Page 4 of Venomous Heart
“Very well.” Ava lifted her arm midway to pull the girl into an embrace but stopped herself. Her touch wasn’t something people longed for. “If Christie shows any signs of labor, don’t hesitate to come find me. She’s the priority. After that, don’t forget the infection nanobots treatment for Will Harl. They need to be replenished every three hours or he’ll lose the leg, whether he’s threatened to slit my throat or not.”
At this, Edmila lifted her eyes to Ava, then shot a murderous glance over her shoulder toward the long hallway that led to the room where all the patients slept. “I’ll make sure to take extra care of the old jerk.” Her tone clearly contradicted her words.
“Just make sure you follow my instructions.” Ava yawned, the tension leaching from her body as the prospect of sleep loomed closer. “He might be a jerk, but he’s a patient first.”
Edmila lifted her eyebrows midway to her hairline.
“You care for him until he’s healthy again. Then, it’s open season on jerks.”
Edmila chuckled, then turned away, her long, brown, straight ponytail swishing with each step as she gingerly made her way back to the patients.
Ava turned away, then grabbed a tray full of food from the cart holding the patients’ breakfasts. She walked deeper into the medical facility, far away from the patients, the equipment, past the storage rooms and, finally, to a small room tucked between the cooling machinery and the electrical generator rooms.
She paused, staring at the gray paint for a few moments. Carefully, she flattened her ear against the cold metal, listening to the sounds on the other side. Only silence answered her, and it was more comforting than anything she had heard since she woke up.
Without waiting any longer, she entered the darkened room, her eyes adjusting to the change in luminosity faster than a human’s would, but slower than Avonie vision. Everything about her was an in-between: not entirely Avonie, but never truly human.
Except maybe her heart. She had a very human temper—Knut had told her so enough times.
The smile stretched her lips, easy and true. It was the first time she’d truly smiled in the last fourteen hours and it felt better than she could describe.
As the door closed behind her, the boy stirred under his blanket then finally turned toward her, sleep still tugging at his eyelids. Ava flipped the light switch on, flooding the room in artificial, cold light.
Bright golden eyes stared at her from a round, childish face that looked younger than his twelve years. Uril’s light green skin was speckled with freckles on the bridge of a slightly large, turned-up nose, and a mane of black hair fell over his forehead as he sat up, rubbing his cheeks like he could still sleep another ten hours.
“Wake up, sleepyhead!” Ava chuckled as Uril lazily stretched his long, fine limbs, yawning with pointed exaggeration. “You’re going to turn into an Arroumi if you sleep any more!”
“I wouldn’t mind hibernating.” Uril sat up on the narrow cot against the wall, then his two golden eyes settled on her. They no longer held any remnants of sleep. “You look like you could sleep for a few months, too.”
Ava made a face at him, then walked all the way to the back of the room she shared with the boy. She sighed as she placed the tray of food on the small round table and sat in one of the two empty chairs.
“Well, I can always sleep when no one needs me,” she said grumpily before taking a long sip of the gray-colored sludge containing all the nutrients her body would need for the day. She grimaced at the overly sweet, metallic taste, but forced herself to swallow. Maybe someday the humans on Aveyn would grow food like they did on Earth, but in the meantime, they had to be fed. Not that most humans minded the nutritious sludge, but Ava wasn’t used to it. She was used to living with Knut in his mansion and eating real food.
Yet another reason why humans hated her—but she couldn’t change the past any more than she could change her genetic make-up.
She grimaced, then drank some more. It was awful, but at least it would keep her alive. Then she would catch a few hours of sleep before returning to her duties.
“Uril, come eat. You know you can’t skip a meal.”
He slowly made his way to join her at the table and stared at his food packet with disdain before gulping it down in a few swallows, leaving not a drop behind. He had adapted to the food rations much faster than she.
“More?” Ava lifted her brows as Uril looked up from his empty packet with a hopeful expression on his face. She chuckled, then pushed her half-eaten packet his way.
“You barely ate.” Uril spoke reluctantly, but his hunger still showed as he eyed her plate. “You need it more than I do. All I ever do is wait here.”
“It won’t be long now.” Ava’s heart squeezed at the tone in Uril’s voice. He didn’t deserve to be confined to the back room of the medical clinic all day. He should be running outside, making friends and learning things, like all the other human kids on Aveyn.
Only Uril wasn’t like any other human child on Aveyn. Because he wasn’t human, not truly. Just like Ava, Uril was a hybrid, whose very existence was forbidden. Just like Ava, Uril was the result of Minister Knut’s greed, his DNA mixed with Cattelan instead of Avonie to please a fabulously rich buyer.
But unlike Ava, he was in constant danger. Neither of them was safer now that the humans had been freed. In fact, they were more in danger than ever.
“You still have no idea where the Exo-Heart is. You might never find it.” Uril bit his top lip in that gesture he made whenever he was sad, or nervous, or scared. A hundred times, a thousand, she’d seen it, but it still tugged at the strings in her heart that belonged only to him. “Why don’t we just order another one?”
Uril was the brother she’d never had. The child she would never carry. The family she had always been denied.
“Exo-Hearts are delicate, complex. Yours had to be tailored to your genes, and it wasn’t easy.” Nor was it legal, but she left that part out. Knut had the resources to order the gene-engineering necessary to engineer an Exo-Heart tailored to Uril’s hybrid genetics, and buy the silence of the synthetic organ makers in the process. But the humans on Aveyn wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and the Eok warriors who protected them wouldn’t even try. “I know Knut had one made for you, and we will find it. You just have to be patient.”
“I know.” Uril’s tone was resentful but his face wasn’t. His features might be juvenile but he had long shed the innocence of childhood, if he’d ever had it. Being born a faulty genetic experiment had a way of making people grow up faster than they should. “I just wish it was easier.”
