—¡Alright! — Dereck exclaimed, the flames of determination blazing in his eyes. The exhaustion from earlier was nowhere to be seen.
A golden opportunity had landed in his lap. For the first time in human history, since the first confirmed contact with the Klyen, someone had survived one of the most devastating floral parasites known.
¡And that person was standing right in front of him!
¿How long had he waited for a study subject like this?
Probably since before starting elementary school, when he overheard his neighbor "rewarding" a doctor for helping one of her daughters. From that moment, he swore to himself he'd become a renowned doctor, adored by all for the studies and discoveries he'd contribute to the field of interspecies medicine.
¡Imagine how many girls would want to meet him!
Of course, as time passed, reality made him realize that revolutionizing the industry was something he'd never achieve. And that he wasn't as handsome or interesting as his mother had told him.
His colleagues were just as smart as him, or maybe smarter, and technology advanced by leaps and bounds every year. Yet, no one had been able to find a cure for the Thanocardia. There wasn't even a glimmer of hope for one.
But now… he could change that.
He was ready to begin the analysis, surrounded by a team of specialists from various fields who had come to assist and ensure no detail went undocumented.
Andy, on the other hand, was terrified. No one had bothered to explain anything to her. She was cured, they said, but… ¿cured of what? ¿Rabies?
Her gaze darted from one doctor to another, searching for an answer, a shred of clarity in those faces showing only concentration. They were slowly surrounding her, like predators cornering their prey.
¡That couldn't mean anything good!
— ¡No time to waste, miss! — Dereck boomed with almost theatrical energy. He grabbed Andy by the shoulders and guided her firmly toward the door.
— Be strong, Andy! — Ripley shouted with all the drama of a hero, his fist raised, his chin in a heroic pose, as if epic music might start playing in the background while his tears fell.
Beside him, their parents —who had more wrinkles than a soggy milk carton— prayed as if they genuinely believed it would help.
They passed through the doors and entered a room overflowing with strange machines. Each one glowed with colored lights, projected constantly shifting numbers, or displayed detailed images of the human body.
But Dereck barely paid attention to the array. His eyes were fixed on a single machine. Bigger, sturdier, and clearly far more complex than all the others combined. Its structure was surrounded by thick cables coiling like roots and screens displaying data incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't studied for years.
At the top, a metal plaque gleamed proudly under the room's lights. On it, delicately engraved letters read:
"Princess."
— This beauty has the most powerful scanner in the hospital. I had to call in a lot of favors to get permission to use it… ¡But it'll be worth it!
Meanwhile, Jarek was sifting through his new host's memories. It felt like being an impossibly handsome extra in the middle of a movie shoot.
Maybe it was the "inner worlds" effect typical on protagonists with demons sealed in their bodies or some bullshit like that, but right now, his appearance from his previous life had returned. The wrinkles and graying hair came back to say hello.
The memories, transformed into young college students, moved around him like actors on a stage. He tried to touch them, but his hands passed through them like smoke. He confirmed that the only way to interact directly with her memories was by tweaking her brain. But as long as he didn't, he'd only get front seats to embarrassing little videos of this girl's college life.
This was different. Martin's life wasn't exactly thrilling, every day was the same, so he hadn't bothered digging too deep.
With the goblin, things were trickier. The compatibility limited him, and analyzing its memories with precision was nearly impossible.
He hadn't time to review Dania's (the woman in white) entire life, and he'd only taken the most important parts of Dereck's.
You could say he was finally going to fully test his ability to read memories.
He was itching to try things out, tweak tiny details, and see what happened. Since he'd be staying with Andy for an indefinite amount of time, getting to know her inside and out would help build a mutually cooperative relationship. And if he could find a way in these memories to nudge her into accepting him faster without injecting false ones, he'd be very grateful.
He could always undo any changes, so he didn't need to worry about side effects. Probably. Surely.
"Wait… did someone say scanner?"
And suddenly, they stopped. It wasn't on purpose, but no matter how hard Dereck tried to move forward, it was impossible. It was like pushing a giant boulder.
"¿Now what?"
Dereck asked himself as he tried to move her.
He couldn't.
It wasn't like he ignored his shabby physical condition.
¡Of course not!
But he was convinced he still had enough strength to move a freckled bag of bones. He pushed harder, confident, but she didn't budge an inch.
The feeling of failure burned in his gut. He swallowed hard, lowered his voice, and, with the greatest shame he'd felt all week, dared to whisper in her ear.
— Uh… hey… ¿Could you… move a little?
The words barely came out, broken, almost inaudible, as he held back a sense of defeat in his heart.
—¿Pretty Please?
— I… I can't.
At first, it was just a tingle at the back of her neck. Nothing strange, just something that bothered her. But the moment she paid closer attention to the machine, a horrible sensation surged and spread through her body like a sea of flames. It consumed her, destroyed her.
That metallic monster, enormous, with tubes that seemed to move like tentacles to trap and finally destroy her. She didn't understand why. It was the first time she'd seen that machine, but her hands wouldn't stop sweating. Her breathing was ragged, and her knees trembled so much they could give out at any moment.
No, this wasn't a product of her imagination.
¡If they put her in that thing, she'd definitely die!
—¿You can't?
Andy took a step back. Then another. And another. Every fiber of her body screamed to put as much distance as possible between her and it. Her feet barely touched the ground, stumbling over anything in her path.
— ¡No, no, no, no, no! — she gasped, her eyes wide with panic.
Her hands grabbed the nearest object, which happened to be Dereck's sleeve.
She pulled so hard that the doctor lost his balance. The poor man ended up being dragged like a sack of potatoes, struggling to maintain his dignity as he was forced to jog behind her.
— ¡It's just a diagnostic machine! — he yelled as the buttons on his shirt popped off one by one, exposing his hairy belly.
But Andy wasn't listening. Her knees trembled, her heart pounded in her chest, and her nails nearly tore through the fabric of Dereck's coat. Every time a light from the machine flickered behind them, Andy let out a short scream, convinced it would move to eat her at any moment.
The other doctors reacted and ran.
They tried to calm her, speaking in soft voices. They extended their hands cautiously; one even tried to grab her from behind. But inexplicably, no one could keep a grip on her for more than a second.
The strength of madness took over her lanky body. Her thin arms yanked Dereck with a brutality unbefitting someone of her build, and every attempt to hold her ended with a doctor on the floor.
— ¡Get this lunatic off me!
The hallways echoed with shouts, hurried footsteps, and the screech of gurneys forcefully pushed aside as Andy dragged her doctor like a ragdoll.
— It's definitely auric sickness — one of Dereck's colleagues explained, handing him a shirt.
Things finally calmed down.
— ¿What did you say?
— You know. Her nervous system started suffering side effects when exposed to Princess. That thing stirs the ether like a tornado.
— ¡I know what auric sickness is, you idiot!
He wanted to cry. If it weren't for everyone watching, he'd already be on the floor begging for a lightning bolt to end his suffering once and for all. But he still had hopes of monopolizing the fame for discovering the cure, and he wasn't about to let it go so easily.
— But it can't be that. If she had auric sickness, she wouldn't have been able to be scanned the first time without an allergic reaction… It must be something else — He rubbed his temple. — we'll have to use the "old methods".
All the doctors gathered in the largest office they could find. The walls seemed to shrink with so many white coats crammed into one space. At first, a tense silence reigned, broken only by the scraping of chairs and the rustle of folders being opened. It didn't take long for the calm to shatter.
Dereck slammed the table.
— ¡We have to sedate her and put her into Princess! — he shouted, though no one paid attention.
One doctor raised his hand. — Clearly, the patient developed spontaneous antibodies. Something like… an internal vaccine.
—¡Pfft! — another interrupted, flailing his arms exaggeratedly. — ¡That's impossible! What happened is the parasite self-destructed due to an error in its cycle. ¡The idiot killed itself!
— That makes no sense — added a short female doctor, adjusting her glasses. — What we saw was a case of reversion. The girl's body absorbed the parasite and turned it into vital energy.
Everyone started talking at once, their voices tripping over each other.
"¡It was a divine miracle!"
"¡Divine my ass!"
"¡It was a psychosomatic phenomenon!"
"She solved it with sheer willpower!"
Dereck brought a hand to his forehead, feeling a vein throbbing in his temple.
—¡All your theories are stupid! — he exclaimed, but again, no one listened.
— ¡You're an ignorant! — shouted the antibody theory doctor, throwing a handful of papers at the "auric reversion" doctor.
The chaos escalated immediately—some biting others, torn papers flying at faces. Shouts and insults filled the room.
— After a deeper analysis, we concluded that we have no damn clue how she's still alive.
Ripley maintained an emotionless expression. Dereck was disheveled, his hair a mess with clear signs of having been pulled multiple times. But that didn't matter to him one bit.
—Your job is to find out why.
—My job was to keep her from dying… ¡and I did it!
—…
Well, it wasn't a lie. If it weren't for Dereck's help, his sister might have died long before reaching the hospital. He sighed and handed him a bottle of purple pills.
—T-these are…
—The Æthari medical temple project was a complete success. One of these can keep you 'active' in bed for a long time. Though I doubt you'll use them in this lifetime.
He muttered the last part.
—Consider it a gift from me.
—¡Boss!
Ripley pushed him away before he could hug him. That was something he'd NEVER allow, no matter how many lives he saved.
—So… ¿that's it?
—No. I wan—we want to keep her under observation until we figure out why she's alive, but let's be realistic. She won't be able to pay a single cent of these services.
—Money's not an issue.
Dereck gave him a "Seriously?" look but chose to stay silent. After all, it wasn't his problem.
"¡Not on my watch!"
Jarek overloaded her amygdala again, the same way he had earlier, a method to artificially generate intense fear. Only this time, he shifted the source of that fear from "Princess" to the entire hospital.
Andy woke up and fell off the gurney where they'd left her after she calmed down. The first thing she felt was that something invisible was watching her from all sides. The walls, the ceiling, even the lights wanted to eat her.
She couldn't stay. If she didn't move, something terrible would happen.
She just ran without looking back. ¿Where to? She'd figure it out when she got there.
She didn't take three steps before her brother tackled her, and they both ended up on the floor, Ripley gripping her wrists tightly. He was talking, but his words were incomprehensible to Andy. And at that moment, she didn't care to understand them. A single movement of her arms was enough to push him off completely, sending him flying straight into one of the hallway's armchairs.
—¿¡What the—?! — Ripley checked that his exoskeleton was still functional as he stood to chase his sister. Everything was working correctly. The strength enhancement hadn't failed or shown any significant errors. Though he hadn't used full force to tackle her, he'd still applied enough that no normal human could have broken free.
—¿So how the hell did she do it? He wasn't scared, but the concern pushing past every limit. They both ignored their distressed parents and headed toward the hospital's main entrance. If Ripley sped up, Andy did too. With every step, memories of his sister surfaced like a cruel mockery. In school races, she always came in last despite being in good shape. Never, ever, had she managed to run at a decent speed. Yet, he couldn't catch her.
"Impossible!"
And so they burst out of the building. The fear vanished, her breathing stabilized, and her sweaty forehead dried in a second.
— Hmm… ¿Why was I running?
She was tackled again by her brother the moment she stopped.
It was an awkward scene. Trained guards were violently pushed back by a single woman driven by pure terror every time they tried to guide her back to the hospital, only for that fear to vanish the moment she reached the street. The process repeated at least five times before they finally gave up.
"What's happening to me?"
Dazed, terrified, every kind of emotion piled up like a barrel of gunpowder, ready to blow the whole place.
— You need to stop doing that — Ripley scolded, still shaken by the impossible feats he'd just witnessed. Now he held her wrist and wouldn't dare let go for a single second.
—¡But I'm not doing anything!
—You just took down at least 20 guards by yourself.
She didn't know how to respond. Her breathing grew heavy, searching for a theory, however small, that could make sense of her sudden, inexplicable strength.
Blank mind. No ideas.
She tried to head back to the hospital and go through with the checkups, but her body refused to obey. She couldn't take the first step toward the sliding doors; a horrifying panic stopped her from moving forward.
—I… I don't know… ¡I don't know!