Star Side

Chapter 26

I reached the brig first, having gone at a run. Strong I might be, but my stamina was ordinary at best, so I was huffing a bit.

Inside I could hear nothing, and that made my insides shiver. Surely he wasn't dead already?

So I hesitated only a mite before typing in the code. The doors hissed open to the dim room within, lit only by the emergency lights we left on.

The alien was still a shivering mound of leather on the floor, lone horn speared high near its top. I could make out what could be blood streaming from the hole to the floor.

As I stepped in, I could hear a melodic rustling, like rain on a tin roof or rice through the cactus spines of a rain stick. The smell of brimstone had returned with an edge of mugginess, as though that brimstone had been thoroughly soaked with water and moss.

"Hey buddy," I said, softly, just to let him know I was here. "Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

I tried thinking towards him, imagining pushing my feelings of the moment towards him—concern, concern, maybe a touch of fear—and the rustling quieted and slowed till I could almost hear each individual click.

It wasn't till I was almost in reaching distance of him that I realized the sound had come from his spines rising and falling in a shiny line down his spine.

I bit my lip, hoping for more of a response. The medkit case in my hand felt like a toy. I didn't even know where to start.

But there was obviously something wrong. Something in the smell of the air seemed to whisper it to me, as though I'd smelled it before in a room where someone I knew had been sick. Something like vomit, but without that sour odor of stomach acid.

Really, it only made sense. This creature wasn't made for our environment.

My chest clenched. I remembered the waves of safety it had emitted, more warm and gentle than anything I had experienced since I was a very small child.

I knelt down with my knew just inches from the barrier of leather wings, filled with the memory of that safety. I wanted to give it back to him, cover him with warmth, let him know I only wanted to help. Without knowing why, I tried shushing him, as though he were a child crying, giving up on words. He hadn't spoken all that many himself so perhaps they didn't mean anything, but he had given plenty of noises.

The rain-rattling of his spines stopped completely. In the quiet I could hear his breathing, strained and whistling.

So I continued shushing, even humming a bit. My heart picked up at the thought that I could actually be succeeding at communicating besides 'come here.'

The leather wings shifted, opened. He let out a hiss as he moved his wing of the skewer of his horn. The odd wet add on to the brimstone intensified, as though the wings had been keeping some of it in, and I felt myself cringe in sympathy as I saw his wet sides and hanging jaw. Saliva dripped off his fangs in rivulets, puddling on the floor where I could see something like bile mixed with blood, red as my own. He laid on his side, weak, shivering, and his eyes gone black with only a thing rim of gold.

He shushed back at me, ending with a warbling, soft croon.

I pointed to the hole in his wing and lifted my case, since it was the only thing I could see that I could do for him. I concentrated on trying to imagine my feelings towards him, my concern, my need to help.

He let his injured wing go slack down his front, sprawling it out into my lap. It had been hot the last time I'd touched it. Now it felt like fire. Perhaps this was a fever?

His shivering intensified as I reached for the hole with a spray bottle of disinfectant. I heard his fangs clack together as he forcibly shut his mouth closed. I shushed, more out of instinct than actual thought.

The puncture wound would have to be sutured. I couldn't see the skin reaching across the gap. Thankfully, I had some extra-sticky butterfly strips that could do the trick.

Somehow, I managed to get the hole cleaned, patched, and covered with gauze on both sides by the time the door hissed open behind me.

The alien, which had relaxed beneath my touch as I'd worked, stiffened.

"Shit, it stinks. It dead?"

Spines rose. Lips curled back over more fangs.

The hair on my arms rose.

"Levi, stop."

The tap of his boots halted.

"What's going on?"

"He's sick. I don't think you should get too close," I said, trying to soften my voice but still be heard. We'd already established the alien was sensitive to sound.

"So it's okay for you—shit!"

The alien had moved, slithering about me like a snake. The wing left my grasp to squeeze to its side with its legs till I'd been encompassed by walls of burning scales. Blood, drool, and bile were covered by its belly.

Levi cocked his rifle. The alien raised its head and shoulders and hissed.

"Get out, Levi," it took all my self-control not to yell. "Please. Trust me."

I couldn't hear much over the strained, heavy breathing of the alien.

After a few heavy moments, in which the quivering of the alien walls about me increased, Levi gave an explosive sigh.

"I'll be by the door. Just in case."

I let out a breath I'd been holding. Sweat from the alien's heat trickled down my neck.

"Thanks."

"This shit's insane, we shouldn't have come here."

"And I'm not getting out of here if you keep talking and riling him up. Sound, remember?"

"Yeah yeah."

Only once I heard Levi's boots get more distant as he returned to the door did the alien give a hard shudder and flop back onto the floor. The spines along his spine lowered and the injured wing returned to my lap, though now it was more of a full body cloak than just a lap cover.

In all that time, the alien hadn't touched me with any other part of his body, despite being sick and close enough to bake me with his heat.

Which reminded me—I slipped out the tablet from earlier, a smaller version that fit my hand, and opened up the shared data files. We'd taken what basic number we could from the cameras before going to bed. One of those had been temperatures. Then I took out the scanner from the med kit and set it to the alien's side. It flinched, but otherwise didn't react.

At the number beeped back at me, fifteen degrees above what it had been, I frowned. Definitely a fever. From what little I understood of biology, fevers and hypothermia were dangerous to life because biological reactions only occurred in a range of temperatures. When temperatures got too high, proteins and enzyme began to unravel.

The soft rustle of spines started up again. The scanner beeped as heart rate began to pick up.

But what could I do?

I pulled up the small tablet, pulling up a room I'd only seen a handful of times. The smell had been enough to put all of us but one off.

"Levi, has Naomi done anything to Joshua's old lab?"