Balancing Minds
Chapter 1: Storm of the Body
The storm raged outside the hulk of the Dawn Excursion. The aged research vessel tossed and moaned against the strain of the high seas. Deep in the hold, someone was waking.
The first thing he was aware of was the groaning of the metal bulwarks inside the ship. They moaned like Atlas beneath the weight of the world. The sound ground against his ears like nails on a chalkboard. He was aware of the sound. Slowly, his tortured mind began to find itself. He became aware of the pain. Torturous white-hot pain that drove any cognitive thought from his mind, and threatened to drive him back into the nothingness of unconsciousness.
'No, stay awake,' he willed himself.
He forced himself to open his eyes. It felt as if they'd had sand poured into them. He found himself staring fixated at a broken clock on the wall. How appropriate, since time was pointless right now. He had no idea how long he had been here, nor even whether it had been days, or weeks, or months.
His body was lacerated with incisions. Most were stitched tight and still fresh. Numerous tubes and IVs were strapped to his body. He tried to move his legs...no, not his legs. Something in the back of his brain hissed at him. Instead, he gingerly levered himself up on one elbow. He scanned the room to get his bearings. As dirty as this operating room was, it was a wonder none of his afflictions were infected.
The bulkheads of the Dawn Excursion screamed again. This time he was able to get his rebellious legs to cooperate with him. He got up and stood tottering next to the table on which he had lain. The deck fell beneath him as the ship entered another trough and he was thrown to the floor, the impact causing him to see stars. Every cut and bruise was screaming through his nerves. There was only one thing that screamed louder in the youth's mind, and it hissed.
Revenge.
'Shut up. You're not even supposed to exist.'
What he did to us...
"ME! What he did to me!" he screamed, his voice echoing against the empty metal walls.
Hiss.
Somehow he managed to stand again, stumbling towards the doorway, down the hall and up the nearest gangway. The back of his mind hissed in fury and purpose. He wanted only to find that man. The man who had taken him from everything and everyone he cared about, that man who had subjected him to this ungodly torture, that man whose life he wanted nothing more than to strangle beneath his fingers.
The Dawn Excursion did not have much longer to live above the waves. Were you to see her decks in her final moments, you would have seen a young man, mangled and bandaged beyond belief, stumbling across the impossibly plunging deck. You would also have seen an old man, gray-haired and worn, rain jacket soaked with the deluge of the storm. Words passed between them, unheard over the sound of the storm.
With one final effort the youth lunged at the man. The Dawn Excursion gave one dying scream and cracked right down her middle, sentencing both man and youth to the deep.
The cold water was a shock. The boy gasped for air. He came up sputtering and coughing. Several of his sutures had ruptured, and he was now bleeding heavily. The cold seemed to numb his already weakened senses. Through the rain and the waves he could see the man swimming for a bit of flotsam.
'Even now he doesn't give a care.'
Even as he slipped beneath the waves he cursed the man that had wronged him thus.
His first thought was irony at the fact he was thinking. Again, slow consciousness worked its way to prominence. With it returned the pain. The youth cursed consciousness for its intrusion. With a horrific moan he rolled himself over on the sand; his features wrenched in agony as the sand grated over the numerous incisions and cuts. The salt water burned like a brand from the furnace. The youth had no idea how he had landed on this shore.
The storm had taken the Dawn Excursion down in the early afternoon, and it was now approaching dusk. The gathering dark did not encourage the young man. He wanted nothing more than to have gone beneath the waves, yet this impossible circumstance of being stranded instead of drowned awakened the base desire to survive.
He stumbled towards a large rock jutting out from the beach. If nothing else, it would provide a little shelter from the wind. It was amazing that the young man's body was able to carry him at all. He had lost much blood in the sea, and just the effort of walking reopened the wounds.
Sitting with his back to the rock, his dying senses brought a sound to his attention. Far down the beach someone was calling. He could make out the distant pinpoints of light. He tried to call, but could managed no more than a weak, "Help?" It seemed to take hours for the search party to reach him. When it did, he cried.
'So I am dying. Bloody appropriate for dinosaurs to be my final delusion,' he thought, 'and talking dinosaurs no less.'
A tiny protoceratops was saying something to him; the youth paid no attention.
A predatory hiss came the voice in the back of his mind. He clenched his eyes against the force pounding in the back of his brain. Yet he was still weak from his ordeal, losing the fight for dominance over that thing in his head. He was losing strength fast, even now the haze that precedes unconsciousness was gathering at the edges of his vision. At the last moment he lost his battle for control.
He stared the little dinosaur in the eyes and roared.