Everything ached. He lay on his back on a mattress, a sheet over him but he didn't have a shirt or pants. There was steady beeping to his left and several pricking sensations in his left arm. In the background he could hear the faint hum of ventilation and other life support systems. He could feel a strong psychic presence to his immediate right and a psychic background of pain, suffering and anger.
So he was in Medical.
Well, actually that didn't quite fit, since they wouldn't have let any of the other subjects sit near him in Medical, even if any of them actually wanted too. He didn't really have anyone he was close to ever since he was taken by Armacham. The bastards deliberately undermined that sort of thing, forcing people who they thought were getting too close to fight to the death, or else.
Actually, hadn't all of his acquaintances died?
And what about the gamma bomb?
Was the person sitting next to him Alma? What happened to her?
Had he died and gone to hell, except he was already there so he didn't actually go anywhere?
"My life is pain," Jack groaned.
After a brief moment, he felt a sudden psychic assault from the person sitting next to him. Honestly, it felt like the psionic equivalent of getting tackled by a krogan.
He let out a gasp of pain and seized up as he futilely struggled to fight the attack off. [i]Definitely Medical,[/i] passed through his mind as he tried to push back to no effect.
Suddenly the assault stopped and he went limp.
After several seconds of gasping breaths he heard it: "Yes." It was a little girl's voice, rough from lack of regular use, perhaps.
But he recognized it.
Opening his eyes to see the metal paneled ceiling and propping himself up on one arm as he turned to her, he asked incredulously, "What the hell was that for?!"
"I wanted to see if were still injured," Alma responded from the stool she sat on, looking at him with her faintly glowing amber eyes. She had an omnitool active on her left hand with a holographic wind covered in text open. Her long black hair was stuck together in messy clumps and her face was haggard with deep bags which combined with her pale complexion and glowing eyes to give Jack the impression of a haunted corpse. She was wearing a patchwork dress that looked like it had been sloppily assembled with a cheap omnitool's "attach" function. He could also spot flecks of dried blood on her hands and feet.
"Two things: one, you could probably feel the aching pain I felt and which is now worse because of that stunt you just pulled; and two, what the hell happened?"
She looked down at the floor. "When I woke up and managed to get out of the rear starboard cargo bay, you were unconscious and bleeding from a gash in your abdomen inflicted by one of my specters…" She was quite for a moment, her shoulders hunched. "I weak, so I had to use the specters that manifested because of my aura and the grenades that you had near you in order to kill everyone else while dragging you to the medical facilities near the bridge. You were severely injured but I needed to get the ship off the planet immediately, so I pulled back my power and used knowledge I took from the pilot to fly the ship out of the planet and set an FTL jump into deep space several light-years away. Then I used the medical equipment to stabilize you." She gestured to the machines to the left of his bed. "You didn't wake up…"
When she didn't continue, Jack sighed. "You got us off the planet and I'm alive and awake now, so I'd say you did good."
She met his eyes and smiled slightly. "Thank you."
He nodded and shifted into a sitting position facing her with his legs dangling off the bed. "So, how long was I out? And what's up with that omnitool? I thought they'd be ID locked."
"You were unconscious for thirty-seven hours. This omnitool was only password protected, and I took its password when I was fighting the crew." She returned to reading whatever the omnitool was displaying before briefly glancing back up at him. "You haven't fully recovered yet, there are several minor fractures which haven't completely healed yet and the toxins Armacham released into the air were absorbed through your skin in sufficient quantities to cause minor organ damage which is also not fully healed yet. This is in addition to the aftereffects of psionic burnout you are still suffering from."
Jack shrugged. "I'm not jogging around or anything and I've slept enough I think."
"Very well, but avoid strenuous activity."
"Okay, mom," Jack retorted.
Alma didn't bother replying so he decided to take a moment to study the rest of the room. There were three other beds in the room, each with their own accompanying equipment. They were also all in varying states of disarray. Two of them clearly had dried bloodstains and all three were knocked over, one of them had apparently been thrown into its accompanying machinery and another was scorched from what Jack assumed were incendiaries.
Jack looked back at Alma, who was intently focused on whatever she was reading.
"So what have you been up too while I was out?"
Alma didn't look back up. "I have incomplete knowledge of how to operate and maintain this ship. I only took some information from the pilot's head, I was in a hurry. There was also some minor damage to the ship due to our combat for control. In addition, leaving bodily remains in the open is unsanitary. I have been rectifying all three with the use of this omnitool," she gestured with her left hand, "and the owner's manual I downloaded from the ship's consol."
Jack frowned. "You were injured and burned out too…and did you get any sleep at all? Those bags under your eyes say otherwise."
She looked up at him again. "There was too much to do, and I needed to make sure that you received the medical care you needed. I'm fine."
"Uh-huh." Jack then yawned loudly, stretching his arms and legs.
The two locked gazes for several seconds, before Alma failed to stifle a yawn of her own.
"Right," Jack said, "give me the omnitool and I'll take care of things. You need to rest and heal up."
"You don't know how to do maintenance or monitor the equipment," Alma argued around another yawn.
"We're fine, there are no immediate problems that I can't figure out even if I'm not immediately skilled in the problem, remember I broken you out after all," Jack replied as he started pulling out tubes from his arm. "And as for the medical machines, they're mostly automated anyway, so all you need to do is tell me what the first few steps are."
"But…" she gestured with her hands, trying to find some argument.
"Nope," Jack said, pulling out the last tube and standing up. He held back a wince and met her glare. "I'm fine." He spread his arms wide. "You said I was still healing, but I'm mostly healed already. Nothing some rest won't fix," he said, focusing on an old psionic trick he'd picked up in the slums. It was nothing someone as unsubtle as her was likely to pick up on.
She focused her stare at him and how he stood, studying him with more than just her mind. "Something could happen, and you won't be able to handle it on your own. That's why you freed me."
"If something bad happens, I'll wake you, even though I actually [i]can[/i] handle it, but seriously, I'll be fine." He picked her up amidst her surprised squawk and set her down on the bed.
Alma glared at him and he levelly returned it.
Jack held out his hand. "I'm not helpless as you think I am. I've lived through pretty much everything you have, and I'm the one who carried you across a hanger full of guards and into this ship."
She looked down at his hand and fought another yawn.
He rolled his eyes. "Fine, be stubborn." He took her left hand and pulled off the omnitool glove amidst her protests, but she didn't actually fight back. He slipped the glove back on to see that the display had switched to the login window. "What's the password?"
After sullenly glaring at him for a moment, she finally and reluctantly said, "5-captiol H-3-exclamation point-j-1-capitol P-plus sign-b."
Jack paused. "Can you repeat that?"
She smirked before fighting down another yawn. Then she nodded and helped him log in.
"Thanks," Jack said.
"Now you are going to plug me in?" He nodded. She sighed and then explained the steps.
A few minutes later, she sat on the bed with several tubes of various purpose plugged into her left arm.
Jack sighed. "Don't just sit there, lay down."
"I need to keep track of you, you'll get hurt."
Jack made sure not to throw his hands up in exasperation. "You can keep track of me while you're lying down. I'll just be sitting here reading the manual like you were."
Alma slowly nodded and then shifted towards the pillow so she could slip under the covers ad Jack helped her get into position. When her head was resting on the pillow, she turned to look at him.
"I'll be fine, and you're a psychic so you don't need your eyes to watch me."
She yawned and closed her eyes.
Jack read the manual from the beginning. There wasn't an extranet connection light-years away any from inhabited system, especially in the Terminus, so he couldn't look up the technical details, but he had a rough idea of what the manual covered.
After about a minute her breathing became regular and her psionic presence withdrew deeper within itself.
Jack sighed quietly. "Not even Max was that stubborn with Big Sis…"