After seeing Adrian off of the ship and back into the house, Tassie returned to her workstation. With Rann on guard at the med bay, her presence wasn’t needed. Knowing that Irric was busy, she continued some of the work without him.

  It was only when he was finished that he called her to let her know that he was heading back planet-side to continue their research. When he arrived back at the Highest’s laboratory, he contacted her once more and together the pair ran their code once again, fishing for information. The pair was forced to take a break for several hours and wait for it to finish running. They spent their time pouring over their previous findings about Adrian’s eyes.

  “Do you think it’s safe to talk to Adrian about these changes?” Irric asked, his eyes glued to his screen. “We need to confirm whether this report is true or not.” He started reading the next page.

  Tassie thought for a moment before shaking her head. “I think it would be safe, since he’s surely noticed the change, but he doesn’t want to know anything about what we find. I would assume that also counts for things he’s aware of.”

  Irric sighed. “That’s a shame. It would be much easier if he cooperated –” a sharp ding interrupted, alerting the pair that their code had run its course. “It’s about time,” he said in relief. “I was beginning to think it hadn’t worked.”

  “Should we really keep digging? Already, the experiment on his eyes show us he’s changed quite a bit. What else are we going to find?”

  “We have our orders, Tassie,” Irric intoned seriously. “Besides, if it’s not us uncovering these secrets, it’ll be someone else.”

  “Who else besides us has the experience to do what we’re doing? No one! We already found too much information on those chemicals. Is continuing really in our best interests?”

  “Yes. We don’t know what we’ll discover here, but anything we find will help us uncover the truth behind the events that occurred here. I thought that after what happened to Reya, you’d want those answers.”

  “I do,” Tassie said, frustrated. “But at what cost? What happens to Reya and Adrian once we learn them? We’re not the ones making the decisions about how to use what we find. Once we look at whatever we just found, there will be no going back. We’ll have to hand it off to the Tribunal, whether we like it or not.”

  “There was no going back a long time ago,” Irric retorted. “We’re committed at this point. Whatever we find now can’t possibly be worse than learning anything related to those chemicals. Adrian’s keeping secrets from us, and we need to know what they are. He’s far more connected to whatever happened here than we first realized.”

  Tassie supressed a shudder at the mention. Guilt filled her. She was in part responsible for information about those atrocious chemicals seeing the light of day, something that would forever keep her up at night. “Of course he is. He was their only success from the looks of it. You’ve mentioned finding mutated bodies elsewhere from other test subjects. I imagine it was only a matter of time until he ended up like one of those. How bad were the bodies you found?”

  “It’s a miracle Adrian looks the way he does now.” Irric’s eyes flicked away from Tassie to elsewhere on his screen. “Do we open what we found or not?”

  “Do it,” Tassie said glumly. “What’s one more secret at this point?”

  Permission received, Irric opened the file and shared it with Tassie. It was another research log. A great deal of technical terms were unable to be translated, but that didn’t stop him from learning its secrets. Line after line, Irric and Tassie absorbed the information, most of it pertaining to neuroscience. The specifics of the research were lost on the pair, but they were able to glean one important fact from it.

  The gru’ul modified Adrian’s brain – extensively.

  Attached to the file were several videos, none of which Irric nor Tassie wanted to view. Morbid curiosity drove them to continue reading the report. “They used nanomachines to this extent?” Irric asked, dumbfounded. “How could one kind of machine be responsible for such massive changes to his brain structure?”

  “Because it’s not one kind of nanomachine,” Tassie said offhandedly as she read. “It’s a cocktail of them and each one appears to have a highly specialized function.” She eyed the attachments. “I really don’t want to watch these, but the report states that the procedure was done by injection.”

  “They can’t be that bad then,” Irric said.

  Tassie looked at him flatly. “We’ve already seen what one of the injections they gave him did – do you really want to see the aftermath of another one?” Irric went pallid at the thought. “We have no choice but to view these since it’s part of what we found. I can only hope they aren’t too horrific.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “I’ll play them at the same time for the both of us.” Irric reluctantly opened the first attachment. A paused image of Adrian with bandages wrapped around his head sitting in an odd chair appeared onscreen. Steeling himself, he pushed play and began the horror show.

  One of the gru’ul in the room went behind Adrian and applied a vibrant pink solution to the bandages. The parts where it was applied dissolved, and they loosened. With a surprising amount of care, the gru’ul removed them and Adrian opened his eyes, only to screw them right back shut. He wiped away tears from his eyes and soon had them wide opened, gaping as he looked around.

  Distracted, Adrian didn’t notice another gru’ul insert three colourful lime-green vials into the small machine above his right arm. Finished, it chittered and shrieked to its compatriots. The machine above his arm clamped down and he winced as the liquid went from the vials to the many tubes and disappeared into him.

  Adrian braced himself for the worst, but nothing untoward happened. The clip ended with him being escorted out of the room by one of the gru’ul. “That was uneventful,” Irric commented.

  Tassie frowned. “Surprisingly so. Should we watch the next one? It must be important if they included it in the report.” Irric shrugged and started the next video that came with the file. Adrian was eating some form food, but neither of them could determine what. He finished the food and laid down on the floor, clutching his head, groaning.

  His ankles shook in a futile attempt to distract himself from whatever pain he was obviously feeling, only to begin stomping his feet after some time passed. Soon he was slamming his head against the floor. Leaning against the wall, he tried to stand while still clutching his head when suddenly his wrists slammed against the wall.

  No matter how he tried, he was unable to budge his arms. His groans turned into full-blown screams of mind-numbing pain as he writhed against his restraints, forcing Irric to pause the video. He checked how much time was left, his expression turning ugly. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to Adrian scream for hours on end.” Instead, he jumped several hours ahead and played the video anew, only to find Adrian still screaming, his voice hoarse. Once more, Irric jumped ahead several hours. This time, Adrian was whimpering. An improvement, but still an uncomfortable sight to see.

  Jumping ahead to the end of the video only showed Adrian finally being freed from his position and sagging to the floor, utterly spent. “That was,” Tassie started once the video ended, “unpleasant to watch. Not as bad as the last video but still, it’s enough to make me wonder what living through that must have been like.”

  Irric grimaced. “I’d rather not dwell on that if I can help it. I sincerely hope any other reports we find don’t have the experiment attached to it. It’s strange that the last research log we found didn’t have any video evidence left behind.”

  “I checked our code and modified it to look for that specifically in addition to the reports,” Tassie replied. “I was really hoping it wouldn’t work but given how much the gru’ul love to document everything they researched, I figured it might be worth the effort.”

  “I’m sure the Tribunal will appreciate finally seeing what one of his experiments entailed,” Irric said. “I can’t say the same about Adrian if ever he finds out what we’ve discovered.”

  “He’s asked us to keep it a secret from him, so there shouldn’t be any worry about him finding out.” Tassie sighed heavily. “How am I supposed to look at him now? First the purple chemical, then his eyes, now his brain? And that’s discounting whatever gave him his scars. Just how much was he changed? I want to find out what happened to him, yet I don’t.”

  “I know the feeling, but what choice do we have?” Irric said wearily. Watching the videos had taken a toll on him. How much more suffering would he have to bear witness to during his work? He knew by now that he’d be deluding himself if he thought that whatever else they found would be better than what they’d already seen.

  They ran their code again after modifying it, dreading what it is they would find next.

  The walls hadn’t moved and neither had she. Irric had left after her translation session for the Tribunal and there was no telling when he’d be back. Lying on her bed, Ava stared at the ceiling of her cell lost in thought, the lights not impeding her vision the way it would a human’s or an a’vaare’s.

  She didn’t know how she’d cried – nor that she’d been capable of such a thing – but it was an experience she strove not to repeat. The release from her pain had not been enough to rid herself of her memories of coming undone, but she’d take anything she could to cope with what had happened.

  The feeling of being trapped was an ever-present guest in her mind she couldn’t shake off. It clung stubbornly to her every thought. She knew that whether she was here or somewhere else, she’d be just as trapped, for she could not escape herself.

  And so she lay unmoving, pretending that she wasn’t feeling the walls close in. Pretending that all was fine and that the stale scent of the cold metal of her cell wasn’t as stagnant as she was. She turned off her sense of smell but found herself deprived of mental stimulus to distract her from her thoughts. She turned it back on, noting that nothing had changed.

  Just like her situation.

  The minutes stretched on, each one the same as the last. Mentally, she checked her internal clock to see how much time had passed. It had only been five hours. Adrian’s earlier words echoed in her mind. Captive like he’d been, she pondered his earlier anger. She knew when she’d be let out of her cell whereas he never did. Perhaps that was the difference.

  Fear crept up on her alongside the ever-mounting dread about the day the others discovered the truth and she found herself paralyzed by indecision on what the optimal actions she should take next were. She could not simulate any scenario that ended well for her.

  Lost in her programming, she thought of moving but simply didn’t have the will for such a pointless action.