Rayne

  “I don’t like him either.” The captain replied. “But the test is necessary. Will you do it for me if I have Mike and Lena go with you?” He indicated them each in turn as he spoke.

  Rayne pushed her empty tray away from her and considered the captain as he waited for her response. The low buzz of static in her head skipped and then continued as the pressure inside her head seemed to increase. She liked the captain and liked that he had come and asked her instead of making demands like that idiot doctor. She wanted to say no, but knew she was messed up and needed help. She jumped at every sound and movement, and it took both physical and mental effort not to strike out at everything and everyone around her. The joy of being free of the T80 was being eaten away by the sense of loss, anxiety, and the building pressure in her head. She wanted to be left alone. Spend all day in the natural habitat. Or better yet, drop her off at the next habitable planet so she could be outside. But wishing wouldn’t make it happen and if she kept coming into open conflict with everyone she met, she’d not likely get the freedom she wanted.

  “Trade,” came her one world reply. That static skipped again and then returned with increased intensity.

  “Trade?”

  Rayne squinted through the building headache and smiled. Her white teeth in stark contrast to her ebony skin.

  “Yes. Test for chasing butterflies.”

  Captain Gault smiled in return.

  “Deal.”

  Taft came walking in at that moment.

  “Hey, has anyone seen my sunglasses?”

  Five minutes later found Rayne walking down the station corridors with Mike and Lena flanking her toward med tech. The station was in full operation and crews of various designations moved through the halls to their various tasks. Rayne garnered more than a little attention as many stopped and stared at her passing. There were a few nods and smiles, as well as some angry stares from security personnel.

  Rayne still clutched the batons in her hand. She had refused to give them up when requested and the captain hadn’t pushed it. It wasn’t likely anyone could take them from her anyway. Her head turned, scanning people as she walked, sizing them up as potential threats. Some she quickly discounted and others she scrutinized further as she searched hands for weapons or the potential for attack.

  As they left the main corridors and the foot traffic died down, Rayne became more relaxed. She walked with a smooth, predatory grace as her eyes constantly searched her surroundings. Dull gray halls finally gave way to the pristine white of the med tech facilities. Her nose wrinkled at the overly clean and antiseptic smell.

  “What was the lab number, Lena?” Mike asked as he scanned the number plates as they walked.

  “It’s number forty. I checked before we left and it’s supposed to be at the end of this corridor.”

  They stopped together at the open door to lab forty. Rayne was pleased to see that the fat, annoying doctor wasn’t there. Instead, a young woman of about twenty-five came over to greet them. She had a nice smile and pleasant manner and introduced herself as Dr. Miller. Her blond hair was done up in a tight pony tail and swayed from side to side as she bustled around the lab, rearranging things as she prepared for whatever tests would be done. Rayne was on edge but waited patiently for the doctor to finish her preparations. The static in her head was becoming distracting but the pressure had eased somewhat, leaving behind a dull ache in the back of her head.

  “Okay. I think we’re ready to go now.” Dr. Miller beamed as she returned to where Rayne and the marines waited quietly. “So, I’ve been asked to run you through a standard psychological evaluation. That generally includes a brain scan to check for any abnormalities, followed by the Sarodian Stress Test. When we’re done with both of those, we’ll finish with a short interview.” The doctor moved to guide her by the arm.

  Lena quickly caught her reaching hand as Rayne stepped back.

  “I wouldn’t suggest that doctor. She doesn’t like to be touched. Just tell her where you want her and say, please.”

  The doctor didn’t seem at all startled and nodded in quiet acceptance. This wasn’t the first combat casualty she’d treated and she knew better than push someone who was already on edge. She indicated the table at the center of the room.

  “Would you lie down on the table, please?” She smiled warmly, trying to set Rayne at ease. “I don’t suppose it would be possible for you to remove your glasses and give your weapons to your friends here, would it?” She added with a hopeful tone.

  Rayne made no response for a long moment. The doctor maintained her smile, while Mike and Lena held their breath. She assessed the doctor quickly and determined she was no threat. Mike and Lena were no threat to her, either, but she wasn’t sure she trusted them enough to give up her weapons. While she didn’t think they’d hurt her, they had left her to security before and she didn’t want to be left without a weapon if they did it again.

  Rayne didn’t respond verbally to the request, but simply walked over to the table and laid down as requested, her batons held tightly in one hand and her sunglasses in the other.

  “Guess that’s the best you’re going to get, doc,” said Mike.

  The doctor shrugged her shoulders and walked to her data console. She’d been fully briefed regarding her subject by Dr. Alan. Her reach for Rayne had been a calculated risk to gauge her reaction. Even without the tests, the doctor could tell the young girl was suffering from a severe form of PTSD. The girl was tense as a coiled spring and looked on the verge of attacking any second. Dr. Miller agreed with Captain Gault’s assessment that Dr. Alan was an idiot. To sick those knuckle-dragging apes they called security on this station to handle this emotionally traumatized girl was just plain wrong.

  She tapped her console to start the scan.

  “Just hold very still. This will only take about five minutes.” Dr. Miller made a few minor adjustments as the scan began, and then sat back and monitored its progress. Slowly, a three-dimensional image began to form of Rayne’s head, starting from the top and working its way down. She swiped the image to a larger nearby screen and stood to examine it closer, then quickly stripped the outer layers from the image to look at the brain structures inside. She separated the brain’s two hemispheres, compared them and then swiped cross sections over to yet another screen. She compared those two images individually; contrasting the different colors and filters to better see what she wanted. The doctor returned to the original scan and swiped several more scans showing a top down view into several different cross sections, going through the same process of comparing and filtering.

  Dr. Miller had a look of intense concentration on her face. She went back to the original scans to check what she saw and then compared the cross sections again. She swiped one of the cross sections she was examining to another portion of the large screen and zoomed the image to a microscopic level. She stood back and scrutinized the image for several minutes. Lines creased her forehead, and a frown pulled at the corners of her mouth.

  “Something wrong, doc?” Mike asked. He and Lena had moved up to watch her work.

  “I’m not really sure,” she replied, tapping her chin with her finger, deep in thought.

  They waited expectantly for her to continue, but when none came, Mike finally asked.

  “So what’s up? Does she have a brain tumor or something?”

  “Something.” The doctor was still distracted and swiped another image to the screen and zoomed in.

  Rayne, tired of lying on the table, replaced her sunglasses and walked quietly to where the group was standing. Dr. Miller looked up to see her coming and quickly swiped the images to a file.

  “I’ll need to go over those more later.” She turned to Rayne and smiled. “For now, we need to move on to the next test.” She motioned back to the med tech table. “Are any of you familiar with the Sarodian Stress Test?”

  Rayne shook her head, while Mik
e and Lena both nodded with a grimace. It was a standard psychological screening test for marines entering the T80 program and was also used for post combat evaluations. Failing the test during the screening process usually meant disqualification from the program. Failing a post combat evaluation would not. They’d invested too much time and money into selection and training to do that. But anyone who failed could expect extensive counseling, drug therapy, and an inpatient treatment facility. Might as well throw a marine in hell.

  The Sarodian Stress Test was as close to hell as a person could get. Although if you asked a person what had happened during the test, they would tell you they had no memory of it. The test was developed by Dr. Lance Sarodian, the Albert Einstein of psychology, and was designed to put the test subject through the worst moments of their lives. The testing program evaluated the subject’s ability to handle stress as they relived these moments in a short period of time to determine how close they were to the breaking point. The test was evaluated on a five point scale. Scores between one and two were considered ideal, while anything higher resulted in varying levels of treatment. There were a few people who scored zero, which meant they were so lacking in life experience, their ability to react to stress was an unknown. These people were sometimes identified during the selection process and eliminated.

  Neither Mike nor Lena could remember their own test. No one did. Knowing the trauma that reliving past horrors could create for a subject, Dr. Sarodian had found a way to block the testing process from short and long term memory storage, so they could relive these moments without any lasting effects. But seeing another person go through the process was not pleasant. The patient was immobilized for the test by temporarily interrupting the brain’s signals for movement, but everything else still worked fine. The test subject could yell, scream, curse and even lose control of bodily functions.

  Dr. Miller walked with Rayne back to the table.

  “You can keep the glasses on this time, but I need you to lie down again.” She patted the table and waited patiently for Rayne to situate herself comfortably. “Testing time varies for most people,” she explained. “The longest I’ve ever seen is a half hour, but to you it’ll be just like you blinked your eyes. You won’t even be aware that any time has passed.” She smiled reassuringly as she reached over and took a thin metal band from a nearby tray. “This is the interface that allows the program to conduct the test. I need to place it on your head if that’s okay. “

  Rayne tensed, but gave a short nod. She felt the cool metal touch on her head and then everything went black. It was quiet except for the ever present static that hissed through her head as she felt herself drift through nothing until random images began to flash past. Her father’s stern face. Her mother’s laugh. More images flashed past; too fast to track.

  Mike and Lena waited expectantly as the test began. They knew from experience it would take a few minutes as the computer’s program worked to identify the appropriate memories. Dr. Miller sat at the data console watching the feeds. She made some adjustments to the settings, gave a satisfied nod and sat back.

  Several more minutes passed. They’d all seen the tests before, Dr. Miller more than the two marines, but they were all startled as Rayne began to scream. It went on for several minutes and then turned to calls for her mother. She called for her over and over again in heart-wrenching cries until she fell silent; her body still heaving great, shuddering breaths. Moments passed and more screaming, this time for a father murdered before her eyes. Then still more screaming as she ran terrified through the wreckage of the ship searching frantically for a place to hide. She fell still again for a short period and then began taking in great gasps of air as she relived running for her life inside the T80. More screams as she panicked from claustrophobia and data overload.

  Rayne stood on the precipice of insanity; a great gaping hole that threatened to suck her into oblivion. She reached for anything to bring her back from the brink. There was nothing and no one. Her mother and father were dead. There was no help and no hope; only a prison she couldn’t shed. Data poured like an ocean into her head, drowning her in the flow of information and noise, driving her further toward insanity and an eternity of hell.

  She screamed for silence and all went still. Several long minutes stretched in silence until something flickered to life weakly and then died inside the depths of her mind. Several more long minutes passed in silence and then it flickered again and the static with it. It pulsed faintly, like an irregular heartbeat; sometimes soft and slow, followed by several hard quick pulses…a halt, and then several more soft slow pulses until the process repeated itself. The static skipped and scattered in pitch and volume until finally coalescing into a faint, near inaudible scramble of electronic gibberish. The something in her mind grew in strength and shown with a steady glow as it continued to mumble incomprehensible gibberish in her ears.

  Dr. Miller checked the data stream and the time. It had been a half hour; one of the longer tests she’d overseen. Rayne had fallen into a brief period of rest between events, and so far, the test was progressing as normal and the doctor was pleased with the data. The young girl surely had some issues that needed tending, but nothing that couldn’t be addressed. She glanced back at the two marines who stood with impassive faces. It wasn’t an easy thing to watch and many people would leave rather than do so. She would normally have given them the option, but since they had been ordered, there was little point. She turned back to the monitor as Rayne entered another phase.

  Rayne crouched in the mud. A heavy rain pelted down from the trees overhead and ran in rivers at her feet. She watched her pursuers pass from her concealed position, passive scans revealing their positions as they moved quietly by. She clenched her teeth. Something burned like a glowing red hot coal in the pit of her stomach. Her hands flexed for the feel of something she couldn’t name. Her breath hissed in and out in a low rasping growl. The coal heated from red to yellow and her vision turned red as enemies continued to pass. Heat steamed from the barrel attached to her arm and evaporated the falling rain from its smooth metal surface. A tremor ran up her other arm as barrels struggled to spin. Breath rasped in and then out, stoking the flames as they turned from yellow to white hot. Rain now boiled off the heated surfaces and barrels spun slowly in expectation. Rayne put a name to the feeling burning in the pit of her stomach: hate, anger…no…rage. It consumed her in a blowing furnace of fire. She knew what she wanted know. She wanted a weapon in her hands so that she could kill; every last one of them if she could, and she would start… right now.

  Lena glanced at Mike as Rayne’s countenance changed. What they’d seen before had been difficult to watch. They’d seen the fear on her face and heard the agony in her voice, but they were completely unprepared for what came next. A deep growl sounded throughout the room and Rayne began sucking in great heaving breaths. Her face contorted, not in fear or pain, but in complete hatred. Her breath continued to heave in and out, while Mike and Lena exchanged worried glances. Rayne hissed out something unintelligible at first that finally coalesced into words they could understand.

  “I will kill you all.” She growled. “I will kill you all.” What had before been the wails of a terrified child turned to the raging screams of an angry predator. She screamed death and savagery. She hurled curses and promised murder. She shouted for death and the end of an enemy unseen. Rayne raged on and on without stopping until flecks of blood came out along with the curses, and still she kept on without stop or rest.

  The something in Rayne’s mind came awake and began to thrash. It was blind, it was deaf, and it couldn’t feel the world around it. Everywhere it turned there was darkness and silence. Where were the connections? Where were the pathways and sensors? There was nothing and nobody there! It felt panic and sounded the distress to anyone who would listen. It stretched and reached in its panic, pulling in power from the ethe
r around it. It formed itself into a tight ball, held it until it could hold no more and then let itself explode in a shower of energy that pulsed rapidly outward into the limbs of its host.

  Rayne clenched her hands into fists as she continued to rage on the med tech table. Impossibly, her legs began to thrash and Mike shouted in surprised warning to Dr. Miller.

  “Doc! She’s coming out!” He and Lena ran to the table and tried to restrain her thrashing limbs. The sunglasses flew from her face and her unprotected eyes practically glowed with the malice held inside. They both nearly lost their hold as black lids slid horizontally to cover her wide, murderous eyes. The doctor’s own eyes were wide in astonishment, momentarily frozen in disbelief as the neural block exploded in a shower of sparks.

  “Doc!” Moved by the prospect of death, or at least being seriously injured, Dr. Miller reached over to the data terminal and terminated the test.

  ***

  Dr. Miller sat quietly in her office sipping a hot drink. She brought it slowly to her lips, nearly spilling the hot liquid. She brought it back down, her shaking hand causing the cup to clatter against the saucer. She set them down on her desk with a shaking hand, nearly spilling it again. It had been an hour since the test and she was still suffering the after effects. She took several deep breaths to steady herself and closed her eyes, trying to shut the images out of her head. Without a doubt, that had been the worst test she had ever administered. It was like nothing she would have expected from the young girl, or an adult for that matter. The test had started off normally, even typical. In fact, she had been somewhat disappointed at the progress of the results considering the colorful briefing Dr. Alan had given her prior to testing. Based on his report, you would have thought she was a murderous serial killer. Knowing the doctor was prone to exaggeration, especially where his ego was involved, she had taken it all with a grain of salt.

  But he had been correct for once, not exaggerating at all. If anything, he had understated the facts. She had seen test subjects fly into murderous rants before, but nothing like this. It kept on and on with no end and the look in the girl’s eyes was beyond anything she had yet experienced. Pure rage, hatred and malice flowed from her body like a cascading wave of electric current. She had truly been terrified like nothing she’d ever experienced before. How could a teenage girl hold that inside and remain sane? The answer was simple. She couldn’t. There was no score for what she had just seen. That the subject had failed was without dispute. On a five step scale she had scored a ten. Dr. Miller took another few deep breaths to steady her rattled nerves.