Aljeda saw the trolls coming up the road and knew at once they were heading for her.

The countryside south of Metrollpolis was largely flat with very little cover. It was easy to see travelers approaching from miles away. That was why she'd moved into this hive when she got too old to travel. Here, the threshecutioners and subjugglators couldn't sneak up on her. And neither could any patients.

She sat beside the window and watched them. It looked like there were two at first, an adult and a younger troll. But as they got closer she could see that the adult was carrying someone. They were still about a good bit away, so she had time to prepare. Aljeda shuffled around her hive, drawing the curtains over the windows. She spread some paper out on the table and got out her bag of medical supplies. Many of the tools were old, but still functional. She had a plethora of medicines stored in her cooling block.

By the time she was finished, there was a hurried knock at the door.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she grumbled, going to the door.

As she thought, there were three trolls. Two of them were younglings, and one was grown. Aljeda narrowed her eyes and looked them over carefully. The adult was a very beautiful and tall midblood. In her arms was a young troll, around six sweeps old. He appeared to be unconscious. Standing beside her was a girl around the same age, with bushy hair that went down past her shoulders. They were all wearing weathered clothing, and their faces were lean and hard. The little girl didn't have any shoes; her feet were coated with dirt and mud.

"Please," said the adult troll. "Please, he's very sick."

"Who sent you?" Aljeda asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Sanuor," she answered. "Please. Please, please help him. Please. I'll give you anything you want."

The lady was desperate. Aljeda arched an eyebrow at her and the two little ones. Did they really know Sanuor? He'd disappeared after word got around that he was a hemophiliac. It was a good thing, too. Otherwise he would have certainly been culled. She didn't think he was still alive. But apparently, he was. How else would these three know him?

"Aren't you the doctor?" asked the little girl, her voice barely above a whisper.

"...yes. I am," Aljeda admitted. "Come in. And be quick about it."

The midblood was in the door faster than Aljeda could blink. She did not need to be told to set him down on the table. Aljeda watched her lay him down gently, as though he were something precious and breakable. The young troll stood at her side, looking anxious.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked, grabbing his wrist to check his pulse. It was steady, and normal for the most part. She checked his temperature, and found it was dangerously high. She immediately administered some medicine to bring it down.

"He's sick," said the midblood. "It started with a cough, then a fever."

"Is he a lowblood?" Aljeda asked. She went to her bag, pulling out her pulmonary listening device. When she used it to listen to his breathing, she found that it was irregular. There was a faint bubbling sound every time the boy inhaled, signaling that there was some type of fluid in the lungs. All of his breaths seemed shorter than average, as though he couldn't get enough air in. So far, the signs were pointing towards Flux. She saw it often with lowbloods. But adult troll seemed to hesitate.

"Well?" Aljeda asked. "Is he?"

"He's...he's not a lowblood," said the troll. "He's-"

"A teal blood!" the girl blurted out. She pointed at the weapon strapped to his hip, which Aljeda had barely noticed. It was a black sickle with a teal handle. "He's a teal blood."

Their attitudes made her suspicious, but she accepted their answer without further questions. "If he were a lowblood, I'd say it was the Flux. Perhaps it is. It could be a mutant strain. I'll treat him for that, and see how he responds to it. But I've never given a midblood this sort of medicine before."

"Do whatever you have to," said the troll. She clasped the boy's small hand in her own. "Just so long as he gets better."

Aljeda nodded. She shuffled through the block quietly, gathering up the necessary medicine. "Does he have a name?"

"His name is Kankri," the girl answered at once. "I'm Meulin. She's Porrim."

"Well, Meulin and Porrim," Aljeda said, filling a syringe with the necessary antibiotic, "you two can wait in the next block while I treat him."

"Why can't we stay?" Porrim demanded.

"You can, but I prefer not to be distracted while I work," Aljeda said, frowning at her. "And usually my patients prefer it too."

Porrim and Meulin looked at each other, silently trying to decide whether or not they should leave their friend alone. Finally the elder of the two sighed and walked out. Meulin glanced back at Kankri, watching Aljeda as she injected the antibiotic into his arm. Then she frowned and followed Porrim out.

There was something off about the three travelers.

Aljeda was almost certain they were runaway slaves. The boy couldn't be a teal blood. He was obviously a lowblood who had come down with the Flux. She wasn't sure where the sickle at his hip came from. It was quite plainly a threshecutioner sickle, and the boy was barely six. Perhaps the older troll had killed one of them and given it to the boy. There was something off about her. Something about Porrim seemed...dangerous.

Her patient was making progress, but not as quickly as was expected. Most people who came down with the Flux responded to the medicine right away. All it did for Kankri was pull him away from the brink. He was no longer in danger of dying, but he wasn't out of the woods yet. This would have been proof to anyone else that he wasn't actually a lowblood, as the medicine only had a mild effect on him. But Aljeda was certain he couldn't be anything else. There were only a handful of diseases that went across the entirety of the hemospectrum, and the Flux was not one of them.

Delirium was shortly added to his list of symptoms. Two nights after the trio arrived, Kankri awoke in the middle of the day and emerged from the coon she reserved for patients. She was awakened by a loud crash, and hobbled down the hall to see what was the matter. Porrim and Meulin had already beaten her there. They were trying to help Kankri back into the coon, but he wasn't cooperating.

"Don't touch me!" he yelled, pulling his arm away from Meulin. "Don't touch me!"

"Kankri, let us help you," Porrim said, her voice gentle.

He shook his head and attempted to stand. It looked as though he'd already toppled a chair in his attempt to stay on his feet. He reached for the desk and attempted to use it to stand. "I am...perfectly capable...of doing this..."

His fingertips brushed against the desk. Kankri attempted to stand, but could not grip it. He fell down again and murmured, "Drat..."

"Alright, move. Move!" Aljeda said, pushing Meulin aside. The young troll hissed at her, but backed away. She grabbed Kankri and lifted him, gently but firmly, and helped him towards the coon. Yet even in his weakened state he struggled. "Exactly what are you trying to accomplish, youngling? You need to rest."

Kankri stared at her with glazed eyes, as though he weren't truly seeing her. "I have to bring Mituna into the session. The world is ending."

Aljeda frowned. She had no idea what the little one was talking about, and one glance at Meulin and Porrim told her they didn't know either. "Alright, get back into the coon. Sleep. I promise you the world will still be here when you wake up in the evening. Come on now. Good boy, there you go. Go on. That's it."

When he was back in his coon, she and the other two trolls went out into the hall. She frowned at them, looking back and forth between the two. "Do either of you know what any of that was about?"

"He had...'dream friends', when he was very young," Porrim explained. "He dreamed about trolls his age. And Mituna was one of them. I think he was just groggy and confused. That's all."

Aljeda nodded once. That made sense. A troll his age ought to be dreaming about horrible, twisted things. Though she had never experienced dreams about the end of the world. They were always about more individual things, such as murder or torture. Oh well. It wasn't any of her business. She just didn't want him to hurt himself stumbling around the block. Someone would have to watch him. When she voiced this to the others, Porrim volunteered to take the first watch. They were all so oddly attached to each other. It wasn't natural for an adult to be so involved with two wrigglers. It was just...strange.

Many of their customs were strange, it seemed. Meulin insisted on spending most of her time outside. Occasionally she spotted her outside attempting to capture small beasts with her bare hands. What was shocking was that she often succeeded, and would bring in the dead animal and offer it to Aljeda. When it became clear that she refused to skin and eat a wild animal, Meulin did it herself outside. She skinned it, gutted it, and cooked the meat over a small fire. Aljeda wouldn't to take any of it, so the youngling carried it up to her friend.

Kankri's delirium came and went. Sometimes when he awoke, he was fine. He spoke with Aljeda calmly and told her how he felt, and thanked her repeatedly for helping him. But other times when he awoke he acted as though he did not recognize any of them except for Meulin. He went on and on about things she did not understand: Skaia, the Scratch, Prospit, Derse, the Battlefield, the game. On top of it, it was as though he were a completely different person. He wouldn't allow anyone to touch him, and his manner of speaking seemed to shift slightly. None of this made any sense to any of them. He never remembered these episodes afterwards, but seemed to be very concerned about what he said.

"I mentioned the Scratch again?" he asked once, after they had related his most recent episode. "What did I say?"

"Just that you had to get the others to complete it," Meulin replied. "You didn't say what it was."

He frowned. "Did I say why we had to complete it?"

"You said if you didn't, trolls would go extinct forever," his friend answered. Kankri's expression changed. For a moment, it was as though he understood. Then the look of confusion returned to his eyes, and he shook his head slowly.

They were an odd group, alright. But Aljeda was about to be faced with even more complexities.

The cough began to worsen. Aljeda gave him various medicines in an attempt to treat him, but they had no effect. At times his body outright rejected them. It was then she knew that her assumption had been correct; Kankri was not a teal blood. But when she tried lowblood medicines, the result was still the same. As a last resort, she treated him as though he were a highblood. The medicine made him so violently ill that he threw up all through the day.

Not a lowblood, not a midblood, not a highblood.

What in the hell was going on here?

Aljeda considered confronting Porrim about the nature of the boy's blood, but decided against it. She would illicit the truth from Kankri himself. Instead of allowing Porrim or Meulin to keep watch over him, she decided to do it herself. All throughout the day she watched him sleep. When he awoke early the next evening, he was thankfully coherent. He sat up, sopor slime still crusted in his eyes and his hair. He wiped it away groggily and looked towards Aljeda.

"Good evening," he said, yawning. Suddenly he coughed, and an involuntary shudder ran through his entire body.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"No worse," Kankri answered. He smiled slightly, then immediately was overtaken by a coughing fit. The youngling covered his mouth with his hand. His face was contorted with pain. When the fit finally passed, he pulled his hand away from his mouth. There was blood on his palm. Alarmed, Kankri attempted to slip his hand back into the sopor slime. But Aljeda was quick, for an old troll. She reached over and grabbed his wrist, turning over his hand.

His blood was candy red.

For a moment Aljeda simply sat there and stared. She wondered if her eyes were playing tricks on her. This couldn't possibly be his blood color. Candy red blood did not exist anywhere on the hemospectrum. Perhaps the illness was discoloring his blood, perhaps-

"I'm sorry," Kankri said quietly. "We shouldn't have lied to you."

"Is this your normal blood color?" she asked, her voice quiet.

"Yes," he answered. "I'm a mutant."

A mutant. That explained everything. The medications weren't working on him as well because they were designed for trolls with certain blood colors in mind. But Kankri did not exist on that spectrum at all. That was why he hadn't responded to any of the cough medicines she gave him, and why the injections had only just barely helped.

"You shouldn't have hidden that from me," Aljeda snapped. Had she known that to start with, she wouldn't have treated him to begin with. The boy was almost certainly going to die. "Blood color is incredibly important when it comes to treating trolls. Medications that work for lowbloods won't work for midbloods or highbloods."

"I'm sorry," he apologized again.

She frowned and released his hand. He wiped the blood off his palm and looked away. Something told her this wasn't the only secret that these three had been keeping from her. "Is there anything else I should know about you, Kankri?"

He nodded slowly.

"What is it then?" Aljeda demanded.

Kankri looked at her with sad, guilty eyes. "We're feral trolls. We live in a group out in the wilderness. Everyone is sick like me, and we came to find you. To get you to help. But I got sick. And on our way here I collapsed."

"Ferals," she repeated quietly. That explains how they had known about Sanuor. She'd suspected that he'd hidden in the wilderness. But she hadn't expected he'd live this long. Perhaps this group had looked after him and helped him with his condition, just as they had sheltered this mutant. Aljeda frowned. "I thought you were runaway slaves. But this is much worse. Do you know what they'll do to you if anyone finds out you're here?"

"I can guess," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

This was where her life had led her. Treating a six-sweep-old mutantblood who also happened to be a wildling. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "How many trolls are ill?"

"Almost all of them," Kankri answered. "There were twenty-four of us, but when we left there were only fourteen."

Aljeda frowned. "...I can send some medicines back with Porrim and Meulin. I don't know how much good they'll do, but they may give some of them the strength they need to fight back. You'll have to stay here, I'm afraid. You'll last longer if you rest."

"Am I going to die?" he asked. His voice was very calm. She had seen people struggle to the last breath, but Kankri looked as though he had already accepted it.

"Most likely," Aljeda admitted. There was no medicine designed for his body. She was going to attempt to mix something specifically for him, but there was no guarantee it would work. And Aljeda had never been one for getting people's hopes up.

Kankri nodded once, then started coughing again.