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"Yeah, I'm fine. Mira's just freaking out, that's all," he said, glancing over his shoulder at Covak.

But then the pain in his chest returned with a vengeance as the adrenaline leeched away. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in as he groped for the wall for support.

Maybe the medbay wasn't such a bad idea after all. He couldn't investigate anything if he was dead.

Pushing off the wall, he staggered toward Medbay, each step a deliberate act of will. First, get patched up. Then find out what Rann was hiding-before it put the rest of them in the crosshairs again.

* * *

Mira followed Davis and Covak down the corridor, staying a few steps behind. Davis moved like a man balancing on a tightrope-each step meticulously placed, jaw clenched tight enough to crush stone.

"The more you pretend you can walk, the longer this takes," Covak observed, looming beside Davis. "Your human stubbornness is wildly inefficient."

Davis shot the Vorrtan a look that could've melted hull plating. "My stubbornness is what keeps this bucket flying while you're busy raiding everyone's food stash." His words came clipped, each one squeezed past the pain.

Covak's laugh rumbled down the corridor like distant thunder. "So it's fine when it's your stubbornness, but when it's my appetite..." He shook his head, amber eyes tracking Davis's increasingly wobbly stride. "At least I admit my flaws, Tell."

The medbay doors slid open with a soft pneumatic sigh.

She stepped in behind them, blinking as surgically-bright lights assaulted her eyes.

Everything in here screamed sterility, from the gleaming surfaces, the equipment in precise rows, to the air sharp with that distinctive antiseptic sting that made her nose wrinkle.

Her gaze drifted to the diagnostic chair positioned near the center of the room.

She'd become intimately familiar with that chair a few weeks back, when Covak had installed her translator matrix.

Remembered gripping the armrests while he'd distracted her with bizarre stories about his first encounter with peanut butter.

Apparently, the sticky substance had been a religious experience for his Vorrtan taste buds.

That almost pleasant memory shattered as Davis staggered the last three steps to the examination bed. His legs gave out the moment he reached it, and he collapsed onto the surface with a barely suppressed groan. Gravity had finally won.

The smell hit her then. Burnt flesh mixing with something electrical, like someone had barbecued a power coupling. Davis fumbled with the latches of his chest-plate, fingers shaking too badly to work the mechanisms properly.

"Draanth it," he growled, the alien curse slipping out with surprising naturalness.

She stepped forward without thinking. "Let me."

He froze, eyes locking onto hers for a heartbeat before giving a tight nod. She worked the latches with steady hands, the seals hissing open with a sound unnervingly like a dying breath. When she lifted the armor away, the stench intensified.

"Sweet mother of-" She bit off the words, staring at what had once been smooth skin.

A ragged, geometric burn stretched across Davis's chest, blackened at the center with angry red tendrils spider-webbing outward. The wound pattern reminded her of lightning frozen in flesh.

Davis sucked air through clenched teeth, gaze fixed on some distant point above her head.

His naked torso was all lean muscle and battle scars, which under any other circumstances might have warranted appreciative observation.

As it was, she was too busy noticing the tiny tremor in his hand as he gripped the edge of the bed.

"What hit you?" she asked, moving aside to give Covak room.

"M'Suun energy rifle," Davis managed, voice tight.

Despite everything, despite the severity of the situation and the blood and the pain, her brain took a momentary detour to register just how perfectly sculpted Davis's chest was where it wasn't, you know, horribly burned.

Really not the time, she scolded herself, as heat rose in her cheeks.

Davis was all functional strength and compact power, like a warship's engine compressed into human form.

Guilt crashed over her immediately. The man was sitting there with his chest practically scorched off, and she was... what? Checking him out? She should be ashamed of herself.

Covak moved around the bed like a predator assessing wounded prey, scanners whirring in his massive hands. With each reading, his expression darkened from professional interest to something that looked uncomfortably like alarm.

"Not going anywhere, are you, little human?" Covak asked, though it wasn't really a question. "Good. Need another pair of hands. Grab that bio-foam applicator and the blue cleanser. Not the green one that would melt his insides."

"Well, that's comforting," she muttered, but moved to the cabinet quickly. Her fingers found the items with surprising familiarity, old clinical assistant muscle memory kicking in. She returned to his side, supplies ready.

"Just like piloting a shuttle," she said, popping the cleanser's seal.

Covak sprayed the wound edges, and Davis's entire body went rigid. Every muscle visibly locked, abs contracting, breath hissing between his teeth. The sound made her stomach flip. Shit. She knew pain when she heard it.

"Easy there, Tell," Covak said, his tone gentler than she'd ever heard from the massive Vorrtan. "This part always sucks."

He prepped a painkiller, checking the dosage before pressing it against Davis's neck.

Davis's expression didn't change. Not even a flicker.

"Not touching it," he gritted out, voice like gravel on metal.

Covak frowned, eyes darting between his scanner and Davis's face.

"Stubborn bastard." He loaded a second painkiller, this one filled with something darker that swirled like oil in water.

"This much would drop a charging Vorrtanian rhino.

If this doesn't work, we're checking you for hidden tentacles. "

He injected directly into Davis's shoulder muscle this time. Davis managed a pained laugh that died into a suppressed cough. "Nah. Mom and Dad were boring old Terrans. Just... lucky, I guess."

She found her hands were surprisingly steady as she handed Covak each item he requested.

The rhythm felt familiar-anticipating needs, staying out of the way but ready to assist. Dr. Rettnor might have been a complete bastard in every other respect, but he'd been a skilled physician.

She'd picked up more than anyone realized during those years.

"Soak that compress," Covak instructed, not looking up from the scanner. "Need to try something different."

She dipped the material into the solution, wringing it out with practiced efficiency. The liquid was cool against her fingers, smelling faintly of mint and something sharper.

"Ready," she said, holding it out.

Covak nodded, taking the compress and applying it to the outer edges of the wound. Davis's breathing hitched, then steadied as whatever was in the solution provided some small relief.

"The wound's surface response seems normal," Covak said, mostly to himself. "But under the surface..." He shook his head, running another scan.

She didn't miss the way Covak's expression changed. Confidence evaporated into something that looked suspiciously like worry. The big medic ran the scanner over the wound again, blue light making the damaged tissue look even more alien.

"I've never seen anything like this," he murmured, his usual swagger nowhere to be found.

"That's comforting. She peered at the readout. She couldn't decipher all the Latharian symbols, but the pulsing waveform was impossible to miss. "What's that thing doing?"

"Still resonating," he said, tapping the display. This frexxing thing is fighting every treatment. The cellular regeneration is completely inhibited."

Davis's skin felt hotter each time she moved near him, the fever climbing visibly on the monitors. Sweat had begun to bead across his forehead and chest, making the wound glisten unnaturally in the medbay's harsh lighting.

"Going to try a cryo-stabilizer," Covak said, pulling another device from a cabinet. "If we can't stop the reaction, maybe we can slow it down."

The device hummed when he activated it, a blue-white glow emanating from its emitter. When he passed it over the wound, what looked like crystals of frost formed briefly along the edges beautiful and terrifying at once.

Davis's knuckles went white on the bed's edge, but he didn't make a sound. She held her breath, watching the monitors. For a moment, the energy signature wavered, its rhythm faltering.

"There," Covak said, satisfaction briefly coloring his tone. "That's disrupting the -"

The signature surged back, stronger than before. The monitor beeped a warning, and the Vorrtan cursed in what had to be his native tongue, a guttural string of sounds that her translator implant struggled to process.

Spot chose that moment to skitter into the medbay, legs clicking against the deck plates. The little drakeen beelined straight for her, bumping against her leg with an anxious chirp. Its optical sensors darted between her and Davis, blinking in what could only be described as concern.

She leaned down, patting its casing reassuringly. "It's okay, little guy."

Spot chirped again, multiple sensors focusing on Davis with alarming intensity. The drakeen made a series of rapid clicking sounds, almost like it was attempting to analyze the wound on its own.

Heavy, metallic footsteps announced Jex's arrival before he appeared. The Scorperio suit filled the doorway completely, gleaming battle plate catching the medbay lights. The cyborg moved with improbable grace for something so massive, heading straight for the bed without preamble.

"Covak to Jex," Covak said dryly. "Oh wait, you're already here."