After Ian and Kyle had managed to get their few hours’ sleep that morning, the four of them then steeled themselves to scout the next section of forest. However, this time they had a slightly clearer goal of finding means to survive, rather than simply finding out what was there at all. They all agreed that finding a drinkable water source was at the top of the list, second only to getting back to the pod once more, before nightfall, just in case.

Though, their exploring did produce more scientifically relevant discoveries that day, such as a few small animals or birds scurrying away as they moved through the woods around them. Though none of these smaller animals seemed that shockingly different from various species found on Earth, rather than a few miniscule differences in size or color or markings. Though, as ground-breaking as finding these similar signs of life were at all, all of them seemed much more intent on survival than science, the further out of reach that old life of theirs seemed to be getting as the minutes and hours passed.

After they had been walking for a good while that day, it became increasingly obvious that Lili had been falling behind, causing them to have to stop and wait for her more than a couple times. As they waited for her to catch up, they all glanced at each other, trying to fathom what, if anything, had changed since their admittedly shorter scouting trip the previous day.

Taking a breath as she caught up with them once more, Jared dared to vocalize their shared concern, “Are you ok?” he asked Lili as he noted her gently holding her hand against herself, the way that would have been likely after running too long, despite the extremely slow pace they were deliberately moving at, for safety reasons, alone.

“Huh?” she asked, trying to keep any discomfort out of her voice.

“You ok?” he asked again, pointedly looking down at the hand she held against her abdomen.

Lili attempted a scoff of indifference as she saw them all move their eyes to her, awaiting her answer, “I’m fine,” she attempted a smile, though the more she spoke, the easier the pain in her voice could be heard.

“You don’t really seem…all that fine,” Ian couldn’t help adding to Jared’s spoken concerns.

“Have I said a word? God, guys,” she said as she looked off at some random tree to avoid having to look back at the three sets of eyes that moved over her.

Then Jared allowed a step closer to her as he spoke more softly, “Seriously, I need to know if you are in some kind of pain.”

She just shook her head, “I think we got bigger problems, right now, ok?”

Jared shook his head, “So, you are in pain?”

“Oh my god!” she complained in irritation. “Must this be a production? Ok, so I’m having some cramps, if you must know. Oh no, the girl’s having cramps. Aren’t you glad I shared that with the three of you now?” she scoffed, still not looking back toward them as she spoke.

Ian and Kyle looked down, though said nothing more, while Jared took a breath of his own before forcing a response, “Is it like the same kind that you normally get?”

“Jared, please. Could we stop with the sisterly discussion and find the damn water?” she complained, her irritation mounting with the pain that she attempted to assure them was nothing of note.

“Tell us if you wanna stop, please. Ok?” Jared returned, “And try to remember, I’m your doctor too, not just the guy who you happen to be royally pissed off at right now, ok?” he managed before nodding to the guys to continue their walk, trying to ignore the expressions they each adopted in reaction to the last part of Jared’s comment.

As they continued their walk, all of them casting glances back toward where Lili still moved slowly, several paces behind them, Ian just had to furtively ask Jared, “So, why is she royally pissed off at you?” though he spoke too quietly for Lili to make out the question.

“And me answering that will help us find water, how?” Jared mumbled under his breath.

“I’m just sayin,” Ian began, still speaking under his breath, “last woman in the world, and she already had a thing for you before that…May not be too, uh, genius, too piss her off, now.”

Jared scoffed at Ian’s statement, as the stress of the very situation forced him to act against his own docile nature at that moment, “Please. This is you, Ian. Shouldn’t you be having a mini-celebration about me pissing her off? God knows you’ve wanted to be with her for like, ever!”

Ian and Kyle both looked a little stunned by Jared’s outburst, “What the hell did you say to him, Kyle?” Ian turned his accusation back toward the youngest one, who had already called Ian on that attraction once before.

“Me? I didn’t say a damn thing,” Kyle retorted.

“Oh so he’s just assuming that he knows who I’ve wanted, and for how long?” Ian continued the accusation as Jared just shook his head.

“Well, he is psychic,” Kyle shot back.

“Oh shut the fuck up, Kyle,” Ian returned in his own growl. Though all their words were soon cut short as, still several feet behind them, Lili collapsed to the ground without warning.

Once Lili did return to consciousness, due in large part to the foul odor coming from a vial Jared now held near her nose, she found herself still lying there upon the ground, only now with the long-sleeved shirt Jared had worn over his t-shirt, having since been bunched up and placed beneath her head, as he kneeled beside her worriedly.

“God, what is that?” she coughed a bit in reaction to the smell, then in further reaction to the pain caused by the cough as well.

“Kind of like smelling salts,” he whispered to her quietly as she also noted Ian and Kyle standing over her with the same worry upon their faces as well.

“I passed out?” she returned with her own shock, as she had never been the fainting type, ever.

“Lili, don’t tell me this is cramps. You’re burning up too.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted as she attempted to push herself up to her elbows.

“You’re lying on the ground, in the middle of the woods, burning up, and in pain. How is any of that fine?” he told her with some odd mixture of forceful gentleness.

She scoffed once more, though she didn’t yet try to finish sitting up on her own again, “Listen, we both know I’m gonna be fine. So can we just help me up and get on with this day?”

“What does that mean?” Ian interrupted in response to her comment.

“Yeah, is she delirious or something?” Kyle added.

“No, she is not delirious. Nor is she deaf,” Lili returned roughly, though winced again as she spoke.

Jared sighed as well, trying to ignore the looks Kyle and Ian both turned toward him, “Lili, just because I saw that, doesn’t mean that this isn’t important. Very important.”

“Saw…what?” Ian asked warily.

Ignoring Ian’s question, Jared continued speaking to Lili, “Right now, I have to figure out what’s wrong with you, Lili. And don’t tell me that nothing is.”

“God, just stop fussing over me and let’s get on with the day. You know damn well that this isn’t life-threatening, whatever it is,” Lili continued as she did then try to sit fully up, despite the pain.

“That. What is that? What is she talking about, Jared? Did you have another vision or something?” Ian prodded.

Though Jared didn’t answer, instead he just cast his eyes downwards, before Lili spoke up again, “Fine, if you won’t tell them, I will. We need any hope we can get, at this point,” she spoke up, continuing to breathe shallowly with a hand at her abdomen, “Yes, he had a vision. And in it, there was…proof…that I was still alive, nearly three years from now, if not more. And, at least two years from now, at least one of the three of you will still be alive, too, if not all three. He couldn’t see any of your faces. But all of us have a fifty-fifty chance of still being here in two years. And, we also know that I am definitely included in that. Me, he did see. So, again I say, this is not life-threatening, ok?”

Ian and Kyle both looked more than a little thrown by her statements, before Ian just had to speak up, “That’s a whole hell of a lot to get from ‘nonsensical flashes,’” Ian pointed out.

“The visions are getting a little clearer, longer, making a little more sense now: A little,” Jared stressed, upset by her stubbornness, but glad she didn’t then go into the most startling part of those visions of his, right then.

“When did that start?” Kyle asked, wanting that question answered for a lot more than his curiosity about the vision itself.

“Last night. They all just seemed a lot clearer,” Jared admitted, still worriedly keeping his eyes glued to where Lili’s breathing was still much shallower than usual, a sure sign that she was still in a great deal of pain.

“Just like that, overnight? They started making more sense?” Kyle continued, his own worried eyes staying on Lili too, despite his continued questions.

“The only theory I have for why it changed so quick is,” Jared sighed again, “that the chemical make-up of the air here, it does make it thinner, but some of the elements in it, they’re also known to make miniscule, tiny changes to brain chemistry, in the proper amounts.”

“We’re getting brain damage from, fucking breathing?” Ian exclaimed.

“The opposite, Ian,” Jared sighed. “Some of the elements here, in the air on this planet, they actually repair tissue, therefore changing it, on a very basic level: Making it better. And when we’re talking about the brain, I guess….that translates as making it easier for me to make sense of the things I see, and see them longer, and with more clarity,” he attempted to explain in terms that would make the slightest bit of sense to a non-scientist.

“Whatever,” Ian scoffed, “But it doesn’t really seem to be making Lili better, now does it?”

Jared sighed again as he gently touched her overheated forehead once again, “If it changes brain chemistry, it can change body chemistry, too. So, her body could be reacting differently to certain factors than it ever did up on the ship,” he stated softly, as he continued to look down at her.

“Factors?” Ian repeated.

“Whatever that means,” Lili interrupted, “It still doesn’t change the fact that we know this doesn’t kill me, even if it does kinda suck a whole lot, right now,” she added more quietly.

Jared then let out an exasperated sigh, “You ever think that maybe this doesn’t kill you because we fix it before it does? So would you shut up and at least let me try to do that?” he asked her more loudly, his outburst seeming to shock all three of them.

Lili swallowed a bit, before finally finding her voice again, “So, how do you do that?” she finally began to give in, though in a tiny voice.

Jared then let out a more relieved sigh, “Well we did bring some medical equipment out here with us, so I guess first I have to find out exactly what it is that’s doing this to you.”

“How?” she repeated.

“Well how any doctor does,” he allowed a slight smile, worried though it was, “You guys mind?” he asked as he looked up at their companions.

“Mind what?” Ian returned.

Jared shook his head, “Could you go find something to do while I try to figure out what’s wrong, please?” he told them pointedly. Taking the hint quicker than Ian seemed to want to, Kyle grabbed the older man’s sleeve and began pulling him off toward a large boulder they had passed about thirty feet back.

“Wow, now they have incontrovertible proof that we do indeed play doctor together,” Lili couldn’t help offering as they moved away, attempting to keep her own mood light, despite all other factors. Jared had to force back his own smile at her comment before pulling his full attention back to the task at hand.

“So, where your hand is, that’s where the pain is?” he asked quietly. Lili simply nodded, “Could you let me have a look, please?” he offered with his own nervous smile.

“You didn’t even have to say please, last time,” she returned with her own devious smile.

“Now’s really not a good time to break my concentration, Lili,” he managed with another shake of his head, though a more sincere smile.

Finally giving into his request to allow him some guise of professional detachment, as impossible as that was for either of them, Lili laid back again, moving her arms away with another shallow breath of her own.

Jared slowly slid her t-shirt up toward her chest, while leaving it still low enough to remain covering her bra, before taking another deep breath and moving his hand to the snap of her jeans for only the second attempt he had ever made at undressing a woman, despite the fact that it was, indeed, the same woman once again.

Another shaky breath of his own as he unzipped the jeans as well and pulled them away from the scarce material of her panties to get a better view of the portion of her abdomen that the pain seemed to be originating from.

Though seeing how swollen and red her pale skin was, did do well to halt the arousal that had begun in him against his will, when he had first begun to undress her. He swallowed hard as his dark eyes moved over the area again.

“What is it?”

“I’ll have to x-ray, just to be sure that it’s what I think it is.”

“And can you do that?”

“Yeah, we brought the handheld imager,” he said more quietly as he moved to his own pack to retrieve it.

“And, what do you think it is?” she couldn’t help asking as he returned to her side.

“It seems like,” he began with another breath as he started up the small machine, “like the minute changes in your body chemistry seem to make it now think that there’s a foreign object inside you, which there technically, well, is. Before the chemical make-up of your body changed, it could interpret what this object was and now it no longer can. It only sees it as not natural, and not natural equals bad. And your body only interprets that one way, and is now attacking it, but obviously, can’t kill it, so it keeps trying, and trying, and that’s what’s wearing you down, and causing you pain. And your body will keep doing that,” he continued as he finished taking the pictures, “until the object is either gone,” another swallow, “or ’til your body just can’t keep trying to fight it anymore.”

Lili swallowed a bit as he put the machine away somberly, “I guess this would fall under, ‘complications,’ huh?” she whispered sadly.

“You could say that,” he offered in the same quiet tone.

“So, what happens now?” she finally managed to ask.

“Now, we gotta get it out, before your body basically kills you by trying to,” he returned, his voice breaking a bit on the thought.

Lili took a deep breath, “So, I guess we don’t get a free two years of life guarantee at the beginning of that vision of yours anymore, do we?” she asked with a bit of a sniffle.

Jared swallowed as he looked down again, “Gotta remember, you’ve still got a guaranteed nine months, at least, most likely a bit longer, since I doubt you’re really ‘in the mood’ right now,” he attempted lightness, through his own sad tone.

“Yeah, so I have nine months. But where does that leave any of you? And if I let all of this happen, and then I do somehow lose you guys, where does that leave me, or my baby?”