Parasitosis

[Rev Solomon]

Continued from Be Careful What You Wish For (http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21397)

"Shuttle Exodus to Challenger flight control, we're clear of the planet's atmosphere. Can I confirm that you have a landing zone cleared for me and medical personnel standing by for our arrival?"

"Roger that, Exodus, medics are on their way now. You have priority clearance to Docking Bay 2."

The Theta-class T-2c shuttle rocketed out of Lethe's upper atmosphere and toward the Venator-class Star Destroyer Challenger. She'd had to abandon her original mission of ferrying supplies from the surface of the junk world up to the ailing Wheel; instead, she now carried Reverend Solomon and two very frightened padawans, one of them clinging to life by the tips of her claws.

Solomon plotted the approach vector to the Challenger's landing bay and swiveled in his seat to look back into the shuttle's small medbay. "Just a little longer, Akasha. Kala, how's she doing?"

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha Khan was no longer writhing under the pain of the toxic little creature that was still sinking its way into her chest - she didn't have the strength anymore, though she certainly felt the pain. The pain was the only thing keeping her awake - she felt as if she were lying on a knife's edge with a black abyss to either side. If she fell asleep now, she would probably never wake again.

"Kala," she said, her voice a near inaudible croak, her eyes rheumy and unfocused. "Don't... don't take the pain away. I need it... its strength..."

The Orryxian feebly gripped Kala's hand with her paw, her claws leaving needlepricks in the Nautolan halfbreed's skin.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

More than anything else, Kala hated feeling useless. And since Anbira's arrival and their subsequent rescue, that's all she did feel. Red-rimmed eyes had dimmed from bright lilac to a dull, dark grey-blue as the steady trickle of tears had finally stopped.

She was kneeling beside Akasha, a hand on the Orryxian's forehead, eyes half closed as she monitored with her senses. That told her far more than the tiny monitors that clicked and whirred around them both. It...wasn't good. The creature glowed a sickly red, threaded through with a pulsing black. It was the inky black that reacted and pulsed more strongly as Akasha faded further, and each time Kala tried managing her best friend's pain.

It was looking more and more grim, and forced her voice to tremble as she answered the Reverend. "Not good...the thing is growing stronger and she's weakening faster. Nothing I can do is helping...only makes it worse."

The hand holding one of Akasha's paws felt a slight bit of movement, and a moment later, the faint sting of pain as claws dug in, though weakly. "Ok...Ok, I'll stop. I'm sorry, Akasha...sorry I even spotted that stupid alley to begin with." Kala whispered, pulling her senses and the faint trickle of energy back into herself.

[Chaz de Coventina]

A medical emergency.

Under the right circumstance, those words were capable of inciting acute panic in even the most experienced physician. Contrary to the picture the holodramas painted, at it's heart medicine was a simple game of like meeting like. Figuring out the way the pieces of the diagnostic puzzle slotted together was a refreshing mental round of fun but after that it became a dance with steps that were so familiar they could have been performed in a drug-induced coma. Discover A. A responds to B, C, and D. Combine A with any of the prescribed options and receive outcome E. If E is not the desired outcome, return to step two and choose from remaining options until advantageous solution is found.

But the E-word changed everything. Emergency meant that the single most valuable weapon in a doctor's arsenal was being taken away: time.

"Do we have an ETA?" Chaz de Coventina, freshly commandeered from the Challenger's central medbay, traveling at a brisk jog that forced the Alliance officer charged with guiding her to move awkwardly in his uniform in order to keep up. There was a look of quiet readiness on the medic's sharp-angled face, an anxious bend to her mouth that wasn't altogether nervous but rather suggested that the misanthropic woman might be looking forward to whatever terror was on it's way.

"They're docking now, Doctor."

"And no further details on what exactly to expect?"

"All I know is that it's an emer--"

"Nevermind," Chaz interrupted, grip tightening on a small trauma medpac. "It's more of a surprise, this way. I love surprises."

She smiled grimly at his bewildered expression and picked up the pace, Docking Bay 2 drawing closer n the distance.

[Rev Solomon]

The Exodus rose though the gap in the belly of the Challenger that opened into Docking Bay 2 and swung onto the nearest open landing pad with an urgency that strained the old Theta's repulsorlifts. No sooner had the craft touched down than its ventral hatch began grinding open. Moments later, Solomon and Kala appeared, guiding a hover gurney down the gangway and onto the flight deck. On the gurney was a stricken adolescent Orryxian female, marginally conscious, with a loathsome, tumor-like creature sucking greedily at an open wound in her chest.

"Which way to the medbay?" Solomon shouted. A deck crewman pointed to the large double doors where Dr. de Coventina and a small retinue of medical personnel were bursting forth.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

The sound of Doctor DeCoventina's voice issuing crisp orders was the most welcome sound she could imagine in that moment. Only Ilias, a Jedi Healer himself, would have been more welcome.

"Doctor DeCoventina?!" Kala said, her voice a mixture of terror and guilt, forcing her words to emerge stuttered and uneven. "It...its an orbalisk...its called an orbalisk...and...elec...eletricity...seems to work on it...couil...could...couldn't gen-generate enough of a charge...with my practice saber...b-b-but an-anythingelsejustmakesitworseincludingForceenergy.. ."

The last emerged in a rush as Akasha's hold on her hand tightened and her friend gasped in agony. "This-is-all-my-fault." she whispered faintly in Nautolan, and refused to be parted from Akasha's side.

[Chaz de Coventina]

Kala was trying her best to give an accurate report but the combined effort of her stammers and the momentary paralysis born from the sight of the grotesque, pulsing mass entrenched within a bloody nest of fur and flesh meant that Chaz gathered very little from the exchange.

"A what?" She snapped, auscultator flying from it's limp perch around her neck and settling into position like a well-trained sandhawk. The smooth, rounded flat of the mechanism pressed against Akasha's chest, transported the shallow, gurgling echo of her breath into the doctor's ears. There was a distant drum of heartbeat in the background, arrhythmic and much too faint to be of any reassurance.

Chaz brushed off an offered wrap containing gloves - they would take too long to put on - and grabbed the other side of the gurney with one hand to help throttle it along. Her free member lifted the medpac to her mouth and she tore it open with urgent teeth, spitting the stiff scrap of material out onto the floor as they went.

"What's her name?!" Chaz barked at Solomon, dumping out the contents of the emergency kit onto an arc of space near the Orryxian's hip. "How long has she been like this?"

[Rev Solomon]

"Her name is Akasha Khan," Solomon replied. "The parasite is an orbalisk. It bit her just under an hour ago, she's been declining ever since."

Even as he pushed the gurney along the preacher was trying to reach into Akasha with his senses, chart the progress of the orbalisk's toxins, maybe even lend his strength to the girl as Kala had been trying to do, but the aura of the Dark Side surrounding the cancerous creature snapped back at him like a viper coiled around its prey. He could only hope and pray that a medical solution would present itself where the Force had run dry.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha's breathing was rapid and shallow, and the people around her looked indistinct against the glare of the rapidly passing light panels in the ceiling, their voices like a garbled comm channel playing from the bottom of a well. But the pain - the pain was still sharp and fresh and irreverently cruel.

"Kala," she gasped, searching for the pale glint of her roommate's hair. "Kala, the Dark Side... it's too strong. Can't... can't fight it. Can't fight..."

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

For a split second, Akasha's voice echoed in her mind as if it were Rin's. She found her voice paralyzed and her darkened eyes wide with terror and remembrance. Her twin had sounded just like that before he died in her arms, cut down by the stormtroopers hunting their father. His spirit as broken as his body was.

The memory made her pain double, but it snapped her back into herself.

"That's not true, Akasha...its never too strong. Your anchor in the light is so much stronger. Stay with me, and I swear I'll fix this somehow. You can't leave me alone now...you can't." Kala said as she nodded, her free hand gently stroking Akasha's forehead.

Swallowing hard, she lifted her gaze to the Doctor once more. "I think the key is electricity. I rewired my practice saber in an effort to get one to stop attacking me and it worked, but not for long. I think if you can generate enough of a charge we can get it to let go before it reaches...bef...before it reaches her heart."

[Chaz de Coventina]

Just under an hour. The fact that she was still alive was startling, judging by the advanced state of toxic shock her system was leveled at.

"Akasha," Chaz gave Kala a brief nod before leaning over until she was within the girl's line of sight, made her work a little to make static eye contact. The gurney's compressors whined as they hurtled around a corner. "Akasha, can you look at me? There we go - good, that's good."

Actually, it was about as far from good as it got. Akasha's pupils were blown, twin orbs of inky black dilation that were glazed over in disoriented fervor. Was she hallucinating? Memory supplied an overheard whisp of the disjointed conversation between the two girls, something undecipherable about light and dark and Chaz nearly chalked it up to symptomatic manifestations before remembering that this was a space convoy, where strange and mysterious creatures existed. Like Jedi.

"I'm going to give you something, Akasha, an isotonic injection to boost your fluids," even as the words were spoken, a hypodermic injector was pressed against the limp neck and depressed with a sharp hiss. In her current state, Akasha was probably unaware of anything that Chaz was saying but that was alright; talking out loud was a way of thinking through a hailstorm in logical sequence and would allow for one of the secondaries to make notations.

The medbay's dim glow was like a beacon calling them forth and they raced toward it, unapologetically cutting off a squad of technicians approaching from an adjacent corridor.

"Out of the way!" Chaz yelled. "Kala, run ahead and power up a defib unit - not exam room three, nothing in there works... You, man - whoever you are - has Akasha been given anything?"

[Rev Solomon]

"Two CCs of cardinex (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cardinex)," Solomon replied, "and she swallowed a few mouthfuls of hydrade when she was still upright."

Two CCs wasn't enough for an infection like this, and Solomon wasn't sure any quantity of conventional medicine would loosen the creature's grip on her. There was a very real possibility that Akasha could die from septic shock, but the orbalisk was a parasite, and surely that wasn't its design. It was using its venom to acclimate the girl's body to its own, to turn her into a sessile breeding ground for its own offspring.

Unless, of course, Akasha was strong enough in the Dark Side to establish a symbiosis with the creature. But she was a Jedi padawan - surely that was impossible?

Solomon cast a worried look at the Orryxian girl's face. Her eyes were only sluggishly following her surroundings, and in Kala's absence her paws had returned to her sides, and her claws were making ribbons of the gurney cushion beneath her.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

"I'll be inside, Akasha, don't worry..."

Gently but quickly prying Akasha's claws from her hand, she nodded to the Doctor and Reverend Solomon before taking off like a shot. Ignoring the sting of pain and the blood trickling down her wrist, she barely waved to Magda before racing into the nearest exam room, which was number two.

She slapped the lights up with her elbow as she entered and took a split second to orient herself properly. Mounted on the wall at the head of the exam table, the defib unit mercifully whirred to life. Kala couldn't stand to watch the charge build so she busied herself setting out everything she thought might be useful. It gave her a purpose, and for a few minutes, she forgot about the pain building in the Force pathways of her mind.

Umm, Kala...your mind...there's...its not right...

Don't have time right now, Rin...Akasha's dying...all I've got is a headache...

But its not a headache, Kala...its your gif-

Kala slammed a mental door closed before he could finish, and continued her frantic preparations.

[Chaz de Coventina]

They careened into the medbay with urgency a thick cloud around them. Magda's copper skin paled to a dull iron shade at the intensity of the party. She took one glance at the prone padawan and the fierce expression on de Coventina's face and began to move, scattering a stack of slim datapads on the desk in her rush. Before it was demanded, she drew the privacy partition that was scarcely ever used, creating a duraplast barrier between the bank of exam rooms and the clinic foyer.

"One," one of the medical techs prepared to help hoist the limp felinoid off of the gurney and onto the exam table. "Two..."

"Now!" Chaz slipped her arms beneath Akasha's trunk and lifted, the girl's frame a dead weight that was unsettlingly still as they placed her on sterile sheets. Only the orbalisk moved, quivering greedily, a living horror that leeched repulsively in the girl's chest.

"Start a line, two units of hespan," a chorus of beeps and squeals erupted in the room, vital monitors springing to life as Chaz attatched probes to one of Akasha's arms. She released a clasp at the head of the table and motioned for Solomon to do the same on the other side; it gave way and with a heave the uppermost half began to rise, elevating the fading patient until she was as upright as her wound would allow.

"We need an antivenom ampule and for blast's sake, someone pull up her records so we're not hit with anaphylaxis," Chaz instructed, yanking open a drawer and whirling back with a vibroscalpel in one hand and a slim-toothed cylinder in the other. This latter was tossed to Solomon with little ceremony.

"Shave around the wound. We've got to slow the spread of whatever the hell that think is releasing otherwise her heart won't be strong enough to survive a shock. Kala, what's it up to?"

[Akasha Khan]

Gentle fingers peeled away the bloody strips of Akasha's shirt surrounding the orbalisk, and then there was a high-pitched electric buzz that she couldn't identify until she felt the razor scraping her chest, taking large mats of black fur with every pass. The exposed skin was deathly-white with veins of red surrounding the wound like a spiderweb. The stink of necrosis was already heavy in the air.

Solomon's shape was a great, indistinct shadow leaning over her from one side, and on the other she could see people she didn't know in medical scrubs scurrying around like ants whose hill had been kicked over. Kala's hair was a curtain of shimmering gold over by a bank of glowing medical instruments. But there was another presence in the room she couldn't account for, someone standing in the back behind Solomon and the bustling orderlies. Akasha caught glimpses of the figure now and then, and she tried to crane her neck to see around the moving bodies, but her muscles wouldn't respond--

A gap opened up across the medbay, and standing against the wall she saw a woman in a black cloak with a pale face and a crooked smile on her blood-red lips.

"No... No!"

Akasha's glazed eyes went wide, and her heartrate spiked as she writhed on the medical bed, kicking feebly with her feet to escape the specter of Idesca Corvera.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

"Two fifty and climbing."

Kala replied quickly, turning back towards the medical bed as Akasha's skin was carefully shaved for a clearer view of the wound. It looked dead already, and reminded her vividly of the witch's own decayed, infested body. The horror of it brought her a strange sense of calm she wasn't expecting, as if she were accustomed to dealing with such a thing.

Stepping up to the bed, she took Akasha's paw in her hand, holding it tight as she tried to brush her mind against her friend's in a vain effort to calm her. Hoping that the communication wouldn't make the orbalisk work any faster, since it wasn't directly impacting it.

//Akasha...its alright...you're safe...I'm right here...try and relax...//

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Damn it - restrain her!" Chaz roared, catching hold of one of the girl's weakly flailing limbs. The antivenom vial was knocked aside and clattered to the floor, rolling beneath the table in momentary freedom as priorities shifted. Panicked writhing wasn't only disruptive to procedural measures, it put Akasha at risk - any motion would only serve to advance the spread of deadly toxin in her body.

Whatever it was that had gotten Akasha's dander up had certainly unearthed a reservoir of fear. It cast a sheen over her unfocused eyes, bright and coloured with an instinctively resistant determination that terror brought.

Someone pressed the ampoule into her hand and Chaz didn't hesitate, now that sturdy restraints pinned the girl immobile. She grasped Akasha's chin with one hand, the other plunging the attached sharp of the serum into her neck. "Keep talking to her, Kala, bloody well yell if you have to but just get through. When that charge reaches 300, grab the paddles."

Truthfully, Chaz didn't expect the serum to make a difference, not this far along. Without a knowledge of the venom's active molecules, there was no guarantee that any impact would be made but if all you had to throw at a charging rancor were rocks, then you damn well threw them and threw them hard.

Solomon had cleared a neat square around the wound and with speedy precision, Chaz began to slice away at the festering tissue. There was no need for an anesthetic; Akasha would feel nothing. Beneath the scalpel blade the sickly grey flesh gave way easily, coming apart in twisted ribbons. Destroyed though it was, the skin around the wound had been saturated with the orbalisk's influence and would only intensify the attack on Akasha's system if left alone.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha fought against the restraints only until exhaustion and agony caught up with her, but Idesca remained. The witch raised a pale, slender finger to her lips.

The Orryxian flinched as something closed around her paw, but then she heard Kala's voice, or rather felt it press the words gently against her mind.

"Kala," Akasha whispered, "she's here. Idesca. Her spirit is here. She's... she's taunting me."

[Rev Solomon]

A cold shadow moved over Solomon's heart at the sound of Akasha's voice. He moved around to the headboard of the medical bed, out of the way of Chaz and all the other medics working furiously to keep the girl alive.

"Doctor, if you don't need more from me, I'd like to help her in my own way."

With only the most perfunctory of nods from the doctor, Solomon reached down over the headboard and laid two of his fingers against the sweat-damp fur on Akasha's forehead.

"Merciful God in heaven," he muttered, "look with pity on this your child. Save her from the designs of the enemy, that the Dark may have no hold on her."

His own influence crept through Akasha's body, working to strengthen the parts of her that the orbalisk had not yet corrupted.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

Kala's gaze narrowed as she took a quick glance around the room, looking past the people she was accustomed to seeing there. Looking to the walls and the corners, her gaze missing nothing...except...was there a shadow that didn't quite belong on the back wall, or was she just hoping it was there?

Well, if it was, she hoped it could hear.

"I know, Akasha. Tell the bitch I can smell her. And she can't frakking have you. Not on my watch." Kala said sharply, watching Solomon and feeling the energy he was trying to bolster Akasha with. She only hoped it would help as long the orbalisk wasn't affected directly.

Lilac eyes blazed brightly as she looked up at the monitors, watching as the defib unit finally hit three hundred on its charge meter. Nodding more to herself, she let go of Akasha's hand and reached for the paddles. An alert tech quickly restrained the shaking paw, a fact for which the blonde was thankful.

This wasn't going to be pleasant, even if it worked the way she thought it would.

But second guessing herself wasn't going to help matters. Kala believed it would work, and she would be damned if let her best friend go without a hell of a fight.

"Clear!"

Paddles placed squarely on the orbalisk's back, she pressed the buttons and watched as the orbalish thrashed and stilled for several seconds.

It didn't let go.

Panic gripped her heart as she stared up at the defib unit and it helpfully pressed its own button and quickly recharged.

[Chaz de Coventina]

With mounting frustration, Chaz watched the bank of monitors rattle off blinking digits that were steadily declining at a rapid rate. Akasha wasn't responding. It had been - she glanced up the wall chrono - fifteen minutes already. In a frantic case like this, that was a century.

"Again!" There was angry frustration in the doctor's tone, straining her voice to a hoarse demand. Once more the paddles were placed on the parasitic demon and once more the creature contorted horrendously, a mass of loathsome malignancy. And once more, it held fast.

On the table, the Orryxian was still. When she pried open the girl's jaw, it was to the sight of sickly pale gums and Chaz swore.

That damned thing. It was draining her dry, thriving in a disgusting cesspool of infection and -

Feeding on her. Because it was parasitic and it was feeding on her.

"Kala," Chaz's mind raced, calculating. There was no room for error. "Draw 20 cc's of Norbutal (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Norbutal_%28drug%29)."

There was a collective pause in the room as the order sunk in. It was nearly twice the maximum dosage for someone of the padawan's build. Chaz just hoped it would be enough. She glanced at Solomon. "Pray harder."

[Akasha Khan]

With each jolt of the defibrillator, Akasha's world came to a shrieking halt, a crystallized moment of pain followed by the orbalisk's screaming retribution. Her breath was fire in her lungs, and she could feel herself fading. She could almost hear the waves lapping against the sides of the Ship of Souls. The only question was whether she would warrant a berth, or whether she would be cast into the water for the Devourers to feast upon.

"Why do you fight? Why do you deny your destiny?"

Idesca had moved to occupy the space between Kala and Solomon. She curled her perfect lips in a predatory sneer. Akasha could only loll her head and stare, lacking even the strength to cower in fear.

"You have no future with these frail creatures of light," the witch said. "I have given you your inheritance. Make use of it. In agony, there is strength."

Akasha worked her jaws, but she couldn't get them to form any words. But she felt something flickering in her chest, something beneath all the pain, the fear, a tiny well of energy like a candle in the dark.

No... like a pool of darkness in the light.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon had been content to stand aside and let more skilled hands than his direct Akasha's treatment, but now he snapped his head up, looking at the doctor aghast. "Norbutal? But that's a paralytic, it'll kill her!"

[Chaz de Coventina]

"Yes, exactly," the doctor snapped. She held Solomon's gaze, her face ablaze with a livid fierceness practically tangible in the close space. For a moment there was a flicker of something there, a haunted look that passed so quickly it might have been just the shadow cast by the overhead light.

A muscle in Chaz's jaw jumped. "And if my plan doesn't work, then at least she'll have a merciful end."

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

Eyes wide with the paddles still in her hands, Kala froze at the order for a split second before launching back into motion. She thought she could see where Chaz was headed with her idea, and...Force forbid...if it failed...then...

No. She wouldn't even entertain that possibility yet.

Kala set the paddles back on the charger and pulled a vial of norbutal from the shelf next to the unit. A syringe from the drawer was pulled out of its sterile packaging, the safety cover over the needle tossed, and the needle inserted into the vial. With a practiced motion, she withdrew just over the twenty requested cc's and pushed out the excess along with the remaining air.

Handing it over to Chaz and picked up the paddles once more, having charged them to three-fifty this time around. Lips set in a tight line, Kala brushed her mind against Akasha's and blinked, eyes narrowing as she 'looked' again. There was a sliver, a writhing, growing sliver of darkness deep inside that ramped up the sense of urgency she felt.

Of course it was there, she told herself...under such incredible stress and under the torture of he orbalisk, anyone would be so affected. Anyone.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha's ears still felt as though they were stuffed with cotton, but a few words stood out about the rest. It'll kill her. It'll kill her...

"Akasha!" Idesca now leaned over her, and she was no longer smiling. Instead her porcelain face was rigid with urgency. "Don't you hear what they are saying? They want you to die!"

Slowly, feebly, Akasha rocked her head back and forth. Her tongue felt like it was filling her mouth, but she mouthed the words: No, no...

"Look!" Idesca hissed, gesturing toward Kala. "Even your best friend is preparing to kill you! There's only one way, Akasha. Only one way you can survive!"

Akasha pressed impotently against her restraints, feeling the pool of darkness in her chest growing, pulling more of her into itself like the accretion disk of a black hole. She couldn't believe it... she wouldn't...

She turned her head to see Kala spritz the last of the air from a syringe full of an ugly bluish fluid and hand the syringe to Dr. de Coventina. Fear shuddered in her heart, which now beat in time with the pulsing of the orbalisk, and she felt a wellspring of strength surging up within her, an elixir bound up in the venom of the creature.

"Ah... ahhh... aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

Several medical monitors alarmed shrilly as Akasha bared her teeth in a snarl, and she arched her back and flexed her claws until the edges of the sheaths stood out like ivory. Dark energy radiated from the Orryxian, a shift in the faultlines of the Force, and all around the medlab, several glass articles exploded, sending liquid and sparkling shards flying through the air.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

Gods, things were going from bad to worse.

Throwing the paddles back at the defib unit, they rather helpfully hung themselves in the proper spots, the unit still charging itself. With a strength she didn't even know she had, Kala placed one hand on Akasha's midsection and shoved her back down, feeling the sharp pain in her own mind intensify. She ignored it and instead flung her hand out towards the exploding glass and liquids, managing to send enough of a ripple of energy to deflect them harmlessly away from people.

Soon enough, that hand had grabbed Akasha's chin in a tight grip, bringing her fading gaze towards her own lilac eyes as she -shouted- art her best friend, emotion threatening to overtake her stern tone. "AKASHA! No! This is not the way! We're trying to help you...you have to believe me. YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME, DAMMIT! Fight her, Akasha! For love of the Force, fight for your life!"

Kala's arms were trembling from the force of holding so much energy in check as a drop of indigo blood fell from her nose unnoticed.

[Chaz de Coventina]

They all flinched as one, shoulders hitching up in protective stance, as the exam room erupted in high warbles of shattering glass. On the wall closest the table an alarm began to sound deep and vibrato, a mounted stasis monitor blaring malfunction warnings as it's readings blinkered inaccurately, an ugly crack down the faceplate rendering it useless.

The room grew bloated and dense as though under a great pressure, rolling waves of unseen insistence displacing the air. Chaz's frustration receded, only to slam back violently with such an increase that it clawed her breath to angry snarls of inhalation. This was a medical ward, not a frakking den of sorcery and -

Not now.

Lurching forward with one arm shielded preemptively above her head in the event that the rest of the supplies in the room followed suit and decided to combust, Chaz brought the syringe down in a fluid arc, the tapered needle sliding beneath the skin of Akasha's arm. She pulled back on the plunger, saw the bright red blossom of blood bloom against the milky contents of the dispenser, and then pushed it back with steady force until it emptied.

Her eyes flew to the monitors, the jerking mountains of the Orryxian's heartbeat that began to rise and fall at an electric speed in narrow lines, the furious effort of her body throwing out it's last efforts to regain footing. The machine let out a warning screech and -

_________________________


"Wait!" Chaz lifted a hand as Kala spun for the paddles. Heart in her throat the doctor watched the readout, counting the seconds off.


_________________________


Not enough and it would surely fail; too long and they lost. The whine of the flatline echoed in the room, filling the silence that had become a collective caught breath. Chaz stared down the chrono, eyes hard.

"Wait."


__________________________



They only had one chance, literally no room for mistakes.


__________________________




With a sharp nod at Kala, Chaz launched herself away from the table. "Now!"

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

She didn't even bother yelling clear as everyone pulled back from the table with Chaz's shout.

Kala quickly placed the paddles on the orbalisk which had grown still and silent as the seconds ticked by. Without another thought, she discharged the paddles at three-sixty and was rewarded with a high-pitched chittering as it let go. Smoke curled around the edges of its shell as it stumbled across Akasha's stomach before flying violently backwards and up against the wall. A particularly long knife lifted off of the instrument tray and impaled it where it hung in a flash of sparkling light energy.

As the orbalisk ceased moving, an unearthly howl whipped around the room with an inexplicable gust of wind. It disappeared a mere second or two later, but Kala didn't have time to gloat over its death and Idesca's final defeat.

Akasha was dead...and everyone was working frantically to bring her back even as they tried to repair the damage the orbalisk and its poisons had done.

[Chaz de Coventina]

Commitment had a long reach and once a body started down a path it was hard to redirect without losing ground. One drastic measure begged another and there was an honesty in that, a propitiatory demand that balanced out the scales.

Akasha was not going to be revived through the usual henpecking and handbook measures. They'd already zipped past that marker.

Moving so quickly that her fingers tingled with only the impression of motion, Chaz retrieved a syringe, her teeth tearing at the sterile packaging even as she rummaged on the shelves through shards of glass and widowed caps. Behind her the ordered sounds of desperation played out and for a moment she thought, This is it, we're out of tricks. But then her eyes landed on the sought-after slim bottle somehow still whole and untouched and sitting innocently amidst the debris.

When she turned, Kala was just finishing dosing her friend with Antisedan, the clinically accurate response to Norbutal. It was a neat trick usually, one that always impressed observers who felt as though they were witnessing a miracle cure it worked so quickly to reverse the induced paralysis, muscles regaining control like nothing had ever happened at all.

But it wouldn't work this time. The magic needed a boost.

Chaz cut through a pair of nurses and without hesitating plunged her loaded syringe through the felinoid's chest, directly into her heart. Someone sucked in a startled breath.

Come on, Chaz urged as she yanked out the needle and pressed a finger to the puncture wound, eyes again on the monitors. Come on!

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon didn't need the monitors. He could feel the energies pulsing in Akasha's body, cells working sluggishly to metabolize the drug spreading through her heart muscles even as they fought the orbalisk venom on a thousand fronts, most of them losing. The spark of life was dimming, too weak now even to be reached by chemical aids.

"Kala," the reverend said, "I need your help."

Now the orbalisk was gone, and its venom could no longer respond to the prodding of the Force. Solomon laid his long hands on Akasha's shoulders, spreading his consciousness into her own, willing her blood to stir, her lungs to expand, her immune system to keep on fighting.

The darkness will not take you... not yet, little one.

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

Trembling, her silver-blue fingertips extended over Akasha's still form, forcing herself to close her eyes and not look at the horror. Her own chest ached as if it was being split open with an axe, and found herself struggling to breathe as she joined her energy to the Reverend's.

Gradually she became completely still, breathing shallow as tears slipped down her cheeks. The seconds felt like an eternity as Akasha slipped still further away, the damage too much to overcome. Kala would have sworn that she could 'see' her spirit slipping away.

The way Rin's had. The way her father's had.

Her energy ebbed as she remembered the helpless feeling, the overwhelming sorrow, and her complete inability to do anything to help them. It had eaten away at her for the last three years of her life, coloring her every moment and tainting every decision.

Pulling back and leaving Reverend to do what he could, Kala snapped back into herself with a deep, shuddering breath. Bright lilac eyes darkened to a solid blue the color of deep, still ocean water. The silver in the skin on her hands began to glow as the Forced flowed through her, and poured into Akasha's broken form. Instinct and newly-woken senses directed the flow, knitting together the physical damage bit by painstaking bit.

A trickle of indigo blood had escaped from her nose as she'd started, increasing the longer she kept at it. She couldn't have said, afterwards, how long she'd spent draining herself of energy to bring Akasha back from the grasp of death. Fingers shook as she came out of the peculiar trance unique to Healers doing intricate, complicated work. A lone monitor above Akasha's head beeped...and then again...and again...erratic, but it was beeping. And that meant she had a heartbeat.

Kala stumbled back, out of the way as the medical team swarmed Akasha once more, her back hitting the far counter. She blinked sightlessly as she slid to the floor, tilting her head back with a thud as she passed out.

[Rev Solomon]

Kala didn't make it to the floor. She stopped partway as she fell, cushioned by an unseen pair of hands, then lifted gently into the air. Solomon came around the surgical bed with one hand raised, guiding the circles of the Force around the Padawan until he could take her into his arms.

"I'll see to Kala, Doctor," he said. "Let me know if you need me."

Kala settled softly into the preacher's embrace, and he took her to a bed in an adjoining cubicle.

[Chaz de Coventina]

A brief nod was all that Solomon was afforded as he carried the unconscious Kala out of the cluttered space. There was no worry to spare a thought for the young assistant; perhaps they were out of the thickest grove but there was still an overwhelming trek ahead to burst clear of the forest. And as far as she was concerned, no matter what that unseen rubbish had been about - the medieval tribal display of healing - the less Jedi voodoo involved, the better. Medical science was a dependable enough weapon.

"Prepare for surgery," Chaz said. Akasha was alive but only lingering on that plane, her body weakened by the repeated assault of the orbalisk and worn down from the efforts it had taken to keep her lungs filling with oxygen. Her heart was weak, her blood ferrying toxins with every passing second, and there was a gaping, necrotic wound on her chest. Any one of those individually would have been enough of a chore but the universe had decided to liven things up. Probably to build character.

A small, dark-haired nurse summoned a medical droid over and fed it Akasha's status.

Chaz doused an impatient glare over them. "If I'd wanted a droid to do it, I would have said so," she snapped. "Stop playing the idiot and pay attention, or else get out."

And without another wasted interruption, the doctor turned on an extra overhead domebulb, bathing Akasha in a flood of austere light.

* * *

When at last Chaz emerged from the suite, it was with an air of strained fatigue. Exhaustion was a visible force hanging from the woman's filthy surgical gown, tied in the folds of the disposable material and entrenched deep in the lines of her face. Moving with the striding gait of someone who was keeping a brisk forward momentum purely because the alternative was collapsing, de Coventina entered the next exam room and peeled a paper cap from her head, loosing coils of fiery hair.

Kala was there, her narrow frame neatly tucked beneath the sheets of a hoverbed, and beside her sat Solomon. Chaz blearily offered him a terse nod.

"There's nothing more we can do. She's stable, for now; that's a miracle in and of itself," she said. Her eyes skirted to Kala. "This one?"

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon gave a sigh of relief - qualified relief, anyway. Recovery from an orbalisk bite was more than a medical challenge, but it was good to know Akasha was in excellent hands.

The preacher laid his hand on Kala's shoulder. A little farther down her exposed arm was an intravenous line connected to a bag of clear fluid. "Nothing a little rest and some electrolytes can't fix, thank God."

[Chaz de Coventina]

"God has very little to do with it, actually; those are supplied by the Alliance," Chaz nodded at the stand from which the ringer hung and methodically stripped off her surgical robe, depositing it in a sealed case emblazoned with a biohazard symbol. Sheer force of habit moved the physician to do a physical check of Kala, taking the young girl's pulse while she referenced it against the monitor readout. Accurate to fault and wasn't that nice. At least something was working smoothly today.

Chaz pressed against her eyelids and suppressed a yawn with a deep, measured inhalation. "I don't care about the juicy details but I will need to know what sort of environmental exposure she had at the time of the incident. We'll have to be prepared for any location-specific complications or," she sifted a hand through the air, searching for the word, "infections which might occur. Were you with her when it happened?"

[Rev Solomon]

"I wasn't," Solomon said. "You'd have to ask Kala, I'm afraid. All I know is they were in a junked freighter at the time. The orbalisk was set on her as a deliberate attack by its former host."

[Kala'ndryl Ryj]

"I was, oww, there."

Kala said softly, blinking as she opened her eyes. Though the lights weren't at maximum, she winced and closed them again immediately. She swore there was an entire convoy of Jawa in her head trying to gnaw their way out while a herd of bantha danced something akin to a paso doble. A few choice invectives in her native Nautolan passed her lips, which she only vaguely remembered to hope that neither Chaz nor Reverend spoke.

As she spoke, she shifted on the bed and slowly tried opening her eyes again, which had finally faded back to their usual lilac. "The orbalisk came off of the witch herself. And she was covered with them from her collarbone down to her wrists and down to her ankles. The stench was...horrible. She was rotting from the inside out."

Tilting her head and staring up at Chaz, eyes tightening around the edges with the force of her vicious headache. "What else do you need to know?"