Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye Page B

than I did.
    I felt the hands on me, felt them lifting me off the dirt, settling me on something padded. Flat. Felt the violence dim.
    Gritting my teeth against the searing pain in my head, I reached over the edge of the stretcher and brushed my fingers against the dirt one more time. Seeking. Letting some of my precious water go and tracking it to source. Who are you?
    I felt the black taking over, felt its blessed eating of the pain.
    But not before I heard my answer.

13
    I ’d gone under to the sound of Toli’s voice—and I came awake to it too. She sounded at least as worried as when I’d blacked out.
    “She’s coming back to us.” Glenn, with the professionally reassuring tones of medicals everywhere.
    My body issued screeching confirmation. I was indeed waking up—and I hurt everywhere. I started running the simple chakra resonance check that all Fixers were taught to use when we’d been idiots. By definition, any of us who ended up feeling this way had most certainly done something dumb.
    Or that would be Yesenia’s conclusion, anyhow. She had very little tolerance for Fixers who ended up on the wrong end of a collision with a pod bus.
    Except in this case, I couldn’t even claim a few tons of traveling plastic and steel. The last few drops of water I’d sacrificed had yielded the answer I needed. A searing signature from a young willow whose beautiful form I remembered gracing the center of the dome. I ran my aching head through the litany of problems from Glenn’s files, and watched the data click into place.
    Totally consistent with people picking up on the psychic sendings of an angsty teenager. I could remember the fractious, hot resonances of my own dream. Skin too tight. Breath not enough. No one understands. Classic teenager angst, and almost certainly the source of the biome’s problems.
    Except in this case, the teenager wasn’t human—and she had just tried to suck all the water out of the one person in the biome who had a hope in hell of being able to reason with her.
    My head pounded harder. I’d been wasted by a tree. Those were always the really fun reports to write up. I groaned and tried to pry an eye open.
    “I have a spray here, Tyra.” Glenn, saying important words. I tried to focus on them. “It’s got a mild stimulant and an analgesic—it’s the strongest thing I have for the pain that won’t leave you dopey.”
    I could correct for the dopey, but I was pretty sure he didn’t have anything strong enough to manage the hammers in my head. “Go ahead.” There was no harm in trying.
    I felt the spray land, and immediately knew it wasn’t going to accomplish anything useful. Which was a shame, because I had a really big mess to clean up. We suddenly had a monumental science problem on our hands—and a bunch of scientists I suspected weren’t going to be very happy to hear about it.
    Which was exactly the kind of thing Fixers were sent in to address, but it generally worked better if the Fixer in question could actually open her eyes and focus.
    I gave it my very best effort and squinted at what I could make out of Glenn’s face, and Toli’s behind him. There was no way I was going at this sideways—this was a small community, and even in defective tribes, scuttlebutt travels at the speed of light. “We need the head science team. All of them.”
    Glenn raised a questioning eyebrow. “Jerome too?”
    Especially him. “He created this.” And I would honor him for it, because there was scientific marvel in this as well as scientific terror. “He’s most likely to know what we might be able to do next.”
    “He’ll know.” Toli’s face was pale. “That doesn’t mean he’ll tell you.”
    I was very aware of that, too. But I believed, deeply, in giving people the opportunity to do the right thing. “All of them. We’ll see what happens.”
    I could see my two allies exchanging dark looks.
    I ignored them, even though it scared me to know I was about to walk in