Ouroboros Episode One

  Chapter 10

  Carson Blake

  Without another word, she turned around and promptly fell asleep.

  He blinked back his surprise.

  Then he saw it.

  Her left hand.

  It twitched as if it were trying to catch hold of something.

  The move was slight, but it was there.

  His expression compressed with confusion and suspicion.

  Just what was wrong with her?

  How had her implant malfunctioned?

  And what exactly did she keep dreaming of?

  Before she'd woken up, he'd sat dutifully in her room. As he had, he'd seen her dream.

  It had been fitful. Her hand had kept clutching back and forth, catching nothing but air.

  He'd pointed it out to a passing doctor, but they'd dismissed it as random nerve activity.

  Carson couldn't dismiss it, though.

  He couldn't dismiss anything. All he could do was sit there and remember - in perfect, agonizing detail - what had happened in her room.

  He tried to reassure himself her implant had just malfunctioned, but it was a small and bitter consolation.

  He wanted a better reason.

  He wanted this to be more than an accident.

  Yes, that was it. That was why he couldn't ignore her twitching hand. That's why he couldn't pull himself from her side, even though she was asleep again.

  He needed this not to be random.

  Though he didn't really know why.

  ?.

  With a heavy blink, he realized he was very much tired, and very much confused.

  He'd had one hell of a night, and he couldn't realistically spend the rest of the day sitting by a random cadet's bedside.

  Because, seriously, he hardly knew her.

  People would start to talk.

  Reluctantly, he got to his feet.

  He tried to make it to the door, but he couldn't.

  Instead, he turned, and he sat back down again.

  Her left hand kept twitching as she slept.

  Again, a restless silence descended on her, and he sat there uncomfortably on the edge of his chair as he listened to it.

  She shifted her head to the side, sighing heavily.

  She didn't wake up, though.

  A part of him felt wrong for watching her while she slumbered.

  In fact, again he pushed to his feet.

  This time he walked toward the door resolutely.

  He didn't reach it.

  She whispered something.

  "Help me."

  Just two little words.

  He could barely make them out.

  And they locked him to the spot.

  She shifted again, her left hand clutching harder at the air.

  He stood there in the doorway, staring at her, waiting to hear it once more.

  Just as his heart started to calm, she whispered those two little words again, "help me."

  She was still unconscious; the computer panel lodged into the wall above her bed confirmed that.

  She was just talking in her sleep.

  She said it one last time, then she shifted, rolling over, wrapping her arms around herself.

  She stilled.

  Her left hand stopped clutching at the air, and she didn't whisper another word.

  It took him a long time to leave. In fact, it wasn't until a doctor walked in beside him that he managed to shift back from her.

  He told the doctor she'd woken up, then he backed out of the room.

  As he walked through the corridors of the medical bay, he felt numb.

  Her whispered words kept echoing in his head.

  She'd been asleep, and they had meant nothing, but he couldn't stop them from reverberating through his mind.

  It took a long time to shake off their effects, but he couldn't forget them, no matter how hard he tried. Work, however, got in the way. And soon enough Carson found himself pulled into one distracting task after another.

  He didn't get a chance to go back to see her that day. In fact, by the time he went to check on her, she'd been discharged again.

  This time he didn't wait to chance upon her naturally. He went straight to her apartment.

  True, he hardly knew her.

  And, yeah, people might start to wonder why he was paying 'the worst recruit in 1000 years' so much attention.

  But that didn't stop him.