Orion Colony Complete Series Boxed Set J.N. Chaney (books for new readers .txt) 📖

“Come on, you know what I mean,” Ricky said, sighing heavily. He looked down at my injured arm again. “So, what? Like an hour of work and then you get it checked out? Man, that thing is going to sting when you have it fixed. You’re kind of bleeding all over our workspace. You should go soon. It’s unsanitary.”

Ricky talked a lot, but the man was intuitive. I’d give him that much. He also happened to be right. Looking down, I saw droplets of crimson falling to the steel floor.

“Yeah, about an hour of work, and I’m headed to medical,” I answered. “Don’t tell anyone, yeah?”

“My lips are sealed,” Ricky said, making a zipping motion across his mouth with his right thumb and pointer finger. “You’re my friend, Dean. In the time I’ve known you, you’ve never done me dirty. That means loyalty, and loyalty means family.”

“Man, you’re not going to get all sentimental on me again, are you?” I asked. “I really need to get to work.”

“A real man’s not afraid to cry,” Ricky said, going to his own station next to mine. “You ever need someone to talk to besides that necklace of yours, you let me know.”

“Yup, will do,” I said, instinctively reaching for my necklace to ensure I still had it on after the fight. It never crossed my mind that I might have lost it in the alley until now.

Through my work glove, my fingers met the thin piece of metal, and I could feel the circular medallion that hung on the chain. I had seen it a million times before, yet it still comforted me in ways I didn’t understand.

The symbol was one I didn’t recognize—a sword with a circle in the middle of the blade and two knives coming up on either side of it. It wasn’t really the symbol that comforted me, but rather the memory of the person who gifted it.

Just before the waking nightmares could pull me down that road again, I was brought back to reality by the crack of Ricky igniting his torch.

You can’t change the past, I reminded myself as I donned my protective visor and lit my own. Ain’t no sense in going back.

3

Ricky was right—the visit to the med station had sucked. I made the trip after only forty-five minutes of work. Fear of infection from the thug’s knife was a great motivator, along with the pain, but I only wanted to work and keep my head down. Imagine a white-hot poker tearing a hole through your skin, and you’d be close to what it felt like standing around with this wound in my arm.

Much like Boss Creed’s office, the med station was little more than a sparsely decorated shipping container. The front door opened into a cramped waiting area with a handful of chairs and a small desk.

I was the only one in the room at the moment. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad thing until that question was answered for me. A shriek rang out from the other side of the long room.

I tried looking further down, but a white curtain kept the source obscured.

The scream came again, along with hushed voices I couldn’t make out. Suddenly, my arm wasn’t hurting so bad. Maybe I could cauterize it myself or clean it out with some whiskey and sew it up. Now any option seemed better than staying here.

I was about to turn and go when the white sheet drew back and an older woman with short blonde hair and piercing green eyes smiled at me. Someone else moaned behind her, but she simply ignored them and closed the curtain behind her.

“No need to worry; he’ll be fine,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “He just needs a few stitches. There was an accident installing one of the Orion’s cooling valves.”

“The Orion?” I asked, forgetting about the moaning man altogether. I didn’t know our colony ship had a name yet.

“Whoops.” The doctor smiled, revealing pearly white teeth. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s public knowledge yet. Let’s keep that between you and me. I received a memo about it just this morning. Grade-4s and above, you see, so I doubt you’re meant to know about it yet.”

I wanted to roll my eyes but knew better. I always hated how proud people were of their ranks, but especially when they talked about privileges. No matter how high your rank was, it wasn’t going to change the fact that you were still a Transient. The only way to become an Eternal was with money, and even then, it took decades for the drug to change your physical appearance. White hair, blue eyes, pale skin—these were traits that only the older Eternals had, which meant everyone could still tell the difference.

I thought she was going to say more, but then her eyes found Stacy’s bloody beanie on my arm. The impromptu tourniquet was more of a sponge for blood than anything else.

“Oh, my.” The doctor strode forward, grabbing a pad from a tabletop on her right. She punched in a few keys faster than my eyes could track. A second later, blue light shot out from the top of it, scanning my body. “Dean Slade, mechanic, grade-2. Never visited the med station before. No record of past injury.” She paused. “What happened to your arm?”

“I was working and got caught on a sharp piece of steel,” I told her. “I’m just worried about infection.”

The doctor came closer. She placed her pad back on the counter and reached for a pair of sterile gloves in her white lab coat pocket. She was close enough now I could see her nametag. Doctor Kelly Allbright.

“An open piece of steel did this to you?” Kelly asked as she unwrapped the mushy tourniquet and carefully rolled up my sleeve. “Really?”

“Really,” I said. I was all in with the lie at this point. There was