Brain Damage

Groot had shackled Drax to a pallet with enough chains to prevent a man with his strength from breaking loose. Groot had also taken away all his weaponry and hid it in a safe place.

The drugged warrior tried to attain a sitting posture, blinking his eyes and shaking his head.

Peter sat on a chair close by and observed him. Sam had taken a medical scanning device and was studying a hologram of the big man's brain. He operated the controls of his interface, zoomed in and out, typed in queries and looked very concentrated.

Drax glanced at him with some estrangement. Then he turned his head to face Peter, who looked back with the stern expression of a captain who was going to discipline a renegade crewmember.

Drax was the first to speak, "Peter, what have you done?"

The leader of the Guardians waited a few seconds to respond and then said with restrained annoyance, "I tell you what I've done. I - we - rescued your ass out of the big mess you got yourself into and now we lost Gamora."

The tattooed warrior looked relieved. "Thank the gods! Gamora can replace me."

"What?" Peter shouted. He slid to the edge of his chair and asked angrily, "I give you ten seconds to explain what you think you were doing or else I'll ask Groot to convince you!"

Groot said, "I am Groot!" and even he sounded angry.

"I will not tell you what this is all about. You can't possibly understand."

Peter jumped up from his chair and was going to do something he would regret later, but Sam intermitted, "It's no use, Peter! You can torture him all you want; he's not going to talk."

"Why is that?" Star-Lord asked, looking down at the cat.

"I've analysed his brain. There are some unusual changes. This is not the man you knew a few days ago."

Peter's anger made room for worry. He only recently met the cat but knew by now that he wouldn't talk nonsense, even if his findings might seem unlikely at first glance. He went back to sit on his stool. "Tell me about it."

"At first sight, it looks like a mild form of psychosis. He's open to suggestions. But not just any suggestion. His delusional state has been triggered by very specific concepts that seem not to be his own. It's like parts of his memory system have been reengineered.

Theoretically, it can be brought about by many things. As the Skrulls had a virus laboratory, my guess would be that it has been induced by an artificial virus. Probably custom designed for his DNA, so it does only affect him and nobody else."

Star-Lord frowned while he took the message in and tried to order his thoughts. "So if I understand you correctly, someone inserted a virus into his brain to make him ... follow commands?"

"That's how it looks. He thinks that he's on a very important mission and will do anything to protect his target. Even if the 'real' Drax would dismiss it as nonsense."

Peter looked baffled. Suddenly, the fierce warrior in chains wasn't a stubborn, dangerous traitor anymore, it was a sick man. Groot looked at him with pity in his eyes. "Can you undo the damage?" Peter asked.

"Any injury outside the head can be healed with our technology. However, brain afflictions are more complicated. I'm optimistic, but we have to do it step by step and I have to consult a colleague."

"OK, you do that," Peter said with a weary voice. He got up and climbed to the upper deck, to keep Rocket informed.

Drax warned Sam, "I don't know what kind of devil you are, but you are not getting inside my brain!"

Sam responded, "What if I'm telling the truth? What if someone altered your brain?"

"Those are lies! I know what you are trying to do. You conspire to sabotage the mission. You will fail!"

"You can't tell anyone about this mission, if I understand you correctly," the cat remarked.

"No, I can't and won't tell you."

"Do you even know yourself what the mission entails?"

"Yes, the mission is ... it's glorious, it's ... Wait! You are trying to trick me! I won't say another word."

"That's what I thought. You're having problems to formulate the mission objectives, even to yourself. I don't think the mission is real. They turned you into a slave. I'm sorry, Drax, but I'm a doctor. I have to help you, even if you don't agree in your current state."

The red-green, tattooed warrior was towering over the little cat, even while he was sitting down. He stubbornly resolved to silence.

Sam took his back pack and got out a small white disc. He made it move through the air and land on Drax's forehead. Then it disappeared. "It's a neuromodulator," Sam explained. "I will use it to sedate you and undo most of the modifications they made to your brain."

The warrior looked at him in disbelief. He slowly closed his eyes and fell asleep.

"He will sleep until I wake him up," Sam said to Groot. "You can unchain him; he's no longer dangerous now."

Before he was going to help Drax, Sam went to the upper deck and walked towards Rocket and Peter, who were sitting in the cockpit and were discussing the situation. Sam seated himself in one of the backseats of the cockpit, listened for a short while and then interrupted their conversation. "What are we going to do from here?" he asked Peter.

"Can you cure Drax?"

"I will try."

"We need him back. We have to go look for Gamora. Have you any idea where she might be?"

"I already started a tracking algorithm but it's not easy. This teleportation system is powerful; it probably has a range of more than a billion light-years. Our system has trouble tracking such a device; it can take a long time before we know her destination. I think it would be faster to reverse engineer the thing."

"How are we goin' ta do that? The device didn't survive the blast," Rocket said.

"I can create a holographic duplicate. Would you be able to work with that?"

"Depends how good ya can replicate the machine."

"Pretty good, down to subatomic particles."

"That good, huh?" Rocket replied.

"OK then, I'll set up a larger holographic display and I'll see what I can do about Drax. I have to warn you that even if I manage to undo the effect of the virus, it may take a while before he will be normal again. His whole belief system has been shaken."

"We'll handle that when we get there," Peter replied.

"And another thing: we're still in the range of the biohazard. There's an unhealthy concentration of virus particles in this ship. We need to do something about that."

Rocket suggested, "I'll get us into orbit and turn on life support. And I'll give the bio-filters a boost."

"That would be a good idea."

The ship lifted up from the planet and went into orbit. Sam descended to the lower deck, where he asked Groot to lay Drax flat on his back on the bunk. Then he contacted a crewmember of the Tangerine. It was a female catlike creature, probably of the same species as Sam, but with Siamese fur colour markings. She wore a two-piece black dress.

"Hi Susan," Sam greeted her.

"Hi Sam, how are you?"

"Fine, how are you?"

"You've been away quite a while now."

"There's a lot of exciting stuff going on here."

"We should catch up."

"Don't worry, I'll contact you after we have resolved a few issues here."

"Yeah, or maybe I'll come over to have a chat. Can I help you with something for the mean time?"

"Yes, I need your advice on a medical problem."

Sam explained the condition Drax was in and sent Susan data. Meanwhile Rocket came down the stairs. He walked towards the group and sat down. He looked at the female cat in the small hologram with fascination in his eyes.

Sam said, "How rude of me. Susan, this is Rocket."

"Hi Rocket! Nice to meet you."

The raccoon grinned shyly and raised his hand to say, "Hi! Nice to meet you too!"

Susan smiled. Sam and Susan were both cats, but looked different. For example, Susan's eyes were slanted whereas Sam had a more open facial expression. Rocket thought the female cat looked gorgeous. Sam continued his discussion with her and soon he knew what he wanted to know and closed the connexion.

"You like her?" Sam asked a bit directly, but friendly.

"She's pretty," Rocket replied.

"Susan is kind of our captain. Like Star-Lord is yours; we're not so tightly organised either. She's also a medic, like me."

"A doctor. Hmm pity. I started ta like her."

"What's with you and doctors anyway?"

"Let's say I met some of the wrong kind."

"You really should meet Susan. She's a lifesaver."

"Yeah, that's what medics are s'posed ta do."

"No, she literally saved my life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her."

"Really? What happened? Did ya have an accident or somethin'?

"No I was in jail and she got me out."

Rocket made a coughing sound in surprise and exclaimed, "You were in prison? A boy scout like you?"

"I was in for murder."

"No really? Ya killed someone?"

"No, I didn't. I was innocent."

Rocket joked, "An innocent convict. That's original."

With a mix of indignation and sadness, Sam exclaimed, "But I was innocent!" He paused for a moment and looked at the floor. "No, that's not entirely true. A rescue operation went wrong and I was accused of having caused people to die. I believed so myself." He sighed. "But Susan could prove I didn't."

"What's your story?"

"It was a long time ago, in my former life so to speak. A colonist ship had crash-landed on a small moon. I rescued four colonists and managed to bring them back to the rescue ship. But then a terrible disease broke out on the moon. I learned that the moon was in fact a quarantine zone. The colonists urged me not to make another rescue attempt due to the seriousness of the plague - it would get out and spread through the cosmos. However, I could not convince my superiors. So I high-jacked the rescue vessel and destroyed the moon."

Rocket looked surprised and replied, "You killed an entire moon?"

"I had to!" Sam said with pain in his voice. "It was a terrible decision to make. But I accepted my penance. In my head, I've lived for years with the image of innocent survivors who died because of my action." He paused and then said with an affected voice, "I met Susan years later, when I was in jail. She could prove that the four I rescued were the only survivors." He swallowed and continued in a calmer voice, "She had been on the Tangerine long before me. She used advanced equipment to analyse what really happened. The judges accepted the evidence and I was released. Then I joined the Tangerine and stayed since then."

The raccoon seemed to be impressed. He looked at Sam without saying anything.

Sam continued, "Frankly, I don't much like to talk about it. It was the worst episode of my life." Then he added in a more cheerful voice, "On the upside, Susan inspired me to become a doctor too. And she's a very fine doctor, I can assure you."

"My life hasn't been a walk in the park either," Rocket replied. "Believe me, I have reasons ta distrust doctors."

"Even the nice ones?"

"People can seem nice at first. Those are the worst."

"I don't think I can persuade you to think differently."

"Look, I may tell ya my life's story some time too, but we have work ta do. Ya wanted to show me yer large hologram."

"That's right, let me get you there. First, I need to set up a portal." The cat removed his back pack and took out a white disc the size of a human hand. "This creates a portal to a bigger place, where I can access a holodeck." He looked around. "I need a wall that is more or less vertical."

"The backside of the lower deck is the most upright surface of this ship."

"That'll do." Sam walked towards the backside and stuck the disc to the wall, a little above his head. He activated the device. An orange coloured symbol appeared on the disc; it was an abstract picture of a tangerine. He pushed it and immediately a closed black door appeared in the wall. It had round corners and looked like a ship door. It was about 1.5 metres high. He pushed the symbol again. The doorway stayed in place while the door inside dissolved. A white hallway appeared at the other side with flanking white doors.

Sam stepped through the portal and Rocket followed.

"Neat," the ringtail said.

"We have pretty cool portal technology; we use it for almost everything. We just moved a few hundred million light-years away from the Milano."

"So where are we now?"

"This is a local space bubble in an empty part of this universe, far away from any galaxy, star or planet. This white corridor gives access to various rooms." Sam opened one of the doors. They went through and stepped into a large, empty hall covered with shiny, blue panels. "This is a state of the art holodeck. I can reproduce the teleport in hard light."

"How is it that ya have trouble trackin' teleports if ya have this kind of equipment yerself?"

"The teleport system the Skrulls use is not compatible with ours. I think you can understand their technology better than we do. Besides, our tracking system is limited. It's best equipped to follow baryonic matter in normal space-time. And we can track FTL movements through subspace to some extent. However, portals can be very exotic. It's beyond the scope of our system."

"I see."

The cat popped up an interface and started to issue a number of commands. A small holographic image appeared. It showed the Skrull teleport as it looked before it was destroyed. It also displayed Gamora activating it. Soon after, the holographic emitters of the holodeck became active and built up a precise replica of the teleport that was inside the cube.

"This is a 4D recording," Sam explained. Here is a simple control interface for the hologram. You can play it forward and backward. You can also cut out parts, enlarge them, check signals, etc. Just call me if you need help."

"I'm pretty sure I can work with this equipment."

"Absolutely. Good luck finding out where she went. I'm going back to my patient."

Rocket started analysing the device to check if he could find clues. Sam went back through the corridor, into the Milano. He stepped towards Drax, who was still asleep on the bunk, and set up medical equipment.