The medward was hidden in the lower levels of the inn, just under the main floor. A sterile room that could be hermetically sealed off in an emergency, it housed a decontamination shower, a storage with six different stasis pods, and until recently, a single ancient med unit that was barely up to the task. Fortunately, we had junked it three months ago and replaced it with three brand new, state-of-the-art robotic stations, upgrading our medbay to the full medward.

The new med units were a gift from Maud. My sister was now the Maven of House Krahr, which meant she was in charge of all of their diplomatic efforts, and her position came with a significant salary. She bought the units for us with her new Maven money and had them sent over on one of Arland’s scout ships. According to Maud, Gertrude Hunt was seeing more action than an average vampire stronghold on a hostile planet, and thinking of us trying to cope with our outdated med unit kept her from sleeping at night.

When I was a kid, Maud would buy me cute clothes at discount sites online. Now she bought me advanced medical equipment. Nothing really changed. My big sister was still trying to take care of me.

I looked at Gorvar sprawled in a complex medunit. He had four deep lacerations that carved him from his belly halfway up his side. Something had dug into his stomach with its claws and dragged them up, ripping gashes in his flesh. The edges of the wounds were trying their best to turn necrotic, but Auul wolves had insane immune systems. It was part of the reason their DNA had been used to bioengineer werewolfism. Whatever contamination had invaded his body had to be very potent, because normally the wounds would’ve closed by now.

Gorvar had lost a lot of blood. Our old medunit wouldn’t have known what to do with him, but the new one analyzed his injuries in seconds. It had pumped him full of antibiotics and fluids, and its robotic surgery arms repaired the cut in his liver, cleaned his wounds, cut off a very thin sliver of the injured tissue to combat the worst of the necrosis, and sealed the lacerations. His pulse was weak but steady, and the medical unit’s read outs assured me that in its opinion, he was stable.

Now I just had to wait for Sean to come back.

He had smelled corruption by Wilmos’ store. Wilmos wasn’t at the store, so Sean would follow that corrupted trail. He told me before that the stench of corruption lingered much longer than normal scents. It stained everything it touched.