be Beren through and through.
There could be no doubt in Rone’s mind that he was who he said he was, or the
game plan would become very different, very quickly. “That’s reassuring.” Cas
smiled for him. “Lead the way.”
Medical wasn’t far, like Private
Fillie had indicated. It took up the entirety of the hallway directly adjacent
to this one, and was staffed by four people, all of whom looked equally bored.
The doctor in charge of the whole thing—or so Cas assumed, given the tassels on
the man’s red uniform—greeted them with way more enthusiasm than a little
blood-draw merited. “Captain! Congratulations on your nuptials, sir. Everyone
in the medical ward was very pleased to hear the announcement.”
“Thank you, Doctor Weiss. This is
my husband, Beren Farling Basinti.”
Doctor Weiss held out a hand, his
round face fixed with a pleasant expression. “Pleased to meet you.”
He’s wearing a glove. He’s a doctor, so not surprising if he’s seeing a
patient or handling samples, but there’s nothing like that in sight. Everyone here
is at loose ends—no active patient cases visible, nor any labwork being done. He
was waiting for us. The glove is thicker than the Imperian norm, not a piece of
formal attire, not a known medical device—custom made? Does he have a condition
that merits such precautions? No issues on visible exposed skin, and how could
a germaphobe be a doctor? The glove is a device. The glove will be the first
test.
It took just a split-second to
evaluate the situation and determine what was really going on, and with a
silent effort, Cas willed the phage out of his hand, leaving behind a slightly paler,
weaker appendage, but not so different that anyone other than him would notice.
He extended his hand for the shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well.” And—there.
A faint scratch across the back of his hand, so minute that if he hadn’t been
expecting it, he wouldn’t have felt it at all. There was no blood—just a tiny
little tissue sample. Clever.
Doctor Weiss took his hand back
and turned to the nearest table. “Please, have a seat. This shouldn’t take long
at all.”
“Great, thank you.” Cas got up on
the table, and was a little surprised when Rone settled in right next to him. Between
the two of them Cas was a little surprised the fragile-looking thing didn’t
topple over—Rone was a big man. It didn’t even shiver, though. I need to learn more about how they build,
what their materials are, and how to break them.
He watched the doctor out of the
corner of his eye, saw him carefully lay his palm down flat on the table beside
the bed for a moment before reaching for the instrument he’d set there. I knew it.
“So, do you use needles?” Cas
asked, wanting to get either or both of the other men talking instead of
focusing on him. He needed to get the phage out of where they were going to
poke, and fast. It was harder to clean the blood—bits and pieces tended to
linger if he pulled too fast. “Because I’m—I don’t do so well with needles, and
that’s what they used down in the camp, and—”
“What?” Doctor Weiss turned
toward him, perplexed. “Needles are generally a last resort, we use
micro-syringe technology. Who used a needle on you down there?”
“The medic who took my blood the
first time.” Cas did his best to project total innocence. It helped that what
he had to say was true. “She said that you’d run out of the other kind.”
Doctor Weiss’s lips thinned. “Did
she indeed?” He gestured to the three other people in the room, all working on
the other side of it but just as clearly invested in listening in. “Is the
woman who assisted you down there in the room right now?”
“Yeah. That lady over there.” He
pointed at the one with dark hair braided into a neat coronet around her head.
“Nurse Galway.”
Cas felt more than saw Rone’s
sudden interest. There was something at work here that he didn’t understand… “It
was fine,” he said, doing his Beren-best to smooth things over. “Needles aren’t
that bad. I mean, I don’t like them,
but it’s not like any doctor I ever knew used anything else.”
“Hmph. We consider them useful in
emergency situations only,” Doctor Weiss replied, finally looking away from his
nurse, who seemed…alert, but still calm. Whatever the politics underlying her
actions were, she wasn’t concerned enough to start making excuses or getting
out of there. Maybe it was just good, old-fashioned xenophobia.
God knows I’ve got plenty of experience with that.
“Well. Back to the task at hand.”
Doctor Weiss picked up the instrument, shaped a bit too much like a gun for Cas
to be completely comfortable with it. “This is a micro-syringe. It can both
deliver the microchip you need and take the blood we require. I’ll simply press
it into the skin of your wrist, and five seconds later the exchange will be
done. It analyzes the blood within two minutes, so you’ll be finished before
you know it.”
“That sounds a lot better.”
Doctor Weiss smiled. “I thought
it might. Now, which is your dominant hand?”
“My right.”
“Then that’s the one we’ll chip.
Please draw back your sleeve a bit.”
Cas did so, slowly, evincing
reluctance while focusing his intensity inward, onto the phage. Up, up… He felt if crawl up his arm, pooling
in his elbow. Some there, some there—no, all of it, it all had to go…
“Beren? You okay?”
Cas blinked and looked at Rone. “Yes,
sorry. I’m sorry, it’s fine.” He finished with his sleeve. “Go ahead,” he said,
then held his breath.
“You really don’t have to worry,”
Doctor Weiss told him, readying the device above his wrist. “I doubt you’ll
feel a thing.”
“Sounds good.” He leaned a little
into Rone anyway, and bit his lip as the doctor pulled the trigger. Rone
stroked the back of his neck, almost disrupting his careful concentration, but
then—
“And done!” Doctor Weiss pulled
the machine back on the table. “Now we just wait a bit to see what results pop
up, and we can test the microchip in the meantime.” He picked up an electronic reader
and closed the open file on it, then held it out toward Cas. “Swipe your wrist
over this.”
Cas did so. A tinny voice, like
the ship’s AI but smaller, intoned, “Access denied.”
“It reads you, good. Now for more
specifics.” He pulled up a diagnostic program and said, “Engage signal analysis.”
The pad beeped. “Now swipe your wrist again.”
Cas repeated the motion. The pad
beeped, then the voice said, “Basinti, Beren Farling, of Leelinge, Delacoeurian
ancestry. Access allowed on levels One and Two, common areas, captain’s
quarters, command center. Further access denied.”
“Perfect.”
“That…” Cas had to say it. “Is amazing. It can tell all that about me, just by
swiping my wrist?”
“It can.”
He needed to know more. “What if
there’s an emergency? How does the chip prevent me from getting trapped?”
Rone frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if I was in a place
that became…dangerous, and I had to leave it, but the only way to get out was
through a place I wasn’t allowed to go?”
“That’s a very specific concern,”
Doctor Weiss commented. He sounded a little suspicious. It was time to do some
damage control.
“I just—I’m used to living underground,
in caves. There were—sometimes, things would collapse. We had emergency exits
built into every room, every building, every tunnel. What if that happens here?
How would I get out?”
Cas saw the knowing look pass
between the two men and smiled internally. Bought
it. “In case of emergencies, the AI bypasses microchip security to allow
people to get to where they need to go,” Rone explained. “If the AI is
malfunctioning, then most doors can be forced. It sets an alarm off, but if it’s
a real emergency then that doesn’t matter.”
“Ah.” Interesting. I might have to engineer a few real emergencies to get where
I need to go, then.
The micro-syringe beeped. “And
there are your results!” Doctor Weiss picked the device up and engaged the
screen on the side of it. “And…all seems to be well. No contamination of any
kind. You’re healthy.”
Phew. Cas slowly let the phage creep back down his arm. “That’s
great news.”
“It is,” Rone agreed. “Let’s go
get something to eat, then I’ll escort you back to our room before I return to duty.
Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect.” They got up to
leave, and Cas felt not only Doctor Weiss’s benevolent gaze, but also Nurse
Galway watching them. The nurse would merit some more attention.
In the meantime, he had data on
his fellow refugees to get from Fillie. It was time to go traitor-hunting.
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