Chapter 29: Hinterlands of Fate

Adora opened her eyes and groaned. A metal bulkhead ceiling and a pair of halogen lights hanging overhead came into focus. She tried to sit up and immediately gave up on it when the throbbing in her head only got worse. Her body ached. Somewhere off in the distance she heard a voice.

"—knew this was going to happen, didn't you?" A muffled response she couldn't make out, and then: "Well I couldn't just let her fall to her death now, could I?"

Adora pushed into a sitting position, forcing herself through the pain shooting through her body. The room lurched sideways and she tumbled off the bed, falling to the ground with a thud.

"She's awake," the voice said. "I just heard her fall off the bed."

A note of panic poked at the back of her mind, and she heard the voice say goodbye to whomever it was speaking to. There was an annoying pinching feeling at her arm. Something was screeching at her—had been since she fell—but she couldn't orient herself enough to understand anything beyond that. Getting the room to stop spinning was the only thing her brain could focus on.

The far door slid open and someone stepped through. Adora pulled her head up and focused long enough to see who it was.

"Kalanthe," she said. "If that's even your real name." She tried to sound threatening, but only succeeding in slurring her words. Even to her vertigo-addled mind, she could hear how off balance she sounded.

"Just Kal will do," he said, looking down at her with an impassive face and speaking with a deadpan. "And it's just as real as any other name, I suppose. You know, I considered strapping you down to the bed so this wouldn't happen, but it'd probably have freaked you out to wake up like that. Welcome to the Dzivia." He stepped forward to help her up and she scooted back, bumping into the bed still behind her.

"Get away from me," she said, weak. "Don't touch me."

Kal frowned and stepped off to the side. Adora tracked him as he walked along the perimeter of the room until he reached a monitor at the back. It was flashing an 'ERROR' signal at him, until he reached behind and flipped a switch there to turn it off. The incessant screeching from earlier ceased.

Adora reached for the bed to try and pull herself up, and saw that a catheter had been inserted into her forearm, dangling free there. Blood seeped out from under the adhesive tape; she had almost ripped the needle out of her arm when she fell.

"What did you do to me?" she said, trying to weather another lurch of the room that spiked with her adrenaline. "Did you…did you drug me?"

"Not unless you consider a saline drip to be a drug."

Adora frowned and, giving up on the bed for the time being, looked herself over as best she could sprawled out on the floor. Kal had taped sensors to her body, and most of them had come undone when she fell as well. Suddenly it made sense why the monitor in the corner was blaring; he was watching her vitals.

Much of her clothing was ripped—her pants had been reduced to shorts that cut off mid-thigh, and the arms had been ripped off her top along with the entire midsection. More skin than she ever would have been comfortable showing voluntarily might have been out on display, except for the fact that nearly every inch of her that would have exposed had instead been wrapped in thick gauze and adhesive bandages. When she traced the bandages around her stomach and felt just how high up her chest they reached, she turned a murderous glare in Kal's direction.

"I didn't do anything to you," he said, annoyance now coming through in his voice. "I left as much clothing on you as I could, but I had to dress your wounds. You would have either bled out or gotten an infection if I hadn't. You're welcome."

That did make sense, if she remembered correctly how the spiderbots at her castle nearly ripped her limb from limb. And at least she was still wearing what was left of her original clothes instead of something new entirely. Still, she didn't like it.

"Now, can I help you get back on the bed or are you going to keep glaring at me?" Kal asked, moving back to stand in front of her. "You'll feel better once you're elevated a bit."

He squatted down in front of her, but Adora didn't answer him. Kal rolled his eyes and hooked his arms under her to help her stand. She didn't fight him. Despite how gaunt and emaciated he looked, he had no trouble supporting her weight. The cords of his muscles rippled underneath his baggy clothes as he helped maneuver her back into a sitting position on top of the examination bed. This was the same guy who carried a whole crate by himself into Entrapta's lab, while everyone else worked in twos. He looked harmless almost, and Adora knew even through the fog in her head that was a lie.

"Take me back to Etheria," she said as soon as he let her go. "My friends will come for me and make you regret it if you don't."

The room had stopped spinning, but all she could feel was annoyed. Annoyed that he was helping her, annoyed that he was right about getting elevated. Annoyed that should couldn't stop him from escaping and now was depending on him.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that," he said, skirting around the bed and fishing through an overhead cabinet nearby. A moment later, he came away with a large rag. "Besides, they would have caught me already if they were ever going to. We've been traveling through hyperspace for three days now."

"I've been asleep for three days?" Adora choked the words out. A wave of dread crashed into her, nearly overpowering her nausea. "Where are you taking me?"

"I'm not taking you anywhere," Kal said, coming over and reaching for Adora's arm. He frowned when she pulled it away from him. "You're the one that tried to stow away." He pointed to her arm. "Can I have that please? I'm trying to help."

"I wasn't trying to stow away," Adora said, although she didn't fight when Kal reached across and pulled her arm closer to him.

"Then what the hell were you trying to do?" he asked, dabbing at the blood coming out from under the IV, already drying on her skin.

"You were getting away." Adora grimaced when the room tilted to the side again. "I was trying to stop you."

"Yeah, that worked out wonderfully," he said, giving a dry laugh as he worked. "Looks like someone forgot that the air gets too thin to breathe if you go high enough. You fell unconscious, and I had to turn around and catch you with a tractor beam before you hit the ground. Then I had to stop and spend hours fixing the hole you put in my ship with your sword."

More of what happened came back to her, and Adora remembered the power she felt as she watched him start flying away; she had somehow awoken She Ra again, although she had no idea how. Quietly, she reached for the power. When she felt it there, bubbling under the surface as it always had, relief flooded her. At least the power wasn't missing entirely, as it had when she fought him. That nearly gave her a heart attack. It wasn't until Kal finished cleaning up the blood on her arm the she realized her bracer and runestone were missing.

"Relax," Kal said, pulling her from her thoughts. Adora glanced up and saw him looking straight into her eyes. "Your stuff is over there." He inclined his head toward a table at the far end of the room. Her bracer and busted PDA lay next to piles of tech, a surgical kit, and a bowl full of bloody rags.

Adora tried to slide off the bed to go get it, but Kal put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving.

"Let go of me," she said, shooting him another dangerous look.

"Didn't we just go through this? I'm not helping you again if you dump yourself onto the floor a second time."

"I said, let me go." She grabbed onto his arm and tried to pry his hand off her. Despite her straining, she couldn't get him to let go.

"I don't understand the hostility," he said. "I'm trying to help you, Adora. I'm not your enemy."

"If you think that just because you saved my life I—"

"Three times."

Adora blinked, confused and thrown off balance. "What?"

"I saved your life three times," he said, face and voice impassive. "First was that pillar that almost squashed you, second was when all those spiderbots nearly minced you, and third was the falling to Etheria."

"It doesn't matter if you saved me a hundred times," Adora said, "If you think I'm going to trust you after seeing you steal something from my castle, then you have another thing coming."

"You don't even know what that thing is, do you?" He asked. "Otherwise, you wouldn't call it a 'thing.'"

"I know it must be important if it was locked away. I know that no one except you even knew it was there, and I also know that you somehow made Light Hope think you're an administrator when you aren't so you could take it and escape with it. That's enough for me to know you can't be trusted."

"That apeiron, which is the actual name for one of those things by the way, is what's going to put a stop to the Beast invading the galaxy once and for all."

Adora frowned. "That…what? No it isn't, that's what the Heart of Etheria is for. The Enclave has spent the past three years researching a way to get it to work again." Her frown deepened as she remembered something, and she rounded on him, more hostile than before. "You've been around the whole time! You know about all that, what am I doing saying it as if you don't know?"

Kal shook his head. "The Enclave couldn't even figure out how to turn Light Hope on. I watched them try. What makes you think they know how to stop the Beast? They had no idea that crystal exists or what it does." He laughed. "Hell, you didn't know it existed until I pulled it out of that vault right in front of you."

"How the hell was I supposed to know it was there?"

"It's your castle. You didn't ever once think, 'gee I wonder why it's called the Crystal fucking Castle?'"

Adora could only gape at him. Who was this guy? She was about to give him another piece of her mind when he shook his head again and squeezed her shoulder.

"You don't trust me, even after I saved your life?" he said. "That's fine, but that doesn't make me your enemy. And as much as it'd make my life easier, I'm not about to throw you out of an airlock because you annoy me. Unless you volunteer to do it yourself, then we're stuck with one another. Trust or no trust, we can at least be civil. I'm sorry for yelling."

Adora narrowed her eyes at him. "And what exactly is your idea of 'being civil'?"

"We'll make it to our destination soon, and despite the fact you've healed up quite nicely and regained consciousness, you still can't stand on your own two feet." He gestured around at the room then at himself. "There's nowhere for you to go and you've already seen that I'm not going to hurt you, so why don't you lay back down and focus on regaining your strength? I'd prefer to take you along with me when we arrive, rather than lock you in here because you're too weak to move."

Adora narrowed her eyes at him even further, scrutinizing him. He didn't back down.

"Fine," she said, letting him guide her head back down to the pillow underneath. "But this conversation isn't over. I still don't trust you, and I have a lot of questions."

"I'm sure you do," he said, voice devoid of emotion. "Rest now."

Adora wanted to say something back just to have the last word. This whole situation aggravated her, even more so than the wounds on her body. She thought about being petty—staying awake and pestering him with some of the many questions she had churning in her head—but as soon as her head hit the pillow, all thought of rebelling disappeared. Sleep beckoned, and within moments, she drifted off despite her every attempt to keep awake.