22 – A Healthy DoseHector felt a headache behind his eyes—a result, no doubt, of his perpetual scowl. He stood watching Paige treat the commander’s injuries, layering adhesive synth-skin patches over her burns, the worst of which were on her right side and so severe that she couldn’t bend her knee or use her arm.She’d passed out shortly after accusing Frederick of treachery, but not before making her case to Hector; she’d been shot in the back, right in her lower spine, just before the bomb came in. She claimed the injury interrupted her aura attack that would have sent the drone off-target. Of course, Freddy denied everything, and he had a compelling argument: he’d been near Kristy when the bomb exploded—not at Mathews’s back.“Well?” he asked Bobby.The scientist looked up from his data terminal. “I think she’s telling the truth—about being shot, I mean. The injuries uphold the story, but so does the drone footage. I’ve isolated a rifle shot just before Mathews dropped.”“And the source?”“Too much interference to be exact, but the only one of us in the vicinity was Red—there were five techs close-by, though.”“Red’s dead,” Perry said.“We’re aware,” Kristy hissed. She was staring at Freddy; the kid hadn’t taken the accusation well and was pacing up and down the center of the cave. “It wasn’t Frederick, though, right, Bobby?”“I don’t think so. I don’t see how it could have been.”“Why’d Matthews say that, then?” Perry asked.“Maybe it’s not Mathews,” Hector replied, the aura fiend he’d fought in Redwick still fresh in his mind.“The hell does that mean?” Perry asked, but he knew. They all knew; some of them just weren’t ready to entertain the possibility.“Are they real? Fiends?” Kristy asked, looking at Hector.“Aura symbiotes are very real,” Bobby answered. “Though extremely uncommon.”“We shouldn’t have left those bodies there. I thought (...)