Marik saying, “I see the natural healer in you. I don’t know if you can touch heal but I know you can heal. There’s no time to teach you everything you know already. It’s all there. I don’t know how you learned it, but you did. Now you must remember.”
That other voice coming in again, “If you implant her with all of the knowledge, will her brain be able to take it? She’s a human after all. Their brains are so weak.”
Marik saying, “We have no choice.”
Marik.
Had he deceived and hurt her? What had he done to her there on the ship?
She could remember feeling sick for a few days and being very tired. She could remember a headache that came and went and the odd flashing light around the corners of her vision. Was that due to whatever it was that he had done to her?
Again, memory surfaced. Marik saying, “Give me the implant.”
That other voice, still protesting said:
“She can heal enough as it is. If we lose her now even bringing her aboard would be for no reason at all.”
Marik said, “We won’t lose her. I will make sure she lives through this.”
Live through what? What had she lived through?
The pain soared to a level so intense that her teeth grit together to hold back a scream. She could feel her skull opening. Her hand went up into her hair and then under it, moving along her scalp. Her fingers sought out and found the long red ridge of scar that was up there hidden below her hair.
A shout of pure misery and rage tried to break free from her lips, but she kept them snapped shut tightly. She was a prisoner to whatever was happening in her mind. It was a far less danger to her than what might happen if Ben came back and decided that she had gone mad or something else and to just kill her.
The pain was so bad that it cycled through her body, making her limbs spasm and her stomach contract then loosen. All of her muscles began to go rigid and then loosen as well. She had a terrible moment when she was really afraid she would lose control of every bodily function and movement forever but, eventually, her body settled again.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Marik standing above her, a tool in one hand and some strange glowing orb in the other. He said, “I shall have to build a wall around it to protect her from its worst effects. It will seep into her consciousness slowly I hope. If it all comes to her once, it might be too much for her to take.”
The protester spoke again. “You cannot stay with her night and day, Marik.”
Marik replied, “But I would.”
A last final shock of pain so terrific and terrible that it made her entire body arch upward off the pallet that she lay on, her spine forming a curve so taut that she could hear little crackles and pops coming from there.
Her body collapsed. Her feet drummed against the floor and the pallet. Her hands opened and closed.
Words flew through her brain. Operations, performed by people and beings that she had never seen, flowed through her mind. The image of a book rose up. The book was vast, bigger than anything she had ever seen and she could not escape from the sight of it. The cover was red and of some material that she had never seen before.
The book cover flipped open. Illustrations and printed words met her eyes, and she could feel her eyes moving as she read every single word as the pages flipped wildly and swiftly. Sickness came back, but she did not vomit. She was hung fast in some strange corner of her own mind, trapped by the sight of the book of the words and the illustrations within it.
Things she had never heard of. Ways to heal but she had never considered. So many things and all of it soaking into her brain so fast that she could feel herself trying to flee from that knowledge. She tried to shut down and escape it in order to protect herself from it.
The book slammed shut. Everything went black.
Her eyes fluttered open. The dimness was still all around her. She was still in the same room that she had woken to a short time earlier. She stared at the ceiling. There was a new wealth of knowledge in her head, she could feel it in there, crawling into the little cracks and nooks in recesses of her brain, burying itself into her mind forever.
Tears leaked down her face. How could Marik have done that to her? It was not so much that she minded having that knowledge. It was the way that he had given it to her. He had known that she might not be able to survive and she was fairly sure, as she lay there weeping silently, that she barely had.
She knew a great deal of time had passed simply by the way the dimness had increased and the shadows had grown thicker in the corners of the room.
She did not dare try to sit up. Her strength was gone. Her limbs felt loose and weak, like someone had run water into her skin and left her without bones. The sickness came back again, and that time she didn’t bother trying to hold it down. She rolled over and retched onto the floor, grateful suddenly that all that was in her belly was some water that she had had earlier that day. She had been given a protein bar as a ration, but there had been a small and very hungry child in one of the rooms, and she had given the child her food instead of eating it herself.
Everything ached. Her eyes felt gelled in their sockets. Her fingers did not want to work. She still felt boneless and weak even after she’d been sick, and she managed to roll away from that small puddle, but it took a great deal of exertion for her to do so.
Her breath was labored. That prickling, crawling sensation in her brain continued. It repulsed her as much as it fascinated her. It was knowledge, and she knew it but if it were not done yet, then maybe she would not survive after all. She was not sure how much more of that she could take.
Marik had betrayed her. He had done something to her wholly without her permission, and he had done it knowing that it could kill her. She loved him, but he had zero regard for her. That was clear. If he cared for her at all, he would never have done that.
