[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 5 - Damon, Landon

Damon woke with his skin on fire.

He stifled a scream and bumped out of bed onto the deck, then launched up and scrambled for the light switch.

He looked down at himself. His shirt was rumpled, but not burning. His hands and arms were clear. He bared his teeth as the pain intensified.

Damon tugged on pants with short, breathless gasps--every rasp of fabric igniting more fire--and stumbled out into the corridor.

The guard standing watch at the end of the section moved toward him. "Sir, is there something wrong--"

"Not a sir," Damon mumbled. Maybe the guard was here for their protection, but it had more to do with Talina staying in Milla's quarters the last three days than helping Damon now.

"Sir, you don't look well--" the guard said.

"Going to sickbay," Damon said, and turned in that direction.

"Let me help--"

Damon took off running. The fire was spreading to his insides.

* * *

Luc sat heavily in the one chair in Campa's office, feeling every bandage and wound in his body despite the painkillers Campa had fed him for the last few days. Campa would never have let him out of his recovery bed under normal circumstances, but he'd been marked as someone who knew Alexi better than he let on.

The cramped room was stuffy with too many people and too much fear. Campa leaned on her desk, propping her crutch against the locker behind it.

"Okay," said Oji, Alexi's wife, "what the Void happened to him? Why does he look like that? Campa, you said you'd have answers--" She ran both hands over her short, dark hair.

Alexi lay on the cot against the wall like an unnaturally preserved corpse. His face, once swarthy, was white as marble. His chest did not move, and his veins were gray where they showed on his near-translucent skin. His hair could have been spun silver.

"We've only been under way again a few days," Campa said testily. "I've only had the chance to run my tests now, Dr. Mackie's been monitoring him in the meantime, there's been no change." She paused, looking down. "I can say conclusively that he does have a heartbeat."

Oji flinched.

"But, it's spaced widely apart," Campa went on. "Once every 3.49 minutes. He is not breathing, but as far as I can tell, his cells are still receiving oxygen." Campa looked up at Oji. "I'd like to say the Miravec did this to him, but he was already turning pale on the way to the station. If this was part of the method he claimed he had to fool the scanners, then gods know what he did to himself."

Oji swore with colorful feeling.

"Luc," Campa said, and speared him with her gaze. "Have you seen this before? Do you know what this is?"

Luc shifted in his seat, and then subsided when that tugged at new wounds.

"I haven't seen anything like it," Oji said. "Narya, I've been married to him for seven years--"

"Yes, well sometimes we find we really don't know the people around us," Campa said, her gaze still on Luc. "He vouched for you. He's the one who got you out of Hale City, right? With Damon?"

Luc gave a wary nod.

"Is it a disease?" Oji asked, ignoring Luc. "Is there a treatment, a cure?"

"I don't know," Luc said. "I don't know what it is." And that was true, though he wasn't saying all of it. His mind was too fogged from the painkillers to try to make sense of what he'd learned from Alexi on the shuttle to the station, and then on the station itself. Alexi had told Luc he was Damon. A future Damon, changed somehow. Alexi had spoken to him in his mind on the station, and that certainly wasn't something Luc's Damon could do.