And fainted.
The blond man's face was the only thing in her line of sight. She was back in that bed. A new point on her neck hurt as if she'd been given another shot.
“Let's start again,” he told her pleasantly as that marble translated his words. He had blue eyes that operated normally. “We want to help Londo. We are ready to do anything to help him. Okay? Do you understand that?”
The room was still spinning around her. “Uh huh.”
“Good. Now the unpleasant truth of the matter is that Londo is Valiant, and so even in this state we can't work on him very well. We were hoping that maybe you could. Can you?”
“Um…” Her eyelids were closing on her and she forced them back open. “I don't… I can't…”
“Wiley here can get you up and around if you can help him,” the man said, “but we'll only do that if you can do something for Londo. If you can't, we'd rather you stay here and get well while we figure out what we can do with him.”
“Oh.”
“So?”
“Just a…” Lina's eyes went unfocused, but they moved around as if she were watching something far away. “Kolaimni,” she said.
The word hadn't translated. “What?”
She blinked back to focus. “A Kolaimni and a chakra balance,” she told the man. “That'll start him off. He's teetering right now. It'll steady him so he can begin to heal.”
“These are healing techniques?” The blue doctor, Wiley, was on the other side of her bed.
“Um hm. Yes.” She was on a choppy sea, so she shut her eyes to stop the movement of the room.
“I've never heard of Kolaimni,” Wiley's voice said.
“Not many have.” She fought to open her eyes again and finally succeeded. “How are you going to get me up? What do I—? What's—? Oh, okay.”
“Who are you talking to?” Wiley's eyes worked together to focus sharply on her. Obviously he thought she was crazy. “Do you see someone else here?”
It was so difficult to keep her eyelids open. “Don't worry about it. If you can get me up and awake somehow without too much caffeine, I can do it. I need a clear mind. Steady nerves.”
“What kind of medicine is this?” the doctor asked. “Pietzallicanthic?”
Lina tried to get a grip on the bed to turn herself to her side. “Psychic,” she replied. “Holistic psychic healing.”
“I've got you.” The blond man lifted her to a sitting position.
She steadied herself there with her right hand, wobbling in a big circle. “Are you sure—” Lina swallowed painfully “—you can get me up? Londo—”
The blond man smiled encouragingly at her. “Lon can wait a few more minutes while we get you in shape. Ms.—?”
“I'm Lina. Carolina O'Kelly.” She closed her eyes again while she waited. “Just don't anyone show me a mirror. That might put me into shock.”
“You'll heal. I'm Jae, Jaeson Rallene. And this is—”
Lina knew. “Wiley um…Five-Minds.”
“Mem-Bazer, Dr. Wilder Mem-Bazer. You can call him Wiley. He only gets really rude when he's upset.”
The doctor grunted as he continued fiddling with loose instruments on a neighboring table. Lina nodded and regretted the action. “Wiley. Lon was telling me about you just before the attack. I figured you'd be the best place to bring him. Just where are we, anyway? I know we're not on Earth anymore.”
“You came in from Earth?” Wilder turned to her, but one eye still focused on a floating screen. “I find that hard to believe.”
“I just aimed for the lab he showed me.” She looked around wonderingly. “This place.” Another world!
“Wiley, it would explain those bio-contaminants,” Jae said. He regarded Lina as his expression turned sour. “You're Terran.”
“Terran,” Wiley echoed, but his inflection was that of resignation. “That would explain the unscientific approach to medicine.”
Jae took a breath and released it with a frown. “You're on Sarastor,” he told Lina in an even tone. “At the headquarters of the Affiliated Systems Megaforce Legion.”
“Is that something like the ParaNet? The Terran Paranorm Network?” Lina desperately tried to figure it out and fight through the dreamlike quality of her surroundings. Nothing seemed to focus except the pain.
God, how her arm hurt. Not as badly as it had a few moments ago, though; the second drug must be kicking in. Now it didn't feel like it was about to fall off. She could feel the lower length of it by thousands of pinpricks of pain.
“ParaNet? Larger scale; we're interstellar. Londo's a part-time member.” Jae rolled up Lina's left sleeve and fitted a flimsy sheet of chicken wire around her punctured limb, stretching from wrist to upper arm. Wilder threaded a stretched-out piece of bubblegum through it, and when it was in place, the armature contracted to fit snugly upon her skin.
“Huh. He would be,” Lina said. Don't worry about the frou-frous; concentrate on Londo.
“Tell us what happened,” Wiley instructed her. He brandished another hypo and she let him administer it, flinching at the sensation. This time it was different. The hypo didn't actually touch her, but it still felt like an insect sting.
“Ah. Well.” Lina tried to organize the events so she wouldn't seem like a complete idiot. “There's this terrorist, Terry, Teresa…Rhodes. And Dr. Menlo. He's famous. For doing awful things. Just now—I guess it was a little over an hour before we got here—Terry attacked us,” Lina felt sick inside, “and she used me to keep Lon in line. But he tried to protect me, and she let him have it with some of Dr. Menlo's guns. Big guns. End-of-the-world guns.
“I tried to get rid of them,” she said helplessly, “but there were too many. I didn't understand them. And now he's… he's… What are you doing with him now? I have to work on him. Will anything I'm going to do interfere with that?” She flexed her left hand fingers. Her arm was starting to feel as if it were a part of her again. “Oo, thanks.”
“You're definitely from Earzh?” Jae asked.
“Of course I'm from Earth.” She accentuated the final th to correct him.
“Have you known him long? Are you a ParaNetter?”
“Oh no, I'm no hero. I only started to teleport yesterday. Maybe the day before that. I met Lon then when he saved me from a fire. That was tough with no powers. He saved me about a thousand times over since, but then Terry surprised us.”
Jae eyed her warily. “So, number one: you're Terran. Number two: you'd only been with him a short while and already you were attacked.” His chin jutted as his gaze seemed to turn inward. He muttered, “Londo, Londo.”
“They weren't after me; they were after him.”
“Of course. And you were caught in the crossfire.” Jae's mouth tightened into a line before he asked, “He could have escaped unscathed if you hadn't been there, right?”
“Well…yes.”
“He was hurt when he tried to protect you?”
“Yes.” So terribly hurt. It was all her fault.
Jae turned away from her. “Next time maybe you'll think twice before you consort with one of the Rands without wearing mega-enhanced armor. They don't need to have a weak spot their enemies can use to target them.”
Speaking of weak, Lon lay so still there as lights played over him. “I should start working on him soon,” Lina hinted. “What are those machines doing?”
Wilder shook his head. “With Londo, there's not much stabilizing that can be done. His invulnerability defeats any external—”
Lina interrupted, “I found something out, just before he was hit that final time. We've sort of got this…bond going on. I think. He might be vulnerable wherever I touch him.” She blushed at the sound of it. “If you need to give him a shot or anything I think I can arrange it.”
The sheer audaciousness of the statement made Jae whirl to stare at her. Despite a whirlwind of other implications the thought that leaped foremost in his mind was, Definitely need to get that money in on the pool. She'd be
en with Lon for how many days? Undressed like that for how long?
Wilder's eyebrows had shot up at the news as well. “If that's true, I can put that to use immediately. Come.”
Jae supported her as Lina followed the doctor on wobbly legs. Londo lay on his floating bed, so pale. The life currents struggled to make it through his body.
“They took an awful lot of blood from him,” she said as she leaned on the bed. “He bled really quickly. Faster than I've ever seen.”
Jae nodded. “Lon's got to do everything better than others. All right, I can help with that.” He put his hands on Lon's legs and closed his eyes in concentration.
“What's he doing?” Lina asked Wiley softly. Jae was communicating somehow, connecting to the bones…
“He's speeding up the production of blood cells. Put your hand here,” Wilder instructed, pointing at Lon's arm. “Let's see if this works.”
She spread her fingers so he could get the hypo between them. The lines on all the monitors skewed the instant Lina touched Londo. Wiley fired. Judging from his surprised expression, it worked.
“Well,” he said. “Well. Keep your hand there. I'll give him some more.” He went to the other side of the station and busied himself.
Jae blinked to awareness and then looked down at her as he removed his hands from Lon. “I'm afraid to do too much with him in this condition,” he said. “Probably just a little at a time would be best.”
He removed the melted mass that used to be a ring from Londo's right hand. “Great shards of the orb,” he breathed. “I thought these things were indestructible.”
Lina noticed that Jae wore a ring on his right hand, middle finger, same as Lon. They might have been similar. She couldn't tell from the melted one, but they looked like they could have been the same size. They were certainly the same slightly iridescent metal.
“I don't want to bother you,” she said, looking up at Jae. She trailed off as she took in the sight before her. He was maybe a foot taller than she, topped with a thick mass of shoulder-length, light blond hair that might have been responsible for a few inches of that “foot” estimate. His height was odd enough—Wiley's was about the same—but holy moly—there were two tiny points sticking out of the hair on either side of his head. He had pointed ears!
He was dressed in blue tights, unlike Wiley's bulky jumpsuit and equally baggy lab coat, but he wore a gray cocooned tunic like a seaman's sweater with a loose double belt and dark, over-the-knee boots. It made him look like a freakishly tall, elvish pirate.
What had she been saying? “Do y'all have any kind of aluminum pan that I can fill with salt water? No, not a pan. Not for this.” She thought furiously, aware that things needed to commence very soon. “Maybe a tub. Something that I can get into and dunk my whole self, not just my arms. I've got a lot of nasty energies that I need to get rid of. Salt water will do it. I'll have to re-use it a couple of times, maybe more, while I work on Lon.”
“You're serious?”
Lina was apologetic but determined. “Yes. Right now it's like working through mud. Clear the energies, and I can almost guarantee you that it'll work. Leave the energies building up— I don't think so.” Her troubled eyes tore at Jae's heart. “Please find me something. For his sake.”
“We may have a whirlpool here. Wiley's got a little of everything.”
Wiley returned and administered the extra shots, studying his diagnostic panels after each one.
“Wiley, you still have that aquatic test chamber?”
“Yes. In the back, near storeroom number three,” Wiley said without glancing their way. “Why?”
“Lina needs it. I'll fill it with warm salt water. Anything else?” Jae paused expectantly.
“Um, a robe or something, so I don't have to run around in wet clothes? Like I said, I think I'll have to use it several times. And it would be great to get out of these bloody things. But I can live without it.”
“I'll see what I can find.”
A nice guy, Lina thought as Jae left. Both these men were nice people. If they were part of this Mega-Legion, or whatever he'd said, they'd be heroes, too, wouldn't they? Megas meant heroes, more powerful heroes than even paraheroes. And heroes had to be nice people, just like her wonderful Lon.
With Jae gone and Wiley—she hoped he really wouldn't mind if she called him that instead of Wilder Ben Dozer, no, Wilder Mem-Bazer—just using her as a prop, she took a few minutes to study Lon's condition. It scared her. He looked too far gone, as if he were still hovering on the brink of death, but Lon was Valiant. Maybe that would tip the scales.
She must be brave for this. She conferred with her guides to perfect her healing approach. They were soon all in agreement. She was ready. That stimulant was really grabbing hold now without screwing up her mental balance. Good stuff.
Jae came trotting back. “All set,” he announced. “It's back here.” He showed her the way, pointed out the tank next to a bathroom and a stack of clothing he'd found, and left the area.
Dear lord, I hope it's not too alien, Lina prayed, cringing from the idea of asking a strange man how to use a bathroom. But she really had to go. She closed the door behind her. It clicked shut with a snap. She couldn't see any unlocking mechanism. Oh god, she was locked in an alien bathroom and Londo needed her! “Puter, how—?” she began, before she remembered she could port.
“What information do you require?” the voice of the computer asked her in English.
“Um, how do you…use this facility?” Lina asked and hoped no one was monitoring the conversation outside. The computer didn't mind her embarrassment. It showed her diagrams in mid-air that were definitely not in good taste but which imparted the necessary information. There were a variety of alternate positions displayed. Things were fairly straightforward with a couple of startling surprises. Everything was automatic!
The real shock came when a mirror revealed the horror that was her face: grotesquely swollen with a long line of cuts and blackened blisters on top of green and dark purple patches. She didn't recognize herself. It looked as bad as it felt.
Deal with that later, after Lon was well. Maybe he would do an Elephant Man imitation for her.
She had to heal him. He couldn't die!
For him she braved the hellish sting of the saltwater pool. Submerging in the center of the pool was the best way to drain the energies. **Hello…Sarastor,** she hesitantly called to the planet while she did it.
**Hello. We've been waiting for you.**
Now what did that mean? Planets and guides could be funny or mysterious. They had moods just like anyone else. But this one was very friendly and kind, very willing to help out. Lina thanked her, finished draining the last of the energies, and painfully pulled herself out of the tank as she tried not to use her left arm at all.
There was a real towel there with the clothing. She thought Jae might be humoring the backwater human, but right now she felt like being humored. She dried off as best she could and pulled on the thick leotard she'd found. It was black and at least two sizes too big, intended for someone much taller than her six-foot self. But it covered everything that needed to be covered. The fact that she couldn't pull the sleeve on over her left arm complicated things. It could have cleared the armature, but then it would have dug into the raw burn on her left shoulder.
Time was pressing. She still had Lon's torn and now burned shirt, so she put that on over it and fastened it shut. Something had cleaned most of the blood off it while she'd fainted. Feeling minimally presentable and a bit warmer, she returned to the main laboratory.
“I'm ready,” she announced as they stood back from her. “Do you need to do anything else to him before I start?” She put the towel down and gave Londo a final psychic examination as she combed her fingers through her hair.
“Will we disturb you if we find we need to work on him while you're doing whatever it is?” Wiley asked.
“I don't know. Not during the first part at least. I'll let you know.
”
“Then let's see how it goes,” Jae said.
Lina nodded. She explained that she'd do a rough chakra balance to get those working better, followed by a Kolaimni treatment, an etheric method that would affect the more minor chakras of the body as well. She'd probably have to repeat the procedures, and felt that they'd take much more time than they usually took. “For all I know, it may take all day.”
Wilder shook his head at the gibberish. “We're not going anywhere. Will it disturb you if I record? Do you understand recording?”
“Be my guest.”
Jae lowered Lon's table just by gesturing so it would be at an easier height for her. Lina pulled a stool over and sat on it even as she gathered protective white light around herself. “Um, it may not look like I'm doing anything much here during this first part, but I will be. Ah, and if I seem to be talking to myself, please don't think I've gone bonkers.”
“Just a quick question, then, before you start,” Wilder said. He crossed his arms in front of himself.
Typical body language: he doesn't believe a word of this, Lina realized.
“Have you ever done anything like this before?”
She tried to smile around her swollen cheeks. “Are you kidding? I've been taking lessons for years; even taught a few classes. I've never done anything remotely on this scale. But I can do this,” she said, and even to herself she sounded confident. “I can.” She could do anything if she had to, and this was top priority in the universe right now, Goal A-quintuple-plus.
She scooted the chair closer to Lon's table. “By the way, this planet says she really hates the weather control. And she says her name's Glasti, even though it's also Sarastor. Just thought you should know.” She raised her hands over Londo but brought them down again. “Oh. No shortcuts. No, I can understand that.”
So she stood up and passed her hands over Lon's body: front/back, side/side, from head to toe, as if she were peeling something back.
“Now I can start.” Raising her hands again, she brought them out, then in toward the top of Lon's head until she touched the outer edge of his crown chakra. Carefully, gently, she tapped the back, then the front, back and forth in a slow, fluid motion, drumming out toxins and blockages.
Touch of Danger (Three Worlds) Page 33