The Parasite

The light in the medical bay was dim tinted blue. All of the patients were asleep, the curtains were drawn. Light glinted gently on the metal implements, metal tables,


And the metal exoskeleton riveted to the Commander's back


Dr. Krill, Sunny and the ex admiral stood over hospital bed staring down at the figure who lay, unmoving, face down against the sheets. He looked eerie, almost ghostlike in the blue light


"Perhaps you.... Made a mistake."


"I don't make mistakes."


Sunny ignored the two and their conversation stepping up to the edge of the bed and placing her hand against his shoulder. It felt wrong, metal pressing against her hand, a poor substitute for real human warmth. His skin, blue in the overhead light was cold and damp with sweat. Where the spine of the machine was riveted onto his back, she could see rings of inflamed skin puckering up around the casings.


The machine bore down on him, like a parasitic infection sinking it's way into his body, an alien monster intent on consuming him from the outside working in. In contrast to his pallid skin, the creature was a black mass of metal bone and silver joints.


"Shouldn't he have woken up by now?" Someone wondered


"Maybe it's best ...if he doesn't."


Sunny turned, glowering down at the ex admiral golden eyes smoldering with anger. He closed his mouth and looked away shuffling his feet against the ground.


"You might want to at least block him off from the rest of the room. If he wakes up... well.... We don't want the other patients to wake up to that."


That was at least a fair point, no matter how much Sunny didn't want to admit it, so she stayed silent allowing them to do their work, as they grabbed the bed, and rolled it out of the room over to the next, vacant ward.


He still did not move, though his pulse was steady.


She sat with the others in silence listening to the beating of the heart monitor, and the quiet whirring over the ship's overhead ventilation.


The doors at the far end of the room hissed open once or twice to allow in one of the bridge crew giving reports about the battle below.


It seemed as if the suggestions from the advisement team were correct. With conn's help, they had managed to wheedle their way into the heads of their enemy, an enemy that knew full well it could win, with one single massive charge. They had made their base too close to the Gromm home city for overhead airships to intervene with the impending attack without destroying thousands of the Gromm and their own men in the process.


The more and more they looked, the more and more the commander's decision seemed to make sense.


Of course there were other exo suits on the market, they were used for heavy infantry and for industrial work in factories carrying large objects.However, The difference was in the wiring, the Steel eye suit was hooked straight onto the spine and nerve endings where other suits only responded to the muscular contractions of the wearer making them bulky, and slow, with a delay time that didn't allow them for more than big sweeping motions during a battle.


The steel eye suit, not only enhances one's strength and speed, but it did it on command amplifying the speed until the subject was more than a man and less than human.


Since operation steel eye became known to the scientific community, no one had attempted similar technology since.


And that is why they were here.


Because that suit could be their one salvation.


Sunny was just beginning to drift off to sleep carried downwards on the wings of exhaustion and her own disquieted thoughts when something pulled her up from the dredges of her own exhaustion.


She opened one eye.


Something about the room had changed, but she couldn't tell what at first.


Everything looked the same. Dr. Krill bustling through the doors on a return visit from his other patients. The Admiral nodding off where he lay on one of the vacant beds. One or two orderlies working to clean up the room to nervous for sleep and waiting on Dr. Krill to release them from their duties.


The overhead fan still whirred softly. A sink turned on and then off.


And the beeping...


Wait?


Hadn't it been slower before?


Sunny stood from her chair walking over to stand next to Adam where she could see the heart monitor.


57 bpm.


Hmm it had been around there last time, Hadn't it.


She glanced down at Adam's sleeping face pressed down against the sheets eyes closed hands resting to his sides.


She glanced back up.


60 bpm


She glanced over at Krill calling his name nervously as she turned to look. The others, hearing the strain in her voice stood to follow, looking over her shoulder.


66 bpm


Krill was close by now checking Adam's vitals.


Sunny knelt by his side, "Adam, Adam, can you hear me." At the end of the room, the door hissed open, and she turned around to find Conn floating up behind them looking none the worse for ware despite having spent most of the past day gliding about in the vacuum of space. However, as soon as he stepped through the door, he stopped.


71 bpm


His face contorted into an expression the likes of which Sunny had never seen on a creature before, Immediately turning to flee the room with a silent scream on his face.


Sunny turned back to adam


75


83


90


100


105


"Krill!"


Sunny was bent down her hand on Adam's hand staring at his face, "Adam, Can you hear me?"


120


"Krill!"


130


The eye snapped open.


Sunny watch in almost paralyzed horror as the bleery murk of confusion morphed rapidly, the small black pinpoint expanding suddenly as the eye widened, and his face screwed up into an expression that would plague her for many years after in the darkness of her own guilty conscience .


And then, he screamed.


Sunny had never heard a creature make a sound like that before, a raw outpouring of emotion that tore through the very fabric of the room shattering the silence into a thousand razor pieces.


His face spasmed, followed by his body, and even as his body moved the machine clicked with him whirring to life with a chattering hiss, like the mandibles of a clattering monster. His back arched and the machine responded throwing his head violently backwards seizing his arms to his chest and his hands into talons. He jerked onto his back so fast, and so powerful that it snapped the railing of the bed in half.


"Adam!"


He was on his back now and his spine arched again so violently that it seemed as if he would snap in half, only his head and legs touching the bed.


"HOLD HIM DOWN!"


Sunny reached out grabbing him by the arms and hips trying to pin him down.


The machine hissed angrily as he screamed again shattering her eardrums, making her head ring.


She was thrown about like a ragdoll slamming into the machines, tearing leads and forcing an explosion of unopened packages across the floor.


"GET A NERVE BLOCK!"


Sunny had him around the middle now trying to control him as his body jerked and spasmed against her. The machine clicked and hissed metal squealing. One of the orderlies was thrown backwards crashing into a table and falling violently to the floor.


Another darted in, and suddenly it stopped.


His body locked up, his eyes, still wide and wild darted back and forth between them though his body was frozen into a contorted abortion of human flesh and machine. Sunny, who had once vowed she would never weep again, found herself on her knees next to him, holding his clawed hand and shaking violently.


She thought she was going to be sick.


"What have I done," Krill was saying, "I should never have gone through with this. I should have knocked you out and set you across the known galaxy goddammit!" Overhead the blue lights pulsed and flickered, something having smashed it during the row. The orderly lay bleeding on the floor.


Sunny didn't even feel her own injuries.


"We are taking that thing off. Immediately. You, tend to James, the rest of you get back into the surgical suite and start preparing a room."


"No."


The command came as a rasp, so quiet it could barely be heard but strong enough that it was just able to penetrate the silence.


They turned.


Adam lay on his back, lips half parted, body frozen under the nerve block, though his jaw could still move minutely, "No." He said again.


"Adam... please."


Sunny was openly weeping now, not in the way humans did of course.


"If.... you don't listen to me.... I will never... forgive you." His voice was distant fading in and out.


Krill straightened up lifting his chin high. The Vrul were difficult to read when it came to emotions, but the light quivering of his mouth was almost equivalent to sobbs for the little creature. His voice was quiet, "I would rather do than unforgivable than to watch this a moment longer." He turned away, "Get the suite prepped."


There was a slight creaking noise from behind sunny, and then a light pop. She turned just in time to watch the flexion of 100 + pounds of titanium and steel alloy snapping the delicate plastic casing of the nerve block and sending it ricocheting across the room. Adam's hands balled into fists against the bed frame. Plastic snapped and metal bent.


The man's teeth were gritted so tight it looked as if they would shatter.


His eyes were closed.


"Please, Adam, no."


The entire room watched in horrified silence as he sat there trembling against what must have been excruciating pain.


"I... Can ...control... it." he hissed through his clenched teeth.


Krill rung all four of his hands in agitation, "Adam, you can't fight like this."


"I can." His voice was hoarse his breathing came in shallow gasps dry, tearless sobs against the pain.


The ex admiral remained silent, "there is one way."


They all turned to look at him, and he turned his head to the still open crate, and the last remaining piece of equipment inside.


"No drugs." Adam spat


"You won't be able to walk without them." The man said quietly


"Nerve.... Block." He moaned


Someone scrambled to find another, and once it was on the man relaxed marginally and through a paralyzed jaw was able to say, "Prepare a strike team, we go in quick, and fast, all the delta units we have.... Me.... at the front. I will be.... Fast enough.... To hold them off ..." Eve with the nerve block his body was shaking. His speech was barely intelligible.


"No." Krill said emphatically


"You can't stop me..... So you either.... Help me.... Or you get out of my way"


Sunny didn't know what to say. There was nothing she could say at this moment that would take away the immense amount of pain. She didn't know that your very being could hurt, but she was figuring it out now.


She had only broken for one minute, but that one minute had been enough to tell her all she needed to know.


"Get me down there, now."


***
She wasn't entirely sure why none of them had stopped him. She was sure there were ways though she couldn't think of any, now, there she was in the back of the shuttle cradled in darkness as they headed towards battle.


ONce upon a time she would have been gleeful for the chance.


But now, she felt only nothingness.


Adam lay on his back beside her eyes closed mouth moving slowly as if speaking to himself, but perhaps counting the minutes trying to keep his mind away from the pain..


She couldn't bear to watch it.


So instead she walked over, slowly dragging him into her arms, the lower around his waist, and the upper around his chest. His body rested heavily against hers, metal pressing into her skin.


His head lolled against her throat, just under her chin. His skin was hot and damp, his hair a matted mess. His breath came hot and fast against the underside of her jaw. She held him closer, hoping, somehow this would help.


Help him, help her, she didn't know.


But hopefully it would help someone 

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