Authors: Lisa Lace
She hadn't even touched me, and my body was responding. I had no chance to think about it, though, because the door was opening.
The droids had a humanoid form and could perform simple tasks. But they weren't sentient, thank goodness. Jared and I quickly overpowered them. These were the servant droids, not the soldier droids I had seen in the med bay where they mind-wiped me. I assumed that there was a big difference in power and weight for different types of robots.
Jared and I picked one up and ran down the hall. Kenna and Mana had slammed the door and locked it. They were right behind us.
We made it to the other cell and used the droid's fingerprint to give us access. I wondered what kind of maniac designer would put prints on an android.
"What do we do with the robot?" Jared asked Kenna and Mana. No one asked my opinion, and I didn't offer it. I was a shadow now, without memories and almost without a personality. I would stay in the background and try to figure things out before I would offer my opinion on anything.
"Just take it into the cell," Mana said. "And hurry. They've been alerted. We have two minutes and forty-five seconds."
Jared rushed into the room. There were excited exclamations from our crewmen who were being held there. He ignored them all, running to the wall. Mana was right behind him and handed him a device that seemed microscopic. I hadn't even realized she was holding anything in her hand.
Jared aimed the laser at the wall and started to cut.
Nothing happened. He gave Mana an inquisitive look.
"I said before it took two minutes to cut the hull the first time," she said.
"That doesn't give us much leeway." His teeth clenched as he focused on cutting the right sized hole and keeping the proper distance and angle from the hull.
"I told you this was stupid," she said with a shrug.
I chuckled to myself. That was so like her.
I froze. How could I know if something was like her or not?
I stared at her for a minute before I shook it off. It was a fluke.
The mind-wiped had no memories or even glimmers of memories. The technology was made perfect in the last fifty years. The people who did that sort of work didn't make mistakes either.
I couldn't have remembered anything about Mana. My assessment had to have been based on what I had seen of her since I woke up.
There was a loud commotion in the room, disturbing my train of thought. My eyes drew to Kenna. She was surrounded by people asking questions or greeting her.
She was talking to as many of them as she could. Shaking hands, smiling, answering questions. Her long brown hair, I noticed, had been coiled on her head instead of being in a braid down her back.
I tried to listen to what she was saying.
"There's not room on the shuttle for all of us. We will return to the ship and make a plan to get you all out of here. You've got to be strong and stay safe until we return, okay? We won't leave you here."
There was a loud screeching noise.
"Kenna," Jared said. He and Mana were pulling out a piece of hull.
Kenna smiled one last time and ran over to me. She grabbed my hand, and I felt an electric tingle zap me when we touched. She looked at me in shock, and I could tell that she had felt it too. There was no time to wonder about all of this.
We had to go. We could hear soldier droids pounding down the corridor.
She pulled me to the hole in the hull. Mana and Jared had disappeared through it.
"You first," I said.
She looked confused and paused for a moment. Then she shook her head.
"You don't understand, but you're much more important than I am. There are a lot of people depending on you to come back."
"Dar, Kenna," Mana poked her head back through. "Hurry up! Why don't you talk AFTER you evacuate? The ship's starting to close up again."
"Now, Dar. Just go," she said pushing me a little.
Something was wrong. I was experiencing deja vu. We had already had this conversation about who should escape and who was more important. But I didn't want to argue. I wanted to get to safety and, more importantly, I wanted Kenna to get to safety, too.
The sooner I went through, the sooner she would follow me.
I put my legs in and slid into the shuttlecraft, landing clumsily in a heap on the floor. Mana helped me get up. Jared was already powering up and getting ready to take off.
Mana went to the hole and called to Kenna again.
"Kenna, quick. You're next!" she said.
At that moment, we heard soldiers coming through the door. I heard the sound of shots. People screamed and ran to the walls and corners, trying to get out of the way.
"You have to come now!" Mana yelled.
My heart pounded at the sounds of chaos coming through the hole. I saw her feet dangling, but something was delaying her.
"Kenna, you're going to have to jump. The ship's closing up," Mana yelled again.
I moved to see if I could help. Kenna was sitting ready to jump through the hole. That's when I noticed the problem with the ship.
The ship was reconstructing its walls by itself. The hole was getting smaller. Soon she would not be able to fit through.
"Now, Kenna!" Mana screamed.
Kenna finally jumped, her body slipping through the ever-shrinking hole in the hull. But she had waited too long. In the end, her arm got caught and pulled back. Her forearm and hand slid through as the hole closed around it. The metal of the ship scraped deeply from halfway up her forearm to her fingertips.
She screamed in intense pain and fell to the floor in a heap, thankfully unconscious. Her arm was bleeding profusely.
I felt like vomiting. I did have memory problems, but I could not remember ever seeing anyone hurt so badly.
"Jay, get us the hell out of here." Mana said.
There was a lurch as Jared quickly accelerated away from the alien vessel. Mana tossed me the first aid kit.
"Stop the bleeding, Dar. Jared's piloting and I've got to make sure they don't transport us back." She ran for a console and began tapping furiously.
"Keep them from getting a lock, Mana," Jared said. "We'll be on the other ship in a few minutes."
I stared down at Kenna. Her arm was a mess.
I didn't know what to do.
"Dar!" Mana yelled, "Stop the bleeding. She's can't lose any more blood. Jared, he's just standing there. I can't let them get a lock on us. But Kenna's going to die. She must have cut an artery."
"Dar, we need you. Kenna needs you. Please," Jared said, his tone desperate.
I pressed my lips together and suddenly felt the ability to move again. It didn't matter how I sick I felt. This person needed my help. And I needed to help her.
I knelt beside her and tore open the first aid kit, finding packets that contained thick pieces of gauze. I opened two of them and used them as gloves. I picked up her arm, wrapping the pieces of gauze around at the same time. The raw exposed red flesh turned my stomach. But I ignored my nausea, focusing on the areas filled with blood.
There was a spot that was gushing, and I quickly tore open medical packets, one after another, pressing them against the bleeding. The pads turned bright red immediately. I opened more and pressed them onto the wound, applying as much pressure as I could. These soaked through, too, but it took much longer. Finally, the outer bandages stayed white. For that, I was truly thankful.
I found a roll of gauze and wrapped lengths of it around the pads that were already there. Then I continued wrapping until the whole bloody mess was covered.
In the end, her arm appeared twice its normal size. It was a terrible job and looked awful. But she wasn't bleeding anymore. I felt a sense of satisfaction. These people needed me, and I had helped them.
I wondered if I was the sort of person that helped other people.
KENNA
I was in agony. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. I certainly couldn't move.
But I could hear.
"She moved. I'm sure she moved. She must be coming around," a man's voice said.
"That's not good. I'm not done," said a woman.
I heard myself screaming, over and over, as the excruciating pain became even worse.
I became aware of strong hands holding me down. Was this alien torture?
The darkness took me again.
DAR
Kenna was in really bad shape.
We had escaped from the prison ship and stopped at the other smaller ship for only a few minutes to gather supplies. Mana continued to evade their transporter beams while Jared and I grabbed food, water, and medical supplies.
We were on our way. After Jared had taken us into hyperdrive, the shuttle was well out of transporter range. Mana sat back from her console looking exhausted, but she got up a few minutes later and moved to Kenna's side. She looked at me and sighed deeply.
"I wish you remembered your first aid training," she said, sadly. She likely wanted me to remember a lot more, too â like who the hell she was to me. "But that doesn't matter. You'll have to assist me."
I nodded.
"Okay. Are you a doctor or nurse or something?" I said.
"No, but I have some basic emergency medical training. We have to cleanse the wound so it won't get infected, then rebandage it. You stopped the bleeding, but we don't know what weird stuff was on that metal that scraped her."
Jared came over.
"Isn't there any local anesthetic in here?" she said, poking around in a box that we had hastily grabbed from the med bay on the ship.
There wasn't.
"We have to work while she's unconscious, so let's get to it. Jared, come over here. You guys may have to hold her if she comes around while I'm cleaning her wound."
She carefully cut off the blood-soaked bandages and peeled them away, layer by layer. When she got to the bottom layer, they stuck to her flesh. As she pulled them away, I saw the woman twitch.
"She moved. I'm sure she moved. She must be coming around," I said.
"I'm not done yet!" said Mana.
The screaming started. The sound was terrible and indescribable. Jared looked at me with wide eyes.
"Hold her," Mana said coldly. We grabbed Kenna as she tried to sit up and get away from the pain. After only a few seconds, she was unconscious again, to our great relief.
"By The Three, we better get her to a hospital soon," Mana said, staring at the exposed arm. "Doesn't this look like it's getting infected already?"
Mana had finished peeling off the bandages. Jared and I had an unobstructed view of Kenna's wound. It was nasty.
"All I've got in here to disinfect it is rubbing alcohol." She looked upset.
"That's going to hurt like a son of a bitch," Jared said.
Mana nodded and opened the bottle. She emptied the whole thing all over Kenna's arm. We held her in case she regained consciousness but thankfully she didn't.
After Mana had rebandaged the wound neatly, Jared and I carried her to the dorm room. The shuttle was so small that there weren't individual quarters. There was only a small room with six bunk beds. We put her safely on one of the lower ones and returned to the bridge.
Mana was checking our coordinates.
"Hey," Jared said. She ignored him, continuing to tap at her console. "Mana."
"What?" she said, looking up at him in irritation.
"You need to go rest. You're dead on your feet."
"I'm all right," she said. I could see the dark circles under eyes and the way her body was sagging.
"You've been awake for over twenty hours," he said.
"So have you," she said, glaring at him. He was slowly blinking his eyes; he must be just as tired as she was.
I watched the two of them in their standoff. Then I walked over to the captain's console. They turned to watch me as I did.
"I still remember how to pilot this thing, and I've had a lot of naps." I said.
I wasn't sure if I could do it right now, but I knew for sure that I had done it before, and I was awake.
They glanced at each other, not sure what to say. Mana had told me that I would retain some of my basic knowledge. All the memories would be lost, and specialized skills like piloting a shuttlecraft would be forgotten.
"Show me," Mana said, so I sat down at the controls. I was nervous, but I was able to do some simple maneuvers. When I looked up, she was giving Jared an incredulous look, which she wiped off her face when she saw me looking at her. "Okay."
"Okay, what?" Jared said.
"Okay I'll go and rest, you jerk," she said. "And so will you."
He grinned and slung his arm around her shoulders. She smiled a tiny smile as he did so. I heard him as they walked down the hall.
"You can sing me a lullaby, Mana." And I snorted. As if Mana would ever sing anyone a song, I thought.
It occurred to me that this was another thing I shouldn't know about her.
KENNA
I was awake, but I kept my eyes closed.
My first thought after I woke up again was that my arm hurt.
My second thought was that we needed to get to Earth. We needed help dealing with the alien attack force. Before I could finish thinking, I was interrupted by a familiar sound.
"Kenna?" I moved into a more comfortable position when I heard Dar's voice. I opened my eyes, and a wave of sadness washed over me.
He was right here with me. He was right beside me.
So why did I miss him so much?
"Are you all right?" he said, hesitantly. "The pain must be incredible. I'm sorry, but we used up all the painkillers in the first two hours."
"Two hours. How long have I been out?"
"About eight, same as Mana and Jared."
"Who was piloting the ship?" I asked.
"The guy without a memory," he said with a grin.
I wrinkled up my nose.
"I thought that Mana said that would be impossible." I trailed off. He shrugged.
I stared at him for a moment.
That's when I realized that I was stupid. Dar could have died. They could have killed him. Instead, he had only lost his memory but like Jared had said â he was still here with me now. I hadn't completely lost him, and I needed to be thankful for what I still had.