Neither could she talk. In fact, she could barely think. Because something was happening to her. Something terrible. The pain in her chest kept building and building, and as she stared down at her hand, with a surge of incapacitating terror she saw blue tendrils of energy driving under her skin. She tried to bat at it, tried to grab it and pull it from her veins, but it was too insubstantial to touch. Yet she could feel it as it wiggled its way through her flesh. She wanted to cry out, she wanted to scream and tell the doctors what was happening to her, but she couldn’t move her lips. They were numb. No, worse than numb—they felt as stiff as the carved mouth of a statue. That particular image stuck in her mind, and could not be dislodged even as another surge of panic washed over her. She was still in the same cavernous hospital room, and the doctors were still trying, apparently, to stabilise the stasis force field that enshrouded her. Occasionally she watched the flickering orange and blue light, but now the only light that held her attention was that which had invaded her bloodstream.
