“Tried, and…arm wouldn’t budge…”
“That’s…” the Nymph grimaced. “Let me just…” Seri scooted by him. He looked up as the man crouched next to his head. Severo barely held back his wince when Seri pushed his hands beneath his shoulders, grabbed on and began to drag him to the couch.
He was sure the Nymph was trying to be gentle, but Seri’s touch felt like needles stabbing into his skin. The sensation seemed to spread from there at the same moment that the man started pulling him up on the couch. By the time Seri had managed to get him on it, the only part of him the sensation hadn’t spread to was his face and hands. Basically, the only parts of him not touching clothing or the couch.
Seri stood back and took a calming breath. “Okay… Tell me what you are feeling,” Seri said as he dug through a pile and pulled out a clear tablet, stylus in hand.
“Insides crawling, nausea, cramping, build up in my throat, and a stabbing sensation on my skin after you touched me.”
“Okay… Okay…but you can breathe and…” Seri let out a soft barely audible whimper. “Let’s just take your vitals.”
Seri tossed the tablet and stylus aside, the stylus snapping back into the tablet before it even landed. The Nymph picked up a medium sized boxy machine, dragged one of the kitchen chairs over and sat down, placing the box in his lap. Seri pressed a button and the box popped open. Severo’s eyes widened as something flowed out of the box, gasping in pain as whatever it was snapped around his left arm, causing the stabbing needle sensation that had been lessening to flare up once again.
“Sorry,” Seri said quickly.
“What was that?” He couldn’t turn his head to see, and his arm was hanging down. At least, he thought it was… His body felt really weird, so now he was questioning if it actually was. Things that shouldn’t be moving felt like they were moving, like his skin.
“It was a pressure cuff.”
“I see.” He flinched at a quick tight pressure around his arm, but it only lasted about a second, before the thing was sucked back into the box.
“Obviously high,” Seri tsked, before pressing, he'd guessed, different buttons on the little box.
And the Nymph kept pressing more. Each time something else happened, blood was drawn multiple times, his temperature taken, pulse checked, lungs listened to…and more.
“Well, everything is higher. You have a fever already. Your body is reacting as it should. Like it’s been poisoned… Like I said, our earlier testing suggested it should take only twenty-four hours before it wears off…but I don’t know. While weakness was a symptom we anticipated, it wasn’t to this extent. Paralysis is not… But then, you aren’t paralyzed, right? You still feel everything, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I definitely feel still. It hurts, I just can’t move. Like I’m too weak to move, rather than that I can’t move at all. Though…I can’t move at all at the moment.” Severo frowned. “That didn’t make sense. My voice was a bit slurred at first too. But that’s better now.”
“What about your powers? Can you use any of them?”
Severo frowned and attempted to manipulate his own shadow… It didn’t budge. Next, he tried to slip into the Shadow Realm. Nothing happened. He couldn’t actually feel his shadow either. Which was how it usually was when one of his kind was afflicted by dysea. “Can’t use them at all.”
“Which was a desired effect…as long as it wears off… I need to do more testing. Let me…take some more blood, and let’s try to get you comfortable before I shoot you up with as much as I can to attempt to neutralize the effects. You’re sure your breathing is fine? You are wheezing a bit.”
Severo took as deep of a breath as he could, in and out, and winced at the sharp pain he felt. “It hurts, and it didn’t feel like I was taking a full deep breath.”
Seri grimaced, muttering something too soft for him to hear, before saying, “I was already going to give you something for inflammation. I’ll up the dose I intended on using. It’s possible the compound has caused the lining of your lungs to swell slightly. I didn’t hear fluid when I listened before, despite how wet your cough sounded earlier. I need you to tell me immediately if there are any changes in your breathing, understand?”
“Yes… Do I even want to know what you plan to shoot me up with?”
The Nymph picked something up from the pile, and Severo gasped in pain when he wrapped whatever it was around his wrist.
“I’m attaching a monitor to you. It will keep constant track of your pulse, temperature, and oxygen levels. If something drops or rises to a dangerous level, an alarm should be set off. As for what injections…none of it should hurt you. It’s just some things I found that counteracted the effects in the tissue samples you gave me.”
“Shoot away,” Severo said with a pain-filled laugh, that turned into a cough.
“Last one for now, I promise,” Seri claimed as he pressed the injector to Severo’s arm and hit the button.
Breathing labored, Severo gave him a wan smile in response. The pain appeared to be increasing, the man had grown quiet while he’d administered the various countermeasures he’d prepared.
Severo was covered in sweat, his long black shirt molded to his skin… Yet the man was trembling. In fact, anytime Seri’s skin brushed against his, the Dweller had felt freezing to the touch.
“All done,” he said, setting the injector on the kitchen island. “Do you feel cold?” he asked before crouching to check the monitor on Severo’s wrist.
“No. I feel hot,” Severo replied.
Seri's eyes widened at the temperature he saw… Ninety! How had the man’s temperature jumped from a hundred and one to ninety in such a short period of time? Had the compound thrown off his internal temperature somehow? “I’ll be right back.”
