Pirra blinked slowly, staring at the ceiling again.

It was just as dull as ever, but right now she welcomed that.

Every part of her hurt; her head, her bones, her sky-damned winglets ached. Even the points where her wing-drapes attached to them were sore.

And she kept having to throw up.

It was not that troublesome for a Dessei; humans had a far more difficult time regurgitating than her people, but after a certain point there wasn’t anything left to vomit and it just hurt.

The splitting headache only added to her misery; Y had told her that she’d narrowly avoided a serious brain injury, but getting the Pre-Traume Gel out of her brain would take several days.

“And unfortunately I cannot give you much to help with the discomfort,” he had said. “There is only so much toxicity your body can take, even with nano-machines cleaning your blood around the clock.”

So she would have to suffer.

But it was not the physical discomfort that bothered her the most.

It hadn’t been that long ago she’d been on the altered Hev ship, been exposed and potentially afflicted herself.

Here she was; that exposure seemed pathetic in comparison to what she’d just experienced.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Her entire team had been utterly helpless in the face of . . .

She didn’t even know what the hell it was.

How could she be okay after that kind of exposure?

She kept trying to check herself, think through logic excercises. Count to one hundred, go through the alphabet. Sing old songs to herself.

She felt like she was complete, but she could not believe that she possibly was.

A force had controlled her like a puppet. It was going to make her shoot herself, even though she’d tried to resist with every fiber of her being.

There was no technological way to do that under those circumstances. Not without massive, intrusive technology like nano-machines or neural manipulators. Things that had not been present.

Alexander was standing outside. He could not come into the room right now; after her exposure, she had to be quarantined.

He’d tried to talk to her, and a part of her appreciated his concern and hated how much stress he was put under because of her.

But she did not know what to say to him. How to even begin to broach the topic.

“Pirra?” he called through the intercom.

He called out to her every few minutes. Pirra knew Y had told him to do so; to try and distract her from her physical ailments. The AI would not understand her current feelings, however.

“I’m okay,” she said, through a scratchy singer. She’d said that a few times, it was all she could really come up.

“Do you want me to go?” Alexander asked.

It was a sincere request; she knew he was hurting with concern for her, but he understood that she might just need space.

At least, she hoped he did.

“Yes,” she said.

There was a pause; in the corner of her vision she could see his form begin to retreat.

“Wait,” she said then, the thought popping into her head.

“Yes?” Alexander asked immediately.

“I need you to do something for me,” she said. “I need you to get Iago and bring him here. I need to talk to him.”

Alexander hesitated. “All right,” he said. Then he disappeared.

Iago would know, she thought. He would understand what she had just experienced, in a way no one else would.

Maybe he could help her tame the fear that threatened to overturn her whole being.