Chapter 28 #2
Kit lets her gaze roam over his form until she’s sure that he’s not been gravely injured. The shadows under his eyes are darker than usual, stubble on his jawline where he usually keeps it clean-shaven. A slash of blood across his cheek from the wound she’d spotted earlier. “You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
“Were you successful?”
“Very,” he says.
Kit’s stomach flutters in anticipation. After studying the composition of the pagadium, she’s almost certain it will help bolster the barrier properties of the pink salt.
“And you’re alright? Voss and Caelinus?”
“Caelinus is recovering. He’s been drained and needs to rest for several days. Voss is fine. As am I.”
“Your face?” Kit asks, gesturing to the wound.
“Just a scratch,” he says, shrugging.
“Let me at least patch it for you,” she offers.
“It’s fine,” he says, tensing, and Kit frowns.
She’s starting to notice that every time touch is involved, he stiffens up.
There’s a niggling in the back of her mind, something that she thinks she learned about touching and bodily tension when she studied the theory of magical maladies at the Agrippa Institute, but she can’t remember what.
“You’re still bleeding,” Kit protests.
Task reaches up to his face as if he’s forgotten, wincing as he brings away bloodied fingers.
“Stop being stubborn,” she says, and she reaches for his hand, intending to drag him to the medical bay with her so she can fix him up.
“What’s going on here?” Kit hears the smooth voice before she sees him, but then Alexander steps from the shadows, a grin on his face, as if he’s deliciously pleased with what he’s stumbled upon.
Kit jumps back from Task, crossing her arms and attempting to look casual.
They weren’t doing anything, not really, and still she feels as though she’s been caught red-handed.
Task whips around, and Kit doesn’t miss how his hand automatically reaches for the lumi-dagger, how he’s unsheathed it before Caden can take a step forward.
“Easy, tiger,” Caden chuckles, hands up. He pauses, staring at the wound on Task’s head. “What happened to you?”
“Training accident,” Task says, the lie sliding off his tongue so easily that Kit would believe him if she hadn’t known where he was, what he was doing.
“Is that so?” Caden asks skeptically.
“Yes,” Task replies, his tone hard. Different from how he was a moment ago, when it had just been the two of them in the hallway.
“And you two are sneaking about in the hallway at 4:30 in the morning for what reason?”
Kit’s heart pounds in her chest, but Task appears nonchalant, sheathing his lumi-dagger as he says, “Caden, you’re telling yourself stories again. We’re not sneaking about. I was on my way to the mess to get a coffee and an ice pack and I ran into Luminary Hart. Nothing more than that.”
Caden crosses his arms, frowning. He obviously thinks he knows something, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to prove it. Instead, it’s Task’s word against his, and Kit thinks Task is doing an excellent job of making him look unhinged. “Whatever you say, Canmore.”
Task turns his back on him, locking eyes with Kit again.
Is he gone? He mouths to her, and Kit almost laughs.
She looks over his shoulder, watching Caden’s retreating form, relieved that Task had somehow managed to steer the situation in their favor.
That all could have gone a very different direction.
“Yes, but we should still…” She casts a glance over her shoulder, spotting the tiny supply closet to the right of the lab.
“Come here.” She beckons him in behind her, overwhelmed by his proximity when the door slides closed, trapping them inside.
They’re almost pressed together, the heat from his body radiating into hers.
Why had she dragged them in here? Was she trying to torture herself?
Her hands feel clammy, her throat dry as she opens her mouth to speak. “Who is he?”
“Alexander Caden?” Task sighs. “Nobody important.”
Kit raises her eyebrows. “He seems important. And he keeps…popping up. As if he’s looking for us.”
“He’s just trying to stir up trouble,” Task says, almost too smoothly. Kit thinks she hears a catch in his throat, a slight stumble to his words, but she can’t be certain. “He sits on Draven’s High Council.” Task shrugs, smiles a bit. “But so do I.”
“Exactly!” Kit replies. “You’re also important.” Blood is still dripping from his brow, and she watches as it trails down his forehead, over his cheek. She reaches for him, but he shies away from her.
“Don’t, Kit.” His voice is gruff, hard again.
She holds up her hands. “Sorry. Are you just going to bleed all over then?”
“I’ll take care of it in a minute.” He wipes his fingers on his uniform, then reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket, pulling free a jar of a fine, golden mineral. “I wanted to give this to you, before Caden interrupted us.”
She reaches for the jar, eyes wide, Task’s wound momentarily forgotten. Their fingers brush as she takes the jar from him, and she tries to ignore the swoop of her stomach. “This could be it.”
Task nods once, his demeanor still closed off. She hates being on this side of his walls when she’s seen who he is behind them. She huffs a breath, frustrated. She’d been looking forward to seeing him, even though he’d only been gone for two days. “I really appreciate it, Task.”
“Go do what you do best,” he says, gesturing toward her lab. “I’m going to clean up.”
He exits the supply closet, leaving her standing there, a little flabbergasted. She hadn’t expected him to close up so rapidly and so entirely, to go from smiling at her to treating her as if she was nobody, as if he hadn’t just traveled across the galaxy to get her a rare ingredient.
She stomps down the hallway to drop off the pagadium, before returning to the lab to check on the antibodies.
The next day, Kit sits at the desk in her lab, digibook pages pulled up on the Prism in front of her so she can cross-reference the exact mixture that the Luminary stationed on Aquidium used to draw out the black magic infection.
Luminary Ellsworth is patched in over the comm system, her face hovering on the screen to Kit’s left.
She looks exhausted, the fine skin under her eyes yellowish-purple and her hair greasy and pulled into a bun.
“I’ve gotten my hands on the pagadium,” Kit updates. “Tomorrow I’ll go to the lab and will try administering the antidote that I’m creating here to the infected cells, see if it binds.”
Ellsworth nods. “Kit, the fact that you were able to get pagadium is significant. It really is nearly impossible to source. We don’t have any on Lumaria, so even if this works, there will be a question of scale. We’ll need massive amounts.”
Kit holds up a hand. “I know it’s stressful there —”
Ellsworth snorts a laugh, shaking her head. “That’s an understatement.”
“All I’m saying is I need to test this first before we even talk about scaling.” She stands, crossing over to where the pink salt is liquefying at her workstation. She carefully opens the jar of pagadium, measuring 1.5 ccs of the dust-like powder into a small tube.
Ellsworth watches over her shoulder, her eyes fixed on the substance. “Liquefying that as well will help with the mixture and subsequent reaction.”
Kit sets up another burner, placing the tube into the metal arm as she turns up the heat little by little. Liquefying minerals could be touchy and prone to explosion if temperature was increased too rapidly, and she’s not about to blow up the Polaris. Hopefully.
“Add a drop of acterin as well,” Ellsworth commands. Kit scowls. She was about to do it, if only Ellsworth could give her a minute.
She bites her tongue and does as she was asked, watching the solution turn a lime green color as it melts.
There is a precise way to incorporate the pagadium into the pink salt — she needs to fold it in while stirring the pink salt mixture, and then wait for it to bubble.
Almost like creating a Pain Draught, but with higher stakes.
“I think I’ve got it from here,” Kit says, turning back to Ellsworth’s face. “Thanks for staying on with me.”
“Of course. I’m eager to hear the results tomorrow.”
“It’ll only be small scale. I still have to test it on an actual patient,” Kit reminds her.
“Still.”
Words spill from Kit’s mouth before she can stop herself. “How’s my dad?”
Ellsworth’s face softens. “He’s fine, Kit. The minister is briefing daily, and I see your father there.” Then, “He’s very proud of you. Your mother would be too.”
Kit’s heart squeezes in her chest at the mention of her mother. She misses her, but especially now that she has this information about herself that she doesn’t know what to do with.
She hasn’t wanted to attempt to use the power with any of the remaining patients, for fear something will go awry.
The other times, it happened without her consciously thinking about it, and she’s fearful that she’ll accidentally swing the pendulum the other way, drag the remaining life out of someone instead of imbuing them with it.
So she hasn’t told her father, or Finn, or Knox, or Luminary Ellsworth, because she doesn’t know what it means. And she hasn’t worked up the nerve to tell Task about it.
She refocuses on Ellsworth, who is looking at her from the Prism, eyes narrowed. “You hanging in there, Kit?”
“I’m fine,” she says automatically. Even if she’s very much not fine, she’s far better off than the Lumarian citizens who are dying daily.
Ellsworth presses her lips together and nods once. “We’ll talk tomorrow, then. Let me know what happens.”
Kit turns to the beakers, combining them according to the instructions.
She’d said she would wait until tomorrow to inject the substance into the infected cells, but she wants to do it this evening so that they can bind overnight.
She makes quick work of cleaning up and heads to the high containment lab down the hall.