Aleigha woke up in the clinic, with the bright lights above her burning her eyes. They were directly above her, reminding her of when her tonsils were taken out. Right before they gave her the anesthesia to knock her out for the surgery, she had stared up at a set of bright lights above her. This felt just like that. She squinted and then looked around her, trying to see where she was. Her eyes were having trouble adjusting to the light.
dic Kaul was at her side, scanning her with a handheld scanner. His face was grim as he moved the device from her head to toe. Niki was sitting in a chair beside her, her face was pale with trails of dried tears on her cheeks. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying for an extended period of ti, which was sothing she never did. She never cried in the first place. Sothing terrible must have happened to her.
"Where is rrick?" Aleigha asked. For so reason, she was having trouble speaking. Her throat hurt like it was scalded with boiling water. "What happened?" she croaked out. She had to force each word out of her mouth. Stabs of burning pain shot through her throat as she tried to speak.
Niki looked up after hearing her sister speak. Her face shifted to one of relief. She sighed deeply. "rrick left a little while ago. He'll be back in a little bit. He needed to take the baby to Carrie, to have her babysit," Niki told her. "You apparently passed out in the tunnels after fighting with a couple of n. Council Leader Vorik carried you here so dic Kaul could see what happened. Your organs were shutting down, but we don't know why yet. Kaul thinks it has to do with sothing you ingested, but he doesn't know for sure. He thinks it may even be sothing that was airborne. He's trying to determine if it was a virus or if you ate sothing contaminated."
"My throat is burning," Aleigha whispered, struggling to speak. "It hurts."
"dic Kaul had to shove a feeding tube down your throat to get nutrients in you after he treated you. He was able to reverse whatever happened to you, but he's worried it will start again. You have to stay in here until he knows you're not going to relapse." Niki told her cautiously. Aleigha could tell that her sister wasn't telling her everything. She was being too careful with her words. Niki was hiding sothing, and she wanted to know what and why she was hiding it.
Aleigha looked around her, her bows scrunching slightly. "Why do I feel like I'm in a bubble?" Aleigha whispered, trying to talk through the burning pain in her throat.
"You are in a bubble," dic Kaul told her as he walked up to her. "You have a plasma shield surrounding you to quarantine you. We need to make sure whatever happened to you isn't contagious. Council Leader Vorik and Keirn are also in quarantine right now because of the contact you've had with them. You're the only one with symptoms at the mont. I scanned them both. There is no evidence they are infected by whatever is making you ill."
"I'm infected with so kind of virus?" Aleigha asked him, barely in a whisper. Pain shot through her throat with each syllable. It was a burning, stabbing pain each ti she tried to speak.
"Yes, I think you were infected with an aggressive virus. I don't really know what is wrong with you. It's acting like a virus. I haven't ruled it out yet." dic Kaul told her, "At least you were. I don't see it in your system any longer. It was attacking your internal organs. If you had not co back into the do when you did, you would not be alive right now."
Aleigha's face paled. "Did you check my stomach contents? I ate before I ran from them." Her words were barely heard through the hoarseness of her tone. She winced at the burning pain in her throat as she tried to speak. She wanted to help Kaul get to the bottom of whatever was wrong with her.
dic Kaul pulled a scanner off a shelf and scanned her stomach content, then looked at the small screen. "It's been too long. It has already been digested. I doubt I would see anything through the nutrients you were given anyway. What did you eat?" he asked, wanting to rule out that it was contaminated food.
"They made this soup. It was a broth made with vegetables they found and cut-up at. They said it was a rabbit. I didn't eat any of the at, but it was cooked with the vegetables, so it was in the broth," Aleigha told him in a whisper, fighting the burning pain.
dic Kaul switched the settings on his scanner and then scanned her intestine. When the scanner beeped, he looked at the small screen. "The at was not from a rabbit," he told her quietly, still studying the small screen.
Aleigha's face paled in horror. "Oh god, what was it?" she asked, fighting the burning in her throat. Tears suddenly fell from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her biggest worry was eating the flesh of humans, Rasian or Kreq. She had always been vegan, but if it weren't an animal, she would throw up what little contents she had left in her stomach. She doubted she could handle it if she ate the flesh of those people from the do.
dic Kaul placed the scanner in a wall socket, then moved her bed so she could see the screen on the wall. Several images appeared. So were roots, and then those of so forms of animal that she didn't know what they were. "It's so form of rodent. I think that if it is the cause, it was not cooked at a hot enough temperature, or cooked long enough, and a parasite was in the at that got into the broth. Many parasites can be deadly. One of those roots may look like the others, but it is not the sa. So roots are not edible. They release a sap-like juice that is poisonous to consu. This root is also a possibility as to why you nearly died," he said, pointing to a picture of a root vegetable that looked similar to the sunchokes.
"What are the chances of it being a virus and not sothing I ate?" she croaked out, fighting the pain in her throat. The more she spoke, the more it burned.
dic Kaul looked at her. "The cause of your illness is inconclusive. I can't find the reason for your illness. It could be either. I was able to stop it, but it is unclear if what you ate was the cause. That is why you are still in quarantine, as is Council Leader Vorik and Keirn."
Aleigha thought about it for a mont while Kaul did work at a workstation next to her. She suddenly rembered the two n she had killed.
"The two guys in the tunnels that I killed ate the sa thing I did. You can check them also," she suggested. Her voice was still in a whisper. She was having trouble speaking, but did it anyway. She wanted to get down to the bottom of what was happening to her.
"I will see about examining them," dic Kaul told her. "Niki will stay with you until rrick cos back. You will not be left alone while you are in the clinic. Whatever you were infected with moves quickly through the body and starts without notice." He explained. "I assu you felt fine until you beca unconscious for no known reason?"
Aleigha nodded. "I was fine, then I just suddenly felt sick, then I passed out," she explained. She looked around the room, her eyes resting on her sister. It was clear she had been crying, which ant she was close to death. She turned back to dic Kaul. "Thank you, Kaul. Thank you for saving . Thank you for saving my life."
dic Kaul nodded, picked up a bag of dical implents, and then left the room she was in, leaving Niki sitting beside her in a chair.
Aleigha couldn't help but compare what she dreamt about to what was happening. She had killed both Eric and Steve in the sa manner as in her dreams. Even having the feeding tube shoved down her throat was in her dream, as well as her sister crying.
A shiver went through her body. It felt like her dream was both a warning and a premonition. Then she rembered her sister's last words before she woke up. She had said that she didn't want to live if her sister died. She paled, rembering it. 'I won't die... I won't,' she thought, then looked over at her sister who was sitting beside her.
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