Too busy trying to keep her shaking hands still enough to make the call, Irajah missed the flash of green on a conscious level. Caught out of the corner of her eye, her subconscious filed it away for later. But it was enough for her to look back down at him, a deeply unsettled sensation running a rump parliment at the base of her spine.
"This is Irajah Ven. I need a medical speeder immediately. The old Club Dread. No. It's a long story. Listen. No. Just. Stop! Doctor Nir has been injured and I need a speeder here NOW."
Once the clinic's doctor's name had been invoked, things got moving. Irajah kept her hand on the pulse at the unconscious man's throat. It never flagged, and while it would occasionally flutter erratically, she never had to intervene. She did a cursory inspection of his torso, and was surprised to find that none of the blood on his shirt was his. At least, he had no wounds there. Less than five minutes passed before the medical speeder stopped at the mouth of the alley. Irajah didn't move until they were lifting Doctor Nir to move him.
She was exhausted. Deeply weary in a way that was only partially due to the events of the night. Everything hurt. Her eyes were gritty and wanted so badly to unfocus and close for hours. But she wasn't done yet. She had to get Doctor Nir back to the center and figure out what exactly had happened. But first, she had to secure the Club.
"Get him back, put him on fluids and get him stabilized," she told the driver.
"I'll be back there soon, there's just something I have to do first."
As the speeder moved away, she walked, slowly and deliberately, back to the Club. Holding Nir's key-card in one, trembling hand, she moved to each of the doors, making sure that all of them were locked. She checked all of the ground floor windows, every possible (reasonable) exit from the building before she was satisfied that the creature was well and truly trapped. Every step had been an agony of tension- waiting for the sounds of claws on the walls or that deep growling- but everything was silent. Maybe he'd already passed out- that was what he'd said, something like that, yes?
Stepping back in to the empty street, she looked at the building. The suns were just starting to come up, throwing a bright gleam on the old club, and she frowned, shading her eyes with one hand as she looked up. There was a movement in the attic window. At first she thought that, perhaps, it was Ra.
But a swinging body moved in no fashion like a live one. She stared for a frozen heartbeat as the body turned ever so slightly as it swung in it's desultory way.
The dead face of Doctor Nir stared down at her through the attic window.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Hazel eyes widened just before Irajah looked over her shoulder, the speeder long out of sight.
"It uh, it happens very fast,"
She turned, pivoting in one movement.
"At night."
The keycard fell to the dusty street.
"I don't know what triggers them."
Her feet skidded in the dust, and she fell, catching herself on one hand and pushing back up immediately.
"I woke up naked in a field the next morning, miles away from the ranch. Unaware of how I got there."
Sprinting down the awakening street, she didn't know how fast she could get to the clinic. If his telling had been accurate, this mad dash was unnecessary.
"There were... casualties."
If it were accurate. But he didn't remember. Couldn't remember. Feeling her chest tightening as her breath seared hot and dusty at the back of her throat, she pushed herself to go faster.
"The dreams, Nir." He looked up at him, looking as if a thousand banthas weighed upon his shoulders. "I have such terrible nightmares... They always start the same. I feel as if I'm seeing through the eyes of another, walking through a jungle. I recognize it, now, for I've been there."
Yuuzhan'tar. I see Yuuzhan'tar
*****
No bodies. Other than what would be expected anyway. Irajah checked on the status of her "patient." He still wore Nir's face, even slack and unconscious. She didn't know how long until his form reverted back. She had time, but not much.
There was a lot to do. She looked down on the unconscious face of Doctor Nir.
Damn it, she was never getting paid.
*****
Whenever [member="Ra Vizsla"] awoke, it would be in an isolation room. Rather than glass observation windows, Irajah'd had them blacked out. She hadn't wanted anyone to see him change, or to compromise the identity of a man going through back channels to see an underworld Doctor. It had seemed prudent. The name on the door outside would be for neither Ra no Doctor Nir. She had wrangled events so that this room was occupied simply by "John Doe".
On the other side of the room, Irajah sat in a chair, absently humming a distressingly familiar tune as she flipped through a series of flimsies. She'd already cat-napped, a useful skill she'd acquired by necessity in Med School, and while it wasn't the same as crashing in the dark for twenty hours, it was what she could arrange.
