Cells at Work: Ebola

Chapter 17: Notice Me Senpai

AE3803 held the little thrombocyte close to her chest as she sobbed silently.

At last, she had Platelet-chan in her arms... At last, she could finally hold her for real instead of clinging to nothing but the emptiness of the dark. It was stupid of her, now that she had time to think, to jump into the open wound thinking she could just somehow find the little platelet without any plan or worry.

Perhaps this was the advantage of an airhead? She could admit that she was not mainly the sharpest knife in the bone marrow, and being smart was never her forte. Many of her classmates would remind her of that, especially when she makes mistakes.

And she does make plenty of mistakes...

However, being in the bottom rung in the ladder actually taught her the value of never giving up. Her sense of direction was practically non-existent, but it had never stopped her in from reaching her destination. By any means, she would definitely find her way.

Thus, when she plunged down into the darkness, all she thought was to rescue Platelet-chan at all cost. It never occurred to her what on to expect, or what nightmares she would face, or how the darkness surrounding her felt utterly suffocating as if it was some invisible goo slowly closing in around her.

In fact, she had never experienced this type of darkness before. Even the light shining from the flashlight strapped in front of her cap did little to fully illuminate her surrounding.

Still, she trudged on.

She didn't have the luxury to worry or to pause and ponder how she could have survived from a fall deep into the underbelly of the abyss. True, she hit the ground hard, but it wasn't enough to take her down. It did hurt though and took all of her willpower to push herself to stand up and move forward micrometer after micrometer. Pain ached all over her body, like a hundred stingers of a Pneumonia Coccus slicing her slowly from the inside, but still, she pushed herself to move on and find her ward.

That was a few hours ago, or an eternity, she couldn't tell. The aching pain made her search agonizingly unbearable. Every step she took felt like an individual battle that she needed to win.

And then there were the screams... By the Consciousness, there were the screams.

As an erythrocyte, she'd always been told to run and make a lot of noise if ever she was in danger. With no way to defend themselves, her kind had to resort to flight rather than fight off wayward antigen. Thus, whenever she heard a fellow red blood cell scream, she knew a threat was nearby, and she needed to get out.

But these cries of the damned that echoed from everywhere and nowhere were not cries of warning, but cries of sheer terror and agony. Every time she thought she was nearing toward the source of a particular scream, it abruptly stopped and followed by shrieks that she believed could not have been uttered from the mouths of fellow erythrocytes or any cell under the Consciousness' light.

But still, she trudged on until she finally stumbled across the little chestnut-haired thrombocyte, all alone, wounded, and sobbing.

She blinked and realized her visions had blurred. Tears had formed in her eyes as she remembered the sorry state of the little platelet that loves to call her onee-chan despite her all her inadequacy.

The pain she felt didn't matter... The hell she went through didn't matter as long as Platelet-chan was now safe in her arms, that was all that mattered to her and-

She shook her head vigorously, trying to bring herself back into focus.

No. She can't stop now, she must continue. She can't delude herself that her ordeal was over now that her ward was in her hands. She couldn't allow lowering down her guard at all.