Chelen City: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

 Notes: I'm genuinely amazed I got a holiday week post up at all. Go me! Enjoy the quiet before the storm.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

***

Chapter Seventeen Part One

 

There were two problems at hand. One of them was a problem roughly the size of Gania’s moon and growing larger all the time—the issue of what to do about Restaria. It was a problem with layers, a problem where it was hard to settle on the core of it—did xe choose who was to be infected? Did xe do it xirself? Did xe have a cure, and simply not make use of it so as to throw people off the scent? How many other people knew what was going on? How deep did the rot go?

That was a problem that was, quite frankly, too big to tackle right now. Elanus set his computers to identifying every case of Elfshot Disease for the past five years, analyzing the who, where, when, how—anything that looked like useful or interesting data. It would have gone a lot faster with Catie and Lizzie’s help, but they were in the process of forging a very fragile three-way alliance with Pol, who was careening between outgoing one hour and introspective the next.

Solving complex equations was easy for an AI, even one that wasn’t sentient. Solving the issue of socializing with a terrorized little boy and his mother was quite another kind of muddle, and one he was more than happy to let the girls puzzle through on their own. Not that he wouldn’t have helped if he was needed—or thought he knew how—but it was about then that Ryu had a setback…

Thus leading to the issue of problem two—fixing Ryu.

“His spinal column is starting to collapse in on itself,” Kieron said after carrying Ryu in to the recently-renovated medical room in the house. It was perfectly sterile, had the most cutting-edge surgical machines in Chelen City housed in it, and was just about adequate for Elanus to feel like he could handle said surgery on his own, rather than going back to a hospital that may or may not be full of people trying to kill Ryu.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Ryu said sarcastically from where he lay on the bed. He was on oxygen, and pale as a ghost, but if he was still capable of being this salty Elanus held out hope for a good recovery. “What with the hideous pain and inability to move my fucking legs over the past fifteen minutes.”

“You could have come here sooner,” Elanus said, not about to put up with Ryu insulting Kieron—his fiancé, ha!—for any reason. “You knew this was going to be coming to a head.”

“And you promised me a solution,” Ryu said. He looked blearily but with determination at Elanus. “So what are you going to do for me?”

“Your version of the disease generates from the bone, like mine,” Elanus said. “So, we’re going to grow you a new skeleton.”

Ryu rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t work. There’s too much of the disease secreted in other parts of the body for a new skeleton to fix the issue. I’ve had two already. That’s why Deysan thought a mechanical one would be the way to go, give me more time to get clear of the disease before finally installing a new bone skeleton.”

“That’s very horrifying of him,” Elanus said. “I’ve got a different plan in mind. Seed cells.”

“Seed…” Ryu’s forehead creased. “You mean stem cells?”

“No. Seed cells are something different, technology from another part of the Alliance. Thing of them like a climbing vine. They aren’t going to replace your skeleton so much as…colonize it, I guess.”

“How very Alliance of them,” Kieron said dryly.

“Ha ha,” Elanus groused. “The point is, the seed cells can be attuned to your DNA while excluding all foreign bodies, which we now know Elfshot is. It’s not endemic, it’s injected, and I’ve run enough tests on our blood to see the markers that correspond to it. Seed cells will renew you while excluding the Elfshot, but it’s a slow process.”

Ryu sighed. “How slow?”

“Like, I’ll have to stick you in a tank of Regen and leave you there for a month while they work, slow,” Elanus said. “And even then, it fixes the acute issue but leaves the problem of the disease hiding in your body. We can’t just use seed cells on every part of you at once—you wouldn’t emerge from the tank still you. That’s the problem we’ve faced over and over with regrowth, and while seed cells will extend your liveliness and take away the pain for probably a long time, they won’t stop you from having Elfshot.”

Ryu made a face. “So you want to stick me in a tank and regrow my entire skeletal structure just so we can do it all over again in a few more years.”

“Or decades.” Elanus shrugged. “I don’t know what form the cure to Elfshot is eventually going to take, to be honest, but we need to buy time. You’re almost out.” He reached over and laid a hand on Ryu’s arm. “You deserve better than this,” he said frankly. “You deserve a real life, the kind of life you can live without always wondering if the next step is going to be the one that breaks your ankle of gives you a clot that lodges in your brain. Regen’s not doing it for you, seed cells will help, and eventually I will have a cure. A real one. I promise you that, but I need you to work with me right now.”

“I…” Ryu glanced between them. “That means you’ll have to take on Restaria without me.”

“We’ll be all right,” Kieron assured him.

“I don’t want you to have to do that. I wanted to be a part of it.”

“I promise to leave some of xir for you to piss on once you’re done healing up,” Elanus promised. “But we have to move fast on all fronts, with you and with xir. What we’re doing here…it’s going to have consequences.” He glanced at Kieron. “And I don’t know what those are going to be yet. If they’re positive and result in a real cure coming to light, great, but if they’re not…we might have to run. And you need to be in shape to do that if we do.”

Ryu seemed to melt a little bit. “You would take me with you?”

Elanus kind of wanted to slap himself for bringing it up at all, but also had to acknowledge the truth. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know how it happened, don’t ask me, but the girls think you’re great. And you have useful skills. And Kieron likes you.”

“I like beating you,” Kieron cut in, but he was smiling.

“Yeah, enjoy it while you can, I’ll be back to full strength soon,” Ryu said, then firmed his jaw. “All right. Fuck me up. Let’s get it done.”

“Good man.” Once he was under repair, Elanus would be able to focus on Problem Number One.

It was going to be a battle for the ages.