I shouted for the nurses as I went to enable the backup power system, leaning over Duncan to reach the berth console. That was when I heard a choking sound, and looked down.
“Duncan?” I whispered.
A long-fingered, scarred hand reached up and touched my wet cheek before it fell back.
“Duncan.”
My hands shook as I removed his breathing tube, and clenched as he took a ragged, voluntary breath. By then the nurses were beside me. I pressed my fingers to his throat, and felt a slow, sluggish pulse beat where none should have been. “Dævena yepa. It cannot be.”
Duncan’s eyelids opened to slits, and his lips moved. I bent down to hear the faintest whisper of my name before the crowds in the street below began shouting.
“I need transport,” I said, ripping off my funeral robe and handing it to one of the nurses. “Where is ChoVa?”
The female Hsktskt stood behind us. “I’ve already signaled for medevac.” She nodded toward a scout ship docking just outside the chamber balcony. “Surgery is standing by.”
Marel climbed onto the berth and cuddled next to her father. “I told you, Mama,” she said, smiling at me. “He was just asleep.”
At the medical facility, which seemed empty now that all of its dust-crazed patients had been released, ChoVa, Squilyp, and I placed my husband in a critical-care unit and examined him for the next two hours. Duncan came in and out of consciousness, and only spoke a few words, but they were coherent.
“His vitals are very low,” ChoVa said after we had finished a complete imaging scan of Duncan’s torso, “but the damaged organs appear to be functioning as normal. I think he will live.”
Squilyp turned to me. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, completely bewildered.
ChoVa transferred the results of our scans onto the screens at the nurses’ station. The three of us left my husband with his Jorenian and Hsktskt nurses to view the results.
“The sword cut his liver and heart in two,” I said as I pulled up the thoracic scan. “My surgical repairs were not enough to enable them to function as they are now. How can this be happening?”
“Your repairs have vanished.” ChoVa stepped forward and pointed to the areas where I had operated. “There is no scar tissue present in either organ. No lascalpel marks. Nothing.”
I stared at the scans until I thought my eyes would go blind. “I scanned him myself. He was …” Duncan’s memories of being stabbed, and the surgery I and my father performed on him, came back to me. “The chameleon hypercells Joseph Grey Veil put inside Reever. They have to be responsible for this.”
“They did repair the kidney damage, but they degraded quickly and disappeared more than a year ago.” Squilyp retrieved the hematology report and results from the tissue scans. “The test results show abnormal cells permeating the heart and liver, the same way the hypercells were present in his kidney when you returned from Terra. Which is unlikely, if not impossible.”
“They must have been dormant somewhere in his body,” I murmured, glancing back at the critical-care unit. “Perhaps the damage to the organs triggered them.” I recalled something Cherijo had once said to Reever about her ability to heal. “Or they have altered his immune system to be like mine.”
“I do not understand,” ChoVa said. “What is this chameleon? How can cells that have died show up in a patient’s body again? An immune system that repairs organ damage this severe?”
Squilyp began telling her about his observations of the hypercells in my husband’s kidney, but I slipped away and went back to the critical-care berth.
Reever opened his eyes while I scanned him again, just to be sure nothing was failing. “You look beautiful, beloved.”
“So do you, Husband.” The internal damage from the sword had vanished, and I detected no residual brain damage. “How do you feel?”
“Disoriented. I couldn’t see you, but I could feel some things. I heard your voice, and Marel’s.” His gaze never left my face. “Is she all right?”
“She will be now.” I threw aside the scanner and took his hand in mine. “You’ve ruined the Jorenians’ party, you know. As well as the Hanar’s.”
“Have I?”
“There were going to be ten thousand people here to watch your funeral pyre burn tomorrow. Then we were to go to the ship and celebrate in some Jorenian fashion.” I smiled through my tears. “We’ll have to tell everyone to go home now.”
He smiled a little. “Send my regrets.”
The Stardoc Novels
by
S.L. Viehl
PLAGUE OF MEMORY
REBEL ICE
STARDOC
BEYOND VARALLAN
SHOCKBALL
ETERNITY ROW
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S. L Viehl lives in Florida with her
family. A U.S.A.F. veteran, she has
medical experience from both military
and civilian trauma centers.