Chapter 31 Tony
TONY
"Kaia, you're not paying attention," Tony said, waving a hand in front of her face. "I've been explaining this algorithm for five minutes and you haven't blinked once."
Kaia startled, her gaze snapping back from wherever it had wandered. "Sorry. I'm distracted."
"I noticed." Tony rolled his chair back from the workstation and stretched his arms over his head. "That's unusual for you. Are you pregnant?"
She snorted. "Projection much?"
"Sorry. It's just that the first thing I noticed when Tula became pregnant was that she started getting more and more distracted."
"Well, I'm not." Kaia picked up a stylus and tapped it against her palm in a nervous rhythm. "William's meeting with Kian, and it's never good when Kian calls William into a meeting. Something's brewing."
"Does it have to do with the island?"
"I don't know." She set the stylus down, then picked it up again. "Maybe."
Tony kept thinking about the island and all the harem servants. What happened to them after all the ladies left? Had they been transferred out to perform other duties? Or were they carrying on as usual, pretending that nothing had changed?
It was depressing to think about the island and all the people they had left behind. It was even more depressing that he wasn't transitioning. His induction had been Saturday night, and this was Tuesday morning. The transition should have started already.
He'd been hoping for something—a tingle, a rush, some sign that it had begun, but he felt exactly the same as he had before the ceremony.
Same old Tony. Still human.
Kaia had told him that transitions didn't happen instantly, that it could take several days, and women sometimes took weeks before the first symptoms appeared.
Still, that didn't make the waiting any easier. He had the sinking sensation that he wasn't a Dormant and wasn't about to turn immortal.
"You know what?" Tony stood and offered her his hand. "Let's take a break. Get some coffee at the café. We're not getting any work done anyway."
Kaia glanced at her screen, then shrugged. "Why not?" She took his offered hand but got to her feet without his help. "Let's go."
They left the lab and headed to the elevators.
When the doors slid open, they stepped inside, and as the cab began to rise, Tony's stomach lurched.
He grabbed the handrail, steadying himself against a sudden wave of nausea that rolled through him.
The sensation was intense, but not quite enough to make him vomit.
His mouth flooded with saliva, and his skin turned clammy.
"Tony?" Kaia sounded worried. "You okay? You look green all of a sudden."
"Yeah, I..." He swallowed hard, fighting down the urge to gag. "Kind of. My stomach just—"
The elevator continued its ascent, and the nausea intensified. Something about the motion, the upward momentum, was making it worse. Tony closed his eyes and focused on breathing, trying to remember what he'd had for breakfast.
Eggs and toast. Same thing he and Shira had every morning.
Things were good with Shira. Easy, in a way they'd never been with Tula. Shira didn't pick fights over small things or get angry out of the blue. She didn't make him feel like he was constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for the next explosion.
Nevertheless, he still missed Tula, still thought about her every day, and still woke up some nights reaching for her side of the bed before remembering that he was sleeping next to another female.
He and Tula had made a kid together, and that was a connection that would last forever, no matter what else happened between them.
The elevator slowed, and Tony opened his eyes as the doors slid open, revealing the bright expanse of the glass pavilion. Sunlight streamed through the transparent walls, warming the large, open space.
Tony took a step forward, and the world tilted.
He stumbled, his legs suddenly unreliable, and would have fallen if Kaia hadn't grabbed his elbow and pulled him upright.
"Whoa." She steadied him with both hands, her forehead creased with concern. "What's wrong?"
"Dizzy." The word came out slurred, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy in his mouth. "I think I'm coming down with something."
Kaia released one of his arms but kept her grip on the other. Her free hand came up to press against his forehead.
"You're warm," she said. "You might be transitioning."
Transitioning?
The word cut through the fog in his brain. This was what he'd been waiting for, what he'd almost given up on.
"You think so?"
"Fever, nausea, and dizziness are all classic symptoms." Kaia's grip on his arm tightened. "Forget the coffee. We're going to the clinic. I want Julian to take a look at you."
Tony didn't have the energy to resist. The dizziness was getting worse, waves of vertigo washing over him with increasing frequency. He let Kaia guide him out of the pavilion and into the sunny path leading to the café and the clinic beyond it.
The waiting area was empty when they walked in. No patients, and no staff visible behind the reception desk. Tony dropped into the nearest chair, grateful to be off his feet. The vertigo was constant now, the room spinning around him even when he closed his eyes.
Heck, it was worse when he closed them.
"Hello?" Kaia called out. "Anyone here?"
A door opened somewhere in the back, and the nurse emerged. She took one look at Tony slumped in his chair and immediately shifted into professional mode. "What happened?"
"Nausea, dizziness, fever," Kaia reported. "Started just minutes ago. He had his induction ceremony on Saturday."
"I know. I wanted to attend, but Tim had tickets to a comedy club." She pulled a digital thermometer from her pocket and held it to Tony's forehead. "Let's check your temperature."
Tony sat still while she took the reading, trying to focus on something that would make the spinning stop, but nothing worked. The vertigo was relentless.
"Elevated, but not dramatically so," Hildegard announced. "A hundred and one point two." She tucked the thermometer away. "I'm going to call Julian. He'll want to examine you himself."
As she walked into the office that was adjacent to the waiting room and closed the door behind her, Tony pulled his phone out of his pocket and found Shira's contact. The screen swam in front of his eyes, and his fingers felt clumsy, uncoordinated, but he managed to hit the call button.
She answered on the fifth ring. "Tony? What's up?"
"I'm at the clinic." His voice sounded strange to his own ears. "Something's happening to me. Kaia thinks I might be transitioning."
"What?" The background noise on her end shifted, the quiet murmur of a library giving way to the sharper acoustics of a hallway. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah. I mean, we don't know for sure yet. Julian is not here, but the nurse took my temperature, and it's elevated."
"I'm coming back to the village." He could hear her rapid footsteps on the marble floors. "It will take me at least an hour to drive back, so don't you dare lose consciousness until I get there."
"It might be just a bug. Perhaps you should wait until Julian checks me. No point in you rushing back if it's nothing."
Shira was quiet for a moment. "Fine. But call me the second you know anything."
"I will."
"Good luck, baby. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for you."
"Thanks." He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The office door opened, and the nurse stepped out. "Julian is on his way. He should be here in a few minutes."
"Thank you." Tony's voice came out barely above a whisper.
The exhaustion was hitting him hard now, a bone-deep weariness that made even keeping his eyes open feel like an impossible task. "I think I need to...I'm just going to close my eyes for a second."
"Tony?" Kaia's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Tony, stay with me."
He wanted to stay, but the darkness was too inviting, too comfortable, too easy to sink into. He let it swallow him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else.
The ceiling above him was made from acoustic tiles arranged in a grid pattern, interrupted by fluorescent light fixtures that seemed too bright.
He was in a hospital bed, with metal rails on the sides and sheets that smelled of laundry detergent.
Something was attached to his arm. An IV line, taped to the inside of his elbow.
Wires ran from his chest to a monitor beside the bed, tracking his heartbeat.
He was wearing a hospital gown. Someone had changed his clothes.
"You're awake," the nurse said.
Tony turned his head, slowly, because the vertigo hadn't faded, and found her standing in the doorway with a tablet in hand.
"What happened?"
"You passed out in the waiting room." Hildegard walked to his bedside and checked the monitor readings.
"How long was I out?"
"About forty minutes or so. We moved you to an examination room and got you hooked up to the monitors so we could track your vitals."
"Forty minutes?" Tony struggled to sit up, then thought better of it when the room started spinning again. "Where is Kaia?"
"She went back to the lab, but she called Shira for you. She's on her way." She smiled. "Congratulations. It looks like you are transitioning."