Connection - 40

~1140 words

Ugh...
What was that!? A voice exploded from the ringing in Everen's head.

What? Everen asked thickly.

I thought you'd died!

What? Everen repeated.

I was so scared. Everyone's been dying and I thought it was you too and of course you didn't respond for days, and I thought I was gonna be alone forever. What even happened?

Everen felt like she was thinking through soup, and half of Kerra's words didn't mean anything at all. Kerra, listen... I can't...

She could feel Kerra's frustration burning through her mind, before it ebbed a bit. I'll talk to you when you're back to your senses but you need to tell me what happened.

Free from Kerra's voice, Everen was able to get a sense of where she was. She was lying down in a quiet room, though she could tell someone was nearby by small tapping sounds and the occasional sigh. When she pried her eyes open -- they felt like they'd been wallpapered over -- she saw that she was in Janna's office, on one of the beds. Janna was tapping away at her tablet, as usual.

"What's going on?" is what Everen tried to say, but all that came out was a rasping hiss, accompanied by a sharp pain in her throat.

Janna immediately looked up at her, standing when she met Everen's open eyes. "Good grief, don't try to talk, Everen!" She hurried over to stand at Everen's side. "The captain got you in the neck with that pen, and it was, shall we say, not pretty. Luckily you had the only nurse on the entire ship with you in the room, otherwise you could have been dead in minutes."

Everen was suddenly very aware of her neck. It hadn't hurt before she tried to speak, but it was wrapped in something. Everen couldn't see what it was. She looked around a little more and noticed that she had an IV in her arm, connected to a bag of liquid hanging from the IV pole.

"We rushed you back here and I operated immediately." Janna sighed and looked at something in the corner. "They really should have brought a real surgeon on board. I have some trauma and surgical experience, but it's not enough for something life-threatening like that. And the surgical robots creep me out. They did a good job on you, but I always wonder, what if they're bugged? It's hard for me to trust them when you could have died with a single misstep." She looked back at Everen, fear in her eyes. "I just didn't want to lose you. It would've been all my fault too."

Everen wanted to say, "Of course it wasn't your fault! Did you stab me in the neck? No! Of course not. This is all the captain's fault. None of this would have happened if she wasn't a murderer!" But she couldn't, so she just tried to communicate it with her eyes. It would be so much easier if Janna was telepathic too.

"Don't worry, you're gonna be okay. They have some really great drugs on this ship, not to mention cutting-edge technology. Although, I guess back home all of this stuff is super old news. But you probably don't care too much about that. Um, what else do you want to know about?" Janna peered into Everen's face.

Everen tried to indicate that she just liked listening to Janna talk but didn't feel that her subtle eyebrow movements were very helpful in portraying that message.

"Right, don't talk." Janna ran a hand through her hair. "You've been in and out of sleep after the surgery for the past couple days. I'm sure the drugs have been helping with that. What's happened since then hm..." Janna tapped her lips with the pads of her fingers. "Oh! The captain has been locked up!"

Everen cocked an eyebrow.

Likely encouraged by a facial expression that she could parse, Janna plowed ahead. “Yeah! I don’t know how much you remember, but the captain stabbed you in the neck with a metal pen, and Benji and I totally caught her red-handed. Literally.” She smirked at Everen who grimaced.

Janna stifled a laugh. “I guess all the blood would’ve been too gruesome to joke about for a normal person, but copious amounts of blood has kind of been my everyday life recently.” She paused for a second, as if collecting her thoughts. “So I immediately began administering first aid as Benji wrestled the captain into submission. He called for backup on his communicator and practically the whole ship stampeded into the hallway.” She grinned, but Everen thought she still looked worried.

Worried about what? The Captain? Or Me? Everen tried to make a little amusement shine in her eyes. She was really surprised at how little she hurt physically when she wasn’t trying to talk, though it still felt like she was trying to think through fog.

“The captain was not going to be turned in without a fight, though,” Janna went on. “She tried to frame the two of us as the killers, but Benji spoke over her frenzied accusations and explained everything. That man can really remain calm in a heated moment. It was almost scary.” Her eyes were unfocused.

Probably reliving the moment, Everen reasoned.

“Long story short,” Janna said suddenly, her eyes refocusing, “everyone believed us over the captain, and now she’s being held in an empty cabin, under constant watch. I daresay none of us really know quite what to do with her.” Janna turned almost absentmindedly and started straightening the already perfectly straight sheets on the bed next to Everen. “We’ve really just been waiting for you.”

Me? Everen wanted to ask.

Janna was quiet for a few breaths. “None of us know what to do, so we figured you could ask Abyssia what is to be done. Obviously Clarisse Bevington is no longer going to be our captain, but who can take her place? What do we do with someone so dangerous?”

Everen tried to reach out to Kerra but her brain and the connection were still too vague to properly access. She steeled herself and tried to tell Janna this, but pain gripped her throat and once again, all that escaped her throat was a hiss.

Janna spun around. “What did I say about not trying to talk?”

Everen raised her eyebrows, trying to ignore the pain.

“Don’t answer that,” Janna muttered.

Everen tried to nod without moving her neck but that proved almost impossible.

Sighing, Janna said, “Okay, am I leaving anything else out? She was captured, she’s being watched… Oh yeah, she still hasn’t given us a reason why yet. She’s clammed up pretty good. But I bet we’ll get something out of her eventually. That’s the mystery that everyone’s trying to solve now.”