Nobody Left Behind 7.5

Hey guys! We hope you're enjoying a wonderful holiday season. I've finally finished my editing pass on the stories for Anthology II (Return of Tales of Hayven Celestia, or whatever), and now I've got some time to write my own stuff. Yay! I love having a few days off.

I've been re-reading where I left off on Nobody Left Behind, and I think it's in pretty decent shape so far, although I noticed that I did kinda skip explaining something, so let's insert this scene into the story to answer the questions before anyone can ask them.

Enjoy!

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———

Siki knocked timidly on the partially open door and peeked in. “Doctor Palani?”

The lio looked up from his tablet and smiled. “Yes, come on in,” he said, beckoning with one paw. “What can I do for you, Siki?”

The geroo stepped in slowly, then dithered over taking a seat before finally settling on just leaning one hip against it. She didn’t meet her boss’s eyes and picked at her claws idly instead. “Well, I’ve been thinking about this project you’ve got me on…” she managed.

Siki had hoped she wouldn’t have to explain more, but after a pause, Doctor Palani simply asked, “Yes?”

She drew a breath and sighed. “Well, it doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

The lio blinked and tilted his head slightly. “How do you mean?”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense,” she repeated, finally looking him in the eye. “Why would a secret project spend so many sovereigns to steal a krakun’s head and reanimate it, only for a college intern to try and get Sarsuk to spill some sort of secret? That’s… I don’t get it.”

Doctor Palani broke into a hearty laugh and slapped at his wooden desk with a palm before he managed, “Marvelous. Spoken like a true scientist, Siki.” His little ears grinned harder and he pointed at her nose. “I see you’ve gotten your mother’s inquisitive mind.”

“Um, thank you, sir, but I mean it,” she said, lowering her eyes once again. “How does this make any sense at all?”

Doctor Palani rose from his seat and walked around the desk before leaning his rump against it. Then, he took one of Siki’s paws in his own before covering it with his other. He confided, “Well, first of all, you should know that stealing a krakun head wasn’t all that challenging.” He grinned. “After Sarsuk’s execution, they put his head up on a pike in a public square for all to see.”

“Yikes!” The color drained from inside her lowered ears.

“I know!” laughed the lio, releasing her paw. “Anyhow, the krakun government just wrote the theft off as a prank. They posted only a minor, ‘You’re not in trouble, but could you please return the head so it can be disposed of properly,’ sort of article once in the local news.”

He drew a deep breath and released it slowly before admitting, “Personally, I think we overpaid to get it smuggled out, and even then, it wasn’t particularly expensive.”

Siki frowned hard, feeling bad for the yellow krakun. “Huh. Well, we probably shouldn’t tell that to Sarsuk. I don’t think he’d take it well.”

“Who would, right?” asked Palani with sincerity. “But thawing it out and keeping him alive has been a real triumph. We’ve collected so much data that even if he died tomorrow, I could probably spend the rest of my career analyzing it all.”

Siki nodded and smiled, glad that the project was a success. “Oh, I see. And my part of this project?”

The older male shrugged. He turned toward the office wall and scanned it with a raised finger. “Well, intern jobs are seldom mission-critical, Siki. Mostly, we want to expose you to what research is like, get a little utility out of your time with us, and to claim ‘first dibs,’ as it were, on the truly exceptional students when they finish their studies.”

His ears lit in a grin when he found what he was searching for and snatched a small frame that had fallen behind various knickknacks. He turned it toward her and tapped the glass on a tawny-pelted youth with an unkempt mane who was posing with other figures in lab coats. Palani looked so young in the photograph that it took her a moment to realize it was him. He said, “Personally, I spent an entire summer measuring the growth rate of mold colonies, and I assure it, it was awful.”

“I bet!” she laughed. She studied the photo a little longer with a smile before handing it back to him. “But I mean, why is the only one talking to Sarsuk an intern? I’m glad to have the opportunity to help, but doesn’t anyone else…?”

“If our facility had any psychologists on staff,” explained Palani as he returned the photo to the shelf, “I’m sure they’d be queuing up out the door to talk with him, but as it is…”

“And with this project being a secret…” she added.

The lio nodded. “Right, we can’t exactly ask around to see if anyone else has been in need of a severed head!” He smiled wide and shrugged. With a fingertip, he touched her nose with the softest tap. “But that’s one of the challenges of running a secret lab. You’re lucky your mother works here or you wouldn’t have known to apply either.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cnMX9BfNLq27DP4mMv6OxEMYKGb8YiSqWRXLwb4Vrk0/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?