satisfaction and weariness written across his face as all the shields dropped in the room.
A moment later Flinn fell to his knees grabbing his head and bellowing in pain. Serenity was on her knees beside him, her hands on his head as she flashed so bright she momentarily blinded everyone in the room.
She didn’t have to think before she was working her power over Flinn, not even a little surprised when it turned out that the miniscule shadow hiding in his head was now pulsing with pain inducing damage.
Even with all her power, it was a race to see if she could heal the damage faster than the thing in his head could kill him.
She knew the room was exploding with worry and rage around her, but none of it touched her where she was deep in Flinn’s brain. She had no time for anything else.
It felt like hours had passed when she finally sat back, dropping her hands from Flinn and falling to her back. She looked up into a circle of faces. Flinn she knew had flopped down right along with her, just on the other side of the circle.
“What the holy galactic hells was that?” he asked. His voice a groan of remembered pain and exhaustion.
“I figured out what the tiny boxes they put in all your heads was ultimately for,” she said and cursing such as she had rarely witnessed blackened the air.
“Don’t worry,” she said and then had to repeat herself louder to be heard. “Give me a minute and I will start removing the last of them.”
Mal practically growled at her. “You will rest first and space out the healings.”
She shook her head sitting up. “Flinn was an extreme case since his failsafe was activated. Tram should be as easy as the rest of you were.” She started to stand and had five hands coming at her to help. She took the closest and Jas pulled her up so fast she came off her toes for a moment before landing back down. She patted his arm as she was turning to look at the others.
“I’ll take care of that now, and we can check the command crew on deck and, if we need to, I’ll take care of them tomorrow.” She shrugged feeling suddenly tired. “The rest of the crew will need to be checked and worked on after that. We’ll see how it goes.”
“No,” Mal said and drew every eye at the absolute tone of his voice. “If you can do Tram I will agree to that, but no one else.”
“What?” she asked, taken completely by surprise. “Why?”
“Because all it takes is one to spread the word of what we are doing, either by telling the councilor as a spy, or by informing soldiers who are not on this ship.”
“He’s right,” Jas growled. “It’s too dangerous. Not only for us but for them as well. If the council gets wind of this who is to say they won’t activate their failsafe immediately?”
“And kill their own armies?” she asked appalled.
“If word gets out about this thing they put in our heads, they won’t have an army, and they know it,” Barak said grimly. In his deep voice everything he said sounded like the voice of doom, but in this case that was about right.
“What are we going to do?” she asked her voice dropping to an almost whisper.
“Tram right now. You take care of the rest of Phoenix then see to your friend,” Mal told her.
“And the councilor of Death?” Riff asked his voice for the first time showing his loathing of the man.
“Bag him for now, we will space him at our earliest convenience.”
“And the rest of the council?” Barak asked darkly
“I think,” Mal said, meeting every one of his men’s eyes. “It’s past time for a change in the OIP.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Serenity did her best to ignore the disposal of the body. She was busy removing all traces of the shadow in Tram’s mind. She was simply happy that the cleaning bots took care of the burst of blood that surrounded the body from the force of the blast. Flinn it seems had not been messing around.
Meg slept through all of it, so did Flinn. Everyone else took microscopic brain surgery in stride.
When she finally woke it was to find the medbay looking sparkling clean, with no sign that someone’s head had exploded. If Serenity had been feeling bad about the fact that a man had been brutally murdered before her, it would