CH8
Alexis was awake throughout the entire time and felt and then watched, as she had had her eyes closed to take a nap, when the drawer she was in slid open. 'Main procedure complete,' was what the voice said. She was still careful as she got out of the pod and stood up then watched it slide back under the bed. "Thanks Daddy," Alexis said softly. She wasn't going to let him hear that, his head was already big enough. Still she could be lying on one of the beds willing her back muscles to calm down.
A quick shower and a change of clothes later, she opened the door to the cockpit. "Hi Dad." Alexis sat down in the empty seat and looked at the space around them while still in FTL. "How's your back?" Rick had known there would be some pain involved, he was just upset with himself that it was his daughter that had to pay the price. "Good as new, no damage. My muscles simply didn't enjoy the ride is all." Alexis was happy it was over and happy that they had a third person. "How's our girl?" he asked. "Still in her pod. Based on what I saw she's going to be in there for a few more hours. Her concussion needs to be worked on, her blood needs to be cleaned and she, herself, needs to be cleaned. Do we have clothes for her?" Alexis didn't want her to stay in those clothes. The medical pod couldn't fix those.
"Just the emergency jumpsuits that each ship has. Believe it or not, I didn't know it was going to be a woman. Does that make a difference?" Rick wanted to hear his daughter's thoughts. Alexis shook her head. "I'm actually happy it's a woman. It means we have you outnumbered now," she teased. "Oh har, har." He shot daggers at his daughter which only made her laugh.
"She's going to have a lot to learn," Alexis warned him. "Yeah, I know." Rick hung his head. They were already far more advanced than her world was and their ship, if the Director selected them for it, was going to be even more advanced. Even they were going to have to go to school to learn about it. "We need to come up with a plan. One the Director will approve of and will actually work," Alexis remarked. Rick nodded. "Any suggestions daughter of mine?" He put it right back in her court. She thought for a while. "You're pilot, navigator, and communications, naturally. Maybe a minor in medical and/or engineering. I'm medical obviously and I'm thinking the ship's second engineer. Given where our third person comes from, I'm guessing the main cook. Neither of us certainly know how to cook." Alexis didn't consider putting in an order, having the cubes arrive, then put them in the machine, cooking. She meant real cooking. "I'm hoping the lead engineer even. Someone who knows how to fix everything onboard," she suggested.
Rick was amazed a little. He hadn't been thinking their third would be in charge of anything based on where she came from. "You're asking an awful lot of her pumpkin. You said it yourself, she's from a world that obviously doesn't have space flight. And it's highly probable that she's not an engineer now, or even close to being one." He wanted to hear her argument for this. "I know, but she's young – relatively speaking anyway. If I'm right and she's twenty that only makes her six years younger than you. Maybe she's already in school and just needs to change majors. It should work Dad. ...hopefully," Alexis added softly.
"Should we take her back and find someone else?" Rick didn't want to do it. Something told him she was perfect for them. "You mean like mom or Gina what's-her-name? No way!" Her grandmother was already out. She wasn't going to learn any of what they needed in time or even anytime after that. He chuckled. "For one, I have no idea where your mother is and I'm not anxious to have her join us either. She made her choice before you were even born. Granted we were both young and stupid. And you may not have been planned, but you're the best thing that has ever happened to me or my heart. I love you more than mere words can describe," he gently told her yet again. Alexis wiped away the beginnings of her tears. "I love you too Dad." What she wanted to do was hug him but conditions didn't allow it, so she would save it for when she could.
"As for Gina what's-her-name, as you call her. Just because I dated her once, just once, and she kept pestering me for a second, doesn't mean she's in my life. And she finally got the message that one date was one too many a few years ago. ...Thankfully." Rick rolled his eyes. God but Gina had been a pest!
"And then there was that one guy..." Alexis teased. "OH GOD! Please don't mention his name," he begged. "You mean Vikram something or other?" She was enjoying this a lot. Even with the passive restraint system on, her dad was squirming in his seat. "I didn't do anything, Nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. Less than nothing even. That guy was a fruit cake. ...Gay!" He snorted which made Alexis laugh aloud. He literally shivered in his seat as he recalled that bozo. "Do I look gay to you?" Rick actually did want an answer. "Don't look at me Dad. All the boys I've ever met have all been jerks and mostly way too old for me. And I'm not a lesbian either. ...stupid girls." The boys may have teased her about her age for the school she was in, but the girls were even worse. "Good! Because you're not getting married until you're thirty, maybe even forty or fifty," he informed her which just made her laugh.
They were both silent for a time and simply watched out the window. "Did we take her from her parents? Someone who loved her?" They hadn't actually asked her if she wanted to do this. They had just taken her without anyone's consent. Rick thought about it and started shaking his head. "Out in the cold where almost literally no one else was. Carrying food because she probably needed it. ...You said the drug that was in her was addictive and actually doing damage. My bet is that she lives alone and doesn't have anyone, except us now," he said, offering his assessment. "Maybe we should check her body for any ID cards or something. Maybe they use tattoos."
"I'll go, her clothes need to be ejected out into space anyway," Alexis offered as she turned off her restraint then opened the door. "And no peeking!" She pointed her finger at him. Rick looked hurt. "I NEVER..." He defended his honor. "I mean it, no peeking." She jabbed him in the shoulder to enforce her point. He lifted up his hand. "I promise not to move from this spot," he swore. "Or turn on the internal cameras." Alexis wasn't a genius for nothing. However he grumbled because his daughter had thought of his plan. "DAD!?" She wanted his promise. "Fine, fine. I promise not to peek or use the internal cameras," he groused. "Pinky promise?" She stuck out her pinky finger and hooked it with her dad's. "Pinky promise," he muttered dejectedly. "And since we're still in FTL you better not come busting into the cabin to warn me about some alien warship has found us or that you need to use the bathroom suddenly." She definitely knew her dad. "Yeah that, too." His daughter was just too damn smart. "Love you Dad." Alexis entered the main cabin. "I love you too. ...I think," he added after the door closed. He turned around to stare out into space mumbling to himself.
Alexis worked the controls to have the medical pod slide out and open making sure that it didn't stop helping heal her. Doing this simply slowed down the process. The glass cover was meant to remain closed to get optimal results.
Alexis started checking pockets first. She found a few things and placed them on the bed behind her. To make it all easier to take off she pulled out one of her devices and carefully cut off all the clothes little by little with a laser. Just for her own knowledge she used another device and ran it all over her body from head to toe and made note of everything she found. This time she took her time.
The medical pod had made good progress on cleaning her up, though she still had hair everywhere. This caused Alexis to adjust the controls a little to compensate for this. The next time she looked her over or she came out of the pod, all the hair except for that on her head would be gone permanently. She made another small adjustment to the controls and allowed it to close. Alexis stood up and pressed a finger on a panel. "You can come in now." The woman may be naked but she was also out of view.
"The medical pod has only just started so she's going to need somewhere between a few hours and several days. I also found a few things." Alexis spread them out on the bed. Rick picked one up. It was basically flat, round on one end and jagged on the other. "I'm guessing it's a key to an old fashioned lock," she offered and Rick accepted her idea.
They noticed yet again that their languages were strikingly similar. "Drivers license, Serena Kaye, New York, a series of numbers and it gives her height, weight, and eye color. Along with something about an expiration date." Rick handed it off to Alexis who went over to her portable computer and placed it on the screen.
"United States of America, Federal Reserve Note. Sounds like money to me. The number one sounds like a low number though. Sure are a lot of them on it." He placed the few of them off to one side. Then he started picking up metal discs that each had a number on them. "Are these worth more or less? One of them says ten." Rick offered it to Alexis who simply looked at it and brought up the drivers license on the conference screen. "She didn't have much, how much do you carry around?" he asked her but didn't get the answer he was looking for.
"Look at this, there's something under it." Alexis adjusted the image. "Can't make it out, maybe after we get home." The computer at home was far more powerful. "I think it's a fake. The picture doesn't fit properly, it looks like the numbers have been altered, though from what I don't know." She kept playing with the view. "So Serena Kaye isn't her name," he mused. "It might be, but why is part of it a fake if it is?" She kept studying it closely. "It gives her birthday which doesn't help us if we don't know their system or what today is."
"We can go back," Rick offered. "You never did get out to experience snow," he pointed out. "And freeze to death? No thanks! A few more hours and she'd be dead from exposure. Maybe when it's not snowing and frozen over," she suggested instead. He just smiled.
"So she's using a fake name. Who uses a fake name?" he wondered. "She's on the run from the authorities," Alexis proposed. "Because she killed someone?" Rick shook his head, he didn't feel that. "Maybe it has something to do with the drug in her system?" Alexis offered another option.
"If this stuff is money, it means she's buying it. Maybe she bought the food too," he posited. "It would help explain why she has so little of it on her." Alexis was willing to buy that.
"She doesn't want anyone to find her. People know her real name but not her fake name so they can't find her." Alexis offered another theory. "But why hide? Except for the drug she's fine. A little filthy but that's easily fixed."
He sat on the floor and looked between his daughter and the drivers license that was still on the screen. "Hide. ...I keep coming back to she's hiding from the authorities but I don't feel that from her. She hasn't stolen anything, hasn't killed anyone." He shook his head. "She isn't going to tell us until she trusts us. But we have another problem. We're from another planet and her planet can barely get into orbit. Our planet isn't anything like hers," Alexis warned him. "Psychological shock confronting another civilization, one that is far in advance of hers." Rick nodded his head.
"Can we get selected if we don't take her to our meeting with the Director? Tell him that she had a medical appointment that we couldn't change? We made it weeks ago. ...She's home sick and we didn't want him to catch it." Alexis offered some ideas. Rick shook his head. "He's going to want to see her and we have no background on her to give him. Her being contagious might buy us a week, but not more. He'll just select someone else," he warned her. That made Alexis slump. She really wanted this, it was her dream.
"How long will she need to be in the medical pod?" They had five days to get home and probably one day at home before their meeting. "Two days, more or less. Longer if we want her to come out without feeling any withdrawal because of the drug she was taking," Alexis replied. "What does the drug do? I mean why would she take it? Maybe it's being forced on her," Rick suggested. Alexis thought about it and pulled up the drugs effects on the screen.
It causes a short-lived, intense high that is immediately followed by the opposite – intense depression, edginess and a craving for more of the drug. People who use it often don't eat or sleep properly. They can experience greatly increased heart rate, muscle spasms and convulsions. The drug can make people feel paranoid,angry, hostile and anxious – even when they aren't high. Regardless of how much of the drug is used or how frequently, it increases the risk that the user will experience a heart attack, stroke, seizure, or respiratory (breathing) failure, any of which can result in sudden death.
Long term use. As tolerance to the drug increases, it becomes necessary to take greater and greater quantities to get the same high. Prolonged daily use causes sleep deprivation and loss of appetite. A person can become psychotic and begin to experience hallucinations.
As it interferes with the way the brain processes chemicals, one needs more and more of the drug just to feel "normal." People who become addicted lose interest in other areas of life.
Coming down from the drug causes depression so severe that a person will do almost anything to get the drug—even commit murder.
And if he or she can't get more, the depression can get so intense it can drive the addict to suicide.
"How long has she been using this drug do you think?" What were they up against? Alexis switched screens to read her vitals using her computer. "Two weeks, maybe a month. Long enough to be addicted, but not long enough to cause permanent damage," she said offering her medical opinion.
"So she uses the drug to get a high. Loses herself in the high only to crash when it wears off forcing her to use it again." Rick was thinking. "Fake ID and she's using a drug to give her a high. A drug that makes her not want to eat and yet she went looking for food. She wants to live and still takes the drug to what? Forget something? A pain so great that she can't deal with it maybe?" He was just guessing and he knew it.
"Those all fit but the only person who knows is her," Alexis told him. "Can you keep her asleep for three days? Long enough so that when she wakes up she doesn't want more of this drug? Because we don't have any and I'm not going to give her any." Rick wanted her healthy and happy. "Easily, it will be about the time we need to stop for fuel," she reminded him. "So do we ease her into being on another planet or show her what it's like being in space, diving into a sun to refuel," he questioned. In the end they decided the latter with a little twist. Since Alexis was less imposing and she was the medical person, he left it to her to get the woman out of the medical pod and answer her questions.
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Alexis had the pod slide out and pulled out her device and started running it over her from the tip of her toes to... "Oh, ah, hi, you're awake! I was just..." Alexis whipped her device behind her back. "How do you feel?" Kate glanced around and didn't recognize anything and it looked like she was lying on a floor. NAKED! She placed an arm over her breasts and her hand over her crotch. "Clothes, right." Alexis took the plastic bag off the bed, ripped it open, and pulled out what were going to be her clothes until they could get home. It actually was a good thing they were ahead of schedule, it would allow them time to get her some real clothes. Something to wear when she met with the Director.
"I know it's not much and the fit's rather universal, but it's all we have. The bathroom is through that door." The girl laid out the clothes on the bed from which Kate came from beneath. She pointed at the door and backed off to sit completely on the other bed with her legs bent under her and waited. Kate couldn't think of anything else to do but comply so while still trying to cover up she stood up and turned her back, figuring showing some stranger her ass was better than showing her everything else. Not considering that she had likely already seen everything already.
With clothes in hand she stepped to the door and looked it over since it didn't have a doorknob. "Press the little colored panel on the side," the voice of the girl told Kate as she stepped inside. It turned out to be a little bigger than she had thought. "You can take a shower if you wish. Just make it fast because we don't have much water," Kate heard just before the door closed behind her automatically.
Kate dropped her clothes on the lavatory and went to what looked like the shower and tried to figure out how to turn it on. Pressing a colored panel got the water to turn on and a number popped up showing her the temperature. Stepping in quickly she decided it wasn't hot enough and started pressing buttons when suddenly the water got soapy so she grabbed what looked like something for her to scrub with and got to work. Pressing the panel again got the soap to stop and she rinsed and then pressed the first panel which got the water to stop. She hadn't felt this good in a long time. She had noticed that except for the hair on her head, the rest of her hair was gone, all of it, everywhere.
Her skin felt and looked better. She got out of the shower looking for a towel. "Stay in the shower and press the panel with the letter D on it," came the girl's voice through the door. She stepped back into the shower and looking around, pressed the panel with a D on it. Suddenly a massive amount of air was blowing across her body. "It's a giant hand dryer!" Kate grinned as she felt the air rush across her body taking all of the water away. She didn't have to spin in place or anything. She even found that if she spread her legs a little, the air went places that air shouldn't.
No panties and no bra, just some kind of standard jumpsuit was all she had. It was a sort of soft green in color and the front opening seemed to seal itself after Kate couldn't find buttons or a zipper and she just placed one side up against the other.
Clean, dry, and sort of dressed, she pressed the panel that opened the door and found the girl sitting right where she had been. "Have a seat." She gestured at the bed across from her and held up what looked like slippers and Kate sat down and stared at her after putting on her shoes that were a touch to big for her, much like what she was wearing.
She was young, maybe 10 to 12 years old. Nicely dressed and had long orangish-colored hair. "I'm Alexis Harper Castle and my dad is up front piloting. You'll get to meet him in a moment," Alexis started out with. "K... Serena Ann Kaye." Kate hadn't had much interaction with people giving them her fake name.
Kate watched Alexis pull what looked like a computer onto her lap from off the bed next to her and suddenly Kate saw her drivers license show up on the wall above the girl. "You only had a few things on you when we found you. You had sustained a head injury and were asleep lying on the ground with snow piling up on and around you," the girl told her. Kate lifted a hand to her head where she had hit it. "We've taken care of the wound and reduced the swelling of your brain. And cleaned you up some. We've also taken all traces of the drug you've been taking out of your system. It was addictive and would have lead to even more complications," the girl informed her.
Kate shook her head. "I needed it and I could have stopped." She was sure of it, and the cocaine was doing just what she wanted it to do. When she took it that is. It was the after it wore off part that she didn't like. However the girl shook her head. "You were addicted and I'm betting even now you want more. Likely to cover up or hide from some trauma that you've experienced," the girl offered, which instantly made Kate angry. "What the hell would you know about it? You're a kid. You're what, maybe 12 years old at best?" She wasn't going to have some child criticize or question her actions.
"I'm eleven actually. I'll be twelve in a few months and I graduated from college just a few days ago if you must know. I was out of elementary school early and graduated high school after just two years. College only took another two years. So I really know quite a lot. I also know that this is a fake." The girl pointed to the drivers license above her head.
"It's not hard to spot if you look close enough. You can almost make out the numbers under the new one and your name over the original one. Also the picture doesn't fit the space perfectly, though that may be due to sloppy work. However, it's definitely a fake," the girl told her. Kate knew this day would come, just not here and now. Wherever here was or have an eleven-year-old girl call her out on it. "We'll call you Serena for now. When you learn to trust us maybe you'll tell us your real name." Alexis and her dad were willing to wait.
"Where am I anyway?" Kate didn't recognize any of this. It wasn't a hospital that was for sure. The place had no windows and was kind of narrow and long with doors on each end and the girl had said something about piloting. A boat of some kind perhaps and she was below deck? There was also something else in the bathroom that she didn't understand. It looked out of place to her.
She watched Alexis put her computer back on the bed, move to a panel, and press something. "How we doing Dad?" Alexis inquired. "About five minutes since we're exiting just outside the system this time. How is she?" Rick asked.
"Showered, dressed, confused, and defensive. About what we expected." Alexis turned to look at Kate and smiled at her. "You might as well come forward pumpkin. Let's see how she handles this." They knew it was going to be a shock. Hell, everything from here on was going to be a shock. She might as well get used to them starting now.
