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scanner and she took her place. "T'shnadar, let me know when you are ready."
    "Calibration complete, Zoe. Commencing scan."
    Zoe felt the warmth of the light cover her from head to toe. "Communication implant detected. No other implants or devices within your system."
    Relief shook her. "Thank you, T'shnadar."
    Breathing heavily, she left the scanner and leaned next to Jarix against one of the medical beds. "I can't tell you how happy I am that I came up clean."
    "Why do you have the implant in your head?" Trin drew his fingers across the spot behind her ear where the implant resided.
    "So that I can talk to T'shnadar when I am not inside her and so that I can talk to my mother when I am home." She smiled brightly and reached over to rub Jarix's back lightly where two bruises marked where the implants had been.
    Jarix pulled her around to face him and he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair and inhaling deeply. "This is all the first aid I need."
    She smiled against his chest and relaxed as Trin and Leos pressed their palms to her back. She chuckled. "Four down, twenty to go. Do you think that they will all come willingly?"
    Trin scowled. "Willing or not, they will come."
    The assertion and determination ran through their minds and settled in hers. Nothing was going to put their new home in danger, even if they had to kill their own to do it.

    Chapter Seven
    The clones agreed to the scans, though a few were very nervous about the procedure. Three of the men fainted after the tracking device was obliterated and five of those scanned had multiple devices.
    Zoe held little Aliisha while her mother was scanned. No one was surprised that Maasha had multiple scanners in her and Liiro supported her while they were blasted with sonics instead of the focussed electromagnetic pulse.
    The baby looked up at Zoe and she smiled down at the round face, sticking out her tongue and squinting her eyes at the infant. A sudden and sick feeling ran through her. "Maasha, I know you don't feel so great right now, but did Dorsos ever run gynaecological tests on you once you were shown to be pregnant?"
    Liiro answered for her. "Weekly. Why?"
    "I would like your permission to scan Aliisha. She is the one thing that he would refuse to part with."
    Maasha looked up with shock in her face. "He wouldn't."
    "I don't know if he did. I just want to make sure."
    Liiro scowled. "Isn't this a little over the top? How could he have planted anything in her, she wasn't even developed yet."
    "Maasha, when was your last exam?"
    "A week ago."
    Maasha struggled to her feet. "Scan her. I want her to live free and if he put anything inside my baby, I want it gone." The rest of her thought went unsaid. If Dorsos had put anything in Maasha's little girl and if he wasn't dead, she would kill him.
    "Liiro, if you want to hold her in the scanner, you can."
    He jerked his head in a quick nod.
    Zoe helped Maasha to her feet and over to one of the medical beds while Liiro stood in the rays with his little girl protectively held in his arms.
    Maasha grew pale when the telltale red light flared in the baby's abdomen.
    T'shnadar, prepare a healing bed for the baby. I don't know what the destruction will do to her.
    Of course, Zoe.
    The moment that the beam concentrated on the child, Aliisha started to scream. Zoe lunged forward and snatched the baby, putting her in the gel bed next to her mother's while the computer turned on the restoration beams.
    Liiro howled, but Leos and Jarix held him back.
    Zoe was busy reading the stats streaming on the displays and she sighed in relief. "She's fine. She's fine. She just needs a diaper change."
    Maasha smiled and wobbled. Trin got her settled in the bed and set the restoration beams to repair the damage that had been done with the sonics. The rupture of cells was a by-product of the treatment and if it was in a non-essential area, it was fine. Maasha had had five small implants and their destruction had left its mark