Prologue
Ekta Dorm clinic, 12 years ago
Wednesday, July 4, 2440
It was imaginary pain, or at least, Aaxyl hoped so, because instant agony in her legs, ribs, right shoulder and arm, neck and back wasn’t the expected outcome of an attempt to sit up. It stopped when she stopped moving and she was back to feeling very comfortable. She must be on a pain block—the best thing to come out of the 23rd century.
Her left eye was partially open, but the right refused outright. The grey ceiling and faint scent of lemon disinfectant teased her memory. She was safe in the Dorm clinic with a soft, familiar child plastered against her left side like an extra splint.
“She’s awake!” A paramedic’s face rushed into her line of sight. A hand waved between their faces. “Do you understand me? Blink if you can.”
Paramedic? Aaxyl winked at once, not wanting his hand waving so close to her swollen face. She wished she knew the code to wink for “keep safe distance”.
Given the lack of activity around her, Aaxyl guessed that medics had managed to do whatever they needed to do to her while she was unconscious.
Usually, Aameh needed treatment, while Aaxyl sat and worried. The dampness of the sheet near her hip suggested that Aameh didn’t like the role reversal one bit. Aaxyl instinctively tried to put a reassuring hand on her back and forgot Rule Number One. Do not move. Technically, her left arm felt injury free, but her shoulders and back wanted a vote.
“Ow.” Her voice had no air.
“You’ve been treated for severe injures and have been given a pain block. Don’t make any movements that feel painful.” Paramedic Wavy kept flapping his hand in front of her face. His voice took on a disapproving note. “You were in an illegal fight.”
Gambling or organising events to gamble on was illegal, but Aaxyl did neither—she got paid to fight. She had honed herself into an excellent fighter, who rarely lost and didn’t ego-fight beyond her ability. She inhabited that sweet legal spot between two profitable crimes but this had nothing to do with a fight.
A deranged brute amped up on AthSYMB had attacked her as she spoke to her sponsor. She remembered a vicious blur of blows catching her unawares before nature had administered the oldest anaesthetic of all—unconsciousness.
It was safe to assume her best fighting costume didn’t make it. She would mourn its sad demise. She was lucky to be alive.
“Do you hear me? Blink if you can.” Wavy was still waving.
Aaxyl winked again.
Why was paramedic Wavy in a Dorm clinic? Paramedics responded in the field, dropped patients at the door and departed as quickly as possible. Were they moving her?
What they did was lecture her on the perils of the fights. Another paramedic, not Wavy, urged her to think of the innocent little girl worrying herself sick. She did. Thinking of Aameh was what got Aaxyl into the fights.
“Get the hoverboard in here, straight to the bed. We don’t need a gurney, just to get her to the door,” Paramedic Wavy told Not Wavy. “And get the little girl out of the way.”
Uh-oh. Aaxyl needed to warn them the little girl was only quiet because—
“No!” A piercing shriek wrent the air. “Let go of me!”
Not-Wavy had tried to pick Aameh off the bed but she already had both arms hooked around Aaxyl. She added legs to the hug, wrapping them around Aaxyl’s splinted and elevated leg, clinging with everything she had. Which to be fair, wasn’t much. Aaxyl fought blinding pain to calm her, but Aameh had already escalated to ear-splitting screams and refusing to let go. Not even Aaxyl heard her own feeble moans.
“Get your hands off me right now!” This wasn’t exactly why Aaxyl had taught her to shout that phrase as loudly as she could. Aameh had never developed a concept of letting go of Aaxyl. “Somebody, help! Get this man away from me!”
Aaxyl and Aameh considered themselves a family: AxAm. But neither had family on Dorm records. The paramedics were sympathetic, but there was only one way this would end.
Not-Wavy let go of Aameh and mercifully, screams tapered into protests, and finally levelled off at a stable flow of sniffs and piteous whimpers. He patted her back and murmured reassuring words, crouching before her. “I know this is scary, but we can’t take you with us, sweetheart. She has no family on record. We’ll be arrested for taking a minor out of the Dorms.”
Aameh looked from one to the other, sniffs turning into sobs. Aaxyl bet her enormous eyes were tearing up too.
Wavy devolved to unconcealed bribery. “Why don’t you tell me your name and Dorm, and I’ll get my hover, and we’ll ride it up to your Dorm? Your friends will be jealous.”
As bribes went, this one ranked high.
“No.” Aameh wouldn’t even loosen her grip on Aaxyl. “Take me with her.” She wouldn’t tell them her name or Dorm.
The girl was demented and terrified. If they left her behind, she’d try to find the hospital on her own.
“No.” Aaxyl put all her strength into saying.
Non-Wavy drowned it out with a “Let me get a sedative.”
Three faces hovered close now—the two paramedics, and a new symbiontist with white hair and a long narrow face. They hadn’t understood her moan.
“No hospital,” she gasped.
“Let’s give them some time. We have a few hours until the clinic closes for the day.” The symbiontist’s murmur was just nasal enough to keep her wondering whether it was or not.
Aaxyl felt Aameh’s body sag with relief and her grip on Aaxyl’s throbbing leg deescalated from over-my-dead-body to a mere death grip.
Wavy spun around and both paramedics exploded into a chorus of outrage. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“Are we babysitters?”
“Look, I’m not saying don’t take her.” The symbiontist had made his move, and floundered. “We just give them some time.”
“This is your clinic and your decision,” declared Not-Wavy. “Send her to the hospital, stay back to monitor her yourself, or kick her out at the end of the day. If there’s no patient to transport, our work here is done.”
“But I haven’t decided.” The symbiontist was going to lose this one. First to the paramedics, and then Aameh would wrap him around her little finger. Symbiontist Softie was new to the Dorms.
“You can call us again if you need transport,” Wavy reassured.
The crux of their issue was that the clinic was only open during the day, but Aaxyl needed monitoring overnight.
Aaxyl had other problems like wounds, fractures, bruising and an eight-year-old appendage that refused to be more than a foot away from her.
The paramedics left and AxAm were officially the symbiontist’s problem.
Aaxyl struggled to remain awake, but Aameh needed to sleep for everyone’s sanity. Both of them were never off-guard under threat. According to Aameh, one member of a herd was always alert for predators. Aaxyl had been stuck with her “herd” seven years ago, when Aaxyl’s mother handed her a toddler and told her she’d come back to take them to a better life at SYMBTech. Aaxyl had thought it was a better Dorm.
Her mother never returned. Aameh never left her side.
SYMBTech had turned out to be a global organisation and Aaxyl’s calls hoping to at least give Aameh to them never made it past their receptionist.
“Let me stay,” Aameh’s insistent tones verged on hysteria and woke Aaxyl up. “I’ll tell you if she needs anything. She’ll sleep better with me here.”
A calm voice murmured something Aaxyl couldn’t hear. She tried to see who she was talking to, but the pain block leaked a surge of pain that ruled it out. Swelling from her injured shoulder had cemented her neck into place.
“I’ll eat dinner if you promise.” Everyone made honest promises in Aameh’s world.
Aaxyl drifted back to sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time Aameh out-argued disapproving adults to remain with Aaxyl. The child had a bladder an elephant would envy.
“How’s she?” A soft voice roused her this time.
Ah shit. Leela, soon to be Director of Ekta Dorms, used to supervise Aameh’s toddler-dorm. She was the closest they had to a parent. Of course, she had come, because it was that kind of a day. She wouldn’t appreciate the nuances of the legality of recreational combat.
“She’s well for the condition they brought her in…” The symbiontist trailed off on an unstated ‘but’.
Aaxyl imagined them standing and staring at her. Exhibit A: How not to exit a fight.
He continued, “We’ll know more by the morning when the swelling recedes. If she can’t return to her room tomorrow, then we’ll send her to the hospital.”
Aaxyl detested disembodied voices of doom. Everyone stood and talked on her right side, because the door and entire clinic was on that side, with a wall close on her left. She managed to open her right eye a little and spied the ceiling in stereo. There, that was good, wasn’t it?
“I can send a medic assistant to be with her at night,” said Leela.
Medic assistants were Dormers who were paid in socicred in lieu of real currency. It could only be spent within the Dorms. Symbiontists were paid globally valid unimon. Aaxyl would never hear the end of it if she made specialists work nights because she was too precious to go to a hospital.
She was already on HealSYMB to boost recovery. It didn’t take a symbiontist to keep her in bed. The agony that spiked through the pain block if she moved was very convincing. She hoped he accepted Leela’s offer.
No such luck.
“Her condition needs a hospital or a trained medic.” The symbiontist left no room for argument.
“Very well. I’ll drop in tomorrow.” Leela’s distinctive heels clacked to the door.
“Wait,” the man said. “This little girl here. We weren’t quite sure what to do with her. I’ve fed her, but it’s late. No one is seeking her, and she won’t leave.”
Leela sighed, and Aaxyl’s Pavlovian memory supplied the exasperated look that went with that sound. “That’s ok. She may stay.”
Aaxyl stroked the mop of hair by her side. To the overwhelming gratitude of Aaxyl’s left leg, the clingy menace had exhausted herself to sleep.
“You can also tell Aaxyl that I know she’s awake, and if I ever find her around an illegal fight again, I’ll make sure that Aameh is sent to a Dorm on the other side of the Dome.”
Leela’s footsteps tapped further and further until they faded.
The bed moved slightly as the symbiontist picked the sleeping Aameh and put her somewhere on her right. Hopefully, in a bed, though Aaxyl wouldn’t blame him if he put her in a box and locked it.
“You heard what Leela said.” The symbiontist returned to sit in the chair next to her bed, on the left. Finally.
He had the caring expression of one who knew nothing about her, but was confident that she was wrong. Aaxyl could feel the lecture coming. It was going to be a long night.
“I’m Hersh. Is it any use telling you the illegal fights are dangerous?”
“You will, anyway.” If she rasped slowly, the words were recognisable.
“You’re just sixteen with an entire life before you,” he said, as though no one could possibly have told her this before. “You scared the little girl.”
“Aaa-mayh,” said Aaxyl, as clearly as she could.
“What?”
“Her name is Aameh. She’s eight. She feared losing me. She won’t.” Half-dead was 100% alive.
“She’s a kid. She shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
“Aameh understands.” The sentence gave up on audibility toward the end.
“Well, if an eight-year-old gets it, a symbiontist ought to understand some of it. So explain it to me.”
“Socicred for Aameh’s upgraded meals—fights get good socicred.”
“You win fights?”
“Would I fight if this happened regularly?” She needed shorter words and more breath.
“Does Aameh want better meals more than she needs you?” Hersh asked.
“She needs them.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t heal.” Aaxyl met his eyes, hoping to convey the importance.
Hersh snorted. “You aren’t recovering on your own either. HealSYMB—”
“—doesn’t work on her,” Aaxyl butted in.
“I’m a symbiontist and I’m telling you, HealSYMB works on all Homo symbions. Don’t worry.” Hersh sounded more confident than he’d feel in ten minutes.
“That’s what the last symbiontist said. Check her medical history.”
She rested her eyes while he used his comm to call up Aameh’s medical history on the screen over her bed. She didn’t need to see the first event the InfoSy would list, because it was etched on her conscience. Aaxyl had chosen a top bunk to evade the clingy toddler.
“Eight vials of HealSYMB for a fall from a bunk?”
“Still took a week, while I’ll bounce back faster from this. Good nutrition helps improve healing and a single fight gets a month’s meals.”
Hersh pondered this for a while as he settled more comfortably in the chair. “Why not volunteer to do a job then?”
“The job pays for our shared room.”
“A room?” Hersh reacted like she’d paid unimon to purchase prime property.
“Most of her injuries came from wandering the Dorm at night—half asleep, trying to climb into bunks, searching for me. I’m older by eight years - we get separated in age-appropriate Dorms.”
“Why won’t she adjust to the Dorm appropriate for her age? Adults complain about coffin-dorms, but kids love them.”
“She can’t even defend herself from an impulsive hug, let alone worse. She’s wary of being around them and rightly so, because it isn’t safe for her. Older people who know her are careful.”
“And what job pays you well enough for a room?”
“Sanitation worker.” It had been a find. Aaxyl grinned triumphantly, but didn’t think it read as she had intended it to. “Nobody wants to work in sewers, so they pay well and it is enough for one bed out of eight in the room. That’s why no Dorm supervisors are looking for her. She lives in a room.”
“Minors working in sewers can’t be legal.”
“Labour laws are for paid work. You can’t stop me from volunteering effort toward the community for socicred,” Aaxyl pointed out defiantly.
“How long has this been going on?” Hersh accessed her file on the InfoSy.
“I started the job and the fights six years ago, after Aameh fell trying to climb to a bunk for the second time. I wasn’t even there—she’d lost her way.”
“You were…” he scanned her file. “Ten?” He got off the chair and went out of sight.
“Yes.”
“What happens now? You’ll be up by tomorrow, but you can’t do sanitation work or fight. It will take time for tissues to strengthen enough to not risk infection in sewers, much less fight. I can’t clear you for your legal work and your fractures will break again if you fight against advice.”
Not to mention, Leela really would send Aameh away if she found Aaxyl fighting again. There were some ultimatums they could persuade Leela about, but this definitely didn’t sound like one of those. She could try to find another job, but she had no skills. Most work kids could do was trivial and got little more than snacks or games.
Drawers rattled, and Aaxyl tried to see what he was up to, but the pain block disagreed.
“Ow! Why can’t you guys use a proper pain block?” Aaxyl was furious at the sudden pain if she moved. “This isn’t a block. It’s torture.”
Hersh walked back into view. “It isn’t an anaesthetic. It blocks ambient pain completely, and you should be comfortable as long as you don’t aggravate the injuries. If you can’t sense an increase in pain, you’ll reinjure yourself and prevent healing. Pain is nature’s warn—”
“I get the idea.” Aaxyl wasn’t crying; her eyes were watering.
“So.” Hersh leaned against the footrail of her bed briefly before heading back to the chair. “You didn’t answer. You can’t work in sewers or fight. What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know what we’ll do.” Aaxyl turned toward Aameh to the degree she safely could. “I promised her we’d never return to living separately in age-appropriate coffin-dorms.”
Hersh held a booklet in front of her—Clinic protocols. “Work here. In the clinic.” He dropped it on her bed. “You’re young for the job. You’ll have to prove yourself.”
“How much socicred will I get?” she hardly dared ask.
“If you promise me no more fights, I’ll make sure it covers your current accommodation and Aameh’s food. Keep the place clean and learn on the job. It’ll take longer, but become a medic assistant, medic, even symbiontist. As your skills grow, so will the socicred.”
