Her tongue touched her upper lip, and then she gave him a faint smile and nodded. Once more, she turned her attention to Mari’s bone marrow. All right. We’ve got this. Red, we’ve got so much work to do.
Once again, Jonas wanted to ask questions, but he remained silent. Whitney certainly must have given Camellia a healthy dose of the plant. He knew he had to have some of the plant in him as well in order to connect with her on such a molecular level, but it was nothing to the extent of what Camellia had. She was extraordinary at what she was doing.
She concentrated on bone marrow in the spine first. She had that little frown on her face, and she began by immediately targeting a tiny cell that he had barely noticed among all the other cells. It was a putrid green color, and it seemed to be attached to nearly every cell that he could see. He thought it belonged because there were so many of them. Nests of them.
What is that?
I believe Zenith left this behind, and it’s multiplied in her.
He knew she wasn’t paying attention to him. Camellia was wholly consumed by what she was doing. Now that he knew those green cells shouldn’t be there, he studied them. They looked to be an invasive species, so tiny, a leech attaching itself to feed. She took out the nests first, destroying them with electrical pulses she sent from the starships—the neurons with the widespread arms reaching throughout Marigold’s body.
I can help with that. Jonas had seen her wield the neurons before.
He might not be good at too much of the healing, but he’d played video games, and he could shoot electrical charges into the larger targets and take them out. The larger targets were tiny, but not like those single cells, attached to the bumpy ones Mari obviously needed. He wasn’t going to take a chance on destroying those. He’d leave them to Camellia to finesse with her superior skills.
That will save us time.
She didn’t ask him if he thought he really could destroy the cells without harming Marigold. She acted like she was certain he could help her. She didn’t even look to see what he was doing when she began going after the single cells attached to the bumpy-looking cells.
What are those?
This is a lymphocyte, the rounder one that looks as if it has multiple cells inside is a neutrophil, and the third one that’s shaped kind of like a kidney bean is a monocyte. Basically, they’re white blood cells and are necessary to the immune system. They fight bacteria, viruses, fungi, anything invading our systems. This leechy thing is cutting off all aid to Mari’s system before she has a chance to even try to fight it.
Jonas concentrated on destroying the nests of green cells trying to hide among the field of red, white and yellow cells. The nests were so tiny that he had to really search for them. He learned to look with that veil of silver that was so foreign to him. He couldn’t think of anything but sending electrical pulses along the neuron’s long spike and out to the synapse. He could see the jump provided by Red increasing the pulse as it leapt to the next neuron and sizzled down the extended arm jumping from synapse to neuron until he guided his missile straight into the center of the putrid green nest. He had no idea of time going by, his complete concentration on the electrical pulses and the flood of chemicals fighting to save Marigold.
“Her temperature is going to begin to elevate,” Camellia informed the others in her distant voice. “You’ll need to be prepared to get it down. That’s her body trying to fight again.”
There was movement in the room around them, but Jonas didn’t look up from his work, now determined to ferret out every single one of the enemy camps. That was how he looked at those nests. The ones attaching themselves to the red and white blood cells or platelets were assassins sneaking and attacking under cover of darkness. He and his woman would find and destroy them. Every single one. But as he was discovering for himself, the effort took tremendous energy.
Camellia staggered back and would have collapsed on the floor if Kyle hadn’t caught her. He eased her down, handing her the water bottle. She took it with shaking hands and held it to her mouth. Some of the water spilled, and Kyle helped her hold it. There was silence while he wiped what appeared to be beads of sweat from her face.
Jonas sat on the floor, his back to the wall, his eyes on his woman, nearly as shaky as she was. “We have a long way to go, don’t we?” he asked softly.
She nodded and leaned her head back, closing her eyes wearily. “We have to get into every bit of bone marrow producing active blood cells. This stuff is horribly invasive and something is feeding it. It reproduces very fast.”
“What is it?” Logan asked. “Was Lily right? Did this happen because of prolonged exposure to Zenith?”
Camellia sighed. “I don’t know for certain. I’ll try to get her a sample of what Mari’s been dealing with. She might be able to tell from that, but right now, I just want to sleep for a few minutes.”
Jonas wished he was sitting next to her. “Marigold’s bone marrow is compromised,” he explained so Camellia didn’t have to make the effort. “There’s some sort of green stuff attacking her healthy blood cells. That means we’ve got to check all of her marrow, in every bone. So far, we’ve only managed to clear the spine.”
Jack and Briony looked at one another, both frowning. “How does that make sense? Her bone marrow was checked,” Jack said. “They came back and told us she had a clotting problem, but no one said she had any kind of alien cell in her marrow.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jack,” Jonas said. His arms ached as if he’d fought a battle holding a cannon. It was strange to feel so utterly worn out when he hadn’t actually used physical strength. “The invasion was very real and quite enormous.” He closed his eyes as well, raising the bottle of water Jeff had handed him to his mouth. “I will say it looked to me like that green stuff was hiding. Maybe they couldn’t see it.”
Green stuff? Camellia’s voice slid into his mind. Gentle. Teasing. So scientific of you.
You’re good for me. Because all he wanted to do was smile.
Her hand came up, fingers pressing against her lips to hide her smile, but when she lifted those long lashes and looked at him, her eyes held pure laughter. I know. She was teasing him. That long fall was getting longer. Dropping deeper. He was in it for the long haul. All the way.
Whitney paired us. Then he dosed both of us with Middlemist. And to top it off, he added the underground network, the fungus.
Um, first, she prefers to be called Red. And she’s always first. She has a bit of an ego for a good reason. Never put the underground network on top of her. She might short-circuit you for a while. And yes, he did pair us as well.
We’re connected three ways. He stated it with great satisfaction.
I suppose you could say that, not that I know why you’re puffing out your chest and getting all macho about it.