"Why don't you join any of us?"
Kaylin smiled and shook her head. She had heard this question often, especially when she was new to this place. The gangs were in a habit of watching the drop ships, and descending on whatever prisoners were abandoned. They were lucky if they were the right race to the gang who found them first.
"I just don't feel about this whole set-up the same way you guys do," she said, casting a glance to her side. Today was someone from the Eagle gang, the Mexicans and other Latinos. Who were not the Spaniards or the South Africans. He stood by one of the inside walls and watched as she smashed herbs in a mortar and pestle on her blood-stained table.
"That's not what I mean," he said, shifting his weight, "I mean that… you could live in the city with your people, and you choose to live out here in the boonies with the plants and the bugs."
Kaylin chuckled slightly, "I don't have people here Adolfo."
The man cocked an eyebrow and leaned to the side to get a better look at her face as she worked, "what do you mean by that?"
Kaylin paused to look at the herbs in the bowl and then went back to tapping, "I'm not sure if you ever noticed, back on earth or maybe from the colony you were from, those fun little science-project kind of kid's toys that let them do the basic blood testing?"
Adolfo thought for a moment, dark eyes almost rolling back into his head before answering, "yeah I think so, the one kinda like the one you could buy for dogs?"
"Yup that's the one," she said, pouring the juice out of the mortar into a small bowl and then going back to crushing, "when I was… ten I think, maybe eleven, I got one of those for my birthday. The first one I tested it out on was myself, the results I got where…," she paused to switch the pestle out for a small spoon and scoop out the crushed herbs onto a plate for drying, "23% English, 20% Inuit, 20% French , 10% Japanese, 10% Pilipino, 9% Irish, 5% Portuguese, 3% Arabic. Which means I am 52% Caucasian, 20% Native America, 3% Arabic and depending on how you want to count the Pilipino part, I'm either 20% Asian and 5% Latino, or I'm 10% Asian and 15% Latino, or I'm 10% Asian, 5% Latino, and 10% Pacific Islander," she looked over at him and smirked a bit, "and I was born in Canada."
Adolfo blinked and then laughed, "well, you're not black," he offered.
"Black Irish," she teased and then added, "and the Arabic part comes from Morocco from when Hannibal crossed into Europe through Portugal, so if you want to get really technical, my 3% Arabic comes from Africa."
Adolfo laughed again, shaking his head, "you're such a nerd."
She smiled over at him kindly, finishing spreading the herbs on the plate and moving it to where the sun could dry them, "I'm just your typical North-American mutt. Yesterday I got two separate compliments for being the nicest white lady, and then the nicest Asian lady anyone's ever met," she smiled again, stepping back inside and going back to the bowl with the liquid in it. She lifted it up and smelled it, setting it down and looking over as a white ball of fur appeared over the edge of the table, looked at her and then cleaned her whiskers.
She smiled and held out her hand, allowing the mouse to relocate to her shoulder.
"Those things are dirty," said Adolfo as Kaylin turned towards some cabinets and began searching through them.
"Algernon isn't one of the mice that came on the ships with us," Kaylin said, groaning as she bent over and filched a bag from one of the lower cabinets, "she's my college thesis."
"She's your thesis?"
Kaylin nodded and walked back to her table, "when I was in college, I was working on finding a cure for muscular dystrophy—."
"What's that?"
"It's a genetic disorder that caused the muscles in a body to deteriorate over time, often confining people to wheelchairs or worse."
"Ah, kay?"
"Well, I thought I had stumbled on a cure using stem-cells to—," she looked over at the man who already looked bored and she laughed at herself, stopping before she got ahead, "sorry, I'll spare the details. But I tested the cure on a lab mouse in order to study the effects it had on healthy muscles, to get an idea on how it would work on MD patients once it was ready for human testing."
Kaylin smiled and gently touched the mouse on her shoulder, "it worked, sort of, a little too well. I ended up accidentally turning her little muscles into… basically organic steel, but not only that but I had apparently jump-started some kind of super immune system by messing with her stem cells. She's my little super mouse, she was going to be my miracle to the world. I found that if I inserted a virus into her system, within mere minutes the proper antibodies needed to fight it were ready for extraction and use, same with venoms and poisons."
Kaylin smiled up at the ceiling, spreading her hands, "I could have changed so much…."
Adolfo stared wide-eyed at the girl as her hands lowered and so did her gaze.
"So what stopped you?" he asked with a shrug and a shake of his head.
"A couple things, found out one of my colleagues wanted to take credit for the experiment, that the muscular effects had military application, and that they planned on killing her to study her new biology closer. So I gave up, I told them that ultimately the experiment was a failure and that subject 28 had expired after suffering horrible side-effects of the drug, and I went to work trying to find a way to duplicate the experiment without the musculature results."
Kaylin put a few pinches of dust into the bowl of green liquid until it started to make a paste. She began to stir it and smiled at bitter-sweet memories.
"That's… amazing," he said, shaking his head again then furrowing his brow, "did you get caught? Is that why you're here?"
Kaylin shook her head as she whisked the mixture and tested its thickness, adding a few more pinches and stirring again. Her eyes began to shine with tears and she cleared her throat uncomfortably, "I was uh… working on LV-7 as a scientist there to study the medicinal properties of the local flora, I was also a back-up medical doctor for the facility, and pioneered a new kind of surgery there," she shifted her weight and turned away from Adolfo, "during one of these surgeries, under the influence of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, I had a hallucination that all of my fellow doctors and nurses, and the patient I was working on, had turned into monsters, and I had killed them all with my scalpel," her bottom lip twitched slightly and she inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to calm herself down, "seven counts of manslaughter, and illegal use of a hallucinogen."
She looked over at Adolfo, smiling apologetically. The man's eyes were level on her and his jaw was set hard. He tilted his head up and pronounced very simply, "bull shit."
Kaylin smiled genuinely and went back to stirring.
"You pissed someone off, and they got you dropped here," he said and Kaylin nodded.
"It doesn't matter. I plead guilty at the trial, that's what it says on the paper, that's why I'm here."
Adolfo exhaled heavily and his shoulders sank, "man," he said shaking his head, "I don't get why people gotta do shit like that to good people."
Kaylin bit her tongue against the hypocrisy and moved over to where he was standing, "alright," she said quietly, "let me see the burns."
Adolfo peeled his shirt off, hissing slightly and exposing bright red flesh, peeling on his shoulders. She moved him over to sit on her bed so that she could reach his shoulders, and very carefully began to apply the greenish cream to the burns.
"Aww that feels nice," Adolfo said, closing his eyes in relief. She smiled and continued to spread it on, careful to not put any pressure on the burns. He had been working out in the sun it seemed, but his shoulders and upper back got the worst of the burns.
"What are you working on over there?" he asked and she glanced over at the odd set-up of dishes and cloths.
"Um, testing," she said, "one of my patients is exhibiting flu-like symptoms, and I'm trying to see what I can do to help, by trying to find out exactly what is wrong," she dipped her fingers in the dish again and switched to working on his left side, "it's hard, not having all the equipment I need. Beakers, dishes, tubes hypodermic needles," she sighed, "if I had even just, one hypodermic needle, I wouldn't even need to test, I could just use Algernon to make the anti-bodies…."
From how near she was, Kaylin could hear Adolfo grind his teeth a bit. She set her jaw and quieted down, smoothing the paste down his back, "alright, this will do you for today, don't put your shirt back on, and I'll work on making you some more for the next few days."
She smiled at him and went back to her table. It took till about sundown, and by the time the rest of Adolfo's medicine was done, he was asleep on her bed, his back exposed to the air, arms buried under the pillow and face buried into it. She smiled and very gently woke him up. He lifted his head, groggy, and blinked a few times before looking at Kaylin.
"Sorry, did I fall asleep?"
"It's alright," she assured, "I'm sure the burns kept you up last night," she handed him the large bowl with the cloth tied around the top, "here you go, if you need more, just come back, and when your done, could you bring back the bowl?"
"'Course," he said, taking the bowl, "thanks Kay, I owe you one."
Kaylin nodded and saw him out her door. She watched him leave as the shadows of the trees protected him from further damage from the sun. She moved around her house and lit the four small torches around, using the smoke to ward off the bugs before going back inside her hut. She petted Algernon, and took one last look at tests she was doing, before retiring for the night.
She was still at a loss of what to do in the morning, looking at the reactions she had gotten from the urine and being unable to get any conclusions from it. She braced herself against the table and sighed, ducking her head and decided to distract herself with some herb gathering. She had a basket and put her created bug-paste on her skin, stepping outside to work on the garden she had growing nearby. It was good work, tending the plants she had growing there, preening off the dead leaves and making sure they were all healthy. Time went by quickly and without her notice, But sometime in the afternoon she heard her name being called and looked up down the road at Adolfo's approaching figure, carrying a white strip of cloth with him.
She blinked and dusted her hands off on her pants and moved up the road towards him, "are you out already? Is someone hurt?"
"No, no," Adolfo said and sighed, he then lifted his hand, gripping several hypodermic needles in his fist. Her breath was taken away and her hands clapped over her mouth.
"I um, I went to the other gangs," he said, lifting up and looking at the white flag, "and I asked them if they could spare any of these for you," he smiled, "I think there's about twenty here. I would wash them out really, really good though. I don't know what the other guys were using, heroine or steroids, but the ones I got were being used for xeno-zip."
Kaylin's heart paused for a moment, and her hands dropped from her mouth and she rubbed the mutilated flesh of her right hand unconsciously.
"So I would wash them out really, really good, and sterilize them and whatever else doctors do," he handed them to her and she cupped her hands to receive them, sobbing once and looking up at him with tears in her eyes.
"That," she said gripping the needles, "is very, very bad stuff," she looked plaintively at Adolfo whose expression fell slightly into confusion, "and you shouldn't do it anymore," she sniffed and then threw her arms around him, "but thank you so much."
She held in a full-out sobbing session and she felt him move awkwardly before patting her back, "okay Kay, okay, you're welcome, ow."
Right, burns, "sorry, sorry," she said, pulling away and sniffing, looking at her handful of needles and rubbing her eyes. She laughed once, so overjoyed to have these and looked at Adolfo again, "thank you so much. I-I owe you."
Adolfo smiled and shifted his weight, "nah, we're even, till next time."
He waved at her with the hand that held the flag, and turned around back down the road. Kaylin watched him go, then looked at the needles in her hand and rushed into her hut right away. She grabbed water and salt and mixed it together, dropping all the needles inside and paced as she counted to fifteen minutes. Then she grabbed one, dried it out and grabbed Algernon. She was out the door and down the road towards Skull territory.