Chapter 26
Michael Ozent coldly rolled the corpse to its side and examined extensive post-mortem bruising, and jagged edges of the numerous lacerations on the victims back. He studied the wounds dispassionately before straightening the body back on down the autopsy table. He grimly stripped the bloody nitrile gloves off his hands, tossed them in the trash, and moved on to the next bagged corpse.
He looked around Raoul Am’s private lab-turned-morgue-and-healing-facility. Large black bags covered every flat surface. Bags filled with the dead bodies of mongrels. Thirteen hours ago he had been in his office when Gabriel Lazen had yanked him and a selected few medical assistants, from the main hospital, by order of Raoul Am. His annoyance of both Blondies high-handedness had been profound, until he had seen the reason behind Gabriel and Raoul’s inconsideration. The horror of seeing Raoul’s ex-Furniture unconscious in the Blondie’s arms, dressed in filthy rags and bleeding from wounds he could partly see on what skin that was bare to his eyes. The status of the young Niko had rendered him speechless.
He had assumed the worst of Gabriel the moment his laid eyes on Niko. He had seen the aftermath of pets taking the blunt of an Elites ‘discontentment’ more times than he cared to recollect. Seeing such a delightful—if not mischievous –member of their community harmed had filled Michael with nothing but disgust for Gabriel, as was he toward Raoul for giving Niko to Sir Lazen as a pet.
His aversion must have shown on his face—not that he had been hiding his feelings—however, the Blondie never chastise him. Never glanced in his direction or spoke to him other than order him to heal the young man in his arms. Gabriel’s full attention had only been on Niko.
Michael did not ask the Blondie anything other than what he needed to know to care for his patient. The damage done to Niko’s body had been horrendous…and done by someone with a medical background by what he saw. The precision of cuts on Niko’s body. The disturbing evidence of layers of flesh removed from each wound. The bruising in his inner elbow from the pin pricks of a needle.
This went beyond an Elite abusing his power over his property, and seeking secrecy by having him dispose of the pet so others would not discover their irresponsibility. However, Michael could not voice his suspicions. His Ruby rank forbid him from questioning a Blondie—engage in relatively heated conversations about worthless topics, yes, but nothing that might question a Blondies authority. Which restricted him from saying anything of consequence.
After examining and determining there was nothing in his wounds to hinder Niko’s recovery, he had Gabriel place the young man in a Healing and Recuperation Pod. He burned with curiosity, curiosity that festered when Sir Am arrived with Sir Gideon Lagat, Sir Mikhale Tain, Sir Jared Kyl, Sir Aisha Rosen, and Sir Orphe Zavi a few hours later. Three of the Blondies pets were fine. Sedated, but unharmed. Raoul had ushered Orphe and his pet to another room while ordering Michael to examine Jared’s strange blond pet.
A duty Michael took very little pleasure in.
Jared’s pet was rude, complained about every little thing, and accused his assistant of stealing his painkillers in an attempt to receive more drugs. He had had to deal with annoying comments the blond made to his staff. Things like, “God, if looks could kill I would have murdered you a hundred times by now” or “pour that shit on me one more time and I’ll chew out your eyeballs”. Which had been humorous to Jared, annoying to him, but had frightened his assistants. However, like Niko, Jared’s pet, and the corpses he now examined, they all showed the same worrisome injury patterns. He’d been ordered by Raoul to notate every one of his finding—off record—but gave Michael nothing in return as to why—or what—the Blondie was searching for.
They left him in the dark, starving for answers but denying him the tiniest bit of morsels to feed his hunger of the unknown. All this death. Michael had never seen such a sight. Tanagura was a city without casualty. He secretly took cases of Midasian citizens just to put his medical doctorate to work. Elites never took ill. Pets never truly got sick and if they did, they were disposed of if their maladies were serious and the Elite did not wish them to be cured. If not for Riki teaching a young pet his definition of respect by thrashing a foolish love-doll, he would have nothing to do. The violence the new off-world pets the Blondies introduced to Eos also gave him a reason to wear a white coat.
“Michael.”
Turning his attention away from the next body he’d been about to examine, Michael bowed to the Blondie in the doorway. “Sir Am, how may I assist you?”
The Blondie coldly eyed the body bag Michael’s hand hovered over before answering, “Two subjects will be arriving momentarily. I wish for you to observe one of them and report to me of your findings. Stay off the main server.”
Michael nodded stiffly in acknowledgement. Stay off the main server, a less than subtle way of telling him that what he was ordering him to do was illegal. “May I ask what it is you wish for me to focus my attention on?” he asked. His annoyance clear in his tone.
Emerald eyes narrowed. “What I wish, Ruby, is for you to report your finding as I have instructed you to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Am I clear?”
He was within his right to expose the Blondie to Jupiter. However… Michael knew the consequences of betraying a Blondie would be dire for him if he did. No one went against a Blondie—especially Raoul Am, the only Blondie that held a true friendship with Iason Mink.
Michael bit his tongue and forced himself to appear humble. “Yes, Sir Am,” Michael replied. “It will be as you requested.”
“Come with me.”
Michael followed behind the Blondie dutifully, if not resentfully. They passed rooms Michael knew to house Blondies and their injured pets. The why of how they came to be this way continued to eat away at him.
“You will not question the mongrel,” Raoul said when they stopped. Michael could hear shuffling of someone pacing behind the door they halted in front of. “Is that understood?”
Just do as you have been told. Michael did not look at the Blondie, not wanting to expose his anger to the Elite. “As you have ordered, Sir Am,” he tightly said. Opening the door, he forced himself to wait until the Blondie walked away before closing it.
“That must piss you off, huh?”
Michael stared inquisitively at the young man standing in the middle of the room. Bare foot, freshly washed, and dressed in a hospital gown, the man smiled at him as best as he could without reopening the wound on his lip. There was a bit of gentleness in the mongrel’s manner, and expressed in his grey eyes, that Michael found charming.
Behind the bruising and swelling, Michael found the mongrel to be…handsome in a strange way. “What must “piss” me off?” Michael asked, amused. Directing the male to the exam table Michael motioned him to sit up on it.
The mongrel nodded to the door as he limped to do as he ordered. “That dude telling you what to do. It’d piss me off. I wouldn’t have took his shit.”
Michael blinked at the mongrel’s crude phrase as he lightly pressed his fingertips to the young man’s throat, counting his pulse. “He is a Blondie,” he said simply.
“And you gotta do as he tells ya, right?”
Michael nodded as he moved his hand from the mongrel’s neck. Both hands ran down the young man’s shoulders.
“But I don’t,” the mongrel said. “The only person I take orders from is Riki, and he ain’t said a word to me about keeping my trap shut.”
Michael slowly grinned. “Is that so?” He hardly felt surprised that the mongrel knew Riki. In the back of his mind, he knew Iason’s wild pet had to have been involved in some way.
“My name’s Norris and I tell you what,” the mongrel said. “I’ll give you the lowdown of why I’m here if you give that Blondie the thumbs up that I’m okay. Max is probably shitting bricks with worry wondering where the hell I am, and I wanna get out of here as fast as I can to see him.”
His hands paused in their examination. Michael frowned. “Max?”
The mongrel’s face softened. “My pairing partner.”
“Your…pairing partner…” For whatever reason, the thought of the mongrel belonging to someone else did not sit well with him. Nor did the love he saw shinning in the mongrel’s eyes.
“Were you told you would be released?” Michael asked slowly, annoyed and a bit confused as to why he would care if the mongrel was in a long term relationship.
“No reason to keep me here,” Norris said. “They caught the white-haired Elite that did this to us, so why would they need me to stay?”
White-haired Elite? A Platinum did this? Michael stood shocked, his hands stilling on the mongrel’s arms. The puzzle of today’s events quickly pieced together. A Platinum Elite had gone rogue. Such a thing was unheard of, but it all fit. The Blondies involvement. The secrecy. The absolute stupidity of the Elite to target the pets of the most powerful men in the galaxy—if not the universe.
Michael had a suspicion he knew who the Platinum was.
“Is Landon still alive?” Michael asked.
“You know him?” Norris asked slowly, cautiously.
“Enough to know that his passing would not be missed…should he be missing. Not by me or the staff who works under him,” Michael said honestly, not at all disappointed that he had guessed correctly. William Landon was an oddity. An Elite he worked closely with for many years, whose mannerisms did not seem to match his rank.
“Michael.”
Michael stiffened. “Sir Am,” he said. “I did not expect you to return so quickly.” He should have known Raoul would not leave him and the mongrel alone.
“You should have realized immediately that I never really left at all,” Raoul replied.
“Were you testing me, Sir Am?” Michael asked staring at the mongrel.
“I had no part in this,” Norris said.
“The mongrel was unknowing,” Raoul said.
“Not important and lacking in brain power to comprehend simple commands,” Norris explained cheekily.
Michael chuckled at the mongrel before turning a serious eye to the Blondie. “May I ask why you deemed it necessary to test me, Sir Am?”
“Do you need more time to look him over?” Raoul asked eyeing the hands Michael still had on the mongrel’s arms.
Michael hesitated a half beat of a second before he released the mongrel and controlled the flush threatening to appear on his cheeks. “No, Sir Am, I am finish examining the patient.”
“Nice to have met ya,” Norris said giving Michael a two fingered salute. “And, no offence, but I hope I never see ya again.”
Michael could feel the heat of the Blondie’s emerald gaze boring into him as he voiced his farewell to the mongrel. He followed Raoul out to the corridor. They were both silent as they slowly walked down the brightly lit white hallway once again, and Michael was glad Raoul did not comment on the impropriety in how he conducted himself with the mongrel. He did not fully understand it himself. He lay his bare hands on him. An action no doctor would have done while treating someone under his care.
Yet, he had.
He could only hope the Blondie kept his lack of professionalism to himself, just as he was keeping the secret of what Raoul was doing here.
“You do not seem to have an aversion to mongrels like our other brethren,” Raoul said, breaking the silence.
“I have treated Riki a great many times,” Michael said carefully. “I do not view him by the manner by which he was birthed, nor by the locality of where he previously called home.” He tried to contain the nervousness he felt from entering his voice. The Blondie was studying him. Weighing his words.
“Do you now…” Raoul said.
“I do,” Michael said firmly. He was not the lowest ranking Elite in Tanagura, but low enough that he did not need to exude the snobbery as those above him. He was a doctor first, an Elite last.
“Do you know why I chose you to assist me today, Michael?” Raoul asked stopping in front of another door identical to the last.
“I would say my expertise, but I’m sure it is not the reason why you’ve done so,” Michael replied.
Raoul nodded. “You would be correct. You were singled out because you are the physician for our pets. The pets of the Blondies you saw brought into my lab.”
“Others have overseen the health of your pets, Sir Am,” Michael said.
“And yet,” Raoul said coldly, “you take it upon yourself to personally supervise their treatment when they are with other doctors.”
He cannot know that I know. Michael’s gaze did not weaver from Raoul’s. “They are the pets of Blondies, Sir Am, and I am the head physician—and chief director of the hospital when Sir Landon and Sir Daylon Asmior* are away—so it is my duty to make sure your pets are not mistreated in anyway.”
Michael trampled his rising panic down. He knew the lengths a Blondie would go to get what they wanted—or to protect what was theirs. The last thing he needed was to incur their wrath. He knew their secret. He just needed to make sure it stayed a secret for the sake of his own life. Riki’s protein molecules and immunization were fascinating to him, because they were created naturally due to the mongrel’s life in Ceres…so when he discovered those same enzymes and immunities in Orphe, Aisha, and Marcus’s pets… It had not taken long for Michael to put two and two together. His reasons for keeping it a secret had been purely selfish. He had wanted to study them.
“Why have you not reported this incident?” Raoul asked.
“You asked me not to do so, but I would say it is really because I would unlikely get such exposure again,” Michael honestly replied.
Raoul stared at him a moment longer before gesturing to the door they stopped at. “Sir Marcus requires your assistance. I trust you will continue to withhold filing a report concerning this matter.”
Michael nodded and entered the room. He warily eyed the tense Elite seated next to the bed. The Blondie did not acknowledge his presence, but continued to stare down in concern at his mongrel pet who was lay restrained on top of the bed sheets.
Marcus paced back and forth. The Ruby stood in front of him, finally finished in his observation and examination of Keita after nearly three long hours. And not a moment too soon. His patience was almost at an end. He had barely been able to control himself from attacking the nurses when they came to prepare Keita to be healed.
Whatever clarity Keita had shown when he had retrieved him had faded. The hour of separation the machine needed to heal his love had unraveled what little hold he had had on Keita. His mongrel looked at him without seeing him now. Nothing Marcus did seemed to penetrate the nightmare his love was trapped in. Once the sedatives had faded from the healing, Keita had erupted wildly. To keep him from hurting himself—because Marcus would have cared less if Keita had harmed everyone in the building—he had ordered the medical staff to bind the mongrel’s arms and legs.
Of all the decisions Marcus had made in his life, issuing those words had been the hardest. The look on Keita’s face… The absolute terror in his beautiful eyes…
“Your pet’s experienced a sever psychotic break, Sir Marcus,” the Ruby said, breaking Marcus’s thoughts. “There are web fractures on his neurons that overlap old scaring. This suggests—”
“I know what it suggests,” Marcus growled at the Ruby Elite doctor. He knew Keita had issues before becoming his. There had been signs. The nests Keita would make with his clothing. Closing himself off in dark closets. However, he had never looked too closely. Keita was so lively… Marcus never took those instances too seriously.
The Ruby, Michael, sighed. “Sir Marcus… Your pet is damaged beyond what our medical facility is currently capable of repairing, because of the restrictions you are holding over us.”
“I will not have you playing with his mind,” Marcus said. “I do not want him to be anything other than who he is. The procedure would eliminate the person that he is, and replace it with that of a…” A pet. Keita would be a mindless doll. He would smile, walk, talk, but be hollow on the inside. Marcus would never allow that to happen.
“Sir, he is in pain,” Michael said slowly. “The humane thing to do would be to put him down.”
Put him down, as if his Keita were a worthless animal to be tossed aside. Marcus fought the urge to rip the Ruby’s throat out. He knew nothing. The Elite was nothing but a slave to Jupiter’s ways and his eyes were closed to the truth. His Keita was his life. A bundle of raw, imperfect, energy that made his life worth living.
“He is only a pet. There are many more that can replace him.”
“When did you submit your report of his fragmented state of mind?” Marcus asked. If a pet were deemed less than perfect, they were tagged and discarded of like trash—recycled for parts or sold as spoiled goods to whorehouses in Midas. He was not about to let that happen to Keita, not that it would. Iason and he would never allow such a thing, but the process of hiding such information after the fact would be a headache none of them wanted.
“I have not…” Michael replied softly.
Marcus’s eyes narrowed.
“Sir Am and I have an unspoken agreement,” Michael explained. “I wish to utilize my skills as a physician—an option I am unable to do, because of the safety in which the Blondies of Tanagura bestow upon us.”
“If you think to use Keita as your lab rat—”
“I am—in a sense,” the Ruby said quickly when a threatening growl rumbled from Marcus’s throat.
“It has never been made available, and I have not practiced this procedure more than twice, but I could lightly bind—shadow— a section of his memories,” the Ruby said. “I would be doing no harm to him. He would retain a sense of the trauma inflicted upon him, but not the weight of what caused the complete fracture to his mind.”
Marcus hesitated.
“The physiological damage is too extensive.” The Ruby grimly looked at the whimpering mongrel rocking back and forth on the narrow cot. “The fact that it did not heal after his session in the Healing and Recuperation Pod is a clear indication that we cannot do more for him, other than clean sweep his mind or bind his memories.”
“Your success rate?” Marcus numbly asked.
“Of the two subjects I tested this procedure on, both candidates scored high marks in what I wanted them to score in,” the Ruby answered. “Please understand, Sir Jayd, there could be complications, but unless you wish to lock him up in a psychiatric ward, this is your only option…”
Marcus glanced at Keita. His mongrel wailed heartbreakingly at the wall, twisting his body this way and that, trying to escape the straitjacket and leg bindings Marcus ordered on him.
“Do it,” Marcus whispered. “Help him.”
Serum – Chapter 25 ★ ～☆ War: Forever Caged, Book 7 – Chapter 1
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Doin' it, and lovin' every minute of it 