SIXTEEN of THIRTY-TWO
*NOTE - Hi everybody, TheManFromMudos here. You'll notice that I've updated this chapter at the same time as uploading the next one. This is simply because this chapter is very short, and the next one is very long. So, to balance it out, I've stuck a little bit of the next chapter onto the end of this one. That's all. Read on and enjoy. It's 'Xavier'. THANK YOU!*
The next morning, I arose as usual and went straight downstairs. My mind was as far from yesterday's events as I could possibly distance it. Yet my own words still rang in my head. 'I think she's dying', I'd said. The very words still troubled me now, though it felt like months since I had said them. But I was trying not to think about that right now. In my mind, if I just ignored it… I could pretend it wasn't really happening. And I knew just the way to distract myself. So, as I reached the foot of the stairs, I took a deep breath, and plastered a smile across my face. I knew Katie was down there, and I didn't want her to worry about me. Sure enough, when I stepped out into the living room, there she sat on the sofa, quietly nursing Amanda in her arms.
"Ah, morning, Katie!" I exclaimed with feigned enthusiasm. "Beautiful day, isn't it? Sun's shining, birds are singing. Pity we don't have a few song thrushes on board, but still... Fed the kids this morning? Course you have, there's Amanda. How-"
"Are you feeling alright, Matthew?" She interrupted. There was a concerned look in her eye, so I suspected that this question was rhetorical.
"Couldn't be better!" I lied, continuing to beam artificially as I made my way towards the front door. "In fact, I'm off out for a while. Don't wait up for me, will you?"
"Matthew, wait." Katie said sincerely. "Don't you want to talk about what happened last night?" She gazed at me caringly, knowing full well that I was putting all this on to hide how I was really feeling. But I was still refusing to cave.
"Talk?" I said, still smiling, though my voice began to break slightly as I did so. "Why, what's there to talk about?
"Matthew, stop it." Katie replied in a slightly angered tone. "You know perfectly well what I mean. Xena is sick, very sick, and instead of sitting by her bedside, you're gallivanting off to… where are you gallivanting off to, anyway?"
"Server banks." I said hesitantly, even now refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room. "There's a huge digital library in the city. Could find something very interesting…" Once again, I smiled, though it was becoming weaker now.
"Well, I think you ought to spend the day with Xena." Katie told me sternly with a demanding look in her eye. "You need to stop worrying about other people's problems and start worrying about your own for once."
"Katie, more and more people disappear aboard this ship every single day." I replied, dodging the topic again. "Someone's got to get to the bottom of it, and I'm determined to ensure that said someone is me." With that, I turned to the door again and pulled it open. Stepping into the porch, I grabbed a jacket and pulled it's long, blue sleeves over my arms. As I stepped towards the front door and pushed my key into the lock to open it, Katie chimed in again.
"Why are you doing this, Matthew?" She said with clear frustration. "Seriously, why?" I sighed heavily and shook my head.
"I don't know what you're talking about." I said adamantly, without even turning back to look at her as I turned the key.
"Yes, you do." She replied. "Your girlfriend is at death's door. And from what I can see, you don't seem to give a shit." I stopped immediately. My fake smile came crashing down as the words registered in my head. I pressed my forehead against the door and closed my eyes, falling silent. Several moments passed before I could bring myself to respond.
"How dare you?" I eventually brought myself to say, my smile now gone and my voice barely more than a whisper.
"Matthew, I'm sorry." Katie replied apologetically, her voice filled with pained regret. "I-"
"No, how dare you?" I said again, my voice much louder, almost a shout now. "How dare you tell me how to feel about all this?" I stormed back into the living room and walked right up to where Katie still sat.
"You have no idea what I'm going through right now, Katie." I told her, leaning in close to her face as I spoke. "No idea." I stepped back, slumping into an armchair and breathing heavily. I buried my head in my hands, fighting back tears as I did so.
"I… I can't cope." I said shakily, my eyes watering as I steeled myself. "Okay? I just can't. And until I can, I need to forget about it. I need to distract myself from it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Matthew, I understand." Katie assured me, reaching out to place a hand on my knee. "But this isn't healthy. The way you're acting, it's… it's not right." I knew that there was truth in her words, of course. But I couldn't help it. I wasn't strong enough to deal with this. With any of this, for that matter. My life was out in deep space. On a cargo tug, or a seeding ship, billions of miles from the troubles of the everyday. I couldn't live a normal life, with normal problems, let alone this…
"I need to do this, Katie." I eventually told her, my voice calming as I wiped a finger under my eyes. "I need to deal with this problem in the only way that I can. And I need you to let me." Katie smiled softly, taking my hand in hers.
"Okay." She said in a gentle voice. "Go and do what you need to do. But just remember: you can't run from this forever."
"I know." I assured her, pulling my hand away and slowly getting to my feet. "And I will stop running. When I'm ready." With that, I walked over to the door without an another word. The key still stuck out of the lock. I clasped it between my fingers and finished turning it, and the pulled the door open. I stepped out silently, and closed it behind me with a muffled click.
The drive to Ike took almost an hour to complete. Slast was nothing but a tiny village, right near the front of the ship, but the huge city of Ike was all the way at the back. The lengthy journey gave me plenty of time to reflect, though, which is precisely what I did. I thought about Xena, laid up in bed back home, and about Katie's concerned words. Not for the first time, I'd run away from my responsibilities. I'd pushed my pain to the back of my mind, tried to ignore it, and refused to even acknowledge it when questioned. I knew I couldn't keep doing this. Sooner or later, I'd have to address the situation. I'd have to face the fact that Xena was… And that there was nothing I could do about it. If it really was happening, then nothing I could do would stop it. And worse still, nobody else on this ship would ever know that she had even existed...
'What if it happened right now?' I thought to myself as I drove. What if Xena collapsed again, potentially even died at this exact moment, whilst I was sauntering off to get involved in matters that didn't concern me? I didn't think I could live with that. With the guilt of not even being there as the love of my life slipped away into the darkness. But I could still be there. I could turn around right now and go back to her. The urge to do so grew stronger with each passing mile. At every roundabout, at every junction, I paused to think: Should I turn around, go back to Slast, and be with her? Or should I keep going, find the library, and perhaps find out the truth about this ship? Suffice to say that every time, I chose the latter. Every single time I asked myself that same exact question, and every single time the answer was to just keep driving on.
I reached the outskirts of the city by around nine o'clock. As I'd correctly presumed, the roads were crammed full of traffic. Cars, buses and lorries filled every lane of every street. I wasn't even entirely sure where the library was, though I had a rough idea. And so, for the next half-hour, I tried to find it, seemingly going around in circles as I did so. The city was big and complicated, a maze of one way streets and double roundabouts. Just when I thought I was heading in the right direction, a 'No Entry' sign would pop up out of nowhere and force me to turn down a different road. But finally, after thirty tedious minutes of driving, I found it. A huge, gleaming white building standing out against the brutalist architecture of the surrounding tower blocks, the words 'National Digital Library of Angelica' emblazoned across a banner draped over the entrance. I pulled up as close as I could and clambered out of the van, leaving the door unlocked as I left, of course.
The entryway to the library alone was easily the size of my entire house, whilst the main complex spilled out from behind. The height of a four story building, at least, though likely only a single floor existed inside, this library made the one in Tinsworth look tiny. And that was saying something. Walking inside, I found a vast lobby area, filled with people. There had to be hundreds of visitors, all here for different reasons, all looking for different things. But I was willing to bet that none of them were looking for the same thing that I was looking for. Despite its size, the lobby seemed to be staffed by just one receptionist, who sat at a desk to one side of the enormous chamber with a nonplussed expression on his face. I walked over to him with a smile, but as I approached, it was clear to me that my mood was not going to be reciprocated.
"Excuse me." I said as I approached the desk. "I'm looking for information on Kovacs Extrasolar Solutions. Can you help?"
"Of course, sir." The man replied with a fake smile and a clearly bored tone. "Just head down that corridor over there, past the Weyland-Yutani data banks, and Kovacs Extrasolar Solutions is on the left." I had stopped listening to his directions mid-sentence, though, focusing on just two words that he'd said about halfway through. Those two ever-present words...
"Weyland-Yutani?" I repeated with a clear tone of intrigue in my voice. "What sort of stuff do you have on them?"
"Everything, sir." He remarked, as if I'd just asked the stupidest question in history. "Every single file, email, telephone call and radio transmission that has ever been sent within the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is contained within our data banks."