Cameron turned to Yale the moment John disappeared into the med tent with his burden. "I'm not going into that ship.  Especially not with you. You still can't fire a weapon because of your aversion program."  

"Excuse my presumption...but didn't you just agree to do that when John suggested the recon a few seconds ago?" asked Yale. 

Cameron eyed up the ship's open hatch, still focused and non-moving with his lined up Mag Pro. "I said 'Right', meaning I agreed with the idea, not 'Right' as in accepting to carry out his orders in the same half-*ssed, brainless way. I got this covered." he reassured the tutor.  Cameron lifted two fingers and whistled piercingly in a two note singsong.

Zero came trudging in from his daily sentry duty. "Do you need assistance from this unit?"

"Yes. Enter that ship and scan for anomalous instrument panel readings, active computer functioning, or anything other than the permanent emergency offline mode on the Eve computer net. Eden Project biostat chip humanoid, Devon Adair, was awakened from stasis without a proper manually entered command from one of us.  Issue an alert for any abnormal environmental, electrical, biological, or radiological findings. Report back to me in five clicks." Cameron told the android.

Zero twisted his upper body around and began to walk steadily onto the ship's entry pad. "Scouting parameters and orders understood, sir."

"Mark." said Cameron, pushing a button on his wrist timer.

Yale began to smile. "Ahh... Zero as a decoy if it's needed.  This action won't put us into any danger."

"Hell, yeah, it sure won't. John wasn't thinking clearly when he spouted off like that.  He was too enamoured with and worried about his precious sleeping beauty of a girlfriend, and don't tell me you haven't noticed those two lately. They've been making eyes at each other every day. Ever since the big waterless incident." Cameron fired off, still raw with nerves and pure adrenaline.

Yale filed away that bit of news, completely unphased. "Well, it's only natural for members of the group to begin to care for each other while living under life or death circumstances for so long. Just look at Julia and Alonzo...  or Bess and Morgan with their recent reaffirmation rite, or--"

"Uly and his dirt dragons." Cameron added ruefully. "Do you really call that relationship healthy?!" he spat with disgust. 

"For him it is." Yale shared like a sage, with neaty steepled hands. "Because of it, he was cured of his Station Syndrome."

"Those frogs like to invade a very personal space inside of us, Yale, like tapeworms." Cameron cringed, happy to blow off a little more steam.

"Cameron, you are mistaken. Terrians are more like benign messengers to the subconscious part of our minds." Yale countered.  "You can break out of contact with them any time you'd like, whenever you sleep."

"Yeah, Cameron. It's not like many of us have the ability to control our dreams anyway." said Alonzo, joining their little group. "So what real harm is there?"

Cameron eyed up Alonzo uneasily. "You tell me, Fly Boy. You haven't exactly been in the best of health after dealing with the Terrians, now have you?"

"That was before I understood what was going on." said Solace, excited. "The planet's learning to talk to us through them."

"Not me." Cameron spat. "I haven't heard jack since Day One."

"That's because they know you won't accept their olive branch." said the pilot.

"Piss off!  How do I know you and the others haven't been brainwashed?! Julia with her Frankensteinian injections into her own skull, Uly's magic tricks, you with your waking hallucinations."

"Cameron.." began Solace, reaching out to him in a calming gesture. "It's nothing bad at all. You're just on the outside looking in."

"Get away from me. Both of you. Leave me alone." he bristled.  "Can't you see I've got work to do?" Then he paced away to another vantage point so he could watch the hatch through which Zero had disappeared.

Alonzo looked at the tutor with a frown. "So now he likes busy after 149 days of dragging his feet? Go figure." he said sarcastically. Then he stormed off to get fresh news from the med tent.

Yale sighed hugely in mild frustration and continued his vigil at the ship's entrance. "He's stressed. And so are we all." the tutor mumbled to himself.

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When Uly's head dropped into a dream trance next to his static coursing Terrian staff, Julia had the presence of mind to turn on an audio recorder that was resting on one of her work tables in the med tent.

"Easy. No sharp movements." John told her. "We have no idea what's running through his head right now."

Morgan's nervousness bubbled out. "You, uh.. mean what's running through their heads." he whispered, half gesturing to the boy and at Mary and Devon. It was only then Heller noticed the status of her two patients. The two connected women's eyes had also drifted shut into an identical trance.

"Where's Alonzo when you need him?" Danziger grumbled, wisely still not moving under the glow of the brightly buzzing, Tesla coil-like energy flickering off of Uly's staff. 

It was then Bess Martin had a very focused idea. "Julia?" she asked the doctor. "Do you feel anything going on?" The others suddenly recalled the DNA strands that Heller had stolen from Uly to implant into her own system.  Her possible Terrian link was the trait that John had wanted to hide, to block out from the Others, after they had found Mary had been attacked.

"Do I dare?" Julia asked, fingering the masking VR gear she still wore on her head that kept away REM sleep brain waves. 

"Yes."

          "Yes."

"Yes."   hissed Mary, Devon and Uly with one voice. "You will not be harmed. We need a re-balancer, a restorer who is Not-we to stop the infection."

The group startled, badly. It was the first time Terrians had ever spoken mentally outside of their Dreamscape to anyone not already sensitive to them in their dreams. 

Julia was fascinated even in her fear. "They're adapting."

"Definitely not to us or for us." Morgan gaped. "Remember, some of these ....things..  maimed Mary, a human who supposedly used to be one of them!" 

Danziger was very doubtful as he recovered from the Terrians' little surprise. "Julia, you once told us Terrians have no instinct for violence towards others of their own kind.  Yet today, they've managed to do quite a lot of harm." he said, waving a sarcastic hand towards Mary in agreement with Martin. 

"And good." said a defiant Bess, gesturing at the healing Devon to broaden the point.

"It's too risky." barked John. "Bess, your suggestion may not be a smart one."

"It's my decision to make. It's my body." Heller countered, and she ripped off the VR set.  

In the next instant, Uly grabbed one of Julia's hands and placed it on the nimbus radiating Terrian staff, arresting John's attempt to stop her experiment. Heller's head immediately drifted up into a dream trance. The boy began to trill with the doctor, and so did his mother and Mary.  Then Uly and the doctor both gestured with one palm and spread fingers facing downwards in a summoning move.  The ground opened up holes all over the earth in the med tent as the dirt regurgitated many unconscious Terrian bodies holding glowing bits of Morganite to their chests with folded limbs.  Each had some glistening skin with orange glowing ooze bubbling on top of either an arm or a leg;  Terrian blood.

One last hole appeared and it vomited out a limp, gigantic humanoid form encased in powerful armor. Its limbs were tied tightly to its back with living vines. The eyes were open and seeing. John gave a shout of visceral horror, scrambling backwards. He knocked over a table in his panic as he drew out his laser pistol to aim squarely at this last arrival. "Uly! What the h*ll do you think you're doing?! This is a ZED here! He's definitely one of the bad guys!"

Bess was candid, although frozen a bit in shock. "Uh, he's not actually moving, John. Those plants look nice and tight around his hands and feet."

Danziger did not change the bead he had inches from the ZED's head. "On this planet, appearances are always deceiving." he growled.

Julia's voice predominated the new quartet of humans linked by the Terrians.   "What is the infection?"

        "..what is the infection?"    

"...what is the infection?"    

      "....what is the infection?"

"Contamination." came the reply through Mary's solo voice. She moved a hand and simultaneously, Uly, Devon and the doctor did the same, to touch both one arm and one leg on each of their bodies. They repeated their gesture, pointedly, eerily matching each other like robots or a machine.  "The sky hunter. Poisoned rock. Digging.." she trilled.

Julia stumbled away from the staff as medical instinct kicked in. "They've been attacked." she shivered, as she woke up. She threw on her diaglove and knelt quickly by the nearest Terrian who was reading as being in metabolic stasis. "They've been impaled by.. oh my G*d... " she broke off.

"What?" quailed Morgan.

Julia caught her breath. "Worm bullets. All of these Terrians have been shot by one. But somehow, this Morganite energy field has paused their self destruct countdowns."

The ZED under John's gun spoke. "A new directive. Target indigenous bipedal life forms and interrogate."

John shoved his gun muzzle deeply into the back of the ZED's neck, its only weak spot. "Hey, that's Eve's voice!"

Quickly, Julia grabbed up a hypoderm from her medbag and injected a fatal dose of medication into the armored cyborg's skull

and spine vertebral notch, killing it.

"Whew..That was close." Heller sighed as its heartbeat disappeared from her scanner.

"Now I understand what's going on here." Danziger said, reholstering his weapon. "Eve's found a new operating system." 

The physician was dismayed in another way, and saddened by what she was seeing in all the wounded Terrians. "They can't talk back in the way the ZEDs want. ZEDs are like Yale. They can't dream." she said, shifting her attention to their care.

"So they keep on shooting, trying to find a talker." said Danziger.

"The sky hunters found Mother-By-Choice, who does. I- I was teaching her how to Speak in a waking way to me." said Mary. "Now she is poisoned, too."

"Where is she?" Uly/Devon asked.  "If she's been shot, we can help. Julia's a good healer."

"Running in the earth. The Others pursue her to cull her life, like they wanted mine to end." answered Mary.  "They feel we make the scent which allows the sky hunters to find us."

"If it's metabolic, maybe I can find a cure." Heller told her.

"That is why we are curing our human tie's mother." Mary replied.

::She means Devon.:: thought Bess. "Symbiosis." Martin marveled, sweeping back her long hair. "That's what the planet will always try to do. Don't you see? This tribe of Terrians are bargaining like ants to the aphids for honey dew."

"But Eve's not alive." said John, catching on. "She's nothing they can effectively influence like they can us."

"If the Terrians have zero leverage and absolutely no defense against the ZED,.." Julie agreed as she and the others began to prepare multiple surgeries to free their new patients from their torturing devices. "...they had to come to us.  They've learned that we know how to master our machines."

"All except one." grumbled Morgan, about Eve.

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Danziger's voice, narrating.

"I'm tired. We all are. The ZED nightmare rearing up again is mental acid;  wearing at most of our strength, and all of our courage. Uly, Mary and Devon are no longer connected. The Terrians released them once Julia agreed to patch them up. But the whole situation still begs the question. Why has Eve suddenly switch tactics? We cured her, she cured us. End of story. Or so we thought. Makes me wonder what other hidden consequences are waiting for us in the murky shadows of that d*mned ship."