Hi readers!

No, you're not getting an early update because I got to the number of comments I wanted. You're getting an early update because I'm feeling generous. You're welcome. Now vamoose, read! And as always, ENJOY!

-8tickles

P.S Just a side note, go check out my friend Alloutassaulthorizon's poetry, he's amazing! He's also the one I'm writing this very story with, so be nice to him and leave him a present, too! Aka, a comment, please. Remember kids, always say your pleases and thank you's, it'll get you far in life. It's certainly gotten me a long way. So, as to not contradict myself, please leave a comment, and thank you so much for reading!

(Alula's POV)

I wasn't sure how long I was asleep. I wasn't sure if I ever did fall asleep, but I was seeing the same nightmares either way. I should have told him. I knew I should have told him. If not him, someone. Something they said, everything just started coming back to me, like the floodgates had opened up. Vandelle. I could hardly stand to even think the name. I wanted to forget about the needles, the drills, the things they had done to me all over again. Instead, as my memories surged back, I was forced to relive them in more vivid detail than before, and all at once. I should have told him. Consequentially, every shadow in the room turned into ominous figures moving closer, the hum of the ship's generator turned into electric drills and pained moaning, and every breath I took brought me one step closer to my last.

I rubbed my wrist involuntarily at the thought. Then I remembered the chip. The one that let me freeze Carter. I traced the scar from when it was implanted down from my wrist to almost halfway down my forearm. Then I noticed an identical scar on my other forearm. Another chip. How many of these were there in me?

I found another scar on my calf. One on the side of my rib cage. That was four already and I still couldn't see most of me. I got up. I was about used to the gravity by now, but the ladder was still difficult for me. I walked through where we had eaten dinner and stepped into the bathroom. In the mirror I noticed a similar scar under my eye.

I needed to know what these chips did. Were they dangerous? Should I be trying to get them out of me? The one that let me freeze Carter seemed like it was working okay. How did I do that? How did these chips work? I was on a ship full of scientists, I was sure someone could tell me.

I found Fitch and Carter in the lab. They looked like they weren't doing much of anything important, just cleaning some stuff up. "Guys," I shouted down to them, "Do you have anything that could scan me?"

"Pardon?" Carter looked at me as if I'd just asked him to slap me across the face. "Are you feeling okay?"

"That's not it, I'm feeling fine it's just…" as badly as I wanted to, I couldn't find the words to explain everything that I was dealing with or what I was looking for. I decided that if it was a problem, the scan would show it, and I wouldn't need to say anything. "I need you guys to scan me. There's something I need to see."

"We were planning to scan you tomorrow," said Fitch. "But we could be ready in a little while, give us a few minutes."

I decided that was good enough, but Carter was still beyond confused.

"Why does she want us to scan her?" He asked incredulously.

Fitch just facepalmed. "We need to run a diagnostic on her before we can say we've pulled this off. Don't worry about it, boy. Just get the scanner up and running."

"Ye..Yes sir." He spluttered.

Fitch continued grumbling to himself. "Wish Olga had waited longer publishing those results… doesn't tell me anything anymore…"

Carter stumbled around the lab pressing buttons, turning knobs, and knocking over beakers of solute which he had to make several dives to catch. I watched, thoroughly amused. After several more minutes of fumbling and bumbling around, the whole lab was lit up brighter than an LED christmas tree. Fitch gave me a blue plastic dress to put on that hung like a skirt from my shoulders, and told me it wouldn't interfere with the scan. When I came out from the heavily obstructed corner of the lab I'd felt most comfortable changing in, Carter told Fitch everything was ready to go, then turned to me.

"I don't really know what this is about, but I hope we find...whatever it is you think is gonna be there." With that, he snapped his goggles from his forehead onto his eyes and marched in the other direction towards a computer.

Fitch laid me down on a white table. "You're going to have to stay as still as possible," he told me, "The scanner can cause serious damage to you if you jerk around too much. Do you think you're going to need to be restrained?"

"I think I'll be okay," I decided.

"Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," I told him. He gave Carter a signal and I could immediately hear a very high pitched sound that I knew would quickly become annoying. I felt myself being lifted a few inches off of the table, and a green energy field appeared at the far side and began moving in my direction.I felt a slight burning pain in my feet the instant it came into contact with them.

Fitch walked over to the computer that Carter was sitting at. "I've got it from here," he said, and Fitch took Carter's place behind the screen. The burning in my feet was slowly getting more intense.

Carter came over and sat by the table. "Fitch tells me when you volunteered, you weren't very cooperative with the whole scanning thing," he told me. "So they took a little bit of blood and figured out where all your cells are supposed to be, what they're supposed to be doing… And this scanner takes where all of your cells actually are and what they're actually doing and records them so we can compare and make sure there's nothing wrong with you." He seemed a little bit more confident when he was talking about that stuff. I tried to smile to him, but I winced instead as the energy field migrated further up my legs and the burning pain became more intense.

The pain started to feel familiar, and I got the sense that I'd done this before. I'd definitely been scanned before when I was at Vandelle. The green energy field had hardly reached my knees, but it was coming back to me just how much it was going to hurt when it got to my torso.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" asked Carter.

"It does," I groaned. He offered me his hand, and I took it. My face tightened and I squeezed his hand as the energy field reached my thighs.

"You're sure you don't need to be restrained?" he asked. "It's not too late, I could…"

"No," I interrupted, "I got it. Just keep talking."

"Ok, what do you want me to say?"

"Keep talking about how stuff works," I told him. It was the only thing I'd actually heard him talk about and not be so awkward.

"Uh… the more of your cells that are in the way of the scanner field, the more it's going to hurt, because…"

"No, anything else but the scanner."

The field was almost past my thighs and Carter let go of my hand to avoid his hand getting caught in it.

"Alright… the ship?"

"Sure, just keep talking."

"Alright… This thing used to be military, but Curtis bought it and converted it, made it a little more cozy. It's got four main thrusters at the back, all mass drivers, and four small thrusters in the front. Main thrusters work two ways and have 60 degrees of thrust vectoring, don't use the front ones much except for moving up and down. I think it was a great design, eliminates most of the micromanaging thrusters and saves fuel. Hydrogen scoop on the bottom of the ship, we'll have power as long as there's hydrogen."

I felt an excruciating pain as the field came into contact with my torso. "Okay," I managed. "What else? Keep talking." I didn't actually understand a word he was saying.

"Alright. Well, there's the shields. High powered magnetic field. It protects from radiation and small, fast moving space rocks we can't really detect or avoid."

"Space rocks space rocks space rocks." I murmured.

"You know all it takes is one little crack in the hull and all of our eyeballs get sucked out."

"Space rocks." I said agreeably.

There was silence after that, and the field cleared my lungs. "Keep babbling...PLEASE." I begged, remembering the pain I would be in when the field reached my head.

"Other stuff… Um…"

"Just say SOMETHING!" I was almost to the point of tears from feeling of the field creeping up my neck.

"Uhh...You're pretty!" He blurted out before realizing what he said and turning as red as a tomato.

This statement made me perk up a little bit and listen more carefully to what he was saying.

"You think I'm...pretty?"

"Um no!...I mean yea...kinda I guess you're definitely not ugly, not that I ever said you were ugly, but did the word pretty really come out of my mouth? That word is usually reserved for brand new sparkling ships. or...or..or a perfect plate of food! But then again, not to say that you aren't pretty I mean, my god, you practically are perfect, any guy in his right mind would date you, but I'm not really in my right mind, considering I'm floating in a ship in the middle of space talking to a space girl with pink hair who wanted to be scanned for seemingly no particular reason but-"

His embarrassing speech was interrupted by a high-pitched warning squeal from the scanner. It had found something.

"What the…?" Fitch stared at the screen in confusion, and Carter went over to take a look.

"Uhhh...Alula? Did you know about...whatever those are?" Carter pointed at the screen. I let my head loll to one side and gave the screen a long stare.

"Go wake up Olga," Fitch told Carter. "She needs to see this."

Carter dashed off and Fitch turned to me, holding a glass tablet. "Well Alula, the diagnostic scan is finished and I'm not really sure what I'm looking at right now. There's these tiny little things in your body, all about two centimeters in height and less than three-fourths of a millimeter in width. They're organic, but they didn't fit the cell map we'd been able to make using your blood. In fact, they don't seem to have your DNA in them at all. From what I can see, there's almost two dozen of them all over your body. Do you have any idea what these are?"

I shook my head. It was difficult, even though the scan was over, my entire body felt like my funny bone after it gets hit. Carter came back dragging Olga by the hand, and even if I hadn't heard Fitch tell Carter to wake her up I would have easily been able to tell she had been asleep.

Fitch gave her the tablet and explained what had happened.

Olga was shocked. "The hell? Are you sure you…"

She was cut off as Curtis roared over the loudspeaker. "Everyone to the cockpit!" he shouted. "Now!"

To say I can't even right now would be an understatement. Dahhhh my brain! Right now it's like...*BOOM*