by S. E. Weir
>>Phina, you have clothes you can put on next to you. Welcome back.<< Her friend spoke through her implant, so the conversation was private.
“Thanks, ADAM,” she whispered, not certain if she’d spoken out loud or in her head. She sat up carefully and saw a privacy screen with a shelf extended that held basic clothing.
Feeling restless, she sat up, narrowly missing bumping Link’s head as he leaned back. She turned to drop her legs over the side of the Pod-doc and realized that aside from feeling physically and emotionally overwhelmed, she felt…pretty good. Not weak like she was expecting from having been lying down so long.
However long she’d been here.
She reached with trembling hands for the clothes and slowly put them on. She didn't feel weak so much as…foreign in her own body. That was strange.
After dressing, she pressed a button that removed the privacy screen, then turned her attention to the person on the other side.
“Link?” Her voice was scratchy and thick from disuse. How long had she been lying here? Her thoughts were scattered as she looked around the room.
“Phina…”
Her thoughts focused at once, her gaze moving to the man sitting next to her. The hesitation in his voice was not normal. Neither was Link’s use of her name. Come to think of it, Link appeared wearier and somewhat ragged. He looked close to his age, and he hardly ever did. His eyes gave her the most pause, showing such a mix of emotions that they overwhelmed her.
“Link, what happened? How long has it been?”
He swallowed, his eyes flashing bleak weariness that faded quickly into relief with a hint of unease. “It’s been a while.”
Phina stilled. “How long?” she whispered.
Link took a ragged breath and nodded, letting out the words in a rush. “Twenty months, one week, three days, and nine hours.”
Chapter Two
Phina’s eyes widened in shock. “Twenty months?” she whispered. “That’s… That’s…”
“A hell of a long time, my dear,” Link finished, his eyes watching her with concern.
She nodded weakly. “Why?”
His eyes rose in surprise. “Why has it been so long, or why were you in a self-induced coma to begin with?”
Phina raised her free hand to rub her face. Her skin was far more sensitive than she remembered. She shook her head in disbelief. “Both?”
Link looked at her, his eyes frustrated, sparking life into his weary features. “Those are two questions I’ve been waiting quite a while to ask you.”
She dropped her hand to look at him with a frown. “To ask me?”
He leaned forward. “You are telling me you don’t have any idea why you put yourself in a coma for over a year and a half?”
Phina frowned. “Well, I have ideas, but I don’t know for certain. All I remember is pain, both in my mind and my body.”
Link sighed and sagged, his shoulders slumping. He looked so tired and concerned that she wanted to reach out to him. Just like that, her mind slid into his, and she knew exactly how he felt and what was on his mind at that moment. He wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do so.
Phina stilled, and her eyes unfocused. Her mind froze; all she could focus on was Link’s lack of belief that she would tell him the truth. Were these his normal suspicious thoughts talking, or had something happened while she was in the coma to cause him to doubt her?
When Phina had stirred and opened her eyes, Link had felt like gathering her up and yelling, “Hallelujah!” He was so relieved that she was finally awake. He hadn’t, of course. It wouldn’t have been seemly. He kept his stoic expression on his face. Still, he thought his emotions must have been visible, given how strong they were.
Link had been very eager to hear why Phina had slept for so long, as well as to have her be present to question her aunt. The desire to bring justice and punishment to the woman who had harmed Phina was burning him up.
Hearing that Phina had no idea why she had been in a coma had brought him up short, his mind spinning. How the hell could she not know what was going on? It was called a self-induced coma for a reason. She had to have known something. It was the only thing that made sense, based on what everyone had told him about her condition.
So, why did she feel the need to hide what had happened? Did she not trust him?
“Phina?” Link sounded concerned, but she couldn’t bring herself to verify that. It didn’t seem to matter. She knew his concern for her was genuine, even if he didn’t believe her.
She looked at Link as she sighed. “What?”
Link hesitated as if he were about to say something, then shook his head. “What do you want to know first?”
Phina’s thoughts were all over the place, but one stood out. “Alina?”
He smiled faintly. “She’s been here every day to talk to you.”
She blinked back tears at the rush of longing inside her. She needed to see her best friend, so much so that her mind surprised her by reaching out to connect with Alina’s. What astounded her wasn’t that she could connect to her friend’s mind, but that Alina was occupied with…well…
Phina shook her head, disconnecting before she got stuck in something she wasn’t ready to experience.
Foremost in her mind was that mentally reaching out seemed easy. Almost too easy. Far easier than before she had fallen into her apparently self-inflicted coma. What had happened to her to cause these changes while she had been unconscious? The questions swirled in her head, overwhelming her. She closed her eyes.
Everything from the air draft blowing on her arms to the floor under her bare feet felt weird. Phina didn’t need weird right now. She needed normal.
She steadied herself. Link reached for her but dropped his hand when he caught her look.
He hadn’t believed her.
She closed her eyes again to mask the sensations and emotions flying through her. Too much sensory and mental input.
Just as she was about ready to pick up her pillow and scream into it to relieve the pressure, she heard footsteps in the other room. The door snicked open, revealing Doctor Keelson.
April entered with a huge smile, her comfortable white clothing accentuating her form. “Phina! It’s so good to see you awake again. How are you feeling?”
Phina shook her head. “I can’t answer that in a meaningful way. My mind is getting used to my body and the sensations, which are far more enhanced than I remember them being. Then there are my emotions, which are all over the place. I am still not sure what is going on. Has it really been over a year and a half since we left the Aurians’ planet?”
Doctor Keelson’s smile dimmed and she nodded. “Yes, it’s been quite some time. Braeden said your conscious mind was absent the times he checked for activity. He did say that your cognitive functions were still present, but that was all he could tell us. Do you have any idea what happened or why you were in a coma for so long?”
Phina shook her head, frowning. “The Pod-doc couldn’t do anything either? I’ve heard it could heal just about anything.”
April sighed. “We had you placed into the Empress’ personal Pod-doc, the one all the others are patterned after. It stabilized you, then we did everything we could to isolate the problem coding in your nanocytes. Your body wasn’t adjusting properly to the nanos in the serum your aunt gave you. Eventually, ADAM and TOM rewrote your nanocyte code to bypass the previous programming so your body could properly function.” She frowned, then nodded. “At least, that’s my understanding of it.” The doctor narrowed her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Phina had frozen. “My aunt…gave me a serum?”
Holy hell in a handbasket.
Doctor Keelson turned to look at Link with a scowl. “You didn't tell her?”
Link rubbed his head in frustration as he sagged into his chair. So much for his original plan. “I was waiting until she had adjusted to being awake.” His eyes hardened at the look of admonishment he received from
the doctor. “Believe me, April. Phina deserves to know, but she’s just woken up. I was giving her time.”
Phina raised her hand to pause the conversation, took a deep breath with her eyes closed, and she straightened her shoulders. “All right. Please explain why you believe my aunt did this.”
April shook her head, lips pressing together. “I don’t know for sure, but that is what I was told.”
Link glowered at the woman. Why did people insist on interfering with his plans? He knew he should have whisked Phina away to recover by herself. She needed to have information given to her gradually. “We know. ADAM has been very thorough.”
“ADAM?” Phina’s voice practically melted.
Hang it all, she sounded like a love-sick puppy. Such things did not improve his mood. Of course, he had to wait for her to finish her welcome home conversation with the AI before he explained about her aunt.
Link stewed as he waited for Phina to finish. This homecoming was not what he had thought it would be after waiting so long for her to wake up. Why couldn’t she focus on the important things? Had she always been this distractable? Perhaps it was an effect of her months in a coma.
ADAM. Phina’s heart warmed when she thought about her friend, but she found herself almost scared to ask him now. Once he told her what evidence they had to convict her aunt, she would have no choice but to believe it. Even though Phina had suspected Aunt Faith, part of her—the part that had known the softer side of her aunt as a child—had hoped she was wrong.
Damn it. Phina refused to be a coward.
“ADAM?” she whispered.
“Hi, Phina,” ADAM replied through the speaker.
Her shoulders relaxed when she heard the AI’s voice. “Tell me, ADAM.”
Her implant sparked to life, turning their conversation private. >>I’m happy you are all right, Phina. We were…concerned.<<
Phina squinted in confusion. She sat against the platform. We?
ADAM’s confident tones showed no hesitation. >>Stark and I.<<
Really? Her interest sparked for the first time since she woke up. Stark was concerned?
>>Yes. He made the transition to AI on the trip you fought the Skaines on Lyriasha, the Aurians’ planet. The decision to risk his engines and the integrity of the hull of his ship to get you here was the tipping point that pushed him to ascend.<<
Phina’s eyes brightened. That’s amazing, ADAM. I remember we talked about the possibility not long before that trip. Can you tell him thank you for risking himself for me? I hope that rush didn’t cause him too many problems. Remembering that the trip had been quite some time ago caused her smile to dim.
Doctor Keelson eyed her in concern and stepped forward. “Are you all right?”
Phina nodded, then sighed and spoke out loud. “Okay, ADAM. Just tell me. How do you know it’s Aunt Faith?”
April and Link looked at her in concern but she ignored them and listened to ADAM. It didn’t matter what they thought. She needed to know from the AI.
“Do you remember the day she came to visit, and you ate with her, then fell asleep?” ADAM asked, using the speaker.
Phina frowned, her mind bringing it up. She had arrived to find her Aunt Faith acting oddly. They’d had a pleasant enough lunch, then she had felt overwhelming fatigue. Aunt Faith had said it was dehydration and she was not taking care of herself properly. “Yes?”
ADAM continued, “When your aunt arrived on the Meredith Reynolds, she carried the serum onto the station and gave it to you with your lunch. I suspect it also had a sedative in it to make your body stay calm while the nanocytes began the transition.”
Her thoughts reeling, Phina shook her head. “But how? Station security checks for suspicious things like that.”
“She brought groceries with her,” ADAM explained. “The serum was mixed into the container of orange juice, and she’d programmed the nanocytes to remain inert until the serum hit your digestive system. Security checks things thoroughly, but not at the microscopic level.”
Phina brought her hands up to her face, her thoughts spinning. She shook her head, uncertain what to think or feel. What was there to say when the person who had taken care of you for years betrayed you in such a big way? She brought her hands down and looked at Link and April, tears shimmering, though she focused and contained her emotions before they could fall. “Did she admit to doing it? Did she say anything about why?”
Doctor Keelson nodded, her expression compassionate. “She admitted to it.”
Link leaned in, his eyes glinting. “She won’t say why, though. She says only you get to hear that.”
Phina eased herself onto the pad of the Pod-doc. It was too much. “I… I don’t think I can see her. Not now.”
Link’s face was unreadable. Phina couldn’t help wishing she knew what was going through his mind. In another breath, she did know, and she stilled as Link’s eyes flashed with anger. She withdrew her mind so fast she almost gave herself mental whiplash.
“Phina Waters, you are being a coward!” Link’s words pierced the mental noise, causing her to stiffen and making her wish she had found a reason to leave. As she got up to do that, she got angry. A coward, was she? Nice to know what he thought.
Phina turned her icy expression on Link, her eyes blazing like fire. “I’m a coward?” she asked softly as she stepped into his personal space to glare at him. “Really? Because I don’t wish to speak to the woman who raised me for half my life and who I just found out gave me an unknown serum that caused weird abilities and ended with me screaming in torment? Because I’m overwhelmed to learn that I just woke up from a year and a half in a coma that I apparently put myself into and don’t even know why?”
Link’s face had lost any hint of anger, and his skin had paled. She was close enough to see the weariness that had been eating away at him, but the distress she felt at his lack of belief in her, combined with his accusation, caused her to ignore it.
She stopped inches away and stared at him. His eyes had darkened with an emotion she didn’t recognize, but she didn’t feel like trying to find out what it was. “If that’s what you really think of me, then screw you. I’m not dealing with this crap right now.”
Phina straightened and strode toward the door.
“Phina, wait!”
She ignored Doctor Keelson’s call as she opened the door and sped into the next room, flying past the people milling around without noticing who they were.
Several people turned and shouted her name as she headed through the next door and into the hallway. She thought she heard someone running after her, but she quickly left them behind. At the next intersection, she hit a crowd and slipped through as fast as her feet could take her.
She needed time alone so she could process everything that was happening to her.
Seeing Phina freeze was too much. Seeing her face turn to stone when he knew she was suppressing emotion was too much. Never mind that Link had refined her natural talent to hide her emotions. There was a difference between showing no emotion and feeling no emotion, and it was a different thing altogether to suppress that emotion to avoid feeling it.
Link’s words about Phina being a coward had burst out of him unbidden, which rarely happened. At least not before this last year-plus of almost no sleep and little break from worry. He struggled to provide a reason for his outburst. He had meant what he said, but only in connection to her suppression of feelings. Nothing else. He couldn’t pinpoint when that had begun to grate on him. Perhaps it hadn’t before now. There were too many unresolved issues and things going on, and nothing had gone right since Phina woke up.
But her face told him it was too late. The damage was done.
Phina’s blazing eyes had punched him in the chest and left him searching for breath. “I’m a coward?” she’d asked softly as she stepped into his personal space to glare at him. “Really?”
Link could only sit there, his energy draining while Phina gave him a much-deserved dressing down
. He had said the wrong thing. The least he could do was let her speak.
Before he could respond, Phina was gone, leaving him feeling he had allowed his inner turmoil to make a mistake he wasn't certain he could fix with practically the only family he had left.
Chapter Three
ADAM and TOM had been monitoring Phina as she woke up to make sure everything was fine. ADAM kept track of the conversation in the room with one part of his AI brain, answering when needed. With another part, he focused on the readouts they were getting from Phina and the room.
The results were what they’d expected, with some differences they would have to figure out. As Phina’s emotions became intensified and she ran out of the room, one set of readings shot up.
>>TOM, you are seeing this?<<
Yes.
>>Well, now we know.<<
Yes.
>>You thought it might be possible.<<
Yes.
>>She will need help assimilating this.<<
Yes.
>>Are you finally going to talk to her?<<
Yes.
>>TOM?<<
Yes?
>>Stop saying yes.<<
Yes. Right. Oh, no.
>>What?<<
We need to tell Bethany Anne.
>>Dammit. She’s going to curse again.<<
Yes.
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Training Facility
Phina flew through the corridors, easily dodging everyone, though her passage caused quite a stir behind her. She entered the hallways leading to the exercise rooms where she had been training. She quickly approached the entrance of the APA. It wasn’t until she saw a weapon pointed at her that she stopped feet away from the guard she didn’t recognize, her hands up and eyes wide as she panted lightly.
