Free The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable by J.B. Garner

only a minor in psychology and minimal post-grad work, but with what I was about to undertake, I wanted to know as much as I could about them.
    “So, Alma, can you tell me what how this happened?”  I took a casual friendly tone as I began.
    “I don’t know.”  Alma was trying to hold still while I, in vain, was searching for normal human vitals, but I could feel her crystalline body shudder ever so slightly.  “I just woke up yesterday morning like this.  The sheets were torn up, my underwear ... I ...”  She paused, her faceted eyes shut behind transparent eyelids.  “I hurt my boyfriend pretty bad.  I must have been thrashing or something.”
    “It’s okay, Alma.”  I gave up on her pulse and put a stethoscope to her chest.  I could see, with close examination, exactly where what had to be a crystal heart beat in her body, clouded by layers of diamond-like tissue.  I was struck by the oddity of her body's hardness to my instruments, despite the strangely liquid sensation it had under my fingers.
    “I can assure you, with one hundred percent certainty, this is not your fault.”  Everywhere, it seemed, was more pain that Eric’s experiment had caused.
    “It’s not okay.”  The sound of her heart beat was more like hearing the amplified noises of a weak, repetitive earthquake.  “Maybe it’s not my fault I’m this way, but I still hurt him.”  I looked up at the sound of what I could only guess was this body’s way of crying.  Small semi-fluid shards seeped out of the corner of the shut eyelid facets.  “There’s one thing you can never do, Doc, and that’s forget about what you’re responsible for.  Even if I never meant it, I did it.  I’d do anything to fix it.”
    I carefully put one of her hands into my own.  Unlike her clothes, my skin remained unscathed.  The gesture of empathy seemed to calm the young woman.
    “I promise I’ll do everything in my power to fix this.  For now, though, we need to find out how your new body works so that we can take care of you and you can take care of yourself until we do find out how to fix it.  Please lie back and let’s keep talking, okay?”
    Despite the fact that I still wanted to find out how the Pushed mind worked, this brief conversation had shamed that line of questioning from me.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t violate people the way Eric had, intentionally or not, while trying to fix this.  I wouldn’t stoop to his level.  Never.
     
    It took eight hours to complete the battery of tests we had laid out for Alma.  I had become so engrossed in trying to give her some answers I completely forgot about the Congressional announcements.  Some results were pending as I wound up having to send tissue and fluid samples not to the biology department but to the material science department instead.  I continued to notice how unnaturally her tissues reacted to my touch, forcing me to use tools and instruments to manipulate all the samples taken.
    One question was answered for us at lunchtime when Alma found that normal food and drink was more than sufficient to sate her hunger.  It was right around four o’clock when I brought Alma to my office to tell her what we had discovered.
    “Well, the good news is that, for the most part, your new body operates in many ways like your old one.  You seem to eat, drink, excrete, and your brain produces comparable electrical activity and nerve impulses to a human brain.  The exact frequencies and voltages are a bit different, but comparable.  I’m going to also infer from that evidence that you will sleep and dream like you used to as well.”  There was some relief on the young woman’s face from that.
    “What’s the bad news?”
    “Well, obviously, you are not flesh and blood anymore.  We won’t get back the material analysis until tomorrow at the earliest, but from my examination, your skin is now an extremely hard crystal.  Not as hard as say diamond, but close.  I guess