Session 43

Jet couldn't help it. The anger and frustration had built up inside him for so damn long. He could wait no longer. "You gonna tell me why you didn't say anything?"

Reduced to one eye, thanks to the patch, Spike didn't even look up as he huddled in the grasp of the straight jacket. There was no look of comfort about him as his restless gaze wandered around the white padded room. But Damian hadn't given the signal, so he was still in the real world at the moment. That wandering gaze was laden with guilt.

Curling his lip, Jet snarled. "For fuck sake, Spike! How long were you seeing shit that wasn't there? Answer me!"

He swallowed and shrugged as much as the strapping would allow. Being this close to him now Jet noted they had those damn tight. No one was taking any chances he might get loose. "I … I'm not sure … "

"Since we left Somnus? Come on—speak up!" He didn't mean to yell, but there was no stopping it now. This had to come out or he would burst.

Spike cringed and nodded. "Pretty much … pretty much from the start."

"You moron!" He swooped down, intent on picking him up by the collar when Damian's shadow from the door caught his attention. He waggled a finger of warning. Taking a deep breath, Jet towered over Spike and forced the edge to soften in his voice. Though he didn't know how well it held. The more that left him, the more he doubted it did. "Damn it! I give a shit about you. Don't you know that? You should have said something."

Cautiously Spike snuck a glance up and shook his head, that one eye looking so damn lost it wasn't even funny. "I didn't know how … I didn't have any idea what to say … how to put it … "

"So you said nothing." Jet grumbled. Come on, argue with me. Resist, make some kind of a remark. At least blow me off! "I'm disappointed in you. I thought you'd gained at least a lick of sense since that syndicate bullshit a few years back. But no. You're still the same self-centered bastard as before."

"Jet I … " what started as a plea ended in defeated silence.

"I'm listening, pard." Speak up! No way I'm gonna let it end there.

Spike sunk deeper against the padded wall. His left eye closed for a long moment. "I'm sorry … I didn't want to fall apart … I understand if this is it … if it's over … and you just leave me here."

The knot in Jet's chest tightened at those words. Slowly he knelt down, the anger abandoning him. "Leave you? Why do you think we're still here? Why I hauled your ass here that night. Why I talked to Damian about you in the first place. Spike—we're not officially leaving this place without you. No matter what. But it means you got a lot of work to do."

He heaved a sigh and turned his face away, shivering enough the buckles rattled.

At the door Damian gestured firmly.

Damn, time did fly. Jet clamped Spike's shoulder. "I mean it. We'll talk about all this when you actually can. We're just waiting on you, pard."

Every fiber in Jet's body resisted it. Spike huddled there in surrender to some unseen plague that just waited in the wings to jump on him. That was the part that hurt—it was obvious Spike knew the trip tide was coming for him … and he'd already lost the fight. Jet knew in a heartbeat he'd do it—stay in the room beside him, fighting off the nightmares if he could. That was … impossible.

Jet forced himself to rise and walk out of the room. It was coming, Spike's inevitable slip from reality. His fists clenched, why had he been so hard on Spike? It's not like he'd come out of Somnus intent on losing his shit. This wasn't his fault … the years of alcohol abuse, certainly that blame was sound. But he had to face facts—Spike wasn't merely facing what Morpheus dredged up … now as Jet stared through the window of the locked cell door the question plagued him.

How much did he really know Spike?

Back in Damian's office they rejoined Faye and Ed where they had left them. Ed sat by the window looking out at the bay where a bunch of waterfowl drifted and fished unaware they were being observed. Faye wearily looked up when the men entered the room. "How was he?"

Jet shrugged. "Barely talked to me." But there was reason enough for that. He flopped down on the couch. "Still, at least I got to be in the room with him for a bit. It's just … that wasn't like him. I wanted to hear a snide remark. Some push back. And all he did was slump there like a … a human slug. I know I've called him that enough times. But I never thought it would be … true."

Taking his own seat, Damian ran a hand through his hair. "Don't expect much from a guy who gets ten minutes at most in touch with reality. That—and you were yelling at him."

Faye turned and glared at him.

Heat rose to Jet's cheeks as he crossed his arms trying to hide it. "I … I'm sorry."

"Spike's the one you need to apologize to, the next time we get the window."

"You really can't do it any sooner?"

Damian shook his head. "There is a risk of toxicity if I increase the frequency of the dose. So—what we have is what we get. And I know, there is no functioning on it. But this is the best result so far. For any lasting effect, we need some way to bridge those lesions, to heal the brain damage. At the moment that's not possible. My research has dug up nothing."

A click turned all eyes toward the computer as Ed's fingers held onto a thumb drive she'd plugged in, the screen showed a loading process.

Thumb Drive! In tandem Jet and Faye shrieked their alarm. "EDWARD!"

Ed slowly turned to face them. "Wuh?"

"Not the thumb drive! Morpheus!"

Now Damian looked like someone had strapped him in an electric chair and flipped the switch.

She released her grip on it, leaving it engaged and grinned as she pointed to the blank casing. "Silly! Edward has more than one. Ed is smarter than to release that slimy bastard again." From a hidden pocket she flicked out the drive marked DO NOT USE! as proof. She pointed at the screen. "No—what's on this drive is waaaay better."

Faye heaved a sigh of relief. "What is it, Ed?"

Hopping on the balls of her feet, she spun. "Spike's parents!"

All eyes stared in confusion. The window on the screen sprang to life filling with file after file in what must have maxed out the little drive.

"It's his pinwheel. It's medicine. Medicine to help Spike-person find his way back out of the dark heady-maze."

Enamored with the screen, Damian gently pushed Ed aside and hunched over the keyboard. He clicked through half a dozen files, skimming the contents as his breathing increased before he turned and seized her by the shoulders, staring in abject shock. "Do you know what you've found? This is the missing research of Lumen and Lyra Spiegel!"

Coming to the edge of his seat, Jet narrowed his eyes. "Wait … this is … but wasn't it lost?"

Ed nodded. "Buried deep. Waaaay deep. So deep it took Ein's help to sniff it out and decode it from the encryption. They were super sneaky and super scared someone was gonna find this and use it wrong."

Faye stepped closer, narrowing her eyes as they skimmed the complex formulas on the screen. "How could it be used wrong?"

In a hushed voice Damian remarked while staring at a chemical diagram. "Anything that alters brain structure could be used to enhance it. While that can be done for benevolent reasons, it could be easily abused. Or even weaponized. I suspect that's precisely what Lysander wanted to do with it, given the focus of the Morpheus espionage project." He rubbed his chin studying the chart on the screen. "I need some time with this. Can I have the drive?"

Ed shrugged and pointed. "Ed already copied it to your hard drive. Now, in thanks be a good doctor and fix the Spike-person."

Not even looking back, he continued to click through the files, not even a single word for the others. After several tries, Jet gave up trying to get his attention, instead he looked down into Ed's eyes. "You … this is where you were all that time?"

She nodded cheerily. "Ed wanted to help find Spike cause he was lost. Figured Spike's parents would know how even though they're long dead. Nyyyyyyaaaaaa. So Ein and Ed hunted down the lost files. No good researcher deletes things forever. The stuff is always somewhere." Yawning, she stretched her full length, her eyes closing. "It just takes a lot of effort and back doors to find it. Ed is done now … energy saver mode. Zzzzzzzzzzz."

Ed blinked as Faye pushed her through the door into the padded room. This felt awkward, even for her. But her bare feet carried her closer to the figure slumped against the wall.

Spike … but it didn't look like Spike. He barely moved. His eye was half closed, chin to his chest. And that strappy jacket he was in looked super uncomfortable.

She knelt down beside him and waved a hand in front of his eyes.

Slowly he blinked and glanced her way before his eye stared back at nothing.

"Hey Spike." Ed folded her hands in her lap. "Ed brought a pinwheel, but they wouldn't let Ed bring it in here. They said nothing sharp. Ooo la la." That annoyed her. She knew it would make him happier. "Whatever."

And yet, he didn't say anything at all. His one uncovered eye looked so tired, it had a large bag under it she wanted to poke. But she kept her hands on her lap. All those warnings not to touch him. Why? It was Spike-person.

Faye wandered in kneeling behind Ed, stealing Ed's thunder. "Hang in there, Spike. Damian's been hard at work since yesterday. It's going to take some time, but he thinks he has a plan—"

"Edward found it! Ed wants to tell Spike-person!" She covered Faye's mouth with her hand before turning back to the silent Spike. "Ed and Ein found the stuffs to fix the Spike-person and bring reality back to him. Cause that's what's going on. Reality wandered away from Spike." There was more to how that happened, way more, but he didn't look like he could take it in right now. She'd fill him in on the details later. "The smart man is working on getting some brain juice mixed up to bring it back to Spike then everything will be right as rain. You just have to hold on a bit longer. Then you can come home!"

There was little reaction from him. Why? Why wasn't he smiling? This was the good news!

Ed stuffed her fingers into his cheeks and pulled his lips taut. "Smile damn it!"

Faye's hand touched her shoulder. "Take it easy on him, Ed. Damian says he's just not been talkative the last couple days. This has been hard on him."

"Well." Ed snapped her fingers. "Not much longer. Edward is fixing Spike! Bebop will have Spike back." Screw the warning. She surged forward and hugged him, hard to do with the weird jacket he was wearing. "You'll see!"

In her grip, Spike barely reacted. Now Ed knew it. She should have snuck the pinwheel in anyway. Tomorrow, she would bring a smaller one she could conceal. That would fix things.

For some reason this time Jet couldn't sit down in Damian's office. He was the only one here today, as Damian insisted, and the frayed look of the man spoke volumes as an assistant had brought Jet back instead of himself. Behind the desk, it took a moment before Damian looked up, his hand uncovered a rack of capped test tubes. "You have no idea the lengths I had to go to synthesize this."

From here it looked to Jet like nothing more than a slightly pink fluid, but as the light hit it he realized there were very fine white strands inside some of the tubes. Another set in the same rack filled with a clear fluid, labeled with a different code. "What are they?"

"I combed through their extensive research. Looked for the best tested and validated studies. It turns out they discovered a combination that netted the best results." He held up the first tube. "These neuro-strands are needed to bridge the structural gap. They would insert them to the areas that required it as a guide. Then this second compound which they dubbed … well, the chemical name is a mouthful, but they nicknamed it stardust." He plucked one of the tubes out of the rack and a plume of metallic sparkles swirled in the thick fluid. "This right here is the magic bullet to restoration. Watch."

Carefully he extracted a single strand from a test tube and laid it in a petri dish on a microscope, bringing the image up on a computer screen. Taking up a small amount of the stardust fluid, just a few drops in a syringe, he introduced it to the edges of the fluid in the petri dish.

Jet's jaw hung slack as he watched the flecks migrate and coat the strand—as if it were magnetic. "Remarkable."

"Isn't it? Their studies proved this works inside the body as well." He pushed up from the desk and stood beside Jet, staring at the images. Concern framed his every motion setting Jet's nerves on edge. "You do realize what an endeavor I'm about to engage in, don't you. How risky this is going to be."

He tried to wrap his mind about this, matching it up with the damage he had seen on the scans. This would be like trying to repair the Bebop's engines from the outside of the ship with a camera and a pair of tweezers. "Damian, are you up to this?"

"Today?" He shook his head. "Nope. My ego will take no damage in admitting that just troubleshooting these components fried me. But, all I need is some rest and I think I should be able to." Damian turned slowly to Jet, forcing his gaze. "I need you to understand what's going to happen. The true risk. This is work that's been buried for over two decades that never made it to full medical application. I cannot guarantee that it will work inside Spike's brain."

Jet gritted his teeth, his stomach churned at the warning. "But you know how to do it … and you can … right?"

"The principles of it—yes. I need to lay a neuro-strand reconnecting every one of the breached nerves. Once that's complete, an infusion of the stardust to his cerebral spinal fluid. Then … we have to wait to find out if it worked."

"How long will the surgery take?"

Damian lowered his gaze and shrugged. "Won't know till I'm done. The good news is I have a micro-laparoscope here. So I should be able to do it minimally invasively. The time it will actually take … I can't tell you. There is a chance something could wrong, that Spike might not come out of it, or may be worse. This could nail the coffin shut and relegate him to having to stay here for the rest of his life. Do you still want to take the chance tomorrow?"

The memory of Spike huddled in the straight jacket, barely clinging to sense shut Jet's eyes. His fists clenched so tight, the metal one squealed. It was this chance … or Spike remained lost to them, further shredding in the rip tide against the unending nightmare.

No. There was no choice. "Do it."

See You Space Cowboy