Endosymbiosis

2. History of Current Illness

I wouldn't talk about my negotiations without a benefit in return - my freedom, in this case - because I knew the implications of revealing too much, especially when I had secrets that could lead me to dungeons... But she was an iatrician, wasn't she? Her confidentiality should be worth something. And I wanted her to know enough to believe what I believed - whether it was true or not.

So I told her what had brought me there:

That morning I had to make a stop in the fevino's world. I parked the ship in front of the doors of an old shed and went in armed - just in case - to deliver what had been ordered.

The iatric wasted no time to interrupt me:

"What did they order?" She stared at me as if my words mattered and, at the same time, as if they were nothing but tools she needed to diagnose the mystery that I was to her eyes.

"I prefer not to commit to details."

"Often the answers are in these details." She leaned in again, as if I couldn't understand her without her body looming.

When I took a breath, I realized that that inch of proximity had brought me her fragrance, a petrichor scent that reminded me of rainy afternoons that no longer existed.

Why had she perfumed herself? It wasn't like the aliens she worked with would care. Maybe she didn't do it for others, but because it reminded her of Earth - an old habit, a familiar smell... I imagined her perfuming herself in the middle of the night, letting her body be embraced by the fragrance, until the scent disappeared and left her again with the sterile emptiness of that hospital.

"I need to know you to heal you." She continued.

"You wouldn't heal me if you knew me."

"And you underestimate my professionalism." She smiled. And somehow I knew she was going to get the truth out of me, every last detail... Even the ones I'd buried. "Continue." So I went on:

One of the fevinos met me at the door to get the product. His body was like a lion's, fluorescent yellow scaled fur covering all the skin over the muscles, fist-sized teeth spilling beyond the limits of his mouth and eyes like a strand of white pearls crowning the entire circumference of his head.

"Did you bring the cartridges?" He asked me, his voice from the depths of his throat in another language I only understood for having spent so much time trying to learn the basics of his vocabulary, the old-fashioned way.

"Yea."

I passed the cartridges and he handed me a bag of starstones, the official currency of Itopis. I took a step back as the fevino examined the goods with a caution that took me back another step, very slowly. When my feet hit the ground after three steps, the fevino looked up at me.

"The cartridges are not full." He growled.

My fingers slipped into my back pocket, where I stashed a gun.

"Are you sure? Better check it out again..." And give me time to get away...

"No..." The creature hissed, approaching. I tried to back away but ran into a wall of scales and fur. "Now we want double."

I was screwed.

"That wasn't the deal." I tried to sound calm.

"You humans love making deals that you won't keep... So let's agree on something new then: you give us double than what we ordered or we'll rip your head off. What do you think?"

I swallowed hard while I still had a neck.

I shouldn't have agreed to deliver the cartridges in person... But the fevinos didn't like remote deals - and they didn't like being cheated either. If I wanted my pay, I had to risk my life.

I've lost worse.

"All right. I'm going to the ship to get the rest."

I walked away, not taking my eyes off the fevino for a second. His silent permission let me go, but it was fragile... And chaos could erupt at any time, when they decided I had become the prey.

I took one step... Two... Three...

And then I ran as fast as I could.

The ship was so close, with the doors open, ready to take me as far away as possible from that hell... But when the fevinos put their 3 pairs of muscular paws on the ground, my legs weren't enough to reach the ship in time.

One of them caught up to me...

And then he swallowed me whole, without even needing to chew.

"You were swallowed?!" Squeaked the iatric. "Oh no... A human swallowed by a fevino is a very bad thing..." She took a small black notebook out of her pocket and flipped through it quickly, the pages filled with tight handwriting that seemed to be trying to accumulate a library of Alexandria inside her pocket. Her fingers stopped on a specific page, fluttering as if she'd found a cure for mortality. "It would have been better if you had been chewed..."

"And died?!"

The iatric flew into a closet and rummaged through it until she found a white ribbon, which, after swinging furiously in the air, dipped into my blood and just... Waited.

I opened my mouth to ask what we were waiting for when the drop on the tape started to glow. As if my blood was connected to it, the scarlet in my depths also began to shine and move in a warm wave that flowed through my body below the skin and boiled me to the soul.

What was happ... When the wave reached my mind, however, I was at a loss for words. The space inside my head had become too small, as if I was now vying for it with a voiceless presence inside... That had the energy of a supernova in a bottle of perfume.

I felt like, with it, I could never fail again... But deep down, I knew that was impossible.

"You're contaminated." She diagnosed.

"So you mean it wasn't my fault?" I started smiling, but the iatric didn't confirm it directly.

"If you weren't contaminated, probably wouldn't have done what you did..."

That was enough for me.

"So take this parasite away from me and condemn him."

"That's not quite how it works..." The iatric sighed, and I was again with the feeling that I was screwed. "I can't take him away from you..."

"Why not?"

She hesitated, avoiding my eyes and not letting the words come out of her mouth. At some point, however, the silence became too unbearable, forcing her to reveal:

"Because you are the parasite."