Page 62 of Salvation
“How long was I out?”
“No idea.” Dante’s weight shifted and Nick gasped at the stinging rush of blood returning to his leg. “Would you happen to know how much time we have left? Waiting for the next bout of pain has redefined tedium for me.”
“No idea.” Seemed like a nice generic answer. Nick levered himself into a sitting position. “Not long, given the body part under siege.”
“Your report said that the contaminant attacks the victim’s weakest point. That it has attacked my brain is disheartening.”
Terrians and Matirans were biologically identical, and Anferthians were close yet maybe different enough to trigger this accelerated scenario. Could their physical differences be the key? Or, maybe it was the Gift he and Dante had, but that didn’t explain why the contaminant chose to attack their brains. “Dante, I’m going to try scanning myself. I really want to know why this thing acts as it does.”
“Do you require assistance?”
“No. Just listen, I’ll be giving you a blow-by-blow as I figure things out.” He closed his eyes and extended his senses through his body. “The contaminant is also in my brain as well, as I suspected.” Why it had attacked both of them in the same locale was a mystery. It wasn’t consistent with how it struck at the weakest points of the dissenters’ physiology. How could it determine this was the place to go in both him and Dante? “If…no, wait. Dante, I’m going to try to get inside this thing.”
“Are you certain that is wise?”
“No, of course not. But I’m doing it anyway.” Anything he found out, he could write down for Sakura and the search parties to find.
“Be careful, Nick.”
He opened his eyes a slit and gave his mentor a grin. “You know me.”
“Yes,” Dante mumbled. “I certainly do.”
Centering himself, he redirected his Gift to his brain. The contaminant’s methodical and repetitive bombardment of the same areas was expected. It was only a matter of time before it wore down the healthy tissue and gained access to the core. Even though he couldn’t visually see the abscesses like he could with his patients, their heat was palpable. And so was.... “A biological code, too precise to be a natural occurrence, just like Sakura thought. Dante, I’m looking at the proof that someone deliberately engineered this contaminant and is using it as a biological weapon. Could Haesi make something like that?”
“Seven years ago I would have said no, but now I suspect it is very much in the realm of possibility.”
Nick withdrew from his scan and squinted at Dante. “We already know that it exploits the weakest points in each victim. But, in us our brains are not the weakest points, they’re just the organ furthest from our strongest points—our Sources.”
“Your Source, perhaps,” Dante said, “but the existence of mine has not been confirmed.”
“C’mon, Dante, you know it’s there because you carry a Gift. Just because you haven’t accessed it the way Saku and can access ours, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Dante grunted. “Perhaps.”
“Notperhaps, I am right. If I were the contaminant, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the one thing with the potential to annihilate me.”
“Are you saying it can adapt to the environment of its host?”
“Exactly.” He tensed, a small, shuddering wince caught in his throat as a sharp, hot poker stabbed at the base of his skull.
The other healer’s brow furrowed like a professor holding Nick’s hypothesis up to the light and turning it to examine it from every direction. Finally, he nodded. “You make a very convincing argument, Nick.”
Nick gave his head a shake. “Thank you, Magister. But, it’s useless since it looks like we’re going to die here.”
