Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(26)
Either way, there was something useful about that pain, a feeling she could channel when she translated for the patients. Kara was there to intercept all the words people used to describe pain and suffering, to parse through all the idioms and wade through the regional dialects and poetic expressions—to sharpen every description until the message was clear and concise. The medics couldn’t diagnose anything until they knew what hurt, and how, and with what frequency. So Kara let the patients tell her their stories, and passed on only what she needed to. The rest of it she absorbed, each narrative a drop in the ocean.
Sure, hearing about trauma took its toll, but organic translation really did a number on her head. Without her cube on, Kara’s mind had to work double-time—and even when she pushed herself she could barely keep up. Plenty of times in the last few weeks she’d wondered about how different life was without her cube—harder, mostly. That absence of the cube computing away while you happily busied yourself with something else seemed foreign to her now. And at night she almost enjoyed the feeling that her brain had shattered in a dozen different places; there was a kind of mental exhaustion that kept her from holding on to any thought for too long. It was the perfect antidote when you were trying to forget you’d been lied to and abandoned.
Probably everyone felt like that. The doctors were too busy dropping down into various war zones—mostly vulnerable Fontisian territories that were getting the crap bombed out of them by Kalu’s forces—to ask questions about why she was even there. The blowback from the conflict on Nau Fruma, which UniForce was blaming on Fontis even though it had been a resistance effort on the part of the WFC, overshadowed everything but survival. They were glad for the extra volunteers. They needed all the help they could get.
In a cruel, practical way, the distractions were a kind of blessing. When she managed to push past the pulsing behind her eye, Kara’s mind kept turning over the info Pavel had found. That the overwriter could be used in targeted memory deletion on a mass scale, and Emperor Ta’an himself had signed off on the research. Was no one above corruption? Kara understood now more than ever how critical it was to get to the overwriter before Nero did.
She was close. They were zooming in on Ralire, a dwarf planet and major pit stop before the epic dead space between here and Fontis. She’d learned that Ralire wasn’t neutral so much as entirely lawless—it was governed by the trade economy that burgeoned there, illegal and legal. Frontline was planning a touchdown soon to reload much-needed medical supplies. Kara rationalized that a re-up meant that it was the perfect time to swipe some meds that she’d need to keep her headaches manageable.
She hit a narrow set of stairs that was more like a ladder—the angle was practically vertical—and crawled down as she gripped the cold metal banisters. It was so cramped, Kara couldn’t imagine anyone with a Fontisian or Wraetan build fitting their shoulders through. Kara was used to small spaces. She’d spent plenty of time in the air—killing time when she was stuck on zeppelins, on the Kalu–Navrum line, waiting for Lydia, who worked on one of those illegal traveling labs.
The medbay was bustling with activity; it always was. Nurses and medics walked briskly, dodging one another with armfuls of supplies, careening gurneys through the tight quarters, and shouting out orders. She took advantage of the chaos and did her part to look busy, walking fast like she had somewhere to be. There were glass windows that looked into the operating rooms. Three in a row were occupied with patients and the flurry of medics and doctors treating them. As long as she found an empty one, she could pick the lock on the cabinet inside and raid it. Kara caught her reflection in the thick, smudgy glass of the window: her two-toned eyes, one a blazing green and the other hazel, a few dark freckles surfacing on her cheeks and nose . . .
The evidence was there, and she couldn’t deny that she was here too for DNA meds. It was a last-ditch effort to prevent anyone from seeing the way her true features—Josselyn’s features—had begun to emerge. It wasn’t just her eyes anymore. Even her tan cheeks were broadening, the shape of her mouth changing, filling in. She was almost recognizable as Rhiannon’s sister, and she could only imagine how the resemblance would increase if she didn’t take something soon.
Not only was she on the run, but Kara was becoming someone she didn’t know.
Thankfully, all the cabinets were stocked with a supply of “warper” pills that were given to patients to manipulate their DNA and speed up their healing. They’d have to do for now.
Just as she’d hoped, she looked into an empty operation room. But right when she moved to push the double doors open, she heard a frenzy of beeping.
“CODE RED!” A droid rolled past her into the operating room, its robotic voice blurting out the same message on repeat as a nurse wheeled a patient past her. Blood had soaked through her WFC fatigues.
Nicola, the head doctor, was on the nurse’s heels. “What’s going on?” Kara asked, chasing after her.
“She woke up and tried to gouge out her own cube.”
“What?” Nausea hit her, and Kara’s skin prickled.
“What are you doing in here?” Nicola started to ask, but the patient began to shout in Wraetan.
“You idiot!” The girl thrashed. She had a bloodied towel to her neck, and a medic standing over her applied pressure. It should’ve been disturbing, the blood and the tendons and the violence of it. But this was Kara’s world now.