I’ll lie down after.
Sepha almost told him that Tilo was not a child.
He was a grown Liran, 26 standard years old and a fully certified dock engineer.
But looking at the young man’s frightened face and at Hamish’s, she understood that it did not matter.
To Hamish, anyone younger than himself who was in trouble was a kid, and a kid in trouble needed help.
That was all there was to it.
She drew the blood.
The analyzer took it and began the long, delicate work of separation, spinning and filtering, picking out the human antibodies that had fought off the Skithra venom and isolating them from everything else in the blood.
Sepha stood over it, watching every reading, adjusting the parameters with her long, careful fingers.
The process was designed for Lyran blood.
She was asking it to do something it had never been built for, on a species it barely understood, and she was asking it to do it in minutes instead of hours.
Behind her, the readout above Tilo’s bed beeped steadily, slowly, too slowly.
Doc said Pip quietly from Tilo’s side, his breathing is weakening.
I know.
Neural activity down 18%.
I know.
Sepha did not look away from the analyzer.
She could not afford to.
One wrong setting and the antibodies would be destroyed and there would be no second chance.
Hamish’s body had made them over three days of fever.
There was no time to wait for him to make more.
The analyzer chimed.
On the display, a small vial of pale, clear fluid sat in the output chamber.
Sepha took it out with trembling hands and held it up to the light.
It was so small, a few drops of liquid, everything that one human body had learned in three days of fighting about how to defeat the most lethal venom in the galaxy.
I have to test it, she said, half to herself.
I have to check that it will not trigger a reaction in his system.
I have to.
Doctor said Tilo urgently, his rate is dropping.
Cepha looked at Tilo.
His head fins were flat against his skull.
His eyes had closed.
His chest was barely moving.
There was no time to test it.
She thought about the Liran biologist on the research station years ago.
Three and a half minutes.
She thought about the lantern in the chaplain’s hands.
She thought about a human man in a cargo bay, wrapping his own arm in a torn shirt, asking calmly whether she had anti-venom.
