Hamsa carried Lila out of the caves and back to the ship, where Gurgeh got her into a stasis pod to keep her stable. Tahir checked his email, and found a general broadcast from a Professor Ilhana requesting aid as her party's supply drop hadn't arrived and they were short of food. Sayah vanished into her cabin to 'do unwise things'.
Tahir flew the Aliya across to Professor Ilhana's camp to drop off a couple of days' worth of food. He got the name of the person who should be delivering their supplies, who they'd lost contact with - Nivrod Motiwali. He then set a course back to Coriolis, where we could find both Motiwali and some high level medical treatment for Lila.
Once we'd docked at the station, Gurgeh managed to wake Lila up for long enough to get some emergency contact details from her. He contacted her family to arrange transfer to a suitable facility, and managed to convince the people who came to collect her that he needed to go with her.
Sayah emerged from a slightly smoky cabin, looking significantly less stressed, and plugged the camera drone they'd retrieved from the caves into Suleiman. With his help she was able to retrieve further video from it, from a few minutes before what they'd been able to watch already.
Not quite trusting her own perception in her altered mental state, Sayah called Tahir and Hamsa over to watch it with her. It showed the team getting the drone into position to fly around the frame, moving the large cylinder that we'd seen pictures of close to the frame, and plugging in the cube. There were a couple of notable points. First, Zhar mentioning not knowing how long the 'hot dust' they found would last. And second, something odd in his eye, like an inky black cloud passing across it.
Hamsa contacted Jinna and learned that Lavim had gone missing. Just walked away, right after dinner. Along with Sayah he went to visit her to see if they could look learn anything there. After a brief and unenlightening chat, Hamsa asked for the toilet, in the hope of being able to retrieve DNA samples while he was in there. Unfortunately, Jinna insisted on accompanying him to show him the way, but this did mean Sayah had the opportunity to collect some hair from the pillow. With Jinna's hair being green, it was easy to know which bed was hers, although there was no way to be certain whose hair we'd actually picked up.
Jinna mentioned one odd thing. Lavim had been demonstrating a new interest in the rimward reach. Magdan was found there, used for anti-gravity, along with some very old ships.
Tahir went to talk to the port officials to see if he could find out if Lavim had left the station. With some guidance from the Traveller he was able to learn that he'd left on a private ship - the Fatima's Bounty.
We met up again back at the ship, but when we arrived, adjudicators were waiting for us. They had questions about Merez. He was dead, and appeared to have grown some extra limbs. Tahir told them what little we knew, being sure to mention the Fatima's Bounty. We were given instructions not to leave the station for 48 hours.
Not long afterwards, Gurgeh got a message that Lila was on her way back. She now had a bio-sculpted arm, and instructions not to use it for the next six days.
We had some time to fill. Sayah did an image search for Islir's tattoo but couldn't find anything. Gurgeh had a look at the samples from the mutated body parts we'd found in the cave, and found that they still appeared to be human. He checked himself to make sure. Still definitely human.
For once, we were on Coriolis at the same time as our patron, Doctor Wana. She invited us to dinner, and we told her about Merez and the shadow monkey. That was when we found out that Merez didn't get our name from her - which made sense, given his syndicate connections. We also told her about the dig site and the frame. Lila explained her theory about it being portal builder stuff, and showed her the cylinder and the camera video. Doctor Wana agreed on seeing the glyphs.
We told her about how we believed there was a second dig site, based on Zhar Baghram's journal. We talked about the keybearers that it mentioned, and she told us about a strange sect with that name, and showed us a keybearer symbol that we recognised as Islir's tattoo. We also told her about Merez and his unfortunate demise. She wasn't entirely upset about that, and said he worked for our Nemesis, Lea.
Many questions still remained. What was the mystic plague we'd heard about? Where were all these extra limbs coming from? Who was the Z.K. who'd been emailing Islir, and was he also a keybearer? Why were there two Lavim Tamm's and what did the alive one want on the Fatima's Bounty? What was in Sabetha's crates of 'medical supplies'?
And how were we going to occupy ourselves for another day on Coriolis when most us were itching to get back to the dig site but weren't allowed to leave?
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