The room Leanora was wheeled into had a familiar feel. It was a hospital room, albeit of an unfamiliar style, with a lot of strange equipment, that looked like nothing she had ever seen before. Still, it was a hospital room. She was very, very familiar with hospital rooms. At only nineteen she could write a whole book on the subject. She would title it “Living through Centuries of Medical Science in One Short Lifetime”. She did not, unfortunately, have time to write it.

Each breath was now a struggle, despite a stable flow of pure oxygen coming off a strange device that a nurse placed underneath her face. It looked like a metal ring with glowing gems, that surrounded a thin membrane. The best she could tell, it both separated pure oxygen from the surrounding air and blew it up towards her nose. She could have dedicated a separate chapter in her book to focus on different oxygen machines and variations of artificial lungs. A year ago, one of her lungs had already been replaced by a modern prosthetic in a desperate hope that this would slow her body’s decline. It may have given her a few extra months but that was the limit of what the New Circe City Hospital, the best medical installation on the planet, ran directly by the Earth’s Outer Planets Humanitarian Foundation, could do for her. If only they had seen her ten years earlier the doctors said...

If only. Those two words became the story of her life. If only her grandfather permitted his granddaughters to be genetically tested. If only the family doctor, a trusted retainer that was, unfortunately, her grandfather’s age recognized the early symptoms. If only the clinic in Leiner that her parents finally took her to over her grandparents’ objections would be much better. By the time her condition was correctly identified it was too late, the body decay progressed too far for the retroviral therapy to correct. They did it, of course, and that probably gave her a whole year.

None of the treatments she had been subjected to had a chance at being the cure, but they did win her some time. A month here, two months there, one gets to value these precious months when reaching your next birthday counts as a major miracle. She pulled off three of them already, but it looked like the fourth one was out of reach. She winced as a slight movement resulted in shot of sharp pain. These were coming more and more often. It had been several years since she last managed to stand on her own feet. More than a year since she could comfortably sit. This was her last chance. At something. Of sorts.

She was not sure what the chance was for. There were rumors ... There are always rumors of miracle cures, healers, even witches that promised to cure any and all ills if only you were to pay them a small fee ... By the time she was fourteen she could spot charlatans in the first minute of conversation. Alx said were rumors about her among them now. They stopped coming.

Alx. Alaxandres. She was a viscountess, whether her father renounced his rights to the March title or not. He was a half off-worlder from the Enclave, the exterritorial area surrounding the Circe’s only functional spaceport, ceded to Earth’s Exoplanetary Development Institute by the treaty of Twelve Nawabies. Alx was raised by a single Circe-born mother, his father disappearing off-planet never to be heard from again before he was even born. They met when her parents finally brought her to the Enclave hospital in New Circe. Their rooms were next to each other. At night, when she could not sleep from the shots of pain running down her limbs as the retroviral treatment attempted to mend what could still be mended, he snuck into her room, sat in the guest chair, his own monitor carefully placed on the tiny table next to him, and they talked about everything. She marveled at his experience being a child in the Enclave, while he wished in turn to have been able to walk on the grass of mountain meadows. They talked about politics of Earth and its Enclaves. They argued if the Mother Planet had any obligations towards its colonies, first seeded and forgotten, and then rediscovered. They planned different ways of how they would get off the planet and travel among the thousands of habitable worlds, both knowing full well that this was just not written in their stars.

To her immense surprise they stayed in touch. He was walking, running, and was told he could even one day play sports. He had a future. He returned to school. He was there for her at her worse times, but he never pitied her. He was a shoulder she could lean on. He was her strength when her strength failed. He would not let her give up when she was determined to. How many of those birthdays were really his work?

It was him who first proved to her that among the charlatans and money grabbers there was someone different. They had no name, though some called them Travelers. There was no official acknowledgement of their existence, but any sailor in a spaceport dive could whisper a tale if he had enough drinks in him. In their search they came across a few that appeared to be more than just a drunk fantasy. All of them involved young desperate women. There seemed little common between them, except that each was girl was pronounced incurable. One had broken her back after falling off a horse, her body rejecting the prosthetic neural implant, another had been suffering from blinding headaches and was losing her sight, the third ... There were not many, but all the stories had been remarkably consistent in a few key details. All the girls were noble born, but none had been prominent in social circles, all had been taken from home and subsequently returned months later, all seemingly cured of whatever ailed them, but then promptly left homes for the Enclave and vanished.

For the last year they researched everything they could about them, she found a common thread and she herself dropped the hints where they would be seen. In the end she was not surprised when a Traveler showed up at the door of the small house her parents rented near the University Hospital in Keroon. She was expecting him, and she has taken his offer. It was not a very generous one but it was a chance she otherwise did not have.

Alx helped to get her ravaged body out down to the harbor, and onto a wooden ship waiting for her. They would not let him come aboard with her, and she barely had the strength to turn her head to see him looking at her from the dock. She could not tell in the yellow glow of a streetlight if he was crying. The trip took a lot out of her, she felt, and there was not much left. Her body could not be saved, they told her as much, but her spirit, her mind could take a test and if she emerged victorious, she would have a new life, a new body, perfect and healthy. If she lost, well, she was dying anyways.

Another shot of pain summoned her back to here and now. The intensity of it made it impossible to think, and she panted, waiting for the surge to subside. Panting was not such a great idea, now her surviving lung hurt too. That was one of the conditions, she was not allowed take any painkillers that affected her mind, and any of the ones that did not stopped working for her long time ago. After an eternity the pain receded enough for Leanora to become aware of a commotion outside her room’s door. She tried to turn her head to look. She managed, barely. A tall lean woman that entered into the room was definitely not a doctor. She did not have that look. She looked old and her cold emerald green eyes looked even older. She visibly exuded a sense of power and authority. Leanora could see a cloud of attendant flunkies behind her in the corridor, talking in voices too low for her to discern, even if she was able to understand their language.

The unsmiling woman’s gaze focused on her face and suddenly Leanora felt something cold and domineering push into her mind. Instinctively she pushed back holding onto her willpower.

Good, very good girl, – a cold voice said in her head. The tone was level and devoid any emotion. She felt as if cold stranger’s fingers rummaged around her memories – should be enough for that stupid weakling. Leanora pushed back harder and as the cold presence withdrew. For a splitting moment she felt herself standing over the hospital bed looking down on her own emaciated form. As her conscience rushed back, she caught what had to be a fragment of the tall woman’s thoughts and froze with dread at the realization. The woman did not pay her any further attention, instead she spoke sharply towards her entourage in a strange melodic language, turned around and swept out of the room. Her cloud of attendants followed her.