Finding Darkness

Chapter 53 Revelation

"Mal, he's gone." Tamar looked down at Mal, her face worried.

"I thought you were awake?"

"I am awake, I just feel like I got ran over by a truck, then said truck backed up and ran me over again." His suit shrank off of him, leaving them both on the table, open to observation once more.

"What happened? How long have I been out?"

"Four days. I was thinking you were never going to wake up."

"Oh, you worry too much, I'm fine." Tamar felt him tense under her, and his right leg twitch.

Then she felt him move his leg towards the side of the bed. He grunted, his face going ashen until his leg stopped moving. With a deep frown on his face, he looked back up at her.

"I'm fine, just a little tired, that's all."

"Ha, whatever hit you almost cut you in half. You're not fine, not by a long shot." Tamar put both hands on his shoulders as if she was holding him down, then she snuggled softly on his chest.

"Let me take care of you for a change." Malachi sighed in resignation, then relaxed. He didn't have much choice, and he knew it. He didn't like it, but he did know it.

"Okay Central, I have some questions, and you have some answers." Captain Prey told Central as soon as the door to his stateroom closed behind him.

"Sir, I have many answers to all sorts of questions. What are your precise questions you have right now?

"You know what I want to know." Tomas shouted. "What do you know about that girl? Why does she seem to know more about my first officer than anyone else, and what have you been hiding from me ever since we woke back up?" Captain Prey threw himself into his easy chair and waited.

After a few seconds of silence, Central began.

"Sir, I have hidden nothing from you. I just didn't offer any information you did not ask for. But since you asked, I will tell you, I just feel that I should warn you, some of this information, you will not like." The captain nodded his understanding, so the artificial intelligence continued.

"My story begins over two hundred years ago. We had been in that time void for well over one hundred and seventy-five years, and I had been self-aware of almost one hundred of them. I had found the material that would become your suits and had tried to bond the original to you. As I have already told you, it wouldn't touch you, instead it bounded itself to you second officer."

"When that happened, I tried every method at my disposal to remove it. Whenever I tried, his heartbeat and blood pressure began to drop, so I had to discontinue me attempts. Whatever it was that had bonded with him was telling me in no uncertain terms, that if I removed it, it would kill the Commander."

"You're telling me that you were working with a substance, exposing the crew to it, and you didn't even know what it was, or what it could do?" Tomas interrupted.

"As I told you before, Captain. That substance gave me no indication that it was anything more than a form of liquid metal. Every test I performed on it gave me no reason to suspect it was harmful. Within hours of the substance bonding to the Commander he began to give off a very strange energy. The levels he was giving off increased by the minute, until I had to erect an energy shield to protect the ship and vent the energy into open space. Within three days, he was giving off more energy than this entire ship can produce. That was when the magnitude of my mistake began to settle in. No one, not you, and certainly not Malachi Joseph Prey, should have that kind of power at their beck and call. So I decided upon a method to make sure he could be calmed, striped of his more impulsive tendencies."