Session 44

Humidity dripped down the walls of the room, clinging to the leaves of the small forest in Jet's special room. He sat on the fold down bench, elbow on his knee, chin in his hand staring at the branches of the bonsai trees. His eyes followed the droplets traveling downward, pulled by gravity as it found its was to the soil.

Timeless … that's what it felt like here. Outside this door he knew time went on, but in here he lacked a clock. That's precisely why he'd planted his ass here this morning after the notification from Damian's assistant that the surgery had begun. Jet blinked slowly. He had no idea how much time had passed now—but it had been hours with his eyes flicking to the phone sitting on the bench within easy reach.

Don't think of it. It's not going to make it go any faster or better. Give Damian the time he needs. The man is knows what he's doing. I hope.

The leaves parted, a tiny blue spotted creature peered through. Mù turned his head back and forth studying Jet. When he didn't move and just continued to vaguely watch, the robotic dinosaur hopped around the shelf examining each of the trees at great length before nudging the pot of one of them closer to the edge. He stopped and peeped at Jet softly, like a busted alarm.

When that didn't work, the little guy hopped down onto the work bench and grabbed the sheers, hauling them over. His tiny talons touched Jet's hand.

It felt so leaden, shifting his gaze as the tiny robotic compy demanded his attention. It would normally take so little to reach out and take the tree onto the workbench, to prune it. At the moment just raising his hand felt like a massive effort.

"Sorry buddy … " Jet sighed. "I thought this was the right place for me right now. But I just don't have it in me to do anything. My mind is … elsewhere."

Mù's cold talons stayed in contact as he cocked his head up at him.

Footsteps echoed by the room, the fourth time in a quarter of an hour. But this time Faye lingered in the doorway, her eyes flicking to the phone. "Hey, maybe we should go down there … " he noted she didn't say asylum, " … do you think?"

"No." Jet didn't even pause. "Damian told me he would send word through his assistant when he was finishing."

"But I mean … " she held her arms tight to her, "we would be there."

"And in the way." He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. The more she spoke, the more helpless he felt. "There is nothing we can do now."

The click of her heels against the metal plates, she came closer. Heavily she flopped down beside him, her eyes fixed on the ceiling where a light rocked with the current playing with the boat. "Then, we do nothing."

More droplets traveled their inevitable path downward until Ed and Ein wandered by, backing up to stare into the door. "Nyaaa? Whatcha doing?"

Jet didn't reply, he just kept staring at the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched Ed and Ein both stare upward at the same light fixture. Slowly the two entered, sat on the floor … and waited in silence.

Hours later … the phone rang.

As before an assistant escorted them through the facility. Faye noted this wasn't to the corridors of before. Certainly they had passed into the locked down areas. But this wasn't the max security of Spike's prior cell, days ago she had begun calling it what it was—not a room but a cell. Nor were they heading to Damian's office—that wasn't in the lock down grid. This was somewhere else. Rooms lined this corridor with the sound of monitors beeping.

Faye paused ever so slightly by one of them, it looked far more like a hospital room. The patient hooked up to an IV with an orderly checking on him. That man seemed calm enough at least, talking quietly.

Catching up, she asked the assistant, "Hey … what is this area?"

"Intensive care. There are a few different divisions of the asylum. Not everyone in here is combative. Those who can be kept in lesser confinement and rehabilitated are. That's the main focus. Those recovering from procedures are in this wing. We have another area with a general population of those in rehab who don't pose a threat. Sure, we could keep everyone locked indefinitely in individual cells like the old days. But that's not the best for everyone involved. Some the patients in the communal rehab wing are actually quite charming."

"Charming?" Faye blinked. "Aren't they all insane?"

"For various reasons." The assistant smiled over her shoulder. "There's a few here who always look on the bright side. I only wish I could be that optimistic all the time. They're quite imaginative too. All that is despite the fact they can no longer function in the real world."

That gave her a shiver. "And … Spike … ?"

The answer to her question was the assistant knocking on a closed door. After a brief pause the door opened revealing Damian still in his surgical scrubs wiping his face with a towel. "Oh hey, you're here." He glanced over his shoulder. "I suppose you can come in now."

"Spike's in there? Is he ok? Is he awake? How did it go?"

Damian held up his hand, still blocking the view. "Slow down. You're expecting too much too soon. I won't know anything for a while."

In the stretch of his silence she heard the strange sound, an intermittent whoosh.

"You can go in. But, I'll be honest—he'll have no idea you even exist." Damian stepped aside.

Faye's heart dropped into her stomach.

In the room Spike lay on a bed, a number of monitors tracking an array of different levels. Around his head a thick wrapping of bandages. His eyes were closed, dark circles beneath them. That was halfway expected … what wasn't was the source of the strange intermittent whoosh … Spike was on a ventilator. Which meant … he wasn't breathing on his own.

When she glanced at Jet his eyes twitched, betraying his concern. Ed cheered and tried to dart forward, he caught her arm and because of her momentum spun her around. "Edward, don't."

"But Ed want's to … "

Damian shook his head as he rubbed his own temple. "I have him in a medically induced coma, and it's a deep one. He's had the first infusion and it's currently bonding with the strands to form the new bridges. In the process I caught and redirected the short that was triggering the hallucinations. The only way this will work is to give the healing neuro-paths a break. At least for this first time span."

"But," Faye took a few steps closer watching as Spike's chest rose and fell beneath the blanket, forced by the ventilator, "he's not breathing on his own."

"That's because of how deep I have him. Some of the channels were close to the control centers for his vitals. At the moment he's on a level of life-support that doesn't require anything of his brain. This will last for the first couple days."

Jet remained motionless, his eyes simply staring, unreadable.

Coming to the side of bed, Faye gazed down at Spike's pale complexion, the tube secured in his mouth forcing his breathing. On the screen she watched the cursor trace his heart beat, subdued but steady. Another screen had a map of his brain activity. Very little showed.

"Damian," Jet whispered, "do you think it will work?"

He shrugged, staring at the monitors. "It went well, without a noticeable hitch. I have given him the best chance possible. He'll be in his ward for a while, under constant monitoring. Three days from now, as long as things look promising I'll start pulling him out of it."

An orderly by one of the monitors padded over to Damian and touched his shoulder. "Doctor, everything is taken care of. It's been an intense day for you. Why don't you go get some sleep."

"I'm fine." He yawned.

"You're falling asleep on your feet. I'll stay with them, see them out when they are ready to go."

"Hmmm?" Blinking, he stretched and massaged his hand. "Yeah, yeah … I guess you're right. You know how to reach me if something happens."

"Boss." He pointed to the door. "Out."

The moment Damian left the assistant shadowed him. That left the orderly with a crooked grin on his face. "Seriously, that guy is gonna end up on the other side of one of these doors. Don't worry, my only task is to keep an eye on your friend here. He's in good hands."

"Ummm," Faye scratched her head, "how can Damian afford to do that? One person to a single patient?"

He laughed and winked. "Doc is amazing when it comes to applying for grants. How else do you think this place still operates?"

Faye swallowed, her eyes straying to the comatose Spike. Just a few inches and she could touch him. But her hand hovered above his bare arm. "Can we … can we stay?"

The orderly nodded. "Long as you like. He won't notice. Trust me, the doc has him on a very deep dose. Had to to keep the signal from going through his autonomic nerve channels."

"Autonomic?"

Ed giggled into her hand and pointed at her brain. "Autonomic, the stuff-stuff the body does without thinkin'. Like the thump thumps, and the whoosie-whoose, and the squirt squirt through the veins."

How did that child know so damned much! Faye smirked. "I knew that."

"Then why'd Faye-Faye ask?"

"Eeerf!" She stomped a foot and turned away from Ed. Her hand rested on the railing of Spike's bed. His chest rose up and down at a steady rhythm, all artificially controlled. Was his body doing anything at all for itself?

Slowly she reached out and touched his arm. The skin was warm to the touch, but there was no reaction, not even a twitch of the muscles beneath. So still. Sprigs of his hair poked through the bandages around his head. She wanted to tuck them back in.

On the other side of the bed Jet stood with a somber gaze. His right hand inched down toward Spike's limp one resting unrestrained above the blanket, an identification bracelet around his wrist with the words: CAUTION COMBATIVE on it. It took Jet a moment, but he worked his fingers in between Spike's and held his hand. "We'll be here waiting … on the other side for you, pard. Just hold on, a bit longer."

Three days. Faye shook her head. Three days which could be an eternity.

The broadcast blared in the background, but no one was watching. Reclining on the furniture Jet stared into the bowl, steam no longer rose from the contents. When he'd made the stir fry it had seemed appetizing, but now he didn't want to do anything but stab it with a fork. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Faye leaning on her elbow doing much the same. There were two empty bowls, Ed's on the table and Ein's on the floor.

Finished some time ago, Ein lay on the floor contentedly chewing on a bone while Ed sprawled in front of her computer humming to herself. The tune was familiar, but Jet's funk was too miring for him to place it.

Slowly Faye sat up straighter. "Ed … isn't that Spike's lullaby?"

"Mmm hmm." Ed bobbed her head back and forth. "The one he taught Ed to chase the dark dark monsters back to the dark dark. It was important."

Jet dropped the bowl on the table and leaned back. "I'll bet it worked like a charm."

"Sure did." She sang it in the melody. "Spike's momma used it for the passcode."

They both sat up in tandem, exclaiming, "What?"

"You heard Ed." Kicking her feet, she rocked back and forth. "The song was the key to get into their research. Only someone who knew the lullaby would have known how to get in. They were cle—ver!"

Codes, now that was something Jet knew about. But the lullaby? He couldn't make it fit. Of course he could barely recall the thing, he'd only heard Spike humming absently a few times, the actual lyrics … maybe once. "How?"

"Must Edward teach you everything?" Collecting her sprawling limbs, she sat up and started to belt out the lullaby at the top of her lungs, keeping beat with the bob of a finger.

"When the shadows lengthen at the end of day

When the night songs call an end to play

Tis time to lie down and close eyes tight

Time, my child, to look to the light

Eyes to the stars in the vast endless sky

Chasing the moonbeams though we don't know why

Heaven's a beacon far up above

And I am your guardian, forever my dove.

Til the break of the day

Chases the shadows far away

So dreamer look to the starlight

And I will be your guide"

When she finished she held her hands out as though it should be obvious … Jet and Faye glanced to one another and shrugged.

Hand on her hips she huffed a breath. "It's a riddle. The stars and the moon? Back on Earth before the sky rocks chased everyone below ground, people marked the moon's path through a constellation when someone was born, that was their star sign. Chasing the moonbeams … look to the starlight. It's the zodiac. Since Spike-person was their only kid, born on June 26th, the code to unlock their journals … " she drum-rolled on her knee with her fingers, "cancer! Tah dah! Kinda makes sense, Spike-person could be awfully crabby."

Jet scratched his head. "That was brilliant. How did you figure that out?"

Pulling down her goggles Ed clawed at the air with her fingers. "Ed has super ninja-think skills."

He rolled his eyes. "Of course."

Her goggles blanked out from his perspective as she loaded something from her computer. She sighed. "They must've been super smart smart. Shame they're all dead. Would have loved to have met them."

See You Space Cowboy