“It’s possible. That’s not my field of expertise. I only repair things that are broken or damaged. The rest of you is strong and healthy, but that bone, which has always been extraordinarily dense, has been chewed through with tiny holes. The attack on it is nothing I’ve ever seen before. I tried to send the pictures of what I was seeing through Joe to Trap, Wyatt and Lily. I don’t know how successful that type of thing is going to be telepathically, but if this destruction is from Zenith, seriously, Malichai, no one should use it.”
“How do we prove it, one way or the other?” Malichai asked.
“Hell if I know. That’s all Trap, Wyatt and Lily. But your leg.” Rubin sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingers, looking down, not straight at Malichai the way he normally would have. He was frowning.
Ezekiel glided closer to Malichai. “What about his leg?” He sounded grim.
Rubin looked up then. He shook his head. “The truth is, I just don’t know. We’re working with something none of us has ever seen before. Joe and Amaryllis worked on that bone twice before I got to it and already the fracturing was severe.”
“Because he had to fight a supersoldier, Rubin,” Ezekiel pointed out. “It wasn’t like he was lying in bed twiddling his thumbs.”
“Zeke,” Malichai said softly. “This isn’t anyone’s fault. Rubin just spent hours trying to save my leg. If I have one at the end of all this, it’s due to his work.”
“I know that. I do. I’m sorry, Rubin,” Ezekiel apologized immediately. “This is just hard to understand. We’ve been using Zenith, and no one’s had a problem. He used it before on that same leg and didn’t have a problem.”
“We don’t actually know that,” Rubin contradicted. “The pitting in the bone could have started then, just maybe not as aggressively. Like a buildup of an insect’s poison in the system. That happens with some insects. The first time you’re fine. The second time makes you sick. The third time kills you.” He tipped up the water bottle and drank more.
Malichai was grateful to see that some of the lines of strain were beginning to recede from his face. “Let’s just get to what you think the chances of my keeping this leg are, Rubin, and be real. I want to hear real.”
Rubin nodded. “I don’t know any other way to be. You shouldn’t be putting any weight on it. We’re going to have to watch you all the time. Joe and Amaryllis will have to be vigilant, checking to see if the hairline fractures start returning even with you babying the leg. If you have to move around, you have to do it on crutches, keeping the weight entirely off the leg. I meant what I said. I think you should be sidelined for this entire mission, but I know that’s not going to fly with you, so it’s the control room with your leg up.”
“Then what? So I rest it. So I stay off it. What is that getting me, Rubin?” Malichai asked before Ezekiel or Joe could tell him he didn’t even get to be in the control room. Or the van, as it would more likely be.
“I don’t know.” Rubin sounded tired and very discouraged.
Malichai had never heard that low, velvety voice so worn. He avoided looking at Ezekiel. His brother knew Rubin every bit as well as he did. If Rubin didn’t have a clue how to save his leg, no one did.
“We have to rely on the three brilliant minds to figure out what the hell is going on and how to counteract it and hope that they can do it before whatever is causing this accelerates the damage faster than the three of us can repair it.” Rubin’s eyes suddenly met his. “Can you take the pain, Malichai? When it’s eating through your bone like that, can you take the pain?”
Malichai felt the other members of his team looking at him. His brothers. He felt their compassion. Their anger. Their feelings of helplessness. He felt all those same emotions. Already, his hand was rubbing at the knots on his hip, the knots that formed from trying to ease the ache that was always present in his leg. That ache that would slowly accelerate into a steady pain until it was so bad he could barely think.
He thought of the alternative. That soldier in the street, the one with the sad eyes and the vacant face and no leg, begging for food, just for something to eat. It had been cold and Malichai had been shivering continuously, but Ezekiel had stolen a jacket for him. The soldier had a jacket but no blanket. There were blankets in the space they claimed as their own. There was food. Malichai had made his way there, rolled up his portion of the food in his blanket and returned to the soldier and offered it to him.