“You!” a death rider behind her barked. “Take her to the infirmary!”
Ling bent down to help the fallen mermaid. “Can you swim?” she whispered.
The woman shook her head.
“You’ve got to. I’ll help you.
“Leave me. Let me die. I don’t have any strength left.”
“No,” Ling said firmly. “Put your arm around my neck. I’ve got enough strength for both of us.”
The mermaid did so and Ling lifted her.
“There we go….That’s it, one stroke at a time….It’s not much farther,” Ling coaxed.
The infirmary was only about thirty yards away. If she could just get the mermaid there and hand her off to one of the workers, she might still be able to make it to the munitions warehouse in time for her morning rations. She was so hungry, it hurt.
Flimsy and spare, the infirmary was run by prisoners who had been doctors and nurses before they were taken. Medical knowledge was valuable. Prisoners who had it were sometimes permanently exempted from Selection. Ling hoped Tung-Mei would be. She’d been studying medicine at the University of Qin and was stolen from her village while on break visiting her parents. Through the infirmary’s open double doors Ling spotted her bunkmate rushing from patient to patient.
The survivors from the night shift had just arrived. Ling saw mermaids and mermen bleeding and thrashing as they struggled to pull oxygen into their lungs. She knew they didn’t have long. All Tung-Mei could do was ease their suffering, not stop it.
“What happened?” she asked, as Ling approached her with the sickly mermaid.
“She collapsed.”
“Anything broken or bleeding?” Tung-Mei asked briskly.
Ling shook her head.
“Take her to the back. Find her a cot. This area’s for critical patients only,” Tung-Mei ordered.
Ling nodded and swam to where her friend had pointed. The mermaid’s head was lolling now. She was only half-conscious. There were no empty cots.
A merman was bent over another patient, taking her pulse. Ling waited until he was finished, then said, “This mermaid’s sick and I can’t find a cot. Where should I put her?”
“You’ll have to lay her on the floor,” the merman said.
He rose and turned to her, and as he did, Ling gasped. For a few seconds she felt as if she might collapse herself.
She was looking at a face she knew so well, but never expected to see again. The face of a dead man. A ghost.
The face of Shan Lu Chi.
Her father.
THE MERMAN WENT pale. His eyes widened. “Ling?” he whispered.
Speechless, Ling nodded.
Her father enveloped her in a fierce embrace. And for a moment, in his arms, Ling was no longer in the hellish labor camp, she was in a place of love and light. She was home.
All too soon, however, he released her. And the love that had lit up his face was immediately replaced by other emotions: fear and sorrow. Ling understood. She was so happy to see him, so amazed that he was alive, but she was devastated, too, to know he was in this horrible place.
“How long have you been here?” he asked. “Your brothers…your mother…are they—”
Ling shook her head. “They’re not here. I wasn’t taken from our village. I was picked up in the waters of East Matali. On my way home. Three weeks ago.”
“East Matali? What were you doing there?”
“It’s a long story, Dad. What are you doing here?” asked Ling. “We thought you were dead!”
“You two!” a voice shouted. “Why are you talking instead of working?” He narrowed his eyes. “And you”—he pointed at Ling—“you don’t belong here.”
It was a guard. He’d just swum into the infirmary. Ling and her father immediately stood at attention, eyes straight ahead, as they were required to when being addressed by a death rider.
“She brought a patient in, sir,” Shan said. “I asked her to stay and help me. We’re overwhelmed. Several prisoners have died from purple fever. The bodies remain contagious after death. We need to get them into the death cart and out of the camp as quickly as possible.”
The guard recoiled at the word contagious. He put a hand over his nose and mouth. “Be quick about it!” he ordered, backing away. Then he hurried out of the infirmary.
Ling looked at her father fearfully. He had aged greatly since she’d last seen him. His black hair was shot through with gray now, and his strong shoulders were stooped. Had he been exposed to the deadly disease? Had she?
“There’s no such thing as purple fever. I made it up,” he said quietly. “The death riders are as stupid as they are brutal.”