When all is said and done, I’ve got temporary sealant over the ruptures in my forearm and a brand new dressing. My left arm is in a sling now, held tight against my chest. And I’m in one of those scratchy scrub shirts again, dejected at the sight of the sad pile my ruined blazer and shirt make. As the anesthetic wears off, the pain seeps back into my arm. Each twinge is a place I could concentrate miasmic energy—if I were clearheaded enough and in unfiltered air.
“That’s really all we can do for now,” Marina tells me. “We can try to set it properly in a follow-up, but not for another week. You need a lot of rest and fluids. The arm needs to be kept still in the sling. And absolutely no heavy lifting.”
“Unless…” Louisa interjects. “Can… can you just fix it?” She’s looking at me, not Dr. Citali.
“Uh… I might be able to, but I’d need to be outside. The air’s too filtered down here for that to work,” I answer Louisa. Marina’s eyebrows shoot up. “There’s definitely other strange physiological things going on with me,” I tell her. “In the past week, I’ve interacted with the environment more and felt more differences within me. I understand that you don’t have all the equipment here that you’d need to measure and detect everything associated with my condition… but if you want to take any sort of ambient readings around me while I do something outside to repair my arm, that could be useful. Something environmental is definitely going on around me when I do… what I can do.” Marina’s never seen me perform any of my new tricks.
“I want to understand my situation better,” I continue, “and you need to understand it if it’s going to be of use to anyone else. We did get the medical records we were looking for. Not just my medical records from the last hundred thirty years, but also Cleve’s. So you’ll have my baseline to compare myself to, and also Cleve’s non-altered baseline to compare to.”
I know that asking her to go outside is asking her to take a risk with her own life, so I also tell her that we’ve brought back additional filter masks from the miasma research clinic that was holding Arx. Marina accepts the invitation, eager to see what she can learn from monitoring what she calls “miasmic recovery.” She doesn’t have the best equipment for this kind of science here at Data Haven, particularly not that she can take outside. But she will gladly measure whatever she can, whether it be with electrodes placed on me or readings on the contents of the air around me. Not right now though. I don’t have the energy for it.
With my healthcare all out of the way, I formally introduce Louisa to Marina, who is taken aback to hear that there are Stepdaughters of Chiron sympathizers in the Morgan domes. “Oh! I guess our information campaign has been very effective already,” she says, pleased.
I shake my head wearily, reminded of all the other bad things that happened to me aside from my run-in with the siege worm. “There’s a lot of information—or rather, misinformation—about the Stepdaughters of Chiron at that dome. I would be very much interested in hearing, at some point, what they were doing for the last thirty years that gave them such a reputation.”
Marina nods, but this is not the time. “I’ll talk with Louisa. You should get some rest. Please, get some rest now.”
“Yes, fine,” I agree, carefully sliding off the bed and scooping up my damaged clothes with my right arm. “And you should know, five people died because of that factory explosion,” I add. She needs to know this before hearing any militant ideas from Louisa. “It’s not hypothetical anymore.”
Marina nods, but she doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what’s going on in her head at this news. She turns away from me, and her eyes settle on Mrs. Fuzzy. The wolf beetle is sitting obediently right where Louisa left her. “That creature can’t stay in here,” Marina declares, changing the topic.
Fortunately, Cleve has arrived at the door of the medical center, come to check up on me. He takes charge of Mrs. Fuzzy and leads her out into the hall. I tell him I’ll join him in a moment. Before I go, I let Marina know that I did bring back some fungus samples for her. Arranging to get that is up to her since I’m obviously not going to get them from the trunk of the rover myself. I do give Marina the FungX that I swiped from the clinic now, though. “Arx is back,” I tell her as I stuff my clothes in my satchel, “and they have a much larger stash of this stuff. I think they don’t need it but are addicted to it. I observed other people in the dome displaying signs of addiction to it.”
“Oh dear. All right, well, I should check up on them anyway. How are they doing?”
“They seem well enough. They got beat up a bit, but they’re in good spirits and… my assessment is that their lungs will be fine, like Takuto’s will be.”
Marina blows out a relieved breath. “That’s an impressive recovery. Maybe this FungX is pretty effective,” she says, looking at it speculatively. “We’ll see.”
I pause by the door. “I’m not saying it was the FungX,” I tell Marina, not wanting her to get her hopes up.
She presses her lips together and nods. “I understand.”