[b]Mid-Morning, Late Spring, Year 2198[/b]

There was only so much Alexander could do to save a person from losing their battle with the greater strand of the Canilo virus. Truthfully, there really wasn’t much that he [i]could[/i] do. His most recent patient was a tall, gangling, blond teenager who was just beginning his third week of infection. The boy’s name was Colin Evon, and had not long been rescued after barely surviving a mauling by a bear during his assigned hunt. The crude stitches on his rib cage were still present as he lay shirtless, and near lifeless, on the infirmary’s cot, shivering with fever.

“Please,” he begged. His lips were chapped and bluish, his voice cracking with the whispers of death. “I-I’m so cold.”

“Your fever is too high,” Alexander frowned without turning, knowing what the boy wanted. From a small refrigerator, he retrieved a bottle of cold and presumably clean water before returning to Colin’s side. “I can’t give you the blanket right now, okay? Here, drink this, you’re horribly dehydrated.”

The cold water was spat weakly out of the boy’s mouth the exact second that it entered. Growing weary from his tireless efforts at helping this hard-headed teen, Alexander let out a heavy, pointed sigh.

“You have to drink,” he said, “or you’ll only die faster.”

This elicited no further response from Colin, other than the fact that he weakly turned on his side, away from Alexander, who let himself out of the room immediately after. If the boy didn’t want to be helped, then there was nothing he could do to help him. It happened like that a lot with patients that came in who were gravely ill. Most of them had suffered some kind of previous trauma or loss anyway -- everyone had. There were a lot of things that a lot of people couldn’t handle, people who let it suck the life right out of them. Alexander refused to be one of those people. He’d literally been personally dealing with death since his first year of life.

[i]Besides,[/i] he reasoned with himself, [i]there are too many males in the area. We can afford to have a few die here or there.[/i]

Lately, there had been an increase of deaths caused by the greater virus. It was becoming a huge concern within the Saint camp, as the virus was becoming more and more difficult to contain. Most people were able to sit it out, and didn’t seem liable to acquire it again. However, there was still quite a few people who were dying from the illness. People who were dying slow, painful deaths, with seemingly no symptom relief no matter how Alexander treated them. He remembered his first year in the camp -- he’d caught the virus himself.

[i]Maybe,[/i] he wondered, [i]this has been going on since before I got here. Maybe this is why they were so quick to accept me.[/i]

The thought puzzled him for but a moment before another patient was knocking on his door.

[hr]
[@CLIW]

Fren was in a hurry.

Assisting in murder was not something she was new to, however it was still something that got her adrenaline pumping. And quite frankly, she was getting too old for this. Though, most of the younger men just couldn’t resist the chance at having a bit of fun with an older, experienced woman. It was usually the younger ones who had a bit of money, which would have been passed down from parents to children. They were also the easiest to seduce.

But as Fren grew older, she began seeing the young men more as children. Having sex with and then helping murder individuals who she saw as children was seriously weighing on her conscience, not that she’d had much of one anyway. There hadn’t be a recent job she’d done that didn’t make her feel ill afterwards.

As she ran down the remnants of what was once a road, she clutched a potato sack full of chems, weapons, and ammo. There was a woman directly ahead of her, traveling with a small dog of some sort. However, also directly ahead of her was the Boar camp she was heading to. It awed her that the woman seemed to be walking fearlessly near the camp. She neared the woman, and pretended to run right into her.

“Oh, my dear,” Fren said, clutching tighter to the sack she carried. “I am so, so very sorry. Dear, please, don’t go any further this way. The Boars are right ahead. I’m just a slave. I really must get going.”

Then, Fren scurried away -- except now she was clutching two crude spears with glass heads. As she grew closer to the entrance of the camp, she glanced back foolishly to see if the woman had any suspicion.