Page 6 of Rescued By the Convicts
Whatever was happening wasn’t a function of the serilium wearing off over time. The serilium in their bones should last long past their deaths. This fading of the tattoo made no sense.
Melina headed down the hall to the security office. Two guards, Sedgewick and the new guy Basner lifted their eyes.
“Do I have the authority to call a patient into the med-center for a follow-up?” she asked.
“Depends on who it is,” Sedgewick answered.
Why should that matter?“Radick. He was here for broken ribs last month.”
“Forget it,” Basner answered. “He’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Euphemism for dead,” Sedgewick explained. “That’s the assumption when we see a prisoner hasn’t turned in any serilium or used any credits for food in a few weeks. Of course, he could have run off and be living off the land, but trapping game is hard out there, unless you’re a sharpshooter with a sonic rifle, which he isn’t. We’ll likely find his body when the snow melts. Happens every winter. Four to five guys haveaccidents.”
The way he saidaccidentssent chills through her. Murder wasn’t unheard of here, far from it.
“At the hands of the gangs?” the new guard Basner asked.
“The official stance isaccident,” Sedgewick emphasized, his underlying message clear. Don’t make trouble. Let it go. “Snowstorms can turn a person around easily here and prisoners die. Or a miner falls down a shaft. We find a few there each season too. A lot of the prisoners are never found. Local animals gotta eat, you know?”
Eww. . . She didn’t want to think that the hogath and casp that Reece and the other hunters brought back as the prisoner’s main source of protein were dining on the humans here.
“I think I might have to go vegetarian,” Melina said.
“Nice thought, but there’s not enough produce in that greenhouse for everyone to go vegetarian, Doc,” Sedgewick said. “You should know that. You’ve been inside.”
She winced, remembering the first and last time she’d entered Section B of the greenhouse. Liden, Manager Thorne’s personal guard, had beaten her for trespassing. She still didn’t understand what that was about. She hadn’t touched, let alone endangered the vegetables in there. She’d only taken samples of the non-produce flora to help identify what had been causing Reece’s allergic reaction.
It made no sense why the hunters who worked there in between their hunts were allowed access, but not her, especially since she had more knowledge of plants than any of the other prisoners. Her expertise in research and development with a minor in botany ensured she wouldn’t do anything to risk the prisoners’ only supply of produce in the harsh Veenith winter.
“When we find Radick’s body—” Basner began.
“Ifwe find it,” Sedgewick corrected. “Then it will be disposed of chemically in a pit. Unless you want to do an autopsy because you think there’s some risk to the general population and staff, Doc.”
“No, nothing like that. I wanted to make sure he was healing properly.”
Melina returned to her lab, trying not to imagine seeing bodies randomly strewn about the planet as the snow melted away or the pit where the guards disposed of bodies. Everything about this planet was so damn morbid.
After checking on Cheng to ensure he wasn’t in danger of rejecting the bone-gen, she returned to her lab. Since Zev had left, she’d focused on solving the riddle of the plant she’d found in Section B of the greenhouse. She had brushed up against a potted tree with thin spindly branches that had woven themselves rather intricately like a lattice up to the ceiling.
When the light pink spores fell onto her prison tattoo, her tattoo had failed to glow for a split second. She’d never seen anything disrupt the glow of the serilium in her tattoo. Serilium infused into bone was never supposed to disappear, that’s why The Company branded a prisoner’s radius or ulna and not the skin. The serilium was permanent. There was no way to remove the tattoo, as the serilium would glow until the day they died. Even after, technically, since tissue would decay but the bone would not. It was the best damn way of identifying a person before or after death, and the final assurance The Company had that even if a prisoner somehow managed to escape Veenith, he’d never get far. Serilium tattoos were knowneverywhereas the mark of a Level 5 prisoner.
A few weeks ago, Melina tested the spores against the tattoo on the back of her neck, but that abomination remained. Namir had branded her for life, so everyone would know he owned her.
Except he didn’t. Not anymore. He couldn’t touch her on Veenith. He’d never touch her again. That right, thatprivilege, was reserved for her men. Her sweet, protective men.
Melina smiled at the thought of Jayce, Ivan, Reece, and Zev. She missed Zev, but she had to hold on to the belief that he would be fine. Whatever he was doing, he’d make it back to her.
She’d been working diligently in her spare time, turning the powder from the spores into a liquid. She brushed the liquid over the swirls of her prison tattoo. Every prisoner had his own unique tattoo pattern, created by how the injected serilium spread into their bones. Some tattoos showed up as an intricate swirls, while others appeared as dots and lines. The researcher who had adapted serilium for permanent tattoo identification had found a way of giving each prisoner a unique ID, more unique than fingerprints even. Melina remembered studying the case in medical school. The project simply named “Serilium Infusion” had fueled her desire for research.
She never thought that ten years later she’d be one of the intended targets of that project. Level 5, the only people condemned to wear that serilium in their bones for life. Even if she could escape Veenith, she could never hide the fact that she was a Level 5 prisoner. There was no removing or extracting serilium. But was there a way of disguising it?
She had yet to see if the powder merely hid the bright yellow glow on the skin or altered the serilium deep down in the bone. Prisoners and researchers alike had tried removing layers of skin and even performed full skin grafts to remove the Level 5 tatt without success. The beauty—or hideous nature, depending on whether one viewed serilium from a research or prisoner standpoint—was that the serilium continually leached from the bone into whatever surface material covered a person’s wrist. Even when plastics and metal skin covers had been used, the serilium prevailed.
Melina had been experimenting with various chemicals to see which might enhance the powder’s ability to fade the tattoo for more than a split second. She spread her latest attempt onto her wrist with a swab.
Five. Ten. Fifteen seconds!
