Free Killbox (2010) by Ann Aguirre Page B

confess I'm worried. If Argus is already feeling the jones--and he hasn't even seen the real deal yet--what does that say about his longevity? Nothing good. He may be a strong candidate for early burnout--or maybe I'm just pushing him too hard.
    Regardless, it can't hurt to have Doc take a look. Maybe now that he's isolated what makes me different from other navigators, he can give Argus a tweak to make him more like me. It would be highly experimental, but there are no other test subjects suitable for something like this. It would be up to the kid.
    "Let's run by med bay before we head back to the station," I say then.
    Argus just nods, which tells me he's seeing a problem, too. We find Doc working on Mary knows what, but he pauses readily for us. "What seems to be the trouble, Jax?"
    Funny how he assumes I have the problem. I explain succinctly, and Argus adds a few things that he didn't see fit to mention earlier, like how he woke from the last dream near the simulator, with no memory of how he got there. That's really not good.
    After a few tests, Doc mutters, "Abnormal activity in the amygdala . . . damage to the cortex. I'm afraid your initial diagnosis was correct. He's already begun the process."
    A kinder way to say burnout.
    "How is that possible? We haven't even done a real jump. Too much time in the simulator?" Oh, Mary, I ruined him. I was too rough, too impatient. Maybe Farwan had a reason for easing us into it as they did.
    Argus looks sick now, his youthful eagerness replaced with fear and horror.
    "Some subjects who possess the J-gene have less natural resistance to extreme environments," Doc says. It's a hypothesis, gleaned from years of study. He rambles on about brain structures and innate resistance, but I'm not really hearing him.
    "Can you try gene therapy?" I ask. "I know you've isolated what makes me different. But can you give it to him?"
    He gets a mad-scientist gleam in his eye. "Only with his permission. And you'd need to keep him out of the simulator until the process was complete."
    "What are we talking about here?" Argus asks.
    And I realize he doesn't know all that much about me. "My mother was a kinky freak, and I was conceived during a jump, leading to a mutation that lets me heal grimspace damage to my brain."
    Doc interrupts then, explaining the benefits and risks of the ability. In short, this genetic mutation lets my body pillage other systems to renew my brain. It keeps me from burnout, but if it ransacks my heart or lungs, it could kill me. Thus far, I've been lucky and it defaulted to my skeletal system, resulting in a loss of bone mass. For a while, I was annoyingly fragile, but with treatment, that's been repaired, too.
    "When I had time, I've been working on a regulator that will control the way her mutation functions," Doc adds. "Thus far it's not ready, but if you're willing to let me try gene therapy on you, I'll finish my work as soon as possible."
    Ouch. He's still really pissed at me. Thanks, Doc, I get the subtext: I'm not worth the trouble, but if Argus joins my elite cadre of one, then he'll need a fail-safe.
    "How risky is it?" the kid asks. "Worse than this?"
    Unfortunately, I can't answer that. We both look at Doc.
    Who shrugs. "I cannot answer that. Gene therapy can offer brilliant or unreliable results. However, I have no reason to believe it will worsen your circumstances."
    Because--now that he's had a taste of grimspace--he's going to go crazy and die anyway, if we don't do something. Other than verifying the J-gene, I didn't run any genetic tests on Argus before popping him in the simulator. I didn't have Doc look at his brain scans to see if he was a good candidate. He had the ability, and that was enough for me. I let my distrust of Farwan tarnish my perception of all their methods. And that was a stupid, unforgivable mistake.
    "Then let's do it," Argus says.
    I offer my arm to Doc and he takes a sample. "It will take some time for me to work up a suitable