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The machine fired up again and even more scans uploaded across the screens. The technician turned the image along the x- and then the y-axis.
“Yep,” he said. “There’s definitely something there.”
He removed all the unnecessary details and highlighted the ones he wanted us to see, turning them bright pink.
Then he drew both the images together—one from Klang, the other from Trang.
The same object was lodged inside both of them. Whatever it was, it was partially concealed by their thigh bones.
“See?” Stari said. “You’re a wizard! What is it?”
“I’m not sure we’re going to know what it is until we get a closer look,” the technician said.
“A closer look?” Stari said. “You can zoom in?”
“No,” the technician said. “I mean a real closer look. You’re going to have to cut them out.”
I shared a look with Stari. Neither of us was excited about that proposition. But what other choice did we have?
The operating procedure was unlike anything I had ever seen before. There were no scalpels or saws, no face masks, or hairnets. An incision was made and there was little blood.
The procedure began with the nurses pumping the Changeling siblings with drugs. I began to wonder if the goal wasn’t to overdose them so they could remove the objects lodged in their legs without worrying if they would wake up halfway through the procedure.
The drugs, as Stari told me, were a way to control the body’s reaction to the upcoming process. If you didn’t want the blood to splatter everywhere? Then you told the body not to splatter. Wanted the arm to raise every time you came close to nicking a nerve? Then tell the body to do it.
Within minutes, the surgeon had removed the first object with a device much like the tractor beam that abducted me back on Earth. It sucked the object toward it slowly, one millimeter at a time. Then the doctor closed the patient up by using a laser tool and not stitches.
I felt embarrassed about our medical technology back home. They would think we were still in the Middle Ages with the way we cut and diced people up.
The surgeon performed the same procedure on Klang without any issues. He placed the two devices on a plate. He handed it to Stari. These, at least, were covered in blood and there was no mistaking what they were.
“Trackers,” I said.
Stari had turned as white as a ghost. She immediately marched out of the surgery studio and into the observation room. She rinsed the blood off the trackers. Then she dumped them in a metal box and slammed the lid shut. She pressed her hands to it as if it made a difference.
Stari’s emotions were on a hair-trigger. One wrong move and she would explode.
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“We have to get rid of them,” Stari said. “We’ll take them far away from here. We only need one more day. Not even that. Just until morning. The Changelings haven’t showed up yet. Maybe something’s wrong with their system. Maybe they use a different computer to track them?”
That didn’t sound right to me. The Control Room would use the same system to trace all tracking devices. It was more efficient that way. And I thought Stari knew that too.
“If they knew we were here, they would have attacked us already,” she said. “I’ll take them myself. Make sure the job’s done right.”
It was too late.
The Changeling siblings knew what was going to happen. That was why it triggered such a reaction in Chax’s gut.
They knew they were going to win.
“None of this will matter when we attack,” Stari said. “In the morning, there’ll be no stopping us.”
Was she being realistic? Or was she being naive? It was hard to tell.
Thump.
The gentle thud made the lights in the ceiling wobble. The shadows danced.
