"That's moronic," she said.
"Well, I believe."
Oddly, Margo found the thought endearing, somehow romantic. While she didn't quite understand it, she could appreciate the capacity for human belief to sway one's perception.
"I believe, and I want this guy to know he's a fuck head." Doug pounded on the chamber again. "You hear that, shit stain!? You're a fuck head!"
Though Edward's mind had not returned to him, inside the chamber, his fingers twitched and curled.
Five
Occasionally, the Atlas crew had to work long cycles. Someone on the alternate shift wouldn't report for duty or would get ill and, because of the close quarters living, would be confined to their residence. To fill their absence, crew sometimes had to split the difference of the twelve-hour shift. Someone would stay late six hours; somebody else would come in six hours early.
Long cycles didn't bother Doug Fowler. After all, it wasn't like he had much else to do. He'd worked long cycles a few times before, but it had never been like this time. Sometimes, it wasn't so bad. He got to move around and talk to people. This time, however, he was stuck staring at an unconscious fuck bag in a metal tube who couldn't possibly go anywhere, and he was bored. It had to be punishment for something.
The long hours darkened the room like dusk, and Doug became tired. The medical deck had closed and would only reopen for emergencies, which, since most of the crew's work was finished and they could relax, was unlikely.
Fortunately for him, it was quiet, except for the hum of the medical equipment. His chair had stopped being comfortable around hour four, and at about the eighth hour, he wanted to go to sleep. Something happened around the time he should have gone off cycle. He suddenly became wired. It made him angry because, while the squint was able to leave and go play with her chemistry set or read a book or whatever the hell she did when she wasn't annoying him, he had to stay and make sure nothing happened to the shitheap.
They'd all probably thank him if he just put the guy out of his misery, but it wasn't his call.
Doug became more restless by the minute. He could probably just leave and no one would be the wiser, but he actually wanted the asshole to get better. He wanted to see Edward return to full health. And when Edward was back on his feet, Doug fully intended to lay him out on his ass.
For a while, Doug mindlessly flipped through his link files and applications, desperately seeking something to do, and then he thought, why couldn't he get some sleep? The jackoff was out. It wasn't right that Doug, who worked so hard and sacrificed so much and never lost his shit, couldn't get some shuteye, too.
He set an alarm on his link, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. It always helped him to fantasize about women when he tried to sleep. When he tried to conjure one up, the first image that came to him was the squint. It wasn't the first time he'd fantasized of a real woman, but it felt odd for some reason. Maybe it was disrespectful. Normally, he wouldn't have cared, but she'd been nice to him, and while he knew he wasn't the smartest guy in the room, she'd been patient with him without being condescending.
He let the fantasy continue. He liked her small stature. It touched something paternal in him, like she could use protection. He liked her lab coat. It made her different from all the other women, but he had her take it off to be able to see her slim body better. He imagined the curve of her hips into a tight waist. He imagined her taking down her ponytail, and her dark hair spreading over her shoulders. He imagined her thin-framed glasses around her round eyes, but he didn't make her take those off. He liked them right where they were.
As he continued down and found no trouble imagining her touch herself, Doug heard a knock, pulling him out of the fantasy.
His eyes shot open, and he looked around the room.
Moments passed, and he heard nothing else. He decided it was probably his mind playing tricks on him. It had always been a spiteful fuck. It probably was just jealous he was trying to turn it off. Or maybe it didn't like that he was redistributing blood to other parts of his body.
Doug settled back into his chair, and when he again was certain he was alone, he closed his eyes and brought Margo back.
Then he heard another knock. A short moment later, he heard several knocks, enough to know they came from Edward's tube.
Doug stood and walked cautiously over to the chamber. He wondered if the machine was glitching or if someone was playing a prank on him because it couldn't possibly be the fuck bag. He was stone cold out. The doc had said so.
The lumbering security officer approached the chamber cautiously because it was completely foreign to him, and on some level, he was afraid. As he neared, the knocking sounds became more frequent and stronger, as if his mere presence aggravated it.
He inched closer until he could peek into the observation window, and a hand pressed against it. Then a fist beat it. Then, two fists. The hands parted, and he saw a swollen face, dark from bruising, screaming a silent scream. While the face's expression was hard to decipher, he thought it looked like fear.
"Hey," Doug called. "Hey! Help!" No one came. As far as he knew, the medical deck was empty.
The fists continued to pound, and Doug could only pound back with his heavy hands, his way of telling the horrible face to calm down and that help was here.
"Uh, what do I do?" Doug panicked. He looked down at the controls and realized the chamber was electronically sealed. He thought if he cut the power, the chamber would open, so he moved to the back of the chamber and yanked on all the cables he could find. Sparks flew. The tube's interior light went dark. The pounding ceased.
With the cables lying on the floor, Doug moved back around to the observation window, peering closer until his face was inches from the glass. He could only see darkness in the tube, heard only the quiet of powerless machinery.
Then the chamber door flung open and gave Doug the sleep he'd wished for.
Six
Daelen dozed at her workstation, struggling to maintain balance in that space between sleep and consciousness. Her head bobbed like crashing waves, and though she wanted to stay awake, she could feel the tide pulling.
She'd agonized over Tom's test results, poring over them as she'd made Margo do with the blood samples, knowing it would lead to mistakes and the lesson she hoped Margo would learn soon.
Every way Daelen looked at Tom's test results, everything looked right. Still, something about him wasn't. According to the book, he was healthy, but she sensed a change in him, an inconsistency, like someone had moved something in a room ever so slightly, just enough to make her notice.
Her link chirped and expanded a window, waking her from that in-between place. It was an automated message regarding Edward. In her concern for Tom, she'd forgotten all about her black madness case.
She expanded the message from her link, and it told her Edward's heart rate had spiked. She thought it odd, though it wasn't anything to be too concerned about. She decided she should check on him. At a dead end with Tom, she welcomed the distraction.
Setting her glasses down, she rubbed her eyes, trying to regain her ability to focus on anything except the back of her eyelids. Her link chirped again. Another message informed her Edward's chamber had lost power.
"Bollocks," she said with a yawn. Though it was incredibly odd, she was not concerned because, even without power, the chamber would function properly for hours, as long as it remained sealed.
She checked her link for the time and saw Margo was on her sleep cycle. She had gone home hours ago. Daelen should have as well. In fact, she'd intended to when she last left Doug with Edward, emphasizing that he not touch anything before she bade him good night. But Tom's case had drawn her back to her workstation. She supposed it was good that she stayed. She would not have liked to have to come back to the medical deck from her cabin for an equipment failure.
With a deep sigh approaching annoyance, Daelen rose from her desk and made her way toward the back of medical into the pri
vate rooms. Nearing the door to Edward's room, she glanced through the window and saw the top of the chamber hatch standing straight into the air.
"What the hell?"
She opened the door and stood at the entrance in an odd state of shock caused by the psychological paradox of seeing something so contrary to expectation. The chamber was open, Edward was missing, and Doug lay on the floor, bleeding from a wound on his head. Her first instinct was to rush to the security officer's aid, and when she lunged forward, a hand swept out from her blind spot in the room and snatched her by the throat.
Unlike Stellan, she had not been trained to check her corners.
The fingers dug into her larynx. Fear, surprise, and the lingering disbelief overpowered her perception so much that she didn't immediately realize she couldn't breathe. She reached for the hand around her neck and tried to pry the fingers away, but they would not yield.
"What did you do to me!?" a voice of agony screamed.
The hand pushed her back on her heels, and she fell to the floor, stumbling and shuffling, trying to get away even as the back of her head bounced off the cold, metal deck. A flash of pain washed out her vision in brilliant white, and when it returned, she saw the face to which the digging fingers belonged. He mounted her and wrapped both hands around her throat.
Her vision darkened quickly, and she supposed her brain was already starving for oxygen, but she saw the swollen and purple face of Edward Stone, the man she'd taken into her care. She wanted to tell him that she was only trying to help him, but only gasps and moans exited her mouth. She clutched at his gown. She beat his arms. Her feet thrashed under his weight and strength. She knew it was the hypoxemia.
After all the struggling, she found herself beginning to let go. Her arms weakened, and she stopped trying to force his hands away from her. Her body became limp under Edward's power, and her vision dulled further. The pressure and pain in her face from the force of Edward's grasp caused blood vessels to burst in her eyes, and it felt like they might pop out of her skull, even though she knew it wasn't likely.
He was killing her, and she knew it. She understood every second in medical and biological detail, and she thought about Stellan, how she wouldn't want him to grieve. They would find the life that had begun to form inside her, and he would take that hard. She knew that, once in his life, he lived close to death. In another way, she did, too. For both of them, the idea of death was harder to accept and live with when it concerned someone they loved. For all of his hardness, he was a sensitive man who appreciated life even though he once took it. It was something she'd always loved about him.
Then Edward's grip loosened, and he began to weep. When she could once again breathe and her vision returned out of the darkness, she saw him above her body, looking down in terror. He left her and slid across the floor, propping himself against a cabinet, nervously biting his fingers.
The fresh air burned Daelen's lungs, and she coughed so hard she worried they would expel from her mouth.
"What have I done?" Edward said, and she reached out to him and pointed to the chamber.
"We have to get you back in there," she said hoarsely. "You've been through a lot of trauma, and the pain you feel isn't going to go away. That chamber is helping you heal."
He stared at her in horror, eyes wide. She imagined his pain was so severe that, whether he had his mind or not, he couldn't concentrate on anything, and what she felt was nothing compared to what he must have been feeling. She struggled to rise much sooner than she knew she should, her weak knees begging to buckle, and as she approached him, his fearful look intensified.
"I'm not going to hurt you, love," Daelen said.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, Edward's voice was just above a whisper. "But I hurt you."
"I'll be all right, yeah," she said, rubbing her neck, already darkening into a bruise.
Then he pointed to her abdomen, and Daelen looked down to see the blood soaking her inner thighs.
She never felt so afraid. Fear stole her breath from her lungs, and she was once again suffocating. It wasn't long before the dizziness overtook her and she fell into a spinning world and then into the black void of unconsciousness.
Seven
The din of the bar crashed relentlessly against Stellan's ears, but it was a sweet sound. The laughter and the upward inflection of the voices meant the crew was happy. Most of their work was done, and for the next couple of weeks, they hoped to relax and enjoy life.
And why shouldn't they? They earned it with their backbreaking work on the Shiva.
More than ever, Stellan hoped for a peaceful resolution with Tom. He hoped Jude was wrong, that he hadn't seen what he claimed he'd seen. After all, Jude was a bartender. Stellan wouldn't doubt the man's ability to discover a bottle of liquor in a waistband, and with Tom, that was a distinct possibility.
As doubtful as he was, Stellan had to treat the prospect of Tom with a weapon seriously. If anything, the man's drunken unpredictability made him dangerous, and a weapon could lead to catastrophe. Although, Stellan didn't expect he'd have to do any more this time than he'd done the other times when he simply dragged Tom to a holding cell to sober up.
None of the patrons noticed Stellan standing by the door. Most congregated into small groups around tables and drinking games, intertwined like thread interwoven to create a fabric so tightly compact they wouldn't be concerned with anything happening outside of their group. Some moved between groups but were intensely focused on the others who were losing the drinking games or telling jokes or stories about bad decisions that weren't funny at the time. Even the shrieks of laughter that followed them passed Stellan by.
It was good. They would provide him cover.
In situations like these, Stellan's concern was not the inevitable confrontation and altercation. That would go the way it would go, and all he could do was read it and do his best. His concern was collateral damage. With so many people in such a tight space, he worried, especially with two weapons in play. Even a shot fired straight at the ceiling could ricochet and hit someone.
Safety of innocent bystanders was his primary objective, so he hoped to be able to take Tom down quickly if he, indeed, posed a threat.
Stellan found Tom occupying his usual stool at the bar. Tom sat still, not rocking and cawing with his usual derogatory words and raucous laughter. Enough empty glasses lined the bar top to challenge even Tom's tolerance. Something wasn't right, and Stellan wondered how bad things could be if he worried when someone wasn't falling into an oblivion of alcohol.
At the base of Tom's back, Stellan saw the bulge. He knew immediately that it was a weapon. From the size of the handle, he guessed it was a snub-nosed, semi-automatic pistol. Though not a large weapon, and easy to conceal, it could be deadly.
Jude saw Stellan approach, which was unfortunate. Tipped off by Jude's glance, Tom deftly reached into his waistband and pulled out the hidden handgun, placing it on the bar top like raising a bet in a card game.
Stellan discreetly moved his hand to his sidearm and unbuttoned the leather strap that held it in place.
The voices in the bar settled one by one, sensing the confrontation. They saw Stellan standing mere paces from a man with a gun, and they saw him freeze in his tracks, as if the man were a bomb that might go off. No one spoke. No one moved.
"Where'd you get the weapon, Tom?" Stellan asked.
"You know, something's been really eating at me these last few years," Tom said, a subtle drone in his voice like a buzzing insect. "Why'd you let him go back to work?"
"Who?"
"You know. The prick who took my leg."
"You know what would have happened."
"It happened anyway"
"I couldn't give up on him. Like I can't give up on you."
"That's your problem," Tom said. "You gotta let people go. Cut your losses. You love everything to death. Everything you touch turns to shit."
"What if it were you?" Stellan asked. "Would yo
u want me to give up? Because I can tell you, right now, the only thing that stands between you and discharge is me."
Tom chuckled and answered Stellan by flipping his weapon's safety off. He wiped his mouth and then casually stood, turned, and raised his weapon at Stellan. His face appeared emotionless, blank, but behind that, a blackness swam in his eyes, something more than nothing.
"Put it down," Stellan said, one hand rising with his palm out in a calming gesture, the other hand digging deeper into his sidearm holster, his fingers easing around the handle of his weapon.
"If it were me," Tom said, "I'd rather you pull the trigger, but you don't have the stomach for it."
"What did you say?"
Time slowed. Everything around Tom blurred. All sound washed away except for the click and high-pitched whir of the rail-firing mechanism in Tom's gun and then the blast.
Stellan thought about the boy in London. He wondered if his answer last time had been the right one. Maybe he should have let the boy shoot him, the Council's man. Whether by his death or by his wounding, perhaps inaction may have made a difference.
But he wasn't fighting for the Council then any more than he was now. Conflicts are never as clear as drawing a line between two sides. Then, he fired for himself and for the friends who may have suffered if he hadn't. He fired now for the same reason.
His hand moved, and as he drew, he ducked his left shoulder, dodging Tom's shot, which rippled his clothing like a passing breath. No time to aim, Stellan let his hand guide his weapon, and his pistol answered with its cracking death call.
The bullet struck true in Tom's chest, boring through his sternum, severing his spine, and burying deep into the mahogany bar behind him. The spray of red mist from the exit wound covered Jude's face and several other people at the bar, their eyes agape in shock and disbelief, catching the red rain.
Tom fell to his knees and then to the floor, where he lay in a heap, a light wisp of smoke pouring from his exit wound.
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