The healing salve came next.
I uncorked the small bottle and got my first proper smell of it: mint and something sharper underneath, medicinal in the way that things which are about to cause you pain are often medicinal. I had sourced that scent profile from a list of real antiseptic compounds and asked the olfactory system to approximate it. I had thought it added authenticity.
I applied it to the gash across my ribs with two fingers and made a sound that I was grateful nobody was around to hear. The sting was immediate and total, far worse than the throbbing had been, a bright chemical burn that overrode everything else for about four seconds and then settled into a deep, bone-level ache that was somehow more unpleasant than the sharp version had been.
"Authentic," I said, when I coul
