Page 51 of Command

ALINA

“How are you, Alina?”

Dr. Pertin leaned forward, fingers interlaced beneath his chin, elbows propped atop his table.

“I’m better,” she said truthfully.

Objectively everything was much worse, and much too complicated. But in her body? She’d breathed in Threxin’shakstuff again that morning and itworked.

“I’m glad to hear our strategies have helped tide you over in this difficult time.”

Right… Dr. Pertin had always given her these little tricks to try to do after their NS adjustment sessions. They could help sometimes. But the meat of the treatment was always in the neuroadjustment he’d performed through their NS links. Which she’d been severely lacking. But at least there was the hak.

“Yeah. Me too.” Alina offered a small smile.

“How are you handling what happened at the dock?”

Alina shifted in her seat. “It’s fine. How areyouhandling it?”

He was there too, wasn’t he? The entire command deck was.

“It is, of course, a terrible thing to witness for anybody, myself included.” Dr. Pertin looked at her, as if waiting.

“Well, it was fucking horrendous, obviously.” Alina smoothed her fingers over her trousers. “I just… Those peoplewereaddicted. Killing them like that was not the answer, of course,” she rushed. “I wish he’d just… isolate them somehow.”

Dr. Pertin reclined in his seat, twining his fingers atop the table. “Do you think exorin addiction is contagious between humans, Alina?”

“Well, no, but… It just shouldn’t be normalized.”

“I see.”

“Threxin shouldnothave killed those people,” she reiterated. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. “That was a monstrous thing to do.”

Dr. Pertin scribbled something on his tablet, and Alina was about to say something more convincing when he looked up and pressed his auth to the drawer beneath his desk.

“Well, I have good news,” he said. The drawer slid open with a rustle of the runners. She stared at the small white box he extracted.

“Oh, I don’t need…”

“I know you don’t need it. But you’re in an especially high-stress situation, your duties to Kaia Halena putting you in closer proximity to the situation than many others. Keep it as a backup. If you never have to use it, so be it.”

“Are you sure others don’t need it more?”

“You have a tendency to put others before yourself, Alina.”

“Well, like I said, I am fine, and if someone else needs it more…” She trailed off as he blinked at her.

“Are you afraid I may not be objective, Alina?”

“Maybe a little…” It all sounded so silly.

Dr. Pertin slid the container toward her. “It is alreadykeyed to your print. But there is only a four-day dose here. Use it strategically perhaps, if you use it at all.”

Alina stared at it for a few seconds, then tucked the box into her jacket pocket. “Thanks.”

She wasn’t going to use it, Alina told herself back in her cabin. She’d tried it once years ago and hated it. Her mother had been on it, and it did jack shit for her. Mom had refused neuroadjustments and tried to make do with more primitive methods like talking and medicine. Alina had been determined to avoid Harmonapam, and it worked, until their Neurosyncs got cut off…

Granted, things were now more complicated than anything she’d had to deal with since her mother’s Upload. Alina didn’t know what to do with all the mixed messages she was getting from Threxin. One minute he was calling her a useless pest to “study” and the next he was calming her down, giving her weird mineral stuff from his world. He’d even arranged the appointment with Dr. Pertin. Alina wondered how many others got a chance to process what they’d witnessed Threxin do to those people in the dock with a medical professional. Was she receiving special treatment for what she did?

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