Zed found himself thrown back onto the med bay bed he had only just escaped. Around him was a flurry of chaos, with everyone shouting over one another.

  No, not chaos, or not just chaos. In some faces, he saw something else, especially in the doctors. Was that excitement? Curiosity?

  A new face entered the fray, though this one was looking at Zed from inside a hazmat suit.

  “Hi, Zed. I’m Dr. Isaac Roth, and I hear you ate one of my samples like an absolute moron.”

  “We need to pump his stomach!” Zed’s mother shrieked.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that? Sheriff, if you could escort the Marshes and anyone else without protection out and let me work, that’d be ideal. Prohibitions on doctors treating immediate family and all that,” Dr. Roth said, without pausing to look up. He turned to Zed as the Sheriff escorted Ed and Ana out of sight amid more vocal protests from Zed’s mother.

  “Lucky for you, Zed, we’re not going to pump your stomach today, but I’m going to put so much activated charcoal down your throat that you might wish I had.”

  Zed swallowed a handful of large pills that were handed to him and followed it with a large cup of water. He realized he was unusually thirsty.

  Dr. Roth pulled up a stool and sat down next to Zed, fingertips hovering over his knees. He was ready to take notes with his CIG.

  “Now, Zed, this is very important. Do you feel any different? Are you experiencing any unusual sensations? Anything at all?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’ve noticed some things.”

  Dr. Roth stared at Zed, blinking rapidly.

  “Do you need an invitation, Zed? Inside your body is a substance no one understands, and it's doing who knows what. Time is a factor here.”

  Zed felt a chill again, but this time it was realization and fear setting in. Had he really been seeing things more clearly since eating the sample, or was he just losing his mind? He was jolted out of his fears by a sharp pain in his arm.

  “Ouch!”

  One of the doctors had just stabbed him in the arm with a thick needle and was taking a vial of blood.

  “Check that for, well, everything we have equipment to check it for,” Dr. Roth said. He then proceeded to snap his fingers several times by Zed’s ear.

  “Back on target, Zed. Does anything feel different?”

  “I think I’ve been thinking differently. In the mess just now, and even here with you, I feel like thoughts come easier. Things that I’ve seen or know just click together. It’s like I always had the pieces, but now I have the final picture for reference.”

  Dr. Roth nodded slowly, his fingers tapping out notes on his knees.

  “So your thoughts feel different than before. How fast did this happen?”

  “Almost instantly. I felt something come over me, or pass through me, I don’t really know, and then I just saw everything differently. Like I can read people like I couldn’t before.”

  “Read people. How’s that?”

  “Like with you. Before, I would have just seen your bad bedside manner and maybe been kind of annoyed. Now, I see the little details of your interactions with me, the other doctors, and my mom, and it makes sense to me that your primary concern is your career, which I’m guessing hinges entirely on whatever this thing in me is.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Dr. Roth smiled for the first time.

  “I wouldn’t call that scientific evidence, but that’s more observant than I would expect from your average teenager; I’ll give you that, Zed.”

  Zed was about to respond when he felt the pain of a hundred needles jamming into his eyes. He cried out, but by the time he raised his hand to his face, the pain was gone. In its place, an odd tingling sensation remained.

  Dr. Roth was on his feet now. Zed heard him asking for someone to hand him an ophthalmoscope. His left hand was roughly pulled away from his eye, and a bright light was shone into it.

  “Oh my…”

  Zed’s other hand was pulled away from his eye.

  “Tina, take a look at this. Tell me I’m losing my mind here.”

  Dr. Bailey entered, also wearing a hazmat suit, and looked into Zed’s right eye.

  “Did that change just happen? This isn’t some injury from his cave injuries. Maybe radiation?” she asked.

  “You tell me. You saw him right after the cave stuff. Did you check his eyes then?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Dr. Roth looked at both of Zed’s eyes once more, as if to convince himself that his own eyes weren’t lying to him.

  “In that case, this just happened in a matter of minutes.”

  “OK, you guys are freaking me out,” Zed said, pushing the light away. He hated that he seemed to be the last one to know what was going on with his own body. “What’s going on with my eyes? Am I going blind or something?”

  Dr. Roth laughed.

  He really does have terrible bedside manner, Zed thought.

  “You tell me, Zed. Can you see clearly?”

  Zed glanced around the room. He focused on a pill bottle that sat on a table against the far wall. At first, everything seemed normal, but the longer he looked at it, the clearer it got. It was a little disorienting, but it felt as if he was actually getting closer to the bottle.

  Within a few seconds, he could read the label: Ibuprofen.

  Yeah, somehow I don’t think that’s going to fix this, Zed thought grimly.

  “Three Hells!” Dr. Bailey exclaimed. “Did you just see that?”

  “I certainly did,” Dr. Roth said, no longer hiding the excitement in his voice. He pulled the ophthalmoscope up to the side of Zed’s eye.

  “Zed, whatever you just did, do that again.”

  Once more, Zed focused on the pill bottle. His focus seemed to lock in faster this time. In less than three seconds, he could read the label again.

  Dr. Roth let out a breath he’d been holding.

  “This just keeps giving. He has accommodation, Tina. This is incredible. Just incredible. No one back on Earth is going to believe this. I barely believe this.”

  “Uh, hello? Impatient patient here. What’s going on with my eyes? I can see just fine. Better than fine, so what are you freaking out about?”

  Zed was starting to feel less afraid and just angry now. The more excited the doctors got, the more annoying they were.

  Dr. Bailey put a gloved hand on his shoulder.

  “When you looked over toward the wall, what were you looking at?”

  “The pill bottle.”

  “OK, great. When you looked at the pill bottle, did things kind of zoom in, like with a camera?”

  “Sort of. I wouldn’t describe it as exactly like a camera, but things are easier to see. I guess my vision kind of narrowed, if that makes sense.”

  Dr. Bailey nodded, absentmindedly patting Zed’s shoulder.

  Dr. Roth leaned closer.

  “Your eyes are changing rapidly, Zed. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, so I don’t really know what to tell you other than that it appears your eyes now have some traits I’ve only heard about in animals before.”

  “Animals?” Zed exclaimed, now very much alarmed. “Am I turning into an animal?”

  “No! Of course not!” Dr. Bailey said, looking at her counterpart for support.

  Dr. Roth gave a noncommittal head wag.

  “I mean, I can’t say for certain that you’re not turning into an animal.”

  Dr. Bailey shot a withering glare at Dr. Roth, who rolled his eyes in return.

  “Look, Zed, I’d love to give you a straight answer, but I honestly don’t have a clue. All we can do is keep observing you and hope for the best. But hey, at least you have those cool gold flecks in your eyes, right? I’m sure that’ll really bring the ladies in.”

  “Gold what?” Zed said, looking around the room for a mirror.

  Dr. Bailey stepped in again, physically restraining Zed from leaping out of the bed.

  “Stay with me now, Zed. Nothing bad has happened yet that we actually know of. So far, everything we’ve seen and you’ve mentioned has been positive side effects.”

  Zed stopped trying to push past her and relaxed, if only a little.

  “I guess that’s true, though I’m not sure how I feel about this reading people thing.”

  He leaned closer and lowered his voice. Zed knew it didn’t make any real difference. Dr. Roth could still hear him, and he was certain both of their CIGs had to be recording something this bizarrely historic.

  “When I was being brought in here, there was a moment when I couldn’t see anyone’s face, and no one was talking.”

  Zed knew his heart rate must be climbing on the virtual monitors that only the medical personnel could see in their CIGs.

  “With no one else to read, it was like my mind turned all that energy back in on itself. It’s hard to describe, but I felt naked inside. But only to myself, which was almost worse.”

  “That sounds like…a lot,” Dr. Bailey said softly. “Is that still happening?”

  Zed shook his head.

  “Not right now, but I’m afraid that as soon as you guys leave the room, it’s going to happen again. I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time until I break inside.”