✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Three - Part III: Unravel

          Gabriel jerked as the higher electrical output surged through his quivering heart. The alarm that had been sounding off before ceased, and was replaced by the chirping of sinus rhythm once more. Everyone in the room blew out a simultaneous sigh of relief—even though it was slow in the mid-forties, it was sinus nonetheless.

          Nova watched on while the paramedics continued to work on him. The male took his stethoscope and quickly inched it around on his chest, and just as urgently took it out of his ears and replaced it around his neck.

          "No breath sounds and there's wide splitting on S2," he reported.

          "This looks pretty tender," Nova's attendant said to him. She was trying to pry his attention away from Gabriel and probed his bruised chest with a deliberately gentle touch. "Are you in any pain?"

          "... yeah," Nova said distantly.

          "Can you tell us what happened?" Sam interjected. "What caused that?"

          Nova continued to stare at Gabriel as he lie limp on the gurney. He wondered what they were injecting him with, and couldn't help a frown when they opened his mouth and fished a laryngoscope down his throat. The other attendant, in the meantime, had moved across the room to a chilled storage unit to retrieve the substances necessary to treat his blood loss, as they had been previously advised before arrival.

          "Nova?" the paramedic urged as she finished drawing up a syringe of painkillers.

          "... It's from chest compressions," Temet answered in his stead when he remained silent. She lightly accented her voice with Saelan-speak—she hoped it would put the humans at ease about her. "He... he was being used as a surrogate, like in Project SETI, but... well, when he was removed from the fertility pod before we escaped, he went under because there were still multiple eggs inside... we got them out and resuscitated him."

          "He's destabilizing again," one of Gabriel's attendants said intensely. His heart was steadily speeding up and growing rapidly irregular, and his already-low blood pressure was falling as per the most recent reading.

          "Get the pads on him to pace," the other replied.

          "We—who's we?" Sam asked. She turned to look at Temet first, then at Nova when she pointedly looked away. "Do you mean Gabriel?"

          Nova squeezed his eyes closed when Gabriel started to twitch with the cardiac pacing that kept his heart beating regularly. The quiet, whistling hiss of the ambu bag that breathed for him sounded off every other moment too, but it was deafening in Nova's ears, along with every other ambient sound.

          "Nova?" Sam gently coaxed.

          "I'm sorry," Nova whispered hoarsely. He barely noticed when the paramedic inserted the sharp in his arm; didn't even flinch. "I'm so overwhelmed right now... I can barely think... and Gabe—he—he followed the mercenaries and tried to rescue me right from the start and now he's dying... it's—it's all my fault...!"

          Sam frowned and her brow crinkled when Nova started to cry. She stood up and stepped over to the bedside, then cautiously reached for Nova's hand. He let her take it, and finally looked away from Gabriel to acknowledge her. "No, sweetheart. From what I can gather from what little you've told me, it sounds like it's the Daxut's fault..."

          "It is," Temet said quietly.

          "I'm going to lower the bed now," Nova's attendant said. "I'm going to do a quick procedure with a mending laser on your chest, okay?"