Chapter 6: "Stabbing Thorn, Bleeding Rose"
-"How, can this be possibly happening? How can such weapon, which has once been a handy protector, hurt so badly such complex being? It feels as if a rose has been hurt with its own thorns."
Darkness abruptly filled the room in the middle of the afternoon. Slowly, it covered her body with an indescribable feeling of pain, a pain that could not be endured by many. It is true that she had felt pain many times before and in many different ways and occasions, but this pain was beyond those others. It was a pain that could not be ceased easily, a pain that engulfed each and every part of her body, and still it only focused on her right shoulder. Although, it is indescribable for those who are enduring this pain, and hard to imagine for those who are not; it could be compared with the aching pain of one thousand thorns covering her shoulder. The room felt warm, every minute the temperature would rise, until it felt almost as hot as hell could possibly be, but her body was cold as ice, shivering with fear, anger and pain. Her limbs were shaking uncontrollably, maybe not as uncontrollable as a 75 –year-old man with Parkinson, but it was hard for her to get a grip. She slowly lifted her left arm and tried to pull out the dagger in her right shoulder, as the blade slowly leaved her skin she realized she was loosing a great amount of blood that was now all over the place; and that every time she pulled the dagger forward two things were happening: first, the pain would increase, and second, the blood will "crystallize" forming a scab over her shoulder trapping the dagger. It was useless to continue; she dropped her arm and stand from her chair, her legs shaking and her right arm numb from the constant pain. All her thoughts revolved around the pain she was feeling and what she could do. She looked around the empty library; it would not matter how loudly she could scream, nobody will be able to hear her. She tried to jump from where her chair was to the hallway, but she has already lost too much blood and her energy would die out if she would. She walked as fast as her legs could without running and held her numb arm close to her body; leaving a trail of blood behind her. As she walked down the hall, she realized, that the darkness that had few moments ago covered the room was not only the dusk and the nightfall, but her vision had begun to blur because of the blood lost. Her legs were still shaking a bit as she walked out of the library, and stood undecided in the middle of the hallway.
"What do I do?" she asked herself in weak and almost inaudible voice, "Do I walk to my room? Or should I walk to the medical wing?"
She decided, for what she thought it was better for her to do; she kept walking through the labyrinth-like halls of the research center, trying to find somebody, anybody that could possibly help her, but the halls were deserted once again. She kept walking, every step forward, was a step closer to cease her pain, but at the same time her legs, that by now had stop shaking, felt heavy as lead and hard as stone; meaning that the numbing pain had now spread through her legs.
"Maybe they are just cramps." she said as she kept walking.
As she got the end of the hall, she stopped at the last door at the left, and knocked softly. Few minutes later, the door opened, letting the warm lights and the cheerful voices from the inside, fill the hallway. She stood outside, her vision and hearing blurry, making it hard to recognize the person that had opened the door.
"Wha… Saya, you are bleeding, we need to take you to the ER immediately!!" the voice said.
"HELP!! Saya needs our help!!" a second voice screamed above the noise.
The cheerful voices ceased and converted into, desperate cries of pain looking for help. And as fast as you could possibly see, she was already in a stretcher and with an IV connected to her arm. The same sirens that had once filled the hallways of the complex a few days ago were now heard again and with them new, but strangely familiar voices surrounded her.
"Can you hear me? Blink if you can." one of the voices said and she did as said.
"At least, she can hear us." another voice called.
"Will she be ok?" a third voice asked worried.
"Yes, but we will need to take out the cocoons." the first voice said.
"And what about the babies?" a girly and high-pitched voice said.
"They will be fine, sweetheart." the first voice answered.
The voices kept doing this for a while, until they got to the emergency room, and half of the voices stopped. She was placed in a metallic table in the operating room, as the surgeons, entered covered with the same outfits as the time before. The nurses around her prepared everything for the operation. A tall figure among the surgeons approached the table where Saya was laying, and opened her belly as carefully as any skilled surgeon could do it, he placed the scalpel aside and carefully pulled out the cocoons and hand them to the nurse beside him. As he was about to make some stitches to Saya's belly he saw how fast the skin closed without leaving any mark or trace that she was ever opened. The numbing pain that invaded Saya's body a few hours ago had ceased thanks to the analgesics they applied on their way to the emergency room, but still the dagger was incrusted in her shoulder. The surgeons waited for instructions on what to do next, although it was obvious for them that they had to remove the dagger, however they respected Julia's authority and followed her orders and instructions, no matter what were those instructions or how long they took.
Outside the Red Shield watched after Saya, and Julia in angst walked the room thinking what to do next. As confusion and indecision was felt inside and outside the ER, a mahogany haired man enters the room, unusually startled by the current events.
"Julia, what it is going on?" the man demanded.
"Joel." the doctor said as she faced the man in the wheelchair,"Her vital signs are stable, we already removed the cocoons, and a scab of "crystallized" blood is trapping the dagger which with she was stabbed in her shoulder. "
"How, can this be possibly happening?" Joel asked startled," How can such weapon, which has once been a handy protector, hurt so badly such complex being? It feels as if a rose has been hurt with its own thorns."
The room broke into silence and everyone looked amazed at how startled Joel was, it was uncommon to see Joel this way, and not in his usual calm mood. Kai turn away from the window of the operation room, and look at Julia, he was interested at what Joel had said a few moments ago.
"What do you mean?" Kai asked interested.
"Well," she said as she took her glasses off, "as you know, Saya's body heals even with the minimum damage, but when the dagger was pulled out, as I might like to believe, a scab of "crystallized" blood started to form. The "crystallized" blood was a defense mechanism of her body, to some strange or unknown pathogen the dagger might have."
"So, you mean the blood crystallized as in the "thorn" in the Schiff" Kai asked confused.
"Perhaps, not that type of crystallization, but more like as a massive scab." she answered as she put on her glasses,"Like when you have a bruise."
"So what are you doing next?" he asked.
"We will have to remove the dagger with surgery." Julia answered.
"So be it." Joel approved.
As soon as Joel approved the order, Julia instructed the surgeons what they should do. They opened Saya's marble skin and carefully removed the blade. As they removed it, and hand it over to nurse that will take it to the laboratory, it could be seen a kind of rust, different from the one you usually find in old metals, but more as a kind of crystal covering the blade. The surgeons removed scab that had formed around her shoulder, and let her heal in a blink of an eye. After that numbing pain, it all seemed over, at least for a while. She was transferred to her room so she could recover, and the cocoons of her children where placed in a crib in beside her bed. Although, she was now in a better state, than the day before, she remained asleep, not in the kind of sleep she does when she hibernates, neither the one in which you can sleep for twelve hours straight after a long night; but more like the one patients do after a long surgery and they need recovery. It is true, that Saya does not need to much of a recovery sleep since, as one of her many gifts as a Chiropteran is to heal immediately after being hurt, but this time it was different. Meanwhile she would rest in her room, Kai would sit in a chair in the conference room, he fidgeted his fingers rhythmically in the large wooden table as they waited for the laboratory to have ready the results of what was in the dagger.
Out of nowhere he stopped with the tapping noises as he felt a hand over his shoulder, he knew someone was behind him, and he knew who he was, it was David.
"Kai, go home and have some sleep." he said as Kai turned around and faced him.
"I'm fine, besides the girls and Mao are sleeping in the room here at the center." he said as he took a sip of a coffee that he has been grabbing with his right hand.
"Anyways, you should sleep. If you are waiting for the results, they might take a while." David said as he sat in the chair besides Kai, "I'm telling you this as a friend, not as your superior."
"I'm not waiting, for the results," he said as he crushed the empty paper cup in his hand, "I'm actually waiting for Saya to wake up, I want to know who stabbed her."
"Well, I wouldn't take any chances, and say it was that queer looking Chevalier" a girly and high-pitched voice said as it stepped out of the darkness.
"Lulu, when did you come back?" Kai said in amusement as she saw the lilac haired Schiff girl across the room.
"Yesterday, visiting Kilibeth again was not as fun as I had imagined." she said, "Besides I heard about Saya's awakening and I decided to come as soon as possible."
"Why do you think Nathan is the one behind this?" Kai questioned.
"I don't know it is just a hunch." she answered frankly.
"Well, I have proofs beyond a hunch." Julia said as she entered the room with some papers in a manila envelope, which he handed to her husband.
"What do you mean?" he asked as he opened the envelope.
"As they inspected the dagger they found three important things," she said as a slide with photos of the dagger showed in the screen, "First, an engraving with the legend N. Mahler; second the "rust" is actually crystallized chiropteran blood; and third, the dagger has about three-hundred- and fifty years old."
As Julia said this, everyone looked shocked by the news that proved that Nathan could possibly be about four-hundred years old, and that the rust was not really rust.
"My theory that what happened to Saya, is that she suffered an allergic reaction to the crystallized blood." the doctor said as a zoomed picture of the dagger was shown.
"Would she be fine?" the lilac haired Chiropteran asked.
"She will, there is no potential harm; but she has just entered a comma state." the doctor answered as she looked back focusing her sight on Kai.
It is true that this is just the beginning of a new era, but one event after another proved that it would not be an easy task to find the missing pieces in Saya's memory puzzle.