Page 40 of Fated to the Dragon Alien

Cerani looked down at herself—bare from head to toe, and inexplicably clean. Her skin was soft and smooth with no evidence of the blood and dirt that had covered her when she’d arrived here. But she was naked. Her leg had been healed, but they’d taken everything else.

She snatched the blanket from the bed and pulled it around herself, dragging it under her armpits and tying the corners until they held. It wasn’t totally secure, but it would do.

The door was smooth. She stepped close and laid a hand against the panel. No alarm. No lock. No one telling her to sit down or wait for clearance.

She pressed her fingers just a little harder and the door slid open with a faint hiss.

Cerani blinked against the brighter light spilling in. The med lab stretched wide—roomier than the intake chambers and ten times cleaner than the barracks.

Along the far wall, beds like hers were lined up in crisp rows. Almost all of them were filled with a body. Miner suits had been stripped away and replaced with blankets like hers. What was left behind was just…beings of different species who had somehow run afoul of the Axis. Not numbers. Not quotas. People, if only the Axis would see them that way.

A female with coils of transparent hair lay still with two lines taped down the inside of her arm. A taller male halfway down the aisle twitched in his sleep, murmuring something through a breathing mask. He must have taken a lung-blast during the collapse. Another miner—one she recognized from the lift crews—was of a species that had no eyelids, so he was wide-eyed but covered to the chest in a thick containment blanket. Monitors blinked above all of them, quiet and rhythmic.

Cerani took one step into the room and stopped.

The floor was warm under her feet. It was so much quieter here than in the shaft. Softer, even. No dust hung in the air.

Far down on the left side of the room, medics moved between beds. They wore standard Axis white with sharp cuffs and zero insignia. One hovered beside the bed of a miner named Sifer, methodically entering something onto the screen beside him.

Cerani’s shoulders eased a degree. They weren’t taking the miners offline. They were trying to heal them.

A second medic adjusted something on the panel above…Jorr. She recognized his tall, blue form instantly. Her chest squeezed at the sight of him. He was alive. Cerani moved forward, down the aisle between the beds, one hand tightened around the knot she’d made in the blanket above her breasts. Every step felt surreal—like she’d walked into someone else’s dream. No crystal trays. No mech barking orders. Just rows of quiet, injured people sleeping and healing.

She stopped when her gaze fell on a small figure who lay on a bed to her left.Sema. Her form was half-covered in a med-wrap blanket. Her hands rested at her sides, palms up. A mask covered the bottom half of her face, and leads ran from her chest to the monitor above her head. She looked…peaceful. Healthier than she’d seen this female in a long time.

Cerani moved to rush forward—then froze.

A medic beside Sema’s bed had looked up, appearing frozen in place.

Cerani blinked. “I’m just checking on her,” she said.

The medic didn’t reply.

The second one—closer to the wall monitors—turned and stared too. She was shorter, with dark hair pinned back at the base of her head. Her mouth parted like she was about to ask a question, but nothing came out.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Cerani said carefully. “I just want to see my friends.”

The medics glanced at one another. The second one took a small step back. The look on her face was something between nerves and…fear? No, not quite. Wariness.

Was it because she had left her bed? Because she was walking already?

Cerani swallowed and stepped up to Sema’s side.

She didn’t stir. Not even a twitch. But her vitals blinked steady blue in the corner, and there was no red on the panel. Her breathing looked normal. Her skin had color.

“She’s healing,” the quiet medic said finally. Her voice didn’t match her posture—stiff, arms folded over her datapad, like she wasn’t sure what standing near Cerani meant. “The controller forbade us from taking anyone offline.”

Cerani nodded and her chest swelled at the thought of Stavian. She could imagine him in here, ordering the medics to save everyone they could. He’d changed so much from the cool, aloof controller who strode through the mines, rarely looking at anyone. She didn’t know how much of that was her influence on him, or if he’d just come to his senses himself. But seeing him change, grow, feel, had made all those things happen in her, as well. “Good.”

There was nothing else to say. Relief curled low in her stomach and stayed.

She glanced back toward Jorr. “And him?”

“Ninety-six percent healed. He will be awoken and returned to the barracks later this cycle,” the medic replied.

That reminded Cerani of her own situation, and she turned her gaze to the main exit. “I need to return to the barracks, too” she said.

The taller medic squinted at her like she’d said something in an unknown dialect. “Now?”

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