Chapter 13 #2
The healing arm whirred as it came to life and slung out of its slot in the wall to hover over my chest. Heat washed through me as it got to work, gliding along the worst gashes on my torso, the ones I knew had cut deep.
They had been stitched together while I’d slept, but the damage needed far more hours of the machine’s work to fully heal.
I did not see why that could not be done all at once, but I recalled Artek, the nearest Shaman I knew, once telling me that it would tax a body too much.
It would deplete my reserves as it healed at a rapid pace, and the body needed time to replenish those.
With that in mind, I tilted my chin toward Corin and met his silvery stare, “Give me whatever nutrients you can supply. I know you can do that. Artek has them.”
His gaze turned flinty, becoming dark and stormy as if my words had infuriated him.
Then the look smoothed away and he tilted his head, a friendly smile spreading across his features.
“What kind of devices do you have, Water Weaver?” He turned away, the scales on his back shivering as he crossed the room to a cabinet against the far wall.
My heart started pumping when I realized he might actually be doing exactly as I wanted.
When he came back to my side, I was so focused on the two packets he held in one hand that I didn’t catch his ruse.
Something snapped around my wrist and then he yanked and snapped the other end of the silvery restraint around the metal rail that surrounded the nest. He had cuffed me, tying me down more firmly than the forcefield was keeping my lower body in place.
Snarling, I pulled, then lunged up as far as these restraints let me and tried to get my free hand around him.
He slithered out of the way, then had to dodge again when Srazz scuttled out of the nest and launched himself at the traitorous male.
“It’s for your own good,” he said, dodging Srazz’s prickly rump.
He coiled himself up on the next nest to avoid my pet, hissing silently.
“I can’t let you do more damage to your body, what good would that do your mate?
She would not want you to kill yourself! ”
A laugh rumbled from my chest at the sight of him balancing on an empty nest to avoid my furious pet; he looked ridiculous.
He glared my way and I met that stare with my own intense look.
“I am not an idiot,” I warned him. “I am asking you to heal me enough so I can track my female. Do you honestly believe you could lie in your nest all day if it was your mate in danger?”
His face went cold, his eyes growing dark and stormy. His entire body switched into a kind of extreme tension that indicated he was on the verge of an attack. He wasn’t about to attack me, or Srazz, he was vividly picturing a female in danger, his female.
The door to the room opened silently, but whoever stepped inside was anything but quiet.
Another human sky being, another female.
This one was smaller than Farah or Vera, a tiny thing with slender legs and pale skin, though her head was crowned with sleek black hair.
Her expression was radiant and cheerful, her posture eager as she pranced inside on her two graceful legs.
When Farah was back to full health, she would walk just as gracefully, I knew it.
Corin threw himself off the nest on the opposite side of Srazz and straightened in a hurry, an odd, somewhat guilty expression crossing his face.
The female spouted a torrent of words, one after the other tumbling from her pink mouth in an endless, upbeat stream.
“Min-Ji, shut up!” Corin exclaimed, cutting her off.
Her expression grew flinty, her lips thinning, and she crossed her arms over her chest.
Then she darted her eyes my way and offered me a sunny smile, and she was back to talking.
With a whistle, I called Srazz back to me.
He had a tiny bit of trouble leaping onto the nest, his back legs scrabbling to get him over the metal rail, but then he was in and cuddling up against my side.
The female’s sounds had changed to soft sounds, her hands fluttering against her chest. I was not sure what that meant, I did not think I had ever seen a female do such a thing, except Farah when she looked at Buzz or Srazz.
It must be a human response to seeing animals, very strange.
Judging it safe, Corin came around the nest and started fussing with the machine at my side.
He hooked those packets up and then pulled out a needle and line of tubing.
“Hold still,” he warned me, “Don’t get any closer, Min-Ji.
” The female had indeed approached, coming around the side of the nest to stand almost on top of Corin’s coils, which he was hastily moving out of her way.
“This will replenish you, some. But it won’t be enough to fully heal you, you understand?” he said. Then he offered me a smile, one that narrowed and grew a little wary when Srazz lifted his snout and bared his yellow teeth at him.
“Yes, I’ll take anything,” I said, to which the new female, Min-Ji, started talking again and nodding her head. She sounded sympathetic, she even reached out to stick her fingers through the forcefield restraining my tail to pet my scales. What a bizarre human, she was fearless and so… cheerful.
The tube was hooked up to my restrained arm and then whatever fluids were in those packets started flowing into my veins. A way to replenish those nutrients that he had mentioned I required, the strength I needed to recover and handle more from the healing machine.
The female smelled very different from my Farah, a bit more metallic, a bit more like the Shaman, actually.
Although, I was starting to think that maybe this Corin was no real shaman, just a male who knew more than most. Maybe he had received training, but he’d received warrior training too.
Thinking about scents and what they could mean made me feel like I was going insane, Farah’s scent teased across my mind.
I flicked out my tongue and tasted the air, certain I was imagining it, but there it was, teasing across my taste buds.
“Do you smell that? I smell my mate, is she here?” I shouldn’t move with the machine still buzzing over the worst wounds on my chest, but I couldn’t stop myself from lifting as much as I could once more to crane my head and look around the room.
Corin shared a look with the sky being, this Min-Ji looked even more sympathetic now, almost pitying.
I bared my teeth her way and that made her grin, she was not responding at all like she should.
“No,” Corin said firmly. “You must be imagining it, Zeidon. She is not here, I would bring her to you if she were. I promise you that. Now, about those machines you said you had? What kind?”
He was trying to distract me, but he was also genuinely curious. I hated it, and I knew they were wrong. I could smell Farah, she was nearby somehow. I needed the machine to finish, and then I needed them to leave so I could get out of there and find her.
A smaller panel in the door opened silently and with a gentle humming noise a green disk with a sphere on top scooted into the room.
It started across the floor in a very precise pattern, as if it intended to cover every inch of the stone with its path.
“One like that,” I said, I had dozens of them actually, though I had never seen them move.
“Ah, a cleaning bot. Well, we can always use more of those. Ahoshaga is very big,” Corin said, sounding a little disappointed.
“Come Min-Ji, we will let our patient rest now.” With a final glance at the still-working healing machine, he warned me to stay in place and sleep.
Then the two of them left the room, leaving me alone with the humming machine as it polished the floor.
Alone with my thoughts, the scent of my mate, and my brewing plans.
When the robotic healing arm curled itself back into the wall, my chest felt much better.
It had even worked on some of the less deep lacerations lower on my tail, and with the last drops of the nutrient packs sliding into my veins, I felt stronger.
They thought they had me locked up safely in here, that the force field and that silver restraint would keep me.
They were wrong, because nothing could keep a male from his mate when she was in danger, and they were about to find out just how handy a Water Weaver male was with technology.
I might not know how to turn things on, but off? No problem.