Jack seemed to be adapting quickly, and was using his blindfold less and less as the day wore on. Endless curiosity washed over his features every time I saw him. Now, he was animatedly chatting with Aru, down the hall, while I spoke with Sarah.
“Are you feeling ill?” She asked me, with some concern.
“Not quite,” I clarified. “A few months ago, there was a sickness up in Darwin, one of the Torgan cities. It swept through the people fast, and left people with chills, headaches and fevers, but little more than that. We were there at the time, and Rust seemed unaffected, but I’ve been feeling a little off ever since. If I got it, I’d like to know. Do you have any healers here?”
Sarah smiled widely. “We have more than that. I’ll do some bloodwork, and see what we’re dealing with, but if you survived the desert and haven’t had any obvious symptoms since then, I wouldn’t be worried.”
I frowned at her. “Blood… work?” I wasn’t even sure how to process that word, if it even was one word.
“Sorry. I’ll take a few drops of your blood, and use machines that we built to see if you have any reason to be concerned.”
With all the wonders in this place, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it seemed there were still things that could shock me. “That’s incredible!”
“To you,” Sarah answered simply. “To us, it’s commonplace. Hopefully, in a few years, it’ll be commonplace to everyone else, too.” She glanced down the hall, at the window built into the side of the mesa.
The facility had been cut into the mesa centuries ago, and it ran deep, as well as up to the top. According to Sarah, the ancestors had built it as a research lab, which meant that they were trying to figure things out here. What things, no one knew. Not even Ivy’s recollections of this place had survived the passage of time. Still, the ancestors had outdone themselves with these tunnels. There were several windows on the very edge of the mesa, looking out over the desert. Even now, just after the sun had set, we could still see the ripples of heat escaping from the desert sand. I’d never even considered that heat would be visible before crossing the ocean, but by now I was almost used to it.
“Come on,” Sarah invited me. “Let’s go down to the lab, and I’ll show you how to look so closely into your blood, that you can see the individual pieces of it!”
I spared a concerned look over at Jack, but he seemed much better now, so I allowed myself to be drawn downstairs.
