Page 9 of Hunted By the Wraiths
Thoryn didn’t respond. Just followed. The heat rolling off him was wrong, even from two meters away.
The depot entrance appeared around a sharp corner, exactly where my mental map said it would be. Heavy blast door, rusted at the edges, covered in decades of grime. I keyed in the old override code.
The lock cycled. Green light. The door ground open on protesting hydraulics.
Inside, the depot was exactly as terrible as I remembered. One large room, carved from raw asteroid rock. Emergency lighting strips along the ceiling cast everything in dim, flickeringamber. Crates stacked along one wall. A rusted maintenance console. Two metal cots bolted to the floor. The air felt heavy with the smell of old coolant and abandonment. But it had independent life support. The gentle hum told me the system still functioned.
Good enough.
I turned to secure the entrance. Thoryn swayed in the doorway. His weight shifted wrong. Catching himself. The smear of blood on the door frame behind him glistened wet and dark.
“Sit.” I pointed at the nearest cot. “Now.”
He moved toward it. Three steps. His entire body seized on the second step. He made it to the cot and collapsed more than sat, the metal frame groaning under his weight.
The whole right side of his vest gleamed dark and wet.
I dropped my pack. Yanked out the medkit. My hands moved through familiar motions. Focus. Fix the immediate problem.
“Vest off.” I crossed to him, kit in hand.
He fumbled with it, his left hand shaking. After five seconds of watching him fail, I batted his hand away and released the clasps myself. Peeled the vest off. He hissed when the material pulled away from the wound.
The plasma burn looked worse up close. Much worse. The scales across his entire right shoulder had melted together into a grotesque mass, gray and black and oozing. The synthetic fabric from his undershirt had fused into the charred tissue. The heat radiating from the wound felt like an open furnace against my palms.
“This needs a medical bay,” I said. My voice stayed level. Clinical. “Real regeneration tech.”
“Don’t have time.” His voice scraped out. “Need to keep moving.”
“You can’t move like this.”
“Can.”
“You’re burning up.”
“Trauma response.” He managed to focus on my face. Those amber eyes were wrong. Too bright. Pupils blown wide. “Runs hot when healing. Normal.”
Nothing about this was normal.
I grabbed the bio-sealer from the kit. Then the plasma-cauterizing pads. Two left. And the coolant gel. One tube.
I started with the coolant gel. Squeezed the tube, spreading the thick blue paste across the worst of the burn. The gel hissed on contact. Steam rose. Thoryn went rigid. His left hand gripped the edge of the cot, claws extending involuntarily, punching through the thin mattress.
“Sorry.”
He didn’t respond. Just breathed. In. Out. Controlled.
I applied the cauterizing pad next, pressing it firmly over the gel-covered burn. The pad activated on contact, sending targeted energy pulses to seal the damaged blood vessels. The pad glowed red, then amber, then green. Sealed.
The bio-sealer came last. I sprayed it over the pad, creating a protective layer.
My own hands were shaking. Just slightly.
Thoryn was still rigid. Still locked in that terrible stillness. Sweat ran down his neck.
My hand, the one not holding the sealer, lifted. An old, forgotten instinct. To brush the sweat from his temple. My fingers hovered, a centimeter from his skin.
He let out a choked sound, a gasp of pure agony from just the intent of my touch.
