Paradoxical Warmth
“Makyo? Can you hear me?”
She nodded blearily. “Yeah.”
“Alright, good.” A scratch of a pen on paper.
“Where am I?”
“You're in a Centcomm cloning facility, fresh out of the pod,” came the voice, gentle and reassuring. “Have you ever been been through metempsychosis before?”
“No.”
“Alright. There may be some disorientation. That's normal. Everything went well. Species, surgeries, implants, all there.”
Makyo nodded and levered her eyes open struggled to focus, then lifted a paw to rub them clear.
Or tried to. Ten centimeters up and the motion was rudely interrupted with a soft clank.
Ah. Yes. That.
“I'm sorry, Makyo,” the voice said again, now far more apologetic. “You'll have to remain cuffed. I'll get a rag and help wash your face.
She nodded and remained silent. The nurse didn't notice or neglected to comment on the tears.
The arrival station-side was just shy of normal. There had been the briefest moment of that bone-aching chill of cryosleep, dissipated in seconds. There had been a moment of orienting herself, of figuring out which way was station-north. There had been the squinting of the eyes against the overbright fluorescents and the shining of snow outside, also quickly adapted to. Grow up in the tundra, and you just kind of get used to adapting to snow-blindness.
There was the homey cold of the Glacier-class station.
There was the soft chatter of voices.
But there, too, was a buzzing pain behind Makyo's right eye. That was new.
There was a chemist today — a frightfully competent one, at that — so she'd beg a soretizone off them. There were perks to working in med.
Close as it was to the biome where she'd grown up, Glacier was too cold even for Makyo's thick coat. The Arctic of her homeworld was cold, to be sure, but this was dangerously so. No arctic fox (as the humans had taken to calling her) could survive without a coat when even the adapted penguins would succumb before long.
She stuck to the main building instead, padding on past the head of personnel's office with a wave to Ian within. She got a goofy corgi smile in return. At botany, she grabbed a few apples off the counter to stuff in her bag. At med, she was greeted by a staff meeting with the chief medical officer currently handing out assignments. The doctor she'd worked with before, the other surgeon she knew outclassed her, and the CMO she knew well enough, but the paramedic was new to her.
“Hey, uh...” she started, squinting at the genet's nametag. “God, I'm going to butcher this...”
“Lleuad,” the paramedic said, smiling. It sounded far more complicated than the spelling implied, with a hushed, almost hissing sound where the manifest showed 'Ll'. “You're Makyo? The surgeon?”
“Yeah,” she said, bowing. She was pleased to see a bow in turn, rather than a heel-click and a salute. She got enough of that when she worked corpsman. “First time seeing you around, figured I'd at least say hi.
Lleuad nodded. “Nice to meet you, Makyo.”
“Makyo?”
She startled awake and lifted her head. There wasn't much to do when one was cuffed to the bed other than nap, though she was promised she'd be let out once a proper officer arrived.
“Oh! Slow Hours. I didn't realize you were here.” She smiled weakly, adding, “Or that they'd let me have any visitors.”
Slow Hours was a rodentia of sorts — a skunk, she'd been told — and thus more than a head shorter than her, but even so, she looked somewhat diminished from the studious and kind friend she'd been in class.
“Yes. I talked my way in on my credentials,” the skunk said. “I am not strictly on duty, but my word as CMO carries at least a little weight, so long as we are still in an NT medbay.”
“They haven't stuffed me in prison, yet? This all just looks like a hospital to me.”
“Not yet, no. Tomorrow, they say.”
“Oh.”
Slow Hours bowed her head, staying silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to hear. “Makyo, what happened?”
Makyo pushed herself up to sitting as best she could. “A shitload. Where should I start?”
“Lleuad said she met you, but couldn't tell me much more about the shift. She is...not well. She said the shift was just...normal. Calm.”
“Yeah, it really was. I left my kit in the autoclave and never needed to take it out. Mostly I just talked with folks.” She smiled at the memory. “Just chatting. It was almost cozy. Bitch about work, laugh about the mail, fuss about doctors. Lleuad's really nice. Gave off a lot of familiar vibes so I just sort of palled around with her and Corvus.”
At this, Slow Hours looked away.
The pain responded well to the soretizone. After the staff meeting concluded, the shift settled into boredom. There was little to do, and better that than the opposite, when it came to working medical.
It was almost boring
The chemist had already made chloral, but Makyo always found it lacking as an anaesthetic, so, for lack of anything else to do, she nudged Lleuad and Vitalis, the other surgeon, during a moment's quiet. “Hey, want to head up to engi with me? Last shift must've left in a rush and took the nitrous tank with them.”
The paramed brightened. “Oh! Sure.”
Back up north, then. Back past the HoP's office, with another wave to Ian. Back up towards the bridge and engineering.
After a quick call on the radio, a skunk met them at the door, a large gas tank tucked under one cybernetic arm. Their demeanor was quiet, self-contained, and the familiarity of the species to that of her co-resident back at school, Slow Hours, gave plenty of opening for conversation.
Unfortunately, the headache chose that moment in particular to return, and with a vengeance. Makyo squinted her right eye shut and stifled a hiss of pain.
“You okay...?” Lleuad asked. The genet seemed to swim in her vision, the vulp's eyes watering with tears.
“Uh... Yeah. Sorry,” Makyo said doing get best to laugh it off as the spike of pain faded. “Been fighting a headache. Guess the soretizone wore off.”
Corvus furrowed their brow. “I would offer you another, but I'm about out, myself.”
She laughed — more earnestly, this time — and waved a paw. “Willow made some for me. Can probably pick you up a refill, if you want.”
“The way you put it makes it sound almost quotidian.”
Makyo snorted. “There's a word I don't hear often. But yeah, other than the headache, it really was just a normal day.”
Slow Hours nodded slowly. “Tell me about the headache, then.”
“It was almost a textbook migraine, like a hot wire going– oop.” The handcuff once more caught her short in the middle of a gesture. Both of them grimaced. “Like a hot wire going through my head just behind my eye. Painkillers helped, but it would still spike.”
“Any pattern to it?”
“Oh, yeah. Every time I would talk to Corvus.”
The skunk stiffened in her seat. “Just them?”
“Just them.” Makyo smiled wryly. “It's been on my mind ever since. Corvus was great. I was so glad to hear them on the radio even after... Well, even after everything. I don't get it, though. Why them?”
Apparently, the shift was quiet for everyone, as Corvus followed Makyo and Lleuad back to the medbay, explaining that the TEG was running fine and solars were all set up.
They each found a comfy spot — Makyo leaned against the desk, Lleuad parked herself before the crew monitor, and Corvus lay across two chairs set next to each other, tail dangling down beneath them.
“How did you both come to work in the Delta sector?” Makyo asked at one point.
“I work for NT to finish paying off my limbs,” Corvus said. “There was an accident when I was young — I don't really want to go into it — but at least I have these, now.”
Both Makyo and Lleuad leaned in closer to get a better look at the skunk's arm as they rolled up their sleeve. While no longer quite top of the line, it was still a respectable work of cybernetics. Makyo couldn't even begin to guess how much it must have cost.
“NT just shipped me out here for a while. Other than the occasional glimmer problem and the two assassination attempts–”
D-A-G-D-B-D.
Makyo blinked away yet more watering from her right eye. D-A-G-D-B-D? Now how did she know that?
“–it's been alright. How about you?”
“Oh, I followed a classmate of mine, Slow Hours. She works chem and CMO out here. Short. Rodentia. Skunk like you, maybe.”
Corvus nodded.
“She was one of my introductions to the sector, too,” Lleuad said, her gaze never leaving Corvus, eyes wide. “But you can't just leave is hanging at “assassination attempts”. You mean someone tried to kill you? More than once?”
“Two people tried to kill me, once each. Syndicate, maybe,” the skunk said with a faint smile. “Neither succeeded, I'm happy to say.”
The pressure in Makyo's head grew and she excused herself to go wash her face in the surgery suite. D-A-G-D-B-D...a PDA ringtone?
“And you do not remember anything about bringing a gun?”
Makyo shook her head, avoiding Slow Hours's searching gaze. “I went to wash my face and try to clear the dizziness, and I guess kind of blacked out. Next time I looked in my bag, there was a bottle of nocturine — I'd know that stuff anywhere from combat surgery — a pen that doubled as a hypospray, and a pistol.”
“I cannot imagine how that will look to the Galpol investigator when they finally show up. You blacked out and woke up with a gun?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don't I know it. I just remember going to wash my face and then suddenly standing back in medbay, grinning at some joke Lleuad had told. No clue what it was, though. It's like that bit of memory was just cut away with a pair of scissors.”
The skunk frowned. “I suppose it is a good thing that you did not have any surgeries that day, if you were blacking out.”
“Oh, more than that.”
“Whoa! Makyo!” Lleuad said, scrambling to the vulp's side. “Are you alright?”
Keeping her right eye closed against the light, she laughed nervously. She felt shaken, as though some truer version of herself were rattling around in this ill-fitting existence.
“Uh...yeah, I guess so. My leg just gave out or something. All pins and needles like it fell asleep.”
Lleuad got her arm around Makyo's back and helped lift her back to her feet. All that paramedic training came in handy when lifting tall vulpkanin. “Well, alright. Make sure you get that checked out, okay? I doubt we have the resources here. Besides–”
An announcement interrupted, blaring over the intercoms. Meteor impacts possible, report structural damage. Before the automated message even had a chance to finish playing, there was a dull boom from the direction of the bar.
Corvus only sighed and pushed themself slowly to their feet. They pulled two prescription bottles from their bag and took a pill from one, frowning at the other apparently empty. They stepped around the desk to pass it through the chemistry windoor to Willow, the chemist, getting an affable chitter from the moth in turn.
“I have to go fix north solars, apparently. Can you call when the prescription is ready?”
There was a quiet murmur from the other side of the windoor.
“Oh, no, it's not that urgent. I'll be back in a few, anyway.”
Another murmur.
Corvus waved and trudged out of the medbay to get to work.
“So you know Slow Hours, then?” Lleuad asked, trying to nudge the conversation back into motion.
Makyo nodded. “When Nanotrasen finally signed that deal with the surgeons' union, she went through a course as part of her CMO certification. I was studying near Sol and I guess she lives around there, so we did our residency together.”
“She's nice,” Lleuad said with a smile. “They all are, I think, all the skunks. That includes Corvus, too.”
Makyo laughed, even as she felt the pain in her head brighten. It was almost cyan, by now. Almost minty flavored. It smelled, in some roundabout way, mentholated. “They are yeah. Glad for a slow shift. It's been good getting to know you two.”
“Hmm? Sorry, you kind of slurred the last bit.”
“Good getting to know you two,” Makyo said, trying harder to push the distraction away to speak more clearly.
Lleuad frowned, but nodded all the same. “Goes both ways.”
A raspy chitter from chem caught their attention.
“Corvus, your meds are ready.” Willow's voice, usually a sotto voce at best, was clear through the comms.
“Alright, I'll be over in a few.”
Makyo stood straight and brushed out her scrubs. “Actually, can we just take it out to them?”
Willow shrugged and set the bottle on the desk.
“Makyo? Are you sure?” Lleuad asked. The genet looked more than a little concerned.
“Yeah. I think actually moving about might help, and getting some fresh air would be good regardless.”
“Well, alright...” She tilted her head enough to activate her headset. “We'll bring it to you Corvus. Are you still out at north solars?”
Makyo pocketed the bottle of pills and pulled on an insulated coat, gesturing for Lleuad to lead the way.
“Yeah,” came the reply in her ear. “Just go outside around the West.”
She couldn't tell what it was that alleviated the pain, whether it was the fresh air or movement, or just something as simple as having a direction, of leaning into yet more comfortable chatter with these newfound friends.
Lleuad shared much in common with Slow Hours and the others she'd met from Lagrange. There was a curiosity about the world around her — phys-side, as she kept calling it — that was endearing, and which made Makyo appreciate things she often overlooked, herself. It helped, of course, that there was a sense of common identity, with both of them sharing stories of transition from earlier in their lives. It was that mirroring and witnessing that made other trans people always feel like home to Makyo.
With Corvus, Makyo couldn't quite tell. There was a pleasantness in the skunk's thoughtful silences and careful speech that made them easy to feel comfortable around. Beyond that, though, there was some sort of draw. There was a pull that made Makyo want to seek them out. It was something basal, and something she didn't understand. It wasn't attraction, and while there was the possibility of friendship, it wasn't the same as the need to spend time with one's friends. It was a compass needle pointing toward them. It was a magnet pulling her. It was a fishing line hooked behind her right eye reeling her in.
Even as she and Lleuad carefully stepped off the station, bounded as it was by the effects of the gravity generator, to float over to the solar array, Makyo could feel that tugging, that pulling, that reeling...
“Corvus is okay. You know that, yes?”
Makyo nodded, realizing she'd fallen into silence.”
“They are spending some time volunteering in perma. It is quiet there, they say.”
“It's safe, you mean.”
Slow Hours sighed, shoulders slumping. “And yes, it is safe. They automatically have a guard to keep an eye on them.”
“I don't blame them,” Makyo said morosely.
“None of that is your fault, my dear.”
“Not my fault?! I killed them, Slow Hours.” She grit her teeth and forced her volume back down. “I somehow got a gun and I killed them. Lleuad saw it.”
“She did, yes,” the skunk said, voice as level and calm as it had been. “She said you fell again, just as you describe, then got up and stood in silence. She said your eyes went out of focus, you pulled a gun from your bag, and you emptied twelve rounds into Corvus, killing them on the spot.”
Makyo glared at her, tears coursing trails down through the fur of her cheeks.
Slow Hours continued, unfazed. “She yelled at you to stop. She called out a murder over comms. She grabbed Corvus's body and pulled them back down the solar array toward engineering. She said you snapped out of a haze, dropped your gun, and said, “Oh god, what did I just do?””
“Oh god, what did I just do?” Her comms were live, and she wasn't quite sure why.
“You shot them! Stay away from them! Stay away from us!” Lleuad shouted, panic and fury in her voice. She bumped her headset on with practiced swiftness and hollered again, “Security, north solars!”
Makyo started to shiver, then.
She was used to the cold. She was an arctic fox, the humans always said. She was built for the cold. She grew up in taiga and tundra. She grew up in snow and ice. Hell, she'd worked on these Glacier-class stations dozens of times. She was used to the cold, but right then, she started to shiver. She suspected it wasn't from the cold.
She kicked the gun away from her, away from where Lleuad was sheltering behind a solar panel, struggling to stem the bleeding on Corvus's direly still form.
“H-h-here,” she managed through chattering teeth and tossed the bottle of the skunk's medication over to them.
Strange that I'd think of that right now. That of all things... But then, the world she lived in now no longer made any sense. A world where she could kill someone she'd love nothing other than to call a friend was not — could not be — the real world. A world where a surgeon, one who had taken an oath to save any life she could, would dump two magazines of ammunition into someone was not a world she could possibly exist in.
Lleuad shrieked and pulled Corvus further away.
Oh, that probably looked like a bomb...
Makyo giggled at the stray thought and, with the feeling of the very wrongness of reality filling her, threw herself off the solar array.
“Makyo!”
“I'm sorry,” she called through comms, voice coming out strange and stuttery, though whether from the cold or dissociation, she couldn't tell. “Oh god, what did I just do? I'm sorry...”
There was silence from Lleuad for a minute or two as, Makyo supposed, she worked on getting Corvus to medbay for revival. There were a few calls from security, trying to find her, but that's was it. Evac was on the way, and people had better things to do.
It was just her and the station, that small asteroid with its research campus, drifting away her with increasing speed. She was falling, she knew, but this high up, it felt almost gentle. The wind was buffeting, tugging the longer fur of her mane this was and that, but it want violent. It was just a windstorm.
Below her, the snow covering the glaciers and ice fields of the planet below reflected the cold light of the sun up onto her. She imagined that snow, that ice.
“Makyo! Where are you?” Despite the distance, Lleuad's voice came through clear on comms.
“It looks like home, you know,” she replied through chattering teeth. “The mountains, the snow, the ice. It looks like when I got on the shuttle back home, when I went to university.”
“Keep talking, Makyo. I'm coming. Tell me about your home.”
It was too far by now to see, but she could imagine Lleuad floating off the solars with her jetpack, ensconced in her void suit.
“I don't know why I did it, Lleuad. I just came to holding a gun and...”
“Keep taking, just keep letting me know you're there.”
Makyo pulled off her satchel and drew items from it, one by one threw them back towards the station, adding little jolts of momentum to her drifting. Water bottle. Flare. Emergency medipen. Bottle of...was that noct? Was that a hypospray pen? It didn't matter. She threw her surgical supplies, still wrapped and sterile. Scalpel, retractors, hemostats, microsaw, bone gel...and then the belt that contained them.
“It's really fucking cold out here, Lleuad.”
“I know! Use your space pen. I'm coming. Where are you?”
There went her space pen, the one with leporazine that would protect her against the cold. Unused, it flew away from her, yet again adding some small amount of momentum.
So cold... she thought, and yet pulled off her scarf and dropped it
“You know,” she said, struggling out of her coat. Her paws were completely numb, and she could already tell that she wouldn't last long enough to even make it to the ground. “There's this strange phenomenon that happens when people die of hypothermia. It's called paradoxical warmth.”
“Don't you fucking talk to me about paradoxical warmth, Makyo. Not after that shift. Don't you dare.” Tears of frustration, anger, and panic clouded the genet's voice. She was no less beholden to that very same oath to protect.
Makyo wound up and threw the bundled up parka back toward the station. Even she could tell it was a weak throw. The cold was sapping every bit of energy she had.
And yet once the jacket was gone, so was the biting chill of the air. The sun was warming her. The air was soothing. It was warm. It was comfortable.
“People will get so warm they'll take off their clothes in a vain attempt to cool off,” she murmured. She couldn't manage much more. “They'll splash water on themselves. They'll pant. They feel so, so warm...”
So tired.
“Maybe that's me, now. I'm burning up, Lleuad. Guilt and cold,” she slurred. “Guilt and cold.”
“Makyo, please...”
“That was the last I remember.”
There was a long moment of silence, then. Makyo fiddled with the cuffs that held her paws restrained to the bed railings. Slow Hours's gaze never left the vulp throughout, and Makyo could not begin to guess what thoughts played out in the skunk's head.
“Being CMO means many things, Makyo,” Slow Hours said. Her voice was unwavering. There was empathy, there, and sympathy, but there was also determination. “As command, I get access to employee health records going back further than just their tenure at NT. It lets me make decisions about the crew under my care. I am not just Super Doctor or a doctor with better tools, but a manager. I organize.”
Makyo nodded, though all she could think of was paradoxical warmth. Those final memories of warmth before waking in the cloning clinic. The warmth Lleuad and Corvus. The warmth of her friend sitting before her.
“I am the keeper of the station's well-being, and part of that is making sure the station starts healthy, by hiring healthy crew.” She drew out her PDA and finally dropped her gaze. “And you, my dear were very healthy indeed. You have kept up on all vaccines. You rarely speak of tiredness, showing that you generally get good sleep. You show care for your diet, ensuring that you get enough protein for a vulpkanin despite being a vegetarian. You pass all physical and mental requirements for your position with ease.”
Makyo nodded again, more warily this time. “What are you getting at, Slow Hours?”
The skunk clipped her PDA back onto her belt and folded her paws in her lap. “More than these things, I know you, Makyo. We are friends, and have been for more than a year. You have never once spoken of a migraine. I have never heard of you falling due to transient lameness. I have never heard of you blacking out. You do not embrace despair and take your own life. You do not shoot people.”
She shied away from the intensity in Slow Hours's words, but though there was seriousness in her friend's expression, there was also care.
“No, I don't,” she mumbled.
There was a knock at the door, and Makyo could see the black-and-gray of Nanotrasen security.
“So,” Slow hours said, standing and donning the blue beret of a chief medical officer. The green cross stood bright at the front of it. The skunk smiled and bowed. The smile was earnest and the bow was respectful. “If you do not do these things, then we must find who did.”