Nightfire Warriors - A Space Opera

40. A Personal Vacation

"Jace just wants to take a few x-rays of your brain," Lily explains. "It's kind of like an MRI. Follow me. I'll show you."

She takes me to her bedroom. It's decorated with white Christmas lights, a white wooden dresser, and her bed is pink with purple pillows. I recognize every single rock band poster she has plastered on her wall. From Simon and Garfunkel to the Smiths, countless legendary musician groups take over the ambiance. On her ceiling there's a large poster of Jimi Hendriks shirtless.

"This is your room?" I ask. "It's so cool."

"Thanks," she says.

"Do you live here alone?"

Lily sits on her purple and pink bed. The white Christmas lights glow dimly around her. "I have a roommate. Her name's Madison."

Jace returns with a helmet in his hands. It's looks like the same one they used on me for the stimulator chair: heavy with needles for incisions in the temples. I think I'm supposed to put that thing on my head.

"You're not taking me to a virtual reality, are you?" I ask worriedly.

"Don't be so crazy, Sag," Jace laughs. "Like Lily said. We're just going to take a few images of your brain."

"What for?" I ask as he fastens the helmet onto my head.

Jace buckles it around my chin, and then proceeds to inject the first needle above my eyebrow. "Remember your glasses?" he asks as I wince from the sting. "We're going to see if that parasite made it to your temporal lobe yet."

"You're talking about that tracking device, right?" I ask.

"I guess I'm only here to provide the equipment," Lily says with a cute smirk.

"Well, to be honest," Jace falters. "JT is at the Stronghold right now, and I already feel guilty enough bringing someone over there he's not comfortable with. We already did it once."

"Oh, JT needs to get a life," Lily says. "I wouldn't have mind paying a visit to him."

"Too bad you're not allowed over there," I mention. "Because you're not on the elite team."

"The mentors are also allowed in," Lily says. "I sneak in sometimes."

Jace inserts the other needle above my eyebrow, and then turns on the helmet. I hear a sizzling sound in my head, like bacon cooking on a stove. It doesn't hurt, but there are noticeable shocks.

"Okay, say you find the parasite. Then what?" I ask. "Are you going to try and pull it out of me?"

"I just don't get why no one has tried to make contact with you yet," Jace inquires.

Lily is laying across the bed, already bored out of her mind. She's tossing one of the pillows up in the air and playing catch with herself. "That still doesn't answer Sag's question, Jace," she taunts him. "You find the parasite. Then what? What if whoever is behind this requires the Nightfire elite team to defeat? You already thought the Cluster was behind this."

"Well now the Megaminds think—" Jace breaks off, knowing the new suspect is sensitive to me. "They think it's someone else now."

Lily stops throwing the pillow and gazes at Jace curiously. "Who?" she asks.

"Don't worry about it," I say uncomfortably. I trust Jace will figure out the answers he needs. "We have to finish up. This needs to be done by tonight."

Jace looks at me in the eye, blatantly confused. "I thought your mission wasn't until the end of this week?" he says.

"Nope. I won't be here this weekend—or next week," I add proudly with a smile.

Jace snorts. "What, are you taking a personal vacation?" he teases.

"No." My eyes are bright with happiness. "I got Joffrey."

Lily flips over on her bed. Jace completely stops what he's doing to a dead halt and drops his mouth so far, I think it's going to rip off. They are silent for a long second before they start speaking astonishingly at once. "For real?"

"No way—"

"Yeah," I confirm. "Scouts came to our Search and Destroy mission. I guess they saw something in me."

"No freaking way!" Jace complains. "Scouts saw me, too. Those guys always pick Ryan!"

"Now I know why Ryan never got his phone call," Lily murmurs to herself. It's probably bittersweet for her. She wants to feel happy for me, but sad for her brother at the same time. I try my best to be humble because I know how much everyone else wanted it.

"Well, this time, they picked me," I say. "Now I get to go, train from the best, and hopefully use some of the new tricks I learn to find my dad."

"Forget that, Sag!" Jace barks. "If I were you, I'd go back and tell my other competitors to suck it while I shove it up in their faces that I'm safe from getting eliminated for two more weeks!" He hollers at those last words.

"No way Sag knows how to be cocky!" Lily giggles.

"Hey, hey, hey," I say quickly. "I didn't tell anyone yet."

"Word spreads fast, Sag," Jace warns me. "So many warriors are going to be pissed with you. I kind of want to punch you right now," he admittedly adds. "You better watch your back."

When Jace finally finishes taking pictures of what's happening inside my brain, it takes a few minutes to download the photos to his computer. The entire time Lily and Jace keep talking about Joffrey, what to expect, and can't stop adding the fact that I was chosen.

"Are you sure it wasn't a prank?" Jace asks at one point. "Because that happened a few years ago. Maybe someone is just looking for attention."

I shake my head. "It was not. I confirmed my RSVP with the Seekers this morning."

Jace and Lily are speechless.

When the photo finally shows on the screen, Jace starts clicking away at the computer. I gaze at the photo of my brain, trying to find anything out of the ordinary. It looks like a normal black and white x-ray with orange and yellow bar graphs that are meaningless to me.

Jace doesn't stop clicking. He zooms in on the temporal lobe and able to see more details than any ordinary doctor on Earth would ever find. "It's there. I can see it plain as day."
"The parasite is there?" Lily sounds alarmed.

"Mhm." Jace hovers the cursor over a tiny, white line on my temporal lobe. It looks ordinary to me, but maybe because I'm not a genius when it comes to human anatomy. I would have never been able to distinguish that a parasite has been living in my brain on my own. It's an uneasy feeling. I would feel more scared if someone other than Jace was handling it.

"No one has made contact with you?" Jace asks me for the millionth time.

"No," I repeat. "Not that I know of."

"But maybe they already did?" Lily says. "The Cluster invasion."

Jace quickly dismisses the idea. "We're already sure the Cluster isn't behind this."

Lily frowns at the image on screen. "I don't know."