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She was trying not to panic and keep focused on the tests. There’d be a solution to this. The Siblet wouldn’t win.

She’d run tests on her own blood samples three times and got the same result. She was also poisoned, just like everyone else. But she didn’t feel sick. She felt fine. Maybe jittery, but who wouldn’t in a situation like this?

Sloane looked up from her tablet to see Dallin watching her from the other side of the lab.

She smiled at him. It would do no one any good to freak out. And it would only worry Dallin. “How’s it going over there?”

“I’m having trouble concentrating,” he said.

“You don’t think you’ve been poisoned, too?” Sloane straightened and hurried over to him.

“No. I’m not poisoned. My sample is the only clear one.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad of it. You’re our best hope for fixing this.”

“I’m not so sure I can.”

“I believe you will. You always say there isn’t a problem you can’t solve.”

“The challenges I’ve faced in the past were different to this.” His gaze flicked across her face and stopped on her mouth.

Sloane bit her lip. “What do you mean?”

“Previous problems have never involved friends, or people I care about.”

She nodded. “This crew feels like one big messy family. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.”

“I’ve known some of the other Apexians on-board for a long time,” Dallin said. “We even fought side-by-side, until I joined the experiments. After that, things changed. It was decided frontline service wasn’t the right place for me.”

Her heart stuttered with sadness at the misery in his voice. “But now you’ve found a different mission. We get to use that brainpower for good.” Sloane lifted a hand, wanting to stroke his cheek, but didn’t make the move.

Dallin caught hold of her hand and pressed it to the side of his face, leaning into her touch and sighing.

Her heart flip-flopped, and she could barely breathe. “Are you sure you aren’t getting sick?”

A smile crossed his face. “I feel good. Better when I’m around you. It wasn’t easy facing the crew and telling them the news. I could have done better.”

“There’s no good way to tell your team they’ve been poisoned. You did it in the only way you know how. They all know you and understand you can be blunt at times.”

“There was no point in telling them anything other than the truth. This will be difficult to figure out. If we were only a couple of days from the waystation, we’d have more time to work on it.”

“For now, everyone on the ship is healthy and strong. And Angel is helping to mute the symptoms.”

“She can only do that for so long. Eventually, the poison will win.”

Sloane shook her head and blinked back tears. “Not when we’re fighting it. Not when you’re in charge of making sure this poison fails.”

Dallin looked down at her, and the intensity in his gaze made her breath catch. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” She inched closer to him. It would be so easy to wrap her arms around him and give into temptation. But if she did that, he’d push her away.

“You always say the right things. You do it with everyone. It’s like you can see into our heads and know what we need to make us feel better.”

Sloane smiled up at him. “My mom always said I was a natural caregiver. She said I should have gone into nursing, but I wanted to push myself and see how far I could go. I’d have been happy looking after sick people and helping to make them better, but I wanted to figure out what made a person sick in the first place. If you find the root cause of an illness, you can cure it, rather than hide the problem with drugs.”

“Stars, Sloane. I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” His thumb traced along her jaw, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Obsessed with weird things like blood borne disease, you mean?”