Good morning and happy Friday readers! Here is chapter 9 of Needing Cassidy.

CHAPTER 9
The next morning was testing. The women and Liviarians lined up outside of the meal hall waiting to be scratched with the Moriat stick. The attack of the Y’Kil still fresh in everyone’s mind tension often filled the air until the procedure was complete, even though there hadn’t been a single sign of the Y’Kil since that fateful day. Still, being that they could appear as, quite literally, anything they’d consumed the DNA of, Cassidy found herself grateful for the Livarian’s paranoia.
Fortunately, the tests went by without incident and it wasn’t long before the crowd had entered the meal hall, mumbling in appreciation at the delicious smells that spilled forth.
Breakfast was a selection of the usual fruits and breads, but it was the pile of yellow fluffy goodness that caught Cassidy’s eyes—and the eyes of nearly every woman who entered. Eggs. Buttery soft scrambled eggs. How had the Livarians managed that, when they didn’t have chickens she didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. All she did know was that they were light and fluffy and looked like they would melt in your mouth.
She was toward the end of the line, again, and found that there was nearly nothing left to scrape onto the two plates she held. But something was better than nothing and she whistled a little tune as she headed out of the hall and into the compound. It was a little awkward managing the plates and cups and cutlery for two, but, stubborn as she was, she managed it.
The storm had broken sometime in the night, and as dawn had breached the horizon so had the heat, promising yet another scorching day in the compound.
Livarian guards already walked in pairs along their routes, leaving Cassidy a little freedom to move from the dorm to the medical building without being trailed specifically, since she was in sight of a patrol at all times.
She reached the side door without incident, choosing it over the more formal entrance in case she tracked mud in with her shoes. She was most of the way down the hall before Tor poked his head out of one of the examination rooms.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I was going to eat. I brought two plates in case you want to eat too.”
Tor snorted. “You aren’t that good at cleaning.”
What once would have been a grave insult now rolled off Cassidy’s back. She knew enough of Tor’s flaws not to take anything personally. He was all bark and no bite.
“I am, and you know it,” she told him over her shoulder without slowing down. “Besides, there’s no reason you can’t teach me how to set up samples while we eat, that basically doubles your productivity.”
She strode through the entrance room and placed the plates on the same table he had been eating at the night before. It wasn’t but a few moments later that Tor appeared at the door, watching her suspiciously.
“We’ve already set up your samples.”
“Mmm,” Cassidy answered. That they had. “I was thinking that you might teach me how to do patient samples too. If they aren’t that much more complicated than the plants I could help you when you need it. That would leave you free to do the important work of medic-ing.”
“Medic-ing isn’t a word,” he grumped, but he was moving closer to the table.
She smiled inwardly. “Or we can talk about the orchard. I’ve been thinking, if it’s a bacterial infection…”
“It is.”
“Right. If it is, then there’s got to be a reason the healthy trees haven’t caught it. Maybe we are focusing on the wrong thing,” she sat across from him and waited.
Almost reluctantly Tor sat across from her. Cassidy smiled inwardly as he arranged his plate, fork and cup precisely. “We can’t know what the difference is if we don’t know what bacteria is causing the infection in the first place. For all we know all of the trees are infected and there are only some that are showing symptoms."
Cassidy pointed her fork at him, the glob of eggs on the spines jiggling precariously as he watched it with growing horror.
“Are you saying that because it’s really not possible to know why the trees are still healthy or are you saying that because it’s killing you not to know what the bacteria is?” She asked.
Tor reached across the table and gently prodded her extended arm back toward herself. “It’s hardly killing me,” he told her.
She snorted. Bullshit. He was engrossed in the puzzle of it all. “You’ve spent more time on this than I’ve been able to work off.” She eyed him. “I think you’ve spent more time than I have on this. You can’t stand not knowing.”
Tor grunted in a non-committed manner and shoveled a bite of eggs into his mouth. “What’s your idea?”
She’d come up with the thought during her gardening duties the day before. What if the reason for the lack of infection wasn’t just chance, or some lucky resistance? What if the healthy orchard trees couldn’t catch the infection because something else was already there? On Earth, penicillin was invented by the same type of serendipitous happening. Mold, if she remembered correctly had been killing off bacterial cultures set for study. What if the healthy trees had a beneficial infestation, either mold or otherwise?
She posed her theory to a suddenly intrigued Tor.
“We wouldn’t have to identify the attacking bacteria directly, just note the differences between the sick and unhealthy trees and try to determine if something in particular is stopping it.”
“And if we’re lucky we get the cause and the treatment in one swoop.”
Tor’s brows rose in appreciation. “Very clever.”
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