Chapter 2: The Intruder
It was hard to tell how long she'd been inside the windowless room. Perhaps a day, maybe two. The alien's even, raspy breaths and the steady bleep of his monitors roused her brain whenever she tried to sleep. Each time, Bulma dreamt about waking to the blaring alarms of his dropping vitals. That they both made it through these critical hours was one small victory.
She raised her head from the imprint of the keyboard on her desk and spun her chair around to face him. The ferocious glare he lent her before was replaced by a restless coma, asleep but not peacefully. It was the alert sleep of an animal on guard. His brows were furrowed and his eyelids flickered as if he was following her movements behind them. Or maybe, he was just dreaming.
Leaving him to recuperate, Bulma peered into the damaged alien pod that had been housed within the general's capsule. It was no larger than five feet in diameter, built for one person, which led her to believe that is was simply an escape pod, meant to travel short distances to planets from a larger ship. Where had he been headed, and what happened to the mothership?
Smoke and electricity spewed from the ship's console as Bulma covered her mouth and stepped inside. Her foot kicked against a small object on the floor. It was some strange, rose-colored eyepiece. She fitted the object over her face and pressed the largest button on its side. Unintelligible characters sputtered across the tiny screen. Bulma set the object aside and moved on to extracting what information she could from the ship's fried database. Likely, it was seared stupid in a geomagnetic storm. That is, unless some crazy weaponry existed that could fry the insides of a spacecraft's electronics without damaging the outer hull.
There was one other person with the intelligence she possessed that could assist her in restoring and deciphering the contents of the ship's data: her father. Bulma spent the better part of the day repairing the ship's hardware to the point that she could encrypt and upload its data remotely to Capsule Corp's private servers. In the background, every now and then, the alien muttered in his sleep in a language she itched to know.
This sensation was familiar, the strands of an external consciousness that began to thread themselves deep into his mind. It wasn't like the thoughts of other Saiyans, which he was able to block and filter at will. He couldn't barricade this one out or partition it into some inaccessible corner. It lived freely alongside his own sleeping psyche. The invading consciousness began to form an image, a figure of a child floating in a space pod. The thick black hair of a Saiyan surrounded the cub's head, but his face was an unrecognizable blur.
Tarble? Vegeta called to his brother—the only Saiyan besides the king and queen to ever gain this kind of access to his head—but the pod moved away, just out of his reach. Answer me, he called again. The little cub couldn't hear him. Its image began to disintegrate, and the pod morphed into a picture of a yellow star. A bright blue atmosphere formed around it, enveloping Vegeta's internal vision. He didn't recognize this sky. The image belonged to the invading psyche. Brother, are you deaf? Answer me or get the fuck out of my head! There was no reply, but the presence remained, quietly weaving out its space in the prince's mind.
Annoyed by the intruder's silence, Vegeta forced himself awake, expecting the invading thoughts to fade away with his dreams, but remnants remained. It was barely there, but Vegeta still felt the fog of another's consciousness brushing against his own.
He tried to push it out by focusing instead on the sensations around him. He knew he'd been trapped like an animal, zapped and tethered for their experiments. But he couldn't remember how he'd gotten into this situation. His last memory was closing the pod and setting the coordinates for the Kanassa cluster. He remembered Raditz cracking some joke over the com-link as the two departed the capital, and the sleep drugs lulled him into stasis for his long journey through the galaxies to the front lines of battle.
When he first woke in the lab, his ki was depleted, nearly vanished, like it'd been drunk up by some external force. His shoulders ached overhead, and his abdomen burned with a searing pain. He recalled the sweet scent of a female's pheromones that hit him as the humanoid clasped her hand to his side. His foggy vision had been filled by her wide eyes, irises swimming in hues of vibrant blue. A halo of turquoise hair had pressed against his chest and filled his nose with her floral bouquet as he fought against her chains.
The woman was still nearby. He could smell her, hear her humming and the clatter of instruments as she rummaged around the lab. Vegeta cracked open an eye just as the woman sat down next to him, snapping on a pair of gloves. She smiled and chirped something in her language before she resumed her bright little tune. Every so often she'd flick her gaze to his curiously as she examined and redressed his wounds, completely undaunted that she was holding captive one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Even in his weakened state, he could snap her in half if he wanted, and he would do it too without any hesitation once he restored enough ki to break his chains.
Maybe yesterday's wounds had been severe enough to consume his energy. It's happened before in battle. But his power would always quickly return as his injuries healed with the speed of a Saiyan's metabolism. And throughout the night, just as the invading consciousness seeded his mind, he felt the spark of ki regenerating under the surface of his skin. He just had to wait it out.
The door to the lab beeped open, and the woman's features dipped into a frown as the two men approached. Another memory shook loose in his brain as he watched the woman stand to place her tiny frame between him and the soldiers.
The smug face of the one in charge ignited a phantom pain. He remembered the excruciating electricity that surged through his entire body and leached his power, its razor sharp prods that gored his flesh. That man would be first to go. Vegeta would tear his guts out with his bare hands.
The taller, timid humanoid circled wide around the bed and stood near the foot, facing him. The soldier feigned bravery as he clasped the heel of his weapon, but he wouldn't meet Vegeta's gaze and stared past him at the opposite wall.
Vegeta returned his attention to the woman, whose temper was getting away from her. Despite the language barrier, he discerned the tension that stretched her vocal cords, causing her voice to pitch. The boss just twisted his lips, amused by her pathetic show of strength. His stony features and even tone seemed to fuel her ire as she clenched her puny fists and waived them wildly.
A soft beep sounded from the end of the bed like an alarm. From the corner of his eye, Vegeta saw the taller soldier trigger his weapon and felt a projectile sting his thigh. He grit out a curse, feeling almost instantly as the small amount of ki he'd generated during the night was consumed, broken down and dissolved by some poison in the soldier's dart. Vegeta watched the woman wrench the dart from his leg. His vision tunneled around her. A feeling of euphoric heaviness washed over him, and the sounds in the room began to float away as he fell again into a hazy sleep.
Bulma frowned as she watched an upload bar slowly advance on her computer monitor. In her head, she replayed her argument with General Strickland.
An escort! She, Bulma Briefs, was to be under heavy guard—not permitted to leave the base, not even permitted to leave the Tank's tiny lab without the company of Lieutenant Hoffstead or one of his men—locked inside this room, same as her alien.
At least he would be gone. That offered some advantages. One month, that's how long Strickland said he'd be away on a trip to Central Headquarters to review the progress of another asinine weapons project he was adopting—one that he claimed would rouse the alien's compliance and assist Bulma in testing his power safely within the confines of the military base. What she asked for, he claimed.
Whatever solution the general was brewing, Bulma knew that the end result would be the same regardless if the alien was tethered to her table for a month or a year. Eventually, he would be killed, dissected, and discarded like a lab rat. Or worse—if Strickland knew that Bulma had figured out years ago how to store ki, the alien would spend the rest of his life as a living battery, charging the military's weapons. She needed to help him escape; that was a cold, hard certainty. If she didn't, if he met a sinister fate at her hands, or anyone else's for that matter, it would destroy her. There was a solution to this predicament, she knew; she only needed to find it. Bulma glanced at the damaged ship beside her and wondered.
As she began to examine the ship's data log, she noted the consistency in which the same coordinates appeared. Every trip began and ended at the same local: his planet, she presumed. Though that wasn't the interesting bit. What drew her attention was the distance between coordinates versus the time supposedly spent in travel. This wasn't some escape pod meant to depart from a larger ship. This was the ship. If the numbers were correct, his species had developed a mode of transportation that was literally hundreds of lightyears faster than the most advanced spacecraft on Earth, which incidentally was built by her father. Giddy with the discovery, Bulma eagerly sifted through the ships data long into the evening until a husky voice stole her attention.
"Onna." The man glared under his sleepy lids. But he wasn't looking at her, rather he was staring just behind her. The alien nodded his chin to gesture at what he wanted, and Bulma realized his focus was on the pink eyepiece that she'd flung onto her desk. She picked up the equipment and rolled her chair over to him, adjusting the device over his face. He attempted to lift a hand, but was met with the clanking tension of his chains. Bulma pressed the largest button on the device, and it flicked on. The foreign characters illuminated across the small screen. He pulled at his cuff again, obviously not reading the information he desired.
Bulma bit her lip and scanned the man's body, searching for a sign of strength. Perceiving only his raspy, shallow breath and the strung-out map of his countenance, Bulma hesitantly moved to unlock one of his wrists from its imprisonment. She eyed the alien with apprehension as he lifted his hand, flexing and stretching the muscles in his palm before he brought it to his face. He punched a combination on the device's smaller buttons before an icon appeared: one small dot that blinked into two dots, then three, then four, and back to one before the pattern began again.
"You sneaky shit," Bulma uttered, recognizing the universal pattern. He was trying to call someone. Despite wanting to help him, the last thing she wanted was a fleet of pods full of his super-powered brethren arriving to find him detained in her labs. Bulma tried to snatch the device away, but his reflexes were quick. He grabbed her wrist tightly with his free hand, threatening to crush her dainty bones with a growl. She froze; they stared each other down with mutual distrust, waiting for his call to be answered.
The symbols blinked off, and what appeared to be an error message took their place. The alien grumbled as he flung her hand away. They continued to eye one another for a tense moment before he sighed and brought his fingers to the device again. Looking at her intently, he uttered something in his language, as if he expected her to understand. Symbols danced across the display as he spoke. He pressed a button, and the symbols on the screen changed into something completely new. He waited a second and pressed the same button, and the symbols morphed again. The alien repeated the gesture again and again. Each time the characters on his screen changed, his eyes flicked between her and their message.
Languages! He was trying to find her language! Bulma let out a gleeful yelp as she realized that he wanted to communicate. The alien's eyes widened at her girlish display, but he continued to sift through the translations that were stored on his device, almost desperate to find characters she understood.
When the beep of the lab door sounded across the room, Bulma hastily snatched the eyepiece from the alien's face and wrenched his hand down to the bed, leaning over him to hide his bare wrist from Lieutenant Hoffstead. She ripped the bandage from his torso, pretending to inspect his wound. The lieutenant, however, barely made eye contact as he shot a dart of serum from the doorway and quickly departed. Bulma snorted at his cowardice. She looked over at the man beside her. His eyes had rolled back into his head as he slipped into another round of syrupy sleep.
Vegeta sifted his fingers through the vapors of the amber cloud that carried him through the air. Below him stretched an expanse of lush, green foliage, its verdant scent assailing him with a sense of calm. The yellow star above him warmed his skin, and the clear, blue sky lay waste to the incubus of burden that typically plagued his conscience. Here, he was alone and free. In the arms of the other's visions, the princely duties of his Saiyan race receded to the background of his mind. Gone were the hardened obligations of politics and economy, the weight of his lineage, the outdated traditions and religion. Instead, a carefree weightlessness enveloped his soul. Deep down he knew that he was living vicariously through the thoughts of his intruder, but in his drug-addled sleep, he couldn't push them away. Still, it was how he imagined Tarble's life being whenever he let himself believe he was alive. Away from their ancestral home, his brother was free.
Vegeta didn't know why he was connected to his sibling again, unless the boy was here, living somewhere on this backwater planet where he unintentionally found himself a prisoner. But if the visions were any indication, Tarble was indeed alive. More than that, Tarble was happy, a word Vegeta never dared to utter or even really understand. He was the crown prince of a warrior race that subscribed only to the wills and whims of their merciless gods through the priests and priestesses that spoke to them. Strength and sacrifice—nothing else surpassed that, especially not now. Their empire was embattled in a bitter war against a powerful foe, yet Vegeta couldn't help them. He was the strongest of his race ever born, the one the prophecies foretold would one day ascend and become a living legend. Yet now he found himself powerless to do anything but slip into the sublime stupor of another Saiyan's mind, skimming the planet's vast turquoise oceans on a magical golden cloud.
The moments when the drugs wore off were the hardest, when he was brought back to the hard reality of not just his captivity, but his duty. His people needed him. Desperately they fought on the outskirts of the empire for what seemed to be, at first, small skirmishes over a few economic resources. But as the one-off battles quickly escalated, planet by planet, the Saiyans realized that they were victim to a calculated surgery to gut their militaristic and economic strongholds.
The Cold Empire had far superior technology and a vast army of unwitting soldiers to carry out their agenda. So great was Lord Frieza's ability to capture and subjugate his foes through a vicious psychological regimen, that the Saiyans found themselves fighting their own brothers and sisters. Those who once stood beside them in battle, the pride of their race, had been reduced to mindless drones. Their tails severed by the lizard lord in his belief that the appendage was the key to unlocking the legend of their race's ascension. The Saiyan Empire was the last vestige of strength in the universe, and the Colds were moving quickly to destroy them.
He wondered how long he'd been here on this planet, a prisoner of these humans. Judging by the nearly healed wound below his ribs, he guessed it had been days, maybe a week.
It seemed that the woman never left the lab. Her scent filled the room in a thick fog, and her appearance grew increasingly haggard. Red rims lined her eyes and her oily hair was now bound on top of her head in some sort of nest.
Twice a day, she'd replace the bags of fluids that fed him and filtered him, wash his skin with a warm cloth, and tend to his wounds. After that, she'd work on the large computer, muttering to herself and clicking away at a frenzied pace. She took apart his scouter and put it back together again. Now it seemed she was building a replicate. For what purpose, he didn't know.
He'd given up on his displays of strength, curses and growls abated. Not because he trusted her, but because she seemed immune to his intimidation, or too busy with her experiments to notice. Plus, it was no longer worth his waning energy.
The poison from the darts was compounding in his veins. Every joint in his body ached, and he could no longer feel his ki regenerate between doses, not even in the short periods while he was awake. With its disappearance, so too his hope began to fade. Even if his people came for him, if they found him like this, if his power didn't return, he would be sacrificed by the church's council—labeled an inferior and exiled, just like his brother had been. A prince to a pauper, that would be the punishment for his capture.
It was these waking moments that Vegeta felt most defeated. When he should be ripping the head off the putrid lizard, he was instead trapped on some shit planet being poisoned from the doorway by a pathetic excuse of a humanoid, too afraid to step near him.
There wasn't anything left for him to do but watch the woman work in between the waves of unconsciousness where he lived inside the heady memories of what he hoped was his brother. Tarble, it was beginning to seem, was the only thread of hope he had left. Even as pitiful as his brother's powers supposedly were, he was a Saiyan after all, and he would come for him—but only if he could hear him too.