“[color=ec008c]Bullshit, no way. You should be, like, [i]soup[/i] by now.[/color]” 

But she didn’t offer much resistance otherwise. I mean, what was there to argue over? Roaki thought of herself as a realist, and the reality was staring her in the face, [i]out[/i] of Quinnlash’s face. If she wasn’t shot—and yeah, sure, she’d probably have remembered if she was—then that meant it had to be modium. Or something that [i]looked[/i] like modium. After all, if it was real, Roaki had just touched it. Shouldn’t her finger have been bursting with steel tumors? 

So, she reached in and touched it again. Still nothing happened. She was almost disappointed.

“[color=ec008c]Weird…[/color]” she muttered, inspecting her own finger, squeezing and poking down her hand in search of anything amiss. “[color=ec008c]Should be super dead. And my hand should be gone. Maybe it’s not really modium? Has that freak doctor seen it yet?[/color]”

It didn’t make sense. Roaki knew modium, what it looked like, felt like, and most importantly, what it [i]did[/i]. The little nugget ticked two out of three boxes, but she’d never encountered anything that didn’t just fill out all of them. Why wasn’t it killing her? She still didn’t believe Quinnlash’s story about growing up drinking the stuff, but how else did you end up with modium in your head if it wasn’t put there?