PLANET AGAFRA - TOLLINDO CITY

“Ms Choi?” The voice was gentle and warm. It was so soft it sounded like the speaker didn’t want to be heard. 

Hyejin groaned and stirred on the bed when something lightly brushed her hand. She just wanted to sleep, but the beeping noise next to her head was irritating.

“Ms Choi?” the woman repeated, a little more enthusiastically.

Hyejin’s eyes flickered open to look at the woman who was so adamant about disturbing her rest. She was short and curvy with cropped black hair. Her face was round and pink with a sweet friendly smile.

“Hmm?” Hyejin murmured, trying to sit up. Pain shot through her shoulder and she lay back down again just as quickly. Suddenly she felt alert and wide awake.

“Oh!” the woman cried out before hissing between her teeth. “Please don’t use your arm right now. We need to find a Mana-Tech to fix it before you can put weight on it.”

Bleary eyes scowled at the woman. What was wrong with her arm? Hyejin looked around the room — it was more like a cubicle — and realised she was hooked up to a saline drip. Her body ached all over and she felt like her blood was made of mud. It was not a pleasant sensation.

The memories of the last few hours seeped back into her mind and settled in place while Hyejin rubbed at her eyes. She swore loudly. After a second, she repeated the profanity three more times. Part of her wished she could forget the teeth and the jaw and the smell. Hyejin could still smell remnants of fish, but it wasn’t threatening her stomach anymore. Oh, thank the blessed Earth.

“Ms Choi?” the nurse tentatively asked again.

“I’m okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

The boring woman seemed to cheer up a little. “You’re in Tollindo Central Hospital. You were in bad shape, but we’ve taken care of that. You’re recovering thanks to the antidote, we’ve charged your leg and once we get a Mana-Tech to fix your arm, you’ll be able to go back to your regular activities.”

Hyejin nodded and pulled the blanket away from her legs. The mana gauge on the inside of her ankle was at 100%. She tested her knee, bending and stretching her leg slowly. It was fully functional, but there was a large gash in the repli-skin that exposed the frame of the prosthetic on her thigh. When she stretched it out to a certain point, a sharp pain radiated through her body, making her wince. 

On her arm, shreds of repli-skin still dangled like moth-eaten fabric and the tooth punctures perforated so deep that the inner mechanics of her prosthetic were visible; twisted and bent in obscure ways. Her arm was practically in ruins. It was going to take an advanced mana tech to repair the damage. Mana-techs were already rare outside of NexTech, let alone the border worlds. 

Although NexTech prosthetics were technically not flesh and blood, they were connected to her nervous system to emulate a real limb. She didn’t have real sensation in her prosthetics, but touch would still send a signal to the main body, almost like a phantom itch or a pressure ache. The connection required significantly more expertise than a simple ‘plug-and-play’ device.

“Where are the others?” Hyejin asked, looking back up to the nurse who was watching her with far too much interest.

“Others?”

“My… friends. I was with them in the truck.”

The nurse cleared her throat awkwardly and pretended to look at something on her holographic clipboard. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean, Ms Choi. You are my only charge right now.” She was scrolling way too fast for her to be genuinely reading anything. She was hiding something.

“Tell me. That’s not a request.”

“I’m sorry, Ms Choi. Your father—”

Hyejin shot up straight. “My father?”

“He called the hospital when you didn’t answer your DataCuff. He’s sending someone to escort you home again. He asked us not to bother you with your er… friends anymore.”

“No! No, no, no, no! How much did you tell him? How much does he know?” Hyejin was on her feet in a split second, charging her way toward the frightened nurse, who backed away.

“I d-didn't speak to him m-myself. I d-don’t know.” The woman cowered, backing away, eyes full of tears.

Great, she’d made the nurse cry. How was Hyejin going to get answers now?

Ugh. He’s going to kill me. Hyejin remembered calling for her father when she was struggling with the trigby.  It left a sour expression on her face. 

She needed to leave before her escort arrived. If her father discovered what she was planning, it wouldn’t take much for him to lock her out of all the systems. He never did want to talk about her mother’s death. It was suspicious how quickly he changed the conversation whenever she brought up the incident as a child. Something just didn’t add up. Now, after years of investigating, she finally had a strong lead and she was about to lose that chance.

It was bad enough that they had scanned her at Morrian Starport, but now they had her registered as a patient in Tollindo Central Hospital. He definitely knew where she was. He even called the hospital.

“Do me a favour. If he calls again, don’t talk to him. Let me do it.” Hyejin told the nurse, rubbing her face. When she pulled her hand away again, she realised she was now in a hospital gown and all the gunk she had been slathered in was gone; but how long had she been out?

As Hyejin headed for the door, the nurse tried to step in her way. “Please don’t leave! We’ll get you anything you need.”

“I need,” Hyejin started, glaring at the woman wildly, “the bathroom.”

The flustered nurse faltered and seemed to take a moment to process the information. “Right. Of course. Let me take you there.”

A frown passed over Hyejin’s face. “Am I a prisoner?”

“No, of course not! Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know, something about a jittery, awkward nurse who won’t answer my questions or let me move without trying to stop me.”

The woman bit her lip and tugged on her hair nervously, only glancing briefly at Hyejin. “I’m sorry, I was told—”

“I’m telling you,” Hyejin interrupted, pulling the cannula out of her flesh arm, “I’m going to the bathroom, and then I’m going to find my friends.” She stormed past the woman before the nurse had the chance to get in her way again. 

“Ms Choi! Ms Choi, please!” 

It took Hyejin nearly twenty minutes to finally lose the guard-nurse and find someone who could give her directions. The packed hospital was like a maze. She was very lost.

The young man on the other side of the desk finished typing on his holodisplay and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I only have a ‘Dion Saunders’ in the system. There’s no Atticus Floyd anywhere,” he confirmed again, remorse etched into the creases of his apologetic expression.

Hyejin wanted to cry all over again. That was just her luck. The only person in the universe who could help her was likely dead. What happened while she was unconscious? Atticus seemed fine when he pulled her into the truck. Did the trigbies catch up after all? She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded quietly.

“Dion is in Section H4, room 17 with his three children.”

Hyejin blinked. “His what?”

“The babies. They’re all safe, thankfully. Poor little things must have been terrified out there. Can you imagine?”

Hyejin was at a complete loss for words. She frowned and tilted her head. “No… I really can’t… You said Section H4?”

The male nurse nodded and brought up a holodisplay with a map over the counter. He pointed to a glowing red dot on the map. “This is us. Section J18; prosthetic surgery. You need to follow these three corridors until you reach the old dock. Then take the first corridor on your right, it’ll take you to the living quarters if you follow it the whole way.” He used his finger to trace out the path in red on the map.

“Why does a surface hospital have an indoor dock?” Hyejin asked, tapping her DataCuff to the red light of the DataPoint on the desk. The light turned green and the large map swapped from the desk display to the holodisplay on her cuff.

The man on the other side of the counter shrugged half-heartedly. “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t always a hospital?”

Hyejin gave an equally dismissive half-shrug and pulled up a real-time overlay on the map directions. It wasn’t as immersive as helmets or glasses, but the DataCuff did a decent job of lining up the miniature navigation map with her surroundings.

“Thank you. I mean it. You’ve been the most helpful person in this whole building so far.”

She waved goodbye to him as she limped quickly down the corridors marked on the map. Each one was flooded with people. As it happened, a large portion of Tollindo’s people had some form of mana prosthetic. When she thought about it, it made sense why they would be the most common survivors of the disaster; they were already decked out in the very weapons that were designed to fight back against the monsters. She had been able to fight one off – bare-handed – herself.

But how did Yesterday’s Children open the gate? The group had been active for as long as history had been written. They had a strange idea that the monsters that flooded through the gates were still present. From time to time, a small gate would randomly open, but nothing that would allow a monster outbreak. The tears were always too small to let anything through, and local authorities were fast to close them.

Hyejin stopped outside room 17 and hesitated. What was she even going to say to Dion? What happened to Atticus? Who were these children he was suddenly burdened with?

She paused again when she heard voices on the other side of the door.

“Harder!” the male voice cried. A strained groan followed.

“It’s so tight!” another male voice replied, breathlessly. It was Dion. 

“Don’t stop! Push it all the way in!” An audible deep breath and a moan.

Hyejin’s eyes were frozen as wide as they could go. Heat rose in her face as she wondered if she should come back later. 

“How deep do you want it?” Dion asked.

“I want to feel it slide to the end!” Hyejin was pretty sure the other voice was the tall man, the driver with the chocolates. 

What on Earth happened while I was unconscious? Hyejin turned and was about to walk away when the door slid open behind her.

“Hyejin!” She looked back again to see Atticus standing in the doorway dressed in a robe. “You’re okay!”

Before she could protest, Atticus tugged her into the room.