It was impossible; The ship had not even hit the ground yet, and already it was being thrown around as if it were merely a raft in a storm. A tremendously, unfathomably large storm, blasts of pure sound knocking the ship across the sky as if it were little more than a toy.
A tremendous force blasted through the ship, sending Chase flying against one of the bulkheads and pinning him there with multiple gees. Too late, he watched with horror as a heavy steel desk slowly warped, and with an agonizing scream of metal, tore itself from the wall and fell across his legs much too fast. Instantly, all feeling in his lower body disappeared, and his mind was so crazed with the sound and pain that he was simply grateful that he was no longer moving.
Bucking wildly, the ship skipped across the rocky ground, shaking him from side to side, only the metal pinning him to the wall keeping him from being thrown about the room.
Finally, the ship slammed into the base of a thousand foot cliff, crashing to a halt, slowing from hundreds of miles an hour in a moment and tearing him from beneath the desk with enough force to shatter through one of the incredibly strong windows; the very last thing he remembered was the window approaching, incredibly fast.
He didn't know how long it was he had been unconcious, but he knew it couldn't have been too long; the blood on the inside of his helmet was still wet. He would have worried about running out of air, but he only had to feel the wind rippling through the rents in his pressure suit to know that was no problem. No, that wasn't bothering him, especially through the pain.
What bothered him was that in one place, he didn't feel any pain. Slowly, terribly painfully, he managed to pull himself over to look down, so far down…and there was nothing there. His legs…
A second later, he lost consciousness.
"Legs…brawn…legs….be a Brawn!"
Chase sat straight up, heart pounding furiously, and instantly fell back as a blinding headache assaulted his senses. He began to black out from the pain…but no, the pain wasn't anything near the pain he had felt during the…the crash. He wouldn't give in to the darkness again!
Over what felt like hours, the pain faded, and finally he was able to think clearly again. He had something he had needed to do…his eyes opened blearily as he remembered.
His legs. He had to know, one way or another.
Slowly, he reached down his body, dreading what he would find there; would there still be the bloody stumps, leaking away with his blood his dreams?
His eyes widened, and he lay back with relief; they were still there! Still there… He let out a long sigh of relief; it must have been a dream, he thought, but it was so real! I didn't know I could imagine so much pain…
Speaking of dreams… he blinked. Where am I?
Also, even though he had felt his legs, he still wanted to see them, to confirm what he had felt; on the other hand, sitting up again seemed unwise, so instead he simply attempted to survey his position from lying down; from what he could see, he was in some sort of medical facility, far better than anywhere he had ever been. Of course, he had never actually been treated in a hospital; not even the dingy backwater hospitals that existed in his normal haunts. Something he was extremely glad for. Some of those places released their customers in worse situations than they had entered in— albeit healed of whatever minor injury they had started with— others never released their patients at all. Even at the memory, he shivered, slightly.
None of those places were anything near this one he realized as he looked around, stopping for a moment to gaze at his faint reflection in the walls.
What the…? I can see my reflection in the walls?
He stared for a long moment, before shaking his head and laying back; sinking into his mattress, depressed at the sudden realization that he was dead.
"Of course I'm dead," he muttered, He could never be in a hospital like this in in real life, not ever, and the sensation of the loss of his legs had been far too realistic to be a dream. He hadn't even believed places like this existed, other than maybe faint mental images of one place being like this. White walls, white floors, white sheets…it was missing only the harps and angels, it would be complete.
Just then, a person that would have qualified for the second of those two walked in, and he instantly threw his arm across his face and began muttering to himself,
"This is not real, this is not real, this is not real, this is not real—ouch!" He was cut off as he felt a sharp pinch on his side.
"I can assure you, this is very real." Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the woman smiling down at him.
"Is this…the brain-brawn academy?"
The woman's eyebrows pinched together, and then she chuckled lightly, "You're in the Ballybran medical facility. It seems like you're a bit confused, not that I blame you." She laughed again, before her face grew more serious, "I'm the chief of medicine here, my name is Antona. I was just coming to check up on you, but since it seems you've woken, I'd like to take this opportunity to clear a few preliminaries. Normally we wouldn't jump into this so soon, but your…special circumstances change things somewhat, and we would like to get them out of the way as soon as possible. Would that be alright?"
Even though he was confused, he nodded slowly, trying not to accidentally cause the headache again, and she immediately she began with a barrage of strange questions, starting with:
"Do you have perfect pitch?"
His eyebrows pinched together, "What's that?"
She smiled, "Have you ever sung before? Could you sing a C if I asked you to?"
"I haven't ever had much chance to sing, but my…mum, I suppose you could call her, she always said I sang like a space banshee and that I should shut up." He smiled at the memory; it had been a long time ago.
She laughed wearily, "I guess we'll put that down as a 'no', then." She wrote something down on her pad, and continued to read off of it, "Do you have knowledge of horticulture?"
He looked at her quizzically for a long moment, and then answered the question, "Err…no." Hydroponics, yes, but horticulture no.
She placed another mark on her pad, "Do you know about the Heptite Guild? Crystal singing? Crystal drives?" His eyes lit up on the last one, and she marked something on her pad, and proceeded to the next question, never letting him have enough time to give more than a monosyllabic response, or ask questions of his own. This cycle continued for what seemed like hours, with her asking him questions that varied from relevant ("How long were you on the Chance?") to what he thought was wildly irrelevant, ("What is your favorite sport?")
Finally, she asked the last question and set her pad to the side, and looked at him for a long moment. Finally, she sighed, "You're lucky you were saved when you were, you know; much longer, and you would have died of dehydration. If it weren't for your suit, you would have died days before; it was remarkably protective, even with the holes that got torn in it. Maybe next time you should consider investing in a better suit before you get tossed out a window?"
Chase grimaced, "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks, I think. I had thought I was going to die for sure."
She shook her head, "It's not me you need to thank. One of the crystal singers happened to stop by to see if there was anything salvageable on your ship, he's the one that saved you…" she paused, and then shuffled a little, "Ah, it seems as if I've forgotten to ask for your name."
He looked over at her, and then glanced away. "My name is Chase—of the Chance, but I guess I'm not of the Chance anymore."
"Chase? We have four people named that on the planet, what is your surname?"
He looked up, confused, "Surname? You mean…last name? I've never really had one."
"Oh?" Antona looked surprised, "Didn't you have any friends or family on board your ship?"
He shook his head slowly. "None to know or care." Not anymore.
She slowly processed this, "Nobody? Ironic," she said with a small sad smile, "That you should live, out of all the people on the ship. She was silent for a long minute.
"I'm the only one that survived, then?"
She nodded and stood, "You're the lucky one. Remember that. We're done for today, I think."
With alarm, Chase seized her arm as she walked past, "Wait! What's going to happen to me now?"
Antona paused, her face scrunching up uncomfortably, "Well," she said, slowly, "Procedure for events like this—they have happened in the past, actually—is… to give all the victims an unlimited ticket to any transport hub, but—"
Chase's thoughts were suddenly going a million miles per hour; "Earth!" he said, instantly, "I want to go to Earth!"
Antona shook her head quickly, "I'm sorry, we can't let you leave. Not in the condition you're in."
Chase eyes pulled together, "Why? When can I go?"
"The Heptite Guild has successfully kept its secrets safe for over five hundred years," she said slowly, her face tinged with a touch of some sort of emotion he couldn't interpret, "I'm sorry, but you've had… exposure here that we can't afford to be found."
He processed this for a long moment, "What do you expect me to do, then? Do you expect me to stay here?"
Her face remained carefully neutral, "You don't seem to have perfect pitch, but there are a number of other suitable professions available on the planet, like piloting, biology, medical, farming, or any number of other suitable occupations."
Chase took this in slowly, "Farming? If you want me to do something like that, then you don't expect me to leave any time soon…" he said, slowly, then his voice slowly escalated with angry realization, "You expect me to stay here? I'm supposed to totter around on this planet for the rest of my life with dirt under my nails, watching plants grow?"
Antona hurriedly said, "As I said, there are a number of other suitable options available—"
"No! I would rather have died in the crash that that! Anything but that!" Abruptly his blinding headache returned, and he fell back to his mattress, thrashing on the bed as Antona rushed over to the monitor to administer a knockout hypospray, as he continued to yell, "Don't make me stay! Don't make me stay…don't make me stay…" he faded out, muttering into his pillow.
Antona was silent for a long moment, "I really, truly am sorry. It's for your own good."
Finally she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her and sagging against the wall.
"I feel like a cad."
From across the hall, a tall brunette smiled reassuringly at her, "I told you, I could have done it."
Antona grimaced, "And would have turned it into a sales pitch, knowing you. Let's be honest here; you like being a crystal singer far too much to be objective about it. In any case, as chief medical director, it was my responsibility to handle." She sighed, "And if I'd told him about the symbiote, who knows what he might have done?"
"You didn't tell him?" she asked in surprise, "Why not?"
"You didn't see his face when I said that normally he'd have a ticket to anywhere in human range, or hear him talking in his sleep. The thought of hundreds of years on one planet would likely have been intolerable for him." She shook her head, "But…there's nothing we can do about it. There's no way he could leave the planet with a symbiote in his system, it's just best for everyone to keep him here… for the foreseeable future."
"Which leads us back to feeling like a cad," she said, grinning weakly, and then wobbling slightly before she was steadied by the brunette's arm and smile.
"Let me buy you a drink," She said soothingly, "It looks like you could use one."
Antona chuckled, "On you?"
"The last I checked, that's still what 'buy you a drink' means," She said, with a sprinkling of sarcasm.
"I think I'll take you up on that offer," she said, making her way towards the door, "Ah, Killa, what would I do without you?"
"Wither up and die, I suspect," she said drily. They were both still chuckling as they left the medical wing.
In his bed, even caught up in dreams, Chase clenched his fists in anger. How could they do this to him? Offer him his dream, and then snatch it from his fingertips at the last moment? It wasn't fair! Why should he be stuck here for the rest of his life, when he'd tried so hard? It just wasn't fair! It wasn't fair…
His face turned down, he fell deeper into sleep.
The guildmaster impassively watched the monitor, where a young man silently let tears drip down his face, quickly wiping them away as the sound of his next meal arriving reached his ears.
"He's been like this for several days now," Antona said, anxiously tapping her pen in her hand, "When there's nobody in the room, he lets his guard down, but we haven't been able to get more than a few moments before he shuts himself down…he goes completely unresponsive." She shrugged, "His symptoms are vaguely similar to a sound-damaged singer, but that can't be possible, because of his initial responsiveness. I have little experience with this sort of situation."
Expectantly, she looked up at the guildmaster, but his face remained as unreadable as ever. Turning away, she sighed, "I asked Killa to have you stop by because you have the most experience with this type of case. Trag—"
"I'm well aware of my abilities," he said, not unkindly. Turning, he stared at the monitor for a long moment, "The roster of the Doubter's Chance has no record of anyone named Chase. Therefore, he's almost certainly not supposed to be onboard."
"You mean a stowaway." Antona said, understanding dawning on her face.
Lanzecki nodded, "Stowaways seldom stow away without a reason, especially not on a ship as harsh as the Chance reputes to be. What you need to do is extract that reason, and then supply it."
Antona watched him, curious, "Why the interest in this particular subject? Why this one, and not any of the other damaged ones?"
Lanzecki made his way the door, and glanced back, "Killashandra asks me for very few things. Your attention to this case has caught her interest…"
Antona nodded, satisfied, but he continued.
"Also, this one reminds me of a young man I once knew, a long, long time ago…"
Without another word, he disappeared into the corridor, leaving a startled Antona behind.
Shankill Moon Base: System Operations
"Where the shards did that come from?" The sound of blaring sirens were shut off as the sound of rapidfire typing filled the room, and the watch members frantically checked their scanners.
"Unknown, Sir. It practically popped out of thin air, nearly inside the atmosphere."
"They must be suicidal, coming out of hyper that late. Who is it? What's its Ident code?"
"It's not broadcasting one, sir."
He spun around, staring down the intruder as if he could incinerate it with only his gaze, "That's a class 5 offence! Hail them immediately."
There was a tense moment of silence as the tech worked at his console, before he turned back, "They're not responding to anything I send at them, sir, not even official emergency codes."
"Shards!" he gritted his teeth, "Open hails on all channels, boost the power, I want their hull shaking! We'll blast it into their skulls, even if they don't want to listen!"
In his bed, Chase clenched his fists in anger. How could they do this to him? Offer him his dream, and then snatch it from his fingertips at the last moment? It wasn't fair! Why should he be stuck here for the rest of his life. I've tried so Hard!
His fists clenched tighter. What right did they have to order him around, anyway? What right...he slowly frowned. There wasn't any reason he had to stay here, was there? They had told him he couldn't leave, but what right did they have to order him around? He'd lived on the rim for years, surviving alone in the darkness, so there was no way these... normal people could keep him here!
He flexed his hands again, this time in anticipation. He was alive, he was on a world that was well traveled; he could still become a brawn, if he played his cards right! He would! And nothing, angel or demon, will stand in my way!
C-1001 cursed prolifically as she fell into the atmosphere, frantically trying to restart her uncooperative engines. How could I have been so stupid, she thought savagely, I should have known! Of course that crate of parts was sabotaged!
But…because the com officer and clerk had been so kind, so understanding, she hadn't expected their betrayal until it was already too late. She cursed herself again, cycling her fuel on the off chance that it would help—but it was no good. Her crystals just wouldn't activate properly, not to mention the rest of her ship! What the shards was happening to her!? She watched desperately as the planet approached, the first sounds of air building around her.
"Sir!"
The chief com officer spun, "What, do you have news? Have the responded?"
"No sir, but I just picked up a military Ident Code. No, two. No...it's...it's too many to count! It's the central third fleet!"
The Chief gasped, "Fardles! Just what's going on here?"
"No idea, sir, they're not responding to hails!"
Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, the Chief groaned, "This is too big for us. Contact the Guildmaster, and alert the ground to evacuate to storm shelters! Move!"
In the medical facility, Chase sneakily made his way to the hallway, and found, to his surprise, that there was nobody in sight, and the hall was only punctuated by a small flashing orange light with an arrow beneath it. Odd. Shaking his head, he darted the opposite way; this was his chance, and he'd be damned before he lost it.
He sprinted down the empty hall, looking frantically for a shuttle pad.
She had found it. The source of all her problems.
C-1001, for the first time since she had made her escape, felt despair.
Inside one of her accessory terminals, glowing an innocent blue, it lay. So close, yet so far; deceptively innocent, considering it was one of the most dangerous and contraband items in the known universe. It was a Hyperchip.
And, when she finally realized the true extent to which she had been wrecked, she could do nothing but stare out at the planet and listen to the wind whistling by in shock. What could she do? What should she do? Help…
"Ballybran, this is the Third Central Fleet, closing on your location. There is a known and highly dangerous pirate in the area, we will be taking care of the issue. Please do not interfere. Over."
The Chief grabbed the mike from his underling angrily, "We know exactly where this 'pirate' is, and whatever you did to it, it's without power and heading directly towards our largest population center!"
"Negative, Ballybran, ship must be captured without loss of the crew. Do not interfere. Over."
The Chief growled, and then began to yell, "Can't you hear me!? By the time you get here, it'll be nothing but a crater!"
There was no response, and he cursed wildly, "Someone please tell me they have an idea!"
"Um…sir, I have one. It probably won't do anything, but it's better than nothing."
"I don't care, just do it!"
"Y-yes sir!"
She could feel her hull heating up as she fell into the planet's gravity well. Without anyone at the helm, her ship was simply spinning out of control, her continuing attempts to restore control only moving the flaps and lifting surfaces randomly.
And now even her hull was groaning at the strain? To her subdued surprise, her hull began to resonate, slowly building and then falling again, sound cascading up and down her sides, making her 'ears' itch terribly.
Wait a minute. She didn't have ears anymore. Which meant those were actually radio frequencies…? In response to the building sound, her drive crystals fired wildly, sending jets of flame into the atmosphere.
The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Her crystals were controlled by sound! She still had control of her broadcast antenna, if not her receiving one to any extent! She knew what to do!
Slowly, but with building power, she began to sing in radio waves, blasting them at full intensity into her drive chamber.
"Sir, we're getting a response! It's broadcasting on an equally resonating radio frequency!"
A chorus of cheers filled the room, but the Chief quickly waved them into silence, "Everyone sit tight, we're not out of this yet. Have the techs reconfigured the old radio antennas yet?"
"They're working on it, Sir! They haven't been working in over 200 years though, so it could take a little while."
"We don't HAVE a little while! I want more power NOW! Even if it's just one, I want it yesterday!"
"Yes Sir!"
And finally, bathed in a massive chorus of resonating radio waves, C-1001 began to slow.
Inch by inch, kph by kph, her ship slowed, the noise of the wind decreasing to only a faint whisper, and then disappearing entirely.
And finally, impossibly, she set down on Ballybran.
On Shankill, dozens of people screamed in elation, indiscriminately hugging one another and yelling uncomprehendingly at each other. The chief and the young tech sat beside one another, taking turns dragging from an ancient bottle of whiskey.
"That was genius, boy," the chief said, slurring slightly, "Tuning their drive crystals from a distance? With radio waves? Insane! But genius!"
"I...It was jusht an idea," He replied before slumping to the floor.
"Genioush," the chief muttered, "But can't hold hish wishkey. Oh well." Shaking his head, he took another drag.
There was something wrong with the ship on the pavement, Chase knew that the moment he saw it. It's landing had been insanely hot; some of the pavement beneath its main thrusters was still glowing faintly, and that didn't happen unless there had been an emergency. But this was the only interstellar class ship in the landing field! It was his only chance; he had to take it.
Sprinting across the tarmac, he reached out to touch the landing strut; still cold, good. At least the landing hadn't been completely uncontrolled. If the landing gear had been too hot to touch...well, better not to think about that. With a grunt of effort, he threw himself up into the belly of the ship, whistling when he saw the equipment, shiny and new, within.
"Rich buggers," he muttered, shaking his head. Oh well, it didn't matter, the old codes would still be there. He hoped. Carefully he crawled past the landing gear mechanisms and found the panel he'd known would be there; the emergency access hatch. It was too small to fit through in a suit, and crawling through was almost always a death sentence, but it had to be there, just in case.
And in this case, it was to Chase's advantage. Quietly he whistled the five bars of an ancient song (or from a holo, he had never been entirely clear on that part) he'd been taught all those years ago. And like magic, the hatch folded open, and with a grin Chase disappeared inside.
Once inside, his suspicions were immediately confirmed. Only emergency lighting lit the narrow conduit, barely large enough for a person to crawl through. But even the emergency lighting flickered weirdly, pulsing in strange patterns, and that should be impossible! Emergency lighting was specifically made to have as few connections to the main systems as possible, and to be almost impossibly redundant!
In fact, the patterns almost looked like...He paused, letting his eyes absorb the lightning quick flashing. 6...4...2...1...1...2...3...5...8...13..."Damn!" he whispered harshly. That shouldn't be possible! He'd thought they'd all been destroyed or captured by the Federation! What was a Hyperchip doing in a place like this, in a ship like this?
Chase reached above and yanked himself through the ship even faster. Whoever these people were, they were lucky to have survived this far. If he was going to escape, he needed to find where that Hyperchip was, and fast, or else...
He strained his muscles, going even faster.
"Shankill Moon Base, what is the status of the pirate vessel?" the words crackled over the communicator, unnoticed by dozens of intoxicated officers. "Shankill, do you copy? Over."
A new voice rumbled over the airwaves, quiet and commanding, "This is Scoria Three. Shankill seems to be offline at the moment. An unidentified ship landed here moments ago, what is its status?"
"You are not cleared for that information. Please stand by, we will be entering orbit shortly."
The voice grew even quieter, "I am the Guild Master of the Heptite Guild. I think you'll find I have clearance far above your own. Put me on to the Admiral, I believe he'll be...happy...to hear from me."
"Ah...yes! Yes Sir! Transferring you now!"
…
"Lanzecki? Is that you, you old dog?"
"Admiral," The guild master replied drily, "Might I ask why you've decided to bring a fifth of the Alliance Firepower out to my part of the galaxy to chase a single small ship?"
The Admiral snorted, "That's no ordinary ship, Lanzecki; that's the C-1143!" he grinned at Lanzecki's slight twitch of recognition, "We spotted her exiting the Habilist system while on routine maneuvers. I'll explain the rest later, when we're not on unencrypted channels. What's her current status? She should be disabled...but we've thought that before. We never dreamed she'd try going to hyperspace with a Hyperchip in her. Sorry about the almost mess, by the way."
"We can discuss that when you're 'explaining the rest'," Lanzecki replied, slightly coolly. "The ship is motionless, I haven't seen anything happen since I got to the control room. Before that, I don't have any idea."
"Watch her carefully, but do not approach. I won't lose her again."
Lanzecki pondered pointing out that he didn't take orders from even an admiral, but after a moment shrugged. No point in antagonizing an Admiral either, even one as consistently friendly as this one.
"Roger that. I'll send up an escort party to show you the way when you arrive. Scoria 3 out."
Chase growled. This was the third access passage that had equipment just sticking through it! On a ship this size, which shouldn't normally hold more than a few dozen people at most, that was absurd. A modification pushing into one could be tolerated, but this was pushing towards making some parts of the ship completely inaccessible! Not even one of the Chance crew would be stupid enough to do that, a fire in the wrong part of the ship could destroy critical components without any possibility of repair or even stopping the blaze!
Grunting, he sucked his chest in and managed to squeeze through. If he hadn't been so skinny...but he'd noticed annoying changes in his body recently. His chest had started to become more muscular, regardless of his best efforts to the contrary. If this trend kept up...he didn't want t think about it. In any case, he was almost there. A hyperchip operated on a certain frequency, one almost impossible to track normally, but it was really a complicated codex-cypher intermixing several songs from old earth. With good memory you could decypher them in your mind...but almost impossible to do with a computer, as any patterns that existed were far too long to be randomly solved by a computer. Particularly deadly to AI's and...brainships. He grimaced at the thought; to think that someone would deliberately try to hurt a brainship was...almost beyond comprehension.
He didn't even realize, in his anger, that he'd stopped sharing his weight equally in the access passageway. And so it was a complete surprise when, a moment later, he fell through the floor and crashed into the dead center of a room.
Chase lay where he was for a long ten seconds before he dared to look up, listening carefully for the sound of someone running, of anyone having heard his fall. Fardles, he thought, glancing around the room, they've gotta notice that hole! I need to fix it somehow. Maybe if I-
"What are you doing on my fardling ship?" His thoughts were cut off by a sudden voice, snarling in surprise.
Chase leapt to his feet, craning his neck to look for the speaker, "I'm sorry!" he said desperately, "I just need to get off this planet right away, and...Where are you?" he peered around, but the room seemed as empty as it had before, "Who are you?" he demanded nervously.
"Right here, you Idiot!" the voice replied, flashing her main monitor several times.
Chase stared at the column for a long moment. Suddenly realization struck, and his eyes went as wide as saucers.
"Oh. Oh! You're the ship! You're the ship!" If his eyes could have grown any larger, they would have. "Shellcrack! I can't believe it! I'm actually on board a real Brainship! A real brainship!" He ran his hands reverently over the walls, mouth hanging slack, looking wildly around trying to take in everything at once.
"It's not like the ship's any different from any other, you know," She said drily.
"But...it's a...you're a... Brainship! Strength, freedom, prestige... The whole universe is yours, you're accepted everywhere, free to travel wherever you please, just you and your brawn..."Chase faded off, eyes far away. Suddenly he had a thought, and started to glance around around quizzically, "Where's your brawn? I haven't seen him anywhere."
"Brawn?" The ship growled, "I don't have a brawn. I don't need one."
Even to Chase, the words seemed slightly forced, and he looked at her quizzically, "But every brainship needs a brawn. What if you need to interact with people outside your ship? Or what if your need to be repaired somewhere your servos cant reach? Or-"
"I do not need a brawn. Is that clear?" The words were tight, strained.
Chase slowly nodded. "But...aren't you lonely? I know I would be. Even on the Chance I always had someone nearby," his smile slid into a frown, "Even if they didn't know I was there. If I had to go for months at a time without seeing anyone..." he pondered it for a moment, oblivious to the silence that was conspicuously being broadcast throughout the cabin, "I think I'd probably go crazy!"
"What. Did You. Say."
Chase shrunk in pain; the words sounded like they'd gone through a woodchipper, "I just said I think I'd go cra-"
"I AM NOT CRAZY!"
"I-"
"I HAVE NOT GONE CRAZY! NOT YET! AND I WON'T LET YOU LIE TO ME! GO. AWAY!"
Chase froze in fear; his ears had just popped. "What are you doing!?" he said in disbelief. She was pumping the air out of the cabin!
"I'm making you be quiet! I don't have to deal with you! I won't! I refuse!"
Chase didn't have time to think; he began taking deep breaths, preparing to jump back into the vent above; maybe if he could get close to the air supply, he could...he could...the world began to swim around him. The air was dropping faster than he realized. "How...can you...do this...?" He gasped, falling to his knees, "You're...a...brainship!"
"And I don't even know your name. Or care. You'll be quiet soon enough. Soon enough..." Her voice was almost a whisper.
"My name...?" he gasped, drawing in breath after thinning breath, "My name...is Chase Chance!"
At last the black overcame him, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
