CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I sulked in my room as I knew that what I had done was stupid and I immediately regret it. My head was still hurting as if it was in a permanent ice cube.

When I tried to get out of bed, I felt the world shift. My heart was racing in my hest as I tried to stabilise myself. Something was wrong with me and I didn't know what to do. "Walter?" I whispered into the communicator and waited for him to respond.

"Yes, Miss Cassandra?" he eventually replied after several moments of silence.

"I'm scared. I don't feel right, but I don't want David to know," I told him.

Another moment of silence spiked my anxiety.

"We will give you a full body scan, tonight," he said. "Do not fret. Everything will be fine."

I wanted to believe him, but it was difficult as it still felt as if something as crawling around in my mind.

Taking a deep breath, I finally managed to get to my feet and stumbled to the door, wondering why David had left the creature in my tiny home. It was truly a task opening the door and feeling the fresh air hit my face.

Chills ran down my spine as I stared into the dark forest. With the sun starting to set, the trees cast ominous shadow everywhere. Why did I ever feel that it was a smart idea to venture in there by myself? It was obvious that I had been way out of my league.

"Hey, are you okay?" Joan Green, Clara's mother, asked as I walked by.

I looked tiredly back at her. "I'm fine. I haven't been sleeping well, lately."

"I know what you mean. The scare really put us on edge. I thought this new planet would give me and Clara a new start, but it's a lot to adjust to. I never really thought that there would be wild… alien animals trying to kill us," she responded. "I think she's doing okay, though. I made sure she didn't know that we could've all died." She looked over to the young girl who was running around with several other children her age.

They looked so carefree as if they hadn't just been rushed into the ship for their own safety. As if they weren't on a planet with hostile creatures that wanted to eat them. I wondered if I had ever been this oblivious.

"Will we be okay?" she asked me.

I didn't know the answer to that, but what good would it do anyone if I told her of my worries? There wasn't anywhere eels to go. The ship didn't have any more fuel to reach any other habitable planets. We were stuck here, unless another ship was able to carry us all elsewhere, which was highly unlikely.

"Whatever happens, we will do it together. The Covenant is built to withstand a sizeable asteroid. These creatures should not be able to get past its defences," I told them. IT was the truth, but not a guarantee of our survival. There was something terrible wrong with the planet, but I was sure that David was going to find a solution.

"It's getting late," I said as I turned towards the darkening horizon. "Don't stay up too late. Have a lot of rest and make sure no one goes out into the forest. We don't know how many of them live there."

With that, I began to make my way into the ship in search of David. The vessel was void of any humans. Hopefully, he was able to find out what was wrong with me before I tried to bash my head in to try to rid myself of this pain.

I stopped at the med bay and found him surprisingly absent. Where had he gone? "W-Walter?" I spoke into the communicator. It was never going to stop being awkward calling him by another name. "Where are you?"

Nothing.

What was he doing, now?

I headed to my old room on the ship and finally saw him sitting stiffly on the bed with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in his lap.

Closing and locking the door, I approached him and watched as his eyes slowly opened. "Hello, Cassandra. I apologise for ignoring you. I was performing a system scan."

I sat on his lap as he placed his hands on my hip. "Are you still angry at me?" I asked, my lips brushing his.

"Anger is not an emotion that I – "

"Stop bullshitting me!" I cut him off. "You know as well as I do that you do feel and now, I may have your child growing in my belly."

As expected, his eyes began to darken with desire. His hands tightened around me. "I am not angry, no, but you deserve to be punished."

"Then, punish me. Show me tha – " I suddenly bent over from the pain exploding in my head.

He jerked my chin to face him and I felt his fingers trace patterns on my forehead. "Look at yourself."

I turned to look into the small circular mirror and noticed the black veins slowly spreading from the top of my head down to my face. It spread into my eyes and consumed by iris. "What's wrong with me?"

Just feeling it with my fingers, I couldn't notice anything different, but the visual was horrifying.

David got up with me cradled in his arms like a child. "Do not allow anyone to see your current disposition."

I buried my face into his shirt and hoped for the best as he walked down the halls to the bed bay.

He placed me on the cold examination table and began to systematically give me a physical check up.

His fingers poked and prodded everything before he took a step back and allowed the scanner to do its work. I watched him as he started it up, but not once did he look back at me. He was completely absorbed with what he was doing.

I patiently waited for the machine to finish, counting each painful throb.

When it was done, he sat down in front of the computer and began to analyse the data. Was it going to detect whatever was wrong with me?

As I lay on the table, my eyes began to droop and I felt sleep slowly grabbing at me.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but my eyes snapped back open when I felt him rip away my clothes. I let out a whine, trying to keep him from doing whatever he was going to do.

His lips latched on to my nipple and began to suck. "Soon, your breasts will swell and you shall produce milk for our young."

"David, stop… There may not be a child if I'm sick! Besides, how do you even know if I'm even pregnant, right now?" I asked him, annoyed that I could be dying of some unknown disease and he was still just thinking about a child.

He chuckled. "Your results show that you are, indeed, pregnant. He is healthy."

"How do you know it'll be a boy?" I frowned at him.

"I've chosen every attribute of the child," he told me.

Of course, he would… "What if I wanted a girl? You could've asked me first!" I huffed. It was still my body!

"Then we shall have a daughter after," he replied as if it was something completely trivial. Did he think that I was some sort of baby making machine? I still had to carry them for nine months!

"Who said I was ever going to have another child with you, again?" I crossed my arms before realising that he still hadn't told me anything about the situation that was just a little more dire.

"I've already told you," he replied, erasing the computer of any records of this scan.

"What? No, you haven't," I argued. "All you mentioned was that I was pregnant and – " I froze. That couldn't be it. "Your baby is doing this to me?!"

"I can assure you that he will be our son," he stated, turning to me as soon as he was done with the computer.

I sighed. "And is there no way to stop these headaches? And I can't have these weird black things popping up whenever it likes. I'll be killed on the spot!" I could still recall what had happened to Dr. Charlie Holloway after he was infected and I had completely supported Meredith's decision to eliminate the contamination. Was this some sort of karma?

"I had my suspicion, so I've manufactured something that may suppress some of these symptoms." He produced a single lavender pill. "I cannot be entirely sure if it will do what it has to. There was nothing I could experiment on, but the worst ic an do is act like a normal pain killer."

I eyed the tablet warily before pinching it between my thumb and index finger. With a sigh, I popped it into my mouth and swallowed. What choice did I have? If I didn't get this sorted quickly, a poisonous tablet was going to be the least of my worries. Besides, David was sure to do his best to keep his child alive. He had been completely obsessing with the idea.

The dizzy spell had hit me again, but after closing my eyes and waiting for it to pass, I realised that the headache was already quickly dissipating. My body began to relax and I let out a relieved sigh. "I think it's working."

I looked down at the reflective metal of the table and saw that the veins had also disappeared.

"Allow me to have another look at you." After another round of pokes and prods, he was finally satisfied. "Good. Have some rest. I will return in the morning."

I never had a chance to ask him what he was going to do before he left the med bay. As I was about to return to my little home, I realised that I was still naked and quickly grabbed a white coat before hurrying to find some proper clothes. He was really going to have to stop doing that.

By the time I returned to my stone hut, I noticed that the large corpse was gone. There wasn't a single trace of it, as if ti had never even been there in the first place.

I laid on my bed, wondering where David could've taken it. If anyone else had found it, I knew that this would surely be a commotion.

"Miss Cassandra, are you present?" Walter knocked on the door and I told him to come in. He had his usual calm expression on his face with the ever present smile. "Are you well? David has not updated me on your current condition. I was concerned."

I looked down, recalling what I had shouted at him before. "I am fine, Walter." He hadn't done anything wrong. I shouldn't have screamed at him like that. "Before… I… I'm sorry. You've been nothing but kind to me. I had no right to go off on you like that. I'm really sorry."

There was a soft sigh and I thought he was going to leave. Instead, I saw his boots stop in front of me. He crouched down, until my gaze met his. "There is nothing to apologise for. Just know that I shall never stop caring for you. I do not know if David has done anything to me to influence these decisions, while I was momentarily offline. All I know is how I feel, right now."

He reached for my hand and kissed the knuckles. His soft lips lingered on my skin, leaving tingles where he made contact.

"I know. I was only angry, at the time. I didn't mean any of it." I leaned over to kiss him and I could see him clenching his eyes shut as my lips touched upon his.

He had let go of my hand to grip the bed frame. It creaked with protest. "I know he won't like this," I told him, kissing him, again. "But it's only a kiss. It's innocent."

He opened his eyes and gently touched my cheek. "There is no such thing as innocent when it regards my thoughts pertaining to you." With a sigh, he stepped back. "You should rest. You may fatigue easily after the ordeal."

I crossed my arms. "I'll go to sleep, now, but don't expect me to stay in bed, until the baby comes out."

He froze. "I see… So he has finally gotten it to work. It was only a matter of time. He had been very determined."

"So you knew about it, too?" I glared at him.

He chuckled. "I believe he hasn't been too subtle about it." Leaning down, he left a kiss on my forehead. "I wouldn't dream of making you do something you do not wish to, but I cannot guarantee that he will be the same."

Half satisfied, I snuggled beneath the covers and smiled at him, tilting my head for him to kiss me on the lips, as well.

"Sleep well."

Indeed, sleep came quickly. It was dreamless and restful, until the communicator crackled into life, disturbing the peace. I groggily reached over to the device. "Hmm…?"

Of course, David's voice came through. "Have you been dreaming of me?

I didn't reply. My eyes were already drifting shut, once more, as his voice became my world and just like that, he appeared in my dreams. Even in sleep, I couldn't escape him, but I didn't want to. I liked feeling him with me, even though he was some far distance away, doing who knew what.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

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