First draft
"...heart." Someone said.
Dia's eyelids flickered.
"Rise and shine, sweetheart."
"Rodriguez? What..." Dia's eyes darted around the room, "...what am I doing here?"
Rodriguez' place looked exactly like Dia's room, but cleaner.
The merc pursued her lips, "You were completely wasted last night. I carried you to your room but the bed..."
"...was gone." Dia rubbed her temples. That headache was killing her, "Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."
"Don't worry, sweetheart. You didn't. Actually, you were quite funny." Her eyes shone with amusement.
"Funny?" She asked.
Rodriguez just grinned, "Make yourself comfortable. I'll take a shower." The merc opened the bathroom's door, but halted, "Oh, I almost forgot. Your clothes are on the chair."
Dia looked at her blankly, her mouth hanging open. Then she lifted the blanket, heat staining her cheeks when she realized she was completely naked.
"By the way," A corner of Rodriguez' mouth quirked up, "you undressed yourself, in case you're wondering."
Dia was still gawking when Rodriguez closed the door.
Shortly afterwards, Dia felt her gums and fingertips itching, sign that Spice's effect was wearing off. She dragged herself out of bed, and she was about to take her daily dose when Rodriguez came back.
The merc frowned, "What is this thing?"
"Nothing. Painkillers for...the headache." Dia answered with the first thing that came to her mind.
Rodriguez raised an eyebrow, "Really?"
"Listen, Rodriguez, I..."
"Dia, you don't have to explain." The merc interrupted her, "I'm no saint. It's not my place to tell you how to live your life, but...you don't look well. Maybe it's better if you get the doctor to check you out."
"That's not a good idea, Rodriguez. Sarah hates me."
Rodriguez knitted her brow, "The pretty doctor? Why?"
"Well...I..."She scratched her head, "I almost killed her."
Rodriguez' mouth fell open, "What? What happened?"
Dia turned her face away, "Let's...let's just say that it's my fault."
"Well, damn, " The merc shook her head, "I didn't expect this."
Dia gave her a bitter smile, "Right?"
"But you really need to see a doctor, Dia." Rodriguez insisted, "You look like hell."
"I'm hungover." She tried to downplay it, "It will pass."
"Hungover? You're pale as a corpse and your eyes..." She grimaced, "Look, just say that you're sorry and get checked out."
"She almost died, Rodriguez." Dia answered, her irritation leaking into her voice, "Do you think a simple sorry would suffice?"
"Maybe not, but it can't hurt, right? Besides, what do you have to lose?"
"I don't know but..." Dia sighed, "Maybe you're right."
Rodriguez smirked at her, "I usually am. I don't know the doctor well, but she seems a kind soul. Don't worry, everything will be alright."
Yet, two hours later, when Dia finally found the courage to overcome her fears and went to the Sickbay, Sarah didn't look so "kind" anymore.
"Sarah, please, put the gun down."
Dia had just walked through the door when she heard a long buzz and found herself staring at the barrel of a laser rifle.
"Why? So that you can throw me against the wall like a ragdoll?" Sarah squeezed the stock of her gun, her shoulders tensing, "No, thank you."
"I mean you no harm." Dia kept her hands up and spoke slowly, "I'm here to talk."
"Yeah?" Sarah didn't sound impressed, "Then talk."
"Fine." Dia took a deep breath, trying to put her thoughts in order but her mind was blank, "That day...you know... Shit, this is harder than I thought." She tugged at her shirt collar, "Anyway, I...I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I wasn't myself that day. I know that it's a lame excuse and I'm not trying to justify my actions, but...it's the truth."
Sarah raised an eyebrow, "Is that it?"
"Yes," Dia exhaled, her shoulders sagging, "that's it."
She turned around, and she was about to leave when Sarah said, "Wait...what's wrong with your eyes?"
"Uh?"
"They are dilated. Besides, they were blue before, but now they are green."
"Ah, don't worry." Dia lowered her head, "It's normal...I think."
Dia heard Sarah sighing, "I don't know why I'm asking this but...are you alright?"
Dia shuffled on her feet, "I..."
"And now they are blue again. It's the Spice, isn't it?"
"M-Maybe? I mean, I guess. I...I increased the dose, but I don't know if..." She trailed off when she realized Sarah was studying her.
The doctor muttered something under her breath.
Then she pointed at the bed with her gun, "Lie on the bed."
"Sarah, you don't have to..."
"Lie on the bed." She repeated. Her forceful tone brooked no argument.
Dia had no choice but to obey. She was uncomfortably lying on the bed when she saw that Sarah was turning off the cameras.
"No need to turn off the cameras, unless you're planning to kill me, of course." She half-joked.
Sarah didn't laugh. Instead, she pushed a button on her medical console. Dia barely managed not to scream when the motorized bed moved inside the SRA, a big cylinder very similar to an old MRI.
"Stay still, or we'll have to start over." Sarah warned when she started squirming.
Dia squeezed her eyes shut, counting the seconds, then the minutes, as she tried to keep her mind busy. At some point, however, she couldn't take it anymore. The oppressive silence and that confined space were driving her crazy. She let out a strangled moan, tears pooling in the corner of her eye as she went through the last part of the ordeal.
"Hang on there." Sarah sounded detached, professional but cold, "We're almost done."
When it was finally over, Dia was covered with sweat, but Sarah barely looked at her. Instead, she took a sample of her blood before going to the laboratory - a small room directly adjacent to the Sickbay.
"Your heart rate is over 400 bpm, so that's...odd, to put it mildly." She said when she came back, reading Dia's medical file on her handheld, "Aside from that, I don't know what's wrong with you. I have your medical chart, and Reyes provided me with the list of your augmentations, but frankly...they are completely useless."
"Useless?"
Sarah shrugged, "Most of your augmentations are experimental, so I have nothing to compare you with. Besides, when I scanned your body" She punched another button, "this is what came out."
Dia looked at the tridimensional image of her body and blanched.
"As you can see, some organs are missing and seems that your bones ...fused with the implants. According to Reyes' data, your spine and other major bones had been replaced, but this" Sarah screwed up her face, "is different."
Dia balled her fists, "Different how?"
"For starters, you're too light." Sarah explained, "You weigh 180 pounds."
"180 pounds? That's a lot, Sarah."
"No, it's not, not with all the metal you are packing. Most cyborgs weigh twice as much as you. The fact is that all your bones, even those that the Umbra's men left untouched, are now made of some kind of ultra-light alloy, for lack of a better term. And that's not all." She pressed another button, magnifying a section of the image, "Watch this."
There was something, a thread or filament wrapped around her lungs like some sort of net.
Dia's face went blank, "What...what the hell is that?"
"I don't know" Sarah answered, "but if I have to guess, that's your body's response to a fatal weakness."
"Weakness? Wait," She remembered about what happened on that desert planet and shuddered, "don't tell me that..."
"Your lungs were a weakness." Sarah pinned her with her eyes, "That's why your body adapted."
"No, you checked me out before." She said, her breath coming in gasps, "The first time I came here..."
"You looked normal. Well, not normal but...you weren't like this. This happened after you left the ship. I think Daxum's atmosphere is the reason behind this phenomenon. The ammonia in the air, to be exact. Your body adapted," She pointed at the screen, "and this the result. I think this is some kind of air filtration system."
"But that's impossible. You're talking like my body is some kind...of sentient being!" She flailed her arms around, "That's insane!"
"Is it, Dia? Then, tell me, when was the last time you ate?"
Dia's mouth snapped shut.
"You can't answer me, right? That's because you didn't. Your digestive and excretory system stopped working when that praying mantis pounced on you."
Dia clutched her chest, her face becoming even paler if possible.
Sarah's features softened a little, "Listen, Dia, I'm not trying to scare you, but I've never seen anything like this. I've run every test there is, but the truth is I have no idea how your body works."
Dia's face contorted, "So, we got nothing?"
"Not necessarily. There's one thing left to try." Sarah's eyes bore into hers, "Do you have it with you? The Spice I mean."
"Yeah, I..." She had just taken a vial out of her pocket when Sarah snatched it out of her hand.
"I'll be right back." She said.
Then she went back to the lab.
Two hours later, when Sarah finally came back, Dia was at her wit's end, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. The ship's doctor wasn't better off. She walked with burdened steps, her gaze darting around the room like she was trying to look everywhere except at her.
"This doesn't feel like good news."
Sarah scratched her nose, "I don't know how to say this, but the Spice is...well, blood."
Dia blinked her eyes, "Come again?"
"I said that the Spice is blood." She repeated, "Well that's not entirely exact but.."
"Wait, just wait..." Dia raised her hands, "what...what do you mean with blood?"
"That's...that's where things get weird. Look at this." She showed her a vial containing a dark-blue liquid.
"That's...that's my blood. You took a sample of it."
"No, Dia. This is not your blood but Spice. Well, part of it, at least. More than eighty percent of the Spice is inorganic, made of metals in liquid form, rare metals to be exact. Iridium 7, Mercury, Element Zeta, Palladium 31 and Chromium 28, of course. But this" She lifted the vial, "is organic. I managed to isolate it from the rest. Then I ran a DNA test and compared it to your blood."
Dia froze, alarm bells ringing in her head, "Don't tell me..."
"I know what you're thinking, but no, it's not the same." Sarah reassured her.
Dia let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, "Then...?"
"But it's similar."
"...how similar?"
"According to my calculations..." Sarah grimaced, "it shares 85% of your DNA."
Dia put her head in her hands, "Oh my God..."
"It's not as bad as you think. Cows and humans share 80% of their DNA, but they are still very different." Sarah said, "The real problem is that this thing is emitting radiation."
"Radiation?"
Sarah nodded, "Yeah, low-level radiation. Normally, it's completely harmless but if you ingest the Spice..."
"You turn into a Junkie." Dia exhaled, "This is the mutagen, isn't?"
"Yes." Sarah admitted, "But you're wrong if you think that the...let's call it Common Spice and the one you're using are the same. They are completely different. The Common Spice is first and foremost a drug, a psychotropic plant that grows deep underground, sheltered from Daxum's harsh weather. I think that the Umbra just added the mutagen, a very small quantity of this." She tapped her finger on the vial, "That's why I didn't notice it before."
"Sarah, that's all very interesting, but we're ignoring the elephant in the room." She swallowed the lump in her throat and asked, "whose blood is that?"
"Sorry, Dia." Sarah sounded apologetic, "I've no idea. It could be from an alien lifeform, maybe a native species - I don't know. I need to run more tests, but...I think you should stop taking the Spice."
Dia looked frustrated, "I can't, Sarah. You know what'll happen if I don't take it. Hell, you saw me. I became a monster."
"I'm not saying that you should stop taking it at once, but you may want to taper the dose..."
"You're forgetting that I need the Spice to survive." Dia reminded her.
"I'm not sure that is true. Your brain is healthy. There is no sign of degeneration."
Dia narrowed her eyes, "Are you saying Reyes lied?"
"Maybe he omitted certain truths, maybe the Umbra didn't tell him everything. I don't know." Sarah shrugged her shoulders, "What I know for sure is that this thing" She lifted the vial, "is not the answer. As I said, I don't know how your body works, but all living organisms require energy to survive. In your case, the Spice carried out that function, but this doesn't mean that there are no alternatives."
Dia opened her eyes wide, "You are saying..."
"You need a new power source. I think I can help with that."
The room fell silent, the electronic beep of Sarah's instruments, the only sound she could hear.
"I'm not sure about this, Sarah. Besides, even if you succeed, this won't solve my other problem."
"Dia, let me tell you a story."
"Sarah..."
"Shut up and listen." Sarah ordered, "I knew this guy on Dacuma, Jonathan. He looked like an okay guy, just a middle-aged man trying to live out his retirement in peace. Only later I found out that he was a pirate, a real piece of shit. He and his crew killed a lot of people back in the day. They preyed on the weak, raided colonial ships and smuggled people across the Fringe Sector just to drop the cargo when things got too hot." Her face darkened, "Anyway, during one of these raids, Jonathan was injured. An imperial soldier blasted him, and his knee snapped like dry wood. He tried to fix it, of course, bought a fancy implant, a new knee to replace the old one. Unfortunately, he was scammed. The new implant was just a second gen piece of junk passed off as new. The right thing to do was to replace it, but Jonathan was a stingy old man. So when his knee started to hurt, he didn't buy a new implant but started taking Gareobonzulin."
Dia's expression sobered. She'd heard about the Gareobonzulin. It was like a panacea for pain, but the side effects were deadly in the long run.
"It still works - He used to say. But the pain kept getting worse and worse and he had to take more pills, until one day his heart decided that it had enough of it. So, on top of a new knee, old Jonathan also needed a new heart." Sarah looked up, locking eyes with her, "What I'm trying to say is that the Spice is just hiding the problem. In the long run, it will only make it worse."
"Let's say you're right," Dia crossed her arms over her chest, "what's the alternative?"
"First, let me ask you a question. I heard Reyes saying that your...abilities are triggered by your emotions. Is he right?"
"Maybe. I don't know for sure." Dia glanced at her with suspicion, "Why does this matter?"
"Because if that's the case, you can learn to control it."
"No, Sarah, you don't know..."
"You can do it, Dia. You have to."
"I've already tried! It's not working!" Dia snapped, "I've only learned the basics of the mental conditioning, and it's completely useless in this case!"
"Then you need to find someone willing to teach you." Sarah looked unperturbed, "Luckily for you, there is someone on this ship that can help you."
"Someone on this ship?" Dia frowned, "Who?"
Sarah gave her a meaningful glance.
"No," Dia shook her head, her confusion turning into surprise, and then, anger, "I understand what you're thinking but..."
"Forgive him already, Dia. You need him."
"Sarah, I can't. I just can't."
Sarah sighed, "Let's do it this way then. Forgive Omen, and I'll forget that you tried to kill me."
That caught her off guard.
"I don't understand." Dia looked at her curiously, "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I owe him." Sarah answered without hesitation, "I see the way he looks at you. You're important to him, Dia."
"You know, Rodriguez said the same thing. Maybe you're both blind." She raised her hands in exasperation.
"Think what you want. " Sarah shrugged, "I don't care. To begin with, I am not doing this for you."
"For who then? Omen?"
"Partly, but mostly for myself." Sarah answered, "I know myself, Dia, I know what I'm capable of. Right now, you're a threat, and I can't sleep well if I don't fix the problem," She stared at her fixedly, "in one way or another."
Dia felt a chill running down her spine when Sarah smiled.
"So, what's your decision?"