Chapter 9: A Brief Interlude on Drugs and Poisons
Lieutenant Sho Qin of the Fire Nation's imperial army was not feeling so great. He lay balled up on the floor of his dingy cell and tried not to shiver. At the moment he was feeling terribly cold but his temperature swung frequently. His muscles twitched and he felt bone tired. He didn't know how long he had been kept in his cell; tracking time had become difficult. There were no windows he could look out, no shadows he could watch. The only frequent things were his meals and his treatments.
That was Bokku the healer called them; treatments. They felt more like torture than anything. It had been a surprise at first to find out that Bokku was a Waterbender. But the novelty soon wore off when Bokku began to bend and Push strange liquids into Sho's body. The young lieutenant felt them course through his blood and make his muscles cramp and his bowels loosen. Bokku's sessions never lasted very long but they left Sho feeling like he'd been beaten and wrung out.
The worst part was that he didn't know why Bokku was doing this. The man never seemed pleased or upset with any of his sessions. There were no questions, no demands, nothing that made any sense. After the session was over Bokku would just wash his hands and leave. It was like the man was waiting for something, for Sho to finally snap maybe and beg for mercy, or maybe have Sho declare he was loyal to the colonies. Whatever Bokku was waiting for, he hadn't found it yet. As Sho lay balled up on the floor, he grimly wished that Bokku never would and would just kill him already.
In another cell, not far from Sho's own, General Khan was facing a different dilemma. His poisoning from Janai's Salvation had been surprisingly brief. Bokku, Yamamachi's physician, had rid him quickly of the poison. It seemed Khan's poisoning had only been a means to incapacitate him while Bokku and his accomplices captured the Avatar. Khan was just beginning to realise how many accomplices Bokku had. It seemed the majority of the Governor's staff was part of this elaborate plan to capture the Avatar. What they planned to do with Aang, Khan hadn't yet figured out. Currently he had...other problems.
When Bokku healed Khan from Janai's Salvation it was only to inflict him with another different poison.
"Make no mistake, General," Bokku had said, "I don't want you dead. But keeping you alive could be troublesome. A man like you surely understands the need to take certain preventative measures?"
Khan certainly did understand. He had no hard feelings, then, when Bokku gave him a drug which removed his bending; none whatsoever.
Of course, he still planned to kill the Waterbender.
His main obstacle to that plan was his lack of bending. He had been stuck in his cell for what had to be days, without any contact. During all this time Khan had felt no inkling of his bending returning. No drug could have affects that lasted so long after only one administration. Khan assumed then that he was still being drugged somehow. Since he had no human contact, there had to be some way that Bokku was giving it to him.
The most obvious option was Khan's meals. They came regularly through a slot in his door. The food and his privy bucket were the only things that came through his door. Khan eyed the food in front of him with a critical eye. It was only soup and bland at that. He couldn't taste anything suspicious in his meal. But unless Bokku was coming while he slept and shoving the drug up his rear then it had to be in his soup. Khan frowned and considered his options.
He could refuse his meals and send them back through the slot untouched. If he did that Khan didn't doubt that Bokku would then send guards in and force the drug down his throat. That was, if Bokku didn't just kill him. He could throw his meal out into his privy bucket or throw it up, but if Bokku was half as clever as Khan thought him to be he'd check that too, to make sure that Khan was eating. Khan shook his head; no, he needed a way to make it look like he'd eaten and yet not take in the drug.
He glanced around his cell, trying to find some kind of inspiration. Bokku and his thugs had been so confident in their control of him that they'd placed in a cell made of brick. Khan felt a swell of anger at their arrogance. At least when he'd been a prisoner of the Fire Nation his guards had been respectful enough to place him in a prison of metal. Khan cocked his head as something on the bricks caught his eye. He shuffled closer and put his face nearer to the wall. There was mould growing on the bricks; thick mould.
An idea began to form in Khan's head. What if he flushed out Bokku's poison with another poison? If he dirtied his food with mould, he could still eat it and have it pass out before his body had time to absorb the poison. Food poisoning and sickness of the bowels was an ailment Khan had seen many times in many poor and ravaged villages during the war. It was a wasting sickness; you could eat and drink but if your food and water was dirty then you would gain no benefit from it. If Khan made himself sick then Bokku's drug would eventually leave his body.
It was a dangerous option. Bowel sickness would leave him terribly weak, perhaps completely incapable of fighting. But what choice did he have? Better to be sick and a bender than be hale and useless. Khan began to pick the mould off the wall and drop it into his soup. Bowel sickness would be messy and hardly dignified but Khan didn't care. The end would always justify the means.
