Page 7 of Music of the Ocean

The Medical Bay—Medical for short—was empty except for Vance, who had his back turned, prepping the scanner. He glanced over his shoulder. “Wow, I just saw you, and you didn’t look this shitty.”

“Thanks. I feel shitty,” Saxby replied, sliding onto the exam table.

Vance ran the quickscan over his forehead, then his inner elbow. “Huh.” He frowned at the readout. “Your electrolytes are all over the place. Sodium’s still off, and now your chloride is up. Never seen it swing this far, this fast.”

“Can you fix it?” Holy shit, that hadn’t shown up when Saxby tested earlier.

Vance shrugged. “Sure. Drink a liter of this blue stuff. Here.”

Saxby took the drink.

“And I’ll give you a salt tab. The drink should replenish your electrolytes. I’m going to give you a shot to help strengthen your immune system, too, in case this is the start of a regular cold. But if this keeps up, we’ll have to run a full blood panel and do more tests. Check back in twenty-four hours. Protocol.”

Saxby nodded. He didn’t want to deal with protocols. He wanted to sleep. “Gotcha.”

He couldn’t wait to get back to his quarters.

HE SLEPT, and he knew he was asleep, but the dreams were anything but restful. He was under water, swimming, pressure squeezing his head with a steady, delicious ache.

There was no suit, no gear, no vessel, just his body slicing through the water as if this were natural, as if he had always been meant for this. His lungs burned. His ears rang, then popped, the pressure inside him equalizing with the depths.

He kept going deeper, past the shaft of sunlight and into darkness speckled with the jerky, silvery flash of prey.

Something called to him from the deep.

Saxby woke gasping, the phantom taste of salt in his mouth. The bedsheets were tangled and soaked with sweat. His body ached in unfamiliar ways, but it was not unwelcome. Scary, but not unwelcome.

He checked his pulse, then did again because he must’ve forgotten how to do that since there was no way his pulse was that high. A quick glance at the time made him do a double take.

No way. There was no damned way. Fourteen hours of sleep? Fourteen? Like, in a row? That was impossible. He never slept that long. And shit, his smartpad showed half a dozen missed pings from friends, and a gentle but insistent med alert from Vance.

The fact that someone hadn’t done a wellness check on him was surprising.

The ship’s artificial sunrise bled through the slat of his viewport. Saxby hauled himself upright, and the world slid sideways for a moment, like the deck had tipped. He steadied himself, waited, and the sensation faded to a throb at his temples.

He dressed, drank enough water to sink a battleship, and headed for Medical. The corridor was empty, but he could hear the faint scraping of maintenance bots somewhere below deck.

Every footstep sounded loud to him. Correction, every footstep and every other noise, even the hum of the lights, felt amplified. His hearing was dialed up to eleven, and he didn’t like it.

Medical’s doors slid open. Vance was there, scrolling through a holodisplay, his face half shadowed by floating graphs. He looked up, caught Saxby’s eye, and for a split second, there was something wary in his look.

“You finally awake,” Vance said. “Was about to send a rescue party.”

“There’s no question, I’ve caught something,” Saxby said, and he heard how thin his voice was.

Vance gestured at the biobed. “Up you get. Let’s see how bad it is.”

It was bad. The scanner ran a full panel, and as the results popped up, Vance’s mouth went tight.

“Your sodium is completely past tanked. You’re borderline hyponatremic. Potassium is up. And your blood pressure—” He flicked his gaze to the monitor. “You train for marathons in your sleep?”

“Just had weird dreams. And I’m thirsty as hell.”

Vance handed him a bottle of electrolyte slush, then started another scan. “You’re running a fever, too. But it isn’t viral, or at least, not any virus I’ve seen. No leukocyte spike, no inflammation markers in the usual places.”

Saxby downed the slush. The taste of salt hit his tongue and he almost moaned. He drained the bottle and felt clarity return like a switch had been thrown.

“I’ll get you a saline IV,” Vance said. “You sure you didn’t get a cut or a bite down there on planet?”