‘Carson, I don’t think we can manufacture a drug,’ Nida began.
‘We have to try; you can’t fight it forever.’
‘I know but . . . when I was with the Vex, they somehow put a wall up between me and the entity. I don’t know how it worked, but it only broke down when I broke it down.’
‘Unless you really want to go back to the Vex and ask them for some advice, that doesn’t help us,’ he noted bitterly.
He wasn’t angry at her—god knows he wasn’t angry at her. He was just fed up with this entire situation. It went beyond impossible. At every turn there was another problem, another dire circumstance.
He sighed again.
‘It’ll be okay, right?’ she tried.
He didn’t say anything. Instead he walked over to the nearest panel—or hobbled, rather—and set about programming the computer to search for some kind of drug to help Nida.
‘Carson, you’re injured,’ she noted as she pushed up from her bed.
‘I’ll heel,’ he answered distractedly as he concentrated on the panel before him.
She didn’t say anything. Instead he looked up sharply to see her push off her bed and stagger over to one of the cupboards on the wall.
‘What are you doing?’ he snapped. ‘Lie back down; you need to conserve your energy.’
She didn’t answer him. She simply pulled a first aid pack from the cupboard and stumbled over to him.
She set the kit down, then searched through it for the scanner.
‘Nida,’ he tried.
She looked up at him as she opened the scanner. ‘You’re right, Carson; you will heel. But like the rest of us, you’ll need a little help.’
Though he wanted to reply—though he wanted to tell her to lie back down—he didn’t.
She just shot him a certain kind of look and, wordlessly, set about scanning his injury.
His stomach felt weird. It kicked. It lurched and twisted.
Especially when she got down on her knees and started pulling up the leg of his pants to get to his ankle.
‘Nida, I can do this,’ he tried.
‘And so can I,’ she mumbled tiredly as she selected a special kind of bandage from the kit. ‘This knits bones. It takes a couple of hours to work, but as long as you stay off that ankle, you should be fine.’
Again he opened his mouth, readying a response, but none was forthcoming. So instead he stood there and mutely waited until she was finished.
She pushed herself up, sighing heavily. For a second, she looked unsteady on her feet, and he lurched out to catch her.
Yet she steadied herself. ‘Now . . . what do we do?’ she looked directly at him.
He searched her gaze.
For answers.
Because god knows he couldn’t find them anywhere else. The rest of the universe only had questions for him. What exactly was the entity? What did it want? What was its connection to the Vex?
So many questions.
And amongst them a seed of doubt.
It was deep down in his gut, and it unsettled him with every breath.
What if . . . he was wrong?
What if the entity was what it claimed to be, and its suspicious actions were all down to the so-called ‘corruption’? What if he was risking everything . . . ?
Maybe Nida knew what he was thinking, because she moved forward, ducked her head down, and stared up into his eyes. Though it appeared she could barely keep her eyes open, she stood there resolutely. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she admitted.
He swallowed.
She was so close that he could see the flecks in her irises.
‘And maybe you’re right. But stop. The entity is . . . it’s . . . we can’t trust it,’ she concluded as she shivered violently. ‘It’s been manipulating us. Feeding me visions, whispering you lies. I don’t know what it really is, and I don’t know what it ultimately wants. But we can’t just follow it blindly in the hope that it’s right. We have to find out. There must be other information on it somewhere. And we need information. Facts, data. Something. Not just hope and blind trust.’
He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t; her words were exactly what he needed to hear. They rekindled his resolve, burning away the doubt as they did.
‘And if we eventually find out that the entity is right—that it’s worth trusting—then we’ll take it home. I’ll drop everything to get it back to its own dimension. But not until I know for sure. I’m done sacrificing things on a hope and a prayer.’
He nodded. Low. ‘You’re right,’ he said simply.
Because she was.
They’d both been pushed into this situation, and it was time to push back.
‘I think I can hold the entity back for now. No,’ she quickly corrected, ‘I know I can hold it back. So we should head to the Coltex System. We should find out what the Vex did. That side of the plan hasn’t changed.’
‘Do you still think you can . . . use the entity to open a time gate though?’ Carson voiced the question, even though what he really wanted to do was run away from it. He shuddered at the mere possibility.
It was a terrifying one.
Now the entity had turned on them—or they’d turned on it—could they still use it to get home?
She withdrew into silence, her eyes narrowing as she stared over his left shoulder at the wall. ‘Yes. I can still access its energy. It will be a battle though,’ she added.
He shuddered at her admission.
‘But I can try,’ she let her gaze drift back to him, and as it searched his, she added, ‘I can try. So all hope isn’t lost. We aren’t necessarily stuck in the future. We can change this,’ she concluded.
He nodded. Low and firm, he simply kept bobbing his head up and down as his determination returned to him, trickle by trickle.
As it did, he swore the energy in the room changed. Or perhaps it was just the energy between them.
It solidified, became realer.
Back on Remus 12 when they had worked tirelessly to get this ship into orbit, he’d felt something shift between them.
Their interactions had become easier, more instinctual.
Now that ease doubled. No, tripled.
He found himself smiling automatically, reaching out to her automatically, and nodding automatically.
She smiled back, breathed hard, then nodded. ‘Right, now, shouldn’t you go back to bed?’
‘Sorry?’ he blinked quickly.
‘Before the entity went ballistic, you were sleeping, Carson. And you still look pretty tired.’
He had to laugh at that. Really? She thought he looked tired? She’d just miraculously fought the entity and won. He’d had to wake her up from unconsciousness. If anyone needed a rest, it was her.
Before he could say that, she just grabbed up his hand and led him from the med bay and back onto the bridge.
He tried to ignore the trail of tingles her firm touch sent through his hand and up into his arm, eventually tracing their way right into his chest.
He had to tell himself he was the lieutenant and she was the cadet.
He had to remind himself what kind of relationship they had.
. . . .
Except it was pointless. Because everything had changed.
So he let himself be pulled in by the sensation.
All at once he was reminded of what he’d told her. Those three little words he’d shouted when the entity had pressed him against the roof.
I love you.
He’d blurted them out in a moment of instinctual fear as he’d genuinely thought he’d lose his life.
Now he winced.
Wow . . . he’d said that.
Did she remember?
Had she even been conscious at the time?
Before he could settle too far into his embarrassing thoughts, she pointed at the command chair, told him to sit, then spent a few seconds pondering the view screen in silence.
When he hesitated, she turned over her shoulder an
d barked at him to, ‘sit.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he mumbled as he followed her command.
Though he fought to stay awake, it was hard.
Every time he tried to wake himself back up, she would just snap at him to sleep, warning that she’d even go so far as to drug him if she had to.
So eventually he drifted off.
It was an uneasy sleep though. Of course it was. At any moment the entity could control Nida and send him hurtling toward the ceiling. At any moment the Vex could attack. At any moment they could come across the rest of the United Galactic Coalition Fleet.
Yet with Nida sitting quietly by his side, he managed it.
Chapter 23
Cadet Nida Harper
Things were happening so very fast. She didn’t have time to think, let alone catch up to things.
Yet at least now she’d been provided with a moment of blessed silence and peace in which to think.
And think she did.
One thought in particular owned her mind.
The entity . . . .
What was it doing? More to the point, what the hell was it in the first place?
She’d felt how brutally it had fought against her as it had tried to flatten Carson to the ceiling. It had only been Nida’s own raw determination and willingness to do whatever she could that had seen her win in the end.
Not for the first time, and not for the last, she found herself staring down at her left hand.
The glow wasn’t there any more.
She’d pushed it back. All the way back, as far as it would go. And there she would keep it until . . . until what? What would happen next?
She swallowed hard, feeling a lump form instantly in her throat. She tried to breathe around it, but it was hard.
Blinking her eyes closed, she shook her head.
‘You can do this,’ she promised herself out loud.
She would have to.
As Nida sat there considering her hand and what had happened to her, she reflexively began to pat her implant. At first it was a distracted move, then she pushed her fingers harder into that small circle of metal that lay flush with her skin.
It calmed her immeasurably.
When she’d fought the entity, she’d realised how similar the sensation had been to using her implant. The ability to make things move with her mind . . . .
Releasing a truly frustrated but thankfully quiet sigh, she tried to push all the thoughts from her mind.
They couldn’t do her any good. The only thing that could help her now was pushing forward. They had to get to the rest of the United Galactic Coalition fleet in the Coltex System.
And when they were there, they could gather as much information on the Vex attack as they could.
With that plan solidifying her will and concentrating her otherwise scatty mind, she closed her eyes.
Yet as soon as she did, she forced them open.
She still felt a latent tingle chasing through her arms and chest, concentrating especially on her pointing finger. The same finger she had used to gesture towards the roof when the entity had tried to kill Carson.
It was a horrible sensation, and she quickly brought up her other hand and tried to wipe it away.
‘Just concentrate on the plan,’ she told herself in a firm tone, ‘ignore everything else.’
Yet despite how often she repeated that mantra, it wouldn’t work.
Because, seriously, she had just discovered that the entity wasn’t the sweetness and light it had pretended to be.
It had been lying to her.
Manipulating her. Just like the Vex had done in the future.
She shuddered again. This time it was a full-bodied move that saw her quickly bring her arms around herself.
How could she have trusted it? How could she have taken what it said as fact?
‘Don’t think about it,’ she tried.
Yet of course, once again, it didn’t work.
Something else did though.
Her exact thought was echoed by Carson as he suddenly roused. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he whispered as he pushed himself up in this chair.
She turned quickly, blinking back her surprise at his sudden interruption.
He pressed his fingers into his brow, gave a rather loud yawn, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just push it from your mind. We’ll find the fleet, we’ll find what they know, and we will fix this,’ he promised.
While she had not been able to push back her thoughts, one look into his fixed, if still tired gaze, managed to do it for her.
He could distract her with such carefree ease. But it was a completely different kind of distraction than that which the Vex had tried to use on her and Carson.
It was pleasant and wholly welcome.
Before she knew what she was doing, she stood up.
She wanted to walk over to him and . . . .
Ah, she didn’t know.
Her body had just acted spontaneously, and now her mind had pause to catch up to it, she realised she had no idea what she wanted.
. . . .
No, that was a lie.
Every second she spent with him, she realised more and more what she wanted.
At that thought, she swallowed, feeling her cheeks tinge with heat.
‘At least the colour is coming back to your cheeks,’ he said through another yawn.
She blushed even more vibrantly at that.
‘Now,’ Carson stood up and arched his back, paying especial attention to his neck, ‘it’s your turn to get some rest.’ he gestured towards the door, no doubt indicating the crew quarters.
She didn’t move.
‘Nida?’ he prompted her.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘I thought we talked about this? We need to look after ourselves.’
‘I don’t want to go to sleep around it,’ she suddenly admitted in a small voice.
She hoped it was clear that by ‘it’, she meant the entity.
Carson didn’t say anything immediately. Instead, he considered her with a quiet, watchful expression. Then he nodded once in a stiff and sure move. ‘Okay. I’ll try to see what stimulation meds the computer can concoct. But . . . .’
‘I’ll be fine. We just . . . I’ll be fine.’
Carson looked at her quietly. ‘You need your rest. We can’t run you dry.’
‘I know,’ she brought up her right arm and trailed the fingers over her left wrist. Though she wanted to touch her left hand, she could not.
Carson noted the move with interest. ‘You said the entity is weak. Well maybe right now is the perfect time to get some rest.’
She considered his advice.
. . . .
He was probably right, but she just couldn’t put up with any more of its visions. She couldn’t bare standing on Remus 12 again only to see the stars fall from the sky.
As she thought about that, her eyes narrowed.
She’d gone through that vision so many times, and countless others, yet now she really stopped to consider whether they truly were visions.
She’d already experienced how technologically advanced the Vex of the future were. They had a device that could make one experience a simulation with perfect clarity and with every detail one would need to assume it was reality.
. . . .
Well that was eerily close to what the entity could do.
‘Nida?’ he asked quietly as he shifted close to her side.
Again he distracted her, and again it was the most welcome move he could make.
She found herself smiling despite the situation. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said again quietly.
‘You need to rest. I can set the computer to monitor the activity of the entity. I can set it to monitor your neural activity too. I can wake you up the instant anything happens.’
She nodded at him, letting his words calm her.
Yet it wasn’t his words that finally made her nod her head and acquiesce to his request.
He smiled. It was a slow move that set his lips pulling apart and pushing into his cheeks. ‘Of course.’
She nodded, relief pushing through her.
Then, despite how scary a prospect it was, she finally settled down in the navigator chair to fall asleep.
Though she tried to fight it, all too soon she felt sleep claim her.
Then the visions started.
One after the other.
She would stand on the surface of Remus 12 and watch the stars fall form the sky. She would stand in that gleaming city and watch the people running from the wall of destruction that inevitably claimed them and turned them to nothing but dust rolling on the wind.
Over and over again.
Relentless.
And then, right at the end, something new.
. . . .
A field of golden grain swaying softly in the wind.
A star field above, bright and glorious.
A night warm and comforting around her.
And above her a faint blue glow.
It shifted towards the horizon, disappearing on the gentle breeze like nothing more than cloud.
Chapter 24
Carson Blake
He watched her the entire time, with concentration so fixed that it soon gave him a headache.
He took something for the pain, and continued to relentlessly monitor the instruments and her quietly sleeping form.
At the first sign of anything nefarious, he was ready with a neural shock to wake her up.
It was such a tense time.
It also completely wiped away the few hours of slumber he’d been able to catch.
But right now was not the time to rest.
This situation, it seemed, would let neither of them do that.
Despite how sharply he had to pay attention, a distant part of Carson realised that when this was all over, he would need a holiday.
A really long holiday, and he promised himself then and there that he would take her with him.
It was clear that Nida hadn’t travelled much. Well, at least not into space. This was all very new to her. Then again, to be fair, it was all very new to him too. This kind of space travel—where you jumped back and forward in time with an evil entity—was very knew to him too. But the point was, he would relish the opportunity to show her the rest of the galaxy.
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