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“They still don’t know what caused it,” you say caustically. The chair groans as your hands dig into the wood, tightening into white-knuckled fists. “Port Authority’s still got their thumbs up their asses. Unsafe investigation, my fucking ass. It could’ve been sabotage on the part of the Teeth, or some fucking idiot in a hurry to get the job done and the cargo out to sea for a fucking quota. Just…bad fucking luck that they were moving away to look at another ship when the line snapped as it was passing over their heads.
“Jean, he…he pushed Tom out of the way, seconds before the pallet fell on them. It crushed his right leg, and his hand. But…” You shudder. “Just sheer bad luck that the barrels burst open when they hit the ground, spilling everything onto the dock. Tom...wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way.”
Many things get easier over the long years. Telling this part of the story never will. “Tom got doused with 8 Gys of radioactive waste. Damn near killed all of the DNA in his body, most of the white blood cells in his bloodstream, and kickstarted the systematic shutdown of each of his organs over a two-week period.”
Gully’s hand comes to her mouth, eyes widening in a horrified expression. “Oh my God…!”
Caroline was inconsolable. Jean only got hit with only 1 Gy from ambient radiation, so he’d be fine, even though he’d lose the leg and half of his hand, save the thumb. But for Tom…
“There wasn’t anything the doctors could do, these…‘doctors’, they just told Caroline that it’d be a mercy to pull the plug. Tom was a dead kid walking, with at best, two weeks before . No affordable way to reverse the damage, but plenty of morphine to make him pass away in his sleep.”
“How cruel of them,” she spits.
“They weren’t wrong, but…yeah. Zero out of ten for their bedside manner. Would not recommend going for a physical.”
She ignores the flippant attempt to lighten the mood, grabbing you by the shoulders. “You did something though. Tom’s still alive, and you’re in debt. So, what you did saved his life, but…what was it? What the hell cost that much?”
Medicine and technology from the Old World. Pre-Cataclysm miracle machines that escaped the Scouring completely unscathed. Things we won’t be reinventing for another few decades, unreplaceable and almost exclusively reserved for the city’s elite just because of the sheer price alone.
But there was only one thing saved Tom. Far beyond the meager expenses and savings that both of his parents could put together.
A price only you could have paid.
You match Gully’s intense stare with your own, and gently extricate yourself from out of her grip. “I sold myself and my services to Lord-Founder Bartholomew Stolze for the lump sum of 25-million ducats. For a syringe of self-replicating nanites capable of reversing the damage and giving Tom the chance to live the life he would’ve had otherwise.”
(cont.)
