Aleigha woke up in the clinic, with the bright lights above her burning her eyes. They were directly above her, reminding her of when her tonsils were taken out. Right before they gave her the anesthesia to knock her out for the surgery, she had stared up at a set of bright lights above her. This felt just like that. She squinted and then looked around her, trying to see where she was. Her eyes were having trouble adjusting to the light.

Medic Kaul was at her side, scanning her with a handheld scanner. His face was grim as he moved the device from her head to toe. Niki was sitting in a chair beside her, her face was pale with trails of dried tears on her cheeks. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying for an extended period of time, which was something she never did. She never cried in the first place. Something terrible must have happened to her.

"Where is Merrick?" Aleigha asked. For some reason, she was having trouble speaking. Her throat hurt like it was scalded with boiling water. "What happened?" she croaked out. She had to force each word out of her mouth. Stabs of burning pain shot through her throat as she tried to speak.

Niki looked up after hearing her sister speak. Her face shifted to one of relief. She sighed deeply. "Merrick left a little while ago. He'll be back in a little bit. He needed to take the baby to Carrie, to have her babysit," Niki told her. "You apparently passed out in the tunnels after fighting with a couple of men. Council Leader Vorik carried you here so Medic Kaul could see what happened. Your organs were shutting down, but we don't know why yet. Kaul thinks it has to do with something you ingested, but he doesn't know for sure. He thinks it may even be something that was airborne. He's trying to determine if it was a virus or if you ate something contaminated."

"My throat is burning," Aleigha whispered, struggling to speak. "It hurts."

"Medic Kaul had to shove a feeding tube down your throat to get nutrients in you after he treated you. He was able to reverse whatever happened to you, but he's worried it will start again. You have to stay in here until he knows you're not going to relapse." Niki told her cautiously. Aleigha could tell that her sister wasn't telling her everything. She was being too careful with her words. Niki was hiding something, and she wanted to know what and why she was hiding it.

Aleigha looked around her, her bows scrunching slightly. "Why do I feel like I'm in a bubble?" Aleigha whispered, trying to talk through the burning pain in her throat.

"You are in a bubble," Medic Kaul told her as he walked up to her. "You have a plasma shield surrounding you to quarantine you. We need to make sure whatever happened to you isn't contagious. Council Leader Vorik and Keirn are also in quarantine right now because of the contact you've had with them. You're the only one with symptoms at the moment. I scanned them both. There is no evidence they are infected by whatever is making you ill."

"I'm infected with some kind of virus?" Aleigha asked him, barely in a whisper. Pain shot through her throat with each syllable. It was a burning, stabbing pain each time she tried to speak.

"Yes, I think you were infected with an aggressive virus. I don't really know what is wrong with you. It's acting like a virus. I haven't ruled it out yet." Medic Kaul told her, "At least you were. I don't see it in your system any longer. It was attacking your internal organs. If you had not come back into the dome when you did, you would not be alive right now."

Aleigha's face paled. "Did you check my stomach contents? I ate before I ran from them." Her words were barely heard through the hoarseness of her tone. She winced at the burning pain in her throat as she tried to speak. She wanted to help Kaul get to the bottom of whatever was wrong with her.

Medic Kaul pulled a scanner off a shelf and scanned her stomach content, then looked at the small screen. "It's been too long. It has already been digested. I doubt I would see anything through the nutrients you were given anyway. What did you eat?" he asked, wanting to rule out that it was contaminated food.

"They made this soup. It was a broth made with vegetables they found and cut-up meat. They said it was a rabbit. I didn't eat any of the meat, but it was cooked with the vegetables, so it was in the broth," Aleigha told him in a whisper, fighting the burning pain.

Medic Kaul switched the settings on his scanner and then scanned her intestine. When the scanner beeped, he looked at the small screen. "The meat was not from a rabbit," he told her quietly, still studying the small screen.

Aleigha's face paled in horror. "Oh god, what was it?" she asked, fighting the burning in her throat. Tears suddenly fell from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her biggest worry was eating the flesh of humans, Ramesian or Kreq. She had always been vegan, but if it weren't an animal, she would throw up what little contents she had left in her stomach. She doubted she could handle it if she ate the flesh of those people from the dome.

Medic Kaul placed the scanner in a wall socket, then moved her bed so she could see the screen on the wall. Several images appeared. Some were roots, and then those of some forms of animal that she didn't know what they were. "It's some form of rodent. I think that if it is the cause, it was not cooked at a hot enough temperature, or cooked long enough, and a parasite was in the meat that got into the broth. Many parasites can be deadly. One of those roots may look like the others, but it is not the same. Some roots are not edible. They release a sap-like juice that is poisonous to consume. This root is also a possibility as to why you nearly died," he said, pointing to a picture of a root vegetable that looked similar to the sunchokes.

"What are the chances of it being a virus and not something I ate?" she croaked out, fighting the pain in her throat. The more she spoke, the more it burned.

Medic Kaul looked at her. "The cause of your illness is inconclusive. I can't find the reason for your illness. It could be either. I was able to stop it, but it is unclear if what you ate was the cause. That is why you are still in quarantine, as is Council Leader Vorik and Keirn."

Aleigha thought about it for a moment while Kaul did work at a workstation next to her. She suddenly remembered the two men she had killed.

"The two guys in the tunnels that I killed ate the same thing I did. You can check them also," she suggested. Her voice was still in a whisper. She was having trouble speaking, but did it anyway. She wanted to get down to the bottom of what was happening to her.

"I will see about examining them," Medic Kaul told her. "Niki will stay with you until Merrick comes back. You will not be left alone while you are in the clinic. Whatever you were infected with moves quickly through the body and starts without notice." He explained. "I assume you felt fine until you became unconscious for no known reason?"

Aleigha nodded. "I was fine, then I just suddenly felt sick, then I passed out," she explained. She looked around the room, her eyes resting on her sister. It was clear she had been crying, which meant she was close to death. She turned back to Medic Kaul. "Thank you, Kaul. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for saving my life."

Medic Kaul nodded, picked up a bag of medical implements, and then left the room she was in, leaving Niki sitting beside her in a chair.

Aleigha couldn't help but compare what she dreamt about to what was happening. She had killed both Eric and Steve in the same manner as in her dreams. Even having the feeding tube shoved down her throat was in her dream, as well as her sister crying.

A shiver went through her body. It felt like her dream was both a warning and a premonition. Then she remembered her sister's last words before she woke up. She had said that she didn't want to live if her sister died. She paled, remembering it. 'I won't die... I won't,' she thought, then looked over at her sister who was sitting beside her.

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