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“Loss of consciousness?”

“Only after we brought him inside.”

The pulse beneath Kesta’s fingers fluttered, slowed for two frightening beats, then accelerated so abruptly that she almost doubted her count. She leaned closer and checked the patient’s eyes. One pupil contracted properly beneath the examination light. The other responded more slowly.

“He needs to be on his side,” she said. When the attendants hesitated, clearly uncertain whether to take instructions from the newly arrived human, Sera’s expression hardened.

“You heard her.”

They moved quickly after that. Kesta cleared the patient’s airway while Sera steadied his head, then checked the bleeding beneath his ribs again. The scar bothered her. It was too straight, too deliberate, with an almost surgical neatness around the central incision. Kesta had seen battlefield repairs made under fire that were less irregular than nature usually allowed, but this looked less like an old wound than an access point.

Another contraction passed through the patient’s abdomen.

For a fraction of a second, something metallic pressed visibly beneath the skin.

Kesta’s hand stopped.

“Sera, do you have a scanner?”

The healer glanced toward the far corner. “Tavi claims we do.”

“That wording does not inspire confidence.”

“It should not.”

A small four-armed alien appeared from beneath a partially dismantled imaging unit, a narrow tool clenched between his teeth. His skin was pale gray-blue and nearly translucent around the joints, while bright violet eyes blinked sideways beneath double lids.

“It works,” he said after removing the tool from his mouth.

Kesta looked at the exposed wiring hanging from the side of the machine. “At the moment?”

Tavi’s upper pair of hands rested indignantly on his hips while the lower pair continued adjusting something inside the housing. “It works when encouraged.”

Sera sighed. “You were sleeping under it this morning.”

“I was considering the circuitry.”

“With your eyes closed?”

“Deep consideration.”

Despite the patient thrashing beside her, Kesta felt the corner of her mouth pull upward. “Can your deeply considered machine image metal inside living tissue?”

Tavi brightened immediately. “Bones, organs, most metal, two varieties of intestinal parasite and, under unusual atmospheric conditions, something that may be a ghost.”

“Metal will be enough.”

His expression suggested ghosts would have been more interesting, but he climbed to his feet and began clearing the scanner bed.

They transferred the injured male as carefully as they could. Tavi activated the machine. Nothing happened. His four hands moved across the controls in increasingly irritated motions before he leaned down and struck the lower casing with the side of his foot.

The scanner hummed awake.

Kesta looked at him.

“Encouragement,” he said.

She shook her head and turned toward the display.