Andromeda Rises Ch. 4
Andromeda Rising IV
Elizabeth woke up with the alarm that rested in a small fixture over her cot. It read 0900, but it felt the same as any other hour on the ship. The past few hours of sleep had, thankfully, been free of dreams. She stretched and yawned, feeling rather hungry already. Standing, she noticed something very different about her room: There was a huge platter of food sitting on the floor, and the retractable monitor she had left open was now shut.
Curiosity overcoming hunger, Lizzy went over to the computer and tried to access it. Every time she pushed the button that would have brought the monitor and keyboard out, however, she would hear a diminishing chime that indicated her lack of authorization. Getting angry, she marched over to the hatch. When she tried to turn the wheel, however, it wouldn't budge. She punched the steel as she screamed out, "What the fuck!?" There was a dent now in her door, and bloody knuckles on her right hand.
Lizzy watched her torn knuckles, breathing hard as she watched the scratches heal up and disappear in a matter of minutes. Her jaw tightened with apprehension. She was going to have to get used to seeing such things.
Bringing her gaze down to the food, she saw a note sticking out from underneath the platter. She took it and opened it. All that there was on the note was a simple scrawl:
"You know too much. Your progress is far faster than we had imagined. Teresa fears for our safety and your own. I'm sorry."
Lizzy screamed out in anger and punched the door again, this time even harder. The steel was dented once more, this time higher and to the left of the first one.
Even through her anger, however, Elizabeth could not bring herself to avoid the food for very long.
Days passed. Every time Byirnah would bring her food and new bedding, Lizzy would press her for information on what was going on. She couldn't get any straight answers, but every time she asked a yes or no question, little ticks in Byirnah's expression gave away the answer. All she could figure out, however, was that they were getting closer to their meeting with Teresa, and Matthew had suddenly shut up about everything concerning this rendezvous. Nobody could glean anything from him. The only things that changed were the date on her clock and the number of dents in the door and walls. Lizzy had punched the walls so often her knuckles were starting to look like that of a flooring contractor's, with big, ugly calluses forming over each knuckle. The dreams still grew worse, and Lizzy felt like her head would explode from the intensity of them.
Finally, on day six, the last day before the rendezvous, there was success. Elizabeth managed to hack the access panel used to lock her computer--and by hack, I mean she tore it apart and rewired the panel.
The computer pulled up, Lizzy went to work accessing every file she could concerning her and what she was. She tore through every bit of information she could. Research on why her nanites changed the way they did, what the extent of her ability was, and finally, what happened to lead to her "demise." Elizabeth started reading in growing intrigue. She came to a passage that was titled, "Testimony from the nefarious pirate, Nemitz."
Elizabeth was breathing hard. Her ribs were shattered--again. Nemitz was standing over her, a sick little grin on his face. Slowly, she healed up, but she could tell that her nanites were getting more sluggish. She hadn't eaten for days.
"Tell me what I want to know," the reptilian-looking creature said, standing over her with his hands on his hips.
"It doesn't work that--"
Lizzy would have said, "way," had the lizard hybrid's boot not connected with her face, shattering her teeth. Blood gushed from her mouth onto the floor of her little cell. The chain attached to the collar around her neck clinked as she tried to crawl away from Nemitz, only to receive a boot to her ass, pushing her onto the floor. The horrid little laugh that came from him only made things worse.
Slowly, Lizzy could feel the grinding and popping as her teeth reformed. The pain of it was there, but it was nothing compared to the pain she had just experienced in her mouth before that. She curled onto the floor, hugging her knees to her chest as she lay with her back to the wall. "Please, no more," she said through slurred sobbing as soon as she could talk again.
"Shut up, bitch," he said, kicking her hard in the back. Lizzy could feel something rupture. Sometimes, she realized, being over-sensitive to the entire workings of your body was not such a great thing. She could hear Nemitz pacing angrily behind her. Then, out of nowhere, the entire ship rocked hard to one side, and the booming sensation of an explosive impact could be felt through the ship.
Nemitz was unprepared of this, and was thrown to the side, knocking his head hard against the wall. Lizzy slammed the back of her head against the same wall, feeling a horrid crunch there. For several blissful moments, all went black.
When Lizzy woke up, she saw Nemitz standing over her. The alarms were going off, the ship was in chaos. She knew she had just died there. The reformation of skull fragments in the back of her head told her that.
"You traitorous bitch," Nemitz was growling. "How did they know I would be here?" he demanded in a slithering kind of voice.
"I don't know."
"Bullshit!" he roared. "There's no way they could have known I would be all the way out here!"
Lizzy smirked slightly. She knew what it was. Matthew had made it his obsession to explore every corner of the galaxy as much as possible. The man was a sponge for knowledge, and Lizzy was benefited by his influence. He would have put two and two together. Where else would a man go when he was in possession of the most powerful weapon that ever existed in the universe? Obviously, he would go where he saw the least threat of discovery: beyond even the outer limits of civilization.
"Wipe that fucking smirk from your face," he demanded, picking her up by the hair. He unlocked her collar and began dragging her out the door and down the corridor.
All around them, hybrids were dashing back and forth. Most of them were reptilian, some were avian, and there were even a couple of rough-looking mammalian hybrids. The whole ship was in distress as the crew desperately battled for their lives.
"Where are you taking me?" Lizzy demanded over the blaring sirens.
"Where you belong," Nemitz said, taking a few turns before heading down the main corridor towards the stern. Lizzy had already figured it out. There were only two things down this corridor: the life pods and the airlocks.
"Stop!" she begged, struggling. She tried to dig her fangs into his leg. Nemitz only gripped harder and gave her a kick.
By the time Nemitz had dragged Elizabeth to the air locks, she was exhausted from her struggle. He opened the hatch that led from the ante room to the lock chamber. It was a featureless tube-shape of dark metal with a four foot wide stretch of flat flooring. At the other end of where Lizzy lay, defeated, there was a hatch with a square pane of clear polyurethane for a window. Outside, there could be seen several military vessels giving chase to Nemitz's ship. The constant barrage kept shaking the Leviathan back and forth violently as Nemitz stepped into the control room alongside the lock. Lizzy looked over to the stretch of windows that were between her and Nemitz now. He had a sick little grin on his lips still. Lizzy took a deep breath, trying to make herself face her death bravely. After all, she had lived nearly five hundred years, far more than anyone could ask for.
Then Lizzy's thoughts turned to Matthew just as the red lights started to flash, warning of impending evacuation of the air lock. She suddenly didn't feel so brave anymore. All she wanted was on more kiss, one more touch with him. All she wanted was just another instant to say,
"I love you, Matthew."
And with those final four words, the air lock opened, and Lizzy was hurled into empty space.
Lizzy awoke in a series of gasping breaths, sweat pouring down her body again. She was in bed. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. She had been reading that last entry, describing the testimony of Nemitz, who had been picked up from a nearby planet after having used his escape pod to get out of the firefight that would ultimately consume the Leviathan. After that, though, nothing. It was like Lizzy had stepped right into the story and experienced every moment of it first-hand. And even now, she still felt that longing, aching feeling in her chest. Yes, she remembered Matthew now. She remembered him very well.
Then, as if summoned by some black magic, the latch for the doorway to her room slid out, and the door opened. In the doorway was Matthew, and he had a terribly guilty look painted across his face.
Lizzy dashed forward. Matthew tensed, then found himself very surprised by her passionate embrace. He lips were pressed to his, her arms wrapped tightly around him, and her body curved up against his in a sensation that was all too familiar. Matthew had expected a banshee ready to rip his head off for her imprisonment. Instead he found something even more cruel. Every memory of his blissful days alongside Elizabeth resurfaced, and tears were now streaming down his face.
Matthew grabbed each of her upper arms and pushed her back, holding her at length. "What are you doing?" he whispered, his voice choked.
"Matthew, it's me, your Liz. I remember now. I remember us."
For a moment, Matthew could have believed it. For a moment, he was standing at the edge of an abyss that he could have so easily fallen into. But when he saw the computer in her room reactivated, his heart dropped. "You enabled your console."
"And I read the testimony you had from Nemitz," Lizzy agreed. "It brought back my memories of that day. And I felt the kind of love we have, Matthew."
Matthew took Lizzy's hand. "I have to show you something."
Sitting in the medical room once again, Lizzy was staring at the map of her recent brain activity. The scanner was a specialized device that could trace recent firings of the synapses. Her mind was lit up like a Christmas tree.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
Matthew pointed at the right edge of her right hemisphere. "See how this part is very inactive?"
Lizzy nodded.
"It means your memories are not back. What you experienced is your first cognition dream," Matthew said, looking disappointed himself. He felt deflated and depressed all over again, much like he felt the day they picked Elizabeth up.
"What's a cognition dream?"
"Do you know of pre-cognizance?"
"The ability to see the future."
"Right. You have generalized cognizance. You can see past, present, or future. But it has its flaws."
Suddenly, so many things were falling into place in Lizzy's mind. She realized just why a pirate of a lizard-man would want to capture her and beat her into submission, why the Council thought her so valuable, and why it was so important that she have Teresa carefully monitoring her progress. "I see."
"By the look on your face, I believe you do. But let me just say this: your nanites have enhanced your mind somehow. Whether it is something in your mind that allowed for this evolutionary progression or something unique about your nanite infestation we were still trying to figure out. You also have the conscious ability to learn and piece things together far faster than anyone known."
"That's why I learn so fast."
"Yeah. We thought you were just gifted amongst the Eternals at first. But over time, those dreams started to happen, and we started to realize your pattern recognition was going much deeper than your conscious mind. Consciously you can only process so much, but subconsciously, you could piece together entire visions of events that were, are, or going to happen."
"My perception goes beyond the three dimensional."
"Basically, yes. The kind of complex pattern recognition required to see and know the things you do is beyond the ability of any other creature known."
"So... I don't have my memories back?"
Matthew closed his eyes and let his head droop. "No." His voice was flat, but seemed to take so much effort to maintain that evenness. "You experience these visions in the most familiar fashion possible. In the case of Nemitz's testimony, you experienced it as if you were in your shoes. If, for example, you had a vision of me during a time while I was searching for you on this past voyage, you would experience things in my shoes. You would feel as I feel, see as I see."
"I could do this before?" Lizzy gasped, implications of the kind of intimacy with which she knew her lover of long ago flashing through her mind.
"Yeah," Matthew said, a somber-looking face meeting Lizzy's awe-struck one. "Now you see why we locked you away like this? We can't let you get so confused and filled with everyone else's memories and thoughts that you forget yourself in the maelstrom. And you have to learn to identify falsehoods in your perception."
"What do you mean?"
"As far as we have seen, your universal cognizance depends on data. If you get the wrong data, or if you have gaps, your ability fills in the blanks. I'm sure you filled in a few blanks in Nemitz's testimony. He glossed over the abuse, even though his personality profile distinctly pegs him as the kind of guy who would go beating on you. He also glossed over hauling you to the air lock. I'm sure you saw all of that, though, even if it wasn't there."
"I read between the lines."
"Yeah," Matthew sighed. He then looked at the clock. "I was planning on coming by your cell to apologize, and tell you that our rendezvous with Teresa was no more than a few hours off. Let's get you back to your room where you can rest."
Lizzy nodded and stood, watching as Matthew moved. She still felt that desperate longing in her, though. As she followed him to her room, they stopped outside the doorway. He turned to her, and all she could do was reach out to try to touch his cheek.
Matthew reached up, gripping her hand firmly, but gently. "Don't, please. If you care about me as much as you say, you won't torment me like that."
"I'm sorry, Matthew," Lizzy said, biting her lip. She moved inside her room and heard the door close and latch behind her.
Lizzy didn't go to bed. Instead, she went back to the computer, and pulled up the logs that led up to Nemitz's testimony. She found several about their search for Nemitz's ship, about the surprise attack that led to Lizzy's capture, but she wasn't interested in those things. In spite of her better judgment, the impulse to know what she and Matthew had was too strong to resist. She pulled up a file about the research they were conducting on her, trying to figure her out. Lizzy began to read.
Lizzy looked down at her feet. They were heavily booted. She wore dingy-looking slacks and a wrinkled button-down that hung open to reveal a yellowed white t-shirt. She turned to look at a mirror to confirm what she suspected. It was true. She was in Matthew's body.
Then, by no will of her own, Matthew moved forward, turning a corner in some brightly lit corridor that reminded her of a hospital. The doorway to a room opened, and there Lizzy was, laying on a table, unconscious and thrashing in her sleep. Sweat was pouring down her body, soaking the mattress on which she lay.
Teresa was there, standing over Lizzy with a worry-worn face. She carefully sponged the sweat from Lizzy's brow. Then she turned her gaze on Matthew. The tightening in Matthew's chest was automatic, and was soon followed by a tinge of guilt. He loved Lizzy, there was no doubt, but Teresa's exotic, harsh beauty was undeniable. He shook off the way she looked at him and went to his little Liz's side, taking her hand in his own.
"What's her status?"
"Same as before. These dreams are doing hell on her body."
"Is it deadly?"
"No, the damage is fixed easily enough. I don't think she's in serious danger. A mortal human, on the other hand... they'd be dead in a week."
"The blessings of being an Eternal, I guess," Matthew said with a harsh bitterness.
"You still hate yourself for that?"
"You would too, if you were already pushing two centuries of life and had outlived most of your family and friends."
"Not my fault that medical technology went so far into the stellar reaches of capability, nor is it my fault you kept allowing them to keep you alive all that time."
"No, it's not," Matthew sighed, "Just very rotten timing. When I finally make my peace with the thought of meeting my maker is when the Red Plague hits."
Teresa placed a hand on Matthew's in a sympathetic gesture. That same flip of the heart hits him, and Matthew silently curses this betrayal to the deep well of feeling he has for his Liz.
"She seems to be coming down," Matthew said, looking up at the neural scans to distract from this moment.
"Yeah, she should be out of it soon."
Only a few minutes later, Lizzy did come out of it, and started babbling.
"Paolish killing Wurns," Lizzy gasped, her hair hanging back from moisture as she tried to sit up. "Wurns will perish."
Suddenly, the entire dream went black. Lizzy's own consciousness separated from that of Matthew's, and the image of her own face reflected back at her became a disembodied vision in the field of black. Then it started to melt. The face that came through it was horrible. Dark hollow eyes stared back at her.
"You will not be allowed to see," said the voice. It was cold and calculating, void of emotion. And yet it carried the bare, naked truth with it: death. This creature was coming for her.
Persephone had just taken Teresa's shuttle into the cargo bay, mounting it into the brackets that hung from the ceiling, putting it firmly in place. Matthew waited patiently along one of the huge arcs of steel that ran around the edge of the cargo bay, watching as a gangway extended from Teresa's shuttle to where he stood.
Then out stepped the still young and fierce-looking Teresa, standing tall alongside an assistant that looked to be a timber wolf breed. The male was thin, but fit and fierce-looking.
"Hello, Matthew," Teresa said, smiling slightly as she sauntered her way towards him. That little smirk, the forward and unabashed gaze she had, and that casual walk all spoke to Matthew's more carnal desires, and he gritted his teeth against it.
"Hello Teresa," he said stiffly, extending an arm for a formal handshake before she could go in and try to kiss him on the cheek, as was her custom. Teresa simply took his hand and gripped firmly.
"Still afraid of betraying your feelings for Lizzy, I see."
"Who is this?" Matthew said, ignoring her.
"This is Yardley, my assistant," she said with a slight smirk. The wolf stepped forward and shook hands with Matthew. "He's of the timber wolf clans on Gelkin. He has proven to be my brightest pupil."
"It's a pleasure, Yardley," Matthew said formally. The wolf simply nodded in assent. There was a predatory look about him, with those wolf eyes of his and the way his ears stood on end. Matthew passed it off, thinking it was simply part of his breed.
"Come on, let's head up to the bridge. I'm on watch," Matthew said, leading the other two away.
Stepping onto the bridge, Yardley closed the door behind the three of them, latching it firmly as Matthew resumed his position in his chair.
"How is she doing?" Teresa asked, satisfied they would not be disturbed.
"She's awake. Her cognition dreams have started in full force."
"I thought you put her in containment."
"I did, but you should remember that she is cleverer than we can typically estimate," Matthew said, turning to give Teresa a sharp glance.
"What was her first full cognition?"
"The day she was jettisoned into space. She had it just six hours ago."
"At least we got to her early."
Just then, there was a slamming on the doorway behind Yardley. Before the wolf could react, the latch snapped under the pressure, and the door swung open. Lizzy was in the doorway, and was dashing across the bridge to where Matthew sat.
"Liz, what the--"
At this point, many things happened at once. Alarms all over the ship began going off. Two singularities were forming ahead of Persephone, one slightly to port and one slightly to starboard. Lizzy had pushed Matthew from his seat before he could get another word out, and began the spooling process for warp drive. As she did so, the remaining alarms on the ship all began going off. The artificial gravity well, combined with the power of the two singularities that had just formed, were all converging. The resulting distortion in space-time was unlike anything the sensors had picked up before--and it was right in front of them. The tachyon field formed up just in time for the Persephone as they were launched forward from the sheer force of it all.
Persephone hurled itself towards the converging singularities, forced ever-closer to either side of the ship as they were shot through it like a slingshot, the combined force of all three artificial singularities hurling the cargo ship to velocities never seen before. Outside of their protective tachyon bubble, the two emerging alien ships were decimated in milliseconds, their debris swept up in the wake of the Persephone along with Teresa's military vessel.
STOP! was the only thing that could be heard in Elizabeth's head. It was like this booming, painful voice inside every fiber of her being. She lay curled on the floor of the bridge, shaking violently, her hands on the sides of her head, hearing it louder and louder.
STOP!!!!
Lizzy screamed.
Matthew climbed back to his chair, the whole ship shaking violently as the tachyon field struggled to maintain its structure. Instead of brilliant passing bands of color, it was just solid white. The bombardment being felt against the tachyon field was immense. Checking the instruments, Matthew struggled to concentrate amidst Lizzy's screaming. All the navigational equipment and sensors were disabled, overloaded with information. The only controls that seemed to still be working were the warp drive and tachyon generator, and those just barely. All the power the ship had was being poured into those systems to desperately maintain physical integrity of the ship.
STOP!!!!!!
Lizzy's fingers dug into the sides of her head now, scratching through her scalp and making her hair bloody.
STOP!!!!!!
Teresa went up alongside Matthew, both their hands flying over the controls now, trying to route and reroute power to try to keep themselves in one piece.
"We can't dance like this forever!" Teresa yelled over the roar reverberating through the ship.
"I can't stop it!" Matthew snapped back.
"Reverse the gravitational differential!"
"There isn't one! The warp drive isn't registering a thing!"
"That's impossible. How are we maintaining velocity?"
"I don't know," Matthew growled, punching controls viciously.
"What if we turned around?"
"Are you insane?"
"Well you said the ship isn't being pulled by anything. If we turned around and activated the warp drive--"
"We could be torn apart!"
"Or it'll act as a breaking system."
Matthew thought about it. Either way, their tachyon field wasn't going to last forever. He put his hands over the controls for the maneuvering thrusters and turned the ship around inside their tachyon bubble. He put minimal power to the warp drive, the ship shuddering dangerously as some power was drawn from the tachyon generator. Miraculously, they seemed to be slowing. It was still too great of a velocity for their sensors to recalibrate themselves, but at the very least they could feel the ship's gravity generators adjusting to the lower velocity.
STOP!!!!
Lizzy still kept screaming. Her fingers were bloody now, but Matthew wouldn't let himself tend to her until they had their ship under control. The tachyon field slowly began returning to normal, even though the bands were now moving in the wrong direction. Matthew kept slowing them down more and more until, finally, they were at a dead stop.
The instrumentation came back to life, scanners checked their exterior environment, and once Matthew was satisfied they were in a safe place, he disengaged their protective bubble, revealing their position on the outer boundaries of a dual red giant system. Lizzy stopped screaming, and lay passed out on the floor. The wolf, Yardley, was nowhere to be found. Matthew took a deep breath and fell back into his chair, letting the adrenaline drain from his body.
"What the hell was that," Teresa demanded.
"I have no idea," Matthew said, gazing out into the space that was behind them. He sat up again, and began scanning their route. "Jesus," he whispered.
"What?"
"There's debris in our wake. A lot of it."
"Composition?"
"Much of it unknown. Some of it, though..." Matthew began, then his shoulders drooped, "matches the composition of a standard military vessel. It seems your ship was dragged into the anomaly behind us."
Teresa banged the console angrily. "Damnit! What the fuck did you do to her!?"
"Me!?" Matthew snapped, standing and whipping around to face her. "It's not my fault you people pressed for constant testing on Lizzy's abilities! Had you not pushed her, she might never have--"
"Matthew?" came a low, weak whisper. Matthew turned, seeing Liz laying on the floor, staring at her own bloody hands. The sides of her head were scratched up. "Why am I covered in blood? Where am I, Matthew?"
"Liz, baby? Is that you?" he whispered, kneeling beside her.
"Yeah," Elizabeth said, smiling up at Matthew. It was her smile, that wan little thing that lit up her face like a bright sunrise. "Who else would it be?"
Matthew pulled Lizzy into his arms, kissing her forehead. "My little Lizard."
"I hate that name," she said tiredly, resting her head on his shoulder.
"But it's so cute," he said with a soft chuckle.
Lizzy stuck out her tongue at him. Matthew pressed her close to his chest. "Glad to have you back, baby," he said, tears streaming down his face.
"Where did I go?"