Page 13 of Lorran
“Now. You are already late.”
Gavran reappeared with a handful of water cubes. The warlord praised his efforts and declared him a fine young warrior.
Lorran slung the equipment bag over his shoulder. He had little time to prepare and much to accomplish.
Chapter 3
Wyn
Those side effects, though. No joke.
Reality swam back into focus, tingling and filling her head with static. Two aliens stood at the edge of the pad, looking serious and determined. Neither was Lorran. Disappointment rolled through her the same moment an invisible force squeezed her lungs.
This couldn’t be right.
She gasped again, breath rattling but not seeming to fill her lungs. She sucked in another breath. Everything felt tight and her vision darkened. One hand went to her throat, and the other fumbled for the inhaler in her bag’s front pocket.
Was an asthma attack a side effect of teleportation? She did not have that on her bingo card of unhappiness.
She administered a dose and breathed in. Clutching the inhaler in one hand, she counted slowly to thirty. She had gone without using her rescue inhaler in so long.
As soon as the tightness in her chest eased, nausea and painful stomach cramps slammed into Wyn. She fell to the floor and her birthday breakfast went everywhere. The inhaler clattered to the ground and rolled away.
Worst birthday ever.
Someone sighed dramatically and spoke, but the words were garbled.
“Sorry. I think there’s something wrong with the translator,” Wyn said. Her head pounded, and her stomach was super unhappy. The muscles heaved until she gagged, but nothing came out.
A purple man with horns crouched down. He spoke, the words sounding more like a bark of annoyance than concern for her wellbeing. He pressed a cube of water into her mouth. She bit down and most of the water gushed down her chin, but it washed away the bitter taste. She accepted a second cube, biting with care and not spilling it down her front.
The man handed back her inhaler. “Medical?”
“I understood that!” She perked, clutching the inhaler to her chest like a favorite stuffed animal.
“Delay…Adverse…” Those were the only words she understood between a garbled noise in her head.
Stupid translator chip. It’d be just her luck to get a defective chip.
She tugged on her ear, like that would help. Pressure inside her ear eased. “Sorry. It’s mostly just noise. Does this thing have a warranty?”
Another big purple alien—was everyone big and purple? —arrived, this one wearing a white uniform and carrying a kit. “Not again.”
The new guy helped her off the floor and onto a chair. Her inhaler was handed back to her. “I need to scan you. Hold still.”
Wyn did her best, but the room tilted. She blinked, her head pounding and eyes ready to melt out of their sockets. “Eyes don’t melt, right?”
“For Terrans, no. That is not a common malady.”
A medic with a sense of humor. Somehow, laughter didn’t seem like the best medicine at the moment. “Mild teleportation sickness,” he announced, then produced a hypodermic needle.
Wyn flinched away. “Oh no, the last pokey-jab gave me a splitting headache. No more needles.”
“It will help with the nausea and headache.”
“Give me a pill or something.”
He glanced up at the ceiling, as if beseeching a higher power. Moving faster than she expected, he jabbed her in the upper arm. She shouted, despite feeling barely a pinprick.
