The Red Route inrail stopped fully outside of Fortunate Cores Hospital. A timer at the front of the cabin blinked down from sixty seconds—a countdown (the bullet is yours) to when it planned to move again.

Lenith was sprightly and healthy, able to tackle the act of jumping from moving inrails, but she nodded graciously at the timer as she passed.

She followed the long, broad walkway to the hospital’s curved façade. Winds broke with violent howls against its apex. 

Flowerbeds filled with effervescent tenlin flowers flanked her on either side. Their blade-shaped petals bobbed on the breeze. Lush green shrubs were back from the path.

Lenith bent down to sniff one of the flowers, expecting them to be artificial in the dying temperatures of early Dros. Their sweet nectar was real. Tenlins endured all weather.

Two metal arches framed four sets of clear doors that led into the hospital. One of the door sets parted as Lenith approached. Another threshold, another step deeper into the Chimayri’s embrace.

The lobby was silent, save for a stray cough or when a patient’s name was called in one of the partitioned waiting spaces. These partitions bowed inward at the top. A color and a large symbol marked each of the sections.

Three receptionists—a man and two women—waited patiently at a circular counter located near the center rear of the room. Forking past the reception counter were two halls. One was lined with doors and populated by the moving bodies of doctors and patients. The other was not.

“How may I help you?” the man asked.

“My name’s Lenith Thaymen. I’m supposed to have a health inspection or something like that.” She stopped scratching her shoulder once she realized she was doing it in the first place.

“Lenith.” The man turned to a display mounted to a lower desk behind the counter. He gave her a friendly smile and nodded. “Thaymen. Yes, a health inspection or something is correct. Have a seat in Section A. That’s the one with the orange carpet and the cruxroot, please. We’ll let you know when it’s your time to go. Oh. And welcome to the city.”

Lenith forced a smile and went to find Section A.

Section D had black carpet under a symbol of intersecting thatch work.

Section C, dark red and denoted by a spiked helix.

Section B was directly across from A, with a sky blue carpet and a cloud painted on the wall.

She raised onto tiptoes to see into each one. A man in Section C nursed his elbow where the bone stuck out. Blood covered his shirt. His face was bright red to match. Section B was filled with relatively normal looking denizens.

A young boy with a horrible cough sat with her in Section A. Lenith moved as far away from him as possible and settled in one of the ovoid chairs. Its walls isolated her from other patients and their germs. She scooted to the edge and looked to the raised, lilac ceiling. The cruxroot’s outstretched limbs, like antlers, watched over her. She wondered if it had been intentional to place her under the only section represented by the Chimayri’s insignia.

A man collapsed into the ovoid beside Lenith. She groaned loudly in protest, and her protest grew louder once she noticed her new neighbor was Iggy with his wide, decayed smile.

“I thought I heard you,” he said. His eyes were clear and focused. A buttoned shirt sagged from thinning shoulders. Pants were held by a tightly latched belt. He had shaved the petulant, black hair down to nubs. “Thought I’d come on over here. See if I got it right.”

“They scheduled us at the same time, didn’t they? Three of Two?” Lenith asked.

“Nah. Got Three-fifteen of Two. Close, though. Hey, you’ll never guess who I ran into at the Blocks, Len.”

“Didn’t I tell you I was done? Not another word?” Lenith crossed her legs and swiveled her pod the opposite way. She faced the boy hacking up phlegm. The mother brought a tissue to his mouth.

“Yeah, but that was before I started getting help. My Advocate told me to clean the scum from my blood so I did, and now I’m here talking because you said a lot and I listened to it all. I want to be worth something, and worth words.”

“It’s only been six days,” Lenith said.

“So? More time wouldn’t make me a better person. If I wanta change today, what’s so bad about it? I lost a lot of weight not eating anything, running every day, thinking about my life.”

A mounted speaker buzzed from above, followed by a woman announcing “Amerantz Veil.” The sick boy and his mother gathered their coats and followed a receptionist down the aisle.

Iggy said “Sortie’s helping me along.”

Lenith rotated her pod with swift little kicks of her toes. Her eyes were wide. That was a name she had not heard in far too long. Her voice lowered. “Sortie Vapafihr’s alive?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s alive and well. Ya thought they killed him? Nah, nah. That’s who I ran into at the Blocks. They did the same thing to him when he came into town. Integration, ya know? But he’s living at the Blocks five years on so he hasn’t gone too far with his life. He asked about ya, too, but I told him it’s none of my business telling people your business.” 

She nearly bounced out of her seat. “Where is he now? Of course I want him to know my business. Sortie Vapafihr. Alive. What a muntk.”

For once, life was willing to loan something to her. A reward for her resolve. At long last, a missing friend returned. Her excitement brimmed. “Let’s go see him after our appointments.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” a gravelly, low voice said from the aisle.

It belonged to an uncertain man with a black beard down to his chest and short, straight hair combed behind big ears. Lenith searched for a spark of memory but he looked nothing like the Sortie she knew for most of her young life. This man was rough and square-jawed under the big beard. She sat, dumbfounded and silent.

He laughed with a rasp and jerked his head to the side. A scar corkscrewed along his neck, cutting an infertile swath through the brambles of his beard all the way to his jawline. He was far from the young boy with bold eyes and sharp knives who thought it was fun to slice designs into his skin. Lenith had been by his side (held the mirror, even) when he dug the spiral into his throat.

Lenith launched from the seat. “What have you done with yourself?” Her shoes slapped the color-coded carpet.

“Don’t blame me. It’s time’s fault that I look like this,” Sortie said.

Time had shredded his voice like a fine cheese, too, it seemed. This man in a thick gray frock down to his knees and a pair of scuffed black boots killed the soft-spoken, sometimes childish memory Lenith kept in her mind. It sometimes took a single day—a single event—to change a person forever. He was a prime example of what seven years of moments could do.

She expected a wholehearted embrace.

Sortie clasped her shoulder and then pivoted into an open pod. His legs hiked. Slick-shaved ankles crossed. “I hate these chairs. How the fuck did you get stuck in here with the rest of us anyway, Thaymen?”

Lenith returned to her chair. The grin persevered. “As if I had a choice.”

“Well, no matter. Now we need to cover lost ground.”

“What about Eby?” Lenith asked. Her throat felt dry. “I doubt… Never mind. I don’t think she’d want to meet with me. Does she live with you?”

“Haven’t seen her. Can’t say what Eby wants,” Sortie said. He scraped his rough palms together. “They put us in the Blocks a long while back after Hidden Ash burned down. Four or five years, was it? Used to talk a lot about the past. Nothing else to do. Everything looked dire but we had each other, right? Then I was alone one morning. Didn’t take any of her stuff or leave a note. But those memories were the best for her. Back when you two had each other—the unattainable past.”

Several of the glass doors swooshed aside. More patients from the Red Route pushed toward the reception counter. Iggy tightened his belt with a grunt.

Lenith’s bottom lip quivered despite her best containment efforts. “She’s gone?”

“Afraid it’s true,” Sortie said.

Lenith plucked at the sleeve of the red shirt with the darker red splotch on the chest.

“Lenith Thaymen,” the male receptionist beckoned from the speaker.

At least two of the incoming patients searched the room and spotted her with surprised looks on their faces.

“Come see me when you can,” Sortie said. “I live in Block Two, Slot Two Two-seventy-five. And best luck.”

“Yeah. Best luck, Lenith,” Iggy said and turned to Sortie. “We might as well get back to…”

“Right this way.” The receptionist greeted Lenith with a clinical smile. He ushered her to the rightward hall, toward a hundred doors and the busy people moving between them. “What do you think of the city so far?” Lethargy cloyed in his voice, slowed his movements.

“It’s good,” Lenith said. “I like it.” 

The young, drifting receptionist waved to passing doctors in their celadon bodices. They were in far more of a hurry. Lenith wanted to go that fast; to get this over with. Her guide tortured her.

“I ask every newcomer that question. They all answer the same way. ‘I like it,’” he said. “Makes me wonder if you’re all liars.”

Lenith paid no mind to the remark. Little men in little jobs stroking little egos stopped fazing her long ago.