An hour had passed since deployment and nothing visible had changed.
Diego still had no legs. Ernesto's hands still moved the way they had moved for years. Maya still lay on the pillow the way she had lain in every bed for the past four years. And the other volunteers were still the way they were.
But something was happening and all of them knew it.
Diego sat with his palms pressed flat against the surface of the bed, exactly where his thighs ended, and felt the deep interior itch that had not stopped since the first thirty seconds.
The itch had spread now, moving further along the nerve pathways, and he tracked it by location, by intensity, by whether it was moving.
It was moving.
He said nothing. Thomas stood at the monitoring display, his eyes moving between columns of data attentively.
