Hekate's Call, Chapter 19

The Gestalt and Gravity sailed through space at a respectable enough speed towards a gate several weeks away. There was an upsetting calm and quiet to things that was driving Krystyn up the wall. The minute Kyrnn was off the ship everything changed.

The drugs, of course. Couldn't use Kyrnn's ID to fabricate more to try to break Krystyn. But that wasn't the part that was gnawing at the back of her psyche.

It was too quiet. Too calm. She didn't even see Velia wandering around, didn't pass her in the hall. Yeah, she agreed to protect Velia from Crater and Manya, but there was just no activity happening whatsoever.

Eat. Train. Sleep. Occasionally find a moment alone to masturbate.

The simulations didn't feel right -- the Inertia's ferrofluid blood felt sluggish and incorrect in the simulations -- and without the constant tuning from Kyrnn they felt more wrong every time she suited up.

Velia didn't come to leer at her in the gym either. Manya used to come hang out, but even she seemed busy most of the time. Who knows what Vigil got up to, now more than ever.

Gods below, she overheard a mechanic talking about some recreation room that the crew had access to. That's probably where Manya and Velia wandered off to to get drunk and hook up. But her ID locked her out from going down there. She was too much of a liability.

Her days were so dull and she found herself missing, somehow, of all things in the galaxy, Ilina.

What was that little freak up to with the necromancer that would have them both absent from the Gestalt for nearly a month? There was something in the way Kyrnn looked at that girl that made Krystyn deeply uncomfortable, and it was probably the utter sexlessness of it. Adoring and proud. Devoid of hate. Like a mother but wrong in some fundamental way -- unconditional love wasn't supposed to actually exist, right?

Not that she liked how Velia looked at her either. So smug and confident. Like she knew Ilina would never consider running away an option -- and she probably didn't. Property. To be used and ignored as she saw fit.

Manya looked at Ilina like she was prey.

There was the dog. The dog was the only person who didn't look at Ilina like they owned her. Coworkers. No, it was more casual than that. Those two were friends. That was... fine. But it annoyed her somehow.

Maybe the drugs weren't all gone. Or this was part of Velia's design. To keep her worked up so she'd be thinking about the last real fuck she'd had in ages until it wore her down. That sounded like something Velia would do.

After the second week she decided to check the medical fabricator because even if that was a lie she was telling herself to feel better, knowing was better than nothing. Krystyn liked the medbay anyways.

It turned out that the couch really did make the whole place a more comfortable place to hang out. It smelled of cigarettes, but Krystyn had gotten used to the scent being attached to almost everything. She spent hours and hours laying on the couch, catching up on reading or watching dramas downloaded before the Gestalt shipped off.

But she hadn't been in since then, until now. To an empty room with no Kyrnn prattling off anxiously to a bunch of jars. She thought it was empty, or she hoped it was. But one of the privacy shutters had been pulled around one of the beds. Dark except the floor's dim halo light and a personal torch somewhere behind the divider.

As the door slid shut behind her, a weak, hollowed-out voice called. "Doctor? Is that you?"

There was a very small list of people the voice could be, but it still set off alarms in Krystyn's head. She didn't actually recognize it at first. Process of elimination. Velia was doing something in here.

When she rounded the corner the first thing she saw were Velia's vacant eyes staring back at her. They looked at her, saw her, but didn't recognize her. Her brain fought her trying to pull away from the eye contact to stare at the first problem.

Velia was topless. That's fine, no shame, no reason to be embarrassed. Not a problem, either. No rules in Hekate's manuals against streaking about the base, or the Gestalt in this case.

What Krystyn didn't want to look at was the blood running down Velia's side from a series of cuts. The razor blade was still in Velia's hand, dripping. The personal torch Velia had been using lit up countless scars, both big and small.

Treatment. Now.

"You aren't the doctor," Velia slurred her words together as if trying her hardest to grasp a concept. "Where's the doctor?"

Krystyn grabbed a cloth and went to push it against the wound to stop the bleeding, but Velia moved quick for a woman only half-present. It wasn't an intentional threat with the bloodied razor, but it was enough to ward Krystyn off.

"The doctor said to do it properly!" Her voice high and shrill suddenly.

Across the exam bed, on a little metal tray that kept the blood from rolling over it, was a bunch of little tools. Disinfectant, swabs, gauze, and a small stack of razor blades. Enough to know that Velia was able to do it properly even in this state.

She could fight someone who looked high out of their mind holding a razor blade, or she could try to talk the woman down. Krystyn didn't want to fight, so with a cracking voice she asked, "Can you clean it up?"

"But I wanted to do another," she raised her arm and looked at the two parallel cuts.

No, nope. Not doing this. "The doctor said you need to clean up." The doctor was Morian, right?

"Oh." Disappointment. "Okay." Obedience.

Velia went to work. She was even wearing gloves, and removed them so that not a single drop of blood got on her hands. She retrieved a new set and went about cleaning and bandaging the cuts. There was a lot of blood, but the cuts didn't look that deep.

From the new angle she could see the front of Velia. Like patchwork. A precious quilt, cut and torn and sewed back together countless times. There were longer scars, older scars, that were clearly Morian's handiwork. Surgeries. Well, one looked like an autopsy, but the rest seemed like more localized surgeries. It was only her sides that seemed to have rows of little razor cuts.

The bandage was in place, but Velia was still covered in blood. Krystyn instinctively reached for something to start wiping things up with.

"Are you the doctor's assistant?"

More like her fucking accomplice at this point. Sure, why not. "Yes, just for now, while she's away."

"When will she be coming back?"

"Next week, if all goes well," she prayed to whatever powers oversaw the Corpse Eater to make it the truth. "Does the doctor usually clean up for you?"

She shook her head. "She says cleaning up so nobody gets sick is part of doing it properly."

Krystyn took a step back and watched the vacant, empty thing go through the motions of thoroughly cleaning the examination bed and the floor. Scrubbing disinfectant into all the little spaces. Throwing bloodstained clothes into a biohazard bag.

Velia really didn't seem to recognize her. And that voice was eerie. There weren't any drugs around that she could see. Well. None that would do this. Plenty of medications on-hand in the cabinets and storage for treatment of most things.

"You aren't the doctor," Velia said when she rounded the corner from putting away a bucket and cleaning supplies when she was finished. Like she'd forgotten Krystyn was even there. "Where's the doctor?"

What was one more lie? Everything about the situation made her queasy. Krystyn recognized the empty vessel standing in front of her now. Morian's pet lobodomite. That thing in the corner that wouldn't stop screaming wordlessly in the in-between. The thing that only learned how to walk and talk and exist recently.

A corpse.

"Away, I'm her assistant. I was told to look after you," Krystyn was discovering, word by word, that playing a character was a lot like lying except easier. "Do you know where she keeps your chart? She forgot to tell me."

There was a flicker of some emotion across her face before she disappeared behind a different divider. "It should be in her desk drawer," the corpse responded as it climbed onto a second, clean bed. "I wanted her to show me the stars."

Krystyn moved quietly to Kyrnn's desk and pulled at the drawers. They all opened and were suspiciously empty, except one. One of them beeped and clicked open when she ran her finger along the edge looking for the lock. Kyrnn was expecting her to be the one to do this then, and keyed her fingerprint to the lock.

Fucking twisted.

Velia couldn't see her from behind that divider. It was just Krystyn and a slightly open drawer full of notes and several autoinjectors. She could just... walk away. Pretend she never saw any of this. Maybe Velia croaks. Krystyn only promised to protect Velia from Crater and Manya, and she's done a fine enough job of that. It would be so easy.

Just close the drawer and walk away, Krystyn.

You've left so many people behind to die, what's one more?

As much as she willed herself against it, Krystyn pulled the drawer open and pulled out the clipboard. The front page was a letter, addressed to her.

To Charlotte Fellows, Domon Imperial Military marked MIA, currently operating under the alias Krystyn Zechs: That you are reading this means the shell that is Velia Lore has suffered a complete collapse. This was expected, but unavoidable.

Yeah. Dr. Morian Kyrnn needed to be put in the ground. Maybe Krystyn could be the one to do it.

There were instructions regarding the auto-injector. In the neck, just like combat stimulants. The entire letter was designed to implicate her in whatever happened to Velia. Too much information to feign ignorance, but not enough to actually help anyone except in whatever way Kyrnn defined help. Typical of Crater, maybe Crater learned it from Kyrnn.

Wasn't Crater older than Kyrnn?

Not important.

Krystyn picked up an autoinjector and watched the eerie, science-fiction green fluid swirl in it. It felt evil. A wrongness liquidized. There was no going back once she put this to Velia's neck and pushed the plunger down.

Just walk away, girl. Just leave. Tell Crater. Tell a government. Tell everyone that will listen what's happened. Maybe you can save a life that isn't your own miserable fucking hide.

As Krystyn rounded the corner, autoinjector in hand she watched those vacant eyes light up. Velia collected her hair and pulled it out of the way and straightened up on the bed, exposing her neck. Her fingers even framed where the autoinjector needed to go.

She uncapped it and pressed the guide to the vein. Making eye contact in the moment before hitting the plunger was the biggest mistake Krystyn had made since these awful dykes signed on with Hekate.

Something earnest and afraid. The tremble in Velia's voice beneath the forced smile.

"Will you stay with me?"

Krystyn hit the plunger instead of answering her and watched as that awful, evil liquid drained into Velia's neck. She waited for the hissing of the autoinjector to stop before pulling it away. Velia swayed for a moment, before laying down with Krystyn's help.

And then she got out of the room. She grabbed a stool and at just out of sight. That was important, apparently.

Under no circumstances should you speak to, touch, or be seen by the patient unless absolutely necessary to prevent injury. The drug will leave the patient in a highly suggestible state and any imprints left on the patient's psyche during this time are likely to become permanent.

Velia moaned as the drug worked its way through the system. The document did not list any additional effects even though it sure seemed to hit as fast as combat stims.

The language bothered her the more times she read the letter though. The patient. It only referred to her as Velia once, at the very beginning. But spoke to Krystyn directly. And when not if, as if everything had been predetermined.

When the patient begins screaming, you cannot make any attempt to calm them. This will be difficult for you, but understand that this is for her own safety.

When Velia began screaming it took every bit of strength in her not to jump to action. To help her. To calm her, somehow. Make more promises she couldn't keep. When you built your entire career off taking hits for others and throwing your own worthless body in front of every threat it was really difficult to just sit back and watch someone suffer like that.

The screaming lasted until her voice was raw. Until she couldn't scream any more. Thrashing about on the examination bed, clawing at her own skin at times.

"I love you, doctor."

Every time she lulled herself into some kind of calm, Velia said those words. She cried out for Morian, sometimes by name, sometimes by title. Over and over again.

"The stars are so pretty, doctor."

Over and over again. Over and over. Doctor, doctor. Morian. Where are you, doctor? Krystyn could taste blood in her mouth from where she'd been chewing on her lip. She should just put Velia out of her misery. Right? That would be the sound thing to do. What the fuck did this drug to do the woman?

"Doctor..."

Stop. Stop calling out for her. Say Ilina's name. Do you even remember your girlfriend? That little thing you broke who says your name like its the only word in the dictionary. Like every word that slipped from your lips are those of the goddess herself. Why aren't you thinking about her?

Hours later. Four, or five? Velia stopped making any kind of sound.

When the patient enters a catatonic state, after about thirty minutes it will be safe to administer water and a protein bar. They are in the sample fridge.

Krystyn fetched them and brought them across the divider, finally seeing Velia. She was no longer laying down or thrashing about, just sitting on the edge of the bed. Before Krystyn could backpedal out Velia snapped towards her and made eye contact.

"Where's Morian?" Velia growled. Her eyes were filled hate.

"She left with Ilina. She should be back next week."

Velia took the food and water offered and ate quietly, washing each bite down with water like hardtack. Krystyn hovered, just in case, though it didn't seem to be earning her any favors. After she finished eating she told Krystyn to go fetch her a shirt. Which, honestly was a pretty good idea. Krystyn grabbed a pair of scrub pants while she was at it, since Velia's pair ended up in the biohazard bag.

"Do you wanna touch any of them," Velia somehow teased with a deadness in her voice. The scars? Absolutely not. "That's fine too. A lot of them still hurt, sometimes. If you're thinking about trying to kill Morian, I've already tried. It doesn't work."

Krystyn smiled, "Well, I'm going to use something more effective than a scalpel when I do it."

"She won't stay dead," Velia said, dressing herself. "I'm telling you now, it won't work. Also, trim your nails and strip them when they start flaking like that."

Velia walked out like nothing happened. After like a grueling work-day long fucking trip on whatever evil serum that woman had cooked up, she just got up and walked out like none of it happened. While Krystyn was left to sit with the whole experience.

Who was she supposed to turn to when she wanted to cry?

Nobody. Nobody is the answer.

Just put the necromancer in the ground at the first opportunity and square your accounts. No more of any of this. Everything those women touched was cursed.