To think less than a week back, I had been counting the hours before my death, and now I was not only thriving but happy.
Except, one thing clouded that happiness. Yesterday, had proven quite anticlimactic, if not depressing. Based on the research Jessica and I had performed in the morning, when water bears went into cryptobiosis, submerging them for twenty-four hours usually sufficed for them to unfold from their curled-up position. But the Creckels had not. Thankfully, keeping Stran positive had not been a challenge. He was determined to try everything in his power to give his people a chance, and so was I. Considering the water bears were microscopic in size, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume Creckels, who were quite massive creatures, would take much longer.
The second day yielded the same depressing results, with none of them having unfolded. However, they now displayed clear signs of rehydration. Their scales that had previously looked like carved stone were regaining their definition, although they maintained a dull, greyish color.
We were heading towards the mess hall, hand in hand, for a quick breakfast when Reaper suddenly stiffened. My head jerked towards him, and I stared at him questioningly. Shock quickly gave way to a thrilled smile.
“We must go to the basement. Stran says the young ones have unfolded!” Reaper said excitedly.
I hated that my psychic range was so limited that, while the Creckels and anyone else from the team could reach me from a great distance beyond my personal range, my own limitations prevented me from hearing them. For all I knew, Stran had probably tried contacting me first and hit a wall then reached out to my mate instead.
Before I could react, Reaper whisked me up in his arms and started flying through the hallways of the ship. We zipped past the door of the mess hall just as it was opening.
“Hey! No flying in the corridors!” Jessica shouted.
“Sorry!” Reaper shouted back over his shoulder without stopping.
He made a sharp turn towards the exit and almost smashed into Reklig and Madeline who were walking down the ramp of the ship. That earned him a rather angry yell from the Scelk in a language that I didn’t know. But I could easily guess he hadn’t expressed tender sentiments.
My reckless mate landed right in front of the base’s entrance and only set me down once we were standing on the hovering platform. I should be chastising him, but that playful, bratty side of him made me smile, even as I shook my head at him.
My mate chuckling made me realize I was restlessly shifting on my feet with impatience. The wretched lift suddenly felt ridiculously slow getting us to the basement. When we finally reached our destination, Stran was all but shouting at us to get a move on in a mix of growls and yips, his broad, flat tail scraping the floor in an excited wagging movement. He was standing next to the repurposed larvae tank which contained the eight young Creckels.
Every single one had unfolded.
“Oh dear!” I exclaimed, my voice choked with emotion.
I snagged a handheld scanner on the medical station we had set up along one of the walls of the room and rushed to the tank. I kneeled next to it and began scanning the babies. Although it didn’t pick up a pulse with their system functioning at an insanely slow rate, the results confirmed the successful rehydration, increased oxygenation, and an almost normal body temperature.
Stran projected an image of one of the babies’ head with a wall in front of it. Although I didn’t doubt his words, I attempted to psychically connect with one of them and indeed met a wall. It didn’t surprise me. They were still awakening. You didn’t go from slowing down your system to 0.01 percent of its normal rate to start running all over the place overnight.
Using a stylus, I pricked the softer underbelly of one of the young Creckels to get a blood sample. A quick analysis still showed a high HIT. The Hibernation Induction Trigger was some sort of serum in the blood that forced them to remain asleep. The Creckels wouldn’t wake until its levels significantly dropped. But we could accelerate that process.
“Let’s help these little guys,” I said to the rest of the team that had trickled in while I was examining the young. I quickly explained my findings before turning to Jessica. “We need to inject them with deraxamine to kickstart their systems. And then they need sun and fresh air. After that, everyone can pitch in to massage their adrenal glands at regular intervals to help them start producing more stimulants on their own.”
We all got to work in a much happier mood than the past couple of days. As the Creckels had absolutely no fat left to fuel their reawakening bodies, we injected them with a cocktail of glucose, electrolytes, lipids, and proteins.
Things were looking up. Even though the adults still seemed a long way from waking, the slightly older Creckels—those that would be deemed the equivalent of a human teenager—appeared to be on the verge of unfolding as well.
The next morning, they did.
With them, we repeated the process we had done with the babies. That same day, the latter started moving their legs. It was more like a twitch. But with their hearts finally noticeably beating, and our scanners picking up brain activity, we wondered if they might be deliberate attempts at movement. We couldn’t mentally connect with them, but we still worked on stimulating their mental activity.
It took two more days before the first baby opened his eyes, followed by the other little ones over the course of the day. They didn’t say hi. They didn’t ask what the heck was going on. They just smacked us all with a single image: ‘FEED ME!’
It was both hilarious and adorable. Unlike me, having already been properly rehydrated, with a solid level of glucose and minerals going in their blood, the babies weren’t restricted to a liquid diet. But we did puree their meat as they were still too weak to properly chew, and we didn’t want to make it too rough on their stomachs.
I held the little Drya cradled in my arm, pushing food into her mouth with my large feeding syringe. She was adorable, her little paws on legs shorter than those of a modified Creckel, opening and closing with delight. Yet, it was my mate that kept drawing my eyes.
Sitting right across from me, he was caring for Haro, a male eight weeks older than Drya. Unlike Reklig who was clearly struggling with adapting to the proper way of holding the little ones—to the great amusement of his mate—Reaper had done it with a mastery that spoke of experience. He was not only perfectly feeding the baby but also talking to him, not in mindless gibberish, but in a simple, accessible, funny, and entertaining way. I quickly realized he was accompanying his words with mental images projected to Haro, stimulating him mentally.
“How are you so comfortable doing this?” I asked, baffled but also pleased to see what a great father he would make for our children.
Reaper looked at me and puffed out his chest with a smugness that made me giggle.
“Experience, my love,” my mate said. “After all, I have 783 brothers, half of whom are below the age of twelve, and all of whom I’ve helped raise. There is nothing anyone can teach me about caring for an infant, from changing diapers, bottle feeding—including burping—soothing a teething rage or wing-growth itching, to keeping them from swallowing crap they shouldn’t and making them fall asleep when they don’t want to. I am beyond baby trained.” He gave a sideways glance at Reklig who was still clumsily holding his little Creckel and grinned tauntingly. “You better watch and learn, buddy. I have a feeling there will be a shit ton more of this in your future. Practice while you can.”