Chapter 6: Quest of Survival
1770 Words
The spate of clean water became a lifeline. Alexander was a one-hour assembly line of dull, repetitive motion: dip, pour, pass cup. Note the desperate, thankful swallow. Again. The initial wave of villagers had been the walkers, those with barely enough energy to limp into the sunlight. They drank and, clutching their bellies as if expecting the familiar, deadly cramps, sat in the shade waiting and watching.
His Active Scan provided a desperate, real-time categorization. With every gulp of water, a patient's condition would flash.
[Status: Severe Dehydration] -> [Status: Moderate Dehydration] [+5 Exp]
The little warnings were a horrific comfort. Each a step back from the brink. But mere steps. They were not a solution.
The real work, he knew, was in the huts. The ones that hadn't been able to get to the water.
He looked at Leo, who had become his shadow and his second-in-command. The boy was busy pumping water from the well into the bucket and dumping it into the filter's top, his little face set in a look of intense concentration.
"Leo, I want to see the others. The ones who are too sick to move."
The boy's eyes shifted to a hut on the edge of the green, its door closed. "My… my sister. Mama. They are… very bad."
"Take me.".
Leo brought him to the hut. The smell that met Alexander when he opened the door was a familiar, intense flavor of St. Brendan's ward—the sweet smell of infection, the pungent smell of vomit, and over it all, the metallic smell of blood. The air was hot and motionless, thick with flies.
In the darkness, he saw two pallets on the floor. On one, a woman lay still, her breathing so shallow that it was hardly perceptible. On the other, a girl younger than Leo in a fetal position whined softly with every exhalation. His Active Scan flooded his area of vision with priority warnings.
[Patient: Unregistered (Adult Female)] [Status: Septic Shock - Renal Failure - Profound Dehydration - Comatose] [Vitals: BP 70/40, HR 50, SpO2 82%] [Mortality Probability: 98% within the hour.]
[Patient: Unregistered (Juvenile Female)] [Status: Severe Gastroenteritis - Severe Dehydration - Electrolyte Imbalance] [Vitals: BP 90/60, HR 130, SpO2 91%] [Mortality Probability: 75% within 4 hours.]
The mother was almost nonexistent. A ghost at the door. The girl, however. the girl persevered.
"Mama won't wake up," Leo whispered, his voice cracking. He stood rigidly in the doorway, not wanting to move closer, as if illness itself were a monster that would leap from the darkness and destroy him as well.
Alexander's medical training screamed for an IV line, for bags of lactated ringers, for antibiotics, for a high-tech ICU. He got none of those. He was administered a pot of clean water and a packet of oral rehydration salts.
It was like fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun.
A cold comforting presence roused at the edge of his awareness. The world did not break apart this time, but the Obelisk's message streamed across the desolate diagnostic screens, its blue script a wintry opposite to the hut's heat.
[Quest: The First Carving - Main Objective Underway.] [Secondary Objective: Administer Oral Rehydration Therapy to the Critical.] [Tertiary Objective: Identify and Seal the Source of Contamination.] [Note: Hydration is the key. Without it, all other interventions are for naught.]
The order was infuriatingly calm. Administer Oral Rehydration Therapy. As if he were giving a traveler's diarrhea case, not a septic-shock woman.
But it was right. It was the only tool he had. He had to start there.
He knelt beside the girl on one knee first. "Leo, I want a cup. And from the pot's water."
He made up the ORS packet and clean water, stirring with his finger. He lifted the head of the girl gingerly. She groaned, eyes blinking but unwilling to focus.
"Little sips," he murmured, to himself more than to her.
He dropped the liquid between her parched lips. She choked, coughed, but swallowed instinctively. He waited for a moment, and then gave her another trickle. It was agonizingly slow. Each minute that ticked by was a minute her mother edged away.
He stayed beside the girl for what felt like an eternity, letting the solution seep slowly by drops. His Active Scan kept track of her vitals. Her heart rate remained dangerously high, but her blood pressure stabilized, just. The 75% mortality risk remained unchanged.
He turned to face the mother. He tried to open her mouth, but she had her jaw shut as hard as she could. He managed a few drops of the solution onto her tongue, but she did not swallow. It just sat there.
She was beyond drinking. She was beyond his primitive facilities.
Frustration, bitter and hot, welled up in his throat. He was a doctor! He knew things! He could unmake fire! And here he stood, letting a woman die because he couldn't pump fluid into her veins.
The power. The Rewrite.
The thought burst like a lightning bolt. He'd used it on the fire. Could he use it on a body? Could he rewrite her dehydration? Her sepsis?
He focused his mind on the woman, on her eerily low blood pressure. He imagined it rising, the blood levels equalizing. He stretched for that font of potential within him, the feeling of a thousand truths waiting on his lips.
Nothing happened.
The power did not arrive. There remained only a hollow, spent feeling. Another alert sprang on screen.
[Ability: Minor Rewrite - Locked.] [Insufficient System Points: 90/100 Required.] [Insufficient Level: Level 2 Required.] [Warning: Biological Rewrite of this complexity is extremely risky. Stability of the System Interface is paramount.]
He stared at the words, a shivering anger coming together in his stomach. He was gatekept by himself. The System had points and levels like some hideous game, and this woman's life was the price of admission.
"I want more," he growled into his chest, not sure to whom he was saying it—the Obelisk, the universe, himself.
Abruptly, as if the cue had been given, a new, standalone prompt materialized. It didn't look anything like the quest text. It was in a severe, red border.
[Emergency Sub-Quest: A Trial of the Healer.] [Objective: Prevent the death of Elara (Juvenile Female) with accessible means.] [Restriction: Avoid the use of System Points and Locked Skills.] [Reward: 100 Exp - Unlocked Skill: Healing Hands (Lvl. 1)] [Failure: Patient Death. -100 Exp. System Recalibration.]
Alexander's breath had been caught. Recalibration. The term was clinical, but the threat was primal. It did not say that it would take away the power. It suggested worse. It could change him. Strip away the pieces of him the System found to be less than acceptable.
He looked from the dying mother to the struggling daughter. The System was not only testing his healing ability. It was testing his ability to prioritize, to make the brutal choice. It was testing his value.
The mother had a 98% chance. The girl was 75%. The math was brutal. The choice was brutal.
He made it.
He left the mother behind.
A portion of his soul shriveled and perished then. He focused on the girl, Elara. He labored twice as hard, pouring rehydration solution down her throat with a new strip of cloth, relentlessly. He talked to her, his voice a low, steady hum, exhorting her to struggle, to swallow, to survive.
He lost track of time. The universe contracted to the space between his fingers and the girl's lips. The sounds of the village receded. Leo's plaintive crying receded. There remained only the throb of the water dripping and the hopelessly ragged rasp of her breathing.
His Active Scan was focused on her Hydration Status and Likelihood of Death. The percentages ranged, teetering in a balance. 74%. 76%. 73%.
He put all his will, his hope, his goddamned faith into those drops of water. He wasn't just a doctor handing out therapy. He was a man fighting an enemy in the dark for a single, precious life.
And then, it did.
Her Mortality Probability dropped.
72%. 70%. 68%.
It succeeded. The ruthless, straightforward, unpretentious act of giving her a drink of water was succeeding. Her body, starved of the simplest of staples, began to struggle its way back from the brink. Her whimpering stopped. Her breathing steadied.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, her eyes opened. They were glassy with fever, but they were focused. They looked at him.
One clear message flashed, its golden light a balm on his bruised spirit.
[Sub-Quest Done: A Healer's Trial.] [Reward: 100 Exp - Skill Unlocked: Healing Hands (Lvl. 1)] [Level Up: Level 2 Reached.] [System Points Restored: 100/100] [New Skill Unlocked: Minor Rewrite - Biological (Limited)]
He succeeded. He had earned it.
He looked back over at the mother. His Active Scan didn't need to be refreshed. The space where her status used to be empty. She was gone.
The cost of his level up was on the pallet behind him.
The victory was ashes. He had flunked the test of the Obelisk by letting one woman die so that he could save her daughter. It was the most brutal triage of his life.
He felt a new sensitivity creep into his hands, a soft, warm thrum just below the surface. Healing Hands. He placed one hand on Elara's forehead, not to examine, but to comfort. The thrum increased, a soothing energy pouring into her. She unclenched, and a touch of the anguish etched on her youthfully delicate face eased away. It was not healing. It was reassuring. A jolt to her body's own faltering mechanisms.
It was something.
He stood up, his body aching with fatigue that was more than bodily. Leo stood at the door, silently weeping. Alexander walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Leo. I couldn't save her." The words were the most difficult he had ever spoken.
Leo nodded, a convulsive single motion, and leaned against his side.
Alexander looked out the hut door. The pot of clean water was tended to by others now, a survival chain in itself. The immediate crisis stabilized. But the Tertiary Objective seared in his mind, still open.
[Tertiary Objective: Identify and Secure the Contamination Source.]
The well. The disease is still gushing from the earth. His struggle to survive wasn't done. Not yet. He had won a fight, saved some lives, and lost himself a bit. And the war was still waiting at the bottom of a rock-lined well in the ground.
- Writer
