Page 102 of Shadow Blind

This too, she remembered from the vigil beside Donnie’s bed. The cramping muscles and coffee-soured stomach. The combination of fear and hope every time a doctor approached.

Kait stirred, a frown knitting the furrowed skin of her forehead. “Cosky said it’s a four-and-a-half-hour trip to this compound they’re attacking. They left at twelve-thirty last night, which would put them on site around 05:00 a.m. Even with their hike into where that rat bastard is hiding out, they should have arrived hours ago. Their mission should be over. They should be on their way home.” She bit her lip before adding, “If things had gone wrong, and they’d taken casualties, the doctors here would know about it, don’t you think? They’d have been warned about incoming wounded, right?”

“I would think so,” Demi agreed. Although, while the clinic would need to prepare for incoming casualties, would anyone tell them what was going on?

For Kait, yeah, they probably would. As the base’s strongest healer, she’d be on the need-to-know list. The only reason Kait hadn’t been on the helicopter with Cosky was because she’d wanted to be around to heal Aiden if given the chance. The rest of the base’s healers had accompanied Wolf and his men. They’d keep the injured alive long enough to return to base. Once home, Kait could heal the catastrophic injuries.

They hadn’t spoken much over the past twenty-four hours. They were locked in their own thoughts. Kait was caught between anxiety over Cosky and fear for her brother. And Demi was caught between memories of Donnie’s final moments and fear for Aiden’s current condition. Plus, there was the constant memory of Aiden’s expression when she’d broken things off with him; the realization and pain spreading across his face and the gut-wrenching emptiness in his eyes. His reaction still haunted her.

That memory might be the last one she had of him. The knowledge of that sat like a lead weight in her chest.

When the door next to the nurse’s station opened and the tall, lean frame of Dr. Brickenhouse walked through, Demi and Kait rose to their feet. The muscles in Demi’s face and arms tightened as she’d braced for bad news.

“Ladies.” The doctor stopped before them. “Aiden remains unconscious, but he’s responding well to the medications we’ve started him on. His fever has come down and his heart and respiration have stabilized.” He let them absorb that before continuing. “We still don’t know what the autoimmune reaction is in response to, nor do we know whether his earlier symptoms will return as soon as we stop the medications.”

The breath Kait released sounded choked. “What about all the tests you’ve been running? You looked for nanobots, right? Did you find any?”

They had found nothing in the earlier tests they’d run. But they had run even more tests since then. The nanobot question was of utmost importance to everyone. Kait wouldn’t be allowed to touch him if there was any sign of bot activity. If she couldn’t touch him, she couldn’t heal him.

The doctor’s hesitation was enough to catch Demi’s breath and tighten every muscle in her body. Kait noticed his reaction as well.

“Doctor?” Kait’s voice tightened into hoarseness.

“Yes…well.” He sighed and peered at Kait over the frames of his glasses. “We’re not quite certain what we found in his blood beneath the electron microscope.” Removing his glasses, he methodically polished the lenses with the hem of his white coat. “The EM picked up fragments of…something. But we’re uncertain what they are. While they have some of the organic markers of what we found in his teammate’s blood, they aren’t fully developed nanobots. These fragments are somewhere around a hundredth of the size of what we found in his teammate’s bodies, which were microscopic to begin with. We’re testing them, but we’re uncertain what they are.” He paused and added quietly, “Or what we’re dealing with.”

“Where did you find them?” Demi twisted her fingers together. Did this mean Aiden was infected, after all?

“In his blood,” the doctor said as he put his glasses back on and adjusted the frames. “These fragments are too microscopic to show up on the brain scans. To get a look there, we’d have to biopsy his brain and look at the sample through the electron microscope—which we aren’t willing to consider at this point.”

“What about his skin?” Kait asked, holding the doctor’s gaze. “Did you find any of these fragments on his skin?”

From the knowing look that settled across the doctor’s face, he knew exactly why she was asking. “We did not. But that doesn’t mean he’s been cleared for a healing. Caution is in order. We simply don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”

Demi’s knees joined her fingers in shaking. “How many fragments did you find?”

The doctor shrugged. “Three.”

Three fragments, at least that they’d found. Aiden could be loaded with those things.

“Are you trying to get rid of them?” Demi asked.

If those fragments had some of the organic markers that infected Aiden’s teammates, they were dangerous. They had to be purged from his body. What if they grew into full nanobots? What if they multiplied?

Brickenhouse sighed, looking momentarily exhausted. “We don’t know what they are. We don’t know what they’ll react to, or if they’ll react to anything at all. They’re not mobile. They’re not alive.” He shook his head. “We’re assessing them. Once we have more information, we’ll reevaluate the situation.”

Which wasn’t reassuring. By the time they figured out what they were dealing with, it could be too late to save Aiden.

The doctor turned away. Kait started and took off after him. “Doctor, hang on a minute.”

Demi tuned out Kait’s voice as she questioned the man about Wolf and his men, and whether the clinic had received news of casualties. She was too focused on other questions.

Like what if these fragments they’d found in Aiden’s blood were the reason he was so sick? If the docs couldn’t flush them out of his body, could he survive with them inside him? Or would the autoimmune response eventually overwhelm his system?

Would the damn things kill him before the doctors could figure out what they were and how to get rid of them?

Chapter forty

Day 17

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