Chapter 3: Devil Inside
A roaring thunder. Black clouds filling the sky. For such a battle hardened ship, the situation above her instilled a sort of fear into the girl. Enterprise looked up, watching three dive bombers point down, aiming themselves at a carrier only a mile away. As they dived down, Enterprise felt her fear growing, but managed to keep her focus onto the carrier. As the planes grew even closer, Enterprise spotted the first one beginning to drop a bomb, followed by the other two. As the bombs sank into the deck, and exploded within, Enterprise felt sharp pains across her body.
It felt as if someone had hit her shoulder, followed by her knee, and finally into her gut with a baseball bat. She crumbled to the water, trying to keep herself up as she grimaced. Her pain came in and out, a burning sensation running along her body as she struggled.
As sudden as it has the attack started, everything faded to black. Enterprise stood up, her pain instantly leaving. For a few minutes she stared around in the darkness, unsure of where she was. Suddenly, a light shown in front of her, and another scene unfolded in front of her. What seemed like the same carrier as last was in front of her, now completely repaired and back into action.
The black clouds, roaring thunder, the waves crashing. All the noise rushed back to her. Another plane, green with a red stripe started diving down towards the carrier. As it got closer and closer, Enterprise realized it wasn't going to pull up. Soon it crashed into the deck, causing an explosion that blew the elevator clear of the carrier, hundreds of feet into the air.
An even sharper pain rocked through her body, causing her to fall to the ground in agony. For what felt like half a hour, Enterprise lied on the ocean in a crumpled mess, a burning pain surrounding her body as she tried to call out for help. She started writhing around, and suddenly it ended.
It faded to black again, and Enterprise opened her eyes, looking up into the eyes of Belfast. Her usual cheerful smile was nowhere to be found. Instead her face had a concerned frown, her eyebrows furrowed as she stared down at the carrier.
Enterprise looked down at herself, seeing sweat covering her body and her legs tied up by her sheets.
"Wha- what happened?" Enterprise managed to spurt out.
"I'm not sure what happened, but you scared me." Enterprise saw Belfast's eyes starting to tear up.
"Hey, don't cry. I'm not really worth that."
"But it looked like you were… having a seizure."
"It was just a bad dream."
"Don't tell me that!"
"But it's what happened. I'm not really sure how else I'm supposed to convince you."
"Can you tell me what happened in your dream?"
Enterprise looked up at the ceiling, and just started explaining, answering Belfast's questions, and asking her own questions. By the time she had finished, an hour had passed, and Belfast thought she knew what had happened.
"You saw a different world compared to the one we live in."
"Are you sure you didn't hit your head on something?"
"Just listen to me Lady Enterprise. What you saw was yourself, or well… a version of yourself on a different earth. One where the sirens never came, we never gained human bodies, and the world never came together like it is now. Your pain was from the ship being connected to you. Since it was your form in a different place, it made you feel the pain it did instead of putting it onto someone from that world. Does that make sense?"
"I guess it does?"
"Would you like me to contact Vestal for you?"
"No, I'm fine for now." Enterprise tried to sit up, only to not have the energy to pick herself up. On her second go at it, she managed to sit up and dangle her legs off the side of the bed.
Shuffling to her wardrobe, she had Belfast help with her uniform, and soon she was on her way down for breakfast. "I'm going to contact her anyways. In the meantime Lady Enterprise, I suggest you try finding something new to do around the base. Something that hopefully doesn't involve going out into the ocean."
"If you say so Belfast…"
End of Chapter 3