Chapter 9: Aftermath
The waves surged up against the rocky base of the cliff, making the small vessel that was anchored in the protected inlet rock and bob. The ship was sleek and shiny, designed to be streamlined like a fish. It was fast and flashy and efficient — everything about it characteristic of the people who had built it. Sunlight glinted off the colorful Garden insignia.
The man looking down on the ship turned, raking his eyes over the forest.
Permeating the silence, his com-link beeped.
"Yes?" he snarled.
"Who is it?" came the garbled reply.
"SeeD."
A long pause, then, "Leave it for now."
"Leave it?" He balked at the idea. He couldn't just walk away.
"Yes. Leave it." The voice on the other end was firm, sharp with conviction and steely resolve. It was the voice of a leader who would accept no argument.
"What about the SeeDs?" he asked.
"Don't worry about them." The signal dropped for a second, as it often did, then came back with a burst of static. "Come back," his leader commanded.
He grumbled to himself and acknowledged the order. This was a mistake. With SeeD on the island, they couldn't take any chances. But it wasn't his place to make decisions, and he had no choice but to return to the compound.
Casting one last glance toward the Garden vessel, he stalked back into the forest from whence he came.
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Seifer flopped onto his butt in the dirt and shrugged out of his pack. Every muscle in his body felt like jell-o. And now that the adrenaline coursing through his blood was beginning to ebb, he was able to look at the situation he was in with a rational mind and feel fear. The monster had gotten the jump on them, and Adrian was badly hurt.
In front of him, Quistis pushed herself up off the ground. The clip that always held her hair fast had come undone in the fight, so her hair was hanging in dirty, blond tangles about her face. Her skin was smudged, her breathing labored. She'd taken a few hard hits; he cringed remembering them. Now, half healed, she was crouching over Adrian and chewing her bottom lip with worry knitted across her forehead. The scent of magic was in the air. Laying her hands upon their injured companion, she closed her eyes and called up a healing spell that shivered across all of them with a cool, blue-green glow.
As it moved through him, easing his worry and exhaustion, Seifer stopped for a moment to examine the monster's sad corpse. It was the color of mulch, spotted with black markings that allowed it to blend in with the mottled forest floor. The claws on its front feet were different than those on the back, less dark and surrounded by thick, pale tissue that must have helped it deliver its poison into its prey.
"Adrian?" Quistis's soft voice interrupted the silence that had fallen. No birds were calling. Even the bugs had abated for the moment. "Adrian. Come on. Open your eyes. Look at me."
He let out a strangled groan.
"This is no good," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Seifer. "We can keep him stable by healing him. But the antidote we gave him is doing nothing to counteract this poison. We need to get him back to the ship where we have more supplies. Maybe if we leave right away, we can radio Garden and have them fly Dr. Kadowaki down to Centra to meet us."
"Would he live that long?" Seifer asked.
She shrugged. "We knew this might happen. We have enough supplies to keep his heart going, at least. But this is a neurotoxin. I don't know what it might do to his brain by then."
"So we abandon the mission, and haul him back to Garden so that he can live the rest of his life as a vegetable?" Seifer shook his head. "He wouldn't want that."
"That's not our call to make. Now help me." She looped her arms around his legs, hauling him half up off the ground by his knees.
"Put him down," Seifer said. "You're going to hurt yourself worse than you already are."
Stubbornly, she asked, "Can you carry him on your own?"
"Guess I don't really have much choice but to try," he replied. "Out of the way. I got this."
Reluctantly, she let go. It was hard for her to give up control. He understood that. Wide eyed, she watched him bend down and lift Adrian up, draping the limp man over his shoulders.
"What about the monster?" he asked. "We just going to leave it after all that trouble?"
"Absolutely. Hell with it," Quistis replied, surprising him. "We know it's here. We know this is the right island. Cid can send more people. Adrian's my only concern right now. You two come before the mission."
Despite everything, he smiled. On the job, Quistis didn't care about anything but missions. She'd been a real hard ass about that as an instructor. And to see her now, letting go of what Garden had told her to do, making her own decisions, was heartening. Maybe this Quistis wouldn't have been so hard on him for leaving his post in Dollet years ago, he thought. Maybe this Quistis finally liked him as much as she'd liked Squall.
"Oh my God. Seifer…look!" She grabbed at him, knotting one hand in his shirt as the other went for her whip. He spun around and found a dark little man standing beside the monster's carcass. He wasn't looking at them, even though they both drew their weapons. Instead he crouched down, his knees popping, and pressed his fingers into a soft spot under the monster's chin.
"Who the fuck are you?" Seifer demanded.
The man glanced up and arched one eyebrow.
"You kill this?" he finally asked. His voice was low and soft, oddly accented in a way Seifer couldn't identify.
"Yeah."
"Hmm." The man nodded, then stood up again and gestured toward Adrian. "He poisoned?"
What the hell was this, Seifer wondered? A native? Were there actually people out on these isolated islands?
"Yeah," Seifer answered. "Do you know how to counteract it?"
The man stepped over the monster's tail and approached them, completely ignoring the way Quistis's hand tightened on her whip. Walking up to Seifer, he reached out for Adrian and peeled back one of his eyelids, exposing his dilated eye. "Yep," he finally said, the word more of a grunt. "We can save him."
"We?" Quistis asked, then repeated Seifer's earlier question: "Who are you?"
"We should hurry," the man replied. "He doesn't have much time."
"How would you know that?" Quistis asked.
He was already walking away, expecting them to follow him, the thready muscles in the back of his legs twitching as he walked. Lean and small, he had the body of an alley cat; he looked like the sort of person who could survive on an island like this. With no other options, they followed him. Though Seifer wasn't sure whether to count his blessings or be suspicious. The man didn't seem surprised to see them. And he seemed a little too calm about the whole situation. Shouldn't he be shitting bricks to find them on his island?
Leaving the monster's body behind, they followed him through the trees. He was nimble over the fallen branches and through the undergrowth, and Seifer had trouble keeping pace with Adrian's added weight on his shoulders. Beside him, Quistis still seemed to be in pain and he was worried about her. As tough as she was, he was used to seeing her as unflappable. But now, worried that she might have broken bones, she was waiting to heal herself and suffering through the pain so that Kadowaki wouldn't have to re-break anything when they got back to Garden in order to set it correctly. He kept glancing over at her, checking on her and ready to heal her himself if things got bad, consequences be damned.
It was hard, too, to leave the monster's carcass behind. That was the whole reason they were on this island, and now they were abandoning it to save Adrian…assuming this man really could.
"Quistis?" he asked, his voice rough.
"Yeah?"
"What the hell are we doing?"
She shook her head. "If this is the only chance Adrian's got…we'll give it to him."
The little man stopped up ahead and waited for them to catch up, then set off at an angle to their previous heading. "This way…" he murmured.
Sweat was pouring off Seifer. His mouth felt dry and he was dizzy, becoming dehydrated. But the man turned around and said, "Not much further," urging him on.
Swallowing his discomfort, Seifer muscled on. They only walked a few more minutes before the trees parted, revealing a low profile building that had been obscured on their satellite photos by the jungle canopy. It looked military, like something the Estharans had left behind when they abandoned their holdings in Centra and the southern sea. A crescent moon logo was splashed above the doorway in white paint.
"What is this?" Quistis asked.
"Home," the man replied. "Come on. I'll take you inside."
No one was outside the building, and if Seifer didn't know better, he would have thought that it was abandoned. Was this where Sascha Maurden had been living for the past several years, he wondered? They walked up to the set of heavy double doors — blast doors, definitely military — and the man kicked twice against them. After a few seconds, one of them cracked open and a man's head poked out.
"What's this?" he asked in the same softly accented voice.
"Found them in the jungle," their guide responded, then gestured to Adrian. "He's poisoned."
The man who'd answered the door pulled his head back in and stepped out of the way to allow them inside. The interior of the building was dark and grungy. A string of yellow lights hung from the ceiling and illuminated a path of hallways that stretched like tentacles through the building. The door slammed shut behind them, and the man pushed a bolt forward again, locking it. Against the monster, Seifer wondered? Or something else?
They were led down a long hallway and into a room obviously reserved for medical use. The islanders didn't seem too far behind on their technology and had a lot that looked like it had been left behind. Another insignia was painted on the wall, a crescent that bared a passing resemblance to the one that had been on the side of the Lunatic Pandora.
"Set him down here," their guide said, motioning to a metal table.
Then he threw open several cupboards, retrieving bottles and a small crucible which he energetically began grinding something up in, adding bits and pieces to the mixture from jars around the room. He worked with speed and efficiency, obviously having mixed the antidote to the monster's poison numerous times before.
"Put this on his wound," he said and handed the crucible to Quistis. A greenish paste was inside. She pulled back Adrian's shirt, dipped her fingers in the mixture, and began spreading the salve liberally over his wounds. While she did that, the other man retrieved a small syringe, drew up some clear liquid into it, and injected it into Adrian's arm.
"Is that it?" Seifer asked.
"That's it." He put everything away, then held up one finger. "Wait here."
He waked out, and they were left alone. Adrian was still unconscious but he seemed more at ease. Color was coming back into his complexion, and the quivering that had started to take hold of him as they walked through the jungle had abated. Quistis leaned against the table and blew hair out of her face.
"Are you okay?" Seifer finally asked.
"Yeah. I'm good."
"What do you think about this?" He looked around at the medical supplies lining the shelves, at the building around them, the unexpected civilization.
"I have no idea."
There wasn't more time to talk before a new man walked in and introduced himself as a doctor. He checked on Adrian once before turning his attention to Quistis and her ribs. Cautiously, Seifer watched the doctor's hands play across her stomach, pressing and testing just under her breasts, around her back.
"We'll take an x-ray," he said. "But I think you're okay."
"Are you all native to this island?" Seifer asked as the doctor set up an x-ray machine in the corner of the room.
"Yes. We've always lived here," the doctor replied.
"Did you build this building?" Quistis asked.
"No. Estharan soldiers built this. We moved in once they left. It provides good protection from the monsters. Plus…" he smiled, "they left us such nice machines. I can check your ribs now. If you would like, sir…I can have someone escort you somewhere to get cleaned up? Maybe rest a little."
"I'll stay." The last thing he wanted was to get separated from Quistis and Adrian. He didn't trust these people yet, and his suspicion was still enough to overcome the draw of crawling into a soft bed somewhere and sleeping for a few days. The doctor shrugged and guided Quistis in front of a screen. They both stood back while the old x-ray machine beeped and whirred. Then it was done and he let Quistis sit down while they waited for the film to develop.
"How did you get here?" the doctor asked quietly. "We…don't get many visitors."
"I'm surprised you get any at all," Quistis replied, avoiding the question. "We had no idea there were people here."
"We would like to keep it that way," the doctor said. "Some of us here were still alive when Esthar ruled these islands. And we don't want another overlord to come and take control. We like our way of life. And we'd like to be left alone." His voice was harder now, chiding. It was the first hint that Seifer had gotten that they weren't welcome here, and it made his hair stand on end.
"Have you had any visitors lately?" Quistis asked. "Besides us, I mean?"
The doctor shook his head. "Not for several years. Wayward ships here and there. But we avoid contact with them. I imagine you never would have seen Abra either, except that your friend here got himself injured."
Abra — that must have been the man who brought them in.
"That monster is something else," Seifer said. "What is it? Is it native to this island, too."
"Yes. But we avoid them. On your way out, you should try to do that as well."
The x-rays were done, so he put them up on the wall and turned on the light behind them, illuminating a black and white image of Quistis's insides.
"There are several hairline cracks," he said, pointing with a pen. "Here and here and here. But nothing that is fully fractured. I can give you something to help with the swelling and the pain. But there's nothing to do but let the breaks heal on their own."
"How about Adrian?" Seifer asked.
"He should be okay. But we'll have to keep an eye on him…make sure we gave him enough anti-venom and that it's all out of the wound. It takes a long time to heal from an injury like this. He'll have to stay here for several days before he can be moved."
Great. They were stuck here then, at the mercy of their hosts. At least so far, whether the islanders wanted them here or not, they were being hospitable. They could have abandoned them in the jungle and let Adrian die.
"Now…can I have someone take you to a room?" the doctor asked. "If you don't want to be split up—"
"We don't," Seifer interrupted.
The doctor nodded. "That's fine. A little rest would do you both well."
They were guided again through the long hallways and led to a sparse, windowless room, barrack-like with nothing but a bed and a mirror nailed to one wall. Across the hallway, they were told, was a communal bathroom where they could shower and get cleaned up. It all sounded so good. Too good to be true, perhaps. But for the moment, as their guide left them to their own devices, Seifer felt safe enough to relax.
