“Okay,” Rake said patiently. “Now pretend like I don’t have a doctorate in genetic engineering.”
“Yes, so,” he said quickly, then cleared his throat. “Griffith seems to be undergoing an increased rate of cellular senescence…”
Rake leveled a flat look at him and shook her head slowly, back and forth.
He sighed as he realized he was pulling a Mesa. “Right. Sorry. His, uh … his cells appear to be aging.”
“Aging?” she asked plainly.
Jackin’s black eyebrows furrowed. “Like, abnormally so?”
“Yes…” Cavalon said warily.
“Why?” Jackin asked.
Cavalon swallowed. “I don’t know? I’m, uh, pretty confused by what I’m seeing, to be honest. Can you tell me what happened to the Tempus?”
He listened intently as Jackin told him about the Tempus’s fate at the hands of the collapsing Divide. Rake stood in silence the whole time, arms crossed and chewing on her poor lip like she held it solely responsible for what was happening.
When Jackin finished, Cavalon took a moment to process everything, and grimaced as he realized what it could mean.
It was … shitty. Really, really shitty.
He looked at Rake, who stared at him with wide eyes, a narrow fragment of that same haunted look she’d had when they’d first brought Griffith in.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Cavalon decided to take a page from Mesa’s book, and begin with a disclaimer. “This is only a theory.” Rake nodded her understanding, and Cavalon went on. “If he pulled away from the gravity at the Divide, without the dampening effects of the torus chamber, and without undergoing the proper deceleration … then his physical presence in that space-time may have ceased, but his cells may have continued at that rate.”
Rake didn’t respond, continuing to stare at him, blinking slowly.
“It’s like … time dilation, in a way,” he continued, unsure if they were following his logic. “He physically left, but never slowed down. And wasn’t protected from it. His body is still going that same rate. So he appears accelerated, in a sense, relatively speaking. Or to him, this gravity is ‘slower’ than he is. Than his cells are. I’m assuming he’s perceiving things properly, or I imagine he’d have been acting very strange.” He tore his look from Rake’s dazed expression to Jackin. “Am I making any sense?”
Jackin nodded, brow creased deep.
Cavalon sighed. “Gravitational tempology, for the record.” By far the most useless offshoot of his studies, but now it’d arrived in all its glory, combining with genetic engineering and his most basic understanding of medical biology to deliver Rake a punch in the gut.
“Okay,” Rake said quietly, then turned to Jackin. “So, his cells are aging at an increased rate?”
The optio looked confused, seeming as unsure as Cavalon about why she chose to ask him the question. Jackin exchanged a wary glance with Cavalon, then looked back at Rake, his brow softening. “Sounds like it, boss.”
“So … he’s dying?” she confirmed.
“Well—” Jackin’s voice caught. “I suppose so, yes.”
“What can we do?” Rake asked.
Jackin frowned. “Rake, I…” He looked to Cavalon with wide eyes.
Cavalon cleared his throat. “Um, nothing.”
She turned her doleful expression onto him, and Cavalon regretted ever answering. That look had been far less distressing when it’d been directed at Jackin.