Chapter Text
The sun rising over the H-1 didn’t feel alive, it felt manufactured; a drill press of white-hot plate glass pushing down on the horizon and distorting the air into a vibrating puddle of liquified tar and shimmer. Raelle Collar leaned her heavy, slate-gray motorcycle into a viciously tight turn. Rubber squealed an otherworldly keening against pavement as her wheels fishtailed ever-so-slightly before finding grip. Everything smelled putrid; sour, fermenting guava guts, the hot sting of Pacific saltwater brine, and the acrid, oily stench of jet fuel drifting from the military base.
Waimea itself unfurled on the other side of the mountain range like a corporate gulag pretending to smile for postcards. Slapped across the skyline was some obscene hunk of digital billboard flesh pounding out a predatory holo-display in obscene HD definition. Pacific Nexus. We are Hawaii’s Heartbeat. A Luka Voss Initiative. Below this grotesque monstrosity was Luka Voss himself staring down a passerby from fifty feet of composited perfection; skin retouched to sterile porcelain powder, azure irises digitized to pierce and calculate every vehicle crawling into his private kingdom.
Rolling into the gravel lot of Waimea Hospital, tires crunched viscerally like bones cracking beneath her. She shut off the idling engine after a moment, letting heat soak out of the modified engine while she ran her fingers over her three small braids running horizontally along her scalp; braids so tight they felt melded to her skull.
The “Voss Emergency Pavilion” was emerald glass and brushed titanium---an offensive clean-cut spike to the hospital’s older hemorrhaging buildings sagging with arteries of mold and rust rot.
“You’re early, Cession. Most travelers bleed every last second of free time before stepping foot in this shark tank,” a voice snapped impatiently behind her.
Ryan Graham ambled towards Raelle Collar through the ambulance bay rubbing a thick, black smudge of industrial grease onto a faded navy towel. Skin an olive, sunburnt gold the color of honeycombed light filtering through freckles. She was built with a restless, athletic energy, her movements sharp and decisive. On her inner wrist, a sea turtle tattoo spiraled in deep indigo ink, its shell detailed with the weathering of years spent on the water.
“Raelle Collar.” She replied, voice clipped and trained low.
"I know the name. The girl with the task-list and the hundred-yard stare," Ryan smirked, her eyes scanning Raelle with a navigator’s precision. "I’m Ryan. I run the trauma bays. Follow me—I’ll show you where the ghosts live." Heard all about you when you transferred into the Cession. Straight flight of medals on your combat medic record except for a glaring: Refusal to Follow Bureaucratic Protocol. Nearly got you dishonorably discharged twice I hear. Rushing onto that bus of school kids in the Ozarks to pull off a thoracotomy with an ink pen and a pocket knife. They say you saved everyone’s lives, Hell, it probably felt like eternity back there without medical gear. Out here they call that ‘being task oriented’.”
Raelle’s brow didn’t twitch. “Saved whoever needed to live. Paperwork exists for people who have too much time on their shift.”
“Well shit then,” Ryan laughed, digging both hands into her pockets and surveying Raelle like a hawk eyeing its next meal. “You’ll love it here. I run trauma. Come on, let me show you where the skeletons sleep.”
Once inside, the lobby smelled of expensive lilies and ozone, but as they crossed the threshold into the psychiatric wing, the atmosphere shifted. It was sharp with the scent of high-grade antiseptic and the heavy, humid atmosphere of human desperation. A woman stood by a chart rack, her almond-shaped hazel eyes reflecting a "zen-like" stillness that felt like a fortress. Ryan’s demeanor shifted entirely when she laid eyes on the woman. Ryan invaded this stranger's personal space wrapping both freckled hands possessively around the woman’s waist and pulling her flush against her chest. She leaned in, her nose brushing against the woman's temple, a slow, heated display of a relationship that had been forged in the high-pressure environment of the ER.
“Raelle, this is Kai Ione. She’s the psychiatric lead here, the emotional anchor of this island, and my better half," Ryan murmured, her voice dropping into a private, guttural register.
“Hello, Raelle,” Kai replied, smooth and melodic. “Nice to meet you.” Kai didn’t flinch away from Ryan’s hands (if anything she melted further back into her touch) flesh molding to flesh in an unfiltered carnal dance for everyone to see.
Ryan led her down the hall to Pediatrics, where the oxygen faded and the air immediately became frigid. Ryan pointed towards a shorter nurse hovering over a clear plastic bassinet. Darker wavy hair cascaded down her pale porcelain shoulders, all feminine and moved with untaught grace; leaning forward ever-so gently onto the tiny cradle. Scylla’s skin was unnaturally pearly, translucent even as the faintest blue hue from the Pediatrics walls washed across her features. “This is Scylla,” Ryan said, nodding towards the woman.
As she turned to face them and all the oxygen was sucked violently from the room. Raelle swallowed thickly staring into a pair of ice blue eyes so pure, so electric they pinched at her solar plexus. Raelle’s gaze, like a homing beacon, locked seamlessly into place in the center of Scylla’s brain. The sexual tension humming through her body and sending vibrations into her ears.