”Easy now, kid.”
It has been five hundred years and I still wake up screaming.
“I got you, kid. You’re alright.”
Five hundred years. Those lockers weren’t working, but that didn’t matter. We both died in there but that didn’t matter.
“Hush now. You don’t want that prick of a shrink to get yet another good excuse to go poking in to your head.”
Five hundred years, off from shipping lanes, frozen solid because something had damaged the drop-ship and recycling and environmental systems weren’t functioning. Fucking five hundred years and they got the nerve to bring us back like it was nothing, like we were a bunch of fucking Sleeping Beauties just waiting for our Princes!
“You have to calm down before this ruckus wakes up everybody else.”
They brought him back with the help from the maggots. They had eaten his skeleton clean, but researchers we’re able to extract his DNA from their feces. From there on it was no problem to grow a batch of cells and plant them on to the skeleton and just wait for everything to grow back.
“Shut up and I don’t have to knock you out.”
With me it was a bit trickier. Since my locker hadn’t worked either I had splattered to nice and colorful mural all over it. They waited until he was all back to himself and just tossed him in to my locker. His body heat melted my remains and my cells activated, hungrier than they had been ever before. At one moment I was actually more a part of him, slippery membrane of tendons, veins and hunger covering him from head to toe. And when I came to, got back my real form and laid next to him he died again. It took almost a week from him to recover from the drain.
“Good girl. Just go back to sleep, okay? I’ll… I’ll be over there on that chair in case you need anything.”
He can’t die. I can’t die as long as he’s alive. And we’re not expendable anymore, like him and his team was when they were sent to retrieve the cargo from our crashed ship. We have to stay sane and alive so that we can guide another team to that location because they want to study closer those black creatures that live out there.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of you.”
And he doesn’t see. Doesn’t realize that it’s no my wellbeing I’m worried over.
“What the hell are you doing, kid?”
What does it look like? That bed was warm and cozy, but his lap is safer. I can curl myself around him and feel him breathing, hear his heart beating and those powerful arms around me when he stands up and starts walking back and forth, staying out of reach of the cameras that are supposed to monitor us when we sleep.
“Can’t sleep with those fucks staring at you?”
Can’t sleep because he sits on that cold plastic chair all alone, his head drooping from side to side as he in turn falls asleep and jolts awake. First thing we did when they put us in this room we made a deal. One of us would always stay awake while other slept. I have been doing most of the sleeping but he claims that it’s okay. That he slept with those maggots long enough.
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“And that’s our cue…”
Door is sliding open and there are people waiting for us. Armed people. With uniforms matching to ours. Our unit. At least part of it. That can’t be all. That planet ate up fifty highly trained men and women the last time. They can’t possibly send us down there with a unit of ten.
“Stay close to me. Make sure that you get in to a locker that’s next to mine. And God help them if they’re not working properly…”
Everybody’s laughing and telling how cute and old-fashioned he is. Because there’s no separate lockers anymore, just a huge tank. Everybody gets in and it gets filled with some kind of jelly, and pressure is adjustable. Much better than old lockers that were death traps anyway, malfunctioning almost fifty percent of the time one way or the other. And it’s his turn to laugh when they tell him that everybody gets in to the tank naked. His turn to laugh because nobody has really paid a thought to my mutation and what will happen to a poor sucker that accidentally brushes against me when we’re in that tank.
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“Just relax, kid. It’s going to be alright.”
And then it becomes impossible to speak. Cool liquid flows in to my locker. He demanded a locker for both of us. He wasn’t going to go in to that tank knowing that I’d be all alone out here. And I’m falling to sleep. There’s a hand against the plex of his locker. A real hand. His palm. He’s in there alone. Just him. Not an army of squirming and wriggling maggots…
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Should have known better than to start writing this. Logie got the last word. Smug bastard.