Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

Kyle caught her around the waist and stood behind her, allowing her to lean against him. Briony gasped and covered her mouth. To the side of Jonas, Jeff waved his hand toward the door, clearly signaling to Briony to leave the room if she couldn’t be quiet. Camellia required every bit of concentration she could possibly muster. There couldn’t be any distractions. Jack put his arms around Briony to steady her and leaned against the wall. Only then did Jonas put his hands on their patient.

He was more prepared for what he saw after the jolt he felt when Camellia had connected with Mari. His vision changed dramatically, just as it did when he called on the eyes of an eagle or a wolf. This time, his healer vision was sharper than it had been with Kaden. The heat was still white-hot and silvery when he looked at Mari’s body, but he guessed that allowed him to penetrate through skin to see organs inside.

His hands didn’t possess the surface sensitivity Camellia’s did, but his pores in the pads of his fingers and palms wept clear liquid into Mari’s pores, and the moment that happened, his veins and arteries, already connected with Camellia, were attached to Marigold’s. There was blood everywhere there shouldn’t be. Her internal organs dripped blood like leaky faucets.

Jonas marveled at the vast network of star-shaped neurons pulsing with energy and information throughout her body. There were so many of them, galaxies of them.

Somewhere around eighty-six billion, Camellia murmured absently. Her eyes were pure silver, the blue gone. Look for something that seems off in color. It wouldn’t be in her blood. It’s going to be hiding in her bone marrow, where the blood is made.

Everything looked off in color to him. Her bone marrow? What the hell was Camellia talking about? He turned his peculiar vision to Marigold’s marrow to inspect it, not that he’d ever looked at anyone’s bone marrow. He wasn’t a doctor. He had no aspirations to be a doctor.

Think of the bone marrow as a factory, Jonas. We need red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma. The bone marrow is where that’s produced. Something is going wrong with Marigold’s platelets, with the clotting process. If she developed von Willebrand’s disease from prolonged use of Zenith, then the damage would have to be in the bone marrow.

She was musing aloud, like she did. Well, not aloud, only to him, but she was talking to herself really, puzzling it out, trying to figure out what was wrong. He remained silent, allowing her to use him as a sounding board. He couldn’t help her, but he did begin scanning the bone marrow in the hopes of seeing something that might be an odd color. He didn’t hold out much hope he would, considering that it all looked odd to him, but he kept looking, determined to try to be of some help.

Jonas, look at this mess. It’s like an army is attacking her. Or a bomb went off. This isn’t cancer. It’s a reaction to the Zenith. You can see where it starts, and then it just grows.

“Where’s it getting its nutrition to grow to this extent?” She definitely was talking to herself, not realizing she was speaking aloud. “What’s feeding you?”

Jonas glanced up toward their audience and shook his head quickly, warning them not to speak or move. Camellia was on the verge of discovery. He felt it. There was a peculiar sizzling along his veins, like the tingle in the air before lightning struck. Marigold didn’t move a muscle, but he knew she was also aware that Camellia was on the cusp of a momentous discovery.

“That doesn’t matter right now, Camellia, does it?” Camellia chided herself, still speaking aloud. “We have to find the source. It’s here somewhere.”

Then she was back internally again, turning that silver gaze onto the mass of red spongy-looking cells at the core of Mari’s bones, inspecting them carefully, looking to see if she could catch a glimpse of the damage Zenith had left behind. Marigold always had a strong immune system in the past, Jonas. Von Willebrand disease is caused by a deficiency in von Willebrand factor, which is a large protein made up of multiple subunits.

Jonas was in awe of the way her mind worked. She was figuring it out, putting the pieces of the puzzle together at a rapid rate when he would have been back on step one. He did feel the need to help her though. He could also see the sparking on the edges of Mari’s neurons, as if those starships were revving their engines, eager to join in the fight for Marigold’s life.

“The VWF is needed to bind to clotting factor eight in the blood. That’s what protects it from being broken down. You have to have that. It’s also needed to help the platelets bind to the inside of injured blood vessels.” Camellia frowned as she stared down at Mari’s body.