Pestilence

[Squad]

The chill from the examination table managed to creep up every vein in his thigh to his low back. The steel’s frigid fingers seemed to pull the patience out of him.

“Stop moving. I shan’t tell you again, boy.”

The doctor looked up from his bent posture, hands along the side of the crusty, opened wound on Johnson’s abdomen.

“This should have healed weeks ago. You’ve been out with the others I assume.”

He stood from the wound, and grabbed the shirt in Johnson’s hand.

“And for God’s sake, stop wiping your face on that bloody rag.”

His wound had split several times over the past few weeks. Each new break made its own pair of ghastly, bright red lips on his shirt. Like the rings of a tree, seven different incidents left their mark on the formerly pristine white cotton.

“I’ll get a new one, don’t worry.”

“Damn your shirt, it’s a new dressing you need.”

The doctor turned his back to Johnson, whose exposed torso soon found itself at the table’s cold mercy. A look of disdain on his aging face, the doctor put his hands behind him and leaned on an equally cold and blank examination table to Johnson’s left.

“If you have been out, I doubt you’ve been of any help. A mere waste of time on your part, and something that could have easily ended you. Regardless of whether your reactions were pristine before, they’re not now. Your core still needs time to rest.”

He gazed at his blood-soaked gloves, slipping one finger off at a time as he spoke.

“Mireen told me how your entrails became so exposed when you first arrived.”

What a bitch.

“If she hadn’t told me about the knife your attacker used, I might now have been able to staple it up properly at the outset.”

Alright, nevermind.

“I appreciate the help, doc, but like you said, it’ll heal.”

“The question is what happens to you before it does. Stay off just a bit longer.”

“If I must.”

“I’m not your mother, I’m your doctor.”

The doctor sighed and shook his head silently.

“These Reavers, they come in with issues all the time. You seem to have topped most of them, and you certainly seem too stubborn to let the healing process take its course.”

“I never wanted to go out, it just happened. One moment, I’m in a bunk, the next, a fighter with Cerulean or one of the others.”

“What are you a puppet?”

Johnson wrinkled his nose thinking about it, and the doctor began wrapping a new dressing about his abdomen. The new cotton clung tightly to the still-moist wound, which seemingly sucked it inside his body with each pass.

“How many targets have you . . . scrubbed?” The question was rather absent-minded and small-talkish as the doctor continued his work.

I have no idea.

“Well?”

“I have no idea.”

“I know.”

Johnson pulled away slightly, but the doctor pulled him back as he made another round with the cotton.

“It’s a better answer than these others would likely give. ‘More than I can count’ or something haughty like that. Their egos are their greatest weapon and weakness at the same time.”

The doctor tucked the end of the dressing into the back of the wrap, his work tight and constricting on Johnson’s belly.

“Do you remember killing anyone?”

“Not really. But I assume most people might try to wipe those memories away from time to time.”

“Killing your parents takes you firmly out of the ‘most people’ category, William.”

The doctor turned to a table and pulled one of the stainless, almost camouflaged drawers open. He removed two small vials, each in their own atomizer.

“I have a theory about you based on what Mireen has told me.”

He applied the first on Johnson’s temple, the smell burning its way into his nostrils. Johnson did his best not to cough.

“What is this about?”

“It’s about you,” was his reply as the physician rubbed the first liquid into Johnson’s skin while applying the second.

“I genuinely don’t think you remember what you do because you don’t do it. Based on everything Mireen chose to share, I believe you have some deeper . . . issues.”

Johnson pulled away, pushing the second atomizer away from his head, a look of annoyance on his face. His eyes met the doctor’s for the first time since he sat down on that god-forsaken table.

“She doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does, and spilling it to the rest of humanity isn’t exactly something I’m keen on doing. Information is as deadly as this hole in my side.”

I’ll be running soon if this keeps up. Sorry, Cerulean.

The doctor stubbornly pushed his atomizer back to Johnson’s temple.

“I suspect you have multiple personality disorder. The memory loss, the seeming ability to do things a normal person wouldn’t. Again, I don’t think it’s you doing what ‘you do.’”

“Are you a quack now?”

“Why’d you kill the first Corsair?”

He was a bastard . . .

“Why did you kill your parents?”

Well, I don’t . . .

“Matthew?”

Fuck you.

“You didn’t and you have no idea who did.”

The doctor reached for a scalpel with a small silicon chip on a separate positioning rod, slicing where the liquid anesthesia had soaked into Johnson’s temple.

“This might tell us why. Something seems to happen when you’re faced with dangerous choices, and I’d like to watch you making them. This little beauty will track your brainwave pattern, and it should give you some answers. I’m sure you’d like to know as well, no?”

Johnson eyed the chip out of his peripheral vision, a bead of sweat pooling around his left eye.

“Alright. But I won’t be your experiment forever. The chip comes out as soon as you have your readings.”

The doctor sat down with a satisfied chuckle while reaching up to insert the chip in Johnson’s new wound.

“Let’s see what happens the next time you go out.”

Johnson slid from the table and threw his jacket around his shoulders.

“After you’re healed a bit more, Mr. Johnson.”

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