0016 Celestimed, Part 3

  There was a sharp hiss as the device discharged, followed by a faint, hypnotic and rising tone. The Celestimed pumped its chemical cocktail into the dying man. For a heartbeat, everything went still, even Reyes. And Ethan thought it was too late as the man’s breathing ceased.

  “No, no. After all of that, it can't—” Reyes’s body jerked, a full-body convulsion that sent him thrashing against the dirt. Blood splattered from his mouth against his own visor; hands twitched and clawed at the ground, at Reyes’s suit, at the air. His eyes flew open—wild, unfocused, glassy.

  “Easy, Easy!” Ethan shouted, grabbing Reyes by the shoulders, trying to pin him down without jostling the damaged leg. His own body, especially his injured arm, screamed in protest, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. And then, the other man coughed – a harsh, long, hacking noise that never seemed to end. But when it did, Ethan could swear he heard normal breathing. And then he stilled. No more of the horrible thrashing or erratic coughing.

  CelestOS’s voice chimed in from above, utterly unbothered by the scene playing out below.

  CelestOS: Stabilization achieved. Vital signs nominal. Mission complete. Note: Limb regeneration requires Tier-7 CelestiMed or higher.

  [MISSION COMPLETE: Desperate Measures - Part 3/3

  Objective: Craft and deploy Celestimed in order to save Critical Agent Reyes.

  Status: Stable]

  Reward: 300 CC; new crafting recipes.]

  Also unlocks the following Tier 1 schematics for purchase:

  [T1 Power Generation Small Fuel Burner 30 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Sustenance Fabricator 40 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Item Fabricator 50 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Automatic Drill 90 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Conveyor Belts (per section) 110 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Auto-Forester 200 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Ore Turret 240 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Water Purifier 280 CC- affordable]

  [T1 Industrial Cleaner 350 CC- unaffordable]

  Ethan sagged forward in relief, forehead pressing against Reyes’s chest. He had done it. He had actually fucking done it. His hands still were shaking so badly he almost couldn't unclench them from the Celestimed, his gloves sticky with Reyes’s blood and his own sweat.

  He stayed there for a long moment, listening to the other man’s shallow breathing beneath him. It felt like magic, seeing the green bar of health on Reyes’s HUD and the other indicators well out of the trouble range. It was like a giant weight was off his shoulders; maybe now he’d be able to make actual progress toward finding Maria. She had left a huge clue to her whereabouts with the transmitter, so he’d hopefully be able to find more.

  His HUD pinged softly, alerting him to his own status. Now that Reyes was no longer in mortal peril, Ethan needed to take care of himself. Every nerve was on fire, every muscle aching, every inch of him crying out in protest. He felt like a hollow shell of himself.

  [HP: [■ ■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □] 22%]

  [PWR: [■ ■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □] 22%]

  [O2: [■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □] 9%]

  He’d need to refill his oxygen and then use the Celestimed on himself, but he didn’t have the will or the ability to care. He was just so tired, and he couldn't take it anymore. His eyes closed as he found himself drifting off.

  —

  The darkness was soft at first. A sweet, sweet pillow at the end of a long day. But then came the sounds: a low hum, first, like the heartbeat of the planet below. It grew louder, turning into a drumline, and then the deafening roar of an engine.

  When Ethan opened his eyes, he was back in the heartfruit forest. The branches, thick and dark in the night sky, burned like a comet trail. The leaves were dripping with the blood-red pulp which curled into the ground, forming impenetrable mounds.

  The air smelled sickly sweet, like rotten fruit and dying animals. His boots squelched as he ran, turning a muddy red. He didn’t remember when he started running, but he was moving fast, sprinting through the maze of tangled trees, branches whipping at his body like knives. He had to run fast to avoid it.

  Boom!

  The heartfruits fell one after another, but he couldn’t keep the pace.

  Boom!

  Another blast, closer this time; a spray of red misted rain down from the shattered fruits. And then he heard a scream.

  Maria’s Scream.

  “Ethan!” He froze, but too late he realized his mistake as a shockwave hit him like a wall, sending him tumbling into the mulch. He hit the ground hard, rolled twice, and then scrambled back up, body covered in muck and pulp. He couldn't stop. She needed him.

  “Maria! Where are you?” he yelled, running aimlessly in the dark of burnt night.

  Boom! The trees shook and branches snapped as the explosion lit up the forest. He saw her running, barely visible through the swirling red mist, pinned beneath a collapsed tree trunk – except it wasn’t a collapsed tree trunk.

  She was screaming and flailing, but unable to free herself as the red pulp surrounded her. Like a living fungus, it swallowed her feet first, and then her legs and torso, creeping, twisting, solidifying around her like a crystalline layer, red like jagged, impenetrable glass.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Please! Ethan! Help me!”

  Her voice broke high and loud, her hands reached out to him, fingers stretching wide, but the Red engulfed them too, locking her wrists in place.

  He grabbed for her hand and tried to yank her free, but the pulp kept rising; death came for her then.

  Her perfect face was the last to go, eyes wide, mouth open in a never-ending scream before it sealed over, trapping her in a gleaming blood-red tomb.

  Ethan screamed, but nothing came out. He gagged and swatted at his throat as if to force the sound out, but his voice was stolen, swallowed by the evil of the forest, and then it came for him.

  The pulp surged up his legs and, try as he might, he couldn’t yank them free. The pulp surged faster and faster, wrapping tight around his waist and chest; it pressed into his skin, seeping into every pore, filling his mouth and eyes and nose and…

  —

  A few hours later.

  Ethan woke up screaming. The dream had been too surreal, and the idea that this pulp could go around eating people unsettled him. It hadn’t been alive, right?

  He felt awful, like the kind of sick he would have pretended to have to stay out of school, except, well, real. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the bright and shining orange star in the same spot it had been, but he couldn't see a thing.

  A new sandstorm was buffeting him. It pressed in on Ethan from every side, its red dust swirling like smoke from a dying fire, tiny particles stung as they picked and picked against his skin through the holes in his suit. He knew it was something he needed to fix, but since the sealant was stolen when the Celestimed went missing, he was out of luck for the moment.

  He wiped the dirt from his HUD and tried his best to find the other Celestimed. It was just his luck that he’d collapse from exhaustion and lose the only way to fix his stupid, useless arm. Thankfully, as he crawled forward, CelestOS made herself useful and marked the item on his HUD.

  CelestOS: Target item located. Displaying coordinates.

  The icon blinked faintly, a green blip in the red storm, barely visible on his HUD due to the lack of contrast. Ethan clawed his way toward it. Each inch a battle through the haze of pain – literally and figuratively. He kept groping until his fingers closed around the smooth, cold surface of the CelestiMed. Relief crackled through his body like a bolt of lightning. His good arm didn't want to work as he tried his hardest to stick it into his broken one.

  The device hissed to life, its glow piercing the storm as he slammed the injector button and the medicine deployed.

  Ethan only had one thought as the medicine coursed through him like molten glass. What. The. Fuck.

  His breath hitched into a ragged scream, and he doubled over, his vision fracturing into static. The skin of his broken arm felt like it was a fruit being peeled away, his nerves flayed open, exposed to the constant battering of the storm. Every inch pulsed with the sheer electric violence of it. It was as if his broken bones were being rebuilt molecule by molecule. Forcefully ripped out and replaced bit by bit. He screamed so loud his voice died in his throat. And then, he felt great.

  In fact, he felt so good he was suspicious of it for a second, until CelestOS chimed in.

  [Medicine: 0 →1]

  CelestOS: Congratulations! You have successfully utilized a Celestitech Tier 1 CelestiMed? medical solution on yourself! Thank you Labrat! Health, hydration, and nutritional levels restored to 90% operational status.

  Ethan took a second to look at his HUD:

  [HP: [■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ □] 90%]

  [O2: [■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □] 9%]

  [PWR: [■ ■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □] 21%] Warning Please recharge battery!

  And his skills:

  [AI repair 2 Athletics 7 Logistical Computing 10 Perception 5 Resistance 3 Repair 1 Combat 3 Crafting 5 Forestry 1 Medicine 1 Mining 3 Smelting 1]

  A sigh of relief went through him as the realization sank in. For once on this damned day, something had worked.

  He leaned back, relaxing comfortably despite the lack of visibility in the storm. The best part was, despite his earlier exhaustion and the utter ache and soreness he felt upon waking, the medicine made him feel like a new man. The storm howled around him, but things were looking up. He smiled as he thought… maybe I’m not completely screwed after all.

  He turned to Reyes, forcing his eyes to focus past the swirling dust. Before he fell asleep, the man had been sprawled against the ship in poor shape, but alive.

  Ethan reached out a hand to see if he could wake the other man, but felt only dust. He dug, and dug, trying to see if the man had been buried; there’d been a literal blanket of dirt covering Ethan when he woke after all. But no, he wasn’t there.

  All that fucking work. All that running, all that toiling away to save him, and now Reyes was gone.

  Ethan stood staring into the wind as the storm swallowed the world around him, alone in a swirling red void of despair.

  End of Part One: Veslaya

  Product Line: CelestiMed? Mk-I Advanced Trauma Injector

  The screen sputtered to life with a low hum, static crackling through dust-clogged speakers. A pale-blue corporate logo shimmered on-screen, flickering slightly at the edges. Then the music hit, synth-heavy, upbeat, and far too cheerful for the grim silence of the surrounding wreckage.

  “New from Celestitech. The leaders in frontier medical solutions.”

  The footage cut to a colonist collapsing in slow motion, their face twisted in exaggerated agony. Dust and smoke swirled as they clutched a clearly prosthetic arm against a stomach wound and then tumbled to the floor.

  ”You’ve survived the fall. You’ve pulled yourself from the wreckage. But now... you’re bleeding out.”

  The image froze. A loud tone echoed as the screen flashed red. Then:

  “Don’t rely on outdated remedies, improvised tourniquets, or alien moss from mars. Trust science. Trust Celestitech. Trust CelestiMed.”

  A gleaming syringe rotated onscreen in a dramatically slow spin. It was made of chromed glass, pulsating amber fluid, and a reinforced gold-plated syringe. Text scrolled across in a bold robotic font:

  CELESTIMED? MK-I — ADVANCED TRAUMA INJECTOR

  Narration: “Crafted using a proprietary blend of micronized basalt suspension, medical-grade R-glass, and Celestitech’s exclusive neuro-reactive polymer mesh. Designed for battlefield deployment and hospital environments.”

  The footage cut to a grinning survivor with a cybernetic leg, giving a shaky thumbs-up as a small fire burned behind them.

  “Inject. Recover. Resume mission protocols within 12–22 minutes. Just 99,959.95 CelestiCredits?.”

  A wall of fine print swept past in a blur—far too fast to read.

  Side effects may include temporary hallucinations, aggressive optimism, limb tingling, internal echoing, and unauthorized neural bonding with nearby AI units. Discontinue use if you grow additional limbs or start thinking you've been reincarnated as a Stubborn Skill Grinder Stuck in a Time Loop.

  Celestitech is not liable for: spontaneous combustion, memory bleeding, unintended marriage to off-world entities, loss of moral compass, sudden fluency in dead languages, psychic imprinting of previous users, hive-mind integration without consent, emergence of new orifices, recursive personality fracturing, aggressive fungal growth, or the irreversible belief that everything is fine.

  Do not use while operating heavy machinery, light machinery, or emotional machinery.”

  The music swelled.

  The screen faded to black. Then, one final message appeared in crisp, capitalized text, centered and glowing faintly:

  CELESTITECH? — WHERE YOUR SURVIVAL IS OUR THIRD HIGHEST PRIORITY.

  The terminal buzzed, then shut off.

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