Read Wounds - Book 2 for Free Online

sort of. A close match but still very different in some very important ways. For example, I know that you come from a place where there’s more oxygen in the air. I know for a fact that the amount in silica and copper and arsenicals in your body is only a fraction of what it is in ours and that’s because there aren’t industrial pollutants in your air or water. Your heart is simpler and still very efficient. You have less surface area in your lungs, and your immunological status is much less reactive than ours. I know because I finally had to give you a transfusion; you’d just lost too much blood.”
    “Oh,” he said, with a dry smile. “I’m sure my system loved that.”
    “Not to worry; I added a reducing enzyme to convert the iron from ferric to ferrous so you’d bind more oxygen. But the point is you didn’t have a transfusion reaction. You didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Your system seems remarkably antigenically neutral, at least to our tissues.”
    “That’s important?”
    “As you’d say, quite. Because there’s one more thing about you that’s very different: your brain. It works really, really well. Is that the way it is with all your people?”
    He said nothing. Her lips quirked into a half-smile. “Right. I forgot. You’re one of us. But do you know I’ve never heard an accent like yours either?”
    “Oh, that. Well, my accent’s very common where I come from.”
    “Then I’m glad I’ve never visited. I might get a headache. Oh, and there’s this other thing that just won’t go away: your remarkable suit that resists vacuum, and flies.” She paused. “You see what I’m driving at.”
    “Even if your scan says that I’m lying, nothing changes the fact that I can’t tell you more than I have already.”
    “Can’t? Or won’t?”
    “Would you believe both?”
    “No, because one’s predicated on ignorance and the other on will. But that little distinction won’t matter, not when this is over.”
    He tried to be jolly about it, a bit gay, the way he imagined a debonair agent caught in a thorny situation might. “What, torture, Doctor? Thumbscrews? Bamboo under the fingernails?”
    “What’s bamboo?” Then she waved that away. “Never mind. This isn’t a joke, Julian. Because the horrible part is you won’t have a choice.”
    He forced a devil-may-care grin. “I’m sorry. For the life of me, I can’t fathom that.”
    “Yah, for the life of you,” she said. “I’d say that’s about right.”
    No idle threat there. His eyes wandered to the room’s vidscreen again, and he watched as a soldier—clearly, Kornak—aimed a rifle at the back of a prisoner’s head. He turned away. Any fool knew what came next. “So what are my options?”
    “I’ll show you. And take a good hard look, Julian. Then, you choose.”
    He took her in: her blue skin and that left eye and her left hand. “What if I still choose my way?”
    “Then heaven help you,” she said, keying in the code that opened his door. “Because I won’t be able to.”

Chapter
5
    W hen Lense got news that Saad was back, it was midmorning nine days later and she was in the middle of changing bandages. She wasn’t prepared for that tug of happy anticipation and the queer fluttery feeling in her stomach.
    So this is what it’s like to be smitten. She hadn’t even felt like that when she and her jackass of an ex-husband started dating back at Starfleet Medical….
    She pawned the bandage-changing job off on one of her assistants, then hurried down passages and ducked through corridors. She got some queer looks and bobs of the head in greeting from the others. No secret about her and Saad. The look on that guard’s face when he found us on morning patrol after that first night… But, God, this felt good. Everything looked brighter somehow; she felt better, more acutely aware of textures and smells. She liked exploring his body; she loved the feel of his skin, and his smell was rich and spicy. She liked