Chapter 22 #2
Task presses his lips together to hide his smile, waiting. He can try, though it’s so easy to rile her up, he’s not making any promises.
“I was interested in your surge-saber,” Kit says, inclining her head to where it rests next to Task, leaning against the metal table.
Task raises his eyebrows, a joke on the tip of his tongue. “You were?”
“Task,” Kit sighs, exasperated.
“You make it too easy,” he laughs, leaning back in his chair, lazily crossing his arms over his chest. “What about it?”
“How does it work?”
“It channels energy, essentially,” Task explains.
“There are two poles in the middle with different charges — they’re surrounded by this conductor,” he gestures to the metal tube that makes up the shaft of the saber, “and there’s a current that you can turn on and off from here.
” He points to the handle of the saber, where a small button is hidden.
“If you tap it, energy will flow through the saber, kind of like electricity. The most important part of this is the celestium core, though. Without it, the saber wouldn’t have energy at all. ”
Kit nods, frowning. “What is celestium?”
“A mineral,” Task says, though he doesn’t elaborate. Nobody knows about the source of celestium. That is Nexarium’s best-kept secret, even more closely guarded than pink salt. He wants to help her, but not at the expense of his home planet.
“And the other two daggers you carry?”
“Why the sudden inquisition?” Task asks. “Are you trying to figure out the best way to murder me?” He’s joking, but his internal alarm bells are ringing, telling him he should be wary of this woman asking him very specific questions about his weaponry.
“In your sleep, with an undetectable poison,” Kit deadpans.
He laughs, a loud sound that comes from deep inside of him, a sound he’s unfamiliar with. She smiles just slightly, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “The other two are lumi-daggers,” Task explains. “Similar concept, but smaller.”
“I think I like the bigger one,” Kit says, just as Task takes another sip of water from his canteen.
Task about spits it out, staring at her a bit incredulously. Her mouth today.
Her lips curve into a grin and she laughs. “I knew that one would get you.” She takes a moment to reset, arranging her features so that she is serious again, green eyes flicking between the notebook in front of her and the surge-saber. “Do you think I could study it? The energy flow?”
Task is puzzled. He is unsure how she would study the energy flow of a surge-saber — it just is. “Perhaps,” he says, “though I’ve no idea how.”
“If I can get a sample of the light, I can break it down into individual compounds. Look at it under the electron scope.”
Task is unconvinced, and is certain that he is doing a poor job of maintaining a poker face. He’s let his facade slip so many times around her now that he’s not surprised he’s let it lapse again.
Kit taps something in her notebook, and then flips a page on the transparent display in front of her.
“Different viruses have different structures,” she explains.
“In addition to magical signatures, magical maladies also have energy signatures, and the way they travel in the body is sometimes different from traditional viruses. If I can understand the way energy flows in the surge-saber, it might help me understand how energy flows in the Fever as well. It may help me understand nixos better. Each planet has its own energy fields that inform how magic moves and supports magical activity, and given the Fever seems to be an offshoot of nixos, I think all of this could be linked to Nexarium’s energy fields.
That this illness is somehow associated with them. ”
Task is momentarily taken aback. He is impressed with her, with how she’s capable of puzzling things out and linking together seemingly unrelated concepts. It’s also dangerous.
He plays with the silver ring on his pointer finger. “I need the saber,” he says, eventually. “But I will loan you a lumi-dagger, if it will help you.”
“Thank you!” she almost squeals, rushing around the table and throwing her arms around him. He grunts, unprepared for the flash of pain, and she moves back, hands on his shoulders. In her excitement, she’s forgotten the no touching rule he’d very clearly laid out for her. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” he says gruffly, sliding the mask back into place, compartmentalizing so he isn’t filled with her grief, her anxiety, her pain.
Her hands are on his shoulders, and he wants her to keep them there, but not when he hasn’t woven in days, when he’s on the verge of cracking.
He’s trying to keep it under wraps, to avoid accidentally scalding her, but he needs her to remove her hands from him. He shrugs, trying to dislodge them.
She looks momentarily stunned before she removes them, stepping back, her face back to business again. “Shall we?”
Thursday
Task
They’ve managed to see each other every day this week. If he was being honest with himself, it’s because he’s made it a point to insert himself into her daily activities, be in her way more than usual.
But he’s not being honest with himself. Right now, he tells himself that he’s lingering outside her lab because he needs his lumi-dagger back. But really, he’s fine without it. Still, that is the premise upon which he’s arrived outside the door, kicking himself even as he raises his hand to knock.
She’s there a moment later, the metal door sliding back.
She stands there, arms crossed, looking up at him with a frown on her face.
He hates that she’s frowning at him. She’s in her white scrubs, hair pulled back off her face in a ponytail.
Different than how she usually wears it. “Can I help you?”
“Are you done with my lumi-dagger?” Task asks.
Kit shakes her head once, beckons him to follow her inside.
He’s never been inside her lab. This is where she works when she’s not in the medical bay. It’s very clean, fluorescent lights casting everything in a stark white glow.
“I haven’t gotten to it yet,” Kit says, standing in front of her Prism, looking up at where images of what he assumes is the virus are cast on the wall.
“I’ve been looking at this all morning. Something about the structure is strange, but I haven’t been able to identify what.
And these —” She gestures to the image next to the one in front of her.
“There’s definitely a cytopathic effect occurring, despite the latest update to the antidote.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Nixos is forcing the cells to mutate, but it’s also growing into something at the same time.
” She tilts her head, as if changing the angle will help her to see something she hasn’t thus far.
Task looks at the image, squinting slightly, as if any of what she’s just said means anything to him. It doesn’t. He has no idea what a cytopathic effect is, nor what kind of structural difference she’s talking about. The virus looks like a blob, the cell not much different. Maybe a bigger blob.
Instead of telling her any of this, he simply says, “I see.”
Kit turns her head to look at him, biting her lip as if she’s trying to hold in a laugh. “Do you?”
“Obviously,” Task replies. “There’s the…spiky thing there, and of course the cytopathic effect there.” He points at the side of the blob closest to him.
Kit looks down at the floor, shoulders shaking.
She’s laughing at him. She looks back up, inhaling and trying to compose herself.
“I didn’t know you had a degree in virology.
That was very medically accurate.” She walks closer to the screen, turning to face him.
“Actually, though, this —" She gestures over her shoulder to the image on the left.
“This is the infected cell experiencing a cytopathic effect. And this,” She points to the other one. “This is the virus.”
“Isn’t that what I said?” Task responds.
He knows he’s wrong — egregiously so — but he’s enjoying making her explain things to him.
Most of all, he’s enjoying seeing her in her element, her eyes bright but calculating, trying to figure out what all of it means, how it all links together.
It reminds Task a bit of Noemi, the way she’d get when she was excited about something, her brain full to bursting with information.
Kit is more measured, but he can still sense the way this puzzle is electrifying her, even as it weighs her down.
“I believe you said that this, right here,” Kit points to one of the spikes on the virus, “was the cell experiencing the cytopathic effect?” She laughs. “Maybe we keep you on military duty.”
“Hey!” Task feels his cheeks tighten, a smile threatening to spill out of him.
“I’m just saying, this isn’t your strong suit, major,” Kit says. “You don’t see me jumping into your battles.”
“What battles?” Task scoffs. “We’ve hardly had a disturbance on board.” Not entirely true, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Thankfully,” Kit says, moving away from the holograms, towards a cabinet at the side of the room. She pulls out a vial, a pair of tongs, and her Calandrian token. “Well, I assume when you’re back home, that’s what you’re doing. Something to do with war. Am I wrong?”
She’s not wrong, but Task can’t tell her that.
He cannot, under any circumstances, tell her that he spends most of his time as an assassin, that before he was forced aboard this ship, the majority of his days were spent trying to help Draven quell a rebellion that is getting stronger daily.
Instead, he says nothing, leaning against her desk as she carelessly grabs his lumi-dagger from where she’d left it on a table.