Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 3.1 - Revolt

Day 23

Whatever you do, please, don't leave us!

"Dad!" I yelled.

Hard times require hard men, but you don't seem to know this.

"Iris? Am I dreaming?" I spoke into my pillow.

I pushed the pillow away and waited for my vision to crystallize. I was in a room as sterile as a hospital on a bed as soft as heavenly clouds. My bed had just the right measurements. It was neither too small to move, nor so large that it made me feel like a baby. I guess they gave the nanofactory a dummy to work with, as I doubt they had standard models for humans.

Sye stood in front of my bed, visorless. I didn't have anything between my face and the air either. In the desert, I briefly survived without a helmet, gasping. Sye was better suited for my atmosphere than I was for theirs.

"Why am I here?" I asked

"Your hand."

Once I paid attention to my wrist, an urge to scratch it overcame me as if it had been stung by nettles. I pulled it from under my bed cover. A trail of blood left the bed cover soaked with red, but to my surprise, my wrist itself had been properly bandaged.

What even happened? Cutting wrists is a damn hard way to kill yourself. I once read that since the arteries are so deeply buried under the skin that bleeding out takes hours. That's why I thought it was mostly safe and I could see what Sye was planning to do. Perhaps I just passed out due to shock.

There were no windows in our room and no doors I could identify as such. The outside world might have been anywhere between Elysium and Omaha Beach in terms of peace and I couldn't tell.

"It's all right," Sye told me. "You did what I told you to. After you cut your wrist, everyone was worried. Those sadists loved to see you self-harm, but they did not want to lose you. They saw how much blood you lost and how quickly. Therefore, they tranquilized you and dragged you into solitary containment. Or, they tasked me to do so before I dropped my guise and showed up with members of my team."

What was the best response to this? Sye always sounded so robotic, like someone who just rattled off all facts about my rescue without any ulterior motives.

No pleasantries, just let the information flow.

"Where are we now, exactly?" I asked.

"We are in a remote hospital just before a space elevator. It'll be what's necessary to bring you to the spaceship on the way home. But first, we need to take care of your injuries."

"I don't think it's-"

Sye reached in their pouch. It was part of a lab coat similar to these almost nonexistent suits Crick and Helix wore. Out of it, Sye pulled an object I hadn't seen for a long time: My singularity stone.

"Just a piece of technology my colleagues retrieved while everyone was distracted," Sye transmitted.

A trembling shook the ground. It felt as if the floor itself tilted and gravity threatened to drag me out of my bed. The stone rested firmly at the tips of Sye's tentacle. It was as if they had anticipated this quaking horror.

"Speaking of technology, I've heard your organization opposes it?" I asked.

The ground trembled again. Less severely than last time, but it was followed up by a bang reminiscent of the one I had heard between day seven and day eleven. The one I had heard just after Crick and Helix had trapped me in their lab.

"You are not concerned about the imminent danger we are in?" Sye replied.

"I am. It's just ... technology is on my mind and I didn't want to ask it later. I tend to forget what I wanted to say."