Chapter 45

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall…
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

- Nursery Rhyme

00000

Harper lay on his mattress and listened to the sounds around him. It's not like he had anything else to do, or the energy to do it for that matter. Just the simple act of walking to this spot the day before had left him totally exhausted. It scared him to realize how far his health had slipped in the months he'd been locked in this prison. He was weak as a kitten and there was nothing he could do about it. Not that he'd ever exactly been the healthy type, but still… To know you were wasting away, one day at a time, and to also know there was nothing you could do to stop it…it was maddening!

Out of frustration, he forced his thoughts away from his own physical condition and continued listening. Small moans and cries, muffled conversations, light snores…they all filtered back to him. The curtain the doctor kept stretched across their little corner partially blocked the sounds, but Harper's ears had grown used to replacing his eyes and picked them up anyway, reminding him that the barrack was full of others who probably felt just as rotten as he did.

And one of those who was suffering the most lay right beside him. Try as he might, Harper couldn't block out the sounds of Twig's harsh, labored breathing, couldn't stop listening to the boy cry and moan in his sleep from the pain. It made him furious. Furious at the genetically enhanced jerk-offs who thought they had the right to do this to other people! Furious at the universe or cosmic power or whatever that had trapped them here! And furious at himself for being so utterly powerless to help.

Weakly, he reached out with his crippled hand and felt around carefully until he found Twig's little one. The child was struggling painfully to breathe – his sleep fitful and his moments of lucidity less and less.

"Hey, there," Harper tried to sooth, willing his bad hand to tighten just a little around the boy's. "Sh, it's okay. Just breathe. You're gonna be all right…"

Hating his darkness more than ever, Harper focused his ears to try and detect any changes in his young friend's condition, but the only thing he heard was the labored breathing continue. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer.

"Doc?" he called as loudly as he dared. He knew the man probably had more than he could handle on his plate right now and hated to be a bother, but it's not like he could wait and flag him down when he wasn't busy.

He waited several minutes but no one came. "Doc Barty?" he tried again, a little louder.

Finally, he heard footsteps and the curtain rustled as it was pushed aside.

"Sorry, son. I heard you but I couldn't come right then," the slave doctor's hushed voice drifted down to the engineer. "What do you need, Mr. Harper?"

"It's Twig," Harper whispered, gesturing blindly toward the fretful child. "Can't you do anything else for him?" he begged. "He's fighting so hard!"

The doctor sighed and Harper heard him sink down to a crouch in the space between their two mattresses. Small sounds told him the other man was fussing over Twig, so Harper waited silently.

"He's still hanging in there, but he's not getting any better," Dr. Kesler admitted sadly after several minutes. He sounded weary and defeated. "Son, I've done everything I'm allowed to do for him."

"But we can't just let him die!" Harper insisted, struggling to rise and fighting against his own nausea. There was anger in his voice again and he didn't care if the Ubers heard him or not.

A kind hand touched the center of his chest and gently pushed him back down. "Sometimes, Mr. Harper, as much as it kills me, that's all I can do."

"Doc, he's a baby!" Harper begged again, feeling more helpless than ever. "Please help him? Give him my stuff if it will help!" he cried, waving the hand with the IV still attached.

The doctor caught his hand and carefully stilled it. Then the other slave sighed again, and to Harper it sounded like he was running hands through his hair. "I'll be back," he finally whispered. "Stay still and rest," he added sternly and then left without offering anything else.

Waiting had never been Harper's forte. By nature, he just wasn't a very patient guy. But waiting in the dark, in an Uber slave camp, for a doctor he was pretty sure was breaking several dozen rules to get something to save a dying little kid was pure torture. He strained his ears to the breaking point, listening for sounds of trouble. Every footstep, every muffled whisper put him on edge. Then Twig stirred beside him and all other thoughts disappeared when he felt the small hand he was loosely holding close instinctively around his own crippled one. It hurt but Harper didn't care.

"Twig?" he asked quietly, wondering if he'd get an answer this time.

There was silence for a long time and Harper thought the boy was probably still out of it, but then a quiet voice finally reached him. "When I die, will it stop hurting?" the child asked softly.

The engineer closed his eyes tightly and sucked in his breath. That question was a little too close to home right now and he desperately wanted to ignore it, but he also found he couldn't lie to the little guy.

"Yeah, Twig," he finally answered. "I think when we die, all the hurting goes away."

The boy was quiet again for a long while and Harper figured he had drifted back to sleep, but he hadn't.

"I want to die then," he said suddenly, a sob breaking his voice.

The words ripped through Harper's gut, more agonizing than any physical injury he'd ever received. Ignoring the doctor's orders, he struggled to a sitting position and scooted over right next to Twig.

"Twig!" he whispered desperately, searching carefully with his hands for the child, "Don't say that, please."

"But it hurts so bad!"

"I know," Harper said, his sightless eyes tearing slightly, "but you gotta hold on, okay? Please?" He finally found the boy's shoulder and used it as a guide to move around behind him. As best he could, he pulled the little boy into his lap, ignoring the tug of the IV on the back of his hand. With his hands still unchained, this was the first time he'd been able to properly hold the kid since he arrived in the camp…well as properly as his crippled hands and his own illness would permit.

Twig didn't protest the change in positions…in fact it actually seemed to help ease his breathing slightly. He just let Harper hold him while small tears of pain and fear rolled down his cheeks and onto the engineer's arms.

"Sometimes," Twig breathed in a wispy, weak voice as Harper lightly rocked him, "I dream I'm in a nice place. It looks like here only it's clean and warm and bright and our barrack is nice. There's no Ubers there."

His version of Heaven, Harper thought as he found the boy's hand again and slipped it into his own good one, squeezing gently. It saddened him to realize Twig's idea of the afterlife was still confined to the slave camp. A cleaned-up, pretty version of the camp, but the slave camp nonetheless. It was all he knew.

"Sometimes there's this lady there and three girls. I don't know who they are, but I feel like I should. They seem happy to see me and want me to stay with them."

The effort of speaking left him gasping slightly for air and Harper tried to shush him, worried it was causing more damage, but Twig wouldn't stop. "Maybe, if I die, I could remember who they are?"

Harper closed his eyes again but couldn't stop the few drops of salty liquid that leaked out and ran down his cheeks anyway. The more Twig talked, the more the young man realized how desperately he needed this little boy. Not since Earth had he let someone get so firmly etched into his heart, not even Beka. Beka was family, as close as they come, but their relationship was different. He needed Beka more than Beka needed him; but Twig…Twig…it was like Twig was his own. Someone who looked up to him for a change, instead of the other way around. Someone who actually needed him and saw him when he was at his very worst and didn't care. In Twig he had a second chance, a chance to atone for sins committed years ago. He wasn't going to fail again.

"Twig," he said softly, opening his eyes even though it made no difference, "if they love you as much as I think they do, they'll understand if you wait a while to go meet them. I think they'd want you to stay alive. I know I do," he added quietly.

The only answer Harper got was a small, pain-filled sob. He pulled the little boy closer and kept rocking, wishing with all his heart he could do more even as he couldn't help but acknowledge that he really didn't feel very good himself.

Eventually, Twig's sobs died out and Harper could tell the boy was asleep again. He kept one hand at the child's wrist, needing the comfort of feeling the shallow pulse. After a while, though, his own body gave into exhaustion and sickness and sleep claimed him too, his head falling back against the barrack wall where he sat with Twig still in his lap.

As a result, he had no idea how much time had passed when he was startled awake by a hand touching his shoulder. He gasped and instinctively jerked away.

"Sh, it's only me, son," Dr. Kesler's voice penetrated Harper's groggy mind and he relaxed slightly. "What part of rest and stay still did you not understand?" the doctor continued wearily, the annoyance at his patient clear in his voice. Harper felt him check his IV line and then heard him sigh heavily. "You've managed to make quite a mess out of this, young man."

Harper had the good grace to duck his head, chagrined, but didn't give up his hold on Twig. "Sorry, Doc," he whispered, "but Twig needed me."

"And what good will you be to him if you don't take care of yourself while you actually have the chance?"

"It won't matter much if he doesn't make it anyway, will it?" Harper shot back, harsher than he intended, then flinched at his own words. "Sorry, Doc," he said again, hanging his head. "I know you're just as stuck as the rest of us here," he added with defeat. "You've done your best."

"Let's just hope my best is enough and that we all live through it…" the doctor muttered. Something in his voice caught Harper's attention, and he cocked his head to one side.

"Doc?" he questioned.

"I stole an extra dose of nanobots," the other slave leaned forward and whispered right in Harper's ear. "In a normal hospital, it would be hardly worth mentioning, but here, even this amount is kept on record. I just hope in all the chaos of the last week, it will go unnoticed. Anyway, it's hardly a dose at all, but if applied directly, like I did with your hand, it might help stabilize the boy's heart."

Harper felt hope flash through him even as his breathing sped up at the thought of the increased danger they were suddenly in. "Will it cure him?" he asked in a careful whisper.

"Cure him? No. Keep him alive, maybe. Anyway, it's all we have, so…" He changed thoughts. "Since you're already over here, I need you to hold him still. He's out of it again right now, but that might change shortly. Nanobots are not normally applied so directly to such a vital organ, and he'll probably feel several minutes of sharply increased pain before they settle in and begin to go to work. If he cries out, it might attract unwanted attention…"

That alarmed Harper. "Will it hurt him, you know, make him worse?" he asked.

The doctor sighed. He did that a lot. "I won't lie to you. This is not a procedure I would try in anything approaching normal circumstances. And especially not to someone as young and frail as Twig is, but at the same time, it's the only thing I think has any chance of saving him, if it works. I wouldn't have risked us all to get the nanos if I didn't think it was worth the chance."

Still worried, but trusting the doctor's decisions, Harper nodded that he understood and carefully wrapped his crippled arm around Twig's shoulders while his good hand tightened on the boy's hand. "Ready."

"I'm injecting him now," Dr. Kesler whispered and Harper's sensitive ears heard the doctor pull down the neck of Twig's ragged shirt and then caught the small hiss from the injector. Instantly, Twig breathed harshly and tensed in his hold, a whimper escaping.

"Sh, Twig," Harper soothed for the hundredth time that day, squeezing his hand as the boy started to struggle, "it's okay. I know it hurts but you're gonna be okay, just hang on a little longer…"

The whimpers threatened to turn to wails and Harper felt panic begin building. "Come on little guy," he begged, knowing instinctively that his friend was awake now and afraid he wouldn't be able to keep him quiet. "Just wait it out a little longer!" The engineer knew he was too weak himself to keep hold of the youngster if he fought much harder. The doctor seemed to realize this as well. Harper felt him settle on the mattress next to them and place his hands gently on Twig's arms, restraining him and offering comfort at the same time. Together, they helped him ride out the next few minutes of intense pain and kept him from making any more noise than was usual. Finally, his body went slack and his struggles ceased.