Beth was hesitant to leave Kelbar all by himself, but he insisted that she return to the ship, so she did. Liam looked like he'd just discovered the cure for cancer. His eyes were as round saucers, and his mouth was hanging open. He was very enthusiastic about the whole ordeal.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing that," Liam said with a smile.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to doing that." Beth countered, also smiling. Both of them jumped when there was a loud knock on the door.
Beth answered it, and she was surprised to see that it was the stern looking nurse from the other deck. The one that had told her to leave, because she wasn't allowed up there.
"Beth Fields, could you please come with me." She said, all smiles and politeness, rather than her surly manners from before.
"Why?" Beth asked. She didn't want to go with her. Not at all.
"For a routine medical examination. We want to see if we can prevent you from getting sick. We've been doing it for several different people all morning." She replied, smiling again. Beth thought that her act was cheesy and fake, and she didn't believe it for a second, but then again, if the request was legitimate, it wouldn't be good for her to refuse.
"Only if Liam can come with." She said after a few seconds. The nurse seemed hesitant to say yes to the offer, but after a minute of contemplation, she accepted. Liam, Beth, and the unknown nurse lady walked to the medical wing.
Beth was stunned to see that there was pretty much no one there. Then she realized that many of the doctors would be away, tending for sick people. There were only two people other than the group that had just arrived. An unconscious patient, and a doctor fiddling with some equipment on the far side of the room.
The nurse asked Beth to sit in a medical examination chair, so she did. The doctor, who was the only doctor that Beth had seen in the place, walked over.
"May I take a blood sample?" she asked. She held a shiny tube with a needle on the end. Beth nodded uncertainly. She was shy of needles since the kidnapping incident. The doctor poked the short little needle into Beth's arm, and a second later, she pulled it out. Beth hadn't realized that it would take so short a time.
"You wouldn't mind if I took a spinal fluid sample as well, would you?" the doctor asked. That's when Beth realized that something was wrong. There was no reason why they should need her spinal fluid. Blood was even a little iffy. Things weren't adding up, and Beth wanted to get to the bottom of it.
"Yes, I would mind that very much," Beth said, getting up off of the chair. She went over to stand by Liam, who hadn't said a word through the whole thing. She whispered to him that she didn't trust the two of them. He nodded and then grabbed her hand to drag her out of the room. She was a little taken aback by the sudden contact with him, and she felt her cheeks heat up. Ever since she'd realized her feelings for Liam, she'd been acting like a silly school girl.
She shook her head at herself. She would have to stop being so awkward about it. She was reasonably sure that he felt the same way, so there was nothing to be ashamed of or anything. Liam kept pulling her until they reached her room again.
"So, why don't you trust them?" he asked.
"You don't need to get a sample of spinal fluid for a 'routine medical examination.'" She made quotation marks with her fingers. Liam nodded, although she wasn't sure if he really understood. She didn't tell him about the previous encounter with the nurse, because she didn't know if it had anything to do with the untrustworthiness of the two of them.
Although Liam wanted to stick around to protect her, she insisted that they should get to work. Beth hadn't been going for a while, so she wasn't too keen on getting yelled at, but she decided to go anyway. She and Liam parted ways at the PPW.
Miss Woods was mad and disappointed that Beth hadn't shown up for those days, but she wasn't overly angry or anything, and Beth didn't get yelled at. She settled into her station. It felt like years since she'd sat there, even though it had only been a couple days.
Beth was relieved to see that her work, although stacked up from the past few days, wasn't too bad. She got through about half of it before dinner time.
As she walked to the dining room, it occurred to her that she had never seen the engine of the ship. She wanted to see how it worked. After all, without an incredibly fast ship, it would take centuries to get to Nyx, but instead, it took no longer than a few years.
She turned back, and when she got back to her workstation, she asked Miss Woods about it. She said that, if Beth got an escort that was approved by a few key people, she would be allowed to go into the engine room, and maybe even get a tour. Miss Woods promised that she would ask a few people about it.
Beth was excited. She hoped that Miss Woods would be able to convince the 'certain people.' She rushed to dinner. Liam joined her along the way, and she told him about her plans to visit the engine room. He said that he would love to go along. Beth was sure that if it was okay for her to go, that she could bring Liam along as well.
They talked about a bunch of random stuff during dinner, not the least of which was their visit to Nyx, and Kelbar.
______
Ruth was angry that Beth had left. She'd been anticipating a spinal fluid sample. She knew that she should be happy with what she had. At least she had a blood sample. That was enough to find out a little bit of the mystery.
She brought the little cylinder of blood to the lab and immediately started testing. It would take a while for a complete diagnosis, but she was willing to wait. She settled down in a chair for a quick nap as she waited. She'd been working overtime since the injections, monitoring Beth and the like. She fell asleep almost instantly.
________
Beth awoke the next morning to the sound of her notification bell chiming. It was a message, and, thinking it was from Liam, Beth rushed to open it. But as it turned out, it was from Miss Woods, which was even better than a message from Liam.
The message was all positive. Beth could go to the engine room, and the head engineer himself would give her a grand tour. The message even mentioned bringing a couple friends if she wanted to.
Beth got ready, messaged Liam, and then rushed to his room. She pounded on the door, and Liam answered it a second later. He was already fully dressed, which was a bit unexpected. It was really early.
They both went to the PPW, which was where Miss Woods had said to meet, and waiting for them there, was a stout man with a receding hairline that Beth assumed was the head engineer. He wasn't what Beth had been expecting.
He led them down a few unfamiliar corridors, and then down a flight of stairs into a brightly lit room with pure white walls. In the middle of the room, there was a large glass case. In the middle of the glass case, there was a mass of wires and machinery. In the middle of the wires and machinery, there was a glassy orb that glowed and pulsed with energy. The glass area itself was about as big as a standard room, but the room surrounding it was huge. Beth guessed that the big room was a safety buffer, just in case something with the engine went wrong.
Beth didn't know what she'd been expecting, but that certainly wasn't it. She had been expecting a dimly lit, rusty room with wires and control panels everywhere. The head engineer began talking about it. It was powered by some sort of newly-discovered mineral that was similar to radioactive things, but not harmful to the human body. No fuel was needed for the ship because of it.
Beth, with permission, of course, walked up and put a hand on the glass. She felt a faint vibration, like the little orb, was calling to her, telling her to pick it up and swirl it around in her hands. The vibration felt good, like a message. She soon felt energized, like she could run a few marathons, and still be ready for another.
Then everything went sour when she felt the heat behind her eyes. she knew that that meant her 'powers' were about to manifest themselves, and she didn't want that to happen, but she seemed to be unable to pull her hand away from the glass. The burning behind her eyes got more intense. She tried desperately to pull her hand away, but nothing worked. The lights in the ceiling started to flicker slightly, and then there was a boom. Not a boom like an explosion, more like a sonic boom.
Then, there were red lights flashing. A loud voice over the intercoms started to wail something.
"Proximity alert. Proximity alert. Automatically cutting power." After that message played for a few cycles, the lights went out. Thankfully, the air systems, which were on a different power supply than everything else, stayed on.
"What in the sam hill was that?" the head engineer asked through the shadow that bathed them now that the lights were off.
"That was a proximity alert," Liam said. "That means we're very close to something very large. Something large enough to destroy the ship if we get too close."
Beth didn't understand what Liam was getting at, but she knew that something really weird had just happened.