"You two, stop arguing and come look!"
Gela Jiang raised his injured shoulder.
Several golden specks moved along the blood seeping from the wound. The moment the tweezers drew near, two squeezed into the wound and burrowed beneath his skin.
Milluki dropped the burned-out terminal in his hand and hurried over.
"Don't touch them!"
Gela Jiang stopped the tweezers.
"You've seen them before?"
"Are you stupid? Don't they look like the parasites that live alongside the Sea Lord? The ones that invade the brain and control their host?"
Gela Jiang stared at him.
"Why didn't you say so earlier?"
"You only just told me! Besides, all my equipment's wrecked. I can't pull up the data. Who could identify a bug from a few lousy grains of sand?"
Milluki grabbed his backpack and dug out two sealed glass tubes.
"Stop the bleeding. These things might travel through blood vessels. Once they reach your brain, it'll be too late to do anything."
Gela Jiang pressed a hand to his shoulder.
He forced Nen down through his muscles, sealing off several blood vessels around the wound. The blood stopped flowing, and the golden specks buried inside were trapped in a small area.
They did not stop moving.
Tiny bumps traveled beneath his skin. Each time they struck the sealed boundary, they changed direction and searched for another way out.
Ging crouched beside Gela Jiang.
"Are you thinking clearly?"
"So far, yes."
"Your hands and feet?"
Gela Jiang clenched his fist, then turned his wrist.
"I can control them too."
Milluki rolled his eyes.
"Someone being controlled would say the same thing."
"Then how do you test it?"
"How would I test it? With a terminal!"
Milluki pointed at the ruined equipment scattered across the ground.
"Thanks to you two, the only piece of