by Aline Riva
“Back from where?” he murmured.
“I don't know how much you remember,” she added, not seeming to care about his question, “But I'm not dead, Rik. And neither are you.”
He had closed his eyes as he listened to her voice as she said things that made no sense, then it surprised him that he felt her kiss on his cheek, soft and tender and too brief.
“Do you still hurt? Does your head hurt? I bet you can still feel it...” her voice cracked with emotion, “That fucking parasite!” she said tearfully, “Why did it have to happen like that?”
Then as she faded out and he drifted alone in the void of darkness once more, he tried to make sense of what she had said, but found none. Cora was dead, he was sure he had a memory somewhere of something that left him sure she was dead. The word parasite meant something too. He wasn't sure if it was the memories or the possibility that another drug h ad affected the impact of the memory wipe, but he was remembering something about being infected with a parasite. He didn't know what it did to him or how it happened, but it had crawled inside his head...
He guessed he was on so much medication as his mind tried to work through it that he was having some crazy dreams. That had to be why Cora was here, because that thought remained heavy as a tombstone that she was no longer alive. But Mack, he wasn't sure. He could vaguely see him as a misty figure in his mind's eye, tall and grey haired, an athletic man who was in good shape despite being quite a few years older than him – and he had been his best friend. Why had he allowed his best friend to be wiped from his memories?
“Sin...” he whispered, recalling the name of the woman he loved.
But there was no reply and Jinx continued to drift in darkness that reminded him of space and the kind of peace that could stretch on for eternity.
As she sat back on the table with her legs open and the table tilted back, Sin was thinking on all Neve had told her before she had agreed to have the zestion ring removed. As Neve pulled a tray of instruments closer and sat at the end of the table, close to her open legs, Sin caught her breath as fear made her throat go tight. The piercing was feeling heavy, making her body throb with the promise of arousal that would not leave her alone.
Neve had draped a sheet over her lower body, she could not see the view from her waist down, but as Neve focused the light overhead between her parted legs then paused to put on surgical gloves, she noticed she looked back, taking in the sight of the large and heavy piercing, she said nothing then sat down again and as something cold and metallic opened her up, exposing the area, Sin caught her breath.
“Can you take it out of me?” she asked, her view obscured by the sheet as she felt Neve examining the area.
“The smaller the piercing the easier it is to remove,” Neve replied, “The ring feels anchored inside the body – I'm guessing the larger the ring, the larger the shards that have grown into the body. Most likely through the clitoris and deeper into the pelvic region. You have at least one shard that has gone deep. When the ring is out if I can't get the shards out entirely, I will have to cut away the tissue. You won't feel it because the chemical reaction that kills the zestion will make it go numb. It would be easier... keeping your clitoris will be purely cosmetic, the chances of ever having any sensation there again is very remote.”
“I want you to try. Even if I can't feel it, I want to look normal.”
Sin looked up at the ceiling as she blinked away tears.
“I will try,” Neve replied, “I'm just warning you that I may have to remove it.”
As she turned back to the tray and arranged instruments, Sin looked away from the sharpness of the scalpel and the surgical scissors and the other tools as she recalled waking from the crash to find Jinx, deranged thanks to the parasite, demanding she was fitted with an orgasm metal that would make her completely his own...
“I'm going to spray on some disinfectant, then I'm going to apply a small amount of formula to the metal to make it crack,” she told her, “It will sting and then you'll feel the ring and the tissue get cold and then the clitoral area will be numb. I'll do it as quickly as I can.”
Neve reached for a bottle of clear fluid and activated the spray. As a burning sensation made Sin gasp, she closed her eyes, shaking despite the mild sedative Neve had given her before starting the treatment. She heard her say something about removing the ring, then the heat and all sensation was dashed away by sharp, penetrating cold that Sin could only liken to an ice cube placed on her sex. The sensation vanished quickly, along with every trace of feeling, leaving her clitoris numb.
“I've got the ring out,” she heard Neve say, “I'm just removing the smaller shards... “ she paused, patting her body with something that the feeling part of her identified as soft, then she spoke again.
“It's all out apart from the central shard. I'm extracting that now... I'll try to get it out whole. If I can't, I'm sorry.”
Sin held her breath, blinking back tears as she fixed her sights on the ceiling and tried not to hate Jinx as much as she did. Right now, she wanted to go into the room where he was lying helpless in a coma and suffocate him with a pillow...
“Bastard...” she whispered.
Neve was still working.
“I've got the shard out,” she said, “It was razor sharp and I had to make a small cut into the tissue to extract the final piece.”
She paused to seal the small cut and the pinprick wounds where the smaller shards had been removed, then she sprayed the area twice with the spray and the whole of her exposed groin stung like hell, apart from her clitoris, where she felt no sensation at all.
“So I might be okay, please tell me I'm right?” Sin said in a shaken voice.
“There's a small chance you will recover slight feeling in the tissue, yes. I doubt you'll ever be capable of orgasm again - at least, not through external stimulation. It will look almost same as it used to,expect some swelling to remain, but the clitoral area will most likely stay partially or – more probably - completely numb. You'll be red and swollen up for a few days and although you can't feel it, remember the wounds need to heal so try and rest as much as you can.”
“Thanks,” Sin said quietly, then as the table was adjusted and Neve turned away to take off her gloves, Sin felt a jolt at the sight of how much blood covered them. She was still stinging between her legs, but the place where the ring had once sat was numb, felt non existent.
Neve said she would clean her up and then she could get some rest, but Sin gave no reply, blinking away tears as once again, anger rose as she thought of Jinx, responsible for this damage, now resting and unaware of his former crimes...
She truly hated him at that moment.
Sin wanted to kill him, wanted to watch as he took his last breath...
“I'll put a bed in the same room as Jinx,” said Neve, “You can rest beside him.”
Then she left the room and Sin lay there, her thoughts between weeping over the outcome of the zestion removal and the building anger she felt towards the man responsible for it. Putting her in the same room as the bastard who had killed her ability to climax, probably forever, was going to be a real deciding moment – she had not lost sight of their intent regarding the parasite, the mission party had to be warned and so did earth authorities – but as she lay there with part of her sex feeling so dead that it seemed non existent, thoughts of murder played through her mind, stemmed from a powerful rage that was reaching a point she was not sure could be controlled...
A short while later, Sin was resting on top of the covers on a bed a short distance from where Jinx lay, still deeply in a coma. The lights had been turned down and Sin had been advised to rest and get some sleep, mainly because of the trauma she had been through having the procedure. Neve had been very understanding, telling her that it was a difficult outcome to live with, and she understood if she needed time alone to work through her emotions, but Sin had lied and said she just needed to sleep as her rage had simmered quietly and as Neve had left
the room, she had turned her head and looked over at Jinx, as hatred rose in a heart that had once warmed through with love.
Sin had been resting on top of the covers in the sheer, short night gown that he had loved to see her wear – it was the first thing she had grabbed from the ship, to wear when recovering from the procedure, something she had brought in a day before, but she had not mentioned it to to Neve as the subject of the piercing removal had hung heavy cover her, weighted with the dread of uncertainty.
Now the uncertainty was gone and the outcome was almost as bad as she had expected – she still had her body intact physically, but sensation was gone and she felt empty and too aware of the nothingness in a place where the ring had taught her to feel so aware, all of the time.
Sin sat up, raised the hem of the gown and looked between her parted legs. It was the first time she had looked since the ring had been removed, and for a moment she felt relieved to see her body was clearly intact, minus the ring. But her clitoris was still swollen, perhaps slightly more than it had been when the heavy alien meal had been inside it. The whole area was red and looked painful, although she felt nothing there at all as she got up and took a step closer to the other bed, the bed where Jinx was still unconscious.
For a moment she stood there, trying to make sense of what she did feel – the rest of her body was as sensitive as ever, all there and complete, but for that one absence that made her rage build up at its loss.
She went up to his bedside and looked down at him as fury burned in her eyes.
“You fucking bastard!” she hissed in a low voice, “I guess you got what you wanted in your sick and twisted mind... Neve said I'll never come again, I might as well ask her to cut it off! It's your fault! Don't bother coming back from this, just die, you owe me that much!”
Jinx gave no response, his eyes were closed and his breathing was steady. She looked to the line in his arm that delivered all the life saving meds he needed to keep him stable and considered ripping it out, then she wondered if suffocating him would be a quicker solution.
Then as she stood there thinking about killing him, a deep crimson stain began to seep through the dressing that covered the scar beneath his bandages, it spread quickly as Jinx turned his head, seeming to know on some level that something was wrong even though he did not wake, his eyes were still closed as a trickle of blood escaped through the bandages and ran down his face, staining the pillow.
Sin's eyes widened in horror, then she turned from his bedside and ran to the door and flung it wide.
“NEVE!” she yelled, her voice echoing down the hallway.
The crisis was over in minutes. Neve had hurried in, grabbed scissors from a tray and cut away the bandages. The sealed wound that ran across his shaved head was splitting open and leaking blood, a quick burst from a skin sealant and an adjustment to his IV had put the matter right, then she had cleaned him up, replaced the pillow and this time taped a smaller dressing over the fresh scar.
“He just needed extra sealant and stronger meds to speed the healing,” Neve told her as she turned from his bedside.
Sin nodded, then she wiped a tear from her face.
“But he's okay? I mean, what if the bleed was internal as well -”
“It was just the surface wound,” Neve assured her, “ it's a separate cocktail of meds for healing the brain tissue. He's not in danger. Now you should get some rest and stop worrying about him. I now have a parasite to study and kill. If you need me just...yell, you seem to be good at that!” she smiled kindly at Sin and then left the room.
Sin was still tearful as she stood there looking at Jinx. In the moment the bleed had started, all her anger had been dashed away as she had remembered the true cause of his condition and of hers, too:
The parasite.
Jinx wasn't to blame for anything he had done while that thing was inside his head, directing his thoughts, feeding his mind with its needs and its orders...
Suddenly she didn't blame him any more. She had never understood more clearly than she did now – none of it was his fault. She couldn't even blame him for the ring that had damaged her body – it was the parasite, that little bastard trapped under glass in Neve's lab that was about to be experimented on and then dissected...
Tears streaked her face as she recalled how Jinx had realised the truth about the creature and refused to comply with its wishes. She had seen that fight going on inside his mind, reflected in his eyes, as they had travelled across the galaxy to get here... She twisted the gold band on her finger, remembering how he had married her just so she would have the memory, in case he didn't make it through.
She was already seeing the real Rik Jinx, even if he didn't wake from the coma, even if he didn't live much longer, she knew the man he really was, the man who had recognised the danger to others and wanted to prevent the parasites from ever using a human as a host again. That was who he was when all the creature had influenced had fallen away, he was a good man, far braver than he knew, and she loved him and knowing all of this made her regret ever feeling such rage, such hatred towards him for all he could not be held accountable for.
“I'm so sorry I said those things, you're not to blame,” she said softly, then she noticed there was easily room on his bed for two, and she got on the bed and lay beside him, clasping his hand as she rested her head on his shoulder, her face and his skin and then his pillow wet with tears as she silently willed him to hold on and get through this, because now the parasite was gone, so was the killer and the cannibal and all that was left was Rik Jinx, flier – the man she loved and she desperately wanted enough time with him to get to know him...
Time passed.
Sin healed – at least, the wound healed, but no feeling returned to the damaged flesh. She didn't give it much thought because she clung to the hope that time would heal all wounds – including Rik's. Week after week had passed by and then time had stretched on further, her recovery had been rapid, a matter of days, but Jinx, although out of danger and remaining stable, still showed no sign of waking. His scar had healed well and his hair had grown back, hiding all trace of the ordeal that had left him locked in a coma. And with Jinx still unable to wake, it left her stranded here, clinging to hope that they would be leaving together when the ordeal ended and he finally opened his eyes. While she waited for him to wake, she was seeing this place with her eyes opened wide now, she had learned much, mostly, how to survive:
The planet was at the back end of the galaxy, one of those shit pits that Sin had been expecting, its barren surface had been over come by building underground, where streets and alleys and markets and houses were all set out under a high artificial sky that changed from sunlight to darkness, simulating the switch from day to night, earth style. At first the place had made her nervous, with the strange and shady people and their shady dealings and the looks they shot her as she passed them by.
There was no good and bad side of town, all existed side by side, the grand buildings and the slums, here in Sector Three, each offered its own service or product, all at the buyer or user's risk, there was no regulation here, no earth rules thanks to the outer limit independence claim staked on the planets out in Delta, where it was pretty much travel, buy and try with no safety net. It was a place for the brave or the stupid, she had not yet decided which, but had soon understood it was a place of great risk and danger to the ordinary traveller.
In the three months Sin had been in Karashi, she had learned much, now wearing a body suit of smooth black fabric that clung to her body, the holstered blaster at her hip looked very fitting, resting next to her hip and set to kill mode, a warning to would be robbers and would be rapists, and worse.
The Princess Galaxy was docked above ground, it was a long ride to the top but she took that ride almost every day, to stay above ground, on board the ship to watch over Jinx...
The thought of Rik Jinx stayed bright in her mind as she left the below ground world far behind and the doors opened to a barren s
urface where winds kicked up dust clouds. She pulled up a silk scarf she wore about her neck, covered the lower half of her face and headed towards the place where the ship had been docked since arrival.
On reaching the ship and opening up the hatch she stepped inside, greeted by the calm of the vessel and the instant promise of escape from the harsh surface made it feel like coming home. As the hatch closed and shut out the dust and the wind, she pulled down the scarf and headed straight for the medical bay.
Entering the room, she went over to the bed where Jinx had spent the past three months, his eyes were closed, he was breathing slowly and easily but the coma that had lasted since the surgery showed no sign of lifting.
She crossed the room and went over to the locked, sealed case set into the wall and her eyes turned cold as she glared at the sliced open creature preserved within, this was the beast that had lived inside the head of the man she loved, turning Rik Jinx the flier into a monster...
Time was slipping away like sand through an hourglass as the dead creature sat preserved. They had the parasite, they had isolated its weakness and understood how it functioned. But it was a matter of days before the research team landed on S69Q -1.
This mattered more than her own situation, something Jinx would not recall after being given the amnesia drug, he would remember none of it... As she twisted the gold band on her finger she wondered if there had been any sense in the five minute wedding ceremony she had agreed to on the day they had landed here. It was all forgotten now, if he woke he wouldn't even recall what had happened to her because of the zestion ring – or its later removal... He would remember nothing of his actions or their consequences regarding her or others - if he woke up again. He needed to wake and quickly, because they needed him, she and the Professor could not take on the parasites alone...