"I'm not going there to die. I'm going there to see if I really am alive." The words hovered over them like an ominous fume. It was a painful poison that clung and ached in her throat. She could have killed him then, or at least severely injured him. She aimed her gun right at his shoulder, but her finger failed to pull the trigger. She willed it and willed it some more, but it wouldn't listen. Her will wasn't strong enough to overcome her fears, and that venomous history that had consumed him. The gunshots that had meant to be in him were instead being lunged at the guiltless ceiling. The metal shrieked above her, and after the fifth shot and when he was almost out of sight, her trembling hand surrendered.
The Swordfish II's engines roared through the halls of the Bebop until they were the distant thunder of a storm that had already rampaged through and was on its way to render someone else homeless. Faye Valentine could barely breathe between the hard sobs escaping her mouth. She still held the gun in one hand, and she cried because she knew that he wouldn't come back this time. This time she wouldn't be sitting by his side waiting for him to wake up to play a trick on him or to hear him patronize her yet again. There would be no scolding for running off like that, not from her, not from Jet. This one would be the end of him. He knew that, and he had told her that when he looked at her with those grievous eyes.
She bit her lip and willed her feet to carry her to the room. If Jet came by, she wouldn't want to face him. He would be this sour reminder of what had happened, of what they hadn't done to stop him. All she wanted now was to sleep, and then to wake up, and realize that just like Spike said, this was all a dream.
Heroes Don't Exist
Day 1
Cold. She was cold all over but she wasn't shivering. She wanted to reach for her blanket, but her hand wouldn't move. Her clothes weighed her down with a heavy dampness and an oily adhesiveness that clung to her skin. Had the Bebop sprung a leak while she had been sleeping?
"BP is ninety over sixty and temperature 96.5 degrees and increasing. She's doing perfect, doctor." A voice sifted through static in her ears. She didn't understand what any of that meant. She was too preoccupied with her senses, and the metallic taste surfacing from the back of her throat. She even tried at some point to open her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but no sound emerged. She was muted in her confusion.
"No, don't try to speak. You're going to be fine." The soft susurrus of that voice echoing and echoing. Her limbs ached so much, and the voice, she couldn't quite decipher the gender of it yet, must have heard her groan. "You're going to be a bit sore as your muscles get used to the new change in temperature." Clearer now. Definitely a male voice. He went back to yelling more medical jargon back and forth with a woman, the first voice she had heard.
"Spike." She had no idea why his name was the first thing that her husky voice managed to utter, but it clung to her tongue and her lips so instinctively that it frightened her.
"Don't say anything," the male voice gently reminded her. When she opened her eyes, the light was intrusive at first. She felt like a newborn baby soaked in the sudden brightness of the real world. She felt the terrible urge to cry out. And so she did.
"What's wrong?" he asked. Faye felt a warm hand on her forehead, but she just continued crying and crying. When his face finally came into focus, she saw his older features, his fair skin, gray hair and gray eyes behind rimless glasses that stared at her with a peculiar concern—the type of concern one has when something expensive might break.
"Where am I?" Her voice broke after each gasp between her words. "What happened?"
"You've been reborn," he told her. His eyes glistened in the bright light. "Do you remember your name?"
"Faye." She mouthed it with a sudden jolt of fear. "Valentine." She held her breath.
"Valentine?" The man echoed as his brow crumpled and his head shook. "The tag definitely said Morgan. Faye Morgan." Hearing her real name sent her into a fit of hysterical sobbing.
"No. No. My—where am I!" she shouted now, forcing her voice to a volume that it could hardly handle so her vowels sounded like incoherent shrieks. Her muscles finally began to respond, and she moved her arms and legs sporadically without any direction or actual control of where they went or how the moved.
"Jensen, give her the sedative now." His tone morphed with the command. He sounded like he would swallow her alive. He held her down with his own weight. Faye soon felt a pinch on her back, and then her muscles went rigid again, and her face numb until she finally faded back into the dark womb.
Day 2
She opened her eyes slowly, cautiously waiting for the bright light to explode in her face again. Her hands explored the soft cotton around her. When she grew accustomed to the light that peeked through, she immediately gathered that she was in hospital from the white and gray mechanical surroundings. Faye glanced toward white door, and then down to her legs. Her feet moved right when she told them to and the rest of her nerves were just as obedient, but could she make it to the door? Before she finally gathered to courage to run, and before she even had the chance of wondering what had actually happened to her, the door slid open.
The same old man from before entered wearing a white robe with a tag that clung to his breast pocket with his picture on it and writing that she couldn't quite focus her eyes on yet. He had a chart in hand, and he smiled bleakly when he saw her.
"I see you're awake. Welcome back," he said, and grabbed the black-wheeled stool that had been tucked under the hospital dining table. "I'm Doctor Iver, and I am so sorry about what happened. I should have never woken you up so abruptly. I didn't think you would, so I didn't take any measures to make sure otherwise. That is my mistake. How do you feel now?"
Faye eyeballed him with a newfound anger in her. "Who the fuck are you?" The doctor stared at her a little displeased, but not surprised.
"I know it must be all so confusing for you, Faye, but there's something I need to tell you." He paused and her heartbeat leapt to her throat. "Do you remember anything?" Faye didn't respond, but simply stared at him. Her mind was blank. She was just angry. She couldn't think of anything else. "What's the last thing you remember, Faye?"
She began to dig frantically, until the sour memory hit her. Spike, the Bebop, the face off, his eyes, his leaving, and then—then she went to sleep. Had the Bebop had some kind of accident while she was attempting to forget it all? But they were stationary. Had somebody tried to blow them to bits?
"Yeah, I went to sleep, and then, did something happen to the Bebop at bay?" Faye questioned him.
"The Bebop?" Iver echoed her again, and then took a deep breath as if bracing himself for the worst news yet. He rubbed his ears nervously, and then focused back on Faye. "Do you know what year it is, Faye?"
"2071," she responded mechanically. The doctor's eyes widened, and his mouth parted slightly.
"No, Faye." His gray stare focused gravely on her. "You were cryogenically frozen for fifty-two years. The year is 2068," he added in a low tone. Her heart beat stuck at throat. It crackled and expanded there, stuck on that last beat. She spat it out with a hard sob.
"No. No! I was—I am—I woke up already. The year is 2071! I am Faye Valentine." Faye shouted incredulously as the tears welled in her eyes. She had lost it. She had gone to sleep and lost him. "Where the hell is Jet? What have you done?"
"No, Faye. Faye! Listen to me, you have been asleep for over fifty years." The doctor reiterated.
Her body began to shake uncontrollably. "No. Spike and Jet, and no!" She yelled with her hands clamped over her ears. The doctor grabbed her arms still trying to talk to her but she began to kick him until she finally pried him off.
"Get the fuck away from me! Go the fuck away!" She gave herself short slaps with both hands repeatedly. "No, the year is 2071. 2071. 2071. My name is Faye Valentine." Among her mutters and shouts, she heard the doctor calling for the nurse.
"My name is Faye Valentine."
Week 2
She came into her office and set her mail down on her desk on top of a stack of papers on the corner. The pile rejected the new addition of weight and collapsed on the ground. She groaned, rolled her head from side to side, and finally faced the reality of another Monday morning. The coffee had failed to sober her up and to help her recover from the abrupt awakening of her alarm clock. Instead, all she could think of was what a jumbled mess this past weekend had been. After picking up most of her papers, she sat down and glared at the pile of charts on her desk all with her name at the top: Doctor Joan Bower. Massaging her temples, she breathed in deep ready to enter back into her work zone. She needed to let go of this weekend. She knew well that she shouldn't have slept with the sergeant last night. Her arms were sore from holding his chest back—a fruitless attempt to control his heavy thrusting into her—and the pain served as a terrible reminder of her mistake.
Joan couldn't take that back, so she had to forget last night, and hopefully he would too. She glanced down at her first chart and read the name typed on the tag of the chart folder. Faye Morgan. She remembered reading about her on Friday. The poor girl had gone into a delusional psychosis from the trauma of the cryogenic awakening. Morgan claimed that the year was 2071 and that she had been living as a bounty hunter for the last year or so aboard a ship called The Bebop. She felt sorry for her. Joan had no idea how she would tell Faye that she was now property of the military, but she couldn't worry about that yet. All she could do was to help Faye regain control of her mind, and even though that wouldn't be enough, it was all she could offer.
Joan pulled out her compact mirror and a hair tie from her black pocketbook. She hadn't put her straight auburn hair in a bun this morning, and she hated walking into work looking so casual like that. After putting on her make-up, those light browns to accentuate or rather draw away from the blue of her eyes, she realized she was running a bit behind and she definitely needed her coffee above everything. As she pulled her hair up and twisted it in the usual bun, she noticed a small chicken-feet shaped wrinkle under both her eyes. Joan cursed in her mind. The last thing she needed to worry about, at the already horrible age of thirty-nine and past one divorce, was another stupid wrinkle, and this time under her eyes. She clamped the compact shut, and took another deep breath.
She glanced at the metallic clock on the wall next to her large mahogany five-shelved book case filled with volumes of psychology and neurology journals, more contemporary works of psychologists and psychiatrists of the time. The clock read 10:25, almost time for her first appointment. Joan continued reading Faye's file, and was amazed at how little they knew about her. She was an unusual sleeper, as they had come to call them, so old that her information had been wiped from the system after the Gate Incident. Joan had no idea how they had managed to find her body intact.
Four knocks announced the 10:30 mark, and Joan felt ready and with a clear enough mind to receive her first and most interesting patient yet.
"Come in," Joan instructed and a male nurse brought Faye inside. Joan smiled at the nurse, and led Faye to the couch off to the side of her office and welcomed her to sit down. Faye allowed herself to be walked and managed like a lifeless doll, but with some mechanical function to allow the more complicated movements of turning around and wiping her nose. Her green eyes were a bit dull, and her dark shoulder-length hair was stringy and filled with a pungent animal scent. Faye still wore the light green hospital robes and white bathrobe. She looked so numb that Joan figured they had probably pumped her with enough neurocleptics to last her a month. She had stopped it as soon as she learned of it, which had only been Friday. She asked that the psychiatrist look at Faye again, and sure enough, he re-assigned her some anti-psychotics rather than the brusque doses that were better used on the wilder patients. As far as Joan was concerned, she hadn't heard of Faye showing anything but symptoms part of a delusional psychosis and PTSD.
"Hi Faye, I'm Doctor Joan Bower, but you can call me Joan, okay?" Bower kept her eyes fixed on Faye. Faye glared back through glazed and angry eyes. "I know you must be scared Faye, but I was hoping we could talk."
Faye was definitely non-responsive, and Joan felt a pang of sorrow for her, something she hadn't usually allowed to torment her. She had seen enough sad cases, and the last time she had allowed a person to faze her emotionally had been way before her divorce.
"Faye, would you like to tell me about Spike?" Bower asked her, and noticed that Faye's green eyes began to water. "Why does that make you sad?" Bower asked. Faye didn't answer, but stared intensely at her. The glazed look faded, and was replaced by a frigid fierceness. She was getting ready to attack.
"Faye, I want to help you. That's why I am here. I know that the trauma from the Cryogenic sleep must have been very hard. I want to help you." Bower coaxed her, but with a menacing awareness of Faye's sudden anger.
"Why are you doing this?" Faye asked her, and Bower narrowed her blue eyes.
"Why am I doing what?" Bower asked, and Faye's glare fell off to the bottom right corner. "Faye, do you think we're doing something to hurt you?" Joan felt sick asking that question, and that was all the distraction Faye needed. She lunged down and then came back up with Joan's sharp letter opener in hand, and ready to be jammed into Joan's throat. Joan sucked in breath, and realized it must have fallen down with the pile of papers. She must have missed it. She shouldn't have been so caught up in her bullshit this morning.
"Faye, don't do this. You're not going to kill me." Bower insisted. Faye may have been delusional, but Joan doubted that this eighteen-year old was traumatized enough to be a murderer. "I know there's a bit of Faye Morgan left in you, so please, don't do this." Bower wasn't begging as much as she was buying time. She had already pressed the emergency button on the clinic bracelet they had given her when they first employed the system five years ago.
"I want you to let me the fuck go! I want to get out of here." Faye hissed in her ear.
"And we will Faye, once you're better. Once you're better." Bower responded uncertain of it herself. "I want to believe what you've told people Faye, but it's hard for me to believe you if you do something like this." The moment Bower finished her sentence, the door swung open, and a dart was shot into Faye's right leg. She immediately collapsed, and Joan swallowed and pushed down the fear she had been holding in chest.
"You all right?" One of the male nurses that had come to her rescue asked. Joan nodded, and immediately sat down. "Put her in room A." She instructed them and then waved them off. Faye would spend a week in that padded room until she became accustomed to the new anti-psychotics. For now, Joan needed to be alone, and drink a cup of coffee followed by a long cigarette break.
Week 4
"This is your room," A large nurse escort told Faye opening a door at the end of the long white hall of the second floor of the psych ward. The room had a twin bed with white sheets, a pillow, a flat digital clock built into the wall, and nothing else. There was a camera in the right corner of the room by the door that she didn't notice until she was in the bed. It was too tall for her to reach.
"How long will I be here?" Faye asked the nurse, and the nurse pursed her lips.
"Lunch and dinner are in the mess hall, and breakfast is brought to you with your meds every morning at nine. Lunch is at 12:30, and dinner is at 5:00. You will start your weekly therapy sessions next week, and will be expected every afternoon in the rec room to do activities with the rest of the women here. You can only take baths under supervision and those take place from 10 to 12. If you miss it, then you don't bathe." The woman told her the recipe of a patient's life without so much as a pause, and then closed the door behind her.
The nausea and claustrophobia began to rise from her stomach from staring at the bare walls in her room. Faye decided to leave the claustrophobia behind and wander about in the hallway. She checked out the rec room and its ordinary walls, as pale as her skin, ordinary tables, plastic chairs, shelves with books, and the worn faces that lingered about them. That kept her mind her own inner turmoil, but not this madness—scared of that one's red hair, and that other one's tantrums, and all the rest of women incarcerated here. But above all she was scared of their eyes and that intense reality in them. Faye had unwillingly begun to believe that she had in fact dreamed it all up. All she needed to figure out was which part was the dream, the Bebop, or this.
"Oh Jesus, another one." Faye heard a voice utter behind her as she walked down the hall towards the mess room. She turned around and met with another woman with dark brown hair shoulder-length, a messy masculine cut and gray eyes. The woman was wearing pink scrubs just like her.
"Are you talking about me?" Faye asked somewhat annoyed with the sudden intrusion to her tour.
"Yeah, I am. What brings you to our sunny little inn?" The woman caught up with her, and Faye resumed walking with this new marauder by her side.
"They think I'm crazy." Faye muttered monotonously.
"Of course they do." She smirked, but her eyes remained cold—a hint of calculated observation.
"Why are you here?" Faye's curiosity crept out from beneath her annoyance.
"Recruitment." The woman propped her shoulders up, and laughed slightly. "Apparently, if you're a nobody, you're liable to become property of the military. And you?"
Faye narrowed her eyes at her. "I'm not--," She stopped herself realizing she was in fact a 'nobody' or too many somebodies. "I fell asleep, and they woke me up."
"That's one I haven't heard before." Her gray eyes suddenly fell and her cynical smile faded. She shook her head. "My name's Electra."
"I'm Faye." Faye uttered the letters gradually and quietly.
"So really, why did they put you here, Faye? You don't sound so crazy to me." Electra examined her slowly.
"I could ask you the same thing." Faye avoided the question, not because she didn't want to answer, but her curiosity had overpowered her. She wanted to know what other people were here for, because perhaps that would lead her to answering why she had joined them. Electra didn't respond, but instead pulled up the sleeves from her pink scrubs. The sleeves concealed two thick scars running down from the wrist to mid-arm.
"And that was just one method to my madness." She added pulling her sleeves back down. "Funny thing is that I don't even remember doing it." Faye wanted to ask why, and what could lead her to do such a thing, but she decided against it. Her curiosity didn't extend that far. She now wanted to know as little as possible of this woman. The less she knew the less real the dream. "And you?" Electra reminded her she still needed to answer.
"I think this is all just a dream. I'm waiting to wake up. I'm waiting and waiting." Faye answered nostalgically. She noticed Electra's expression sober up. Then, she suddenly shook it off and smiled at Faye.
"That's a good way of looking at it," Electra added, and they continued from then on to walk in silence.
After a full tour of the facilities, Faye went back into her room. She hadn't wanted to talk to any of the others either. She needed to concentrate in remembering the Bebop, and Jet, and Ed, and Spike. But above all, she needed to concentrate on remembering Faye Valentine. She couldn't forget another one of 'her' again. But she was slowly forgetting. The drugs pilfered through her memories and sifted out bits and pieces of it. They had taken Jet's nose, Ed's eyes, and Spike's lips along with them. Features were undulating out of her mind and disappearing.
A nurse knocked on her door, and warned her that dinner would soon be ready. She also added that this was the only time they would tell her, and she needed to check on her own from then on. For some reason after the nurse left, Faye had the sudden urge to cry again. The urges surfaced and drowned again as they pleased, constantly tormenting her, and rendering her more inept than she had ever felt before. It was better though than the panic attack that happened two weeks before.
At dinner, Electra sat at her table along with her, but didn't say anything. They served their dinners in red trays, a cold bun with a watery lentil soup, and an apple. It was better than the cold oatmeal from this morning, so she ate contentedly. What bothered her is that by her plastic cup of juice there was a pink oval pill. Faye glared at the trays of everyone else, and noticed she was the only one who had been given a pill at all. Faye held it up between her thumb and her forefinger and examined it. Electra glared at the pill and then at her.
"The General will come for you tonight." She muttered, her silvery eyes entranced by the pill.
"Who's the General?" Faye asked her, a sudden sharp pain pinging in her chest.
"The General will comfort you tonight." Electra muttered again, and resumed eating her soup. Faye then realized that Electra had in fact both times said "comfort" and not "come for." The General would comfort her tonight.
Day 22
Faye woke up abruptly from an empty sleep. She had closed her eyes last night, and a minute later she had opened them up and it was already morning. Once she scanned her surroundings she gasped inwardly. The soft cotton sheets and the thick silver comforter were unfamiliar to her. The comfort of the large feather pillows beneath her only frightened her. She didn't recognize the Gauguin print on the left white wall, or the iron candle holder hanging on the opposite wall. She was still wearing her scrubs from last night, and as far as she knew nothing had happened.
Had she been dreaming again?
The white wooden door swung open and in came a tall handsome man with raven hair and light gray eyes. He headed towards the bed, but made no gesture to near her. He wore a black military outfit with trench coat on top. His eyes, his features, they looked so familiar. They were on the tip of her memory, almost there, wanting to be remembered, but she just couldn't.
"Hello Faye, I'm glad you're awake. You've been brought here, because I want you to know that you're important to us. Things will get better, when you get better." His low masculine voice uttered rather gently.
"Who is this 'us'exactly?" Faye questioned between clenched teeth. She hoped he hadn't done anything to her, or any other woman, because she would come back for him. Yes, she would, and then he would never do anything again that involved a woman. But his face remained serious, he wasn't bragging, he wasn't intimidating her. He was merely informing her.
"You will soon find out. I want you to stop this nonsense though. I don't think you're crazy, Faye. I think you know well how things work. So you need to stop this."
Who the hell did he think he was? As much as she wanted to just lunge at him, she remained still in the bed. Soon after he was done speaking, two men in white came in to escort her back to the psych ward. She eyed the General carefully as she went out, still wondering what memory he might have triggered that she had found herself unable to access. He stared back at her, his light eyes with some extrasensory field that was completely unreadable to her.
They forced her gaze away from his, and led her out of the room. As they walked through hall after hall, and down floor after floor, she realized that this room was located on the complete opposite end of the facility and away from the ward. As they waited in an elevator, it stopped at the fifth floor—they were coming down from the tenth—to let in another group of people.
"This way, Dr. Al Hedia." A fair-skinned man in a white coat led another one in a similar attire, except this man had olive skin, and his lips were settled in this peculiar smile. "The General is waiting upstairs."
Faye observed Dr. Al Hedia, who from the corner of his eyes glared back at her curiously. They finally reached their destination at the second floor, and led her out of the elevator. Dr. Al Hedia's smile widened at her slightly, and he nodded very discreetly. She never forgot his face since then.
Month 3
They weren't allowed many windows, but the facility, wherever it was and whatever it was, had its own little park. The only row of windows in the psych ward and found only in the rec room faced that bit of green, and the trees stretched tall beyond the second floor so that all she could see was rows of trunks and two benches from where the stony path within it split. Faye was no expert at what the trees were, maybe an oak, but it made no difference. It was the only green, vibrant sight that reminded her that there was a world full of colors outside of this white one.
Faye began to ponder about the color green as she gazed out the barred window. Green was the color of her eyes, and the color of Jet's bonsais. Green and blue was how the earth looked from high above, and also the hue Spike's dark hair would turn under the yellowish lights of the Bebop. Yellow was her outfit. Yellow with a red sweater. Red was the color of Ed's hair, Spike's Swordfish II, and of Julia's lips. Her hair was blonde too, and her car! Julia's car was a red convertible. She had helped Julia when they were chasing her, and Julia gave her the message for Spike. Then Spike went, and he returned, and left again, and she—and she—had she woken up? Had Spike been right?
It had all been a dream.
"Faye?" Five fingers squeezed her shoulder. "You're shaking." Wanda, one of the nurses, informed her. Faye glared down at her pale hands, thin and jittery and with dark veins protruding—an old woman's hand whose skin had been stretched—but even if the skin could be rejuvenated to some extent, nothing could cure the arthritis consuming it from beneath. How old would Faye really be today? What was the year again?
"Did they start you on another med for your insomnia?" Wanda asked, and Faye shrugged.
Since that night before meeting the General, and like the nights before then, she had gone back to not being able to sleep. They gave her pill after to pill to help her, but the insomnia wouldn't recede back from wherever it had stemmed from. They finally gave her something that they told her would be a while until the effects occurred, so she waited patiently the entire week for the sleep to return. If she didn't sleep, she wouldn't dream, and if she didn't dream, then she would never know which one was the dream. She needed to sleep and wake up, and go back to wherever she belonged. That's all she wanted. That's all she had ever wanted. She didn't care if that meant going back to 2016, or if that meant the Bebop, or what. She just wanted something to be real.
Month 4
The sleepless nights had stopped. A pill had finally worked. After so many of them, she didn't know which one did the trick, nor did she care. The point was that she slept now, but nothing had changed. She didn't dream, so it was like she never really slept. Just shut her eyes, and felt a bit rested, but not really asleep.
"Why do you think they're keeping us here for so long?" Electra asked her, and then threw a small pea at Faye. "Are you even listening?" Faye wiped the cheek where the pea had pelted her, and shook it off her lap where it landed. "Are you going to eat that?" Electra pointed at her dinner roll, and Faye shook her head. "I mean I understand why they're keeping you here, but I'm better." Electra added scooping the roll up and placing it on her napkin on her dinner tray.
"What do you mean you understand why they're keeping me here?" Angered suddenly fueled her to join the conversation.
"After all those meetings, you keep telling the doctor about the whole fantasy world you created while you were asleep. They're never going to let you out." Electra waved her spoon carelessly.
"What the fuck do you know?" Faye scoffed. She was tired of Electra's constant nuances.
"Faye." Electra dropped her spoon and addressed her with urgency. "This isn't a dream, and you're not fucking sick, and neither am I. They're using us." She whispered hoarsely.
"I'm forgetting, Electra. I'm forgetting that other world slowly." Faye sighed.
"Well, good. I hope you forget all of it." She muttered.
"Why'd you do it?" Faye narrowed her verdant eyes at her. Electra glared what with defiance in her light gray eyes as if asking 'do what?' "Why did you do it?" Faye aspirated her last 't' and pointed at Electra's wrist.
"I guess I was in a Special Forces team, and there was this war. It was a war with no people, and I fell in love with a man that betrayed me." Electra's hand formed slowly into a fist squeezing the remainder of the golden dinner roll in her hand. Faye immediately wanted her to stop, and she didn't have to ask. Electra dropped the bread, stood up, and left for her room. As Faye stared at the brown glossy hair growing distant down the hall, she thought of Julia and Spike and Vicious.
Had Spike betrayed Julia? No, it made no sense to have one woman and two men. But anything could have happened. Faye couldn't imagine anyone being in love with Vicious, or Vicious loving anyone, so she supposed Julia must have been with him first. Then Spike came in, and he fell in love with her, and she must have loved him back. Tensions between the two men that already existed probably exploded. She figured Julia must have been with Vicious first, because he seemed like the type of man that would be good to ally yourself with. He would protect you, if you were useful to him back—whatever useful meant.
Stop it. Electra was right, she needed to forget.
"Did you envy Julia?" Dr. Bower had asked her in the last session.
"What?" Faye rose up suddenly from her bed. Dr. Bower had decided to do personal room sessions with Faye after the incident in her office.
"Well, from the way you described her…" Dr. Bower didn't finish her sentence. Faye immediately questioned the insinuation with rising annoyance.
"What do you mean how I described her?" Green fury sizzled in her glare.
"A blonde beauty, an angelic devil, or a devilish angel. She took Spike from you." Dr. Bower carefully noted.
"He wasn't mine to begin with!" Faye enunciated the word "mine" by punching her chest, and after that she gasped bringing her hand to her mouth. She had said too much. She had leapt up in wild anger and said too much. "I want you to get out." Faye added in a lower tone and sitting back down on her bed. Dr. Bower simply observed her. "Get out." Faye repeated this extending her arm and pointing at the door.
"Okay Faye, see you next week." The minute the door shut behind the doctor, Faye couldn't hold it in any longer and the tears fled from her eyes urgently, seeking the freedom she could not have.
It had to be a dream. It had to be a dream, because Faye Valentine would never cry like this, and because right now she must have been asleep in the Bebop. Nothing in this world could be worse than this. Not the dying, and the moon, and the cryogenic freeze, and the debt, and the bounty hunting. If she didn't get out of here, she was going to die.
Week 14
The bullets echoed all around them, and their hearts drummed with adrenaline. They both had guns in their hands, and she had become fully aware of the resolve pounding in him. It rippled in his dark brown eyes with every pull of the trigger. Every time, he wanted it to be him. Him. Vicious. Her long mane left a golden trail behind her as they ran up the stairs escaping out of the convenient store. She had pistol in her hand now, and he still carried his rifle killing off the men that bombarded them with bullets from the streets. It all occurred so fast the moment they stepped outside. The bullets were everywhere, and they both shot at all the sources. She fell hard against the concrete bridge linking the two buildings while Spike turned around and killed the man that had followed them. How did he miss that last one? What happened?
She stood up and brushed back the intrusive golden locks that had gathered around her eyes. The bullet came out of nowhere, and so did the man that shot it. Spike killed him and then gasped realizing he had been too late, and ran towards the fallen Julia. The bullet perforated through her lung and nested itself there. The pain went by, and the coldness and numbness set in quickly thereafter. The raindrops pelted her face as her heart slowed down. Spike held her in his trembling arms not entirely sure of what was happening. Her red lips parted, and the soft words slipped out before those verdant eyes finally shut out the life that had quickly left her.
"This is…just a dream…" She whispered. Spike had nothing else to say but to affirm it.
"Yeah, just a bad dream."
----
"Doctor Bower!" Tina, the clerk nurse, came running towards Joan as she walked down the hall towards the rec room.
"What is it?" Joan detected the urgency in her voice and eyes.
"It's the sleeper. She's having an attack of some sort. She's just woken up, and she won't stop screaming." Bower didn't wait for the nurse to finish before she started rushing towards Faye's room. When she arrived, two nurses held Faye firmly down as Tina rushed with a needle in hand to give to the doctor. Bower waved her off.
"I don't want to give her that." Bower shouted as she observed Faye's agitation and her face red and glistening from tears. "Let her go." The nurses glared at Bower with mouth agape, and remained frozen in their restraining force. "I said, let her go!" Bower commanded and pushed the nurses out of the way. Faye's body trembled but her arms lay in the same position that the nurses had held them down.
"Faye?" Bower sat down by the bed and touched her shoulders. "Open your eyes, Faye." Faye didn't respond, but just sobbed harder. "Faye, it's just a dream."
Her lids flew open revealing two horrified verdant eyes. Faye slowly began to shake her head from side with side with an incredulous grimace.
"No, it was so real." Faye darted her eyes away from the doctor and towards the white walls. "Julia, she died. I wasn't there, but I saw, and I knew." Faye paused letting the choking realization set in.
"You knew what, Faye?" Bower's heart beat with anticipation. It had never happened before. She had never been ridden with an instinctual curiosity that sought to know more about a person not for medical purposes, but for a deeper personal discovery she had rejected for herself.
"That it was all a dream." Faye shouted her response a second time as if she needed to hear it herself. "All just a dream." She threw herself at Joan and clung to her shoulders. Faye wasn't crying anymore, but she needed someone to hold on to and to reiterate this new reality she had come to accept. Joan held her, and stroked her stringy hair saddened by Faye's discovery rather than relieved.
"Yes, it was all just a dream." Joan repeated the melancholic words.
That had been one of the worst mornings of her life. Joan had no idea why exactly, and she ought to know after all she was the psychologist. However pleased she should have been with Faye's sudden leap towards recovery, Joan took it as a rather bitter betrayal. She hadn't seen it coming. The way she had planned out Faye's therapy she had figured it would take her a long while to grow accustomed to the new world, especially because Faye had lived in a completely foreign environment. She was a ghost of the past, and that she would concoct a dream that would allow her to belong in this world seemed a natural response. The breakthrough startled Joan, almost as if she had nothing to do with it. Perhaps a part of her had even grown to believe part of Faye's fantasy world.
Joan glanced over at the silver clock on the wall. It was sixty-thirty and she ought to be leaving. She was dissatisfied though, and she couldn't just leave like that. She opened up Faye's chart sitting in front of her and dug through it. A name Faye had mentioned in their fifth weekly session dangled off the page into the second one. The father-figure, she had written, the real hero versus the actual tragic hero—Jet Black. The ex-cop that had taken in all the strays. The instinctual curiosity returned again and this time as a heavy excited pang in her mind. She picked up her phone receiver and dialed. A man's throaty voice answered.
"Landesman, it's Joan. I need you to look up something for me. No, it's not for medical purposes. I'm asking a favor. I want to keep this between the two of us." She summoned her business tone for the request.
"No problem, Joan. What is it?" Sergeant Landesman complied without so much as a pause.
"I need you to look a name up for me. Jet Black. Do MPS, and search ISSP or anything else." The sergeant agreed and asked her to give him some twenty minutes and then he would call back. "No, I'll come down. I'll bring you some coffee."
Joan knew that she wouldn't be able to sit in her office during the time he searched. She had naively done this before, searched for one of the names Faye had given her. The curiosity that this uniquely complex fantasy had brought about didn't want to subside. Joan wanted if not needed to know more about the tragic hero, Spike, the female ideal, Julia, but above all, the fatherly hero, Jet. It was the name 'Bebop' that Joan had searched for and found no records for a ship with that name. She had reprimanded herself for being so preposterously gullible as to think such a thing would exist, but it had sounded a bit amazing at first. Here was a cryogenically revived corpse naming current technology like she had grown up with it. But Faye had been in a coma-like state while the specialists repaired her body, and the chamber in which they kept her in wasn't exactly soundproof. Any information they mentioned or if they had a television or radio on, phone conversations, anything and she could have used it in her fantasy.
Rationalization for Faye's unsettling amount of information on the present and disregard for her own past was all the scientific reassurance that Bower had.
After entering through two security clearance areas, Joan finally made it to Landesman's area. He was the only one around in the swing shift, and Joan did not want records printed or sent to her about any search.
"So, any hits?" Joan asked as she handed the cup of coffee she had brewed at the nurses' lounge. She honestly hadn't expected him to say anything, or she would have practiced her nonchalance a bit more.
"Actually yeah, nothing on military personnel, but a hit off ISSP." When Joan didn't respond, the sergeant added, "I didn't think you would be so surprised."
"No, it's—what does it say?" She stuttered a bit. Landesman sipped some of his coffee and instructed her to come around.
"There he is," He pointed at the picture of a somewhat balding man with dark skin and eyes. "Jet Black, retired from ISSP, he used to be a homicide detective within the agency. Retired when he lost an arm in an incident."
"And now has a cybernetic arm." Joan whispered as she stared incredulously at the screen. She couldn't tell anyone about this.
Week 15
"Electra!" Faye knocked on Electra's door. It was around 6:30 in the morning. "Go to the bathroom, Electra." And then she ran off to the only place Faye knew they didn't have cameras, the small bathroom with two stalls, and no mirrors. The toilets, the sinks, and even the doors were sensor-activated.
"Jesus Faye, it's six-fucking-in the morning. We have five minutes—tops—before a nurse comes after us." Electra came half a minute after Faye had called for her.
"Have you ever woken up before six?" Faye urgently asked her.
"What?" Frustration and weariness glazed Electra's gray eyes.
"I'm serious, have you ever woken up before six in the last two months?" Faye grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a bit.
"No, I don't think so. What about it?" Electra pushed one of Faye's hands off her.
"Don't you find that odd?" Faye insisted. Electra shook her head. "I have a bruise. I noticed it yesterday, on my left side." Faye rubbed her hand under her breast right on her ribs.
"I have it too. It's probably electro-shock therapy or something. They do it in our sleep."
"I need your help. I know you know this building, and how it works. I need to get back to Dr. Bower's office. I want to know what they're doing to us." Faye stole a glance towards the door worried that their time was running out quicker than she had anticipated.
"Faye, if they catch you, they'll put you in solitary. I haven't even been to solitary, but you don't come back from it. Ever." Electra's senses had snapped awake.
"Just because they woke me up doesn't mean that they can own me. I can't just sit here and be the military's fuck toy." Faye hissed back, and then softened her features from the contorted angry gestures. "Please."
Before Electra could respond, the door opened abruptly and nurse's head peered inside. Faye and Electra nodded and the both headed towards the door which the nurse was holding open.
"You know the rules. No congregating in the bathroom." The nurse muttered in sordid tone as they walked out. Faye turned to Electra one last time.
"Please." She whispered before she entered into her room to wait for her breakfast there. She hoped and even prayed to a God she didn't think existed for Electra to help her.
Week 16
She didn't know why she had agreed, and as she stared at the clock she felt herself more nervous each minute that passed. How had she agreed to this? They were lucky that Electra even woke up in time to carry out the plan. She had left Faye a map in the Jane Austen book on the shelf in the rec room, but she didn't even know if Faye had understood it. In fact, she wasn't even sure if the map was all that correct. The cold set into nervous shivers, and she opened her eyes slightly to check the clock. Two minutes to 6:30 in the morning. That's the time they had agreed. The secondhand dragged her nerves across the room, and her heart sped up twice as fast. She wasn't scared anymore. She was excited. It pounded with excitement because if Faye found what she needed to find, then maybe they would know once and for all why they were here. They would know if there was a way to get out, and Electra wanted more than anything to get out.
In the last minute remaining, she remembered the clandestine missions she had carried out. She remembered her tact, her preciseness, and her ability to keep focused on the target. If it hadn't been for him, she would have never changed. She would have never been like this. The seconds counted down in her mind, and when the time struck she opened her eyes to see 6:30 and screamed. She screamed as loud as she could, and began to shake. Her hands gripped onto the bed she pushed herself forward, screaming, her heart drumming hard against her chest, her excitement pouring out in tears. Two minutes passed and the nurses on the floor came rushing towards her. It would take the last one of them at least ten minutes to get the sedative prepared.
"They've come for me!" Electra yelled pushing one of them off. They called her name, and shouted for her to calm down. They pressed the full force of their bodies on her but she fought, the adrenaline kicking in just then, pumping faster and an amount of energy she hadn't felt in months.
The nurse with the air injection came in, a small plastic tube with the sedative compressed inside. All she needed was contact with Electra's skin and one push and the sedative would spread. Electra kicked the sedative out her hand and sent it rolling in one corner of the floor. She had hoped that then Faye would have already slipped by unnoticed. She could only hope.
Her tears were running dry, and though her adrenaline still kicked, the nurse made contact with her left arm. Electra hadn't even noticed when they made the exchange and suddenly it was the nurse closest to her that had it. She had lasted twenty minutes though, and that should have been more than enough she told herself as the sedative slithered into her bloodstream.
She heard a ghastly silence followed by distant screams. They weren't her screams. She had stopped the minute the nurse had won, and she just shook thereafter from the surge of the adrenaline. No, she recognized those muffled angry shouts. She had heard very similar ones the day of Faye's dream. The first and only dream she had even had in this place.
As Electra drifted from consciousness, she wished, if not pleaded, to herself that Faye had been right. For the first time, Electra hoped it was all true and that this was all dream.
Faye's screams drowned out and Electra's hope and excitement went with it. Her last thought before she drifted out of consciousness was that of the rumored solitary confinement. The place where they said they had taken two patients before. The place they would take Faye. The place she would never come back from.