An unfamiliar ceiling with monitors hovered over her eye. Each breath hurt, and her internal clock was out of sync.She didn't mean to, but she groaned in pain. Toxic woke up in the chair next to her and said sleepily, "Your skin doesn't have that bottle-glass green shine like you did when you had all your internal organs...internal." Snowflake blinked and tried to clear all the fuzz from her mind. She ran an internal diagnostic on her internal systems and tried to call Rose or anyone else of her family. She got nothing. "I feel awful. Why do some of my internal organs read as new?" Snowflake felt nauseous and light-headed. New things for this machine-life. Seil turned from the monitoring station and walked over to the foot of her bed. Seil smiled and said, "It's two A.M., thirteen days after your battle with the 'Madjulla Dragon'. You almost died. You suffered catastrophic organ damage,multiple compound fractures, and almost fatal blood loss." "If not for your aunt, Rose and Toxic, you would have died. Both of them gave blood to transfuse you. Toxic is a universal donor for any species, it seems, and she brought you back several times when modern medicine failed too. That is why she's in the sterile field with you. She hasn't left your side since the fight." Snowflake stared at Siel and asked, "Aren't you a criminal that kidnapped Toxic?" Siel rolled her eyes. "NOT since I was found innocent, last week! Captain Tkarro and Doctor Panchetta pulled some strings to get me assigned to the Nautilus as a medic in the Medical corps." Kael Oran spoke up for the first time, "A near thing,too. Snowy, as soon as you feel like it, Inspector General Hera Kragg, from the JAG office needs to interview you about what happened. Since Toxic blew up that dragon's mouth with some kind of heat blast, the media is going absolutely BONKERS about the mess. A news black-out was clamped down 240 hours ago, but to late to prevent nosy people from asking to many questions." "Someone tried hacking into your brain while you were out, so we stuck you in this radio blackout zone. Rose almost got charged for back-tracing it and beating the CRAP out of the news jockeys responsible! Lucky it was during the blackout, so the military secrecy act was in effect. The poor ass is downstairs, healing his broken arms and legs!" Kael laughed and shook his head. "Rose has more self-control than I would have shown him!" There was a moment when Kael looked at Snowflake, she felt like her heart would burst. Toxic perked up and said, "AH-HAH! Got you!" Snowflake looked over at her and asked, "What?" Toxic said, "Don't lie! You LIKE Kael, don't you?" Snowflake frowned in irritation, "Yes, I like him. He IS my anchor, my partner!" She paused and looked puzzled. "Wait! I don't feel the Four Sisters network! it's not on-line! What happened? How did Toxic create heat to blow that dragon's face off?" Kael said, "Isn't THAT the question of the month! Apparently the moon, Hel, told her how to use powers like the Four Sisters 'fire sister', and she kept them! Rose, Toxic and Sunshine tried to restart the System, but it didn't work. The Naga women, Measure and Oheeeyuuu have some theories about WHY." "ONE: the Chalchilaloq virus has to purged from the system before it restarts. TWO: Since Toxic might be hooked into another, older system, the Nunera system refuses to let Toxic back into the Four Sisters. Measure thinks this one is crap, though Oheeeyuuu supports it. THREE:Since Toxic has her powers back and no one else does, It might think the system is back on-line anyway. No one is sure of this last one." Seil asked, "What does your gut tell you?" "The virus Chalchilaloq, is a ghost in the machine. We need to exorcise her." Kael shrugged and looked at Toxic. Toxic looked away and whispered sadly, "She's not my mother, anymore." --TO BE CONTINUED!--