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His metanoids were giving up the fight,Selene thought.He looked so vulnerable.
She sorely wanted to run her hands through his thick hair, which was now mostly gone. She longed for his strength, his loving, his heat. She missed him. Period.
She eventually found her voice, speaking to the Riders’ medic. ‘What are his symptoms?’
Ki’Remi threw a glance at her from the other side of the bed. ‘He has many.’
His voice, or a close approximation, came from the med bay’s speakers. Selene jolted at the sound, unused to the lost Rider’s selective mutism and his brusque substitute vox, even though Sheba had told her he controlled it via his neural node.
‘Injury to the lungs from smoke inhalation. Loss of fluid from burnt skin. Shock and heat loss and an inability to properly regulate body temperature.’
‘How bad is it?’
Ki’Remi shook his head and frowned. It was unclear whether he was uncomfortable speaking or with the question itself.
Sheba, adjusting Kainan’s IV bags, glanced at him, and her gaze softened.
‘He’s free of infection for now,’ she told her sister, taking over from the Riders’ medic. ‘His altered chimera cells are fighting his normal metanoids and DNA. Should they win, they’ll shut down the entire body.’
‘Which could result in death. In milliseconds,’ Ki’Remi sub vox said. ‘A swift death. Like being vaporised by a nuke or a supernova.’
Selene sucked in air. She knew the clinician meant well, but she’d been unprepared for his blunt answer.
‘What are you doing about it?’ she asked with a whisper.
‘The med-scan bed is on full power, analysing the criticality of his burns,’ her sister told her solemnly. ‘It uses a high-tech laser to identify Kainan’s critically weakened meta-human cells that need to be discarded. It’s also re-programming the healthy metanoids to accelerate the cell multiplication process to cover and heal entire sections of the lost muscles, tissues and organs. In other words, it’s scanning his body and neural networks to identify the rogue cells, eliminate them and try to repair the normal metanoids being killed off by the chimera effect.’
‘It’s a band-aid,’ Ki’Remi vox interjected coolly. ‘This last combustion has reduced his life span drastically. The rate of damage and attrition because of the chimera cells is higher than the replication of his healthy meta-human cells and neutrons.’
‘How long does he have?’ Selene ventured, deeply afraid of what the answer could be.
Ki’Remi’s response was curt and clinical. ‘Weeks.’
Selene felt the gut punch response with all of her body. Eyes burning with tears, she turned her face away and walked to the med bay’s windows.
Outside, a rush of swirling colours and flashes of occasional bursts of light greeted her.
But all she could see was a sky full of darkness through her tear-soaked eyes.
One without Kainan in it. Without him, she would be nothing.
A soft hand fell on her shoulder. ‘Sel,’ Sheba said. ‘Don’t mind Ki’Remi. He’s just blunt, as I’ve come to find out. Know this, hon. We haven’t given up. So please don’t give up as well.’
Selene folded into her sister’s arms. ‘Sheba, I just got you back. We just lost father. I can’t lose anyone else. He is my light. He is my chimera, and I need him so much.’
Sheba held her tighter, and they stood in each other’s arms.
‘My sky is falling, Sheba,’ she said as tears clogged her throat. ‘You two are everything. You’re all that matters to me.’
‘Then, whatever happens, I will hold up half your sky,’ Sheba said softly. ‘And with the half you hold up for me, that should keep our world from falling apart.’
The instant the Phantasm docked at Eden II’s orbital space station, Kainan, already transferred onto Mirage, was whisked away to Dunia.
Selene had insisted, knowing that one of her planet’s few advantages over Eden II was its medical facilities.
They flew straight down onto the landing pad at New Malindi’s Macion Hill Hospital.
The facility was one of the most sophisticated hospitals on the planet, offering leading-edge inpatient and surgical care and a System-wide famous program in regenerative medicine and body reconstruction.
