Parasite (Completed)║🏳️‍🌈 LGBT+

13: Care

01:09, Fifthsol 6th M6, 2226

Shiro's coordinates take me to a dilapidated pod complex overlooked by a bioreactor plant. The sweet odour of cellular agriculture wafts from the factory, probably the major employer of the poor souls living in the pods it overshadows.

A woman — judging by her trailing plait, bindi and shirt adorned with peacocks — opens the door warily and sweeps tired eyes over me, ushering me in with murmurs of "Thank the gods."

Just inside the door a little girl lying on a worn divan raises her head in confusion before sinking down again into sleep. The pod is ruinous but tidy, not quite a shade den yet not somewhere I'd expect to see a child. The lady soothes the kid with a rub to the head and a "Shh, darling," before leading me up a tight spiral of stairs.

The rooms on my way up are all shut. Drawings and paintings in a range of childish styles line the walls, some daubed by the hand of a toddler, some pieces of great technical detail. I must be in a foster home. At age four I'd been lucky enough to be taken in by wealthy foster parents who quickly adopted me, though since qualifying as a doctor I've treated countless Eris children whose lives are a colourful patchwork of foster homes.

A delicate sketch of a snow-capped stratovolcano, unmistakably Mount Fuji, is the final exhibition piece displayed on the dim stairway before we come to an attic room devoid of furniture but a small bed.

In the gloom I almost miss him. Shiro is crumpled next to a wall, his chest heaving. My foot throbs in sympathy at the thought of him climbing so many stairs into this ghastly loft on a wrecked ankle. At least it's the last place that wardens or IndoChina would look.

Shiro's hair is slicked with sweat. Vomit stains his shirt. Frightened eyes look up at me, and my heart twists with the most intense grief. I pray to Shiva that this is a particularly bad phase in the crests and troughs of his slow demise by radiation poisoning, and not his final moments.

I crash to my knees beside him, cradling him with one hand and rummaging through my medical bag with the other. Medicine bottles tumble out in my panic, my muscles rigid with fear of him dying in my arms.

Shiro can barely lift his head to look at me. "Can't be sick... Earth..."

"Shh, we'll talk later, OK?" I whisper, tucking his ice-cold body against mine, rubbing at frozen limbs. I ready a syringe while his head lols against my shoulder, chilled fingers grasping for me. "I'm going to give you an analgesic and an anti-emetic then I'll help you to my hov. We'll rest in my pod, then we'll get you on that 'porter, OK?"

The strange woman watches me with interest as I press cautious kisses to Shiro's hair and murmur nothings about mountains and blue skies and thick warm atmospheres. "I'll get you to Earth, I promise."

The woman says, "He didn't tell me about you."

"We're friends." My heart floats with pride as I say it, then plummets at the implication. How can Shiro be so alone? At his weakest moment he called me, of all people. I must be his only friend.

A few moments of stillness, and Shiro's breathing seems to settle. I ease him up onto his knees, the woman rushing to aid us. She prattles on as we navigate each step painfully slowly, Shiro's lead weight between us. "Earth will be so good for you. No radiation, no spacewalks, normal gravity. You'll get better in days."