After the citadel breach, Dr. Yun ran a full biological assessment on Ray the third one since his arrival, but the first one post-full-resonance-activation. This time the team was eight scientists and the assessment took twelve hours and generated a report that was forty-nine pages long.
Ray read it. The language was dense with technical notation but the core finding was in plain enough terms: the Void Resonance activation at full intensity was accelerating his cellular aging rate. Not dramatically. Not in a way that was immediately dangerous. But measurably, consistently, as if the price of carrying the Aphelion Strand in a cooperative state rather than a parasitic one was that the cooperation was costly. The Strand gave. But it also took.
At current activation frequency, the model showed: Ray Lexmix would age at approximately 1.4 times the standard human rate. Not catastrophic. But not nothing.
Dr. Yun explained this to him personally, with the careful delivery of someone who understood that data presented to the subject of the data required a different register than data presented to a research team.
"I want to be clear that 1.4x is a preliminary model. The actual rate could be lower. It could also be higher, depending on how frequently full resonance is triggered."
"And what if I choose not to trigger it?"
"Then the model doesn't apply. But in every scenario we've run, not triggering it when it needs to be triggered is the more dangerous option. The thing you can do should only be you doing. The cost is we believe the cost is manageable."
We believe. Ray noticed that.
"Does anyone else know?"
"Captain von Rhein. Lieutenant Kitagawa. Commander Lyell. General Yuen."
"Does Dayo know?"
"Not from us."
Ray nodded. He looked at the report for a moment. Then he said:
"Does it hurt?"
"The aging? No. You won't feel it. Not directly."
"That's not what I asked."
Dr. Yun looked at him.
"Does it hurt. The resonance. To the Strand. In me."
A longer pause.
"That's a question we cannot currently answer. We don't know if the integrated Strand segment has enough independence to experience something analogous to pain."
Ray thought about the pulse in his chest. The conversation it seemed to be having with him.
"I don't think it does."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because if it did, I think I'd know."
He left the medical suite. In the corridor, the suit pulsed once soft, the slow rhythm of rest. He put his hand over it briefly, the way you'd put a hand on something that was trying to tell you something, and then went back to training.