Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

  “His chakras are imploding. Every one, the minor ones, too. He can't live like that,” she realized. “They know they are supposed to— God, they're blocked— They're overloading!”

  Without thinking she ported up on the table to straddle Londo. Pain from her arm, pain from her shoulder and back, neck and stomach didn't register; it wasn't important. She laid her hands flat on his solar plexus and looked wildly around the laboratory. A spirit guide pointed to another section of the room.

  “Watch out!” she yelled and bent to her work, left hand on him, her right pointing to that section. She funneled energy that had been surging through Londo out of him and over to the corner of the room, a safe place to dispose of it. **Whatever planet this is, please help me!**

  A concerned voice answered, encouraging her to keep it up.

  The living energies roared as they tore out of Londo across the room. They swirled through her like a mad whirlpool, dragging at her body unevenly until she had to scream. Hurricane wind blasted them, sending equipment flying and crashing all around the lab. And somewhere in it all the blue man was shouting at something in the air while the blond man braced himself against Lon's makeshift bed.

  Lina had never seen the energies of the body appear on the physical plane before, but then she had never seen chakras implode, either. All that mattered was Londo and his life energy. Funnel out the blocked excess—get rid of it! Dump it while there was still time!

  Now the blond man raised his arms in the midst of the storm. Somehow he was trying to help. Slowing down the chakras trying to burn themselves out? Whatever he was doing bought her time.

  Sweat poured from her as she gritted her teeth. Breathe, breathe. Keep the energy flowing. She cried out from the pressure in her arm as the energy surged around her wound like a living fire. Arching against the pain, she screamed again. Keep the energy flowing out! This was Londo! He must be saved at all costs! The two men shouted to each other in the background, but she couldn't spare them any attention.

  “Relax, Londo!” she cried to him. “Relax, dammit! You're just making matters worse when you fight it. Damn it to hell, relax!” Suddenly the room stopped. No lightning, no wind. More equipment fell and shattered at the sudden cessation of the storm.

  “No. Oh no.”

  “What's going on?” Wiley demanded.

  The other man gestured over Londo, strain on his face. “I'm trying to speed him up now,” he said frantically, “but nothing's working. Wiley, do something!”

  It could only mean one thing. Lina said, “He's shut himself down. The implosions— Chakras aren't designed to work that way. It was too much. Ohmigod, ohmigod—”

  She swayed there on her knees, right hand over her open mouth. She had to do something and fast. She could feel the energies slowly sliding out of the lowest chakra, leaving the second chakra… Lon was moving to the Other Side. “Jesus!” she cried as her heart turned inside-out. Not Londo!

  A vision of a heart attack patient appeared before her eyes. “Clear,” a doctor shouted, and an electric charge went through the patient, shocking the body back.

  “Got it, thanks,” she said quickly to her guides. She looked around to the blond man. “Help me,” she begged, and he swung her down from the table. She ran to a spot about four feet above Londo's head and smacked the air and the energy boundary there with her good right hand. A vibration shuddered down the cord only she could see that ran into Londo's body. She smacked it again. “C'mon Londo! You're not leaving me again!” Something seemed to take. The chakra stabilized slightly. “Good.”

  She moved down to his crown chakra, the spherical bioenergy center, and slapped its edges sharply, twelve inches from the top of his head. “Always be gentle with chakras,” her teachers' lessons came back to her. Not now. Not this time. Shock therapy was his only hope.

  She slapped it again, and again the chakra stabilized slightly. Maybe once she got them all done, they'd help each other. She went down his body, slapping the air around him about a foot out from his body at each major chakra's boundary.

  “C'mon, c'mon,” she chanted. “Hang in there, Lon. Don't you dare leave me again, dammit. You promised. Come back. Come back!” She reached the root chakra, slapped it and waited. “C'mon,” she whispered. Nothing. She went back up to the solar plexus chakra and held her hands above and below him on the table. Her left arm drooped and shook, but the blond man reached and held it in place for her.

  “Londo!” she cried out. “Londo Falcon Rand! Come back!” And abruptly he was inside the body. More than half-dead but there. Lina breathed out with a whoosh of relief, and then realized that that had been a mistake.

  She fell in a faint to the floor.

  The blond man managed to catch her, but just barely. She had been so pale before, between the purple-black bruises and blistered red-black burns, but now she was absolutely white. He didn't think she was breathing. “Wiley!” he commanded as he checked for her pulse.

  “I'm a little busy here, Jae!” The blue man gestured over Londo, comparing flashes of information as they displayed on the half-dozen monitor boards floating alongside the bed.

  Jae lifted up Lina quickly, depositing her on another lab bed, and then swung monitors around to focus on her. “As soon as you get a moment, get the kick over here!” he yelled, and Wilder looked up. Jae attached a butterfly to the girl's rib cage. It should have made her suck in a breath, but Wiley only saw her twitch.

  “Puter,” Wiley instructed the air, “set up emergency respiration procedures at Jae's station.”

  Two beeps, and Jae reached around to grab two thin tubes from the table behind him. He jabbed them into either side of Lina's neck and touched the butterfly again. Another twitch, almost a breath. Green light splayed out from the ceiling above and Jae triggered the butterfly. This time she gave a great, shuddering breath and a trickle of blood came out of her mouth.

  “Grigach,” Jae muttered, trying to make sense of what the monitors were telling him. “Deep shock, Wiley. Trauma. Burns. Broken ribs, punctured lung. Her windpipe is almost swollen shut from the bruising. Tell me what to do!”

  Jae held her hand and reached for communication with her weak lungs, then her blood. He coaxed compounds there to turn into oxygen, dissolved already so the hemoglobin could instantly use it. The faintest tinge of pink touched the girl's skin, but he didn't think it was anywhere near what her normal color should be.

  Monitors showed that Gorgeon and the rest of the medical staff were proceeding with evacuation of patients in the med section. They wouldn't be available to help. Jae elevated Lina's feet, threw a blanket of warmed air over her and checked the monitors again. “Life signs decreasing,” he reported to Wilder. “C'mon, Wiley, what do I do? Puter, give me an oxygen field here!” He touched the butterfly again.

  Wiley looked at the man on the bed in front of him. Shards and shreds! This was Valiant! He couldn't do anything for him, even though he desperately wanted to, but he could do something for the woman. He hesitated a moment more, frustrated at his own inaction, and then hurried over to her.

  Taking a quick glance at the monitors, he focused a resuscitating turze beam array on her. “It's okay, Jae,” he said. “I've got her. It looks like we're not going to lose anyone in the next fifteen minutes at least.” He became the epitome of efficiency as he pressed various pulse-ampoules to her neck, checking the readings from the monitors after each try.

  “That hole in her arm seems blacker now,” Jae noted as he caught his breath, “like maybe that lightning seared it.”

  Wiley glanced at the arm, then back to his monitors. “It probably did. I'm surprised we're all not burnt to a crisp.”

  “How is he?” Jae turned to look at Lon, so still on the table over there. The monitors over him showed an uneven heartbeat, ragged lines of registration for different body functions. At least it showed he was alive.

  The girl was breathing on her own as she came out of shock. Wiley programmed nanomeds to shunt her airways
open against the swelling. Now he could return to his primary patient. “I'm skurned if I can figure out what's going on. His whole neuro-electrical system has gone completely haywire. Readings showed him clinically dead just up to a few minutes ago. He is back, showing slight signs of stability, but I don't know for how long.” He looked grimly at Jae. “What did she do? Could you see it?”

  “A little. She was working with the chakras. They'd closed down and she shocked them open, allowing the life energy back. Then she actually called the spirit back down into the body. I've never seen anything remotely like it in my life.”

  “Calling the spirit back— Give that to me in scientific terms.”

  Jae shrugged. “The soul, the mind… He was leaving; he was gone, Wiley. But he came back. Lon came back when she called.”

  “The soul.” Wiley grunted at Jae's inexactitude and looked around the remains of his beloved laboratory: tables upended, loose equipment lying everywhere, much of it broken. Experiments stopped by voice command; some would have to be restarted from scratch, sunfire take it! Flapping dermott, it would take days to get things back to normal in here!

  The fire suppressants the puter was pumping into the huge chasm in the floor where black smoke was rising— The chemicals might interact with the chemicals in Experiment G3016. Wiley told the puter to move that table away from the hole.

  Good thing that there was nothing important underneath that section of the lab to be damaged. Sensors reported the floors ripped apart at least thirty stories down. Through impervion—impervion!—supposedly an absolutely invulnerable substance. He scratched his head, which made his violet hair stand up.

  “Well, I don't get any of it. Puter, cancel building evacuation. Advise everyone of quarantine conditions in here and institute same. Where the kick did these bio-contaminants come from? Get a force field up over the damage here to contain things.” Two beeps. “I want a replay of this in broad-vision, enhanced on the extreme sides of the spectrum. Jae, get that sielwer over there and I'll bring her around again so she can keep on doing… whatever the kick she was doing.”

  Jae shook his head. “Let her sleep, Wiley,” he said. “I think Lon's not going anywhere for a while yet. She'll be better off with a few minutes of sleep at least. Look at her.”

  Wiley considered and nodded his head, then moved to view the playback, muttering to himself. A screen suddenly appeared in midair above him. A man yelled from it, “Mem-Bazer, what the skurn are you doing in there?!”

  Wiley addressed him brusquely. “Londo just teleported in—dead. But he's alive now. Just let me do my work and figure out what's going on, Stoan. Check the playbacks and leave me alone!” He gestured, and the screen folded back up into the air.

  Jae stood by Londo. Gently he tried to speed up Lon's metabolism. Keep the energies going in Londo's body. I agree with the girl, Lon. Don't leave me, he thought. The cold-rushing fear that had tightened its fist around him ever since he saw Lon lying there on the floor began to trickle out of him, but he caught it and held on. Lon was still very much in danger, but there was nothing he could really do here except to act as assistant to whoever needed him, Wiley or the girl.

  The girl. Badly injured, covered with blood and gore that the table was cleaning up now. Horribly bruised, burned and swollen all over her face; her bare legs were patterned in red and blisters. That shocking hole in her arm. Some kind of major burn on her shoulder; sensors showed a huge burn on her back, too, as well as internal injuries that were minor to everything else except the punctured lung.

  Londo's shirt's sleeve on her was shredded. Did that happen while he was wearing it, or while she was? Jae decided that Lon had to have been wearing it. Anything that could rip the material that way would have shredded the girl's arm as well.

  The machinery of the table continued to stabilize her. Wiley would come over again after he was through with Londo and work on her. She might be pretty enough when she healed up; it was difficult now to tell. And she was wearing Londo's shirt over very little else.

  Jae smiled in spite of himself and wondered if he had time to put some money on this month in the “When Does It Happen to Londo” pool. Then again, perhaps he should wait until they were sure Londo was going to pull through. It'd be a kick of a thing if Lon died after he'd finally discovered sex, but then Jae had never held a high opinion of the universe's sense of humor.

  Besides, this girl looked entirely too vulnerable to stand up to Lon. Even the almost-invulnerable women Lon had had over the years had never been able to go all the way with him. Poor Lon would live and die a virgin, but hopefully he wouldn't die anytime soon. Jae looked again at his friend's so-pale face and wondered if anyone would notice if he held Lon's hand.

  Chapter 6

  Lina pulled herself up through a suffocating fog of pain and exhaustion. She didn't want to, but there was something very important to do. Something…

  She squinted against the bright laboratory light and licked her lips. So dry. The blue man, Five-Minds, stood next to her, holding one of Dr. Crusher's Star Trek hyposprays.

  “Londo,” she croaked.

  “I've given you a stimulant,” Five-Minds said.

  “Okay,” she replied faintly. It couldn't have been very powerful. Her throat felt clogged. It was hard to breathe and she rattled when she did. She was burned, ah god, she felt like she was still sizzling on the blackened sand like a piece of bacon in a frying pan. The agony from that blotted out everything else except her arm.

  She wanted cold water to wallow in, to suck the burn out. Cold water to drink and wash her face.

  But more than that she wanted to faint again to get away from the pain. Instead she wiped a thick film of sticky sweat from her forehead. Her left arm buckled as she tried to raise up. It throbbed and pulsated with raw torment in time with her heart. She couldn't feel anything below her elbow. She was afraid that if she looked, that part of her arm would be gone.

  “Lo— Londo. How's Londo?”

  “I'll give you some more pain killers for that.”

  “How's Londo?!”

  “Here.” Five-Minds pressed the shot against her neck.

  She gasped at the entry point: a sharp heat sensation whose effect stopped too quickly for it to have been hot.

  Something was happening. The pain wasn't going away, but a layer of insulation spread through her, separating her from the worst of it. It was a little like floating now. Ah, god, she hurt. Now she could feel the all-over pain that had been under the surface.

  The blue doctor checked his instruments and turned back as if he were going to administer another shot.

  “No.” She tried to make that clear. He paused. Perhaps this time he'd heard her. But no, he leaned in for another one. “No!” she said loudly, and when he didn't stop she managed to lift her good hand to block his access to her neck. It felt bigger than it should have been, as if it had a huge bee sting.

  “I am giving you something to lessen your pain. It comes in this tube. I put it in your body and you get better,” Wiley explained slowly.

  Something was funny about his eyes. They didn't move in unison. Lina tried to scowl at him, but the muscles in her face were too stiff. “And I told you no,” she growled in a gravelly voice. “Try it again and you'll need a shot of your own. How the hell is Londo?!”

  “Puter,” Five-Minds instructed the air, for all Lina could see, “give me some restraints.”

  Two beeps responded.

  “Puter!” Lina called, surprising the doctor. “What's the medical status of Londo Rand?”

  #That information is classified level five,# a voice from the air said as Lina fumed.

  “All right, I take it you know what shots are.” The doctor held two glowing straps in his hands and leaned down to check attachment points on Lina's bed. He gave a start when the straps disappeared. A determined look came over his face and he picked up the hypo again with a shake. “Now, see here—”

  “He's not dead, is he?” Lina raised
up like a fish flopping on the beach. She couldn't twist around enough to her right side for good leverage. “Keep away from me with that thing. Tell me how he is!”

  His left eye betrayed someone approaching behind her and she managed to turn her head a little. The blond man.

  “No fights in hospital!” He pointed sternly at the both of them.

  “He's alive?” Lina asked him anxiously. “Tell me he's alive.”

  The man gave her a small smile. “Yes. Hanging on, but alive.”

  Lina sank back down on the cushions of the table/bed. “What are you doing for him? Is he getting better?”

  Five-Minds was creeping up on her and she turned quickly. “I thought you said you understood English? I said no!” She stared him down. “Well, you give some suggestions if you know better!”

  That stopped the doctor. “…In regards to what?”

  “Did I look like I was talking to you?” Lina's gaze darted around the room until she spotted Londo lying on a floating bed, a different setup than he'd been on before. “What's going on?”

  “Was that addressed to us?” the blond man asked, holding his hand up for the doctor to be quiet.

  “He is. He is? Then why the hell aren't you helping him?” Lina glared at the doctor. “I don't need anything. You. You get over there and help him! Please!”

  “I take it that was for me. Now calm down, young lady.”

  “Look, if nothing else, he's Valiant. Valiant! Isn't that worth saving his life?” She struggled again to get up and this time the blond man reached out.

  “Easy,” he said. “I'll help you.” He almost touched her wounded arm but supported her back instead. She was too exhausted, too immersed in the emergency, to draw back from his touch.

  “If it's money you want, I'll pay for everything,” Lina promised. “It may take me a while to pay you back, but I'll do it somehow. Every cent!” She tried to feel for the floor under her and slid off the side. “I have a house I can sell.” After what seemed forever, her bare toes touched the smooth, cold floor. She stood up.