Please leave a review if you are enjoying!
I swear to Algo it was her. She's alive. I know she is. I know she is. I know she…
Pvt. Lashiec held his head in his trembling hands, his shallow, rapid breathing the only sound in the room save for the occasional beep of a medical device. The pain in his leg had subsided in a swirly haze of opioids only a few beats prior; the amputation had gone well, he thought he heard a nurse say. But he didn't care about his lost limb. He just needed to see her again. He needed to make sure.
He'd recognize that face anywhere.
Lashiec heard faintly approaching footsteps coming from the nearby corridor and looked toward the door. It quietly swung open, revealing a slight woman of short stature, her curled blonde hair pulled tight to her head in a not-particularly-skillfully-braided ponytail.
Lashiec hadn't seen her before. She eyed Lashiec across the room and in an instant, her face changed - from a calculated cold to a face betraying an overpowering sympathy - she looked just like Alis. Sure, this woman's blonde locks paled in comparison to Alis's fiery red, and her sharp features were not nearly as beautiful as Alis's cherubic porcelain face - but she looked close enough.
She looks nothing like her, Lashiec rationalized to himself, before the logical part of his brain deactivated once more, leaving him once more to his panicked, repeating visions.
"Pvt. Lashiec?" came her voice, deeper than he expected, the voice of someone many years wiser than her body suggested. "My name is Nurse Joy, do you mind if I sit and talk with you for a little while?"
Not her, Lashiec thought, his whole body now trembling. Is it cold in here? I'm sweating…
Without waiting for an answer, Nurse Joy sat down on the cot beside Pvt. Lashiec. In her left hand, she held a fountain pen with a bronze-colored nib and Silph Co. emblazoned on the side in gold lettering.
She worked there she worked there she worked there she's alive I know she's alive
"Hi, Nurse Joy," Lashiec mumbled. Up close, she looked older than he'd expected. He'd never grow old with Alis.
"I wanted to talk to you about…what you saw, down on Golra," the nurse stated, studying every movement of Lashiec's facial muscles as she spoke. "Can we do that?"
"I saw her. I saw her. She's alive, I know she's alive."
The nurse glanced at a clock near the exit door. 194.27 beats.
"Who did you see?"
"Alis. Alis. She's alive."
Nurse Joy flipped through a folder she'd brought into the room. She had dozens of pictures from what Lashiec could see, most of them of people. As she flipped through them, he caught a flash of red - Joy stopped on that photo, and held it out for Lashiec to see.
"Is this Alis?" she asked, in a cautious but caring tone. Lashiec was not in his right mind. Who knew what he was capable of? Any one of the last month's events could have driven even the most stalwart of men mad. And Lashiec had experienced more horrors in that month than almost anyone else.
Lashiec's body calmed, his tremors giving way to an almost statue-like rigidity. Slowly, almost without breathing, he reached for the photo that Joy held out for him. Her face - her beautiful face. It was an old photo - 7 years, at least, taken when she registered for her spot on the Overture 2.
"I saw her - on Golra."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
Joy furrowed her brow. Yesterday, Lashiec had been under anesthesia for the entire day.
"Are you certain that this wasn't a dream?"
"Listen to me," he growled, his tone suddenly much less helpless. "I swear to you. I'm not crazy."
"I believe you."
Lashiec paused and blinked. "You do?"
"Yes. That's why I'm here. I need to know what you saw. I need you to tell me everything."
Lashiec held back tears as he stared at the photograph. No one would listen to him. He was shell shocked, they said. He saw his teammates die. He saw his partner Growlithe die. His eggs were scrambled - he couldn't string together a normal sentence, only word salads.
He knew what he saw.
"Alis was on the Overture 1," he started, his tearstained face drying. "She worked in atmospheric sciences. She was part of the team studying the habitability of Golra."
Joy nodded along - all of this information was available in her files.
"She, um. She was pregnant when she left. I hadn't - haven't heard from her since she left on the 1. So, um, you know. I had been hoping all this time that when we finally got to Golra, I'd see her and get to meet, you know, a little boy or a little girl."
"That must have been very difficult for you," Joy said, nodding reassuringly.
"Yeah," Lashiec sobbed. "After the explosion, we were ordered to ground, and…"
"You were a part of the team sent to secure the ToPo VI systems."
"There was…a fog. And then, they came. The monsters."
Joy tapped the end of her pen on her clipboard. There it was again - monsters. The whispers were everywhere. But for the first time - she was finally speaking to someone who had seen them. "Can you describe them? Were they Pokémon?" she asked.
"They were aliens. I don't know - maybe? We didn't stand a chance…"
"Can you explain what kinds of attacks they used? Maybe you could share some of your battle data so we can discern what type it might have been."
"There was no battle," Lashiec muttered pitifully. "It was a massacre."
Nurse Joy jotted something down on her pad.
"You said you saw Alis's face."
Lashiec winced. "Yes. Alis was…one of them."
Nurse Joy pondered this development. A shapeshifter? One that could read minds, and take a form that would cause weakness in a target? So, a Psychic-type? Or perhaps the creature was obsessed with death and chose to take on the form of the recently deceased - in this case, Lashiec's lost love. So, a Ghost-type?
"When can I go home?"
Joy snapped out of her thoughts. "Oh, well-"
"Just let me go home. I need to go home."
Before Joy could respond, the silent air exploded with the cacophonous ringing of an alarm bell, one that surely woke everyone from Block Green to Block White. The dim yellow lights lining the walkways suddenly turned the shade of blood and started to flash like a strobe. The once-quiet medical wing now resembled a vampiric, neon-red soaked rave.
"Fuck!" Nurse Joy shrieked, grabbing her clipboard and throwing her bag over her shoulder. "Thanks, Pvt.! I hope you feel better, or, you know, whatever people say!"
She sprinted toward the door and disappeared into the flashing red darkness of the hallway, as the sounds of marching footfalls shook through the ceiling above Lashiec.
He looked around in bewilderment, trying to mentally balance the sudden alarm assault on his eyes and ears with the nurse's sudden departure.
—-
Nol tapped a few keys on her wrist communicator and sent several short commands to Tapas, her PokéCell. Tapas had been her companion ever since she'd received her Section ID seven years ago. The Electric/Photon PokéCell resembled two impossibly gleaming white metal spheres, each draped with long, curtain-like ears tipped with red metal. Eight eyes glowed with a neutral expression on the creature's two faces as it accepted Nol's commands.
"Tapas, please catalog and caption Pvt. Lashiec interview footage," Nol commanded while dropping two cubes of syntharine into her hydroponic tea. The PokéCell beeped happily in response, and moments later, Nol's HUD updated to include the now-organized footage files.
"Tapas, add Pvt. Lashiec interview footage to Monsters subfolder,"
"Yes, Master," the drone replied.
She'd had a few hours now to catch her breath after her escape from the military hospital. It wasn't difficult, especially during those hours. With so much manpower dedicated to securing Golra's surface, there wasn't much security at the hospital at all.
Nol wondered if the real Nurse Joy would suffer at all due to Nol's impersonation act - she hoped not, but she knew it was a possibility.
But it had to be done. Nol had to be sure. And Pvt. Lashiec was the best chance she was ever going to get.
The people wanted answers. 30,000 beats had passed since the Overture 2 circularized its orbit around Golra. A whole month. They were told that the first priority was to get the population off the ship and onto soil as soon as possible. They were told they would be able to speak to their loved ones on the surface as soon as communications were established. They were told that Golra was safe.
Until it wasn't.
Ever since the explosion, the government has said nothing. There was no timeline for colonization, and seemingly no urgency. Only a few people were allowed transport to and from the planet's surface - certainly not any civilians. The promise of thousands of colonists sharing their first steps onto their new homeworld was seemingly further out of reach with every passing day.
The people were getting antsy. The Overture 2 was a powderkeg looking for a spark.
Nol would do anything for the story of the century. Even though all that was left of her world was a few tens of thousands of people, she was going to make her mark.
And my award for excellence in journalism will go right there, she thought to herself as she passed a shelf in her hallway. As she stepped into the living room with her cup of tea, she took a sip, and promptly dropped the ceramic cup to the floor, where it shattered.
Her jaw dropped as she found herself face to face with a seven-foot tall brown bear.
Don't forget to leave a review!
