Lorna LaFey's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

Terra's arm was healing, but Vanessa's warning stuck. One body could not feed the whole sanctuary. Lorna stood in the lab the next morning with a fresh count in her hand. Twelve Kaiju on KaijuX. More arriving each week. She had bought calm with Terra's flesh, and the math still failed. "I need another donor," Lorna said. "A willing one. Or the whole workforce goes feral." Vanessa did not look up from her tray. "Willing matters. A frightened Kaiju gives bad tissue. Fear ruins the sample." She set down a vial. "You need one that trusts you enough to hold still while I cut." Grey climbed down from the high vent where she liked to perch. She had been listening, the way she always did. "Okay so. You're asking a monster to bleed for the others." She folded her arms. "That's not a thing you can order. That's a thing they have to want." Lorna knew Grey was right. She thought of the pens upstairs. New arrivals, still shaking off the fight in them. None of them trusted her yet. Then Azzie slid into the doorway. Azzie was the second Kaiju Lorna ever calmed. A water serpent, teal scaled, wrapped now in a blonde wig and a pink top. She lived for an audience. She kept her distance from anything that might mark her scales. "I heard," Azzie said, clipped. "You want a volunteer." "I want someone the newcomers trust," Lorna said. "They watched you calm them. They follow you." Azzie's jaw tightened. "You want me on a table. With a needle." She looked at Terra's bandaged arm. "I saw what it did to her." "I won't force you," Lorna said. She meant it. Forcing Terra had nearly broken her once. "But if it's only Terra, Terra dies of it." Azzie went quiet. Grey put a stone-soft hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Nobody's dragging you." Azzie shrugged the hand off. She stared at the cold locker, at the thin row of vials that stood between the sanctuary and a night of teeth. Then she pulled the wig back from her neck. "Not the face," she said. "You cut where it won't show. And you tell them I did it." "I'll tell them," Lorna said. Vanessa worked fast. Azzie flinched once, then held still, eyes on the wall. The sample went into the machine. By afternoon a new batch cooled in the tray, drawn from a second body. But Vanessa held two vials to the light, one from each donor. "Two donors now," she said, quiet and final. "It buys more days. It doesn't solve it." She looked at Lorna. "Every Kaiju that heals is a Kaiju I'll have to cut. Your sanctuary grows on their blood. Sooner or later, one of them says no." Lorna took the vials. The calm would hold. And she had turned rescue into a knife she would have to raise again.