And we're back! I hope this new chapter finds you well and I thank you for your patience. This last half year had a great deal of changes in store for me both at home and professionally, but make no mistake the story was never far from my mind. Next chapter coming soon and hopefully faster now that I've settled in my new home.
-Old Night
An itch.
The sensation came like the gradual, distant warmth of the first rays of dawn kissing one's skin. The feeling would be easy to ignore for a waking, busy mind; but for one deep in a half form of slumber and barely conscious the prickling irritation contaminated an otherwise peaceful darkness. At first, the itch was felt but not consciously acknowledged, the mind simply felt and ignored it, instinctually hoping that if it waited it would go away.
But it didn't, the feeling increased inexorably and the mind rankled at it. Slowly it changed however to a twist of the wrists, sharp enough to cause pain up the palms and every finger tip.
Why do my hands hurt?
The mind woke but didn't open its eyes. Every feeling of discomfort began to creep into its senses. Then pain. Across the neck down to the bone, scattered on the chest, the arms and legs.
My hands are burning. Gods, please make it stop. It's getting worse.
Vetra, help me.
Through swollen eyes, Sindri peered at the ceiling above him and drew a single ragged breath through a ruined mouth. He felt thorns on his neck and in spots on his chest.
The light above him was pleasantly dim. The gassy, constant, discharge of oxygen hissed from a spigot behind him. With a labored breath he became aware of the pleasant intrusion of air being forced down his nose. His umber eyes traced the sterile lines of the white paneled walls in front of him and the glass doors which separated him from the smells and sounds of the nurse station across from him.
I'm in a hospital. Kuov. I'm in Kuov.
A fresh stab of pain cut through his forearm, up his bicep and into his shoulder as he tried to raise his hand. Where a short barking scream wanted to rip out of his lungs a wet coughing fit seized him. His eyes watered and his each contraction of his abdomen he felt every stab wound in his body and the gripping feeling in his left lung as he tried to draw breath.
The pain was mindless and exquisite. This white overload of pure agony that paralyzed all conscious thought other than the wordless, animalistic desire to make it stop.
He didn't hear the medical staff enter his room and only distantly understood the words spoken to him. Unfamiliar faces surrounded him and spoke to one another and at him.
"Sir, his blood pressure is spiking."
"Mr. Bogatyr, can you hear me? Don't panic, you're in Kuov General Hospital, my name is Daeka. I'm your nurse."
"Call Dr. Ponten, tell him his patient is awake."
"Give him two units of pain killers."
At the mention of the narcotics, Sindri swatted away at Daeka's hands, the turian looked at him a little shocked at how violently but clearly he'd reacted.
Tears welled in Sindri's eyes at the sudden stabbing pain across his neck got worse and his voice refused to come. Patting at his neck he found a neck brace.
And a lot of bandages.
His room fell silent save for the warning bells of the telemetric devices monitoring his vital signs.
Why can't I pick at this shit? Are my hands broken? I can feel them, they hurt.
Holding up his hand to look at he then understood.
Dry, clean bandages fastened neatly on the stumps of his forearms.
What his eyes saw and what his body felt were mismatched. He could feel the pins and needles of his swollen, aching hands.
Hands that were no longer there.
"Sir, you were attacked five days ago. You were found in Grennik's Calo Park, do you have any next of kin we could contact?"
-0-
Sullen but professional, Dr. Ponten sat at Sindri's bedside as the Darskirr glowered at the two police officers who came to question him. It was impressive in a primitive sort of way how angry the Darskirr looked as he wrestled with the omnitool that had been brought to him. Struggling weakly he gave up on tapping it with his elbows when it almost ripped his stitching. He'd tried to warn him then to take it easy and rest but the human refused, determined as he was to reply. In only a few minutes of struggling with the holographic display he had begun to resort to poking at it with his nose after prodding the keys with his tongue didn't work.
"Mr. Bogatyr, did another Darskirr do this to you?"
With a snarl on his face and a hiss in his voice, Sindri poked his nose clumsily into another key.
"I understand you own a small clinic in Grennik for non-humans, did this cause any strife between you and the cult?"
At this Ponten turned and looked at the officers.
"Wait, this is the guy who runs The Apothecary? I thought it had been another turian."
"No, doctor. Oppiter Callux was a co-owner and he was murdered about a half decade ago."
Sparing a glance at his patient he felt his ire rising but consciously kept it from showing on his face or mandibles. It'd been a single article in the newspaper and uniquely strange too. Callux was a Relay 314 Incident veteran and the sole survivor of his platoon sent to capture mining facility on a moon orbiting a gas giant. His entire platoon had been massacred in a dramatic battle in the hills overlooking a river. He was subsequently captured and kept hostage for the remainder of the conflict and subsequent cessation of hostilities.
That's when Kuov had come to know the character of the cults living on Mirrard for decades prior to the conflict. The Darskirr.
They were racist, violent, cultish throwbacks to humanity's Martian Wars and the Martian antifederalists who'd gone so far as to violently rebel.
Shockingly, Oppiter had described his treatment at the hands of the cult as gentle.
"Mr. Bogatyr, why were you at Calo Park? Do you remember how you came to be there?"
With another poke of his nose the human dropped the tool onto his lap and rested his aching arms with a bitter but sincere smirk on his face. A woman's synthesized voice chirped from the omnitool's display.
I am not Darskirr, nobody tried to kill me. I fell off a very long set of stairs. Charge me with a crime or get away from me. I will answer no other questions.
The trio shared a look before one of the officer turned his notepad off.
"Sir, you can't seriously expect us to believe you just fell off some stairs. Someone obviously tried very hard to kill you and believe it or not we want to bring them to justice. If you're concerned about your safety we can take you into protective custody."
With a grimace of pain, Sindri elbowed the omnitool closer to his chest and poked a key with his nose for a little instant before poking the enter key.
I fell off a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long set of stairs.
"Well, if you change your mind sir, please let the staff know and they'll contact us."
"Wait, that's it? You aren't going to question him further?"
As the officers stepped out of his room one spared a long look at the turian. He looked disappointed but not surprised.
"The Darskirr are standoffish with humans outside the cult and tolerate aliens, at best. Not a single Darskirri has ever broken ranks to report a crime that involves one of their own."
The officer spared a look at the human who glared at him.
"And this one isn't a stranger to violence. The Grennik police department found him covered in blood at the crime scene with the body of Oppiter Callux, never spoke a word either to protect the people who did it or to confess his crime. For what it's worth doctor, be careful but I don't think he'll be hurting anyone ever again."
The turian looked at the Darskirri once more. Sindri hissed with the contempt of the aggrieved and elbowed the omnitool back into his face's reach. With clumsy thursts of his nose he began poking at the keys again.
For a long while the turian observed the man poke at the display with fumbling determination. Sindri in turn ignored him.
I didn't think I was dealing with someone so coldblooded as to murder their business partner. But that leaves the question of why Vetra Nyx was with you.
Thoughts of interspecies intimacy made Ponten uncomfortable.
Well, she is probably a smuggler. Makes sense you two would rub shoulders. But if that's the case why did she run off without leaving her contact information? Was she afraid of the police?
Another poke of the nose and the omnitool began to audibly ring with a tone.
The synthetic voice chirped again with truncated tones and perceivable amicability.
We're sorry, the contact number you have dialed is no longer in service.
Sindri leaned forward laboriously once more and poked his nose into the numerical keys again, re-reading them once he'd finished. Then allowed himself to fall back into the bed before offering a clumsy but smug and very self satisfied smile.
The turian snorted and shook his head as the dial tone rang.
It did so thrice before the voice replied again.
We're sorry, the contact number you have dialed is no longer in service.
A crack formed across Sindri's affect, a seed of concern and obvious disturbance.
"May I ask, who are you calling?"
With pleading eyes the Darskirri stared into the omnitool then looked at the turian after a long moment. There was obvious, needfulness in his eyes.
He mouthed the words Vetra Nyx with slow deliberation. A sort of perverse pleasure came to Ponten, thinking about how the murderer now was going to get his comeuppance and a taste of what it was like to be betrayed. Studiously however he kept it from showing on his face or quivering on his mandibles.
"Vetra Nyx?"
Sindri winced in pain as he nodded.
"I'm afraid she dropped you off here a week ago. Her younger sister was with her as well. She left no contact information."
Heedless of the discomfort Sindri began to poke into the omnitool, quicker and more urgently.
Vetra Nyx is tall, she favors the color blue-
"And she has bright green eyes with blue markings on her face. Yes, I met her."
It struck Ponten as unjust that a Darskirr and murderer could command such affection. Especially from such a beautiful, young female like Nyx. All in all it was probably for the best if he kept her exchange of medicine for his recovery to himself. A man like this didn't deserve to survive an attempt on their life, much less to engender such obvious devotion from a turian female. The medicine she'd traded in was in the ballpark of seven digits and she'd given it all away just for the guarantee the hospital would mend him. She didn't need to do that, she could have just outright sold it in the black market.
Poking his nose into the omnitool it began to ring again.
"This is he Apothecary Clinic in Grennik. How may I assist you?"
Straining with concentration and delicate effort, Sindri chocked out a word in no more than a raspy, airy whisper before another violent coughing fit seized him.
"Grin."
"Oh! Oh! Oh my! Uh- yes, Dr. Bogatyr hello! I am relieved to hear your voice, I take it you cannot speak as your neck was slit. Yes, sorry. Please hold a moment while I get Amanda."
Dr. Ponten narrowed his eyes and wondered if he'd heard the tone correctly. This was a Salarian voice. What was a Salarian doing working for a Darskirri clinic?
"Sindri! Sindri! Can you hear me? Can you speak?"
Another coughing fit and the human blinked the tears out of his eyes after meekly trying to wipe them with the stumps on his wrists.
"No, please don't speak. I'm going to tell the others you're ok, I'm coming to see you right now. And before you worry, don't. Everyone knows what happened to you and they are looking after each other and there are no patients in today. We'll manage-"
"Ve-tra" he rasped, no more than a whisper.
"Sid" he added after a pregnant silence and painful effort on his part.
The woman on the other line remained silent for a long moment. Then she choked and exhaled, obviously fighting tears.
"Sin, honey. She's gone."
The human blinked at the omnitool and shook his head at it as if to shake the words he'd just heard out of his brain.
"Vetra left you at the hospital. She said she figured out what the medicine you gave Sid was worth. She wanted to steal it to sell. That's why she came to you in the first place."
Like a stony sentinel, Dr. Ponten watched the expression on the Darskirri man's face as his mind obviously considered the words being said to him and rooted through his memories. Then how slowly and horrifically it began to dawn on him.
"I tried to convince not to go, Sid fought tooth and nail to stay with you. But she's gone, Sin."
An uncomfortably long silence permeated the room as the human listlessly stared at the omnitool.
"Sindri? Listen, just stay put, I'm coming to see you. I'll let everyone know you're ok first and then I'll hit the road."
Silently, tears began to roll down the man's face. No rage or grief contorted his visage, no coughing fit from trying to scream.
"Hello, Amanda? It's Dr. Ponten."
"Dr. P! Hi, what's he doing? Is he ok? He's not answering me."
The turian spared a long look at the human as he lay still and silent. There was something very obviously withering inside him.
-0-
Daeka and Ponten shared a look as the two turians stood aside while Sindri took a few, wobbly steps out of his wheelchair. He'd almost fallen the first time but by degrees he was beginning to achieve forward locomotion. In retrospect it was not surprising, the man ran a medical clinic and was likely familiar with physical therapy. Realizing this he'd wondered if Bogatyr was going to be a difficult patient but found him instead to be surprisingly compliant. To say nothing about taking orders and directions from turians.
"Are you feeling ok, Mr. Bogatyr? Any headrushes? Your balance ok? Any pain?"
Sindri's eyes shut and he breathed deeply as he lurched forward carefully, deliberately.
He looked straight at Daeka and shook his head, obviously lying.
"Ok, good. Do you mind if I hold your elbow? Just to be safe?"
The Darskirr held out a stump at her and leaned into the turian as they walked together. His neck bent as much as his brace allowed to look at his feet.
"Look straight ahead, I told you. Don't trick yourself into falling."
Obediently, the man rolled his eyes in self reproach and looked at the wall across from him.
"If you'd be more comfortable with a human I'm sure we can get another staff member to help you. I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."
Sindri turned to her and squinted his eyes, not understanding. Then the reason dawned on him and he chewed his torn lip and shook his head. Trying for reassurance he patted Daeka's shoulder with his forearm.
How very tolerant of you, Mr. Bogatyr.
As the Darskirr huffed and puffed other staff and the scant few patients in the private wing of the hospital made way and very few met his gaze. It was amusing in a meanspirited sort of way to see so many people so fearful of such an injured man. The police officers hadn't been subtle and quickly the word had spread on the day of his arrival that Sindri Bogatyr was Darskirr. The staff had been trained on de-escalation tactics and active shooter drills in case of a gunman or armed attacker. The turians in particular were informed of the potential for reassignment depending on how difficult the man proved to be. No one was here to be insulted, degraded or harmed, the director had told them. She'd also made a point of telling them that if they felt even the slightest bit unsafe that they could call security and they'd be up in an instant. The man's room, floor and information had been provided to them.
"Do you need a rest?"
The man nodded and slumped into a nearby chair with a hiss and quiet snarl.
Daeka stood by awkwardly. Glancing at her patient every few moments as other patients and other staff walked by them on rounds of their own. More than a few nodded at her and Ponten, subtle indication that they were watching the Darskirr.
More than a few obvious city dwellers and cosmopolitans sneered at the wheezing man and offered sympathetic looks at Daeka and himself.
"Mr. Bogatyr, may I ask you a question?"
The man looked at his nurse and nodded gently as another pair of ambulatory pedestrians passed them again.
"Will there be any next of kin coming to visit you? Wife and children maybe? Parents?"
Deflating a bit, Sindri shook his head slowly.
"Cousins?"
The man shook his head more sharply and emphatically.
"Any family at all?"
With a pained stretch of his arm, the Darskirr made a cutting motion.
"Wow? Really? I thought you people have big families."
With a bloody smile, Sindri nodded gently.
"And I do mean just your people, the Darskirr, I'd heard that they are clannish aren't they? Is that offensive? I'm not trying to be. It's just surprising to hear you are all alone."
For a brief instant Ponten wondered if Sindri would respond with hostility to such a statement but instead his lips curled in a warm smile.
"Is it true that you guys have a problem with turians?"
Daeka turned her head towards another staff member, an Earth-born physician's assistant named Michael.
Sindri gave the man a curt nod.
"We got a good briefing on Darskirri people while you slept, and I read up on the Extranet about everything else your people get up to. It must blow your mind to have a pair of turians looking after you and a salarian drawing your labs and an asari looking at your scans. And let me tell you something, this is how the rest of the universe is; all the species working together for a common goal. And that is the way things are going to stay, no matter how bad that's got to hurt a Martian terrorist's sensibilities. Human supremacists like you are insignificant, and you're on the wrong side of history."
"Michael."
The man stopped, taken aback by the turian's warning.
"Mr. Bogatyr has been perfectly polite, leave him be."
Daeka spared Sindri a glance as he tapped her on the arm gently and gestured at her omnitool.
Sindri again poked his nose at the floating tiles and smirked at Michael as he stood close to the turian and held her arm in place with his stumps.
"Whatever racist justifications you have to say don't matter to me, guy."
Again, a woman's voice with stilted tones intoned from the turian's device.
Daeka is not going to fuck you, Michael. Now go empty my bedpan you virgin.
"Mr. Bogatyr!" chided Daeka even as she tried to keep her mandibles tight to her jaw and not splayed in an obvious smile.
"Real mature, dude. I bet that passes for a pithy insult in whatever village you crawled out of."
Grinning through his ruined mouth Sindri mouthed the word virgin and blew his tongue at the man before sorely plopping back into his wheelchair.
"Well done, Bogatyr. You managed to take a whole three steps in fifteen minutes. I'd say that's progress."
Dr. Ponten opened his own omnitool and began charting on Sindri with somber focus.
"Don't listen to him, Mr. Bogatyr. Michael's just like that."
"Why are you defending him, Daeka? You probably make his skin crawl."
"Because he's my patient and it's my duty to heal, nurture and protect him to the best of my ability. Same for Dr. Ponten, now leave him alone."
Michael sneered and looked like he had something more to say before a very audible commotion a big crowd walking together entered their wing of the hospital.
"Sindri? Sindri!"
The trio looked at the entrance to the unit at the end of the hall as a mob of people followed the lead of the young human female with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. The Darskirr struggled to his feet and met his friend who ran to him but slowed before gently embracing him. Bizarrely she was followed with nearly equal urgency by a salarian who stepped by his patient and embraced him too.
Then a pair of asari.
And an old, scarred krogan who clearly outlived his species' average lifespan. The old warrior clapped the Darskirr on the back with what passed for tenderness among his people.
Then a human woman who wore matching wedding bands with an asari approached, one held a plate of covered pastries and the other held a jug of spicy smelling tea.
And more and more still.
Non humans of every denomination and walk of life from Grennik had come to mob the unit.
The rest of the staff and patients stared in bewilderment at the packed nurse's station and the crowd of people and the well-wishers who made no private matter how distressing they found the man's injuries or how many offered to stay and look after him.
This is surreal. The man's a murderer, a cultist and part of a terrorist group. Why are these people here?
Dr. Ponten blinked and struggled to understand.
"You're holding up good, aren't ya Sin? Figures, you of all Darskirr would survive dismemberment and getting your throat slit. You sure your mother didn't favor krogans?"
"Oh, my god! Jordun! That's awful."
The old warrior laughed and inclined his head by a shade as Sindri hissed what passed for a laugh and the tapped his forehead into Jordun's.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, my name is Daeka, I'm his nurse and this is Dr. Ponten. Who are you people?"
Sindri smiled earnestly and the salarian who embraced him with Amanda stepped forward in the manner of a hostess.
"We're his friends."
-0-
Dr. Ponten and about half the staff and ambulatory patients sat around the nurse's station as Sindri indicated for plates to be brought to share food with anyone who wished to partake. About a dozen times since the mob settled and began speaking to one another the Darskirri man had been made to sit and remain there by his nagging compatriots. The asari couple of Myra and Gola sat on either side of him taking turns bringing him food and keeping him from trying to playing helper.
"So when is he coming home?"
"That depends on the rate of recovery, but considering he seems so determined to walk and eat I'd say a few days. Thankfully his lungs were not perforated and his carotid artery and jugular vein were not severed, nor were his vocal chords. Past the obvious dismemberment, he should make a full recovery. No expense was spared in accelerating his recovery."
Many sympathetic eyes went to Sindri who seemed to be wrestling with his jug of tea.
"Here. Let me help you, Sindri." Mrs. Rivana kneeled by him and held the container steady after she slipped a straw into it and he glowered at her with a sour look on his face.
The Darskirr coughed and Rivana gave him a soft look, the human licked his lips and returned his friend's gaze.
"Useless" he hissed, now an increment more clearly than a creaking door.
Daeka and Ponten looked at each other.
"Now, Mr. Bogatyr. Your friends are kind enough to come fuss after you, be kind."
The Darskirri man held eye contact with the asari in front of him and after a moment she ran her hand through his hair comfortingly.
"You aren't useless, Sindri. Just gotta' get yourself a new pair of hands and you'll be back at it in no time."
Dr. Ponten's mind turned to The Apothecary and he frowned.
"How did Mr. Bogatyr come to make so many friends? Given he's a Darskirri man this is unusual."
Amanda brightened and leaned back in the creaking wheelchair she slowly spun in.
"The Darskirr in Grennik are dicks but they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone."
"And I take it he did something to anger them?"
No one answered and a few uncomfortable glances flickered towards Sindri who sat quiet, sipping tea with glassy eyes and his mind clearly far away.
"I understood he was found with his business partner Oppiter Callux's body when the man had been murdered. He is now the sole owner of the clinic, isn't he?"
"He did not kill, Mr. Callux." blurted out Grin almost on reflex. Her eyes were narrow in annoyance at the turian.
"The police officers said-"
"Sindri and Callux were close as brothers. He did not do it."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because nobody chooses to be exiled out of their family and entire way of life because they have ulterior motives. Mr. Bogatyr is my friend, he hired me when I failed my science program and he deals with me when I am difficult or say too much."
Taken aback the turian looked at the other people present. They had similarly firm looks in their eyes ranging from righteous indignation to simmering anger.
"He delivered our daughter when Sula had her."
A human woman with a warm glint in her eyes squeezed Mrs. Rivana's hand and looked again at the doctor.
"Nobody in Grennik would help us because I'm human and my wife is asari. He made the house-call and stayed until our daughter's fever broke."
Sula Rivana looked at the Darskirr and smiled.
"I insisted on paying him; he told me to get fucked and that I didn't owe him anything."
"Why?" asked Ponten.
"Because he has a big heart, as the humans say, I don't know if you were told about Vetra Nyx but he-"
"Grin!" snapped Amanda looking then at Sindri.
Turning his umber eyes at Grin and Amanda he shrugged and smiled.
"You are not bothered? I would have thought you'd be furious with her."
The man shook his head, sadness staring back through his eyes at the salarian where his mouth tried to display confidence through a smile.
It went over her head.
"You are tough like she said. I'm glad her absence isn't hurting you."
Dr. Ponten did not take his eyes off the man as the salarian spoke. He'd seen much during his time with the military and his work at the hospital; he was experienced enough to recognize when a man was on the verge of falling apart. Every emotion on the human's face played out in a subtle wince or dart of the eye but to him they might have well been loud as diction. Warmth, abashment, remorse and sorrow. It was obvious that Vetra's decision had cut his soul to the bone.
A man like that has very little left in him, I doubt he'll be tough for much longer. But perhaps I misjudged you, Bogatyr. Do you feel guilt because you killed your friend? Or because you didn't save him?
Gradually and in turns the conversation began to pick back up as did the mood of the visitors. Reminiscing and sharing stories about The Apothecary and of Callux, winter holidays and Sindri's efforts and generosity. And of his feud with the Red Mirrardi Fluschorks.
The visitors as well took it upon themselves to decide the rotation and duties therein of looking after Sindri, who'd been made to sit down and accept their decision.
Conspicuously nobody brought up the attempted murder on Sindri's life or who may have done so. Or the logical concern that if a Darskirr had done so and they learned that Sindri was still alive; wouldn't they come back to finish the endeavor?
The sun had set by the time the denizens of the clinic had settled on what would be done and how. None of them were in any real rush to go home, despite the long drive.
None of them were by the parking lot with it's one lonely streetlamp casting a beam of white light down on the darkened concrete. None of them saw the single woman who'd emerged from the snowy fields and the woods beyond or the throng of shadowy shapes that followed her.
-0-
"Can I help you?" asked the asari downstairs in the reception desk for the second time.
A strange woman that entered a moment prior struck her as mean-spirited. She ambled with all confidence looking down each hall as if looking for something but intruding no deeper into the hospital.
"Ma'am, can I help y-"
"Yes you can, asari."
The receptionist narrowed her eyes and took a long, good look at the woman.
She had a drawl that hung on u's and y's and rolled her r's. Her mode of dress was more unusual still. Even if Mirrard was beginning to warm it would have been much too cold for a black, homespun dress and open sandals but she looked as though she didn't even notice he cold. Her torso was hidden by a poncho in dark hues with white serpentine patterns stitched into it. He auburn hair hung in dreadlocks whose bodies were broken up by rings of brass and gold. Her eyes were a hateful shade of green, almost white. They set her gaze apart from her inviting, full lips and hawkish, noble features.
"Sindri Bogatyr. He's an old friend to me, may I ask where he is?"
"Popular man."
"Excuse me?"
The asari cleared her throat. She didn't like how the woman looked at her, there was a quality in her aspect that made her feel close to danger.
"I said he's a popular man. A bunch of his friends and neighbors came to see him."
"How many would you say?"
"Maybe two dozen, I can't remember how many signed in here. Speaking of which, you need to sign in too."
With a toothy smile a few shades less inviting than a snarling bear the woman took a half a step forward.
"I don't think I will. Would you take me to him?" she asked, throwing in a please almost as an afterthought.
"Everyone must sign in ma'am. If you don't I will have to ask you to le-"
Click
The sound was antiquated but it was unmistakable.
A gun.
Shadowy shapes loped into the hospital with sloped helms and chain veils. Ponchos folded across chests slung with archaic rifles held in practiced hands.
"The hospital is very empty on a Friday night. You will take us to dear Sindri, and you'll do so quietly. Now, tell me. Where are the service elevators for the staff?"
-0-
Michael glowered, uncomfortable and irritable by his workstation as he half listened to the crowd gathered by the Darskirri man.
It was unfair that someone so racist, backward and cowardly could feign a care for people he obviously despised and they so obviously believed him.
Bogatyr didn't deserve what he had.
He heard the clack of boots on the ground and glanced down the hall's automatic doors before burying his nose into his work.
More well wishers, wonderful.
The doors hissed open and he didn't bother looking up from his station.
He felt a cold ring on his cheek, turning around irritably he came face to face with a handgun.
"Scream and I'll shoot, Terran."
Michael looked at the hateful eyes staring back at him from behind a chain veil and felt the blood in his veins freeze.
He then fainted.
The thump drew more eyes as more guns and more veiled men and women filled the entrances of the hospital wing.
A few patients gasped, nobody moved.
The green eyed woman held her right index finger to her lips and hissed a gentle shush. Her finger then pointed at the dismembered man sitting at the heart of the crowd who sat quiet and still.
"I've come for Sindri Bogatyr, and I shall leave with him."
"No." intoned a throaty krogan voice.
Several rifles fixed themselves on him.
"Yes." intoned the woman, "I've never seen what one of our guns could do to a krogan but at this range I'd wager they'll be finding giblets for weeks."
With trembling effort the man began to stand to his feet and he held up his stumps at the woman in a gesture of surrender.
Hands reached out and grabbed at him, wordlessly begging him to stay put.
"Sindri, don't!" hissed Amanda as she dug in her nails into his hospital gown.
Her wet eyes pleaded helplessly as the man grimaced and pulled away from her as strongly as his battered body could manage.
Shuffling forward and making every effort to hide the pain that wracked his frame Sindri approached the woman.
"Where is your woman? Vetra Nyx."
"She's gone." he hissed quietly, shame averted his gaze from hers.
The silence in the room stretched for an agonizing minute before the woman's hand snapped forward and grabbed Sindri's face, scrunching it and turning it like she were inspecting an animal at market.
"You have so much to answer for, Sindri Bogatyr."
With a wracking cough the man cleared his throat as tears slipped out of his eyes.
"I have paid. I have paid." he hissed laboriously holding up his severed wrists to the woman as proof.
The woman grabbed one of the stumps and squeezed hideously hard.
Involuntarily, Sindri fell to his knees and his face contorted in agony but he did not cry out. He didn't dare.
"No, no you haven't. Don't hold your pathetic dismemberment at me like it means anything! Exile was too kind! You haven't even started to pay the butcher's bill for everything you've done. You're sick, Sindri. Sick in your soul. And your atonement begins today."
Sindri's resolve broke like glass and he cried out to the woman to stop. She released him and his bandages came away bloody.
"You're not Darskirr. Whimpering and wounded, wailing like a Terran woman, wishing for mercy. Gods, I cannot even call you a man."
With savage interest the woman's hand came to undo the back of Sindri's gown. She smiled, her perfect teeth glinting, with all the warmth of a steely knife as she kneeled by him.
"Stop."
Amanda stepped forward holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender. She looked ill with anxiety and her palms trembled; her eyes screwed shut as a rifle with a bayonet poked her in the gut.
"Please, Sindri is a good man. He's been exiled. Vetra left him. He's got nothing left but us, don't do this. Let him go, I promise we'll move away from Grennik and you'll never see him again-"
"His fate is not in your hands. He does not belong to you."
"Yes he does! He is ours-"
Rising to her feet the woman drew a long knife, wickedly barbed with a handle made out of a humerus and flicked it across Amanda's cheek. Flinching, then touching her wet face Amanda's fingers came away bloody. She froze and stared at the savage woman before her, processing the casual violence as she almost failed to comprehend what had so thoughtlessly just happened.
"You are not strong enough to claim him-"
Looking down at the man she sneered.
"And he has no fire left in him. He is dead already."
Jordun stepped forward and grabbed Sindri by the arm, pulling him to his feet.
"I am not letting you take him."
"And you'll forestall his atonement? How? With the little pepperbox you've got under that leather coat of yours, good krogan?"
"I recognize a killer when I see one. I'll die, but so will you."
The woman held her arms wide and smiled in bliss as her eyes closed.
"And I'd welcome death against such a mighty foe, that I could join my forebears without shame."
"Enough."
The word came like a gravely stream of hisses and sighs out of Sindri's mouth as he struggled to stand straight. He shuffled between the krogan and the savage woman and looked at the latter. Furrowing his brow in concentration the Darskirri man wrestled with the words as he hissed them through his tongue and ruined mouth.
"I will come with you, in peace."
"You will come with us regardless."
"No, I will go in peace. Spare them, they love me and they just want what is best for me."
"If that were true then they would bid you come with us to see honor satisfied."
"Their ways are not ours, Spearmother."
The Spearmother's green eyes narrowed into a predatory leer and her knife poked into Sindri's belly.
"Ours? What do you mean ours? You are an oathbreaker! You pushed away your own people for the sake of strangers! And you failed to protect your kin! You are not one of us, you are not Darskirr. But we did make you, so we are responsible for what you have wrought."
With a snap of her arm, her hand gripped hard into Sindri's nape. Pulling him close and with cold fury billowing from her eyes like a winter gale her blade pushed painfully into the back of Sindri's ribs.
"But, if we wipe away the man we may yet wipe away the shame. You will come with us, and you will answer for all that you've done. I am going to pull everything there is out of you until you are a husk, then we will see the quality of Sindri Bogatyr, son of Tibor and Verine. "
"Dr. Bogatyr-"
All eyes and a rifle shifted towards Grin who stood stock still and perturbed. Her eyes darted nervously and her fidgeting fingers flicked with poorly concealed anxiety as she refused to make eye contact with anyone but the Darskirri man between her and the guns.
"Just say no."
The Spearmother's face contorted with a snarl and her knife pointed at the salarian in a warning.
Looking down at his hands to hold, then gripping him by the arm, the salarian shook her head.
"I do not want to let you go, I am not going to let you go."
"You have to, Grin."
"Just say no. Don't go with them, if we all fight them then they cannot win. What they have done is highly illegal taking us hostages, their situation is untenable when Kuov launches an investigation and searches for their place of residence. The police force outnumbers them and-"
"Grin."
Stopping her sentence mid breath she drew closer Sindri, recognizing his tone as beckoning her. Or recognizing this was the tone he used before he was going to say something important to her.
"I am going with them."
"But why? The Darskirr can only lose this engagement in the long term-"
"It would come at the cost of your life or the lives of our friends. And that price is more than I can bear."
"Doctor, they are going to kill you."
The shadow of an old sorrow passed by Sindri's face like a storm before fading into stoic resignation.
"All death is certain. But if I can sacrifice and save my people, I will. Grant me this, Grin, don't be cruel."
Frowning with disapproval the Spearmother sneered at him before stepping aside.
"What would you know of sacrifice? You are a coward."
"No, he is not!"
Flicking her wrist at Amanda, the Spearmother sheathed her barbed blade and regarded the young woman with the contempt of the enlightened.
"What do we say about life, Sindri?"
Straightening, the man recalled the words that had so often been repeated to him in Dubek. His gravelly sighs and hisses intoned the wisdom he'd first heard from his mother chastising him for being meek then his father for having cried after losing a fight as a boy.
One must ask himself; why did I chose to succumb when I should have endured? To run when I should have stood? To bend the knee, when I should have taken up arms? To live when I should have died? All one truly owns, is the choices one makes in life. Embrace each step in your journey, for they were yours to live, to truly live.
"Say that you were to be in my shoes, what would you make of a man such this?" she gestured with an angry finger pushing into one of the many stapled knife wounds on Sindri's chest.
The words rose like bile.
And this time, they spilled out like poison drawn from a wound.
"I am a coward."
The hospital wing stood silent save for the beeping of cardiovascular computers and beeping monitors.
"Why?"
"Because I succumbed, I ran, I bent the knee and I lived."
The Spearmother nodded at one of the veiled men and he with a few other of his armed and cloaked brethren opened the door to the hallway and called for the service elevator. In ones and twos, still keeping eyes on halls and minding the staff and other patients the Darskirr began to withdraw entirely.
"You are saying the right words, but do you believe them?"
"I do, Spearmother."
Grasping Sindri's shoulder with the affection of a parent she turned him around to face his friends and loved ones. Drawing her knife she slid it into the ties behind his gown and sliced it open. The shift fell off of him, revealing the man's naked body for all to see and the full history of injury, strife and war he'd endured in his twenty eight years of life. A pregnant silence filled the room as they looked at him and he returned the attention with a vacant, shameful stare.
"Then prove it, choose; I'll shoot that stranger there and let you stay here in peace with your friends, or you can walk naked through the cold with us and pay for everything you've done."
Her words hung like a sword over his head, the weight of her promise was imminent and final with her revolver leveled straight at Dr. Ponten.
The crowd froze and Dr. Ponten cursed himself for trying to blend into the background rather than take action. The soldier in him braced himself for the bullet that was about to come.
"Spearmother, that's too harsh." intoned one of the men as he spared Sindri a glance.
"He has much to atone for, don't you Sindri?"
The naked man looked at the turian. His eyes were more sharp, there was life in them now. But only just. Something deeper stared back at him from the depths of Sindri's umber eyes, something dangerous.
The Spearmother smiled at Sindri and pulled back the hammer of her ancient revolver.
"Is that anger I see in your eyes? Would you like him dead? Or perhaps the female-" the revolver shifted to Daeka who on reflex pressed herself up against the wall she leaned on. It was written plainly on her face how badly she wished she had a weapon. No fear, just dread at being vulnerable.
"-or perhaps not. Seeing as you were fucking one of their kind you may find that a little discomforting. Say the word, and I'll end the physician. You remember shooting them on Dubek don't you? How angry you were? How all you found of your parents and siblings was a shoe from your little brother after they bombed your village. I remember that Sindri; how you strung those skull-faces from trees by their own guts, how you stripped them naked and set them loose for the dogs to rip to pieces on the moors. "
Tears of rage welled in Sindri's face and his naked frame shook as his friends looked at him, their shock beginning to shift into horror as they searched his face for any indication that The Spearmother was lying and found none.
"I remember that same young man, not even twenty winters old, the glee on his face, when he flayed the prisoners alive and cleaned off their war-leader's severed head for an heirloom to hand down to his future children. Now, that was a man, you defended us like a lion and fought like a demon. That was a son of the clan worth loving, you had honor then."
Sindri turned with a silent enraged snarl on his face, his wet stumps went to his eyes and wiped away at his tears leaving smudges of blood on his skin.
"I had no honor then. I was cruel, I was evil. Those soldiers and I had to fight and we both did our duty. They didn't deserve what I did to them after."
With a bell-like laugh The Spearmother smiled at Sindri, equal parts bemusement and contempt.
"You are a leader, Sindri Bogatyr. Whether it's aliens and Terrans here or your kinsmen on Dubek you've always led by example. And the tricks we learned from you led us a long way to terrorizing our enemies. You should be proud."
The man buried his face into his severed wrists and choked out something like a scream, but his injuries wouldn't allow it.
"I killed Oppiter Callux." he hissed like a dying viper.
The Spearmother's smile faded and disappointment was written clearly in her face.
"The cruelty and rage I felt, I passed onto my cousins and they killed him because I loved him! I am responsible as surely as if I'd held the blade."
"Love? What is there to love about these invaders? Turians wiped out your entire family, your village-"
"And I killed Callux's friend! I speared him through the chest and smashed his skull open with my rifle."
"So that turian's life was worth more than all the ones you lost? What of Mischa and Rin? What of your parents? You weep for the people who murdered your family?"
Noiselessly, Sindri began to cry.
"These aliens only take and take and take from us, when will you learn that they are closer to animals than people? They are incapable of feeling love like we do."
Sindri's uninjured leg came up like a spear and struck The Spearmother in the stomach, the other Darskirr did not stir even as the woman straightened herself and caught her breath. Now a feral smile adored her beautiful face.
"I loved Callux, I loved him like he was my own blood and my sins caught up to him instead of me! Not a day goes by that I don't regret it, but you will not utter another word about the turians. You don't know anything, they are just like us, they are just like humans. I loved Vetra like she was my wife and I held Sid dear to me like she was my daughter, like she was mine and they loved me!"
The Spearmother grinned and aimed the gun at Ponten once again.
"And look where it got you. They are gone and you are completely alone."
Sindri's anger vanished in an instant.
"It was only a matter of time before they turned on you really, but my offer stands. Ask me to kill the turian doctor and I'll spare you or you can come with us and pay the price for everything you've done, oathbreaker."
Sindri's umber eyes looked to Dr. Ponten, the dread was clear in the older turian as was the quiet pleading in his gaze.
"I will atone."
The revolver's hammer clicked back and the gun was holstered under Spearmother's poncho. Noiselessly the woman pointed at the bare man then gestured towards the elevators. Without protest, he turned on his heel and obeyed. Carrying all the weight of his wounds plainly on his back Sindri Bogatyr entered the cabin and stood between the chain-veiled Darskirr. Battered and vulnerable and with several of his fresh wounds seeping he locked eyes with his friends. A sob wracked his form for an instant before he closed his eyes and smiled as the doors sealed shut.
Relief kissed his face like the dawn after a long, cold night.