Puzzling pieces.

Posted on Sat 30th Sep, 2023 @ 11:47am by Makila i'Hartelhai & Alsina Telsamvi & Arik Telsamvi

1,096 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: O' the Cardiff Rose
Location: Brown Sector
Timeline: MD 4 0630

No one had noticed. Except Makila and Arik no one had noticed that a faction was missing. All the colors had come through the vaccine clinic eagerly, except one.

There were whispers, of prismatics that took off their colors to sneak through the lines. In tiny voices, wracked with coughing that whispered don't tell anyone I was here. It Took days of a murmered comment here, and a whisper of suggestion there before anyone would tell the healer what was actually happening. It was a piecemeal story, where Makila had to put together the pieces into a cohesive whole.

The faction chief was a fool. Arrogant, paranoid and a coward. He'd had his people steal the supplies Starfleet had freely given to everyone else, but viewed the vaccine as a control mechanism. Dispute being afraid of the virus, he forbade his people from getting it. They were strong, and powerful as prismas. Supposedly he said that if the other factions were foolish enough to let Starfleet know their whole numbers, let them be wiped out and let the prismatics be the only faction left. He didn't care. Over and over and over she heard they don't care.

Frustrated, angry and exhausted from the constant effort of keeping the anguish of everyone else out, Makila walked up to Arik and Alsina.

"Do you know where the prismas have their base camp?"

"What?!" Two voices echoed the same word, and two faces stared at her stunned.

"It's a Simple question, do you know where the prismas have their base camp?"

"Well yes but..."

"But nothing. Go fill me a bag and then you're going to lead me there."

"You're mad" Alsina said flatly.

"We can't be going there without permission. We haven't been invited. They'll kill us? " That last was spoken by the young man in a tone of questioning. He knew how sick everyone else was and he had the inkling of what the healer was doing but it was dangerous.

His dark eyes scanned the room full of sick people from the clinic, and hed seen the aftermath of the first wave of the virus. Body bags lined up in neat rows to be disposed of in a way not their own. The rituals they'd come to rely on hadn't been performed on those dead. The plague fighters didn't care about angry shades roaming the brown sector, merely that they wiped out the spread of disease. Arik could see both sides, though he didn't want to be haunted, He also didn't want to die. Haunting seems like the better choice of the two, considering if one saved up enough coin one could bring a priest down into the sector to bless ones living space.

Inside his head he decided that he was going to save up enough coin to have a priest come. Though he wasn't sure what denomination of priest he would like, there were holy men and holy women that could and would send prayers and blessings of health to all the gods for him and his little family. For his sister, and his nephew. For the parents who already haunted the halls. And for the healer would brought them back hope. When did he started seeing her as family he wondered chewing his lip as he watched her work steadily through a load of patients.

She turned to him and with kind eyes reminded him that he was supposed to be doing a job "pack me a bag Arik and then you will lead me.".

"Yes healer. " He answered with that peculiar gesture that hed done the very first time he'd met her. Kissing the closed fingertips of his hand and pressing them to his forehead. Makila could tell it was an honorific, though she wondered how that particular gesture came to be used down here.

They walked, with Arik seemingly more and more nervous as the plunged deeper into the Prismatics territory.

There had been whiffs of the fungus and taken her several days in sickbay to remove from her lungs, that had sent her into paryoxium's of coughing even with barest scent of the spores.

How do people breathe this soup? How do they stand particulates in the air? . There was no answer to that of course, no more then there was an answer as to how they've gotten to this point to begin with. It didn't matter the cause, it simply was a fact of life here. Now, eyes hardening with a grim resolution as she began to smell the scent of disease and death before she got into the camp. Oh, she knew what she was going to be dealing with.

One look around, once she'd passed through the gate told her that she was right and sent her digging through her pockets for a comm badge. Her residency had issued her one, and she taken to carrying it in an accessible manner, but not wearing it on her chest the way a fleet officer would. She'd thought about having it mounted into a bracelet, and it was likely that she would do that once she was done with this.

" Sick bay, this is Dr i'Hartelhai."

"What can we do for you doctor?"

"I need one or more of the volunteer medical teams that they're setting up to go to Brown sector to my location immediately. And an air purification unit."

"Can you elaborate doctor? What's the situation?". That a different voice, and she recognized it from her meeting.

"We noticed there was a whole faction not coming to the vaccine clinics. We pieced together that they think we have alterior motives. I asked one of our local guides to take me to their home base, where they live and congregate. The very heart of their territory I guess, and I'm not even to the entrance in the scent of death is overwhelming. There's only me and my guide, and I cannot handle such a thing alone."

"We'll get them to you right away doctor."

Turning her attention back to Arik, she asked quietly "Is there an appropriate way to gain entrance or do I just..." her voice trailed off and she made a flipping motion towards the doors with both hands as if to say that she threw them open before her.

Arik giggled and shook his head "I will announce you, no one will think to bar entry to the healer.".

She clung to the sound of his little giggle, it would be the last such joyful sound that she would hear for many hours.

 

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