Dr. Veer Quel's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Veer ran with the wrapped vial against his chest. The sun was low. He needed a lab before the strain rotted in his coat. Then he saw the great stone building ahead. Tall windows lined its front. Carved letters over the door spelled MERCY WARD. He knew this place. He had worked its halls years ago. He knew where the pathology lab was. He climbed the wide steps and pushed inside. Nurses moved between beds in the long hall. No one stopped him. He walked fast to the lower rooms, past the smell of lye and old wood. The lab door was unlocked. He went in and closed it behind him. A tall shelf stood against one wall. Jars, herbs, and wrapped bandages filled every row. A mortar sat on a middle shelf. In the corner stood a plain white sink. Veer turned the fixture. Cold water ran. He washed his hands, then set his vial on the bench. He worked. He warmed and cooled the fluid, drop by drop, and watched it under glass. He crushed herbs to test which killed the strain and which fed it. Hours passed. His notes grew. He learned how the sickness gripped the lungs. He learned what weakened it. When he mixed the right herbs in clean water, the strain died in the glass. It died. He stood still and stared at the dead sample. Two years of empty pages, and now he held the answer. He had a cure. He did not stop. He measured the herbs from the shelf and mixed batch after batch. He filled every clean vial he could find. He lined them along the bench, twenty, then thirty, enough for a ward full of the dying. He thought of her cold hand two years ago. He had held it and said words that were true and not enough. This was not words. This would save the next one. He capped the last vial near midnight. Then he saw the flaw. He picked up one vial and held it to the lamp. The mixture had already gone cloudy at the bottom. He watched a second vial. The same. The cure worked in the glass, but it broke down within hours, just as the raw sample had. Warm and open to air, it died. He had made thirty doses that would be useless by morning. Veer set the vial down. His hands did not shake, but his jaw tightened. The cure was real. He had proven it. But he could not carry it, store it, or send it to the sick. It rotted faster than any patient could reach it. He looked at the shelf of jars and herbs. He needed a way to hold the cure stable, something to keep it alive between the bench and the bed. He had solved the disease. Now he had to solve the vessel, and he had until the next dying patient to do it.