Chapter 13: Fever Treatment
The lock held through the night. The silence behind it was not sleep, but a shallow, pain-racked simulation. Zack drifted in a feverish haze, the thin blanket soaked with sweat. The wounds on his back, never properly cleaned after Vik’s lash, had festered. A deep, throbbing heat radiated from the torn skin. Worse was the ache inside him, a raw, burning insistence that announced an infection taking root.
Morning came not with light, but with the harsh screech of the bolt being forced open from the outside. Kael stood in the doorway, a silhouette against the greasy corridor glow. He took one look at Zack shivering on the cot and sighed, a sound of profound irritation.
“Get up. You’re no good to me dead. Not yet.”
Zack tried to stand. The room tilted. A wave of nausea washed over him, hot and sour. He braced himself against the wall, his skin clammy.
Kael didn’t offer help. He simply turned and walked. “Infirmary. Now. Or I drag you.”
The infirmary was a tomb for the still-breathing. It lay deeper in the complex, a low-ceilinged room where the smell of iron-rich blood fought a losing battle against the chemical stink of cheap disinfectant. Rust-stained surgical trays lay scattered. A single, flickering lumen-strip cast a jaundiced light over lines of cots, some occupied by silent, bandaged forms.
Kael pointed to a stained examination table. “On your front.”
Zack obeyed, the cool metal seeping through his thin pants. He heard Kael rummaging, the clink of glass, the tear of a packet.
“The stripes on your back are a fucking mess,” Kael said, his voice conversational. Cold fingers probed the welts. Zack stiffened, a sharp gasp escaping his lips as the pressure ignited a wildfire of pain. “Pus. Inflammation. Typical.” Something cold and wet swabbed over the wounds, a sensation so sharp it felt like being cut anew. Then a salve was slathered on, thick and greasy. It offered no relief, only a smothering, heavy heat.
“That’ll keep the skin from rotting off. This, however,” Kael said, his hand moving down, pressing against the base of Zack’s spine, “is the real problem.” His fingers trailed lower, over the curve of his ass. There was no tenderness in the touch. It was an inspection. “You’re inflamed inside. Swollen. Fever’s from that. Those fucking animals tore you up good.”
Zack closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the table. Humiliation was a luxury his body could no longer afford. This was just another clinical fact.
“Sepsis isn’t a pretty way to go. Organs shut down. You drown in your own poison.” Kael’s hand withdrew. More rummaging. The sound of a cap unscrewing, a thick, viscous liquid being squeezed. “I’m not wasting expensive intravenous antibiotics on pit-fodder. We use the direct route.”
Zack heard him step closer. A strong, medicinal smell, sharp with alcohol and herbs, filled the air. “This is a medicated suppository. Thick. It’ll coat the lining, kill the infection at the source.” A pause. “You’ll take your medicine like a good little soldier, or I’ll let the sepsis finish what those men started. Your choice.”
There was no choice. There was only the metal table and the fever and the certainty of a slow, internal death.
“Do it,” Zack muttered, his voice a dry rasp.
Kael didn’t bother with gentleness or preparation. He grabbed a handful of Zack’s hip, yanking him up onto his knees. The cold air hit his exposed skin. He felt the broad head of something—not a medical instrument, something thicker, blunt—press against him. It was slick with the cold gel, but its size was immense, a brutal invasion designed for utility, not care.
“Breathe out,” Kael commanded, and shoved.
The stretch was unbearable. Tender, torn tissues screamed in protest. It wasn’t a dick, but it was just as violating, a cold, unyielding intrusion that burned with the sharp medicine. Zack grunted, his fists clenching, knuckles white against the table. He pushed back against the pain, breathing in short, sharp gusts.
Kael worked it in deeper with a gritty, relentless pressure, twisting slightly as if searching for the exact point of infection. “There we go. Got to make sure it’s all coated. Every last raw inch.” He paused, the object buried to the hilt inside Zack, a foreign, punishing presence. “You feel that burn? That’s the medicine. Think of it as a lesson. Your body isn’t yours anymore. It’s a tool. I maintain my tools.”
He held it there for a long moment, then began a slow, excruciating withdrawal, only to thrust it back in hard, ensuring the medication was spread. Zack saw stars, a white flash behind his eyelids. It wasn’t arousal—it was a brutal, clinical violation that bypassed shame and landed squarely on a primal plain of torment.
After a final, grinding push, Kael pulled the object free with a wet, obscene sound. Zack slumped forward, shaking, a cold sweat breaking out over his fever-hot skin. The medicinal burn inside him was a new kind of fire.
Kael cleaned the implement in a basin with a detached air. “The fever should break by tonight. The inflammation will ease in a day or two.” He tossed a cleanish rag onto the table next to Zack. “You’ll be sore. But you’ll be alive. You have another fight in seventy-two hours. A real one. Not some crowd-pleasing brawl. An arranged match. You lose that, and I sell your contract to a smelter crew. They’ll work you to death in a month. It’s a less poetic end than sepsis, but just as final.”
He walked to the door. “The lock on your room only works from the inside. Remember that. It’s the only piece of control you have. Don’t fucking waste it.”
The door clanged shut.
Zack lay on the table, the chemical burn inside him a screaming testament to his existence. He thought of the lock. He thought of the cold, calculating pressure of Kael’s hands. He thought of the men in the barracks, their faces blurred by pain but their voices distinct in his memory vault.
The medicine burned. The fever murmured through his veins. But in the core of him, in the vault where he stored the broken things, a new schema was forming. It was not a plan. It was a principle.
He would learn the rules of this place, not to play by them, but to shatter them. He took the rag and wiped the sweat from his face. Then, moving with slow, deliberate agony, he pushed himself upright, off the table, and stood on his own two feet.
The burn was a reminder. The lock was a promise. He walked back to his room, one step at a time, each movement a fresh sting of betrayal from his own body. He bolted the door. In the dark, he cataloged the pains, each one a landmark on a map of survival. He waited for the fever to break. He waited for the fight to come. He was a tool, now. But even tools could be turned into weapons.