Katya took the stethoscope from around her neck and threw it onto the desk. She sat heavily in the old swivel chair, arms like lead, eyes prickling as she stared at nothing in particular.
She hated performing physicals.
The last of Unit 89 had just left the medical office. A boy, younger than her brother. She had seen him not a month prior after a wayward pickaxe caught him in the face. He had been brought to medical screaming and shaking by a gaggle of children not much older than him. While he was writhing on her table, Katya wasn't entirely sure what she was looking at.
The head bled so much.
Several gauze pads and a shot of morphine later, she was able to find the puncture wound. It was deep. His lower jaw was cracked and crumbling around a maw of splintered bone and marrow. Teeth that remained hanging loosely by their roots.
Katya did her job and patched the small boy up the best she could, flushing and packing the punctured bone and flesh, and stitching the gaping hole in his cheek. She wove a drainage tube into the bandages around the lower half of his face and told him it would be best if he could stay home – wherever home was – until he was healed. She knew he wouldn't - couldn't - do that, but she told him all the same.
He had come back today for his physical, and what she feared was happening. The bone was infected. She had seen it happen before to other miners. The toxic fumes in the tunnels and the general bacteria of dirty bodies bustling against one another created a chemical petri dish that was insatiable, eating and eating until the next compound fracture presented a dizzying buffet of bone tissue and rich, fatty marrow.
In most cases, Katya or Will would go through the arduous and messy process of amputating the doomed appendage before the infection got too far out of hand. It was easiest and cheapest (for the mine). Amputating a jaw bone however . . . Katya was not skilled enough to attempt such a thing. She wasn't even sure if one could remove a mandible and keep its owner living.
And now the boy's face was rotting from the inside out. He had clambered up onto her exam table, sallow and sweating, his emerald eyes fogged over with infection and she grit her teeth and went through the physical exam as quickly as possible; so, she wouldn't have to look at him, wouldn't have to smell the ripe stench of decaying tissue.
She had marked up his chart with barely veiled agitation. Fever. Underweight. Irregular heartbeat. Gunked up lungs. She put his paperwork in the box to be sent to administration that would terminate him for ill health. Then he would probably die in the streets.
Or, he would die in the tunnels before the folder even made it to the foreman's desk.
She slipped a few packets of painkillers into his small, clammy hand and coolly sent him on his way. She didn't dare show any sign of sympathy, fearing that if she allowed any emotion through she wouldn't be able to reel herself back in.
Now she sat slumped and rigid in the office chair, forcing herself to think of Viktor. She was doing this for him. Working in this shit-box for him. Unhelpfully helping people to give him a chance and keep him alive.
With great effort and concentration, Katya peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth and pried her teeth away from one another. She glanced at her pocket watch.
The members of Unit 90 would begin showing up shortly. Cautious excitement dared to creep under her skin. 90 was the unit Sevika had been placed into. Katya hadn't seen the girl in a while and the prospect soothed the angst that had gathered in her belly from her last patient.
Sevika had worked in the medical clinic as an assistant of sorts up until a few years earlier, once she had hit puberty and she had suddenly exploded into a hulking figure. It didn't take long for the Piltie foremans to take notice of the bulky medical assistant and file to have her placed in the tunnels, to use that muscle for moving ore instead of pushing pencils.
Katya had very reluctantly let her young assistant go. It had been the only time she had ever put up a fuss to administration.
"We need someone strong in the clinic in case there is a body too large for me or Will to lift!"
It was a long shot and it didn't reach far enough. Sevika was sent into the mines. And Katya was sick over it. None of the laborers fared well in the caves, but those who were thick with girth and muscle suffered the most abuse. Not under the batons and electric rods of foreman, but under the assumptions and expectations their physique alluded to. People who looked and performed like Sevika were worked to death. Most of the time when Katya or Will were called into the mines to transport a dead body, it was that of a large, burly person who had collapsed in the midst of work.
This fact – that the physically strong died first – was unspoken, but well-understood amongst the miners. And it filled Katya with dread every time a statuesque individual would lumber into the clinic for whatever reason, knowing that at some point she would probably be pulling a sheet over their face. Sometimes, not often, when a young miner began to spurt both up and out, they would leave their jobs in the mines knowing that they wouldn't be leaving alive if they stayed. Katya knew Sevika felt like she didn't have that luxury with so many mouths at home to feed.
"Just . . . be careful," Katya had said before her friend disappeared into the dark.
"I will be."
"If – if you need anything," Katya whispered fiercely, gripping the girl's hand, "just let me know. I can get it."
Sevika had pursed her uneven lips and stiltedly nodded. "I'll let you know."
Katya rose from the chair and went to wipe down the examination table in preparation for the next onslaught of patients. As she restocked gauze, plaster, tape and bandages from the clinic's small supply closet, the main door swished open and firmly shut. Katya stilled, before peeking at her watch. It wasn't quite time, and it wasn't like workers to show up early for such things. Before she could call out, Katya heard the even taps of expensive soled shoes and she knew who it was. Steeling herself, she set down the box of syringes she was holding and exited the closet.
It wasn't often Thade Rynweaver, the Piltovian nobleman who owned the mines, showed up to survey his enterprise. In true elitist fashion, he was much more apt to dole out responsibility to his underlings and receive written reports of the goings-on, as well as the bulk of the profits his hole-in-the-ground reaped, than exist among the Undercity masses that toiled and died under his feet. However, every now and again, he would appear.
Thade was not a Councilor, and despite his massive wealth and influence, had not been able to quash Bone's new regulations and guidelines for miner's safety. His sporadic visits became slightly more frequent after the sanctions went into effect. Katya was sure it was less about creating a sense of support and more about scaring everyone shitless. To make sure that everyone in the mines knew who exactly was in charge.
Careful to keep her face schooled, Katya stepped into the clinic's office. Rynweaver's back was to her, his tall, slender frame draped in an expensive black coat. He was sliding gloved fingers through the files of miners she had just seen with lackadaisical boredom. Katya felt the tips of her fingers twitch.
"Good day, Mr. Rynweaver," she pleasantly pushed out through tight lips.
The mine's owner glanced over his shoulder, setting down the file in his hands. "Miss Slostov," he greeted in his received Piltovian accent, turning to face her.
No matter how many times she was in the presence of the unnerving man, it still rattled her – she just got better at hiding it. Everything about him was haughty and predatory. Like a regal bird of prey: eyes such a dark shade of blue they appeared black under harshly angled brows; sharp cheekbones cut toward a mouth of too-straight, too-white teeth; a slender, beaky nose created further menacing angles to his face.
"May I assist you with anything, sir?"
"I just wanted to pop by and make sure my funds were being put to good use. How are the physicals going?"
Careful to keep her tone neutral, Katya said, "Well. They're going well. Most everyone Mr. Sadik or I have seen is fit to continue labor."
Rynweaver's blue-black eyes flicked to the tray with the file of the boy with the rotting jaw. He knew what it meant, those papers being in that box.
"Only a few . . . considerations," Katya conceded.
Rynweaver plucked the file up and opened it, studying her notes. The corners of his lips curled up ever so slightly – a reaction that made Katya's stomach clench – and he tsk'd under his breath.
"So young," he mused, closing the file and placing in back in the outbox, "too bad."
Katya brought her hands behind her back and squeezed them together to give her anger and nerves somewhere to go. There was nothing to say to such relished apathy so she kept her lips tucked between her teeth. Rynweaver swung out a long leg and stepped closer to her.
"How is your brother, Miss Slostov?"
"Doing well, sir."
"And his schooling?"
"Excelling, sir."
"Very good," he said, standing entirely too close. He stretched out his hand and wove his fingers through the lock of hair slung over her shoulder. Katya kept her breath even. "You know, I saw him last week. I had a meeting with the Dean about funds for the next lottery. I found Heimerdinger speaking with him outside a classroom during a passing period, congratulating your brother on some test or another. It's good to know that my coin isn't being wasted there." He let Katya's hair slip through his fingers and it fell limply back onto her chest.
Rynweaver turned back to the desk, his eyes drifting to a sheet of paper stuck underneath the stack of files of miners due to begin arriving at any moment.
The order sheet.
Katya tightened her grip around her fingers as the pads of his pressed down and slid the paper out from underneath the manila folders. His eyes cut down the list. His lips ticked down and he looked back at her.
"This order is larger than usual, yes?"
"Slightly, sir, yes," Katya answered. She spoke evenly and with conviction. "It's not out of the ordinary and the order was approved before purchase. We have typically ordered more supplies around physical time, and last year accidents increased when the weather turned cooler."
It wasn't a lie. Last year, when the weather became rainier, followed by ice and some light snow, several miners had slipped and hurt themselves on rocks. Some became hypothermic. There had even been a couple small rock slides as water pushed the earth around.
Rynweaver made a displeased but understanding sound at the back of his throat. "Very well."
He made his way back to the clinic's entrance, turning to her one more time. His dark eyes locked with hers before skimming down her form. Once at her feet, the bottomless pools jumped back up to her amber orbs. "Good luck with the rest of the physicals today. Hopefully nothing too unpleasant crops up."
"Thank you, sir."
He left. Katya let out a long, ragged breath. She let her hands drop back to her sides and flexed feeling back into her fingers. After a moment's consideration, Katya quickly wove her long hair into a wide fishbone plait.
The members of Unit 90 trickled down in alphabetical order, so Sevika was one of the last miners Katya saw. Despite being eager to lay eyes on her friend, it suited the medic fine; it gave her something to look forward to as she poked and prodded dirty and haggard bodies.
Katya's heart thumped firmly against her ribs as she filed away the paperwork of the miner that preceded Sevika. She pulled out the teen's file and flipped through it as she waited. She was relieved to see that the notes in Sevika's file were few. The relief crescendoed when Katya heard the door open. She quickly abandoned the folder and strode into the main room, unable to stop the wide smile pulling her mouth apart.
"'Vika!" she sighed, drawing the girl into a tight embrace. "I'm so happy to see you."
Sevika paused, only briefly, before returning the gesture. She rested her cheek against the crown of Katya's head and tightened her strong arms around her, feeling the young woman chuckle underneath her.
"Gods, did you grow more?"
It was Sevika's turn to giggle, "I dunno. Maybe."
Katya stepped back, keeping her hands gripping the girl's arms as she looked her up and down. She had grown more – a few inches taller so that the teen was almost a full head above her. She had also widened and hardened, her musculature growing from the hard labor she was put to. There was hardly any give to the tight biceps under Katya's fingers. Despite the firmness and mature look of her body, Sevika's face gave away her youth. Slightly rounded cheeks, skin absent of worry lines or wrinkles, bright silver eyes, and dark, dark hair that had been pulled back into two small buns, one behind each ear.
Katya's lips quirked, affection and concern pulsing through her veins. "How are you?"
Sevika shrugged. "Fine."
Katya rolled her eyes, "Such a teenage answer. Come now, I'm not your parent. How are you? Are you doing well? Keeping your head down –"
"Geez, yes!" the teen huffed, unable to keep herself from sounding pleased. "I'm doing okay, I promise. Keeping my head low, staying out of trouble . . . mostly."
The teen flashed a devious grin that Katya frowned at.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
The gentle sway of Sevika's body, her weight shifting from foot to foot, was the only clue that she was nervous. "You remember when you said if I needed anything, I just needed to tell you?"
Katya's stomach dropped and stepped back toward the tall girl.
"What's wrong? What happened? Is your father sick? One of the little ones?"
"No no no, nothing like that. My old man's fine, so are my brothers and sisters. This isn't about them – "
"You're not sick, are you? Did one of the foremans hurt you?"
"Kat, NO! Just quit your mother-henning for a second and let me tell you."
Katya was not impressed with what Sevika had to tell her as she performed the girl's physical. There was always scuttlebutt about an uprising against Piltover whispering its way through the Undercity. People were born stepped on and fed up, but ultimately, they were without any bite. They gummed against Piltover's negligence and unfairness, knowing if they actually put any teeth behind it the retribution would be swift and crushing. Deadly. So, talk of revolution was kept wistful and dreamy.
Or so Katya thought. Now, Sevika was excitedly telling her about a small (but allegedly growing) group of youths who were trying in earnest to will an uprising into existence. To throw Piltover's boot off of the Undercity and secede. To become its own independent nation. A place Sevika said they were calling 'Zaun'.
"Stop talking," Katya snapped as she pressed the disc of her stethoscope against Sevika's bare back.
The teen clamped her teeth together and hissed at the sudden cold against her warm, brown skin. Several moments passed as Sevika sat hunched over, taking deep breaths, Katya pressing the diaphragm over various spots of her back. Sevika wondered if she was actually listening to her lungs or if she was formulating a disappointed response.
"Your lungs sound good," Katya said, looping her stethoscope around her neck. She picked up Sevika's file and began writing. "I'll have to make a note that the gasses in the tunnels are beginning to affect a person's common sense, though. That's a new development."
'Ah. So both.' Sevika thought.
"Kat, will you please just listen for a sec?"
"Lie back," Katya commanded, pointedly not listening.
Sevika laid back in a huff, and Katya began palpating her abdomen. The teen shifted her lower jaw around as she thought of what to say next, of how to get her friend to listen.
"Arms up."
Sevika lifted her muscular arms over head and Katya methodically pressed the tips of her fingers around her breast tissue, in her armpits and across her chest.
"Katya – "
"You can put them back down," came the cool reply. "Open your mouth."
Sevika sighed, bringing her arms back down. Feeling a little stupid, she opened her mouth. Katya shown a small pen light into the cavity and swiftly grabbed Sevika's tongue with a small swatch of gauze. The light flicked to and fro, pinching fingers pulled the tongue side to side and up and down. Satisfied, Katya released the pink muscle and Sevika gladly set it back into her jaw, swishing some spit around to relubricate it.
"You can sit up. Put your shirt back on."
Sevika obeyed as Katya picked her folder and pen back up, and sat on her stool. She scribbled across the inside of the file in short, irritated strokes.
"Katya. Please. Can you just . . . listen to me?"
The teen's desperate tone pulled at her heart, and Katya finally relented. She set the file down in her lap and fixed her amber eyes on Sevika's silver ones.
"I am listening, 'Vika. And I'm concerned. Do you know how much trouble you could get into for even just conspiring this? And not just you! But your family as well! Is it really worth the risk? This . . . Zaun?" Katya hissed the word as if she were afraid Enforcers would leap out of the supply closet and beat them both.
"Kat, trust me, this is different. The guys who started this . . . they're different. They're not just some sloppy drunks dreaming and griping at the end of a bar. This could actually work."
Katya's heart couldn't help but swell watching the unbridled hope build in Sevika's eyes, shifting from gray to bright silver.
Katya blinked and shook her head. "I cannot believe you'd be so foolish," she muttered. Sevika opened her mouth to respond before deciding not to. She snapped it shut again, and Katya huffed a reluctant chuckle at how petulant the large fifteen-year-old looked, sitting at the edge of the table, legs swinging slightly, hands bashfully fidgeting in her lap.
Finally, Katya voiced the question she had been afraid to ask, "Why are you telling me this, 'Vika? You said you needed something. What do you need?"
For the first time since spouting off about this Zaun nonsense, Sevika had the decency and presence of mind to look unsure and cautious. Her eyes flicked down to her twiddling fingers and she bit the inside of her lip.
"I think . . . it might be best if you talk with them. I think they'll do a better job at explaining what we need and why – "
"Sevika," Katya cut in. "What do you need?"
The teen's face began to flush with frustration and she clenched her eyes shut. "I just need you to come to The Last Drop tonight after you get off work. Meet them, let them explain everything." Sevika looked back at the young woman with big, watery eyes. "We need your help. Please, Kat."
Katya stared back at her. After a moment, a long sigh escaped through her nostrils and her face softened. "Fine. I will go – "
"Yes!"
" – if only to see these fools you've gotten yourself messed up with. That way I can avoid them, too."
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" Sevika crowed, pulling Katya into a hug. "I promise, Vander will be able to convince you much better than I could – "
"I'm not looking to be convinced, 'Vika."
The teen brushed away that concern with a sassy tsch'd, tongue clicking against her teeth, before hopping to her feet. She adjusted her shirt as Katya led her back toward the clinic's door. Sevika reached for her friend once more before the door could be opened, drawing her into another embrace. Katya reciprocated, her hands cupping each of Sevika's shoulder blades.
"It was good to see you – "
"I'm happy to see you too – "
"Even if you've become more foolish since you left this office."
Sevika groaned and pulled out of the hug. Katya smirked at the dramatics. The exchanged good byes, and Sevika told Katya the location of The Last Drop. Reluctantly, the medic watched her young friend open the door and begin to slip out.
Suddenly, Sevika paused, the door gently wobbling as its trajectory was impeded. "Uh," she began, face scrunching in thought, "just so you know, the next miner you're seeing is one of the founders of this . . . organization. He'll be there tonight, too."
Katya's eyebrows raised and her lips dipped in a frown.
"Just thought I'd give you a heads up," Sevika explained. "See you tonight." A hopeful smile returned to the teen's mouth.
"See you tonight."
At the sound of the clinic door opening again, Katya looked up from the file she was studying. She didn't know this miner, had never seen him in the clinic, Will's stilted scrawl was all over his medical papers. But curiosity had gotten the better of her when Sevika said that this boy – man, she supposed. He was a couple years older than her – was one of the 'Zaun' idiots, and she hurriedly had pulled his file to get a better idea of who she might be dealing with.
Katya closed the file and stepped out of the office. Neither of them said anything as they took each other in. Either he was a man of few words, or Sevika had managed to alert him that Katya was not pleased with him or his 'cause'.
He looked annoyed, so Katya assumed the latter.
Her amber eyes quickly skirted over him, taking her new patient in. On the taller side. Slender – a build that would suggest that he would be a Slipper, although his chart hadn't said anything about it. Dark, wavy hair that hung lank around his ears. Light teal eyes that pierced through thick, defined brows. High, knife-like cheek bones, the cut of which were only challenged by the blade of his sharp, angled nose.
Katya felt her jaw tighten and she hoped he didn't see the flash of recognition in her eyes.
"You're Silco?" she asked, waving the folder in her hand.
"I am." A low, smooth voice. Accented in a way that one didn't typically hear in the Lanes.
"Come on then. Let's get this over with," Katya brusquely said, shortness trying to cover the discomfort she felt.
The exam was conducted in tight silence, only punctuated by the scribble of Katya taking occasional notes. She wasn't certain, but she thought she felt Silco's annoyance give way to amusement as the physical continued.
"Are you always this quiet?" he asked as she inspected his ear canal. "The other one mutters the whole damn time."
"Take your shirt off."
"Not even a drink first?"
Katya fixed him with a withering stare that he only chuckled at before removing his top. She circled around, eying him clinically. Long, ropey muscles, a slight concave dip between his pectoral muscles, ridges of ribs visible under taut skin, scars of various lengths, depths, and origins littered across his exposed skin. Nothing appeared to be new or infected.
Katya placed the ear pieces of her stethoscope in her ears and brought the diaphragm to his back.
He hissed. "Fuck that's cold!"
Katya was glad she was behind him so he couldn't see the shit-eating grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Don't talk."
His lungs sounded surprisingly good for having worked in the mines for so long. She made a note and instructed him to lean back. Her fingers danced and pressed along his stomach. Satisfied, she made another note in his chart.
"Open your mouth," she said, grabbing her pen light and a piece of gauze.
Silco spared her another remark and opened, Katya noting his slightly crooked teeth as she flicked the light around his mouth. She paused, spying a small inflamed gouge on the roof of his mouth. She released his tongue and turned toward a wall cabinet.
"What happened to your mouth?" she asked, pulling a bottle and a small plastic cup from the cupboard.
"Thought I would moonlight as a sword swallower. I'm still learning."
Katya rolled her eyes, pouring a small amount of sharp smelling liquid into the cup. She gestured for him to sit and it to him. "Swish. Don't swallow."
Silco did as instructed, wincing at the medicinal burn stinging his palate. Katya made another note.
"Just spit it back into the cup," she said, reaching her hand back out. He did so and handed the cup back to her. "Anything else I need to make a note of?" she asked, tossing the cup into the small sink.
"That's it?" Silco asked, pulling his shirt back over his head. "You're not going to ask me to bend over and cough?"
Katya glared at him. "I don't want my fingers anywhere near your ass. If you're desperate to be touched in such a way, come back when Will is working."
Silco barked a laugh and stood up. He began to make his way back to the clinic door, Katya's hardening gaze against his swaggering back. As he opened the door, he glanced back at her over his shoulder.
"See you tonight." And he was gone.
Katya swiveled back over to the desk, tossing his file onto it.
"Asshole."