Liùyuè 4th 250X Cont.

Medic Poulter greeted Sirka and her father as they entered the tall concrete research facility. He was wearing his stark white Medic's lab coat and was holding an electronic data tablet.

Next to him stood a young dark-skinned man with closely shorn black hair, a lean frame and attractive features. The man was wearing the distinctive Assistant Medic scrubs of pale blue.

"I'd like to introduce Medic Reed," Medic Poulter announced, gesturing to the other man. "He's recently been granted a research position at the Medical Centre and is now my acting assistant. He'll also be helping with your case Sirka."

Sirka glanced at Medic Reed who smiled warmly at her, "Please call me Chase," he said before bowing to her father, "Commander Morcos."

Akeem gave the Assistant Medic a perfunctory nod before turning back to Poulter who clapped his hands together enthusiastically, "Well! Shall we make our way upstairs then?"

The four of them took the elevator up to the sixteenth floor. Sirka snuck a few more glances at Chase - envious of the ease with which he conversed with Medic Poulter, the stillness of his hands compared to the twitching of hers. She wondered with a slight pang of sadness if they were around the same age.

'How different we must appear,' she thought miserably to herself.

"Eyes got changed."

Sirka flinched as Iskra's hot breath tickled the back of her neck.

'What are you talking about?' Sirka thought as loudly as she could.

"His eyes don't fit," Iskra stated adamantly before squeezing through the gap between Sirka and Medic Poulter to stand in front of Chase. Sirka frowned as her fractal raised her hand, trailing her fingers towards the young medic's face.

"Don't," Sirka hissed, realising too late that she had spoken out loud. All three men turned to look at her with expressions of surprise as Iskra grinned widely.

"Now you've done it," her fractal laughed as Sirka bit her lip and bowed her head to stare angrily at the floor.

They arrived at the sixteenth laboratory level a moment later and Medic Poulter led them down the familiar route. They walked past glass walled rooms filled with brightly coloured vials and strange looking pieces of scientific equipment.

They were just rounding the corner when movement in one of the test labs caught Sirka's eye. She paused, ignoring the exasperated noise her father made as she moved to peer further into the room.

There was a boy lying down on a metal pew, he turned his head when he saw Sirka on the other side of the glass and swivelled his legs to sit upright. He looked about fourteen and he was wearing a dark blue tunic, his hair was almost black but his skin was a warmer tone than Sirka's.

She had just noticed the helix tattoo on his left wrist when there was a scream behind her. Wrenching around, Sirka saw Iskra crouching on the floor - her fingers scrabbling at her loose hair, pulling it down over her face.

Sirka winced with the transferred pain, letting out a shocked shout before jamming the heels of her palms against her eyes. Starbursts of colour shot across the backs of her eyelids and she heard Iskra crying out;

"Why is he here?"

A flash of a second later Sirka felt her hands being gently pulled away from her face and she blinked up into the concerned expressions of the two Medics.

"What's happening?" she could hear Akeem shouting as Chase pressed his fingers tightly against the sides of Sirka's skull. The action seemed to relieve some of the pressure that had been building up in her head.

"He's another helixed," Chase explained quickly, before gesturing for them to follow him down the corridor, away from the boy in the test room. "There must have been some kind of telepathic collision between the two of them," he added, before hurriedly pressing in the door code for the main laboratory.

The three of them rushed inside and no sooner had the sliding door closed behind them, when Akeem wheeled on Medic Poulter.

"Why is he here?" he demanded angrily, echoing Iskra's wailed question.

"He's a research subject," Chase answered, ushering Sirka over to a high chair, before drawing out a small flashlight and shining it in her eyes.

She grimaced at the sudden beam of white and gripped the edges of the chair tightly.

"I want to talk to you," Akeem hissed at Medic Poulter, "in private."

Sirka watched quietly as the two men stalked off into a side room, the connecting door clicking shut.

"Are you okay?" Chase asked her calmly after a moment's silence, switching off the flashlight and stowing it back in his pocket. "I'm imagining you probably don't interact with many other helixeds."

"That's never happened before," Sirka said frowning, "why did that happen? My fractal - she screamed when we saw that boy."

"You're still seeing your fractal?" Chase asked with raised eyebrows. "Well hopefully the Panacea should change all that."

He finished sticking a temperature strip to Sirka's forehead before drawing back and jerking his head towards the direction they had just come from.

"His name is Alexei Sokolov, although he prefers us calling him Alex. He's fourteen and a helixed like you but quite a special one because..."

"He has five rings," Sirka finished, watching Chase's subsequent look of impressed surprise. "Yes - that's right. You were able to spot that huh?"

"Does he come from the Asylum?" Sirka asked, hoping to get as many questions answered as possible before speech became difficult again. Everything had become more difficult since coming off of the suppressants.

"Yes," Chase nodded, " Seb -Medic Poulter that is, brought him in just under four months ago from the Asylum. He's an orphan but the Medical Centre recently became his legal guardians."

"Is he one of the test subjects for the Panacea?" Sirka enquired, chewing thoughtfully on her lip.

"No," Chase shook his head with a quick glance off towards the still closed inter-laboratory door. "Seb doesn't want him on any drugs courses right now. He doesn't..." Chase paused, his surprisingly pale green eyes flicking up to Sirka, "Alex doesn't have any fractals."

Sirka took a sharp intake of breath, "How is that possible? He's got five rings! Is it because he's so young?"

"Perhaps," Chase shrugged, "but like I said, Alex is special." He reached forwards to peel the temperature strip off, his own blue scrubs gaping slightly at the neck with the movement.

"He's patterned!" Iskra announced excitedly, appearing suddenly beside Sirka and smiling as if she hadn't just been screaming her head off five minutes ago.

"You have tattoos?" Sirka asked as Chase stretched out her left arm and began to swab at the crook of her elbow with antiseptic, preparing it for an injection.

"They're Guild marks," he grinned, pulling his collar down further so Sirka could see the swirling bow of script across his chest, pictographic characters continuing down on the right-hand side.

Chase moved to roll up his sleeves, showing her intricately designed symbols on either arm. "This is the emblem of the Guild I belonged to," he pointed to one of the tattoos and then the other, "and this one shows I was a Genie."

"You were a Genie?" Sirka exclaimed with surprise. She knew what Genies were - underground illegal medical practitioners specialising in gene alteration and therapy.

"Making people's wishes come true," Chase winked at her with a toothy grin.

The practice of gene alteration purely for aesthetic purposes was not unheard of in the Polis. Although Sirka knew that Genies also helped to treat citizens who couldn't afford proper healthcare or those who suffered from genetic mutations - such as helixed. Suddenly Iskra's earlier comment made sense, "Your eyes!" Sirka said. "You changed your own eyes?"

Chase frowned at her before chuckling, "Huh, guess I didn't do as good a job as I thought I had if it's that noticeable."

"No..." Sirka trailed off, "no it's not that. My fractal - she said something."

"What's her name?" Chase asked. "I read it in your file - Eesha?"

"Iskra."

"Iskra, that's it," Chase nodded before pulling up a stool and sitting opposite Sirka, "does she talk to you a lot?"

"Only in riddles," Sirka shrugged, "I guess I'm lucky I've only got her, I could have three of them."

"The suppressants have at least been doing something," Chase murmured in agreement.

"How did you become a real...sorry, I mean how did you..." Sirka bit her lip as Chase laughed kindly.

"It's okay - you mean how did I end up a certified Polis Medic instead of an illegal Genie practising out of the back of a noodle restaurant in the alleys of Xi zone?"

Sirka nodded with a tight smile as Chase reached across the desk to grab a narrow belt strip, which he began to tie around her upper arm.

"Well I was arrested. Which I suppose was inevitable with my line of work. However, I'd been lucky enough to have had a high ranking medical official take interest in my research and work. He bailed me out, got the charges dropped and offered me a position at the Nu zone Medical Centre."

"Medic Poulter?" Sirka asked curiously.

"The very same," Chase nodded. "I owe the man a great debt. Plus the military have been kind enough to award me with a grant in order to further my research into helixed abilities."

"Broken toy soldiers," Iskra hissed beside them, before giggling to herself.

Chase picked up the data tablet that Medic Poulter had been holding earlier, flipping through the pages onscreen with a slight frown, "How old are you Sirka?"

"I'm a Quart," she answered quietly, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks, "everyone always thinks I'm younger."

"They always tend to with helixed," Chase smiled, looking back at her before standing up, "if you'll excuse me for a moment I'll just go grab some syringes and the formula and then we'll have everything all set up ready for Seb to get you started with the first round of Panacea."

Sirka frowned at some vials of bright green fluid sat nearby on the lab bench,

"Is that not it?" she asked as Chase shook his head.

"No that's something else," he told her, "a hybrid Stasis formula that some of the other Medics are working with. I'll be back in a minute." He turned and walked back out of the lab via the main doors, the suction hinges squeezing open and shut with a popping noise.

"Where are you going?" Sirka sighed as she watched Iskra cross the floor towards the side doors that Akeem and Medic Poulter had disappeared through a little while earlier.

"Hush," Iskra chided, looking back at Sirka with a wide-eyed expression, "the adults are speaking."

Sirka clicked her tongue irritably as she jumped down off the high chair and strode towards her fractal. She paused a moment later by the door, there was an air vent to the side of it and she could just hear the edges of raised voices coming from the adjoining room.

"Shh," Iskra whispered, as she leaned to press her ear against the vent. Sirka chewed on her lip for a moment before copying Iskra's actions, the metal slats cold against her cheek.

"I got permission for this!" Sirka could hear a loud bang - like someone had slammed their hand against a table, before she realised it was Medic Poulter's voice.

"The department cleared it for the subject to be housed in the Psi zone research facility," Akeem snapped, "not Nu - and you damn well knew that Seb."

"My research is based here," Medic Poulter replied with an aggrieved sounding sigh, "my equipment, my team - all here."

"Well have them moved," Akeem bit back.

"You're overreacting," the other man groaned and then there was another thud and scraping sound, as if someone had just slumped down into a chair. "The potential benefits of the project outweigh the dangers."

"It's not just..."

"I know!" Medic Poulter exclaimed. "I can assure you that I have considered this case from every angle."

"Have you?" Akeem asked pointedly. "Because it wouldn't be the first time you'd gotten so close to, so involved with your science and your research that you don't see the bigger picture."

"Well it's somewhat hard not to see the bigger picture here," Poulter retorted, "look, everything is under control. You just keep making sure I get the green light for any military paperwork and I'll keep up with my end of it all. The child could be revolutionary Akeem."

"So I've been informed," Sirka's father replied grimly, his voice trailing off too quietly at the end for her to make out what he was saying.

"It's settled then," Poulter announced triumphantly, before Sirka could hear footsteps. She gasped and quickly drew away from the door to cross the lab and position herself back up on the high chair just as the two men returned to the room.

"Where's Medic Reed?" Poulter asked with a frown as he noticed her sat alone.

"He went to get syringes and the Panacea formula," Sirka replied, formulating her words carefully, lest the voices sneak something incriminating in there without her permission.

"Good," Poulter nodded with a pleased smile, "this injection could change everything for you Sirka. It could change everything for everyone."

Sirka offered a tight smile in response before she felt Iskra on the stool behind her, leaning against Sirka so they were back to back.

"Don't like needles," the other girl sighed balefully, shifting to let the notches in their spines slot together.