Session 41

A dark cloud of unbreakable silence hung over them as they exited their monocrafts out into Bebop's hanger. The whole trip, after leaving Spike in Damian's care, Faye had been at a loss for words. The silence was awkward as hell. It didn't matter, anything that popped into her head seemed trite.

How could Jet have secretly carried Spike's gun loaded with a traq for all those weeks? It burned her inside, until an icy finger ran down her spine. How could he have borne the weight of knowing what was inevitable all this time? How could he have watched Spike, waiting until he had no choice … dear God, is Jet ok?

She stole a glance at him as he trudged toward the hanger door with heavy steps, the weight of an entire world on his shoulders. His eyes, the circles beneath them filled with darkness, almost bruised. Had he been crying? If he had, the tears had been wiped away. As he reached for the door Faye caught his shoulder. "Hey … I didn't mean to yell at you earlier. I just … it shocked me when I heard the gun go off."

Paused, Jet stared down at his feet, a tremor traveled through him. But he didn't break the silence.

"I … I wish you had told me."

His head lowered, the voice no more than a whisper. "I couldn't … it would have made it reality."

Before she could get another word out he rolled the door back and left her standing in the darkened hanger. The shadows shrouded the bright red of Swordfish where she sat waiting for her master to return. Faye gripped the loose fabric of her shirt, her thoughts straying to where she didn't want them too … would he ever return?

Hanging upside down from the door, Ed swung back and forth like a pendulum. "Faye-Faye, come play hide and seekers! Spike-person has wandered off and not even Ein can find him." She placed a finger in her mouth. "Come to think of it, Ein isn't looking. He's curled up on Spike's bed in his room and won't leave. Stub-born!"

Faye's throat tightened, but Jet was nowhere in sight. She'd have to handle this. Slowly she walked forward and stopped the tick-tocking, holding Ed still with her hands on the shoulders. "Edward … if you look for Spike you won't find him. Not on the ship. Jet and I had to take him to a special place where they're going to help him get better."

She blinked and cocked her head. "Spike-person was getting better here. He was happy at home with us."

"I know." Faye held up her hands … he nearly hit Ed, that's how serious this is. "But … Spike's going to be gone for a while sorting some things out. Ok? He'll be back when he's feeling like himself again." Just take it, don't make me explain more! Just accept it, pleeeeeeassseee!

For the longest time, Ed stared at her with wide eyes before she smiled and blurted, "Kay! Ed go make pops-corn!"

"No!" That was all Jet needed. A trashed kitchen again. She needed something else, another less messy distraction. "How about we go give Ein a bath?"

"Oooooo!" Ed twisted down and landed with ease, darted deeper into the ship calling out, "Ein! Com'ere, we're gonna do something fun."

Well, that would work for now. She cast a glance at the couch where Jet sat, head in hands, tendrils of smoke drifted up from his cigarette. Quietly she crossed the room, her hand inches from his shoulder … still no words came to her. Now she understood the grip of his silence, how much it ached not being able to speak.

A moment later Ein's scrabbling claws on the deck plates echoed as he raced around the corner tailed by the slap of Ed's bare feet. "Ein, come back. It'll be fun. You've had baths before! It won't kill you, it'll make you smell better!"

From the moment Jet and Faye had entered the asylum their expectation was they would go straight to Spike. Instead, the unusually taciturn Damian passed by staff in scrub uniforms who went about their rounds casually in the minimal security section of the facility. Without entering it, Damian took the pair past a ward entrance marked Inmate Lockdown in bold letters with a clear hazard sign. They came instead to his office with a rather fancy computer and a projection screen. He poured himself a cup of tea and offered them some wordlessly as they seated themselves on the tweed couches.

Something told Jet he might need it. Maybe it was the grim expression on Damian's face, the bags under his eyes, heavier than typical. Maybe it was that Spike wasn't sitting there in the corner of the room. Or … maybe above all the fact it had taken Damian a full week to contact him.

The tea cup clattered in the saucer as Jet took it from him. After taking a sip of his own Damian folded his hands over a knee. "I apologize for the delay. Things … got a little more complicated than I had first suspected." His jacket sleeve shifted and Jet noticed a bandage beneath the cuff of his shirt. "Let's get down to it, then."

He hit a remote and the projection screen showed a series of scans and test readouts. Brain imagery overlaid in a variety of rainbow hues that made little sense to Jet. Weird squiggles of lines cut across graphs in series of peaks and valleys. This was not Jet's territory at all. He knew first aid and longer term wound tending. The only thing that told him this was related to Spike was that his name was in the corner.

"I was also hoping I'd have a breakthrough before I called." Damian's voice was heavy as he shook his head. "These are the results of the scans and tests I ran. It should come as no surprise he is displaying signs of massive stress. As you see this region here," he wiggled a laser pointer on the projection around a blazingly bright region, "the hippocampus is … "

Cut to the damn chase! Jet held up a hand. "Can we save the fancy speech? Just tell us plainly, what's wrong with Spike?"

Releasing a breath, Damian hung his head. "He's no longer capable of reaching the real world."

Faye sat forward. "What does that mean?"

"It's complicated. A lot of factors contributed to his current condition. Physical, mental, metabolic. First let me ask, has Spike had any concussions?"

Jet almost choked on a mouthful of tea as Faye answered with a smirk, "What day of the week is it?"

"That answers that." He glanced at the images and used the pointer. "See all of these? This is scar tissue, lesions caused by physical head trauma typically associated with concussions. This interrupts normal neurological activity. The reality is that damaged neuro-pathways rarely heal leaving the signals either reduced or entirely cut off. Now, I have to ask, he recently had a liver transplant due to cirrhosis, am I to assume he drank as a means of coping?"

This time Jet beat Faye to the punch. "Unfortunately, yes. He always seemed to handle drinking well."

"A functioning alcoholic. Logical given what he was before he met you, from what you shared with me." He sighed. "The recent crucible of the trauma in his life being whipped into a living nightmare of a frenzy did not help. That activity can be seen here." Again he pointed at a nuclear blip on a scan. "What we have is a short circuit that hard wires the dream center of the brain to the sensory cortex into an endless feedback loop."

"Lay it on me straight, how bad are we talking?" Jet set the empty cup on the table.

Slowly, Damian stood up and gestured for them to follow. This time he walked directly to the door with the hazard sign and entered the code before flashing his badge at the scanner. The heavy doors opened and now Jet was relieved they had left Ed back on the ship. These halls were markedly less peaceful then the regular one. Among the milling staff, they passed room after room, small windows in the thick metal doors revealed the occupants. Quite a few unsavory fellows who barely seemed human as they glared out. Some of the patients laid in beds, heavy eyelids barely moving. Screens outside their doors gave readouts of their vitals and stability levels. Most—were not in the stable range. Jet could tell that much.

A savage brute pounded his fist on the door, screaming plans that sounded more fit for a kitchen. Damian didn't even miss a stride as his finger entered a code on the screen. Behind the door the man's eyes rolled back and he lost all muscle tension, slumping out of sight.

Jet shook his head as he remembered where he had seen him before. A bounty head on the news some time back, the man was a mangler wanted for dissecting people. So this is where he'd ended up. And clearly for good reason. He cringed at the thought of this man being in a normal prison population. The carnage.

Down another white painted corridor they came to a door marked C-118. Damian gestured to the window. "Go on, take a look."

Jet didn't know what he'd expected … not within these halls—but it wasn't what he found. Inside the room was entirely padded, against the wall slumped a figure in a straight jacket. From the center of the ceiling a coiled tether hung down and vanished behind him. Spike … gaunt and slack, laced so damn tight Jet could see where his hands were inside the crossed sleeves belted behind him. The outlines of a device of some sort showed inside the jacket … it reminded Jet of the life-support belt Spike and Faye had worn in the hospital. Not that Spike would have noticed at the moment, he was clearly gone to the world.

"What have you done to him?" Faye gasped.

He held up a hand. "I assure you, this is kinder than it appears at the moment. Initially I did try to just restrain him in a bed in a less secure ward. But after he nearly rebroke his arm trying to get out of it, this method proved the best answer. It's a technique we have found works decent for the more combative patients. This way he can move, and I've noticed it's better than the level of panic that comes from complete immobility. That tether supplies everything he needs, meaning minimal risk to interact with him directly. When we must, a code into the panel sedates him. For the moment I'm only bringing him out for short periods of time, we have to be careful not to stress him out too much. We've tried a few different medications. But there's no sign of a breakthrough."

"This is cruel!" Faye pointed into the room.

"Is it?" Damian lifted an eyebrow. "I'll let you decide." He hit a button on the panel. "Give it a few minutes for it to clear out his system and you'll see how close you cut it."

\It didn't take long to prove him right. Within minutes, Spike began to twitch. Not small motions, he positively thrashed. His bare toes curled moments before his eyes snapped open. A deranged scream left his throat and despite not being able to shift his arms he scrambled to his feet, staggering around as if besieged in a drunken brawl. His eyes darted everywhere around the empty room, never settling for longer than a second.

Jet swallowed at the sight. "He's completely out of his mind."

"At the moment, yes." Damian shook his head.

"Spike!" Faye pounded her fist on the door.

There was no response. Spike carried on in isolation, kicking and even biting at the empty air. His demented cries muted by the thick door.

"He can't see or hear you." Damian guided her from the door as she stared with wide eyes. "There is no reaching him where he is now. The hallucinations are too deep seated. That full blown panic is what seizes him every time we bring him out of sedation since you brought him here. He doesn't even feel our contact. Everything appears to be filtered through that nightmare you described from that Somnus place. He shouts names and screams rebukes and will do so until he collapses from exhaustion if left to it."

Inside the room, Spike delivered a frenzied kick to the padded wall. Sweat dripped down his face. He was nothing but a deranged animal lashing out … at nothing. The action looked so much like on the ship. All those times, the motions had been subtler, but no less intentioned. It sent a shiver down Jet's spine as he recalled the pit of hell that Morpheus had been keeping Spike in back at Somnus … a prisoner of his own mind.

"The straight jacket is essential because … well, he basically nearly tore himself to shreds trying to fight before. Not to mention he ripped the IV out of his arm on the first day when he woke in the middle of one of the test—which proved problematic." Damian shifted a bit, one hind gripping his bandaged wrist.

Jet eyed it and pointed.

"Ehhh, yeah … not that he did it on purpose, but he bit a couple of us when we were trying to sedate him again. Didn't break the skin on the nurse, but I got a nice dental print. It'll heal. Not the first time I've been the focus of unchecked rage, will hardly be the last. Kinda goes with the territory." He looked back through the window. "This arrangement helps to keep the level of aggression down. Besides, this way we can safely test if a medication has any effect at all."

Jet placed his hand on the window watching as Spike tumbled on the floor acting as if someone was strangling him. This was so no like him, this out of control. "Any relief at all?"

"Do you think I would have left him like this if I had found an option?"

"Of course not." A knot in his belly twisted.

Damian pressed a button on the panel. Inside the room Spike's eyes rolled back, the lids grew heavy and shut as his body went completely limp on the floor. Turning to face Jet Damian met his worried stare. "I have not given up. This is just a case I never seen before. This is the first I have seen on someone who has literally been driven to a psychotic episode due to being trapped in their dreams. For now, this is the best way we can keep him safe from his condition." His hand strayed to the hidden bandage on his wrist. "It's a good thing you didn't wait any longer, Jet."

Those were not comforting words.

See You Space Cowboy