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Ash stared at it a moment, and then he grasped Kurt's hand, clasped it firmly, and they shook.
"I'll see you on the other side," Kurt said.
Ash nodded and left, catching up to the rest of the candidates.
Tom and Lucy both nodded their approvals.
"They're ready," Kurt whispered. He looked away so he
wouldn't have to meet their gazes. "I hope we are. We're taking a hell of a risk."
Kurt, Tom, and Lucy stopped at a staff conference room, now an improvised ONI command and control center. Medical technicians in blue lab coats watched 330 video monitors and bio-sign sets. Tom spoke to one of the techs while Kurt's gaze flicked from monitor to monitor.
He then went down to the open surgical arena. It had four hundred sections—each partitioned by semiopaque plastic curtaining, and each fitting with a sterile-field generator that blazed with its characteristic orange light overhead.
Kurt entered one unit and found SPARTAN-G122, Holly, there.
The partitioned area was crammed full of machines. There were stands with bio monitors. Several intravenous and osmotic patches connected her to a chemo-therapeutic infuser, loaded with a collection of liquid-filled vials that would keep Holly in a semisedated state while it delivered a cocktail of drugs over the next week. There was a crash cart and portable ventilator nearby, as well.
She struggled to rise and salute, but she fell back, her eyelids fluttering closed.
He went to Holly's side and clasped her tiny hand until she settled into a deep sleep.
She reminded him of Kelly when she was this young: full of spunk, and never giving up. He missed Kelly. He had been dead to his fellow SPARTAN-IIs for almost twenty years. He missed all of them.
The chemo-therapeutic infuser hissed, vials rotated into place, micromechanical pumps thumped, and bubbles percolated inside its colored liquids.
It was starting. Kurt remembered when he went through the augmentation. The fevers, the pain—it felt as if his bones were
breaking, like someone had poured napalm into his veins.
Holly shifted. The bio monitors showed a spike in her blood pressure and temperature. Tiny blisters appeared on her arms and she scratched at them. They filled with blood and then quickly smoothed into scabs.
Kurt patted Holly's hand one last time and then went to the infuser and lifted the side panel. Inside were dozens of solution vials. He squinted, reading off their serial numbers.
He spotted "8942-LQ99" inside the infuser. That was the carbide ceramic ossification catalyst to make skeletons virtually unbreakable.
There was "88005-MX77," the fibrofoid muscular protein complex that boosted muscle density.
"88947-OP24" was the number for retina-inversion stabilizer, which boosted color and nighttime vision.
"87556-UD61" was the improved colloidal neural disunifica-tion solution to decrease reaction times.
There were many others: shock reducers, analgesics, antiinflammatories, anticoagulants, and pH buffers.
But Kurt was looking for three vials in particular, ones with different serial numbers—009927-DG, 009127-PX, and 009762-00—that didn't match any standard medical logistics code.