Exiles
Chapter 30 Returned
She flexed her fingers, one of the few bits of her body she could feel and move, and dug them into whatever it was she was lying on. It was soft and warm, a bed perhaps? Something didn’t feel right, where was she? How did she get here her? More importantly who was she? Her mind was a minefield of disconnected memories none of which made much sense. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to open her eyes. They were heavy, too heavy, involuntarily she let out a sigh as her tired muscles relaxed. Off to her right she heard a muffled cry and the clatter of something falling onto the floor. At least her hearing worked. She fought against the tiredness and tried to analyse the sound, metal on metal, to give her a clue as to where she was.
She was dimly aware of someone leaning over her, the dull hum of electronics. Then she heard the voice, a startled female voice. At least she wasn’t the only person surprised to be here.
“Doctor, Doctor, I think she’s coming round.”
The faintest of smiles crossed her lips. So that’s one mystery solved. I’m in a hospital, a hospital bed, immobilised and drugged. Now all I have to do is figure out who put me here she though as she felt herself drift off into the darkness again.
The next time she came round she could hear two voices in the room. The first she recognised instantly as the nurse who called the Doctor. The second, a male voice, was unfamiliar, she assumed this was the Doctor. She strained every fibre of her body trying to focus on the conversation, but the voices were muffled and she struggled to catch more than odd disjointed words. She tried in vain to open her eyes. Damn them, damn their drugs, she needed to know what was going on.
Again she had the sensation of someone learning over her, no more than one, two, one either side of the bed? More electronic humming, something across her chest pinning her down. Suddenly someone lifted her head up off the pillows and she felt something being slipped over her head. It was then, as she felt the cold device against the skin of her scalp, she realised her head had been shaved. “Bastards” It was a superhuman effort to utter that single word. At least her brain told her she had, she was so heavily sedated she could have just imagined it.
She felt her head settle back onto the pillows as they secured the device and adjusted it. Then suddenly without warning she felt a finger pull back her left eyelid and shine a blinding white light into her eye. Whoever it was flicked from her left eye to the right one and back again a couple of times, before dropping her back into total darkness and a surreal world of after images.
Again she had the sensation of someone learning over her looking at something above her head this time. The male voice spoke again. “Her memories are still too fragmented, we can’t risk waking her up yet. I’m upping her sedatives and the other drugs till we see some coherence.”
Another voice, female, angry, entered the conversation. “Unacceptable. I need her up and running, do what you have to do to get that bag of meat functioning.”
She felt the soft hiss of an injector, more drugs, as she drifted off into a deep, black, dreamless sleep, the male voice echoing in her head. “You shouldn’t be here, you’ll ruin everything if she see’s you...”
She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling, blinking in the harsh white clinical light. She rolled her head first to the left and then the right taking in the surroundings. Her bed was in a small private room in what appeared to be some sort of hospital. An array on unknown equipment was parked neatly along the wall to her right, to the left there was a nursing station with a locker beneath it and a locked medicine cabinet above it. A small tablet computer, along with some neatly arranged medical instruments she didn’t recognise, sat on top of the locker. Beyond it she could make a out a small cubicle on the far side of the room. A bathroom perhaps, toilet and shower? The room then was completely self contained. She looked down the bed towards the door. There was a small black box above it, a security camera, with a small blinking red LED beneath it. The light flashed green as the door slid open, blinking back to red again, as it closed.
“Good you’re finally awake.” said the nurse, smiling as she stepped into view. “You gave us all quite a scare for a while. It was touch and go if we’d ever get you out of that coma.”
“Coma?” she whispered
“Yes dear, a very deep coma, but the Doctor will be along shortly and he can explain everything. Now let’s make you comfortable.”
She adjusted the bed and propped her up in a sitting position, pouring a tumbler of water from the jug on the table at the foot of her bed and handing it to her.
“Thanks.” she said, through dry cracked lips, as she sipped the water. “I feel parched.”
“Yes, well, you would, we’ve been feeding you intravenously.”
“Thank you.” she said, handing the glass back, as she took a deep breath and ran her hand through her hair and down the back of her neck. “How long...” she stopped. “My hair it’s...”
“Yes it is rather long, but it was like that when you were transferred here. We try not to change the appearance of our coma patients, unless it’s absolutely necessary, it assists reorientation when we wake them up.”
“But my hair...”
“...Isn’t an issue. We can get a stylist in and do something with it if it’s not right, but right now I suggest you talk to the Doctor.” she said, as the door swished open again and the doctor dropped himself onto the bed beside her smiling.
“Welcome back.” he said, as the nurse picked up the tablet and passed it to him. He studied the data scrolling through it with the flick of finger. “You’ve been gone sometime, we didn’t think we’d get you back at one point.”
“Well I’m back now, back here, wherever here is?”
“Tell me.” he said, ignoring her question. “What do you remember?”
“Remember?”
“Yes what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Here in this room, nothing, nothing till I woke up just now. How did I get here?”
He smiled patiently and took her hand in his, they we’re cold, cold like the cold calculating smile he wore. “That’s good, but not what I meant. What’s the last thing you remember before waking up, before being here?”
She tried to recall the last thing she could remember, before waking up in this strange surreal hospital, full of slightly futuristic equipment, in advance of anything she had ever seen before. Her brain was like Swiss cheese, she tried to pull her memories together, fill in the gaps. Then it hit her and she started to panic and hyperventilate.
“I was shot, I tried to shield him and that bastard shot me twice in the chest, here!”
Instinctively she pulled her hand away from his and clutched her chest. The panic rising as she gasped for air, reliving what she believed were her dying moments. The pieces suddenly began to fall into place. They had brought her back from the dead. She wasn’t in a futuristic looking hospital, this was the future, she must have been in a coma for years. She looked down at her hands clutching her chest and imagined she could see the blood, her blood, seeping between her fingers, as her life force ebbed away. What had they done to her?
He gestured to the nurse and there was a soft hiss as something was injected into her neck and she fell back onto the pillows. He turned to the camera above the door and shook his head. “She’s not quite ready yet, but were making progress. That last tranche of data he recovered just needs a bit more time to integrate with what we already have.”
The intercom made the reply sound even colder and harsher than it actually was. “I hope for your sake it does. If we have to terminate this project, I’ll terminate you along with it.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Good, because don’t think for one minute I won’t do it.”
What seemed like the following days, merged into weeks, perhaps months. It was impossible to gauge or calculate the passage of time, as every encounter with the doctor followed the same pattern. It could have been a matter of hours for all
she knew. She’d wake up, drink, eat, be interrogated and then sedated. The same relentless routine, over and over again. Yet something was changing, the sensation that her brain was Swiss cheese gradually disappeared, as she pieced the memories together and reclaimed her past. She wondered if all coma patients had similar experiences and received similar treatment. Yet still something didn’t ring true and she still vividly recalled her first experiences of being in this room.
The doctor was sitting on the bed again talking to her. “So you were a freelancer, a relic hunter, you and your ‘partner’, your lover? Searching for something to sell to one of the big corporations, the big score that would set you up for life?”
She nodded. “Yes. We’d known each other since university, we were in the same xeno-archaeology class.” a smile crossed her face and she laughed. “Talk about naive, we we’re going to set up our very own research institute to pursue our own lines of enquiry.”
“Which were?”
“Lost civilisations. He believed that somewhere out there we’d find the thread that linked all life together. A common ancestor from which we all derived. Crazy idea right? But everyone’s got to have a dream that was his, mine too, for a while.”
“So what went wrong?”
“Everything, no money, no sponsors, no nothing. We became relic hunters, grave robbers, savaging alien tech wherever we could find it, for whoever wanted it, to scrape a living. I guess someone figured we were about to double-cross them, sent one of our rivals after us, or they just got greedy and decided to rob us. Who knows? The end result was the same.”
“And that’s when you got shot? Shielding him from the gunman?”
“Robbins, that was his name, Robbins, and if I ever get out of here, wherever here is, I’m going to hunt that bastard down.” she paused and looked around the room. “Mind you I guess it worked all right for him in the end, my partner that is, after all this treatment you’re giving me isn’t cheap. Assuming he’s paying for it of course.”
“That’s really not for me to say.”
“Funny that you keep questioning me day after day, but no one ever answers my questions. Where am I? How long I’ve been here, in a coma? What the hell this is all about?”
“All in good time. My job is simply to help you piece your life, your memories, back together, but that enough for one day. It’s nearly meal time, I’ll have some food sent in.” he said looking at the nurse.
She nodded obediently and left the room.
He stood up and made ready to leave, placing the tablet back on the nursing station. “I know it’s hard, but try not to worry. You’ll have the answers to all your questions very soon, I promise.” he turned his back on her and looked up at the camera over the door as he left, silently mouthing two words “She’s ready.”
The nurse came back into the room and placed a tray on the table. Then slid the table up the bed to where she sitting, adjusting to a suitable height for eating, before turning he back on her. Attending to the nursing station. She adjust her pillows and pulled herself up, reaching out to pull the serviette out from under the plate. As her finger touched it a small black arrow appeared in the corner indicating to her to turn it over. She pulled her finger away and it disappeared. Bio-ink, linked to her DNA, it was a message only she could see. Carefully she lifted the disposable plate and plastic cutlery off the tray and placed them on the table. She propped the tray up behind the plate, so she could read the message without the camera detecting it. Then opened up the serviette, as if preparing to eat, and watched the words appear.
‘You are being held prisoner. I can help you escape. Disable the nurse when the light under the camera goes out and take her uniform. Further instructions will follow on her pad.’
She turned it over so the writing was against her chest, plain side facing out, and tucked in into the neck of her hospital gown. Just then the red light under the camera winked out. The nurse was too busy prepping an injector, loading it with drugs from the cabinet above her head, to notice
“Hope you’re enjoying your meal dear, time for a booster shot when you’re finished.” she didn’t bother turning round as she spoke.
The back of the tray crashed against the back of the nurses head, sending her sprawling, face first, on to the floor. Collapsing in a groaning heap of shock and pain, momentarily stunned by the unexpected assault. She grabbed the injector from her limp hand and pumped the contents into her neck with a satisfying hiss. The moaning stopped. Anxiously she checked for a pulse, half expecting to find she'd killed the woman, and was relieved to find the injector had only contained what appeared to be sedatives after all. Checking the camera was still off, she rolled the unconscious woman over, unzipped her uniform, and unceremoniously stripped her down to her underwear. She decided against taking that. She’d have to find her own somewhere else. Thankfully they were of similar build and size, the uniform could have easily been made for her. She slipped her hospital gown over the nurses unconscious body and dragged her into the bed. Taking care to hide her face from the camera, making it look as if the nurse had sedated her. She tossed the food into the waste disposal and dropped the tray back on the table, pushing it to the foot of the bed. Then, checking the room was in order, picked up the nurses pad.
Moments later the cameras red light came back on. As she hid her face from the camera, she caught sight of herself in the polished stainless steel door of her cell and gasped, nearly dropping the pad. She barely recognised herself. The youthful woman she'd always know herself to be had vanished, replace by someone with the same unmistakable features, but considerably older. Twenty, perhaps thirty years older. Must have been one hell of a coma she thought. If indeed that’s what it was, and they hadn’t simply spent all this time brainwashing her into believing she was someone else. The vibrations of the pad in her hand brought her back to the here and now, the speculation would have to wait till another time.
She checked the message on the pad. ‘Pick up the nurses pass, use it to leave the room. There's a fully prepped courier class ship in launch tube seven. Follow the route indicated on this pad to the flight crew changing rooms. Locker nine has been keyed to the nurses pass. Inside you will find a gun, flight suit, money and other useful items. Now go, quickly.’
She smiled at the unconscious lump of humanity covered up in the bed before swiping the nurses ID card across the sensor. The light under the camera briefly flashed green, the door slid open and she stepped casually out into the corridor. She kept her head down, looking at the pad as she moved swiftly along the corridors indicated on the route. No one gave her a second glance as she moved around what appeared to be a very large starship. Just stay calm and act like you belong here, she kept repeating over and over again to herself. They're all too busy, wrapped up in their own tasks to notice you, unless you start acting out of place. You’ve gotten out of tighter scrapes than this you and...
She stopped momentarily. Where was he? What had he been doing all this time? Did he know she was here? Had he put her here or was he the secret assistant helping her escape? So many questions, so few answers. Suddenly she realised people were looking at her, wondering why she had stopped. She glanced down at the pad pretended to be checking something and moved on, hoping she hadn’t aroused to much suspicion. There were eyes burning into her back as she turned the corner, she could feel them. The flight crew changing rooms were directly in front of her. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room, thankfully it was deserted. She opened locker nine and pulled out a pistol, holster and belt full of spare clips from the top shelf. It was then she felt the hand on her shoulder.
Indistinctively she swung round and pistol whipped her would be assailant. Smacking the solid metal grip into his temple as he sank to the floor with a sickening thud. Blood began to slowly seep from a small gash in his scalp. She hurriedly emptied the locker of its contents. Tossing them on a stainless steel bench that stretched the length of the room, between the rows of identical lockers.
Then bundled the unconscious crewman's body into it. As she slipped out of the nurses uniform she breathed a sigh of relief. There was a vest and pants amongst the contents of the locker, as well as a red flight suit, white helmet, handful of credit chips, pilots identity bracelet, pre-loaded with navigation data, and black messenger bag. She slipped the credit chips into the suits inside pocket. Clipped on the bracelet, that she hoped would give her access to the ship, and secured the belt around her waist before holstering the gun.
Just then the door opened. Hurriedly she slipped on the helmet to hide her face. Threw the nurses uniform into the locker, over the unconscious crewman, slamming it shut and grabbed the bag. She could check its contents later. Nodding casually at the startled mechanic, who it seemed had slipped in to you use the bathroom, she made her way out onto the flight deck. She shouldered the bag, took a deep breath, and strolled casually towards the access port for tube seven. She was just about to access the hatch that would drop her into the cockpit of the ship, waiting for her in the tube below, when the flight deck controller stopped her.
“Hey you, where do you think you’re going? I’ve got nothing scheduled.” he barked scrolling through the launch itinerary on his pad.
She help up her left arm showing the identity bracelet and the messenger bag. “Courier special delivery.”
“It’s not on my schedule.” he said scanning her bracelet. “Your ID checks out, now show me what in the bag.” he reached out to take it from her.
She pulled the bag away and before he could react he found the pistol resting on his forehead, between his eyes. “Like I said special delivery, need to know basis, and trust me, you don’t need to know.”
“Damn space jocks, you all think you own the place. Just because you can afford to pay a higher tithe to the Brethren than the rest of us.” he muttered under his breath as he backed off. "So what level of salvation have you achieved?”
She pressed the identity bracelet against the access panel and opened the drop tube. “Buddy I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Thought so.” he said as he reached for the alarm.
It was the very last though he had. She pulled the trigger and the plasma bolt hit him squarely in the forehead, frying his synapses, sending him spinning backwards onto the deck. Ignoring the alarms she dropped the pistol into its holster, then gripped the top of the open hatch, swinging herself into the drop tube and sliding effortlessly into the courier ships cockpit. The cockpit cover automatically sliding over her head and sealing her in as the flight harness locked her into the seat. She initiated the launch sequence, noting with satisfaction the ship had already absorbed the flight plan from her bracelet. The G-forces pressing her back into the seat as the ship was spat out of the tube into space.