Page 21 of The First Omega Made
“I don’t like him either, man. His vibe is like, way off.” Merriel’s ever-present voice brought me a modicum of peace. I’d take what I could get. But still, what he’d said bothered me and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“Merriel, repeat those words you couldn’t translate from him back there.” I furrowed my brow and listened. Familiar but foreign…
I brought up a call screen with a gesture midair, calling Sarge. “Hey, I got a sound byte. Hear this and see if you understand.”
Sarge, groggy and disheveled on the other end, perked up and Merriel, presumably, played it for him. His half-asleep face went full on in a wide panic. “Who said this?”
“Shafa.”
“Fuck! Stay where you are. Is he there? Are you safe?” Sarge jumped around clawing clothes on.
“He can’t come into the clinic.”
“Wait… Did you take photostereoscopic images of him on resuscitation?” His wild-eyed gaze in the camera made my heart thunder.
“Yeah… Wh—” I flinched when he demanded I send them, barking the order as if I weren’t just making out with him hours ago for the dozenth time in days.
I sent over the images, and Sarge stared at them with searching eyes, revulsion thick. “He asked if you wereone of us. AndI smell you.Hecan sense me on you, Doc.”
His eyes focused on something offscreen.
Sarge’s face paled. “No…”
I’d not focused on it before, but something looked odd about the creature’s lung…it had an extra lobe. One that I realized wasn’t a lobe at all.
We said it at the same time.
Colthraxian.
“Be careful. I’m going to do some research. Stay out of his way.” Sarge stared at me with open eyes full of fear and pain. “Come back to me as soon as you can.”
Our connection ended and Merriel muttered, “Dude… Not cool.”
Chapter Eleven
Sarge
It didn’t make sense. For as long as I could remember, we weren’t supposed to infect a Naleucian. The very biology of them was said to be toxic to us… But that didn’t matter to Shafa, apparently.
It didn’t concern me that he’d not taken over a heart. That was the easiest target for a human, but we could nestle into pleural cavities, lungs, kidneys—you name it. Anything that had sufficient blood flow and access to the spinal cord. We weren’t picky.
“Merriel, can you give me access to Nirem and Raziel’s Naleucian history and anatomy files?” I took deep breaths and stilled myself.
“What for, man? Is it something bad? Like, I’ve got the heebie-jeebies over all this shit and I’m beginning to think Cap needs in on it.” It was nice to know Merriel’s loyalty was strong.
“I need to know how he’s infected a Naleucian and what I can do to make him go away.” I waited for the file tree to appear on a screen hovering before me and reluctantly, they did, fading in gray-scale to let me know they were locked.
“I’m giving you twenty-seven hours. Then I’m telling Noel and Cap. Sorry, dude, but I got a baby to protect, you know?”
“Honestly, that’s more than fair.” I sighed as the files unlocked, and I searched through them with tags likeparasiteandColthraxian.Searching did nothing as I flipped through files, looking up Naleucian illnesses, and Merriel’s tentative voice spoke up.
“There’s a hidden file in here, man. It’s like, integrated into a photo. Want me to decrypt it?”
“Of course.” I waited as Merriel beeped and booped pointlessly and opened up an image of two regal-looking Naleucian males holding a pale and bright-eyed little hatchling—a baby Noel.
The first file was a small text document in an old word processor format.
I opened it, titledto our hatchlingroughly in romanized character Naleucian.
