The Phoenix Rising (14 page)

The hunger for the drug ate at him. Forcing
his mind to spin circles. But he fought it. Trying to think of
nothing. Of blackness. It didn’t work and another hour passed. He
fought the need. Fought the intense demand. Eventually his body
relented and he drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 9

The images were fleeting and surreal. At
times almost tangible, yet elusive.

She smiled at him; her soft brown eyes
glowed. The scent of her perfume, very lightly applied, tickled his
nose.

“
What is it?” he asked,
soaking in the delightful mischief behind her smile. His own voice
sounded distant, like an echo.

She didn’t answer, except to take his hand
and lead him down the corridor. It was a familiar place, and glowed
brightly. Figures passed by them. He couldn’t see their features.
They were like shadows, silhouettes moving against the bright light
they approached. Calvin shielded his eyes.

“
Where are we going?” he
asked, smiling.

“
It’s a surprise,” Christine
replied, her voice playful.

They reached a door. It was the airlock. She
pushed a button and it began to open. But they weren’t blown out
into space. Instead there was an all-white room awaiting them. So
bright Calvin had to squint as Christine led him inside.

“
What is this
place?”

There were others there, all whispering
something. It was a Polarian prayer chant. But the other figures,
who stood assembled in a ring with two people in the center, were
humans. Fellow officers in Imperial navy uniforms. They cried in
unison, in the Polarian tongue, and reached their hands up to the
sky. In the center of them all was Commander William. He led the
chant. His eyes met Calvin’s as he and Christine approached—she led
him inside the prayer circle.

“
We’ll all die if we board
that ship!” Commander William screamed. He looked at the sky and
then once again directly at Calvin. “Don’t you understand? We’ll
all die!” His body transformed into the grotesque figure of a type
two Remorii in full-blown blood-lust, a fierce strigoi. A
distortion of a man.

The strigoi lurched forward and Calvin let
go of Christine’s hand and instinctively covered his own face.
Protecting himself. But Commander William—what was left of him,
didn’t attack Calvin, instead he assaulted Christine. Biting her
over and over. Calvin charged him, punching and hitting the far
stronger Strigoi with all his force, but it was too late. Christine
lay on the ground.

“
NO!” he yelled.

The scene changed in a dizzying spiral and
he found himself in a dark room. He stood before a bed, on it was
Christine, unconscious. The only light shined down on her,
revealing her sullen face. All kinds of machines and tubes were
plugged into her. She looked pale and broken, wasted away. Aged
decades in only days.

Calvin bowed his head. He leaned down to
give her a final kiss, feeling his heart bleed. Just as he was
about to press his lips to hers, her eyes opened and she screamed.
Her hands grabbed his arm and she squeezed with the force of a
vice.

“
Why did you let me suffer
like this for so long?” Her eyes searched him and he felt a
profound chill pour over him. He had no answer for her.

***

Calvin awoke in a start. He was gasping for
air, his sheets tangled around him tightly, the comforter having
fallen to the floor. His chest was a frozen sheet of sweat and he
shivered.

It had been a dream. Only a dream...

“
Temperature?” he asked out
loud.

“
Twenty-four point three
degrees centigrade,” a dispassionate automated voice
said.

Twenty-four degrees? That wasn’t cold. Yet
he felt like ice. “Lights full,” he said.

The room lit up and he was forced to squint.
He felt suddenly nauseous and rolled out of bed onto the floor,
nearly vomiting his guts out. He felt like he was going to die. He
disentangled himself from his sheets and crawled very slowly to the
bathroom.

The next twenty minutes were hell. Flashes
of cold came and went, and intense cramping seized his abdomen. The
pain ripped into him like a bonesaw. And the nausea never left,
even though he was unable to vomit.

“
Oh, God. Make it stop!”
Minutes felt like days.

Eventually the pain subsided, and the
feeling of nausea lessened enough that he could return to bed.
There he tossed and turned anxiously, trying not to think of the
nightmare, or his sick feelings, or anything really. But uneasiness
kept him awake.

“
That’s it,” he said, and he
climbed out of bed. “Nothing is worth this.” He’d have ten
physicals, get a hundred shots, and donate all his blood if that
meant he could sleep normally again.

He took a moment to dress, putting on the
first shirt and pants he could find, and then set out for the
infirmary.

***

“
What you’re describing
sounds like withdrawal symptoms,” said Rain. “Honestly I’m
surprised these didn’t manifest much earlier.”

Calvin nodded. He’d expected nothing less.
“So what do I do, Doc?” he asked, grateful that Rain wasn’t giving
him a glass of “I told you so.”

She didn’t smile or relish the moment, it
apparently meant nothing to her to be proven right; she honestly
seemed concerned only with his welfare and helping him recover. His
respect for her grew. She still wasn’t Monte, but he was glad he’d
chosen her over the other candidates.

“
I’ll give you something to
treat your immediate symptoms,” she said. “And something else to
help you sleep. This will all pass eventually on its own, however,
the process will be significantly lessened if you agree to a
scale-back treatment, instead of going cold turkey.”

“
Fine.
Anything
.”

Rain unlocked one of the storage
compartments in the infirmary and began sorting through the various
shelves of drugs. It took her a few minutes, she wasn’t familiar
yet with how Monte had organized everything.

“
Here, take this every six
hours for the next day or two,” she handed him a bottle. “Take two
tablets each time. And then,” she handed him another bottle. Its
translucent orange figure was just as light as the other
prescription in his hand but felt much heavier in his mind.
Equarius
. “These tablets
are much smaller than what you’re used to taking. Take five tablets
every day for the next three days. After that, decrease to four
tablets and so on. I’ll write up a schedule for you.” She paused
and looked him in the eyes. “Can I trust you to take only the
prescribed amount and not more?”

Yes
,
he wanted to say. But, as he felt the longing within him, and knew
his own weaknesses, he found that he couldn’t answer her right
away.

She took the bottle back. “New plan,” she
said, and she opened the bottle and handed him five tablets. “Take
these now and come back here every twenty-four hours. I’ll see how
you’re doing and then give you the right scale-back dose.”

“
Okay,” said Calvin. He
wasn’t enthusiastic about having to come back here so often but,
still feeling pretty horrible, he was inclined to agree with just
about anything she suggested.

She pointed him to the sink. He took one of
the paper cups and filled it, then downed the prescribed
medications. For the pain, the nausea, and lastly, the equarius. It
felt strange taking it. Like poison. He hated it. Hated that he was
still its slave. But a small part of him was excited. Expecting the
same calming pleasure to overcome him. Even though he knew this
lessened dose wouldn’t have that same effect. At least not as
strong.

“
Thank you,” he
said.

Rain smiled. “I’m happy to help.”

He nodded and began walking for the
door.

“
Calvin, wait,” she
said.

He stopped and faced her. “What?”

“
How—” she paused, searching
for the right words. ”How did it all begin? Your equarius
addiction, I mean. I know that’s none of my business and you don’t
have to answer but—”

Old memories raced through his mind,
memories he’d kept buried. Rain must have seen it in his face that
her question had made him uncomfortable.

“
I understand that we all
have our secrets, and our baggage,” said Rain. “Even me. But these
things can be good to talk about. It helps us face them head
on.”

“
You have secrets,
Rain?”

“
I do,” she said very
seriously. “I’ll keep yours if you keep mine.”

Calvin couldn’t help but feel curious.
Normally he wouldn’t make himself vulnerable by opening up to
someone who a few days earlier had been a total stranger, but now
that Monte was gone he felt a void—he had no confidant anymore
where his addiction was concerned—and he was curious to know her
secret. Even if it was just a ploy to get him to unearth his.

“
Very well,” he said,
deciding there was no harm in sharing the short version of the
story. Now that his addiction was common knowledge, and Monte was
dead, keeping the secret no longer protected anyone.

He looked at Rain, from her striking pale
eyes to her barely tamed red hair—there was something about her
that stood out, something he trusted but couldn’t identify. She was
pretty, though not in a way that forced all nearby men to ogle
her—like Summers did—rather Rain’s charms were more subtle. She
just came across as genuine and kindhearted.

“
You first,” she
said.

“
Fine.” He cleared his
throat, thinking how to begin. “A long time ago I was on a ship
called the Trinity.” He didn’t want to go into details about the
horrible massacre that had happened on that ship when—after
responding to a distress call—they’d been ravaged by strigoi. Nor
did he want to tell her the intimate details about his relationship
with Christine, the fellow officer he’d fallen deeply in love with.
The only woman he’d ever truly loved. And he especially didn’t want
to tell Rain about Christine’s tragic death. Something he’d never
found a way to get beyond. So he skipped over those
details.

“
The ship was destroyed in
an unfortunate incident,” he went on. He’d been fortunate to avoid
being bitten or clawed by the strigoi, but he’d still torn his ACL
in the fight and subsequent escape.

“
The ship was
destroyed
?” she asked, shocked.

“
Yeah,” said Calvin,
thinking of how the Imperial warship had fired on the Trinity and
blown it to dust to contain the Remorii contagion.

“
How many
survivors?”

“
Fourteen,” said Calvin.
Actually there’d originally been fifteen including
Christine.

“
Out of how
many?”

“
About four hundred
crew.”

Rain’s eyes widened. “You’re lucky to be
here!”

“
Yeah,” said Calvin,
recalling the horror. “Lucky…” He didn’t think that described the
ordeal very well. “Anyway, I hurt my knee during the evacuation and
had to get surgery. Equarius was given to me to manage the
pain.”

“
And you got
hooked?”

“
Yep. I found that it was a
way to deal with not just the physical pain, but the emotional pain
too.”

“
I’m sure that was horribly
traumatic.”

She didn’t know the half of it. “It
was.”

“
So how did you get more
equarius after the prescription ran out?”

“
Well,” he said; this part
of the story was the shady part. “I became friends with the doctor
who treated me post-op. Monte Blair… he was a real good guy. When I
came to him with new excuses for why I needed more of the drug, he
put two and two together. But, rather than rat me out that I’d
become addicted, Monte decided to keep supplying me with the
drug.”

“
He was an
enabler?”

“
For a small
fee.”

“
A drug dealer?” Rain
balked.

“
The way he saw it, I was
dealing with a lot and it was a choice I had a right to make. What
to put in my body was up to me,” Calvin tried to justify it. “And
eventually, when I got this ship, and got to handpick my senior
crew, I selected him as my chief physician.”

Rain looked around the
infirmary. “Oh. I thought that name sounded familiar. A really
messy signature that vaguely resembled ‘
Dr.
Blair
’ is on a lot of the paperwork
here.”

“
Yep,” said Calvin. “He was
my dealer and my enabler. But he was also a fantastic doctor and an
even better friend. I know my story doesn’t paint him in the best
light, but you’ll just have to trust me. Monte was a great man. And
I miss him dearly.”

Rain’s incredulous expression became soft.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “I’m sure he was a great
friend. And, while I know I cannot replace him, I will promise to
be at least as good of a physician as he was.”

“
That’s all I can ask,” said
Calvin, though it was small comfort. “Your turn. What’s your
secret?”

“
I’m dying,” said Rain
without missing a beat.

“
What
?” Calvin looked at her. She was young and energetic and
seemed perfectly healthy. “Wait, is this some kind of loophole?
Cause technically we’re all dying.”