The razor-sharp trailer smelled of antiseptic alcohol, boiling deionized water. The cold, metal fragrance of powdered stone.
Inside the sterile enclosure, high-pressure halogen floodlights cast an even, shadowless white glare over the stainless steel running table. Dr. Morrigan Calder stood beside a potion-made compounding station, wearing a clean razor-sharp gown, rubber gloves, and a sterile mask. Before her sat three care pyrex beakers, an analytical micro-balance. A high-speed magnetic stirrer whose teflon pellet hummed against the glass.
Arthur Vance washed his hands and forearms at the scrub sink in a warm chlorhexidine-iodine lather, step by step cleaning each knuckle, fingernail, and wrist according to strict razor-sharp protocol. Rinsing with sterile distilled water. Then, he allowed Toby to gown and glove him in powder-free nitrile.
“Dr. Calder, report on the buffer mid-air,” Arthur commanded, stepping up to the compounding station.
Morrigan gestured to the first beaker, where forty grams of emerald-green river-jade powder were suspended in fifty drops of crystal-clear ice-slow runoff. The magnetic stir-bar spun silently at fifteen hundred RPM. That kept the colloidal stone specks evenly distributed in an emerald-green vortex without settling.
“The river-jade has been ground to an average particle size of one point four hair-fractions,” Morrigan reported. Her voice was calm and skilled through her mask. “Total dissolved silicates are at ninety-six percent saturation. Transdermal absorption enhancers derived from the drain tube-leech bile have lowered the water’s skin by forty-five dynes per half-inch. It will permeate amphibian deep skin without triggering chemical cellular lysis. It’s fully…
