Chapter 5

The bus full of people and livestock rumbled to a stop in the center of town. People flowed off of it, including Claudia. She had never been to Peru and was convinced she never wanted to come back. Lima and Iquitos hadn't been bad, but as she followed Genna's trail into the jungle, she was convinced this is a place she never, ever wanted to return.

Claudia walked up to a woman and asked for directions to the clinic. The woman pointed as she gave them. Claudia walked through the rutted dirt streets until she saw a faded sign with the notable Clinicá on it. She entered. The waiting area was full of sick and injured. A rotund woman sat behind the front desk. Claudia walked up and spoke to her. It took her several attempts to find out if there was a sick woman with abdomen pains there. Luckily, HIPA had not reached Ecuador and the might Benjamin was what it took to get answers. The woman there pointed to the house where the sick stayed, el hospital.

Claudia followed the directions up the street to this house. She walked in, past a man with a machine gun. He eyed her as their paths crossed but didn't stop her. She turned at the first door and stared. The room was jammed with cots. There was barely enough room for the one nurse to get between beds. Claudia searched the room and didn't find Genna. She tried the next room with no luck. In the third room, she found her. She was on a cot in the corner, half in the fetal position. She was pale and sweating. Claudia squeezed between the beds and sat down next to her. She saw a bowl of dirty water with a dirty rag nearby. She scrunched her face but picked up the rag and wrung it out, then laid it on Genna's head. She could feel the young woman's fever on her hand. Claudia moved her hand down to her abdomen and lifted Genna's shirt. There was no physical wound, but her stomach was extended. Something was definitely wrong.

"Relative of yours?" someone asked.

She turned. A man in a suit stood at the end of the bed. He was tall and thin, with defined features that made him ruggedly handsome. Two men with shotguns stood behind him.

"Yes."

"She is very ill. The nearest hospital is a day away but she needs to be there instead."

Claudia smiled. "I'll take any help I can get, thank you. Can we leave—"

"It is three thousand just to get her out of the hospital. Four thousand for the vehicle, and another four thousand for the trip."

Claudia did a quick conversion of US currency to pesos. "I have six thousand of it on me now. I can give you the rest when we get to someplace with an ATM or bank."

He smiled. He had several rotting teeth.

"US dollars, little one."

Claudia's heart sank. "What?"

"Eleven thousand in US dollars."

"I don't have that."

"That is a shame. She is a lovely woman. Perhaps you should come back tomorrow when you have more money." He motioned to one of the men.

One came forward and grabbed Claudia's arm.

"Hey! Let me stay with her at least! She's unconscious, it's not like we're running anywhere. I can make some phone calls. Just let me stay! Let me – Go!"

She pulled away on the steps of the house and stumbled down them into the street, in front of a car. Claudia quickly hopped back to avoid being hit. She turned. The man had taken a position in front of the house.

She spun around and walked around a street corner. Once around she flattened against the wall and moved to the edge so she could see the house. She pulled the Farnsworth from her pocket and tapped the call button. Artie appeared.

"I found her. We have a problem." Claudia looked at him. "You know that muscle you thought we might need when we found her?"

Artie's face tensed with his anger. "Find a place to stay out of sight for two hours. I'll contact you with coordinates." And Artie was gone.

Claudia smirked when she glanced back at the hospital. "Suckers." She headed down the street to look for a good place to lie low for a few hours.

#

Miguel was startled when the door of his dining room burst open.

In Spanish his guard told him, "The hospital is being raided by Americans!"

He leapt to his feet and ran out, followed by his guard. They got to the hospital as two American soldiers came out of the door with a gurney and the girl the young woman had come for the day before. Soldiers kept weapons trained on his guards as they moved across the street toward the helicopter waiting in an intersection free of electrical wires.

Miguel ordered his men to stand down. The girl wasn't worth losing men over. They loaded the girl but the other soldiers didn't get on right away. From out of the helicopter came the girl's visitor from the day before. Under guard of four soldiers and the helicopter machine gun, she walked to the middle of the street in front of the hospital and sat a silver briefcase on the street. The group returned to the helicopter and it lifted off.

Miguel stared at the metal briefcase she'd left in the street. For several minutes nothing happened. He motioned one of his men to it. The men hesitated, but eventually walked out to it. He poked it with his rifle. Nothing happened. He crouched on a knee, prepared to leap away, and lowered it to the ground. He popped the latches open and lifted the lid. He rose and backed away.

"It's money."

Miguel walked up to the case and found a small stack of U.S. one hundred bills sitting in it. Taped to the stack was a folded note. He picked it up and opened the note. Handwritten on the note was:

Here is two thousand. Next time, agree to my terms and treat me nicer. I would have paid you five thousand, but you made me break a nail, asshole.

Miguel couldn't be mad. Perhaps it wasn't six thousand, but at least this girl was fair. And after all, his man did break her fingernail.

#

Pete woke slowly, trying to pull free from the fog in his head. He stared at the ceiling for a long time before he realized his pain wasn't nearly as bad and that he didn't feel like he was suffocating in a furnace. He turned his head. There was a water bottle sitting on the bedside table. He reached for it but let out a grunt when his side started hurting more. He let his arm drift back onto the bed, staring longingly at the water bottle.

Myka appeared out of nowhere. She put a straw in the bottle, bent the end, and lowered it to his lips. He drank the entire bottle.

"More?" she asked.

He shook his head. She sat the water bottle down.

"I feel awful," he told her.

"You look awful. Need a shower, you're scruffy looking, need a shave, hair combed, running around in in a dress with no back… I couldn't stand living like this!"

Myka smiled and Pete returned it. If she was joking with him, it meant he was getting better.

"I'm okay?" he asked.

"You're short a kidney, but yeah, you're okay."

"What happened to my kidney?"

"Do you still remember releasing Genna from the teapot?"

"Yeah. That and then some."

"You did it without a tawiz amulet and you two are bound. What happens to one of you, happens to the other."

What Genna told him suddenly made sense. "Like conjoined twins."

"We'll say that. It turns out that while you were tackling an artifact thief, she was climbing a mountain. When you ate cement with the guy, it caused her to lose her grip and fall. She broke several right ribs, two of which punctured her kidney. When they opened her in surgery she had internal bleeding and her kidney had gone sepsis. They removed it and then your kidney failed. Luckily Vanessa suspected that was going to happen and had you in a surgery room when they took out Genna's."

"Is Gena here?"

"No. She's in Iquitos, Peru. Claudia is staying with her until she can fly back to South Dakota."

"She can't go back in the teapot."

"You get to go home in four days, Pete. We can talk about it then."

"Please, you have to convince the Regents not to put her back in the teapot."

She offered a tight smile. "You almost died, Pete. I am not going to argue for her to—"

"I was in a prison in Iraq for six months and they put me in a hole," Pete told her.

Myka's words froze on her open lips.

"When Genna and I meet in our dreams, we meet in that damned teapot. It's dark, the floor is cold and gray, and in the darkness, there is… something in there with us. That doesn't matter, but it reminds me of that hole. If you put her back in the teapot, make her stay there, I think she'll lose it, and then I'll lose it. Please, don't put her back in there."

Myka had watched Pete's EKG monitor show a steady rise in his heart rate. It was nearing the warning line. She heard his breathing grow shallow. This memory he had was terrifying him. She leaned over, laying a hand on his head, and nodded.

"Okay. Now get some sleep."

Pete obeyed. When the EKG monitor was back to normal, she returned to her recliner.

Artie sat in the chair next to it, reading a newspaper.

"You were so adamant," Artie said.

"About what?"

"Putting her back in the teapot."

Myka looked at her hands. She rubbed one palm with her thumb.

"And you still are, I see."

She looked at Artie. "Was Pete in an Iraqi prison?"

Artie nodded.

"He never talks about what happened to him in the military."

"I imagine things happened that he doesn't care to remember."

Myka nodded.

Artie sat his paper aside. "Okay. It's time I remembered what happened while you two were in Seattle."

Myka reached in her bag beside the chair and pulled the teapot out. She watched Artie put his glasses in his shirt pocket and shift in his chair until he was comfortable.

"This is going to hurt," Myka warned.

"I'm ready for it."

Myka held the teapot out in front of him. Artie stared, as if he were having second thoughts.

"She can't go back in this thing, Myka," Artie said.

"He's safer if she does."

Artie looked at her. "Their bond turned them into artifacts, but as long as they have each other to balance it out, they may just have a chance to survive. But if that woman loses herself in this teapot, we will lose Pete. Do you understand that?"

Myka looked at the teapot. "It's not really my decision, is it?"

"No. Not really mine either."

She looked at him. "Grab the teapot and hold on tight."

Artie reached up, hesitated, and then latched onto the teapot with both hands. He gasped as his irises expanded and lost memories were forcibly returned.