Chapter 9
Whew, talk about cutting it close! Here's the March update!
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The second she thrust the spear, she wanted to take it back. Olunnhar fell to the ground beside her with a crash, Elizabeth just managing to twist to the side in time to avoid being pinned beneath him. She heard him flailing behind her and she dragged herself out of his reach, weeping tears of agony. They quickly became tears of emotional agony, as well as physical, when she heard him gagging and choking wetly.
Terrified to turn and look at him, terrified of what she would see, Elizabeth nonetheless forced herself to roll over onto her other side so she was facing him.
He lay on his back, the spear rising out of his stomach. One hand, dark with blood, was clasped around it, the other was limp at his side. His head was raised slightly, and his dark eyes looked…stunned, as he stared at the mortal wound in his abdomen. A slowly widening pool of blood glinted beneath him.
"NO!" she wailed in anguish, not caring that less than a minute ago, he had been trying to slaughter her. He couldn't die. He couldn't. "No, no, no, no, no…" she sobbed, knowing that despite her protests, there was absolutely nothing she could do to prevent it. She'd killed him and he was going to die and he was going to leave her and she would be all alone in the ship full of monsters, all alone on this desolate planet with nothing to do but wait for death.
At the sound of her cries, he turned his head to look at her. There was no more anger in his eyes now, just that same stunned disbelief. He looked at her with wide eyes that seemed to say I didn't think you could do that. Blood trickled out of his open mouth.
"Olunnhar…" she sobbed, dragging herself to his side, no longer caring if he still wanted to kill her, no longer caring about the life she had taken his to protect. If he wanted to reach out and choke the life out of her with his last dying strength, she would let him. It would be kinder than the alternative.
But he no longer seemed to want to. He looked at her dully for a moment, then laid his head back down and turned his face away from her, as if resigned to his fate. In a way, he almost seemed relived.
"No…" she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. "No please…" Any anger she had felt toward him for attacking her was unimportant beside the terror of being alone. "Please don't die…please…Olunnhar, please!"
He turned his head to look back at her, and this time she saw a hint of surprise in his eyes. It only made her weep harder. Was it really so shocking to him that she could weep for him? He had forced her to do this…she hadn't wanted to!
He only looked at her for a moment more before coughing weakly and sending a spray of blood droplets out to splatter his chin. Almost as if that had used up the last of his strength, he laid his head back on the floor and the hand that had been clutching the poker finally let go and fell at his side.
Still crying, she reached out uselessly, trying to catch his hand before it could fall, as if that action symbolized the approach of his death and she could stave it off by keeping his hand where it was. She wasn't fast enough, and her hand closed around the poker rising out of his stomach instead. She wanted to wrench it free, as if that might save him, but she knew it wouldn't. Removing the poker would only make him bleed to death faster…..and she wanted every second she had left with him before she had to be alone.
She let go of the poker and her own hand slid back to the floor as well, where it brushed against a wispy thread of cool metal.
Her necklace.
Instinctively, her hand closed around it. Instinctively, she pressed it to her cheek, to her lips, still taking what little comfort she could from its familiar shape. That it had been the trigger for Olunnhar's murderous rage only vaguely registered. In her darkest hour, in her moment of deepest need, what it represented to him didn't matter. Only what it represented to her. Love. Faith. Her father. Her god.
With nothing left to do, Elizabeth Shaw held the cross to her lips and began to pray.
She prayed for help. For strength. For guidance. For comfort. For her father. For Charlie. For her fallen crewmates, even those now lying cold and dead in this very room.
For Olunnhar.
And for his people.
She prayed and she wept and she hoped and she despaired as she knelt over Olunnhar's fallen form and waited, knowing that what was going to happen was out of her hands, and she could only be ready to face it.
A hand touched her arm.
She looked up, tears trickling down her cheeks, to see Olunnhar had his hand on her wrist.
It closed gently around her wrist, pulling her hand away from her face, and the cross fell from her nerveless fingers to dangle by its chain which had gotten tangled around her thumb. Olunnhar's hand slid free from her wrist and closed around the cross, pulling it gently out of her grip with a single soft tug.
She caught her breath as he brought it close to his face, ran his thumb over the smooth metal looked at it in what looked like quiet amazement. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time, and his impression was decidedly different from the one he had had before. But why? What had changed?
He looked at the cross and then, almost hesitantly, brought his eyes up to meet her own. There was uncertainty in them, and surprise and confusion, but there was no more anger, no more hate. He looked back at the cross, then at her again, as if marveling at something. Elizabeth could only look back at him in confusion, hardly daring to breathe in the tense atmosphere.
Slowly, something new twinkled to life in his dark eyes. It looked like horror.
"Olunnhar?" It came out in a whisper.
He seemed not to hear her. The hand that was holding the cross dropped limply to his side once more, but he remained staring ahead, seeing nothing but at the same time, seeming to see something that was horrible beyond comprehension. He looked like he had realized something awful, so awful that it chilled him to the very core.
Olunnhar?" she said again, louder this time.
He looked…no, gaped at her in horror, eyes wide, mouth open slightly. The horror didn't seem to be directed at her this time though. No, it didn't seem to be in response to anything she'd done, just in response to some sort of inner realization , some sort of internal conclusion he'd come to. Still, the look on his face was just ghastly, and she couldn't stop herself from placing a comforting hand against his cheek.
He turned his head away from her as if her touch stung. But, once again, his reaction seemed different than before. He didn't seem to be angry, didn't seem to find her loathsome…it was almost like he didn't want to accept it. Like he felt he couldn't…or shouldn't.
His eyes were squeezed shut, as if he desperately wanted to avoid seeing something. Tears, guilty tears, leaked from the corners of them.
"Hey…" she said softly. She tried to touch his cheek again, but he gasped at her touch and his eyes flew open. They looked lost, empty, broken. He breathing was short and shuddering, as if her were trying to stave off sobs.
"No, don't cry," she told him. "It'll make your wound worse." She touched the bloody spot where the poker entered his body
To her surprise, he turned his face away from her again and shook his head. She called his name again, touched him, shook him, but she could get no further response out of him. He was still breathing, so she knew he was still alive, but he seemed to have shut her and everything else out as if it were unimportant. As if he had no further need of the outside world. As if the only thing that mattered now was this…this horror he'd finally recognized.
As if he were finally reigning himself to his fate.
"No!" she cried, seizing his shoulder and shaking him. "Olunnhar, you can't die! You can't! C'mon!" she pleaded, as if it would do any good, as if making him want to live again would magically heal him. "Olunnhar, please…"
He did not stir.
She collapsed in despair, still sobbing, clinging to him, burying her face against his chest. "Don't leave me," she whispered uselessly, unable to stop herself from begging for the impossible. "Please don't leave me alone…"
A hand touched her shoulder.
"Olunnhar…" she whispered, unable to raise her head to look at him. "Oh, Olunnhar..."
The hand shook her shoulder.
"Huh?" she said stupidly, raising her head to meet his eyes.
He was looking at her, and although his eyes were pained and cloudy, they were surprisingly alert. He let go of her shoulder and pointed toward the far end of the room.
Elizabeth looked over and saw the open doorway she had been trying to make it to when Olunnhar caught her. "The door?" she asked him, pointing toward it herself. "You want me to go out the door?"
Olunnhar pointed toward the doorway again, then held a single finger in front of her face.
"Wha-?" she said. She didn't understand what he was trying to tell her.
He raised a second finger, then a third.
"Three?" she said, when he didn't raise any more fingers. Three what? Count to three? Three seconds? Three minutes? Three little pigs? "I don't understand…"
But she had to. She didn't know what he was trying to tell her, but it had to be important. Whether it was a way to help him, a way to help her, or just some sort of last dying wish, she wanted to carry it out. She had to force herself to figure it out.
Go out the door. Then three. Three landmarks of some sort? Three doors? Three hallways? It had to be something like that.
Olunnhar pointed toward the door again, counted to three on his fingers, then raised his other hand and used both to outline the shape of a large, spherical object. Finally, he mimed picking something up, and finished by pointing to himself.
"Go out the door, go past three landmarks, find a round thing, pick it up and bring it to you," she interpreted, although, of course, there was no way for him to confirm if she'd gotten it right. Still, saying it out loud helped firm the idea on her mind.
She looked into his dark eyes, pained but still alert. "I'll go get it," she promised, nodding her head for emphasis. "Whatever it is, I'll bring it back to you." She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.
Then she was forcing herself to turn around, forcing herself to her feet. Her newly torn open wound screamed with familiar agony, and she could feel the wetness of blood running down her belly, down her legs. She had to bit down on her lip to keep from screaming, but she moved. First one shaky step, then another. Tears of pure pain trickled down her cheeks.
She thought she heard Olunnhar's voice from behind her, but she couldn't let herself stop, much less turn around. If she stopped moving, she might not be able to start again. She wasn't sure if she had enough energy, or willpower, to make it where she needed to go and back again, so she couldn't afford to waste a single second on anything else.
It felt as though the doorway were several miles away instead of just across the room, but Elizabeth forced herself to place one trembling foot in front of another, and eventually she reached it. She didn't know how long it took, how much of her own time and Olunnhar's was left, but she nonetheless pushed on. Outside the door, the hallway was tall but narrow, and Elizabeth was relieved to have a wall to lean against. A few feet away on the right side of the hall was a tall, wide doorway. Further down the hall was a second. Both of them were open, although she could see nothing but pitch blackness inside.
Two doors. Could there be a third farther down? Is that what he meant by "three?"
She shuffled down the hall, one hand on the wall to help her stay on her feet, the other covering the wound in her abdomen. It was still bleeding, although not as badly as before. Thankfully. If she continued to bleed as heavily as she had been, she would bleed to death before Olunnhar did.
If he hadn't bled to death already…
She fought the urge to pick up her pace. If she tried to move faster, she was sure she'd fall, and she didn't think she'd be able to get up again if that happened. She'd die in this hall and Olunnhar would die in the cockpit and the centipedes would eat both of them.
The thought of the centipedes, and the thought of the bodies they'd fed upon, especially of Weyland's peeled and grinning skull-face, made her blood run cold and she almost stopped. What if she ran into some of the creatures while shuffling helplessly down this dark hallway? She'd never be able to fight them off, and worse, she had a brand-new, unprotected body opening for them to try to crawl into.
Unbidden, the image of them crawling into her open wound, the feeling of them scuttling around inside her, feeding on her, made her shudder. More pain screamed from her belly, and she felt her shaky hand begin to slide from the wall.
She forced herself to seize back hold of the wall before she lost her balance, forced her legs to keep shuffling forward. She had no choice but to keep moving down this hallway, centipedes or no centipedes. It was Olunnhar's only chance, and, by extension, her own.
As she passed the second doorway, Elizabeth finally spotted the third, near the end of the hall, which dead-ended at a blank wall. This door was narrow, unlike the others, although it was just as tall. It was open like the others too, a fact which made her sigh in relief. Olunnhar hadn't given her any sort of combination, so she wouldn't be able to open it if it was shut.
She finally reached the third doorway and leaned to look inside.
Almost immediately, a soft blue glow illuminated the room. The lights must have been motion activated, which was more good news.
The room was small, (by Mala'kak standards anyway –there was still plenty of room for her to move around) and lined with dark shelves that looked to be the same material as the walls and floor. It looked almost like they had been molded from the walls, or perhaps grown from them. On them were all sorts of different vases and canisters and other things which she couldn't even comprehend the use for. A clear vial full of what looked like black "beads," some of which occasionally "jumped" weakly, clattering against the side of the vial. A device made of at least ten different clear tubes, each of which ended in tiny funnel that looked like it was made out of yellowed bone. Squat round vases that were leaking sticky red ooze around their caps.
She had no idea what any of it was for, and she didn't have time to find out, for which she was almost grateful. Some of the items actually unnerved her to the point of not wanting to go near them, let alone touch them. What was a long roll of "tape" that looked like Mala'kak flesh used for? Did she want to know?
It didn't matter, in any case. What she was looking for was on the closest shelf to her left. Rows of huge, round jars made out of what looked like clay, each about the size of a bowling ball. They looked so ordinary compared to the other things on the shelf they almost looked like they had been put in this room by mistake.
There was no time to wonder about it though. Elizabeth seized the nearest jar…and had only a split second to wonder if she should have checked to see if any centipedes were on the shelf before she felt the legs on her hand.
She hurled the jar away from her instinctively, not bothering to scream this time because she didn't have the energy. The jar broke open against the back wall, revealing some sort of viscous fluid that looked like electric blue honey. The centipede (one of the mutated ones, certainly, given that it was the size of a frankfurter sausage) twisted and writhed and flailed its little legs, but it was ensnared in the sticky substance. The strange substance actually gave off a faint glow, and she could see the centipede's struggling shadow cast on the wall behind it.
Shaking herself slightly, Elizabeth forced herself to put it (and any other mutated centipedes that might be lurking nearby) out of her mind. She gently nudged another jar and waited a moment, but there was no sign of any movement. No centipedes on this one.
She seized it and wrapped her arms around it protectively, glad that it wasn't terribly heavy. Then she began the long, slow, painful shuffle back down the hallway toward the cockpit. And Olunnhar. She only hoped he would still need what was in the jar when she finally reached him.
She was feeling lightheaded and her vision was starting to swim by the time she finally reached the cockpit, but she forced herself to cover the last bit of distance to Olunnhar with shaking, wobbly steps. She fell to her knees at his side, still wrapping her arms protectively around the round jar to avoid dropping it. To her relief, she could see that Olunnhar was still breathing, although his eyes were closed and he didn't react to the sound of her return.
"Olunnhar?" she said, hoping to snap him back to consciousness. She needed to know how to open the jar. It had no lid or markings of any kind, and seemed to be a perfect, unblemished sphere, aside from a small flat spot on the bottom so it could sit on the shelf. There must have been some sort of spot you pressed or way you had to hold it and twist it or something similar, but the jar itself gave her no clue as to how this was accomplished.
Olunnhar didn't stir at the sound of her voice, and she tried not to panic. She wasn't going to let him die when she was right beside him with the…medicine (or whatever it was) that he needed. If she couldn't open it, she'd just have to break it. She'd broken the other jar when she'd thrown it across the room, after all. That proved they weren't too durable to shatter. She raised the jar over her head with both hands and brought it down on the floor in front of her as hard as she could.
It clunked hollowly against the floor and bounced back slightly. Thankfully, she managed to keep her grip on it. She didn't think she had the energy to chase it if it rolled away from her.
There wasn't even a crack in the jar's surface, but she didn't give up. She knew her strength was going, and that it might take more than one try. She smacked it down on the floor a second time, and this time saw a network of hairline fractures radiating out from the spot where it had struck the floor. A third time and there was an audible crack!
The fourth attempt finally did the trick, leaving a jagged edged hole in the side of the jar, a hole that emitted the same soft blue glow she'd seen in the supply room. Inside, the blue "medicine" seemed to "slosh" in slow motion toward the hole, but that was probably only caused by her holding the jar at an angle.
She wondered how she was supposed to help Olunnhar with this. Was she supposed to put it on his wound? Did he drink it? How exactly did it work?
Knowing that time was running out, she decided to put some on the wound and see what happened. The substance's consistency reminded her more of a salve to put on an injury than a medicine to be ingested. Of course, this was Mala'kak medicine, so who knew if it was like human medicine. Still, human medicine was the only frame of reference she had, so she would just have to trust it and hope for the best.
She reached into the opening in the jar and drew out a handful of the blue goo…and then nearly dropped it as she felt it contract in her hand, as if the handful was a single squishy organism that was trying to escape her grip. It felt uncomfortably like she was holding a giant slug. The effect was furthered by the blob of blue goo actually stretching out one of its ends until it poked out from between her fingers, first hesitantly, then eagerly, as if it had grown a head and was searching for something.
A hole to crawl into… she thought, and shuddered.
Unable to stand the sensation any longer, she reached over and placed the handful of goo onto Olunnhar's stomach wound. The goo reacted immediately, surging eagerly toward the hole, spreading, sending out pseudopods of itself toward the edges of the injury, where they separated from the main mass and began oozing along the perimeter of the hole, making them resemble slugs even more than before. They seemed to encase the ragged edges of flesh though, pull them eagerly into themselves, rather than simply crawl over them. It was as if they were feeding on Olunnhar's flesh. It actually reminded her more of leeches than slugs, and her stomach lurched. The main mass of goo slid into the wound and disappeared.
Olunnhar finally stirred, moaning softly in surprise. A moment later, he moaned again, louder, this one sounding almost contented, or even…pleased.
Not knowing what was happening, only praying that it was good, Elizabeth took another handful of the disgusting goo and pressed it into Olunnhar's wound, which was already looking smaller. It's working! This stuff is actually healing him! It looked like she'd been right a few days ago when she'd wondered if the Engineers had something that could immediately heal any injury. She wondered how it worked. Was it some kind of nanotechnology? Was it accomplished by the same mechanics that gave the black goo its powers?
There was no time to wonder about it though, since there was at least one more thing to do. The spear was still sticking out of Olunnhar's stomach, and she needed to remove it to let the goo close the wound completely. She curled one trembling hand around it and tugged, but it was stuck fast. She pulled harder, with all the strength in her arm, and Olunnhar moaned again. In pain this time.
Elizabeth forced herself to lean over Olunnhar and take hold of the spear with both hands. Her own wound screamed in protest and nausea and lightheadedness tried to intrude upon her concentration, but she pushed them all back and pulled with all her might.
The spear slid free and fell at Olunnhar's side with a clatter, just as Elizabeth herself fell over onto her back on his other side. She'd done it. The spear was free and the blue goo was working and now Olunnhar would be all right. As long as she'd put enough of the goo into his wound, that was. She wanted to sit up and check, but didn't think she had the energy any longer. It was all probably okay, though. She'd saved him and now she could rest. She wasn't sure if she'd wake up again, but it seemed unimportant. Everything was…was…
And then she became dimly aware of movement at her side. Of hands touching her. Of hands shaking her. Hands fiddling with her suit. She felt a clasp give way and then a zipper slide open. A hand intruded into the opening, and, before she could react, pressed something cool and wet and slimy down onto her stomach. She felt it move against her skin and had time to realize what it was before the itch started.
It began around the edges of the incision, just a slight tingle, but gradually intensified as it traveled deeper into her wound, deeper into her body. Soon, her entire abdomen was seized with an itch so intense she wanted to tear herself open so she could scratch inside. She almost thought she might have tried, but she felt someone holding her arms down.
Then it didn't matter anyway, because a moment later the itch was replaced by relief. By pleasure. It felt as if thousands of tiny hands were inside her, scratching away at the itch, replacing it with ecstasy. She moaned, and the pleasure continued to intensify. She thought she felt hands on her again, touching her shoulder, maybe even shaking it, but she paid them no heed. The pleasure continued to rise, continued to envelope her entire abdomen. It was all she could concentrate on.
It finally peaked, causing her to cry out in ecstasy, then gradually subsided, leaving exhaustion in its wake. And thirst. For some reason, her mouth felt as dry as a desert. She wanted water, but knew there wasn't any, knew that even if there had been, she didn't have the strength to go get it. So instead, she succumbed to the former urge, allowing herself to spiral down into peace and darkness, hoping that somehow, everything would turn out all right.
The last thing she felt before exhaustion took her was a gentle hand covering her own.
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Cigarette, Elizabeth? :P
Anyway, my sincere apologies, but there will be no update in April. It's one of my busiest months and I've got two other fics that really need updates first. See you all in May…that's a promise!
