Vesna pulled the Zhelezo uniform tunic tighter, the fabric coarse against her skin. The portable terminal, still clutched in her hand, hummed with the steady progress of Arkady’s location. The pediatric quarantine ward. The pale shoot was a hostage in a nursery. She glanced at Taras, whose vacant gaze hadn was fixed on the sterile white walls of the corridor, his large frame making the medical bay feel impossibly small. He was a silent sentinel, his presence a stark contrast to the antiseptic efficiency of the Institute.
“Right,” she muttered, adjusting her grip on the plasma rifle she’d pilfered from a locker. “Time to be the hero no one asked for.” Her sarcasm was a familiar, bitter taste, a shield against the rising unease in her gut. She led him through a series of automated doors, each hiss and click echoing too loudly in the hushed halls. The air grew colder, thick with the metallic tang of disinfectant and something else—a faint, sweet scent of wilting flowers and sickness.
They found the ward’s entrance, a reinforced plasteel door with a single, small viewport. Inside, beyond the glass, a small girl lay in a specialized bio-containment bed, tubes snaking from her frail arm. Her hair, the color of moonlight, spread across the pillow, stark against her unnaturally pale skin. On a small table beside the bed, glowing faintly, was the pale tree sprig, its silver leaves trembling as if in a phantom breeze. The sapling, their key to immunity, stood out against the iron walls.
Anya. Arkady’s daughter. Vesna felt a brief, unsettling pang of something akin to pity. The girl’s eyes, wide and luminous, were fixed on the sapling, as if drawing comfort from its ethereal glow.
Vesna keyed in the access code she’d found on Arkady’s drive, the door sliding open with a soft sigh. The cold intensified, carrying with it the subtle, sickly sweet aroma of the Glassplague. Anya’s head snapped towards them, her eyes, the same stark blue as Arkady’s, going wide with a child’s instinctive fear at the sight of Taras. He was a looming shadow, his scarred cheek furrowed and grey, an image of brute mass in the sterile white cubicle.
Anya whimpered, pulling her thin blankets higher, her gaze fixed on the silver scars that marred Taras’s cheek. He faltered, his shoulders slumping, a familiar cloud of self-loathing passing over his features. Vesna saw it, a flicker of pain in his usually impassive eyes, and her own cold resolve sharpened into something fierce. This child’s terror was not his fault, but the world’s. And Arkady’s.
“It’s alright, little one,” Vesna said, her voice surprisingly soft, a stark contrast to her usual barbed words. She stepped forward, placing a hand on Taras’s arm, a silent command for him to hold his ground. “He won’t hurt you.”
Taras, sensing the child’s fear, slowly raised his hands, his movements deliberate. He didn’t speak, couldn’t, but his large, calloused palms, so often used for destruction, began to move with an unexpected grace. First, a rabbit with long, twitching ears danced on the wall. Then, a soaring bird, its wings beating silently. A tiny, silver fox chased the rabbit across the pale ceiling. Anya’s whimpers quieted. Her eyes, still wide, tracked the shadow-puppets, a faint curve touching her pale lips. The terror receded, replaced by a tentative curiosity.
Just then, the door behind them hissed open again. Director Arkady stood there, flanked by a squad of heavily armed Enforcer guards, their plasma rifles humming with readiness. His face was a mask of weary desperation, tears tracking clean paths through the grime on his cheeks. He clutched a heavy-bore slug rifle, its muzzle pointed directly at Vesna.
“Vesna,” he grated, his voice hoarse with raw emotion. “The sapling… and you. You came. Give me your marrow. It’s the only way.” His gaze flicked to Anya, then back to Vesna, pleading. “Please. She’s all I have left.”
Vesna met his gaze, unflinching. The cold fury returned, sharp and precise. “No cages. No draining. I won’t be another commodity for your research, Arkady.” She gestured to Taras, then to herself. “But Oksana was right about one thing. Our bond. It’s more than just a coincidence. It’s resonance.”
Arkady’s brow furrowed, a flicker of something he hadn’t expected. “Resonance? What are you talking about?”
“The plague seeks life. Our fated bond repels it. We can transfer that. A magical blood-transfusion. Untested, dangerous, but it would heal her without killing me.” Vesna’s voice was low, laced with a dangerous calm. “You want a cure? This is it. But if you try to cage me, to drain me, I will shatter this entire Institute into dust. And your daughter will die.”
Arkady stared at her, his gaze darting between Vesna, Taras, and his daughter, whose faint smile still lingered on the ceiling. He hesitated, the slug rifle wavering slightly. The air felt suffocating, thick with sweat and stale coolant. He had no other options. No other hope.
“Agree,” he said, his voice barely a murmur. “I agree. Do it. Heal her.”
Before he could finish, a different voice cut through the tense silence. “Foolish sentimentalist.”
An officer stepped from the guard rank, wearing the silver insignia of a security commander, his face bearing the brand of the Northern warlords. The officer stepped forward, grinning without warmth. “The Director has lost his nerve. He would beg at the feet of a plague-ridden fugitive. This Institute, its research, its power—it belongs to the Northern Clans, to the true inheritors of this land!” His plasma rifle, instead of aiming at Vesna, swiveled towards Arkady. “Anya is a casualty of war. The Director is a liability. For the Clans!”
Before anyone could react, the officer swung his rifle, not at Arkady, but at the plasteel reinforced viewport above Anya’s bed. A heavy slug tore through the glass with a deafening crack, shattering the sterile barrier. The freezing, lethal Glassplague storm, a swirling vortex of crystalline shards and icy blight, immediately flooded into the room.