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[Bad! Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad!]
“I can fudging see it’s bad, Rocky!” Grace snapped over the din of alarms warning of foreign bodies and contaminants, dragging the blood-covered man through the halls of the Hail Mary.
[What happened, question?] Rocky demanded, managing to stamp one foot twice despite keeping up the pace in his ball. [Radio signal cut when Grace reached moon surface.]
Well, Grace hadn’t quite made it to the actual surface. Thanks to the lack of an atmosphere, he’d been able to park Mary in an exceptionally close orbit around the unidentified moon, donning his spacesuit and launching himself downward, waist wrapped up in some leftover xenonite chain. He’d drifted almost aimlessly until landing atop that inexplicable tree, something alive despite the lack of oxygen and nearby sunlight, reaching five distinct branches upward as if in invitation. And what had Grave found fused into the trunk of that invitation?
“I— I had to pull him out,” Grace stammered, fighting to keep his muscles from going into shocked numbness.
[How did second human get on moon, question? Why is new human missing some parts and has too many of others, question?]
“I don’t know, Rock, I don’t know,” Grave said, readjusting his grip on the unconscious man-shaped person. “I’m not even sure if he is human.”
Dragging the stranger into the lab, Grace shouted, “Armando, come help, now!”
Ever-respondent, Armando whizzed over, hovering over the bloody man as if confused. Before Grace could lose his temper, Armando used two arms to hoist the stranger up, dragging him over to the same cot Grace had recovered on after the fishing incident and sticking him with various cuffs and needles, new arms descending from the ceiling with rags in hand to make an effort at cleaning him up.
“Vital signs unstable,” Mary announced. “No heartbeat detected.”
“What? No no no no no,” Grace rambled, rushing over to crowd the scene while Rocky echoed another string of “bad”s. “He can’t— Do something, fix it!”
Armando used its main arm to grip the back of Grace’s spacesuit and yank him away from the emergency. Meanwhile, the spare arms retreated back into the ceiling with their now soaked rags, returning a moment later with two rectangular shock pads.
[What Armando doing, question?] Rocky asked, getting his answer a second later as Armando delivered a jolt of electricity to the stranger’s chest, startling the poor eridian into shrieking and jumping backward.
The stranger gave no true reaction to the voltage, chest involuntarily jumping upwards with the shock and just as quickly collapsing back onto the cot as the current ceased. Armando rubbed the two pads together, the coiled wires attached to them bouncing with the movement as some unseen battery revved up.
Again, Armando shocked the stranger. Again, no reaction.
“C’mon,” Grace begged, leaning against the wall for support. “C’mon, please.”
Another bout of charging the pads, another rev of the hidden battery, another jolt sent into the stranger’s chest. This time, he lurched outside of the electricity, giving disjointed thrashes as Armando’s extra arms retreated, along with gargled shouts and coughs that sent spittle and blood flying.
“Hearbeat detected,” Mary declared in her pleasant British accent, ever-calm even with the alarms still raging. “Intubation and sedation required.”
Without hesitation, Armando brought out another needle and a too-big-looking tube, using the rest of its arms to hold the stranger down. Grace took the commotion as an opportunity to rush forward again, weaving around Armando’s arms to slot gloved fingers around the bloody man’s remaining hand.
“You’re safe,” he promised, squeezing. “You’ll be alright, you’re safe.”
The stranger coughed around the tube as Armando slid it into his esophagus, sending blood splattering both the inside and outside of the specialized plastic, but Armando pressed on, deploying the sedative into the man’s neck at the same time his sternum elevated with the tube’s presence.
“Foreign contaminants detected,” Mary reminded to dismiss any sense of calm as the stranger’s struggles finally ceased.
“Yes, we know, Mary,” Grace said, trying and failing to keep the irritation out of his voice as he removed himself from the human-shaped man, Armando needing the space to keep working. “Please dismiss all alarms.”
With that, the lights returned to their standard white glow, blaring warnings silenced.
Rocky fiddled his two front claws together, making his ball clink against the floor as he shifted his weight. [New human leakage dangerous, question?] he asked.
“I… I don’t know, bud,” Grace admitted, staring out at the trail of blood he’d dragged across the Hail Mary, trying to remember where exactly he had discarded his space helmet. “Looks like we’ve got a lot more answers to look for.”