Return?
Alice shifted in the pilot's seat of her X-Wing as they flew towards Tyr Tantalis. A staple of her early teens had been the X-Wing novels Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Alston, but she was no Wedge Antilles. She had a feeling that flying them in combat for real was going to be vastly harder. The controls, at least, were familiar enough, thanks to the info dumping Frax had done -- they looked, and felt, like the controls of Zord fliers she might have controlled, had she been a 'proper' ranger, like her parents had been -- but...
Over the comm., she heard Rick's voice, full of barely stifled laughter, announce, "Red two in position, Red Leader."
Risking a quick glance in the direction of the twin-seater craft to her right, she saw Katie shaking her head a little. A moment later, she heard, "I know we're all having fun, but try to stay focussed, Red Two."
"Red Three, on your port wing," Alice reported in.
"Red Four, in position." Namir sounded nervous -- but then he'd sounded nervous in the TOI and he'd come through that with flying colours. He'd be fine.
She heard Gold and Blue squadrons also reporting in. The other two squadrons were attacking from the south and west of the city respectively and were, essentially, decoys -- that way, the Atlanteans wouldn't be sure which wing was the one actually going for the Death Tower. At least, Alice mused as she followed Rick's lead towards the Atlantean capital, that's the theory.
The flight computer bleeped, indicating sixty seconds until entry into Tantalis airspace. Here we go...
Rick put his fighter into a steep dive to come in under the defensive shield. Alice followed suit, knowing Katie and Namir were also doing so. Instinctively, she reinforced her forward shielding, but as they came into Tantalis airspace, she found herself rapidly shunting the power aft as a positive cloud of tie fighters swarmed up behind them.
Holy shit! Her sensors immediately started yelping that she'd got something on her tail. A moment later and Wes' voice came over the comm., telling her that. Tell me something I don't know! OK, Ali. Think -- what would Wedge do right now? She started to jink left and right, evading weapons lock even as she found herself grinning at the absurdity of her last thought. Dad is going to have a ball when I tell him this...
Hauling back on the stick and accelerating, she pulled her fighter up and over in a tight, fast loop.
"Point of interest," Namir announced, as she completed the manoeuvre and came out behind the fighter that had been pursuing her. "The life signs match up to what we found at the TOI."
"Clones?" Alice asked, lining up the targeting brackets over her quarry.
"Not even that sophisticated," came the answer, even as Namir scored his first kill. "Definitely synthetic, though."
"Excellent." The bracket went red, indicating a solid lock. Alice fired and pulled up to avoid the resultant explosion. Two more fighters appeared in front of her, heading straight towards her.
The two oncoming fighters both opened up with their lasers and though they did no damage -- the shots all hastily aimed and snapped off -- it was enough to put her into evasive manoeuvres.
She kicked her fighter up onto its port S-foils and slid it through, between the oncoming fighters. Then, banking sharply to the right, she came up on the tail of one of the fighters. Her first shot boiled off a section of the armour plating on one of the fighter's fins, while the second cored through the main body of the fighter. The Emperor really shoulda considered putting shields on those things, Alice found herself thinking as she pulled up, over the resultant explosion. She smiled. Wonder what Stackpole would say if he knew ties and X-wings really were as manoeuvrable as he'd made them out to be?
Another warning tone sounded, indicating she'd attracted another fighter on her tail. Jeez, what am I? A tie magnet? This one was obviously being piloted by a slightly more intelligent clone as it clung to her like glue.
"Ali watch yourself," Rick warned.
"I am doing," Alice retorted, making her fighter practically dance to avoid weapons lock -- not that the lack of same was preventing the fighter on her tail from firing anyway, which was gradually nibbling away at her shields.
"Head bearing three-one-two," instructed Wes, "then break hard to starboard."
Alice did as she was told and for a second found herself facing the wrong end of Wes' lasers, then she broke hard to starboard. The fighter on her tail followed, but was picked off by Wes' expert shooting.
"Thanks Wes."
~*~
"Closing in," said Katie. "Best load up that concussion charge, let the kids take care of business."
"On it," said Wes, typing in the configuration code for the charge. "Rick, you copy?"
"Yeah. Reading land-based defence systems, Dad. Fall back a bit, lemme clear some air space for you."
"Falling back," said Katie, suiting action to words. As Wes finished creating the computer linkup for the concussion charge, Rick's X-Wing accelerated to ground attack speed. Wes watched as his son put the craft into a steep dive towards the first ground based tower, lasers blazing. The first tower went up explosively, leaving behind a plume of oily black smoke. The second tower followed soon after. Then a third as Rick pulled round in a wide, arcing turn, strafing anything on the ground that looked as if it was liable to shoot back.
Suddenly the enemy fighters pulled away. There was a whine from above, a bright flash, and the upper portion of the starboard S-foil on Rick's fighter exploded. Wes' heart stopped, only to sputter back to life when he heard his son's urgent voice. "I'm hit!" The fighter wobbled, then stabilized.
"Pull out, Red Two!" Another series of blasts screamed across the sky, targeting the crippled X-wing. Wes cursed succinctly. "Roll it, Kate!"
She gave a nod; the big fighter did a barrel roll and stayed upside down for a moment, giving Wes an excellent view of the black and chrome ship that was trying to kill his son.
Ransik. Had to be.
Wes snarled and took the concussion charge offline, thumbing the blasters. The first array skittered and jumped across invisible shielding; the second, hard on the heels of the first, scarred up the ship's surface.
There was a burst of light practically in Wes' lap; he was thrown back into the bulkhead, and then there were a whole bunch of stars exploding behind his eyelids.
"Wes!" someone screamed. The world tilted and spun.
His head was pounding and there was something warm sliding down the side of his face; Wes groaned. "'Mokay," he managed. He wiped at his face. Blood. Wes got to his knees and crawled back to the gunner pit, but it was essentially slag. Sparking slag. He groaned again.
"Dad! DAD!" Rick's voice was frantic.
"Dammit, Red Two, get out of here! That's a goddamn order!" hollered Wes. He watched the crippled ship peel away. "Namir, you're with Rick. Make sure he gets back to base. Ali, you're on point. Keep an eye on that ship and keep your shields up to full." This surely wasn't how Luke had done it, but who the hell cared?
"What now?" Katie's clipped tone was belied by the concern in her brown eyes.
"Now," said Wes, getting to his feet slowly, "we improvise."
A few moments later he thumbed his comm. again. "Alice?"
"Right here."
"You up for a little bluff?"
He could hear her grin. "Always."
Wes gave a nod. "Okay. I need some time to get the concussion charge reconfigured over to the aft gun. And we're gonna have to change our flight plan pretty radically."
There was a brief pause. "You want me to engage the black ship?"
"Just long enough for us to get this in place."
"You got it."
"Ali." Wes took a breath. "Be damn careful, okay?"
There was a chuckle. "Love you too, Wes." The X-wing swerved off, guns blazing.
Katie, meanwhile, was flying erratically, making it look like the blast had taken out more than just the forward gun. In the remaining gunner pit Wes kept one eye on the targeting screen while he began to configure the aft gun. "C'mon, c'mon, Ransik, you're not that smart. Take the bait like a nice villain." He could almost feel the hesitation in the black craft. What was Ransik thinking? Why was he still on their tail?
Red Three screamed by overhead, all engines full, heading straight for the tower that had appeared on the horizon. "What the hell's she doing?" yelled Katie.
"Making it look like she's the go instead of us," Wes hollered back over the sounds of blaster fire. Alice dodged and wove between the deadly beams like she was knitting a scarf. Dots appeared in the sky ahead; small, X-shaped dots, all of them lighting up like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
"Running out of room, Wes," Katie warned. "Once I go past the tower I'm gonna have to roll tight to get us close enough to the target. You get about a three-second window before Ransik figures out what we're doing, maybe less."
"I know, I know." Wes punched in the final configuration with relief.
Nothing happened. "Dammit!"
"What?"
"The blast took out more than I thought. I'm gonna have to reroute again, find a clean circuit path."
Katie made an aggravated noise. "Have we got a clean circuit path?"
"Sure." Wes paused. She was going to hate this. "The shields haven't been touched."
There was a long pause. "I hate that."
"Yeah."
"We don't have enough time."
"Nope."
"Without shields we're sitting ducks for Ransik."
"Yup."
Katie sighed. "Do it."
Wes smiled tightly. "Already on it." His hands were shaking, which was no help at all. He blew out a breath and began recoding the weapons array. There was more that he had purposely not mentioned to Katie, hoping she wouldn't realize it: not only would they not have shields, but he'd have to take the aft blasters offline to reroute the concussion charge targeting matrix. If Ransik decided to go after them, they'd have nothing.
"T-minus two minutes, Wes. We're gonna come in hot and roll hard, so you better buckle up." There was a pause. "Oh, and please don't tell me you're having to take the aft blasters offline too."
Wes mouthed several bad words. "Okay."
Katie's voice dripped with suspicion. "Okay, you're not taking the blasters offline?"
Wes sighed. "Okay, I won't tell you."
"I knew you were going to say that."
The comm. crackled. "Wes... took... both ...ort engines... can't..." and then the sound of Alice's voice dissolved into static.
Wes bounded out of the gunner pit. "Can you see her anywhere?" he demanded.
Katie was equally agitated. "I'm trying to get a lock on her signal... there." She checked her tracking screen and then pointed out the windscreen. Silhouetted against the setting sun, Alice's X-wing was leaking smoke into the air. She had some backup from Gold and Blue, but even at this distance it was clear that it was all the girl could do to stay in the air.
And Ransik was on his way.
"GrrrrrAGH!" was about all Wes could manage as he slid back into the pit and fumbled with the keypad, trying to get the coding right. "Go in hotter if you can, Kate! We have to get our shot!"
"Going goddamn volcanic, Wes!" He could feel the engines squeal as she pushed it to the max. The fighter heeled well over as Katie took half the roll heading in; Wes realized it was so she'd have less momentum to fight on the spin to aim the aft gunner pit toward the tower.
Blaster fire streaked past Wes' startled gaze. "Shit shitSHIT!" he yelled, bracing for impact.
"YEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAA!" A tracer missile lit up the sky and nailed Ransik's starboard thruster array, and the black and chrome ship went spinning into the stratosphere. "You're all clear, Babyface," came Zordon's extremely welcome baritone over the secure Alliance commlink. "Blow this sucker and let's get the hell out of here!" The Falconzord waggled its wings at him and wheeled off toward the Alliance base.
The Death Tower shot past the ship; Wes could feel the twin-seater shudder as Katie struggled with the controls to roll the rest of the way over. The entire fighter shook and shimmied like two angry bulldogs in a bag.
Wes nudged the targeting matrix over his eyes. Yeah, yeah, he remembered this part. "Use the Force, my ass," he muttered, depressing the discharge.
The phenomenon of time expanding to slow motion was one that Wes had experienced before. He hated it.
He stared at the targeting matrix. Was it... would it...
Katie's yell registered before the actual fact. "Direct hit! Nice shot, Wes!"
Wes watched as a dark cloud rumbled from the base of the tower. "Get us out of here, Kate!"
The twin-seater wheeled neatly and was at max speed before Wes could get his breath. He watched the Death Tower from the aft pit. It seemed to... wobble, and drift slightly...
The top of the tower blossomed suddenly, four stone petals peeling back to reveal a sight Wes never expected to see again. The head of a huge, black and gold serpent... Wes blinked, hard. Not a serpent.
Serpenterra.
"But then that would mean... the Emperor... holy crap." Wes was muttering to himself, keeping an eye on the monstrosity as it lifted into the sky. Serpenterra stretched out its long neck and roared, reaching toward space.
Something dropped from the metallic creature and hit the middle of Tyr Tantalis with an odd whoosh. Something like a heat wave scudded out from the centre of the hit, rippling across the land below as though a pebble had been dropped into a pond.
Wes frowned. This was probably not good.
Below him there was a low rumble, and then a huge crack developed in the landscape, splintering out from the receding silhouette of Tyr Tantalis Prime, spreading as far as Wes could see. The very earth shook.
Definitely not good.
For a cataclysm, it didn't take long, but the time it did take was horrifying. Wes tried not to think about how many people Tommy's old nemesis, Lord Zedd, Serpenterra's master, had just destroyed in his escape. The farmland, the desert plains, everything up to the edge of the tropical rainforest just... broke, cracked, thundered apart and sank, the wild and hissing seas swallowing it all in a fiery, smoky dance of destruction.
"Oh, my God," said Wes quietly, and he meant it. The fighter slowed, then came to hover. He jerked his head up and clambered from the gunner pit. "Katie? What's...?"
She sent him a stricken look. Hovering directly in the centre of her windscreen was a large, black and chrome ship, so close Wes could see Ransik's triumphant grin. And according to the readout at Katie's elbow, he was charging his weapons.
So this was it, then. Wes put his hand on Katie's shoulder and gave it a squeeze, sending a mental wave of love to his wife and his children. "It's been fun," he whispered to Katie.
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes, a smile on her lips. "The best."
Wes closed his eyes and held his breath. The explosion came, deafening in its intensity. Funny, Wes thought, death didn't hurt as much as he'd expected. Everything was very quiet, sort of peaceful...
Sound pierced the shroud of silence. Someone was shouting. Wes opened one eye, then realized with surprise that he still had an eye to open. He looked around with astonishment. They were okay, Katie was okay, just as flabbergasted as he was to still be in one piece, and outside the windscreen...
Was just the remains of an explosion, sparks and smoke and bits of Ransik falling toward the roiling ocean.
A shadow loomed overhead; Wes and Katie craned their necks upward.
The comm. crackled. "Geez, I leave you alone for five minutes... You owe me, Babyface." Wes started to laugh. "Come on," said Zordon. "Let's get you home."
~*~
The ceremony Ackbar insisted on holding was nowhere near as big or impressive as the one at the end of the movie, but it was every bit as embarrassing for Wes. He could see why the Admiral wanted to hand out plaudits to all and sundry; the world always needed heroes to praise in the face of tragedy, and the loss of a continent, even a small one, more than qualified. Heroes filled a real need in the collective psyche of any society.
Wes just wished he didn't have to be one of them.
"Y'know Dad, if you blush any harder you're gonna have an aneurysm," Rick mumbled out of the corner of his mouth as they waited to go down an aisle, at the end of which Ackbar waited to present them with the Order of the Squid or something.
Wes shot his son a dirty look, which softened as it rested on the sling Rick's arm was in. "You holding up okay?"
Rick smiled. "I'm fine, Red Worrywart Ranger. This is nothing -- wait 'til Mom gets a load of you with that gash on your head."
"That," Wes said airily, "is why I plan on having a chat with Ven Evore before we go home for good."
The ceremony was taking place outside the pyramid, in a sort of ruined temple picturesquely overhung with vines and blowsy red flowers. The only jarring note in the scene was a stack of round, red waste containment receptacles lined up along one wall, and even that just added local colour.
Alice, meanwhile, was chatting with Zordon, trying, Wes was sure, to store up as much as she could to tell her own mother when she got back. Dimi and Katie were standing quietly together, and Ben was all but taking notes.
"It would be better," Wes heard him mutter to himself, "if Ackbar were pretty. And there ought to be some really majestic music." Wes chuckled to himself, and then Ackbar beckoned them.
Zordon was the real hero of the day, and he relished the attention and the praise being flung at his head. And he deserved every word, thought Wes. His and Katie's goose had been well and truly cooked, twice. If it hadn't been for Zordon...
The ceremony concluded, and most of the crowd trickled away. Wes caught up with the handsome pilot. "Hey."
Zordon turned with a grin. "Hey, Babyface." He nodded toward Rick. "Nice kid."
"We like him." Wes smiled. "Listen, 'Don, I just wanted to say... thanks."
The other man blushed, but there was a sheepish smile on his face. "I should be thanking you, actually. You made me do some thinking, Wes, about a lot of stuff. Seeing what you went through for a friend... made me think maybe friends like you are worth having." He blushed harder and shrugged. "Made me realize that there's more to life than having things, getting away with stuff. I dunno." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I know I sound like a sap; but I also know... you and me, we won't be seeing each other again, so..." Zordon shrugged again, his blue eyes steady.
Wes stared. "Who are you and what have you done with Zordon of Eltar?"
Zordon laughed. "Aw, shut up."
Ben came up, all smiles, both hands out. "I expect you'll be heading back now, eh, Wes?"
He nodded. "Soon, I guess. Been nice knowing you, George. Ben," Wes corrected himself. "Listen, a couple of things I wanted to tell you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah." Wes folded his arms. "First of all, small, furry, bearlike creatures are not cute, they're saccharine." Ben looked absolutely bewildered. "Second, and this is an important one, comic aliens with zany speech impediments are not amusing, they're annoying."
"Wes!" That was Alice hurrying over, who'd clearly head the last bit. "Hello, Destiny Force? Knock that off." To Ben she added, "Just forget what he said, okay?"
To himself Ben murmured, "Small, bearlike creatures...? What a cute idea..."
Dimi approached Wes, signs of inner struggle on her pretty face. "You okay?" Wes asked, curiously.
She nodded, her lips twisting. Dimi gripped her hands together and opened her mouth, taking a deep breath. There was a pause, and then she finally got it out. "Goodbye, Wes. And thank you." Dimi finished with a sigh and a beatific smile.
Wes grinned. "Can't help it, huh?"
She grinned back. "Do you think I'd speak only in questions on purpose?"
Wes chuckled and linked his arm through hers.
They strolled outside the pyramid to join Namir and the others. "I don't get it," Namir was saying. "There ought to be a timeship. The tower's down, Ransik's dead... I don't get it. What else could there be for you guys to do?"
For answer a figure stepped out from behind a half-tumbled wall, a blaster in her hands. "I have a suggestion."
Good grief, thought Wes. Boba Fett to the life, with one relatively minor exception: this was a woman. If her long silver braid hanging below her helmet didn't give it away, her strident, annoying voice would have.
Everybody reached for their own weapons; thanks to the ceremony, nobody had one. Wes stepped forward, his chin up. "What do you want?"
She chuckled unpleasantly. "You," she said, and fired.
"NO!" yelled Zordon, tackling Wes around the midsection. The blast caught him full in the back, sparking and skittering over his body as it slumped to the ground.
Without another thought Wes was up and after the woman, heedless of danger, of anything except that Zordon had just gone three for three, only this time he'd run out of luck. With a growl he threw the assassin to the ground, disarming her. He tore off her helmet: her features were Asian, but she was nobody Wes had seen before. "Who the hell are you, you repulsive bitch?"
For answer she just snarled at him.
"I don't have time for this," he said, pissed. Wes dragged the woman over to the waste receptacles and dropped her into one, securing the lid. "That ought to hold you for a while." He ran back to the group huddled around Zordon. "Is he...?"
Ben broke away, shouldering past him. "I'll get a doctor."
Wes looked down, horrified by what he found. "Oh... oh, damn..."
He was still sparking, jerking occasionally as though in spasm. Zordon's skin had gone dead white, thick and opaque looking; his once-handsome head of hair had vanished. Eyebrows and eyelashes were gone as well.
Wes knelt. "Hang in there, Zordon." The pilot convulsed, his lips trying to form words. "Come on, buddy, take it easy. The doctor's on the way."
"Correction," came clipped British tones. "The Doctor is here." A tall, lanky figure with wild curly hair and an impossibly long scarf knelt next to Wes, examining Zordon. He looked up at Ben. "Let's get him to the TARDIS; we'll pop him in a time warp until we see what we can do." Bearing the prone body of the fallen Zordon between them, Ben and the Doctor moved back toward the pyramid.
Wes watched them go. "Dammit."
Katie put a hand on his arm. "He'll be okay, Wes. He won't be the man he was, but... he'll be who he's meant to be, now. Which means we'll all be who we're meant to be."
"I know," said Wes with a sigh. "But it still sucks." Katie nodded.
A bruise-collared hole appeared in the sky. "Hey!" said Namir.
Rick looked at his father. "What do we do about the chick in the dumpster?"
"Leave her there. Someone will figure out what to do with her." Wes sighed and shook his head. "Let's go home."
~*~
Eric wasn't sure when it started to happen. It was a gradual process -- a little akin to waking up, except that he had no sense of having been truly asleep. In fact, he realised; he had no real sense of anything. He couldn't even pinpoint his last memory prior to this slow ascent into consciousness. Which would have been disturbing, except that he couldn't seem to muster the strength to care.
And it was a slow ascent. They -- whoever 'they' were -- seemed to be bringing him around in very careful stages. So careful and so orderly that it almost seemed natural. Almost.
First had come feeling. The sensation of lying down, flat on his back. The feeling of soft, cotton sheets covering him. The texture of a firm yet comfortable mattress supporting him. The sense that he wasn't naked beneath the sheets. The gentle pressure on his left wrist that indicated bandaging.
'They' had allowed him to become used to that sense then they had slowly started to feed in hearing. No harsh bleeps, no loud shouts, no heavy footsteps, but the gentle sound of someone breathing. He listened to the rhythm and judged it matched the feeling of his own chest rising and falling. His own breathing, then.
He had adjusted to that and 'they' had responded by feeding in a third sense: smell. A faint tang of antiseptic hit his nose along with a whisper of citrus and musk and the fainter hint of food on its way. That woke up his stomach with no other outside help and it growled. Loudly.
'They' now fed in more stimulant and he found his mind finally reaching full consciousness. A moment or two passed and he could connect most of the data he'd processed. He was in some sort of medical facility. 'They' had to be medics -- which probably explained the reason why he was coming round so slowly. The citrus-and-musk smell, he realised, meant Kimberly had been here at some point. What he could hear told him he was currently alone. Putting that together with the faint smell of food suggested that it was mealtime and Kimberly was taking advantage of that. Knowing Kimberly, probably not entirely voluntarily.
It was almost without realising it that he hit the final level of consciousness. The one that enabled him to remember the immediate past -- at least in snatches at any rate. Being arrested. The interrogation. The imprisonment. Being rescued. Having his body not-so-slowly fail him as the tmazacol did its work. He shivered. Was that over?
There was something else slightly strange. He hadn't noticed it at first but now he was more aware, he realised that at no point did he have any impulse to try and confirm any of the information he'd taken in through his other senses by opening his eyes and looking. Even now he'd noted that oddity, Eric still felt no need or desire to open his eyes. Almost to spite himself, he tried to do just that...and found he couldn't. Not 'couldn't because his eyelids were being held shut in someway' just couldn't. Almost as if, at some point during his unconsciousness, his brain had forgotten how his eyes worked.
As if that wasn't strange enough, his reaction to that discovery was even stranger. He didn't have one. Logically he knew that he should be feeling fear at this point. At the very least, he should be anxious to know what was going on. And he wasn't.
Drugs, he finally decided. They've got me on some sort of Prozac type thing, I guess.
He heard footsteps making their way along a tiled hallway, heading in his direction. Perhaps this would herald explanations. The tap-tap of heels came closer then stopped, probably about six or seven yards away and to his left. Doorway of his room, perhaps?
"Eric?"
He'd suspected the owner of the footsteps was female, hearing her voice confirmed it. The voice was familiar, though it took a few moments before he associated a name to it: Ven Evore. Lucas' task force doctor. She must have found a way to heal the damage.
She properly entered the room and came up to the bed. "How're you feeling?"
"Not really sure," Eric admitted. "Confused."
"That's understandable." He felt her take hold of his right wrist. Metal was pressed against it. "I'm just taking pulse and blood pressure readings," she explained. "Which are all normal," she added. "Are you in any pain?"
"No...but..." Eric trailed off, hesitating. "You've got me on happy juice, don't you?"
"Happy juice?" Ven echoed, amused. "Is that a reference to something in the twenty-first century?"
In spite of himself, Eric smiled a little. "Not exactly. 'S just...I ought to be scared spitless with everything I don't know about my situation and I'm not. It's kinda disconcerting."
"Ah." His wrist was released and a moment later he heard the telltale scrape and squeak of someone sitting down in a chair. "Yes, you are on some intravenous drugs, one of which is currently helping to suppress anxiety. That was more a measure for while you were unconscious and you are being slowly taken off it -- but it'll take a couple of hours for it to leave your system. By which time," she added, "I'm hoping that you'll understand what's happened."
"Which is?" Eric asked.
There was a moment of silence. Eric guessed Ven was collecting her thoughts. "How much do you remember?"
"I remember about the tmazacol," he replied quietly. "I'm a little hazy on how far the damage went...but I know it was killing me."
"There is no easy way to say this," Ven answered, "but there was a period of about two minutes where you were clinically dead."
Despite the anxiety suppressant, Eric shivered. "That bad?"
"That bad," Ven agreed. "The good news is, the damage is all healed. A couple of days to recover your strength and you should be just about as good as new."
"Just about?" Eric echoed.
Ven sighed. "You may find you have a few, minor, balance problems for a few days once you're up and about -- your hearing was one of the last areas to fail, but the tmazacol did quite a bit of damage to your inner ear and auditory nerves so, while the damage is healed, it may still take a couple of days for things to truly settle down."
"OK so far," Eric said quietly. "I'm thinking there's still a shoe to drop."
There was a lengthy pause. "The damage done to your optical nerves was far more extensive than the damage done to your inner ear. I was able to repair the damage, to the best of my ability, but..."
"I'm blind."
"Not exactly," Ven corrected. "You should be able to see, albeit with a certain degradation to your vision -- nothing major, just something that would require reading glasses."
"Should?"
"Should," Ven confirmed with a sigh.
"But?" Eric prompted.
"There's a condition, called hysterical blindness," said Ven.
The anxiety blocker might still be in his system, but it didn't prevent a lead weight settling on his chest. "What do you mean?"
There was another lengthy pause. Ven presumably wanted to pick her words carefully. "I don't know what was done to you in the TOI -- at least not beyond the obvious and physical -- but at some point, something made your brain decide not to trust visual input. Essentially, you blinded yourself."
What the hell had happened that he would have done that to himself? For a second, Eric frowned, trying to remember, but it was no good. His time in the TOI was just a mess of fragmented memories and a haze of pain.
"You...you can fix it, right?" This was the future. They had advanced technology. They had a cure for goddamn concussion -- they had to be able to fix this. Right? "Right?"
He heard Ven swallow. "It's -- it's not a medical condition," she said. "There is nothing to fix."
Eric felt sick. "What do you mean?"
"The physical damage is healed; the psychological damage will heal but it will take time."
"Well how much time?" A spark of anger flared.
"I don't know, Eric. I really don't know. It could be now. It could be next week. It could be three weeks from now..."
"It could be never." The anger died; quenched by a deep, soul-burning depression. "I get it."
He heard Ven sigh. "I have done...will do everything I can to help you with it. I..."
"Leave." The word was a flat, toneless command.
It obviously surprised Ven. She uttered a soft sound, almost a squeak. "Are..."
"Leave. Please." Eric swallowed. "Give me time to think," he whispered.
There was a pause. Finally, Ven answered, "OK."
She walked away, but he barely heard her leave. Blind. Helpless -- maybe not completely, but certainly not independent. Useless.
Broken.
It would have been kinder if the tmazacol had done its full course.
TO BE CONTINUED...