Skye City: The Darkness of Emmilyn

The Retrieval of the Body

My dead brother's blood soaks into my cardigan as I hold his limp body in my arms. The sights and sounds of the slums fade as I sit, motionless on a thin layer of frost. I have already lost my best friend, now my older brother. Two more are missing and if they are not dead yet, the chances are they will be soon.

What is the point? The purpose? Slum life is simply too cruel, too relentless, too brutal to survive, and it was never meant to be this way. We were supposed to escape the brutality, not die like the rats they think we are.

My sticky red hands tremble as I loosen my grip and Arturo slumps on my lap, empty of whatever made him him. I squeeze my eyelids as tight as I can, trying to suppress the agony, but I am disturbed by a roaring voice: 'Oh my Goddess, Emmi, out the way!'

A hand grabs my shoulder and flings me to the side as Arturo is plucked from my lap by a blur. Landing heavily on my elbow, I scrape my skin through my woolly cardigan, then I kneel without flinching. I glance over my shoulder to see Smig shaking the corpse, then slapping a gaunt, scarcely familiar face.

Arturo's half-open eyes are pink and his jaw is rocking as he lies on the frozen ground among pink ice crystals. I sit back against the wall of the old warehouse because there is no point in helping with the resuscitation effort. Smig taps his holowatch with a bloody finger and screams the words: 'ASTR emergency!'

A moment later, comes a reply: 'Turbo speaking. Smig, how can I–'

'Turbo, get to Arturo's place, quick! He's been shot,' Smig shrieks.

'Try to stop the bleeding. I'll be there as quick as I can,' Turbo says and the call abruptly ends. Smig rips off his shirt and presses it over some of Arturo's bullet wounds, like applying pressure will make the slightest difference. The blood loss is simply too much. I doubt a single drop is left inside my brother's veins.

'Emmi, help me,' Smig demands and I crawl over to humour him, pressing my hands against Arturo's mangled body. The action makes me burst into tears again – this cannot be happening.

We sit with our foreheads close, pressing against fatal wounds for so long my palms ache and I resist the urge to vomit. Glancing up, I see a transport soaring down the road and I do not care whether it contains friend or foe.

Moments later, a grey hunk of metal parks near the growing puddle of blood which is leaking from my brother's upper-body. The lanky ex-soldier Turbo jumps from the sliding door and he is followed by an unfamiliar driver. Turbo runs over and injects a needle into Arturo's neck, then the pair grab his arms and legs and hurry into the vehicle. Smig follows them inside and stares at me, bare-chested from the sliding door, clutching his bloody shirt. I walk around the puddle of blood and the discarded syringe to join them inside the transport. Arturo is lying across a two-seater chair with his legs dangling over the edge.

The vehicle contains many seats and I want to choose one at the back, farthest from the view of my brother, but that would be abandoning him so I sit close by. Turbo slides the door shut as the other man sits in the driver's seat, and the hover vehicle drives away on its wheels for extra speed.

Turbo opens a large case to reveal medical equipment, then he removes a pair of scissors and cuts through Arturo's t-shirt. The full extent of my brother's injuries becomes clear – his stomach and chest are shredded, crimson bullet-holes tattered and glistening, a broken rib showing, bloodless sections of skin purple.

Turbo takes a handheld device from the case and squeezes the trigger, firing a beam of energy into one of Arturo's bullet wounds. And the smell is horrific as his exposed flesh sizzles and turns from red to black.

'What are you doing?' I grimace.

'Cauterising the wounds,' Turbo says.

Once Turbo has cauterised every visible bullet wound, he opens a flask and carefully pours liquid over them which quickly sets, forming rubbery seals. He activates the largest device in the case and applies two metal appendages to my brother's torso which jerks and I gasp in response.