The Stargazer's War - Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Recovery

“Cadet Rex? Cadet Rex, can you hear me?”

My eyes blinked open to a bright light shining into them. I groaned.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The light flicked off and vision slowly clarified to reveal a sparsely adorned hospital room complete with sunlight blaring in through the window to my left and refracting off the polished linoleum floor right into my eyes. Before me stood a middle-aged woman in a pale green medical apron, currently in the process of typing into her holopad.

A window to my right revealed an open hallway, through which various patients and personnel went about their business. Xavier, Charlotte, and Nick looked in with concern on their faces. I flashed them a weak grin.

“How are you feeling?” The—I squinted at her badge—doctor asked.

Hmm. Good question. “What happened?”

“We’ll get to that. How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty. My head hurts. And-um…” I paused to do a quick inventory. “My lower back is sore.”

She nodded, continuing to tap away as she spoke. “There’s some water to your right. Don’t drink it all. Your mouth is probably dry, but we’ve been hydrating you intravenously. Headache is normal. Are there any dark or blurry spots in your vision?”

I shook my head.

“That’s a no,” she stated the obvious. “Can you wiggle your fingers and toes for me?”

One by one we went through a slew of tests to confirm I hadn’t fucked up my nervous system, tests that should’ve been redundant with biometrics from my holopad, but I guess it paid to be sure. Mostly I just wanted her to leave so I could check my meridian. Unfortunately, only once the doctor was good and satisfied did she move on to her next question.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I hit my head. I-um…” I trailed off, hit by the realization that I probably shouldn’t tell her I’d been opening meridians in the third floor showers. Luckily, Charlotte had my back.

I glanced past the doctor to find Charlotte’s holopad pressed to the window, three words written upon it in massive font.

SLIPPED IN SHOWER

I blinked, reverting my gaze to meet the doctor’s. “I was showering after class and I slipped.”

She nodded along. “Good. We found a laceration on your ankle that seemed to have come from the fall, a severe contusion in your brain we had to treat surgically, and a ruptured tendon in your back from the ensuing seizures. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Don’t I know it,” I muttered darkly, more to myself than to her. “I’m okay, then?”

“We’re going to keep you here another night to be safe, but right now, all signs point to full recovery. We’ll have you up and getting beaten to a pulp by your peers again in no time.”

Huh. A doctor that wasn’t too fond of all the dueling. Who would’ve thought?

I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“Just doing my job,” she replied, closing her holopad and turning to go. “I’m going to let your friends in, now. That alright?”

“Yes, thanks.”

She just nodded and left, leaving the door open for the others to enter. As they did, I silenced them with a raised finger.

First things first.

I sank into my center, finding my qi waiting patiently where I’d left it. My heart pounding in trepidation, I gathered up a thread of the liquid darkness and directed it into my muscle meridian.

I didn’t seize. No pain wrenched through my body.

A sense of cool solidity spread through me, as if my flesh had turned to iron, immovable and unstoppable. It took a force of will, greater than I’d expected, to spur my muscles into motion, but once I did they moved with a quiet power that sent chills down my spine.

I cut off my cycling and returned to my friends. I could play with it later.

“It worked.” I let out a sigh of relief. “My—”

Charlotte shushed me and stepped back to close the door behind her.

I lowered my voice. “My meridian’s clear. No damage.”

Charlotte nodded. “We thought as much. Nick said he saw you stop seizing as the medics loaded you out. What happened?”

“The fucking drain happened. I should’ve seen it coming. My muscles twitched in just the right way to slice my ankle against the drain. Surprised me enough I lost focus for half a second.”

“That’d do it,” she said. “You were lucky. It takes a good instinct to keep cycling after getting knocked out like that.”

Xavier beamed. “You have a warrior’s spirit.”

I smiled gently. “Thanks Xav. And thanks for helping me. Both of you.” I looked to Nick too. “Gods know what would’ve happened if I didn’t have you supervising me. I take it you’re the ones who called the paramedics?”

They nodded in tandem, Xavier enthusiastically and Nick shyly.

“Seriously, thank you. You saved my life.”

“That’s what we were there for,” Xavier said. “You were paying us to watch you.”

“I know, I know. Still.” I let out a breath. “How long was I out? What all did I miss?”

“Two days,” Charlotte said.

I blinked. “I missed dueling day? Hell yes! I should have brain surgery more often. How’d you all do?”

“Two-one, two-one, oh-three,” Xavier rattled off, pointing at himself, Charlotte, and Nick respectively.

I stared at him. “Does that mean…?”

He grinned, wide and proud. “I’m moving to housing C this afternoon.”

“Xav, that’s great! Congrats! We’ll have to celebrate. Maybe I can get Lucy to come down and—Lucy! Did someone talk to her? She’s probably—”

“I messaged her as soon as I heard,” Charlotte butted in. “We’re keeping her updated. She knows you’re awake, that you’re okay, and that you’ll call her when you’re ready.”

“Okay.” I exhaled. “Thank you. Is there anything else I missed? Anything I need to…” I trailed off as before my eyes Charlotte reached for Xavier’s hand and intertwined her fingers with his. “Holy shit.”

“Cal!” Charlotte chided.

“I know, I know, I just… if I’d known it’d take a traumatic brain injury for you two to admit you’re dating, I would’ve bashed my head into a wall weeks ago.”

Xavier blinked. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew. You’re a terrible liar. That’s what I like about you.” I looked to Charlotte. “It’s you I’m surprised about. What all do you remember from that night we got drunk last dueling day?”

Charlotte froze. Like, full on deer-in-the-headlights froze. “Did I-um… do something I should know about?”

I laughed, remembering the image of her drunkenly shushing me as Xavier carried her home. “Let’s just say your secret never stood a chance.”

Charlotte blushed. She actually blushed. Red cheeks and everything.

“Anyway, I should probably talk to Lucy. Doctor says I’m not getting out of here until tomorrow, so we’ll have to hold of celebrating Xavier’s promotion until after he’s already moved. Is there anything else I need to know?”

Nick finally spoke up. “We’re-um… we’re glad you’re alright.”

I smiled at him. “So am I. Imagine how boring it would get around here without me to make a mess of things?” I chuckled to myself, making approximately one of us. “Thanks, Nick. That means a lot.”

They shuffled back out to reclaim their seats in the hallway and offer some privacy, an unnecessary gesture but one I appreciated all the same.

Lucy picked up the instant I hit the call button. “Cal! Sweetie, how are you?  I heard you …slipped and fell.”

Lucy, you angel. “I’m okay. And the doctor’s gone. No one can hear us.”

“Oh, good.” She lowered her voice nonetheless. “And your meridian? How bad is it?”

“It’s fine. It’s open. Apparently I finished clearing it while I was out.”

“That’s… Cal, that’s outstanding. You did it! That’s… oh threads, that’s such a relief. I worried you’d face permanent consequences. You wouldn’t be the first to sever a meridian like this.”

My mind jumped to the disclaimer I’d had to sign to “open” meridians in the focus rooms. Including, but not limited to, injury, permanent stunting of one’s cultivation, and death. I didn’t like the sound of any of those. Particularly not death. “I was wondering about that actually. I’d messed around a little with some of exercises for subconscious cultivation, but never particularly seriously. Too many other things to work on. Do you have any idea why I managed this?”

Lucy let out a breath—or, more appropriately, mimicked the sound of letting out a breath, what with the whole no lungs thing. “My knowledge of the human spirit is limited to what I’ve overheard, but I think your rapid progress had something to do with it. Normally I’d be the first to advocate for taking it slow and avoiding risks, but in this case, you may have only survived because you’ve opened so many meridians so quickly. I think you’ve—for lack of a better word—taught your spirit how to complete the process by doing it so many times in so few months.”

“Huh.” I ran through the idea in my head. Correct or not, it certainly sounded good. “That actually makes sense. So you’re not mad?”

“I’m not mad. I wish we had the funds to purchase pills for you, but anything in our price range might well have done more harm than good.”

Oh, shit, you guys are probably wondering about the whole financial situation. Skipping right past the complexities of interstellar exchange rates, between my time on the freighter and then roofie, I’d saved up a few hundred credits—the currency the entire Eternity's Maw sect and thus all its subsidiary systems used. For reference, that was enough to cover incidentals like the odd night out or new outfit, but if I’d had to pay rent to stay on Fyrion, I would’ve been in trouble.

Lucy didn’t have much use for money. People usually jumped at the chance to load her up with fuel and supplies once they realized she was a soulship. Cedric had had money, but while I had taken a good amount of his stuff, I didn’t have any legal claim to it. His money in particular remained locked up in his account, presumably until his next of kin—wherever the hell they were—realized he was dead.

Long story short, I wasn’t quite broke, but I wasn’t exactly in line to buy expensive pills.

“I’m just happy you made it through,” Lucy continued. “You took my advice and had friends watching over you, and it sound like it made the difference. I’m proud of you. Maybe you could’ve done a few more test runs, but no amount of practice is going to make cultivating not dangerous.”

“That’s… thank you. You’re right about the test runs. I should’ve done more. I wanted to open the meridian before dueling day and my meeting with—shit!”

“Language.”

“Right, right, sorry. I missed my meeting with Elder Lopez. I waited almost a week for that chance to see her.”

“You’ll have another opportunity.”

“Yeah. Gods know how long it’ll take. You think she knows why I didn’t show? If she thinks I just forgot…” I shuddered.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lucy reassured me.

“You’re probably right. I just hope she isn’t too angry with me.”

——

Elder Maria Lopez couldn’t have been more pleased.

After months of dead ends, empty reports, and an absolute dearth of new evidence, her surveillance of Cadet Rex finally had a new lead. She’d begun to grow impatient.

Not for a moment as she’d watched him play the part of the diligent student day in and day out had she fallen for his charade. His motives may’ve remained unclear, but long periods of normalcy didn’t invalidate the evidence she had, the footage of him, unbreathing and with the pallid skin of a corpse, walking unmolested past a trio of void beasts. Threads, he’d even come to her asking after a way to secure his spirit to his body!

However many of her sect members he’d fooled, Maria knew. Something necromantic was going on.

Unfortunately, industriously training, attending classes, and making friends didn’t quite fit her undead abomination theory. There had to be more. More secrets, more schemes, more cracks in his facade.

But none had shown, so Maria’d done what Maria did best.

She’d applied pressure.

That pompous upstart Long had made the perfect tool, his disdain for mortals an excellent handle with which to wield him. Bigots were so easy to manipulate.

Maria had had enough experience not to bother thinking Caliban might show his true colors the moment Long pushed him, and the fact he’d used her name had tipped her hand more than she might’ve liked, but she could maneuver out of that little implication.

For five days she’d watched. For five days she’d waited. For five days her hopes of pushing Cadet Rex to do something desperate dwindled.

Until her contact in the trauma center informed her that Cadet Rex had admitted for severe head trauma, presumably from slipping in the shower.

She didn’t believe that for a second.

Which led her to today, with at last another lead and the perfect excuse to further delay meeting with the cadet in question. Threads, she could even use his absence to wring another focus room hour out of him! She couldn’t have planned it better.

Maria scrolled back through the security tapes, unfortunately limited to hall outside. It’d have to do. She watched the two male friends, Cadets Vesper and Honchel, step into the bathroom, followed shortly by a towel-clad Rex. She scrubbed through a half hour of nothing before Cadet Vesper bolted back into the hall and down the stairs, only to return minutes later with paramedics in tow.

What had they been doing in there for so long? Why had Vesper and Honchel been uniformed and Rex undressed?

A brief delay later, she watched the medics roll Rex out on a gurney, strapped down and spasming from the head trauma. Maria leapt back and watched it again. And again. And again.

Threads, it looked like a fall. She watched the way he moved, the looks on his friends’ faces, the mess of his injuries. Over and over she analyzed that tape, searching for something, anything out of place, anything to bely the story she’d—there! In the linens of the gurney, washed away and obscured by the water and the blood, Martha spotted it.

The telltale black of cleansed impurities.

He was opening a meridian. Why there? Why with those two? How was he opening a meridian after showing an almost willingness to part with his focus room hours?

Her second question answered her third.

They were giving him qi.

It all made sense—the secrecy, the veil over Rex’s qi, his close relationships with some of the sect’s most vulnerable. It explained the uptick in instances of void induced psychosis, the disappearing ships, the abandoned refueling stations.

Whoever had created Rex wasn’t just experimenting with necromancy. They were experimenting with vampirism. Rex must’ve been the answer. After dozens of failed attempts leading to the slew of void psychos, his mysterious master had turned to necromantic practice to create something that could take in the qi of others, that could steal power without being destroyed.

And now they’d sent it to Fyrion, a fertile ground of weak cultivators that nobody really cared about.

Maria was giddy.

She had no evidence, of course, but she didn’t need any. All she had to do was be the one to stop him when he showed his hand, and she’d have her ticket off this godsforsaken rock. It was the perfect opportunity, one for which only she was looking, one for which she needed only wait until the time came.

Cadet Vesper had even floundered since coming to meet Rex. Sure, his other two lackeys had made astounding progress up the ranks since his arrival, but if Rex was feeding Maria focus room hours, it stood to reason she wasn’t the only one. Perhaps he drew more heavily from Vesper.

Maria shook her head. Her theory didn’t need holes punched in it. It was perfect. It explained everything in a neat little package that provided her exactly the opportunity for advancement she was looking for. The evidence would arrive eventually.

And even if it didn’t, Maria had ways of making it.

Yes, things were coming along nicely. She couldn’t have been more pleased.

——

I waved the others back in with Lucy still on the line, wanting neither to hang up nor make my friends wait for us to finish. They all greeted her politely enough, though Charlotte in particular stilted and uncomfortable. Even now she struggled speaking to a millennia-old soulship with anything resembling familiarity.

“I’ve heard you’ve earned a new housing tier?” Lucy asked. “Congratulations, Xavier.”

“Thank you. It is but a step on the eternal climb towards glorious victory.”

I snorted. “That means it’s about time for another celebration.”

“I’ll coordinate with the harbormaster,” Lucy said, “but it may be a few days. There’s a queue of food freighters from Ilirian because something went wrong with the latest silver shipment.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “We don’t need a full hangar, either. They’ve all had their chance to revel in your beauty.”

Charlotte nodded. “A normal bay will do.”

“Aaand, sent. We’ll see what he says. They’re usually quite accommodating.”

“Well, you are very impressive.” I laughed.

The conversation drifted on from there, the morning passing in comfortable companionship as Xavier relayed—in detail—the stories of his successful dueling day. Nick kept understandably quiet about his three losses, while Charlotte spent more time explaining why she’d targeted the opponents she had—including the intentional loss to avoid suspicion—than going over the actual duels.

The suns had long passed beyond the frame of my window by the time the talking wound down. Lucy hung up to go talk with the harbormaster, and the others inevitably had to return to their own days.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Xavier fussed. “I could stay and spar with you.”

“I’m pretty sure sparring is the last thing I should be doing. I’m fine. I could use some meditation time, actually. You’ve all been great, really. Thanks. Now go pack. Xavier’s moving today, remember?”

They smiled and waved and said their goodbyes and get-well-soons, only to stop at the door as I remembered an idea that’d been itching at the back of my mind.

“Hey, wait,” I flagged them down. “I actually have one more question.”

Charlotte stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“Well it’s just… now that I opened my muscle meridian while unconscious, does that mean I’m ready for my brain meridian?”

Next 

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[A/N] Whew.  As of this post, The Stargazer's War is officially 100,000 words long!  Aaaaand we're still several chapters short of even starting the book 1 climax.  God help me.

I hope this (plus some future edits to come) helps shine a better light on Lopez's mindset.  I've got big plans for her.  As always, thanks for reading, and for any and all feedback you have to offer.

-Nixia