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“How do you know that’s true?” Stari said. “Let me guess. You have a feeling.”
“He wouldn’t lie about that,” I said. “Not to me.”
She wore a strange smile on her face. One corner of her lip curled up. It wasn’t an ugly expression. It was quite endearing.
“Fine. I’ll release him. But it’ll be your responsibility to watch him. If he breaks the rules or tries anything funny, he’ll be back in his cell before you can say— Two and three-eighths!”
She admonished a mechanic who attempted to tighten a bolt with the wrong tool.
Stari could be a live wire when she wanted to be. I felt sorry for the Changeling siblings already.
Okay, not really, but almost.
That was half an hour ago. When Stari returned, she had a dozen Yayora soldiers on her heels carrying Klang and Trang’s unconscious bodies into the medicenter.
The soldiers dumped them unceremoniously on separate beds. They clapped their hands and filed out of the room, joining us in the technician’s section. We could see the Changeling siblings through the observation window.
The technician flicked a bunch of switches and turned some dials. The beds slid into a large machine where multiple scans and their results flashed up on the monitors.
I recognized some of them—like the x-ray, MRI, and CAT scan. But there were a bunch of others I’d never seen before.
“See anything unusual?” Stari said.
“They’re in surprisingly good shape,” the technician said. “They’re a little malnourished but I don’t think that’s going to cause any long-term problems.”
Stari’s shoulder’s slumped. I understood. I felt a little disappointed myself. It didn’t sound like we were going to find the solution here.
“Thanks, doctor,” Stari said.
“I’m not a doctor. I’m just a technician.”
“You’re a wizard,” Stari said. “Thanks for trying. Appreciate it.”
“What now?” I said.
“Now we tie them up to some chairs and treat them to a nice ice shower,” Stari said.
“I thought you said they won’t tell you anything?” I said.
“They won’t,” Stari said. “But maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll let something slip.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. They never struck me as the kind of creatures to let anything slip. Except maybe their forked tongues.
“Hold on a sec,” the technician said. “What have we got here?”
He motioned to one of the monitors. I couldn’t tell if it was Trang or Klang.
“What are we looking at?” Stari said.
“This here,” the technician said, zooming in on a screen.
I peered closely at the image but I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.
Neither could Stari.
“What?” she said. “All I can see is a bunch of white stuff.”
“That’s why I almost missed it,” the technician said. “I suspect it was inserted that way so no one would see it. Let me do a complete scan and see if I can get a better image.”
