Wed to the Alien Prince by C.V. Walter

Chapter 21

The shoes were ridiculously comfortable and more than she ever thought she could hope for in a casual shoe. They were flattering on her feet, covered enough to keep them warm and off the floor and changed color to match her dress.

"Where have these been all my life?" Kaelin asked, glancing down at her feet as they walked along the corridors to the Medical Bay. "I'd say I need them in every color but they are every color. Every style, maybe?"

Roger smiled at her and squeezed her hand. "Ship shoes are special," he told her. "And only come in styles appropriate to wear on board but when we've found our new home and landed, I'll show you the crates of shoes for planetary wear. Some of the ones that made in on board are truly spectacular."

"Oh, I'm so excited," she told him. "And they're my size! How are they my size?"

"Ah, well, something we've discovered is that human women are roughly the size of our, I believe you'd call them pre-teens? Our children before they've grown into their adult height."

"Wait, we look like children to you?" Kaelin asked, shocked.

"Oh, no, you look like fully-formed adult women just," he paused and glanced at her. "Just smaller than we're used to. That means some of our clothes meant for children fit you better than those intended for adults."

"So, this dress was supposed to be for a teenager?"

"Not that one, no," he said. "Like I said, there wasn't much brought along for a woman of your station. Everything that was is being altered to fit you. That means the dress you're wearing was cut down significantly from what it was."

Kaelin was used to being considered short, most of her clothes were altered unless she could find them in petite sizes, but when she thought of just how much fabric would have been needed to be cut off to make the dress the correct length, she was nearly breathless.

"Whoever altered this must have cut off enough to make another dress," Kaelin said.

"I wouldn't know," Roger said. "But I suspect you're correct. Is there a problem with that?"

"No," Kaelin said, her mind spinning. "But I wonder what they did with the extra fabric. Do you think we can find out?"

"I'll ask Brinker," Roger said. "After our talk with Mintonar."

"Thank you," she said.

"Any particular reason why?"

"I have ideas," she said. "Ones that might not work, exactly, but I want to poke at them a little."

"You can poke at whatever ideas you'd like," he said. "As long as it's not ways to get away from me, I'll even help you with them."

"You are going to be busy," she pointed out. "And I really hope Mintonar has more answers about what's going on because my plan requires me to stay with you for a very, very long time. And finding ways to communicate with Earth that don't require spy satellites."

"I understand that those are already being worked on," Roger said.

"Yes," Kaelin said. "But, well, if we settle nearby, I'd like to be able to talk to my mother now and then."

She looked up and could see Roger smiling. Her words were as much an acknowledgment that she was staying on the ship and with his people as he was likely to get right then. She was more disturbed that, as blurry as it was, she was able to see his smile. The walls of the corridor were more clearly in focus as well.

It didn't take long to get to the Medical Bay, though it took less time than she'd remembered it taking from the last time they'd made the journey. She might have been more than a little distracted that time, however, so she wasn't going to feel too bad for not having the area mapped out in her head. She'd have to make the journey a few times with her eyes closed to make sure she could do it by herself the next time she lost her glasses.

Roger activated the chime then went through the door, not bothering to wait for an acknowledgment to enter the Medical Bay. He went straight through to the exam room and gestured for her to get in the seat.

"Mintonar!" he called, heading for the office only to be stopped by the head doctor coming through the door. "It took you long enough."

"Honestly, I expected you two to take longer getting here. It seemed like you were going to get distracted being new lovers multiple times," Mintonar said.

Roger was speechless but Kaelin laughed. "I knew you were monitoring that," she said.

"I monitor everything," Mintonar acknowledged. "I really have no interest in what you do beyond how it affects my readings and human women are both fascinating and strangely predictable. You, however, are a bit of a mystery."

"I thought we already agreed about that," Kaelin said.

"We did. And I had set the bio-nanos to only gather data from you but you're showing conflicting data in ways that shouldn't be possible."

"If it shouldn't be possible, why is it happening?" Roger demanded.

"That's what I would like to know," Mintonar said. He flipped on the screen next to the exam chair and pulled up charts that didn't make any sense to Kaelin. Then, he handed her a set of frames that almost looked like her glasses. "You're squinting, try these on."

She put them on and blinding, piercing pain shot through her eyes. They were on the floor in front of the chair before she realized she had dropped them and that the screaming was coming from her. Roger was pulling her into his arms and shouting at Mintonar before the pain faded.

"Well, that's one mystery more," Mintonar said. "Except maybe not. Has the pain stopped?"

"What did you do to her?" Roger demanded.

"Nothing," Mintonar said. "Those are an exact replica of the glasses she was wearing when she came on the ship. It would appear they no longer work and not in a way that would normally happen. That tells me her eyes have changed and that there's something in her eyes now that will cause pain when combined with the prisms."

"The only thing that has changed is the bio-nanos, " she said. "And you set them up to do the diagnostics you wanted while taking energy from the dead and damaged cells in my body, right?"

"Yes, and the diagnostics were modeled on the information we have from the other human women already on board. It should have been able to read hormone levels and other things and know what were appropriate for a woman of your approximate age, weight and height and report them. They were supposed to take a closer look at your implant and how it worked and why but do otherwise do nothing."

"Were they," she stopped and considered her next question carefully. "Could they repair damaged tissue to get closer to an area? There was a lot of, um, exercise and hormone releasing happening over the last few days."

"Only if the cells were damaged. If they were malformed but otherwise functioning, they were to leave them alone and find other ways to get the information."

"You programmed that specifically?"

"I-" Mintonar started then stopped. "No, I didn't."

"What do you mean you didn't?" Roger asked.

"I didn't because I didn't need to. One of the things the bio-nanos are designed to do is diagnostics without changing anything. They do it on pregnant women all the time. Well, not on the women themselves but on the fetuses. It is the basic function of the bio-nanos."

"So, you stripped out all of the programming except for the diagnostics and the information about what was supposed to be there and it went on its merry way changing shit anyway?" Kaelin asked, horror building in her chest. "But that means, what? That the bio-nanos that are just supposed to be monitoring the fetal development are interfering with it?"

"That would seem to be the case," Mintonar said, his voice calm. He had more charts pulled up on the display on his comm and started shutting them down. "And now, we don't have working glasses for you, I'm afraid."

"I'm not sure that's-"

"What are the options going forward?" Roger asked, his voice calm and remote. "What can be done today and what do you need tomorrow?"

"I need," Mintonar said, then paused. "Research. I need more research that doesn't exist except in the sealed archives in the capital if it exists at all. What I can do now is shut everything off or we can keep going."

"What happens if you shut everything off?" Kaelin asked.

"Nothing," Mintonar said. "You carry on with exactly what's going on in your body as it is and we figure out how to adjust everything. Your body will eventually expel the bio-nanos as waste and it will be like you went through a very thorough rejuv treatment on random places in your organs."

"And if we let them continue?"

Mintonar shrugged. "I don't know. Based on what's happened, they'll continue attempting to bring certain parts of your body into baseline readings. They've already mitigated a seizure and adjusted your eyes. The coloration on your skin hasn't really changed much but Molly said you had probably already gone through a procedure for that before you got on the ship?"

"Yeah, there's a thing they do with lasers to keep my face from getting worse," Kaelin said. "It's a bit controversial, actually, because it's using technology to interfere with my condition but not doing it makes me non-functional."

"So there won't be much movement on that for a while," Mintonar said with a nod. "Alright. It's up to you. What do you want to do?"

"I-" Kaelin thought about it. How much did she want to change? How much could she change? How would they know how extensive the reach was if they didn't let it continue? "Do you know what kind of changes they make to the babies?"

"They're not supposed to cross the placental wall," Mintonar said, the agitation in his voice enough to tell her he wasn't as calm about what was going on as he first appeared. "They're supposed to support the mother and the connection and monitor the fetus without crossing the placental barrier. I have no idea how much they actually change."

Kaelin nodded. "Alright, let's keep them going. I'd like to be able to see at some point but I don't know how that's going to be possible if they keep changing my eyes. You have the initial scans of what my body was like before all of this?"

"I do."

"Okay," she said and took a deep breath. "Find out what the programming is actually doing and we'll keep watching me to see what's going on."

"What are you going to do about Molly?" Roger asked quietly. Kaelin had been avoiding the subject of Molly.

"I've already turned hers off," Mintonar said. "There's so much we don't know about how we're going to procreate together I wanted more information but I'm not willing to risk the baby or my ajoia."

"What if turning them off makes the risk higher?" Kaelin asked.

"I'll know more once I've torn the bio-nanos apart and see what they've done to you over the last few days. And then over the next few."

"If you put Kaelin at risk," Roger started.

"He won't," Kaelin said, watching Mintonar's face. "Because putting me at risk puts Molly at risk and he knows that."

Mintonar nodded.