“The fractures seemed to begin around the larger, deeper wounds, the ones that originally did the most damage, the ones that should have killed him,” Rubin said. “His artery was torn. I had to go in while I hauled his ass to the helicopter and hold it together to keep him from bleeding out. At that time, I observed that the wounds were reacting strangely, almost bubbling blood from each of the sites. I had a hell of a time keeping him alive just on that run to the chopper.”
Amaryllis gasped and jerked her hands away. She breathed deeply, looking as if she might faint.
“We need that light,” Joe snapped.
Malichai opened his mouth to protest the way Joe was talking to her, but Amaryllis simply opened her palms over his legs and whispered a soft apology, shedding that heat and that burning light right through his skin and muscle to his bones.
“What do you mean by bubbling? There was no mention of that, Rubin.” Trap sounded more annoyed than ever.
“I was running with Malichai on my shoulder, trying to hold his artery together to keep him from bleeding out and observing the wounds all while running up a very rocky hill. I didn’t have much time to observe each wound individually, Trap. I just noticed that the way the blood was coming from several of the wounds was different from normal. It stuck somewhere in the back of my brain.”
Rubin sounded the same as always, unruffled, but Malichai knew him. There was just a small underlying warning note, so low one might not hear it, but Ezekiel and Malichai had grown up with him. They exchanged a long look. He was upset, and that meant he was upset on Malichai’s behalf. Malichai’s stomach did another slow drop. This was bad. His alarm had gone off for a reason.
“Can you tell me how it appeared differently to you?”
“Blood can spray, or ooze, or just leak, pour, stream, but actual bubbling is something I’ve not really witnessed, not like that, where it was copious amounts.” Rubin, again, sounded matter-of-fact, but Malichai knew he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Interesting,” Trap said. “Did you get that, Wyatt?”
“Yes, and it was as much blood as you would expect from a bullet wound of that size, Rubin?” Wyatt asked. “Even with the field dressing?”
“More. And presenting in a very strange way. Almost like a fountain of blood bubbles.”
“You would have thought you would have mentioned that to me,” Trap groused.
“He told us when we asked,” Wyatt pointed out. “Joe, keep going.”
Joe didn’t hesitate, sensing the brewing volcano in Rubin. Rubin was a man who was extremely quiet, but if he exploded, he could take the entire team down with him. “There are no fissures starting from any of the lesser wounds. The cracks certainly are throughout the bone, including where those wounds are, but they didn’t originate there. In the larger damaged areas, where the bullets tore everything up, there are the beginnings of the fractures in the pitting—”
“Stop,” Trap said sharply. “You didn’t mention any pitting.”
“Sorry, Trap. Around each of those wounds in a large circle—”
“How large,” Trap interrupted again.
“Four inches on each of them. A diameter of three inches. Maybe a little larger.”
“I have to know exactly. At each wound does the diameter vary? Is it exact?”
Joe was the team leader and respected at all times, but Trap didn’t ever seem to notice or pay attention to protocol. He lived in his head, in his research. When he was on the battlefield or running a mission, he was entirely focused. He wasn’t a man who would ordinarily ever be part of a team, but he fit with them, and all of them understood his brilliance.
Amaryllis startled everyone by replying. “It’s exact. It’s a circle of pitting that is three inches out circling the original wound. It doesn’t vary, although on two of the five larger wounds where the circle is, it’s off, meaning two inches above and one below instead of being exactly centered.”
“Damn it,” Trap burst out. “Can you fix what’s happening to the bone, Rubin?”
Malichai’s heart accelerated and he knew everyone in the room could hear it. He willed his brother not to look at him. He couldn’t look at any of them. Everyone had a secret fear. A dread that loomed over them. Since he’d been a child and he’d seen a man, clearly a veteran soldier, begging in the street, one leg gone, just a stub showing, he’d been terrified that he’d end up that way.
“The fracturing is clearly accelerating,” Rubin said. He looked down at his hands and then at Malichai. “With Amaryllis and Joe working with me, I believe we have a chance of healing this, but we have before. Amaryllis and I cleared every one of those fractures earlier today after Mills kicked his leg. They should have stayed gone but the time of return seems to be accelerating. Everywhere the pitting is, the fissures in the bone begin, and there’s a lot of pitting. We need to find the cause of the return. With the three of us, we can keep the bone clear, but it’s imperative to find the actual cause for the fracturing.”
“Is his bone brittle? What does he have in him? He has great eyesight. Bird? He swims like a fish. I need to be able to pull up all the data on him.” Trap was clearly frustrated.
“His bones aren’t hollow,” Rubin said. “They’re dense. Very dense. More than a normal human, which is why we’re careful about taking him to a hospital. We need our own doctors.”
“Penguin,” Amaryllis guessed. “If he swims like I do.”
“Can a regular surgeon fix what’s happening to his bone? One of us?”
Malichai closed his eyes. He already knew the answer to Trap’s question and he desperately needed comfort. At the same time, he didn’t want anyone to touch him. He wasn’t going to break down in front of his teammates. How many other men had lost limbs and had to face loved ones? Ask their woman to live with that loss? Ask their children to be okay with it? He was a GhostWalker and the government would spend any amount of money to get him back in the field, so he would have a prosthesis very fast, but he would have to come to terms with his worst fear.
“No, Trap, there’s no fixing this in an operating room. Amaryllis can watch for it. Examine him every night and any time it starts, the three of us can take care of the problem, but that’s not a permanent solution. You and Wyatt are going to have to figure out why this is happening,” Rubin said. “I can have him build strength in the leg and we can work on it consistently, but we still need you to figure it out.”
“You obviously have a conclusion,” Malichai challenged Trap. “Say it. What’s causing this, and is there some way to stop it?”
“You know I don’t like to speculate . . .” Trap started.
“I don’t give a damn,” Malichai snapped. “I’m asking you friend to friend, what the fuck is happening to me?”
Trap sighed and ran his fingers several times through his hair in obvious agitation. “If I had to speculate. Just guess—which I don’t like to do—I’d say that would be the diameter of the second-generation Zenith patches you used to stop the bleeding and push adrenaline into your body. You used them on the five worst wounds. The ones that could have killed you. That’s why each of the circles are exact in diameter, but not in relationship to the wound. You were slapping them on fast, hardly looking at what you were doing. This is some reaction to the Zenith. Wyatt?”