✅ Project SETI 3: Eve's Advent

Part XXII: En Route

When she remained slack and unresponsive, Julia slapped her across the face, almost as hard as she could. Temet inhaled sharply as she came-to, and Julia's shoulders dropped when she saw her eyes open again.

"You need to show me the antidote," Julia said gently as she braced Temet's body on her shoulder. "That's all, sweetie. Just show me the antidote."

Temet shivered so hard that for a moment, Julia thought she was going into convulsions, but it passed as it traveled down her legs and arms. "Ugh... the—the casing is... pink. Neon pink..."

"Okay, but—just to be sure—I'd rather if you showed it to me," Julia urged her as they walked toward the medbay. She could hear Temet's breathing growing more slight and heavy-sounding, and her body started to go slack again at the same time. "No, c'mon—Temet...!"

She hastily lowered her to the floor when she became overwhelmed by her deadweight, then felt for a pulse in her wrist again. She allowed herself to be relieved by it when she felt the still-fast, still-weak rhythm there and dashed to the entry ramp where Gabriel was still tending to Nova's leg with a mending laser.

"It's almost done," he shushed and tutted while he continued to move the powerful laser in a tight circle over the small but serious burn. "Just a little more..."

"Temet passed out again before she could show me the antidote," Julia said worriedly. "All she said was that it had a neon pink casing..."

Nova winced at his nerve endings firing off in and near the wound, and he drew a sharp breath through his teeth before he spoke. "I—I know how the Daxut infuser works—fuck...!"

"... aaand done," Gabriel proclaimed just a moment later. "It shouldn't hurt much now. Where's Temet?"

"In the hallway thing," Julia pointed behind her. "Help me carry her to the medbay."

As Gabriel and Julia rushed back to Temet's side, Nova carefully stood up. The wound was still tingling and felt kind of cold, but it wasn't enough to be hindering. He bounded into the corridor behind the entry ramp and into the first stall in the medbay. He quickly found the glass supply case where the infusers and their drug cartridges were usually kept, but it had been cleaned out by human scientists already.

"Fuck," he hissed under his breath as he rushed to the next stall over. Thankfully, the equipment and supplies of this one remained intact. He flipped open the glass cupboard where the coloured cartridges were and found one that looked pink—but he wasn't sure if it was bright enough to be 'neon', so he kept looking. A label with a distinct Daxut symbol on it caught his eye, and while he wasn't sure what it meant, there were ten sets of neon coloured cartridges stacked behind it. His shoulders dropped in relief when he saw a bundle with a hot pink casing among them. "I think I found it!"

He could hear Gabriel and Julia shuffling into the first medbay stall, so he called out to them again while he snapped off a cartridge and loaded it into an infuser, "in here. The first stall was looted already."

They promptly joined him in the second stall and laid Temet out on the gurney as quickly and gently as they could. Julia pressed her hand against her chest and felt for her pulse with the other while Gabriel dashed back out to get monitoring implements they could actually read.

"I don't think she's breathing—shit," Julia said as she finished her measurements. She took the mask and the electrodes out of her scrub pockets and laid them down on Temet's legs, then reached into her pants pocket for the weak laser she'd pocketed during the earlier surgery so she could remove her feathers.