The girl foamed at the mouth. I turned her head to the side to clear her airways.
That's all I could think of doing, besides praying, of course.
"What can we do?" I whispered to Maria.
"I'm not sure. They took out part of her brain. I'm guessing that's why she gets like this whenever she sees something that makes her remember DAMBALLAH."
I whimpered. "She won't be able to see us without having a fit?"
"I don't know."
We gazed sadly at our convulsing friend, not speaking, just watching.
"I've heard that the human brain and other organs are basically families of organisms, meaning that if they lose a member, they are still a family, and they can reorganize in a harmonious pattern, to the point where you can't tell what's gone.
"They have growths to cover a wound, which in turn heals and becomes almost seamless with the other skin. On other occasions, they break bones in order for them to join back together in the proper place. I'm thinking if one of us uses the Wooby Worm and coaxes her neurons to connect around the gap in her brain, she'd be able to heal."
"Did you learn all that in Rosedale Square?"
"Part of it. But I also looked in the computer systems."
I waited for her to do it, but she did not.
"I think you should try it. She is more familiar with you. I think it might work better."
"All right," I stammered. "I suppose I can't do much more harm than what has already been done. Are you able to keep her airways clear while I...work?"
"I think so."
Not wanting to injure Rebecca's thrashing limbs, I positioned myself with care on the floor next to her, sending my worms through her nostrils, gently touching her gray matter.
Newt's brain, it appeared, had been asleep, for when I linked my mind with hers, I experienced strange waking dreams.
I stood in a white hospital ward containing EKG machines, blood pressure machines and other mystifying gadgets. The large airy structure did not resemble any location on the base, the beds a little too heavy to transport thousands of light years across space. Also, the window overlooked a city.
Rebecca's mother lay unconscious on an automatic bed, hair shaved off in parts, a line of stitches running across her forehead.
Across from her mother, on another bed, lay...a cat. Also with stitches running across its forehead.
Rebecca, understandably horrified, squeezed her mother's hand as a literally faceless doctor explained how he put her mother's brain into the cat's body while she was away.
The cat meowed strangely, like a human saying "Meow meow meow," in monotone, rather than the sounds an actual cat made.
With tears rolling down her cheeks, Rebecca crept up to the cat, perhaps with a distant hope that her mother was in there.
Rebecca opened her mouth to speak to the feline, but no words came out when she moved her lips, like someone had pressed a mute button.
The cat didn't recognize her. It only acted sick, hissing at her as she neared the bed.
Wide eyed, Rebecca reached down and touched the creature on the muzzle. Its nose fell off, revealing an ugly layer of tissue.
The cat bit her hand. Newt screamed, but no sound came out.
She retreated, tried to cry, but only made the sounds a terrible actor makes when pretending to cry.
I squeezed Rebecca's hand. "This isn't real."
Rebecca let out a silent shriek, backing away in horror. Her hand slid out of my grip.
"Rebecca. Something has been taken from your mind. You must show me to the gap so I can help fix it."
"No!" she silently mouthed, running into the hallway.
I hurried after, but when I entered the corridor, I got lost in endless stretches of doorways. When I looked back, I stood before a wall, like the ward containing Rebecca's mother never existed. Direction signs had been posted every few yards, but they only showed garbled words and meaningless numbers.
In the dream, my sense of smell did nothing. Likewise my heat vision and other senses. I only chose to go right because most humans favor that hand.
I shoved my way through a set of double doors, encountering a wall. Another fork where I needed to choose right or left again.
A door to my right led outside.
The moment I looked back, I didn't stand in front of a hospital at all, but rather outside the base on LV 426. Rows of large connected trailer units on either side of me.
A few yards out, Rebecca stood frozen in one spot as she watched her father unearthing skeletons with a shovel.
Holes in the ground all around me, like graves. I counted hundreds of bones, femurs, skulls, wrists and spinal columns, all scattered around beneath the soil.
One burial site contained a set of bones arranged in a curiously artful design.
I looked up from the remains and saw...myself, pointing a claw to my chin as I gazed at the bones like a painter trying to decide which shade of green to use on a landscape.
Looking disturbingly cheerful, this other me grinned at the little girl, positioning a clavicle across a set of metatarsals. "There!"
Rebecca backed away with a visible shudder.
"How do you like this one?" my other self said. "Isn't it lovely? I do so love arts and crafts!"
"I wouldn't do that!" I protested.
Rebecca let out a silent scream and ran into the base.
I followed her into the living area in crew quarters, where I found her speaking to her mother (now not a cat) about the bones, mouthing something about calling the police.
"Those people have been dead for some time." The woman still had stitches on her forehead, the cat nowhere to be seen. "We don't want to bother the police with this. They have more pressing things to take care of. But don't you worry. I know a retired police officer that might be able to help."
Newt frowned, thumbing through a digital phone directory, for a real police officer.
I leaned over her shoulder. "Rebecca, you have the wrong idea about me. I would never do those horrible things you saw."
"Go away."
"Please," I sobbed. "You have to trust me. You need to heal, so you can survive."
She raised her voice to a scream. "Go away!"
Somehow, the base had a front porch, for a strong wind blew the door to crew quarters open. A large alligator came growling at us from the front porch, snapping its teeth.
It seemed that I had neared the hole in Rebecca's mind, and her brain had gone into attack mode. In response, I positioned myself between it and the girl, visualizing a wall with a gap in it, surrounded by piles of bricks, then a chocolate cake with a piece missing, and a slice of lemon cake going in the gap.
She gave me a solemn nod, but didn't say anything.
"She's making it all up, of course," Mrs. Jorden said to someone on the phone. "Skeletons in the back yard! Children and their imaginations!" The woman covered up the receiver. "Rebecca, honey, could you go down and clean the lion pit?"
Rebecca nodded, floating through a dirty, worn looking wooden door that opened on its own without her even touching the knob.
I followed her down a set of poorly constructed concrete steps to a dirt basement occupied by five dangerous looking African lions.
These lions growled and paced around her as she shoveled up their droppings, looking ready to eat her at any moment. One of the lions looked like me.
She glanced at her brother at the top of the staircase. "Have they been fed yet?"
"I didn't know we had any lions," was his reply.
"Just feed them!" she cried, hurrying up the stairs. "Please!"
I followed Rebecca into the living room, and found that crew quarters now resembled a dirigible, with snow and clouds passing by the windows. The floors, rotten from water damage from the windows, kept shifting as we hit air currents.
The basement door burst open, and we got ripped apart by hungry lions.
As the lion clawed my exoskeleton to ribbons, I briefly caught a glimpse of Mrs. Jorden's mutilated corpse. The image presented itself with such astonishing detail and clarity that I could only conclude that Rebecca had witnessed her mother die right in front of her, and the image had so traumatized her that she couldn't hide or escape from it. It haunted her very dreams.
Our connection broke.
Rebecca's eyes flew open, her face a mixture of shock and horror as she took in her surroundings.
The girl screamed, yanking the worms out of her nose as she backed away from me.
"Rebecca! I'm only trying to help!"
Her eyes widened in fear when she noticed my companions, her bottom lip trembling in fright.
She dove into the ventilation shaft.
"Did it work?" Maria asked.
I frowned. "I don't know."
I crept to the opening, peering into the darkness.
Rebecca crouched in the tunnel like a cornered animal, her eyes filled with fear and mistrust.
"Rebecca. We're your friends. You can trust us."
"Leave me alone!"
That's when a pair of black claws emerged from the darkness behind her.
She disappeared with a scream.