...Her smile fades. 

She looks down at her folded knees. :Speaking of that, I - should probably tell the Queen about you being here. And I guess we'll have to decide whether we can afford to move you to Haven. All the best Healers are there. It's where I trained: 

Ah. Yeah. Makes sense. Her heart rate jumps a lot.

Shavri, of course, notices this. 

:It's all right. She isn't going to hurt you. She'll - be spooked, I mean, this is bizarre and nothing like this's ever happened before. But she's - a good person: 

She's met politicians and she doesn't think material scarcity and hereditary monarchies made them more virtuous and generously minded. And there are lots of good people who'd be strongly in favor of setting Julie on fire. It's kind of hard to even argue they'd be wrong.

But that's not actually really what she's worried about, it's just - you know. Being a piece in someone's game. When they won't care about the Belt. When in almost every meaningful sense, if contact can be made with home at all, her father has more to offer them than the Belt does. The rules by which the rich get richer and the poor get elevated and/or executed at precisely the rate that keeps them not too rebellious -

Yeah, she says, not sure how much of that the medtech got.

:I know: 

:But...I think Valdemar really is different. It's hard to explain and I - don't expect you to take me at my word - but it is: 

And Shavri would really like to not be talking about politics anymore. :I'm going to ask the others to send someone riding for the nearest Herald on circuit - I'm not a strong enough Mindspeaker to reach them myself. And we'll get a message to Haven. In the meantime we need to get you stronger and the infection weaker. I've been working on cutting off the nutrient supply to the crystals I already hit, in case they're not dead and as practice for the living one. I want to try at that one now. It...might fight back, if it really is smart. Do you need more painkillers first: 

I wouldn't turn them down.

Shavri gives her the rest of the vial. :I'll have to get more: 

And she goes to work on the active crystal-growth, using the process she worked out before. Pinch off and Healing-cauterize the largest feeding artery first - then go after the smaller collateral ones, but this time making some attempt to re-route blood supply to Julie's other tissues if and when she can manage it - then systematically disrupting everything in contact with the Proto growth, right down to the capillaries.

There's going to be a lot of tissue death in there. She might need to cut out the entire growth before it can turn gangrenous. That's not going to happen in a candlemark, though; it can wait. 

She checks the vomit-basin carefully stashed against the wall. There's not much in there for the Proto to live off; is it even still alive in there? 

It's not growing. It doesn't seem dead, exactly, but definitely dormant; it spread out throughout the water and hasn't moved or changed since.

...It can wait. And then maybe she can test whether boiling destroys it or not.

She keeps working on starving out the Proto in Julie's shoulder, watching closely to see if it responds to this. 

It does! It - grows, suddenly, up through her skin, bursts out into the open air.

--- eeeugh.

:It's okay, it's okay - I've got you, I'm going to fix it -: 

Shavri is not panicking but she's switching to working VERY FAST, even at the cost of sloppiness; she wraps her Gift tightly around the crystal, not crushing but squeezing and holding, and trying to cut it off from the rest of the life-force spread through Julie's body; she flattens and smashes smaller vessels on all sides of it, until it's left swimming in a thin layer of destroyed, dead tissue. 

She pauses, and watches. 

Life force panicking and squirming and racing about, life force melting back into Julie's tissues and blood... the crystal itself strains, wavers, like a plant seeking sunlight -

She clamps down on it tighter, then even tighter than that, gauging exactly how much destructive force it takes before it goes dark and dormant like the others. 

More than the others did. Substantially more. Not because it's free of Julie's skin, that doesn't seem to be helping it, but it seems like it's just harder to squish, and has more of an idea of how to protect itself. 

This is the WORST disease. Weapon. Whatever. 

By the time she's got it, she finds herself breathing hard. 

:I'm sorry, I know that must've hurt - I'm sorry - I think I should try to get it out. It's - not really attached to anything, I sort of just mashed everything in there. And your body will heal better if it's not in the way. It's - hmm - I'm not sure how, exactly, I can't touch it directly - maybe if I had two long spoons...: 

There's a vac suit with engineering gloves in the ship?

She takes a breath. Lets it out. :I - guess it's probably a risk worth taking, going in there. I should - have you tell me where it is and what it looks like - and figure out if there's anything else it makes sense to grab at the same time. And make sure you'll be all right while I ride there and back...: 

Vac suit looks like - it covers your whole body, it has a plastic faceplate, it's made of very tough materials... your government will want the drive but you aren't gonna be able to carry that. Once you have gloves you could grab my hand terminal? And there's a first aid kit that might not be redundant given how you seem, uh, poor...

:...I can't think what the Heralds would do with the, er, 'drive'. But I guess it seems important for them to know about it: Shavri shrugs. :All right. Those three things. Can you describe what the first aid kit and the, um, hand terminal look like?: 

First aid kit is white with a big red cross on it. Hand terminal is glass and about this big - she makes a rectangle of a few inches - and it's charging in a slot next to the monitors. The drive is the entire back of the ship, it's - did you see me landing? It's the thing that was very bright white.

:Right: Shavri sits back on her heels, moves her Sight out again to scan Julie's whole body at a glance. How is she looking, overall, compared to when Shavri first saw her sprawled in the wheat-field? 

Better? Getting a little food and water in it helped. She's still very thoroughly infested with the protomolecule, but it doesn't have living large structures at this point. She looks unlikely to immediately collapse unconscious, at least.

:All right, I’ll head over. Get through the rest of that broth if you can, okay? Um, I don’t think anyone without Healing Sight should be in here, but I can ask if someone can be nearby so you can call for help?: 

I think I'll be okay. Thanks.