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Throughout the ages, the capital city had belonged to barbarians, become a holy site for the local tribes, been the center of commerce between countries long gone, and eventually it became the theatre of war that determined the current world order. Now, as the axis on which the Sahalyian Empire turned, it was known as Tremont.

It was the home of the Talmadge Palace, the seat of power of King Jovan and his wife, Queen Elvira. It hosted the schools leading in the fields of magic academia such as the Rede Academy and Clover College. Even the science of steam-powered technology found a home in Tremont, led by guilds like the Strothers Company. It was a hub of learning and business, knowledge and pioneering side by side with highborn finery and noble traditions that led poets to make a romance out of the city streets themselves. Just as it had its shining and prosperous side, Tremont also had its shadow, streets lined with poverty and black market activity. North of the Market District lay the poorer neighborhoods populated with low-status citizens and otherkind. It was known as the Rim, bordered by the factories and the substandard lodgings of the factory workers, sprinkled with the many taverns they patronized to lighten the misery of their lives.

A few minutes away by gharry on the outskirts of the city was another large building, pockmarked by windows at even intervals and attached to collegiate dormitories, halls, and a small park. It was the Ariano Memorial Hospital, and they accepted anyone that needed medical attention. It didn't matter your status, race, or creed; a controversial stance in the face of Sahale's laws and traditions. Far from being a joke, however, it was one of the best medical centers in the country and boasted one of the biggest practicing colleges west of the Bienne Sea.

It was there that Frederic found himself the following morning, speaking to a woman staying on the second floor.

"And as I listed off the names of the crew, you should've seen the looks on their faces." He chuckled softly, fiddling with the end of his sling. "You would've liked that, would've laughed at all those slack jaws and wet eyes, looking at me like I'd just mooned each of their mothers. I would thank the rebels for their timely acts of terrorism, but not when... not after what they've done to us, to the crew. I tried so hard to keep your name off that list," the captain swallowed hard and looked up at the unresponsive woman lying on the clean, white bed.

Her name was Georgia Lulos and though she had survived the surgeries that saved her life, she was still here.

"Please wake up," he said softly. He laid his left hand over one of hers and tightened his jaw. "Please, Gigi."

A soft knock at the door was the only warning he received before a woman walked in, briskly but in perfect calm. Her entrance and the airs she put on would’ve told Frederic she wasn’t one of the nurses had he not learned how to read the hospital’s rank insignia many years ago. On her white tunic’s right sleeve, there were two blue bands with a thin white line halving the top band, marking her as an apprentice physician. He had done his best to avoid the hospital staff, visiting in between shifts and staying out of sight. It had worked too well, perhaps, because she looked at him with a small dose of suspicion. Her doe brown eyes met his hazel-blue but she looked away first, taking measure of Georgia’s heartbeat. Only when she was finished did she look back at him.

"My name is Carissa,” she said gently, "Are you her family?"

His throat thickened, Frederic nodded mutely and looked back at the sleeping woman's face. Something softened in the doctor's demeanor, and she let loose an almost inaudible sigh. "It's not unheard of for patients to stay asleep, even after the sleeping web's been broken." The doctor's hair was tied up in a braid and it fell over her shoulder as she checked Georgia's eyes, first the right, then the left. "She is stable. Her body just needs time to recover from the... trauma."

Frederic wanted to laugh, but it felt like if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop, so he wisely kept his mouth shut. Carissa, looking more compassionate than before, came around the bed and sat down beside Georgia's knee so that Frederic was forced to look at her, suddenly wary of the conspiratorial tone she started speaking in, "I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but her captain's got this mad idea to sail off with her and move her down to the Yuasa Clinic in the south by week's end. I know Doctor Swafford, the head physician here in the hospital. I could talk to him if you like. He'd lobby to keep her here with us, with you." She looked curious at his wide-eyed stare, wondering if her news had been a surprise to him, but it was clear she was determined to wait for an answer.

He continued to stare at her, his shoulders raised and his mouth held slightly open. Drawing his bottom lip between his teeth for a brief moment, he scraped up enough of his voice to ask, "Could you go and get Doctor Swafford for me?" He smiled, painfully, when she nodded and she stepped away from the bed and out the door.

It was only a minute, perhaps a little longer, before he heard footsteps outside the door again. Frederic knew the face of the man who would be walking in, a tired and handsome man with silver at his temples. He even recognized the timbre of the sigh that escaped him as the two doctors slowed to a stop. "Frederic–" He started, but the younger man rose to his feet and turned to face both of them, Doctor Swafford looking exasperated and Carissa looking confused.

"Please, Laurie, introduce me to your colleague," he said almost pleasantly.

"Are we playing games now?" Laurence Swafford asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He slipped his hands into his pockets and turned to the woman beside him as he inclined his head at the other man. "Carissa Sigg, this is Frederic Lassiter–"

"Georgia's mad captain," Frederic finished for him and Carissa’s eyes widened. He had no eyes to spare for her, however, because he was staring hard at her superior. The bands on his right sleeve were blue outlined in black, marking him as an accredited doctor and the head physician of Ariano Memorial. Doctor Swafford, if it was possible, looked more tired than when he’d walked in. Frederic refused to consider it as he continued: "Is that what you've been telling people about me, that I'm crazy for trying to help Georgia?"

“I shared my opinion with my apprentice," he said weightily, sparing a glance for the woman beside him. Carissa shrank further into herself. If she could have, she would have sunk straight down into the floorboards. The intensity of his gaze, however, didn't lessen at all when he turned back to the captain. "And I was going to give you the same lecture the minute you arrived, but you've been ignoring my missives and dodging me at every turn. We need to talk, Frederic."

"Georgia needs to wake up," he said, feeling hysteria rise up in his gut but he pushed it back down after a moment's effort. "Can you tell me what you're doing about that?"

"The sleeping web has faded completely, her body is functioning normally and she's been stable for more than thirty-six hours," Laurence listed off as if by rote, the words easy and comfortable in his mouth. The same didn't hold true of his heart and he grimaced as though in pain. "There is nothing left to heal, she just won't wake. We have been running tests and she–"

"You still don't know what's wrong," Frederic said, unrepentant when Laurence leaned back, clearly stung from the accusation. "What kind of tests are you running that they tell you nothing?"

"Every kind of test I can think of," Swafford growled, his calm façade cracking as he stepped forward. "I've run out of conventional options, Frederic. I've asked every Master Physician and Healer into this room. I even had some Outer Rim diviner down here yesterday waving feathers in the air. You know what she said it was? Faeries!" He took a deep breath, his shoulders bowing forward as he regained his composure. Frederic's expression hadn't shifted at all and Laurence sighed, continuing as though it exhausted him to do it. "Something is at work here that we don't understand, but that doesn’t mean I've given up. There is no one here that doesn't have Georgia's best interests at heart. The one thing of which I am certain is that if you take Georgia to Wheelis, Evelyn's not going to be able to wake her up either."

"Georgia will wake up," Frederic said with quiet vehemence. "And when she does, it'll help her to know she'll be able to walk again. We're going to Wheelis, and that's final."

"Captain Lassiter," Carissa's voice cracked and she visibly quailed when both men turned to look at her, but she took a deep breath and forged on. "The Yuasa Clinic only deals in prosthetics, metal limbs. I don't think you understand the severity of the trauma that Georgia's body sustained." The woman balked as though she could feel the room's temperature lower, but it didn’t put out the fire in her eyes. Carissa took a step towards the captain that, if she was any judge of character, she had just enraged. "I helped put that woman back together from pieces, so I know exactly what it was like to decide between her leg and her life. We chose her life and when she wakes up, I think she'll be happy with our decision."

"You'd be surprised," he whispered.

"Yeah, and what would you know about it, Captain?"

"Carissa," Doctor Swafford’s voice was like a gavel. The young woman instinctively took a step backward, glancing sideways at her mentor who shook his head. She looked back at Frederic who was carefully peeling off the glove from his right hand, revealing metal fingers and metal joints of a tarnished gray. Letting the glove fall to the ground, he slipped the sling from his shoulder and let the limb fall to his side. Instead of a cushioned drop of metal on flesh, there was a resulting clank as his hand struck his thigh. Frederic made a fist with his left hand and knocked on his left thigh, and although it didn’t make the same sound of metal on metal, Carissa understood his meaning. Her lips were pressed into a thin, pink line but Frederic smirked.

"Do I need to undress completely to prove my point?" He asked, a light tone to his words that contradicted his steely expression. "If that's the case, I'll need someone's help with the buttons."

"Frederic, don't be vulgar," Laurence said, a hint of disapproval in his voice. Carissa didn't pay any mind to her mentor, despite the instinctive reaction to cringe from that tone. Her eyes were still fixed on Frederic's legs, on his hand still hanging by his side. She wondered how far up his arm the metal went.

"That's more than a prosthetic," she said quietly, eyes slightly glazed as her thoughts raced. "You're transhuman."

A heavy silence followed her proclamation.

"My mechanic would argue with you on the semantics," Frederic said at last. "But you're not wrong."

More than sixty years ago, Ambrose Haskell, philosopher, wizard, and madman, had successfully transplanted a demon arm to a living host, creating the phenomenon known as 'transhumanism'. He posited that, to evolve, humanity had to become more than human. He did so through magic, learning forbidden arts and sciences, using willing and sometimes not-so-willing volunteers for his experiments. Perhaps it would've been forgotten as yet another magical abomination had his first success not been with the Emperor Malene himself. Some said that he had introduced demon blood into his body, sullying his humanity, while others raved about the powers he now wielded because of the spell.

To an empire obsessed with race and bloodlines, it was a dilemma, so a new status was created. If more than a third of a human was made of something else, then he was 'transhuman' and became a second-class citizen in the Empire of Sahale. It was good news for civilians and soldiers who had only lost an arm or a leg, and bad news for those who had lost more.

"I didn't have a choice in this," the captain said. “It would've been nice, to have a choice." He looked pointedly at Doctor Swafford and the older man clenched his jaw, but he remained silent.

"Carissa," Laurence said again, though this time it was gentle and when she looked back at him, he nodded towards the door. She hesitated but another look at Frederic decided her. The sound of her boots was quick and decisive on the wooden floor, shut out completely when Doctor Swafford pushed the door closed behind her. He sighed and looked back at Frederic who stared impassively back. Laurence closed the distance between them, bending forward and picking up the glove from the ground. Slipping it into his pocket, the doctor proceeded to help the captain with his sling like a professional, like he had been anyone else that could’ve walked into the clinic. They shared a look, the older man a couple of inches shorter than the other, and Laurence felt himself suddenly relax. Time and experience had forged a bond between them that no argument could break so easily, no matter how deeply the sentiments ran. Once they’d settled Frederic’s arm back into a comfortable position, the man turned away and stumbled back into the chair by Georgia's bedside.

"You know I have to say it," Laurence started.

"Please don't," Frederic answered quietly. The doctor opened and closed his mouth with an audible sigh, making an effort to swallow the words on the tip of his tongue. This wouldn’t be solved by a bullish attack at the problem; it had to be done sideways, through more subtle means, and at another time, if the possibility presented itself. It always came down to a waiting game with Frederic and Doctor Swafford wasn't sure he had the patience for it this time around.

"I heard about your ceremony last night, the Prince's little thank-you gala," He said quietly, settling his grip on the bar at the end of the bed. "And I thought your brother was the one for dramatics." He spoke lightly but Frederic didn't think that Laurence was talking about last night anymore. Emotions bubbled and shifted in his stomach, but he pushed them down yet again. It wasn't the time, he wasn't that kind of person. The captain rested his elbow on the bed, pressing his forehead into the palm of his hand as he sighed.

Doctor Swafford grimaced. "Frederic, about what happened in Tierra Lue–"

"No," he said with a finality most people heeded, but Laurence was often an exception.

"Yes," he countered. "We are going to talk about this. I know you, Frederic. I've stitched you up since you were eight, I sailed on your father’s ship-" Don’t say the name, Frederic heard in someone else's voice from a memory. It's bad luck to say the name of fallen ships. "-and I was the one who dragged you to Evelyn in the first place when everyone said you'd be in a wheeled chair for the rest of your life. I get to talk to you about this. If you're not going to talk about this to anyone else, I have a right, perhaps, perhaps the only right–"

"They’re fixing up my Daruna," he said suddenly, looking at Georgia's face instead of meeting Laurence's eyes. "The crown's even paying for it. I'll have to go to Arrhen and report to the guild in a couple of days, see what Mistress Ellimore has to say on the matter. I'll get the edge of her tongue, but I doubt it will spell any trouble for us. The crew... they're holding together. Neonna took it hardest when Uriah died so close to rescue," his voice softened to almost nothing, taking comfort from holding Georgia's slack hand in his own. He squeezed once, numb to the fact that there was no response. Frederic cleared his throat, shivering as though wakening from some private reverie. "She says the man was never meant to die of old age, but you could've fooled me. He was closer to fifty than not." He glanced pointedly at the doctor's silvered temples, the small smile on his face practically begging Laurence to share in his joke.

It was clear from the look on his face that the older man wasn't having it.

"So far you've told me how everyone is doing but you," Swafford said starkly, and when minutes rolled by and neither one of them yielded the doctor muttered. "Galbin love us, how I put up with you Lassiters for this long, Reveries only know," he exhaled shortly, letting the tension drain away from his shoulders. The annoyed expression similarly vanished, replaced with tired concern. He added gently, "It's okay not to be okay, Frederic."

"I'm not," he answered, and Laurence perked up unconsciously. The captain's lips thinned as he raised an eyebrow. "I damaged my arm in the fight, obviously. I would've asked you to take a look at it, but we'll be in Wheelis by week's end. I'll have one of the Cales fix me up. Don't worry, Laurie, I'll be right as rain soon."

The doctor made no attempt to hide the roll of his eyes or his long-suffering sigh. He gave the younger man a sideways look, but Frederic had already turned his eyes – and a small, relieved smile – back to Georgia.

They spent several minutes more in silence, and Laurence was distracted for a little while as he wondered at the life that continued outside of the room. There were people who counted on him, relied on him to show up to work every day, lives hanging on his every decision, and Frederic did not count himself among those who clamored for his attention. It had been over a year since he’d even seen the man, unaware of his day-to-day living except for the occasional gossip. He studied the captain’s quiet repose and wondered if anyone else would have continued insisting there was something wrong. If he were honest, Laurence would have liked to accept Frederic's stoicism as proof that the man was just as peaceful in spirit, but he had never picked a comfortable lie over a painful truth in his life. He wasn’t about to start now.

The doctor pulled the glove from his pocket, righted it, and walked over to Frederic. The process was much like dressing a mannequin, the metal fingers completely limp and cold to the touch, the swirling patterns of the magic that normally gave it life obviously dormant. Laurence tucked the ends of the glove into Frederic's sleeve and caught his eye again. "What if Georgia hasn't woken up by the time you get to Wheelis?"

"She will," the captain insisted.

"And if she hasn't?" Laurence raised an eyebrow but Frederic didn't look away from the man's skeptical gaze. He already knew what answer the captain would give him. "Alright, fine, but if I sign off on this, you owe me a favor."

"I owe you my life," Frederic said seriously, looking down at his sleeping crewmate. "Ask and it's yours."