Antigen (EBOOK)

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“PUT DOWN THE PROTOPLASER and raise your hands where we can see them, Frey Erisuel,” said the armed guard standing in the doorway of the prison infirmary.

The woman leaning over Temple’s naked torso tensed, and Temple hissed out a breath as the medical instrument she was running over the sluggishly bleeding gash in his chest slipped, stinging the ragged edges of the wound. Very carefully, the Vithii doctor shut the device off and set it aside, straightening but not turning around.

One of the prison sub-intendants had ordered Temple to be taken to the infirmary after he’d been beaten and shivved in the exercise yard. It wasn’t the worst injury he’d gotten since being captured, and it also wasn’t the first time they’d sent him here to be patched up. It was, however, the first time he’d been seen by this particular doctor. She’d gruffly informed him that it was her fourth day on the job, and that she was replacing one of the older doctors who had just retired.

Now, she was apparently about to be arrested.

Any deviation from the norm inside the prison was generally a cause for worry if you happened to be an inmate, so Temple held his breath as he waited to see what would happen next. Because the woman was Vithii, they probably wouldn’t shoot her down in cold blood—but in this place, assumptions like that could be dangerous.

“My name is Dr. Radathian,” she said in a level voice, though Temple could see the tendons in her jaw standing out as she held herself completely still. “I don’t know anyone named Erisuel. What is this about? I have a patient here who needs treatment.”

The guard stepped further inside the room, allowing space for three other uniformed Vithii to enter and flank him. They stood with their hands on their sidearms, but did not draw them. Temple wondered what the hell was going on, and how likely he was to end up getting dragged into it. He’d been stuck in this stinking hole for almost a month now. At least, he thought it was almost a month. He’d been sick for several days shortly after he was captured, and time in this place tended to run together into a continuous blur if you didn’t pay attention carefully.

The guard gestured with his sidearm, even though the red-haired Vithii woman still hadn’t turned around. “Your name is Aryderlyn Erisuel, and you are under arrest for several charges, including child endangerment, illegal use of nanotech, obtaining government employment using a false identity, and practicing medicine without a license. At least one of those is a capital crime. You’re coming with us.”

For a moment, Temple wondered if the doctor would try to make a fight of things. It would be hopeless, he was sure, but the tension in her body spoke of someone hovering on the knife-edge of the fight-or-flight response. A brief flash of desperation or insanity made Temple wonder if the two of them together could somehow overpower four armed guards and get away. Fortunately, good sense kicked in before he could make a mistake that would probably be fatal for both of them.

An instant later, some of the tension left the woman’s rigid posture, and he knew she’d given up on the idea as well. “You’ve made a mistake,” she said, “but I’ll come with you so I can get it sorted out with your superior.”

“There’s no mistake, Frey Erisuel,” the guard insisted. “Now turn around slowly, and keep your hands in plain view.”

Temple saw the doctor’s jaw clench, but he noticed she didn’t protest being addressed as Frey—the Vithii equivalent of Ms. or ma’am—rather than Doctor. Having been on her exam table for some time before the guards had barged in, he was pretty confident she did, in fact, have extensive medical training. He thought all his curiosity should have been pretty much beaten out of him by this point, but he still couldn’t help wondering what the story was here.

Just worry about whether or not you’ll get sucked into this mess, he tried to tell himself. What do you care about some Regime lackey anyway?

The answer was that he didn’t—even if she had been professional and competent in her dealings with him as she treated the fallout from his latest round of ‘accidental’ injuries.

She turned around slowly, as instructed, her lips pressed into a thin line. She was striking, as far as Vithii women went, with her spiky hair dyed a vibrant shade of red and her large brown eyes full of fire.

“This inmate needs further treatment,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let me finish what I was doing, or at least call someone else to take over my shift in the infirmary. I’m the only doctor on duty.”

The guard snorted. “Then there’s no doctor on duty, is there?” he jerked his chin toward the guards standing on his left. “Take the human prisoner back to his cell. He looks fine.”

“Yes, sir,” the larger one barked.

Temple rolled slowly into a sitting position, careful not to make any movements that could conceivably be interpreted as threatening. The guards in the capital city prison had a unique definition of what constituted fine, at least when it came to the human inmates. He was painfully aware of the way his half-healed wound gaped at the bottom edge, another little trickle of blood oozing out to drip down his chest as he rose.

The woman’s eyes cut to his briefly. “Try to keep it clean,” she said. “The shiv didn’t penetrate deeply enough to hit anything vital, and the broad-spectrum antibiotic injection should hold infection at bay. I’ll try to arrange for you to come back in as soon as this is sorted out.”

“That’s enough talking,” the guard said, sounding bored.

He and one of his colleagues came forward and took the woman by the arms, marching her out of the room.