Chapter #3You hold still by: Slaad11   Sweat pours down your face, stinging your eyes as you freeze, trying not to shake as your muscles scream with pain. The ‘bug’, for lack of a better term, stands facing you, nearly within arms reach and also not moving. You try to keep your breaths shallow and steady, so that your chest doesn’t move, and you wait. Finally, after what seems like two or three minutes, it begins to move. It lowers itself from what may have been a defensive posture and crawls closer, onto the man in the black jumpsuit. It prods him with its front legs for a few seconds, and then stabs the cadaver’s neck with a clear tube. You watch in horror as the tube fills with blood, followed by the bug’s body, turning all but its legs crimson red.
A dizzying wave of panic and nausea hits you. You’re unable to keep from trembling and your now loud rapid breathing is causing your chest to visibly convulse. You prepare to beat the bug off of you with your bare hands as it turns to face you and rises up on its clear chitinous legs. It leaps on you in an instant. You flail at it with your fists, but manage only to cut you hands on its razor-sharp edges. You can’t seem to dislodge the surprisingly tenacious creature as it clings to the thigh of your wounded leg and extends its clear feeding tube. But just before it punctures, it suddenly lets go, staggering away from you. It twitches violently and then falls onto its back. Its clear legs cease their twitching and curl up under it, like a dead spider.
You gasp and catch your breath, wondering what just happened. The possibility occurs to you that its digestive system encountered something toxic in black jumpsuit guy’s blood. You get another flashback…
You are walking in a single file line of men wearing orange jumpsuits down a dimly-lit corridor. As the man in front of you passes an armed guard in a black jumpsuit, he slips the guard something. The guard sneaks it quickly into his pocket, but not before you catch a glimpse of the small bag of white powder. So the guard’s a junky. Not surprising. Your instincts for survival tell you to pretend not to notice. You stare straight ahead as you pass the guard, waiting from a blow from his stun baton, but he just glares at you as you pass.
You shake off the vivid scene and wonder if this bug was killed by narcotics in the dead guard’s system or if it just can’t metabolize human blood. You don’t care to find out either way. Remembering the need to arm yourself and fix your leg, you get busy.
First things first... You pull the MPL out from under the guard’s corpse. You look at the familiar feeling weapon and know that you have used one before, but you don’t remember where or why. You also notice the bio-lock trigger. It's a good thing you didn't try use the MPL on the bug, since the trigger is encoded with the dead guard's vitals and DNA. You're going to need tools to hack this. Funny that you feel confident in that ability. You tuck the currently useless MPL under your belt.
Gritting your teeth to bare the tremendous pain, you drag yourself across the floor to the wall with the med-kit. You steady yourself against the wall and stand shakily on your right leg. You grab the med-kit with both bloody hands and fall back to the floor, successfully dislodging it from its mount. Inside, you find everything you need. Painkiller first. You tear the already ripped pant leg to expose your thigh and press the bright red jet-injector to your clammy skin, pulling the trigger. Two seconds later, you are feeling no pain and the room spins very slowly around you. With partially numb but now steadier hands, you pull at the metal shard still lodged in your wound. It comes out easily, but bright red blood flows quickly after. Feeling sick and light-headed, you waste no time grabbing your shin with both hands and squeezing as hard as you can to set the bone back into place. It snaps straight with a sickening wet click. Thank God for pain meds. You slap a new-skin patch on the bleeding wound and then grab the blue jet-injector, shooting your leg full of nanite-gel.
Fighting off the urge to loose consciousness from blood loss and the effects of the painkiller, you crawl toward a section of ship with an in-tact door. You reach up and wrench the door open, finding a small lavatory. Perfect. You crawl into the slanted closet-sized compartment and shut the door, pulling the “occupied” latch and hoping that the bugs are the worst things looking for you. Finally, you let yourself drift into deep narcotic-induced sleep…
You dream of a prison transport. A familiar black jump-suited guard just hit you with a stun baton for no reason. You feel helpless as you choke down your anger and fight the urge to retaliate. Suddenly there is a violent lurch and alarms start screaming. The room is bathed in red flashing lights. The guard looks frightened for the first time and dashes out. You’re left standing there with an intense sense of dread…
You wake up feeling groggy and your head is pounding, but otherwise back in one piece. You move your left leg to test it and find that the nanites repaired the bone and laceration perfectly. Not even a scar left under the layer of dried blood. You’re hungry and thirsty. You reach out and unlatch the door, pushing it open tentatively. Cooler but still humid night air rushes in, along with a cacophony of chirps, chitters, and shrieks from who knows what. You could probably walk now, taking your chances with the nocturnal critters and search the ship’s wreckage for food and water, or you could get some more sleep and see if you can hold out until you have some daylight…  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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