Chapter 41: Atalanta Rests

…

This aspect of Layna's personality must have been consigned to her chosen fate because she did not try to struggle against Link grabbing and wrenching the hand bearing her blade away from her neck. Nor did she act like she cared that Link was placing his hands on her, especially when he used his other hand to grip her neck. He started when he realized that he might have been choking her and tried to twist his hand to better put pressure over her wound. It was his only concern, his other fears of his assassin-born airman cast off out of desperation.

Her blood began to seep through his fingers, so he hollered, "Somebody, help!"

He watched as Layna's eyes fluttered closed. Before he knew what was happening, she flopped lifeless onto Link's left arm. This was the same arm that was trying to hold her blade away. With her weight suddenly shifting to that side, Link felt the cot tilt. "No no no—" he chanted aloud before hollering in surprise as the cot dumped both of them onto the deck. The IV stand tipped when the tubing in Link's arm gave a tug. Krsh! The bottle hanging on the stand crashed with the same sound Link had heard in his dream.

"What's going on?!" one of the men across the deck from Link (Airman Hunter, if Link had to guess) hollered.

Link rolled Layna off his arm and straddled her abdomen so that he could use both hands to apply pressure to her neck. "Respond to cargo!" he hollered at the hull in front of him. "Any hands, respond to cargo!"

"Captain!" Link glanced over his shoulder to see Stan and Hunter standing nearby. "What is it?" Hunter asked.

"Someone get Nester!" Link told him. "Layna just cut her throat!"

"She what?!" Stan hollered in surprise while Hunter, appearing to be the less sick of the two, turned and bolted into the berthing deck.

"Quick," Link told Stan, "let's get her onto that cot!" He nodded at the cot they had just fallen from. Stan grabbed it while Link carefully slung his left leg over so he could get off her, his wound reasserting its presence with pain and stiffness. He tried not to crush her neck, and he hoped that he was doing the right thing.

"Goddesses above," Nester growled as he stepped into the hold, Hunter close at-hand, "is this nightmare ever gonna end?" Link looked up to see that Nester, in addition to looking tired, wore an urgent look on his face.

"What do we do?" Hunter asked as Stan carefully lifted Layna off the deck. Link forced himself to his feet and rigidly shambled with Stan so that he could hold her neck.

"I left my bag next to my bunk," Nester told Hunter. "Get it now!"

Stan laid Layna on the cot, and Nester descended on her. He wrenched Link's hand away so that he could examine her neck. "Fate's playing with us this time," he grumbled. "Looks like both a carotid and her throat are cut." He looked over his shoulder at Link. "What did this?!"

"She did," Link said. He turned and pointed to the circular blade left neglected on the deck behind him. "She used her own blade."

Nester gave him and the discarded blade a bewildered look. Then he grabbed Link's hand and pressed it to her neck. "Keep pressure here," he told Link, pushing Link's fingertips hard into the side of Layna's throat. "Don't press down on her throat or you'll choke her." He spun and snapped his fingers at Stan. "Stan! Get Leynne down here."

"Aye aye," Stan said as he turned to ascend the port staircase.

"How bad is it, Doc?" Link asked, squatting next to the cot as the pounding in his head began to disorient him.

"To tell you the truth, she's in better shape than you," Nester told him. "Just don't let her bleed out her neck anymore."

Link felt Layna shift and turned his head to find her giving him a wide-eyed stare of fright. Link felt a chill throughout his body, which then caused him to hiss as his wound stung. He met Layna's gaze. And, in spite of his resistance, he still found himself asking, "Why, Layna?" Layna only let her mouth drop open slightly, her breathing turning ragged under his hand.

"I can't say whether it contributed or not," Nester spoke up. "But the next time I start to point out someone about to snap, feel free to tell me to just shut the hell up."

"Right…" Link replied idly as he stared back at Layna.

"Here, Doc," Hunter said as he stepped up beside Nester, one hand offering out his medical bag.

Nester grabbed the bag. He then knelt down and slammed the bag against the deck, causing the top to pop open. The first thing he pulled out was a bandage. "Hunter, trade places with the captain," he said as he handed the bandage up.

"I can do it," Link argued weakly, just barely turning his head toward Nester while still keeping his eyes on Layna.

"You're risking infecting her from your dirty hands," Nester said as he searched his bag. "And you're shaking."

Link held up his free hand. To his fright, he found that he was indeed trembling, his hand a blur of motion that he could not rein in. He stared a moment until Hunter cleared his throat. Then Link shuffled aside so that Hunter could place the bandage over Layna's neck. Link discovered that he did not have the strength to stand up again and simply crawled over to the hull so that he could rest against it. He spun so that he could sit back while observing Hunter and Nester work on Layna. Then he noticed the tube trailing from the bandage on his left arm across the deck, pointing toward the shattered bottle and fallen stand. He realized that, with the sudden uptake in action, he had forgotten that he was still supposed to be on bedrest. The moment he remembered, fatigue washed over him, and his side began to ache horribly. He slid his left hand over his side to feel for any blood leaking through the bandage on the white sick gown Nester had provided for him.

"Goddesses above…" Link looked up in response to the awed voice to find Leynne and Stan watching Nester work at the foot of the cot.

"Told you, Lieutenant," Stan said.

"Yeah, yeah, welcome to the show," Nester groaned as he carefully worked a curved needle through Layna's wound. "Take a seat, snacks served at intermission."

"I'm delighted that you think this is such a joke," Leynne replied in a heated tone.

"The hell I do," Nester told him. "The only reason this happened is because I said something."

"Who found heh?" Leynne asked.

"Nobody found her," Hunter said as he removed the bandage so that Nester could stitch her throat closed. "She was on top of the captain when she did this." He briefly pointed to Link. "He grabbed the knife out of her hand and wrestled her onto the ground."

"No," Link spoke up, his voice reduced to a barely-audible groan. "We… fell off the cot."

"Is he all right?" Leynne asked, pointing to Link.

"Probably a little worn out," Nester replied. "The excitement. And the dehydration. And the infection. And the fact that one of his girlfriends tried to kill herself right on top of him."

"Doctoh…"

"He'll be fine," Nester told Leynne in an impatient tone. "He isn't bleeding; that's the best- and worst-case scenario."

"What about heh?"

"I've cut myself worse shaving," Nester said.

"You mean all that stubble isn't permanent?" Hunter asked.

"Shut up," Nester told him as he cut the last stitch. He looked up at Leynne. "Thing is, Number Two, if she'd done this where we couldn't find her, she might've bled out. The cut opened her trachea and her carotid artery, so the odds were pretty good. But it's small enough that I can stitch them shut. Just a bandage to cover it up, and she can sleep the rest of it off."

"A promising forecast, Doctoh," Leynne said. "Good wohk."

"Yeah, 'good work'," Nester grunted as he rose. "Can we have one night were something dramatic doesn't happen? This crew is starting to drop like flies."

"It isn't easy, Doctoh," Leynne told him. "Unfohtunately, the only one who can interact with The Night is lying against the side of the ship."

Nester, after Leynne pointed, glanced back at Link as if realizing that he was still lying there. "Hunter, bring your cot over here," Nester said. "The captain can sleep in it; you look well enough to get back to duty."

"Aye aye, Doc," Hunter replied.

…

Link was unconscious before Hunter could get him back into bed. He could not recall waking back into the dream world; if he had, it had not been for long. He woke up early the next morning and, once he remembered what had happened the night before, he turned to look for Layna.

The sight of her sleeping in the cot next to his reminded him of two years ago. They had been under Might Island trying to clear out the reptilian elements of Cunimincus' crew before their interference could cause the island to fall out of the sky. Both of them had come out with bullet wounds, but Layna had been hit much worse, so much worse that Link had had to carry her out of the technoworks by tying her semi-conscious form to himself with a whip. It had not been until later after the event that Link had begun to wonder if she had consigned herself to die back then, given that she never once seemed troubled by the prospect. Now, it truly looked as if Layna would die at the drop of a hat, even kill herself if she had to. Was there something wrong? Was he to blame? After all, she had told him she loved him right before she had done it, even going as far as to kiss him again. What was supposed to happen now?

Nester stepped into the hold a few minutes later. "Good morning, Captain," he said as he drew a thermometer from his jacket pocket. "Let's see how that fever's doing." Link grunted and let Nester put the thermometer in his mouth. He checked Link's pulse like before. Then he moved over to Layna's cot and placed a hand on her forehead. He clicked his tongue.

Link pulled the thermometer from his mouth so he could asked, "Is she all right, Doc?"

"Yeah, she's fine," Nester replied with a sigh. "No sign of fever or anything."

Link paused for a moment. Then he asked, "Are you all right?"

"I wish I was. I can tell myself 'Anyone could've had that thought' a million times, and I'd still feel bad about it."

"Nester, you're not responsible."

Nester heaved another sigh. "Say it all you want, Captain. It doesn't change things."

Link gave a grunt as he sat up, prompting Nester to turn around. "Maybe it doesn't," Link said with a strained voice. Once he was sitting straight up, he released a loud breath and took in another so that he could talk again. "But we're all having that problem. That's how The Night's been beating us. Our thoughts, our fears, our guilt…" He had to pause for another breath. "It can turn everything about us against us however it wants."

Nester allowed half a smile to appear. "Is this the part where you tell me to pull myself together and get over it?" he asked.

Link gave him a shrug. "Actually, I'm glad you said something," he admitted, allowing himself to grin. "I wasn't sure what I was gonna say after that."

"I'd probably argue the point with you," Nester said. "Glad you ran out of things to say." He glanced back at Layna. "I know my duty, but this has gotta be the rottenest place I've ever had to do it. And now it feels like I'm making my own patients. That's the trick, isn't it?"

Link nodded. "That's how it seems to go."

"Excuse me, Doc." Both Link and Nester glanced at the nearby stairwell to see Lilly lingering nearby. She held up a bowl as she said, "I brought some fresh soup."

"Yeah, one sec," Nester said as he turned back to Link. He snagged the thermometer from Link's hand and placed his free hand on Link's forehead. "How's the gut, Captain?"

"Sore," Link answered. Nester prodded a spot near Link's wound. "Ow!"

"Give him the bowl," Nester told Lilly. "He can feed himself."

"Does this mean I'm well enough to get back to work?" Link asked as he accepted the bowl from Lilly.

"Not really," Nester replied as he crossed his arms. "But I don't know that we have much choice anymore. If you keep getting hurt, it'll eventually reach the point that not even Randy will be able to refill you. But if you don't get out there, this whole ship might wind up on its back. If we keep falling at this rate, we might not make the middle of the month."

Link sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He discovered that, thick as it was now, it was beginning to tangle together. "Well, I found out that, if I need to, I can wake myself," Link told him. "I should be able to avoid getting hurt anymore. But… this technoworks in the mines is hard. It's pitch-black, and no matter what, I can't see what I'm doing."

"Can't you just take a lantern?" Nester asked.

"Tried. Both times. I can see myself just fine, but everything inside just doesn't let light touch it. Even the creatures down there won't appear."

"What about your flares?" Lilly asked.

"They're good for telling where the next safe spot is," Link admitted. "But I fell into a trap the last time I was there. If anything, though, I fired off a smoke shell. Between the smoke and the flares, it lets me see better."

"That's not good for you, though," Nester said. "If you have to wander through smoke, you'll eventually start to asphyxiate. Unless you have a lot of space, I don't suggest you do it."

Link shrugged. "I don't know what else to do, Doc," he said. "There should be something in the lower parts of the technoworks that can help me, but I have to be able to reach it."

"Why do—Don't you dare!" Lilly suddenly snapped. Link jumped in surprise and turned his head toward her. However, he saw that she was not addressing him. He followed her gaze down to the side of his cot.

Sello, on his knees and one hand while the other hand was reaching for Link's bowl, had frozen in place next to Link's cot. Link stared into Sello's eyes, although Sello appeared to have fallen cross-eyed upon being caught. Now that he knew that Sello was there, he could smell alcohol much stronger than the bowl in his lap.

Link frowned and carefully lifted the bowl away from Sello. "This is my breakfast, Sello," he said.

Sello stood up to his full height (which often intimidated Link since Sello was one of the tallest members of his crew) and saluted with his left hand. "Cook the turkey bowl and straighten the aardvark," he replied.

"Is he running low on alcohol?" Link asked Lilly, pointing at Sello with a free hand.

"I don't know," Lilly said with a shrug. "I gotta not been downna the engine room lately."

"I gots plenny o' boozes," Sello replied.

"Oh, hey," Nester spoke up. "He actually answers sometimes."

"Rarely," Lilly told him. "Don't get usedda it."

"What are you doing up here?" Link asked Sello.

Sello raised an eyebrow. Or, at least he tried; Sello did not appear to have fine enough control of his brow ridge to actually arch a single one. "I am to boot like da boot is a pillow machine," he said.

Nester glanced at Lilly and said, "I see what you mean."

"Do you have any more of this… soup?" Link asked Lilly.

"It's everyone's breakfast," Lilly told him with an indifferent shrug.

"Sello, go with Lilly," Link said, pointing to Lilly for emphasis. "She'll get you some soup."

"To da pickle of my undies!" Sello shouted, pointing a finger at the deckhead above Lilly.

"Gee, thanks, Captain…" Lilly groaned. She waved a hand as she turned toward the staircase next to her. "Come on, Chief Din'-Don'."

"Fluffly lightnin'!" Sello declared before following her down. Both Link and Nester found his bouncing gait fascinating; each step entailed only his shin moving in an arc that slid his foot over the deck for a minimal amount of motion forward and jabbing the heels of his boots into his buttocks. At the same time he joined Lilly going down the stairs, Leynne appeared from the portside staircase and paused for a moment to watch Sello hop down each step with his feet locked together like they had been tied.

Nester waited an additional moment before saying just as Leynne came into earshot, "Y'know, I've been working around airmen and engineers for twenty-five years. And it occurs to me that Mister Sello is the most disturbed individual I've ever met. Only the Goddesses know what The Night has been doing to his head."

"It's a little hard to find a sane person living in a volcano, Doc," Link commented before he took a sip from his bowl. Nester, not being familiar with what a volcano was, could only cast Link a confused look.

"Hmm."

"'Hmm', what?" Nester asked Leynne.

"Well," Leynne started. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone there. "I had come down heh in seahch of a vehdict regahding youh latest patients, but I find myself intrigued by youh thoughts, Doctoh."

"My thoughts?" Nester asked, his tone confused. "About Sello?"

"Yes."

Link swallowed hard and gave a cough. Nester looked down at him and said, "Take it easy with that swill, Captain."

Link suppressed another cough and croaked out, "Sorry…"

"All right then," Nester addressed Leynne, crossing his arms. "What about my thoughts on Sello intrigues you, Number Two?"

"Well, namely, what The Night might be doing to him," Leynne explained. "Everyone else on this ship is eitheh sleepy oh on the vehge of going completely mental. Sello is the only one who (despite ratheh contradictory evidence) continues to act nohmal."

"Yeah, well, that little aside of yours is a bit of a problem," Nester argued.

"Yes, granted, Sello's definition of nohmal is decidedly everything except such," Leynne said.

"The guy's brain is a sack of potatoes," Nester said. "If you let them ferment, you could tilt his head and let the alcohol pour out his ear." Link snorted and quickly mimed taking another drink of soup.

"Pehhaps," Leynne relented. "Howeveh, theh is no doubt that he is capable if somewhat… idiotic."

"Weren't you the one who brought him up here last month so I can patch up his head after you said he got it stuck in one of the generator's turbines?"

Leynne opened his mouth to argue more, paused, and clapped his mouth shut for a moment. "Yes, well… I suppose Sello hasn't quite got the hang of common sense…" he finally responded.

"So, where were you going with this again?" Nester asked with a smug look on his face.

"I was trying to explain that, of the entih crew, Sello is the only one who isn't affected."

"Head. Sack of potatoes." Nester knocked on the side of his own head for emphasis. "There's nothing there to affect."

"But The Night tends to react to the rest of us as if it reads ouh minds every houh of the day," Leynne said. "It's almost a compulsion. The Night has to have looked into Sello's thoughts at some point."

"So what if it did?"

Leynne shrugged. "What's theh to see? We've all heahd Sello talking. If his mind is as jumbled as his speech, it might be reasonable to assume that even The Night has met its match."

Nester hesitated for a moment. "Okay, I can see Sello having an immunity to The Night simply because his brain is a train wreck that never ends. But all The Night has to do is ignore him. You can't prove that Sello can have a reverse effect on The Night, not without shoving him inside that thing."

Link swallowed hard again so he could speak up. "Wait a minute," he said as Leynne began to speak. Both men looked at him. "Maybe we do have a way to prove it."

"How?" Leynne asked.

"Remember when I saw The Night's eyes with the goggles?"

Leynne raised an eyebrow at Link as he thought. Then he said with a dubious look on his face, "It can't be that easy." Link shrugged at him. "Ah we to actually wohk undeh the assumption that looking The Night in the eyes… all fifty-two of them… is going to yield an advantage?"

Link shrugged again. "We've done crazier things."

"Like what?" Nester asked.

Link counted up on his fingers as he listed, "Well, we changed the Sky Lines and outran a storm and set a trap for a demonic bird and his insane crew."

Nester's eyes darted between Link and Leynne for a moment, his expression asking both of them if they were serious. When neither of them refuted the response, he hung his head for a moment. "Dear Nayru and your orbs of wisdom. Please save this insane crew. I need a nap."

…

Link's first attempt took place only a few minutes later. However, true to The Night's sleeping habits, he discovered that The Night's eyes did not watch his crew during the day in spite of the fact that The Night seemed to create problems any time it wanted. Since they already knew that The Night's eyes would appear once it was awake, they opted to check the whole crew that evening.

Link remained in bed as Nester had requested. When compared to yesterday, though, Link felt much better. He was certain it was the events of last night, being forced to move about, which helped him break the stiffness in his side. That was until Nester ripped off the bandage over his wound. Link could not see the wound too well, but Nester informed him that it was not closed yet and had at least stopped bleeding so much. He told Lilly not to put grog in Link's soup anymore, leaving Link's lunch and dinner lacking in taste. He suggested that Link could at least wait one more night before exploring the dream world again just to be sure another wound would not cause the eventual scab to disintegrate. Link agreed since they still needed another night to determine if Sello could be used against The Night.

Flower succeeded in bringing Beech out of the berthing deck for dinner, and Flower later told Link that, while he still feared that the crew would eventually attack him, Beech had to at least take the chance so that he might make it back to Hyrule an unbroken man for the sake of his unborn child. Link realized that he had forgotten about Beech's family and started regretting keeping him aboard. Nester reported that all signs of Geordie's peritonitis were gone and that all of his wounds and most of his bruises had healed. Link almost thought that was the end of the news until Nester added that Geordie was showing signs of memory trouble, namely his memories of the attack itself and afterward, including the past few days. Nester explained that he had expected some kind of amnesia; whether it remained would tell how poorly his head was recovering from injury. Gillam's esophagitis looked to have been healing, but he was still unable to keep food down and, therefore, still unable to return to duty.

These men, along with Layna, were on Link's mind that evening when Leynne had the crew assemble. Looking at their reduced number of able airmen strengthened his resolve to find a way to beat The Night before it claimed more of them. Link walked down the line for a moment after they had gathered, taking in the tired, depressed, and frustrated expressions on their faces. He himself felt that he probably looked quite rough as well, stiffly wandering down the line in a white sick robe with his hair disheveled and boots clumsily clapping against the deck.

Leynne appeared from below and came to a stop in front of Link. "That's everyone," he reported.

Then Leynne offered out the goggles he had been sent to retrieve. Link accepted them. Then he took in a deep breath and mumbled to Leynne, "Here we go."

Link slipped the goggles on and adjusted them so that they sat comfortably over his eyes. Then he looked up at Leynne. Just as he had seen once before, a pair of large, amber eyes loomed behind Leynne's head. While Leynne was not oblivious to the eyes, Link still found it strange to watch the older man ask him with a straight face, "Do you see them?"

Link nodded. "So far, so good."

"Not quite the wohds I would choose…" Leynne commented to himself.

Link turned to look at his crew. As he had expected, every one of them stood with a pair of eyes staring over their shoulders. The evil scowl on those eyes was unnervingly identical, as if each pair had been bred to mirror the same look for every crewman. Link felt like he was being looked down on by his crew despite knowing that those large eyes did not belong to them.

Link stopped in front of Sello about halfway up the line and looked down at him. As per the usual, he had been dumped onto the deck by another airman (likely Randy, who stood next to him) in a way that left his face and knees pressed to the deck and his bottom oriented upward. Sello was no exception, being followed by a pair of eyes hovering over his head, although they seemed to watch Link rather than Sello as far as Link's perspective was concerned. Amber eyes. Imposing eyes.

Pained eyes.

The line atop the eyes which would have served as the edge of the upper eyelid sat angled in the opposite directions of the scowl Link referenced over Randy's head. The eyes looked larger as well. Having looked into similar eyes for the past two weeks, the associated emotions immediately sprang to mind. Link found that he was actually quite surprised by the revelation, not having thought that this particular expression was in The Night's inventory of feelings.

As Link's mouth twisted into a grin, he watched the eyes behind Randy change into an equally worried look. Link's reaction was to lose the grin in another bout of surprise once he realized that the other pairs of eyes spying on his crew had changed to the same expression.

"Captain?" Leynne asked. "What is it?"

Link turned to Leynne. However, The Night's eyes also caught his attention. Link was staring at that concerned look with determination as he told Leynne, "Gather the command staff. Release everyone else to their duties."

Leynne, confused by the direction of Link's eyes, glanced over his shoulder to ensure that Link was talking to him.