Command Me To Be Well [Completed]

8 - Hurt on purpose

The battle is still not over.

Timur is struggling with the operation. Now he notices what's been outside the radar's radius. They've come closer by now. It's even more Wasps. Flying in a tight formation.

They are trying something new, as it seems. Adapting to the altered circumstances. To me.

I must be back in the game. In one piece. Body and mind.

"I'm dissolving," I mumble, trying to shed some light on the problem. Just when I start to doubt the effectiveness of figurative speech in the case of soldiers, Master Auberon sighs, and he puts his arms around me. There's nothing affectionate about it, it feels like a safety belt, defining my physical body, holding it back from floating.

It makes me able to concentrate again. I clear my throat and address the soldiers. Their relief is like a chain of Christmas lights, flashing one after another on my internal landscape.

The task doesn't get any easier. Staying alive does. And it's enough. Despite the pain, I feel at the top of my game.

I don't need to fight fainting. I need to fight the Wasps only. And I do. After a short time, the number of dots starts to decrease notably. And it's not our dots. It's theirs. I need another thirty minutes to turn the difference into something critical.

It's a huge victory for us. Surpassing all our expectations. And it's unexpected not only for us, but for the Wasps too. I see the feelings of their retreating forces. They are at their wit's end. They still don't know what changed. They can't sense me the way I sense them. They are scared, desperate and clueless.

When it's all over, I let the dots disappear from my inner map. One by one first, then in masses, until my brain is totally empty.

Master Auberon, of course, can't see what I'm doing. He still concentrates on anchoring me with his breathing. He can't feel what I feel either, despite the illusion of our collective nervous system. He has no way of sensing the terrible loneliness, as my mind is evacuating. In other words, as everyone is abandoning me, leaving me alone, with the bitter memory of the deepest attachment that's possible between human beings. I'm falling literally out of their hearts. Thousands of them, at the same time. Dumped into a hopeless world, where all emotions are dead.

So, he obviously can't understand either, why I push his hands away with a disgusted snort.

His nerves must be in worse condition too than they seem. When I fail to react to his questions, even his usual cool leaves him. The last thing I was expecting from him is to march out of the control room, with a hurt look on his face, after grunting something like he thought that I needed his help, but it must have been just his god complex speaking.

The battle was probably even more stressful than the way I felt it. He's far more practiced in assessing military situations and tactical chances than me, no wonder it made his self-control hang by a thread. It was a close call indeed.

While I sympathize with him, it doesn't solve my problem. I can't get up from my chair. I kind of hoped that he would help me to get back to my room. Timur is still busy with supervising the landings. So I just keep trembling there, with a devastating headache, and vibrant colors swimming into my field of peripheral vision.

I try to concentrate on them, instead of the lingering feeling of loneliness. It's strange, it has never lasted this long after a mapping. Now it refuses to go away.

I only start to feel better when the pilots return, and they invade the small control room. They are too loud for my pulsing brain, but they chase away the feeling of being abandoned, surrounding me, thanking me for saving them. Most of them are crying. I start to cry too. It's such a relief, it makes my mental pressure a little easier to bear.