Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 9 - Leavi

The cavern walls rise up around me. My entire body is so tight, I feel like a constrictor snake is wrapping around my muscles and squeezing as if its life depends on me becoming its next meal. As the snake twists my stomach, anxiety rises to fill me, a toxin climbing toward my throat.

I betray none of this apprehension to Sean. My hands stay steady as I draw his blood with a syringe. We've been in such close proximity the last six days that if either of us are infected, we're both dead.

Taking out my hematester, I carefully drip the blood from my syringe's needle into the glass tube. Inside the device, several miniscule, mineral-coated nets separate the fluid into its constituent parts. The thick liquid laboriously trickles through the layers, adding a drop to my anxiety with every slow drip. Once I empty the syringe, I cap the hematester and shake it up and down, careful to keep it straight.

A few long minutes later, the device has done its work. "Hold this," I order, handing the tube to Sean. He complies, allowing me to pull out my magnifier. To a layman, the tool probably looks like a trinket someone might put on their keyring. Ten thin, teardrop-shaped crystal lenses clink together on an iron loop. Reclaiming the hematester with one hand, I pull a magnifier lens to the top of the ring and peer through.

Adjust the distance, I instruct myself. Better. Flip the next crystal. Now, adjust the distance. No, not quite. A little closer—too close. Back one millimeter, two, two and a half... Good. Flip the next crystal. Adjust the distance...

"This lighting is terrible," I mutter, pulling more crystals up one by one. Now that I'm staring through all ten, the blood in the tube transforms from a homogenous red liquid to millions of tiny but distinct shapes. Being sure to keep it the same distance away from my magnifier, I raise the tube increment by increment, examining its length. If I change its proximity in any way, I have to start back at the first crystal.

Sean's lantern flares to life behind me. My eyes relax their squint, the light bright enough to allow them to focus.

But they don't. Instead, my gaze turns back to five days ago, staring into a gutter swimming with dirty bandages and overflow sewage. My hands pressed against the street, grit clinging to my skin. My lungs dragged in the filthy air. Contamination was everywhere there. The trash, the ground, the atmosphere. It wouldn't be that hard for it to have transfered to my skin, my nose, my cells. It wouldn't be that hard to have gotten infected, to have infected Sean.

In fact, it would be far too easy.

The soft tinking of Sean's nail on the glass of the lantern pulls me into the present. Focus, Leavi. If one of us caught it, there's nothing to do about it now. Panicking is pointless.

Instead of comforting me, the thought allows the constrictor one final squeeze, spilling toxic anxiety into my veins. My eyes wander back to the crystals, and I force myself to concentrate. Let's get this over with.