Chapter Eleven
Rachel
Working in the medical station, I felt like a water skier handed a snowboard and shoved down the side of a mountain. Sure, in theory, skiing was skiing. Balance. Weight shifts. Dancing with gravity as you raced over the surface. But this lab was different than anything I’d ever seen before.
A medical officer named Krael jumped to assist me the moment I’d walked in. The doctor ignored me, which was fine. But I didn’t like their instruments. I didn’t trust what I couldn’t see or measure myself. There was too much room for error in their gadgets. Who did the programming? How did I know whoever had calibrated the things even knew what they were doing? And were they designed to be used on a human being? Or were they full of alien physiology only?
I frowned at the screen before me, populated with vitals and blood analysis done with the doctor’s handy little magic wand. “This doesn’t make sense. I need a biochemical analysis of his infected tissue only. Not this.” I waved my hands in the air. “This won’t work.”
Krael leaned over my shoulder. “That is the complete chemical analysis, Lady Rone. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to know what was in his entire body all at once, I only want to know what was in the tissue around his implants. Specifically, the black tissue. And the implants themselves.”
He shook his head. “Why? Quell affects the mind.”
I was going to strangle him. Where was a fucking punch biopsy, a simple slide kit and a basic microscope when I needed them? “Look. I don’t care what was in his head. I’ve seen your reports. The macrophage levels in the tissue surrounding the Hive implants are way too high. It’s like he just got the implants and his body is having a massive inflammatory reaction. I need to know what’s there. I need a microscope and slides. I need a complete blood count that I do myself.”
“I do not know what you are asking for, my lady.”
Doctor Surnen walked toward us, his nose buried in a tablet display screen. He hadn’t exactly been friendly, but he hadn’t gotten in my way either. “The human immune system is primitive, Krael. Primitive and highly aggressive. A human body will literally destroy itself trying to fight off a disease.” He raised his gaze to me and lifted his brows. “Or while attacking a foreign body.”
Krael titled his head. “Such as the Hive implants.”
“Yes.” I wanted to leap into the air. I’d been arguing with this guy for over an hour. “I need to look at the surface conformations of the absorbed proteins. I think his body was fighting the Hive implants. But there is too much activity. It’s like the implants were new. His inflammatory response would indicate an early phase cascade reaction instead of chronic. Please, can’t you guys conjure a basic microscope? Some glass slides? I’ll handle the blood counts and tissue samples myself.”
Doctor Surnen nodded at the S-Gen unit in the corner of the medical station. “Try asking for one. Perhaps the system has your microscope in its database.”
I nodded and walked to the S-Gen pad, placing my palm on the activation switch, as I’d been taught. We were in a large work area, away from the main treatment rooms. It felt like this room had been built to handle triage, or large-scale emergencies. Four surgical beds were spaced in the center of the room like statues, the bright lights, hovering wands and gadgets something I would work to understand later. Right now, I just wanted a fucking microscope. I needed to see the Hive implants. Krael told me the Hive technology was biosynthetic, engineered, living tissue that actually fused with the host’s cells. I needed to see what they looked like.
Maybe the two cells weren’t getting along very well. Based on the white cell counts I’d seen coming from Captain Brooks’ blood work, his body had been in a full-scale war with something. And that something was attacking my mate right this moment, eating away at his flesh, waiting to kill him, just like it killed Brooks.
Over my dead body.
“Tilting LED microscope, cytology configuration, 3500 times magnification.” I had little hope that my request was going to work, but hopped up and down once when the piece of equipment materialized on the S-Gen pad. Krael explained that it was an adaptation of their current transport technology. S-Gen stood for Spontaneous Matter Generator, and anything that had been programmed into the system could be acquired with a basic verbal request, from food to clothing to…lab equipment.
Now I had my microscope. Complete with the stupid power cord. I asked for glass slides and slide covers next. Picking up the end of the cord, I turned to the doctor. “Okay. Where can I plug this in?”