trans_9 | A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

Entry tags:

A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

The downside of gathering long term supplies for the crew, was that Lex did have to make sure they were all brought on board and stowed away properly. It cut into his vacation time, but it was a small price to pay to get some business done, and make a few connections that he'll be able to call on later. Besides, with 99% of the crew off the ship, for once, it allowed him freedom to do a few things, like have a word with a certain AI that wasn't Stacy.

Sitting at one of the terminals in Neuropathy, Lex navigated his way through part of the AI multiplex, until he came across the one he wanted to speak to.

"Hello, GLaDOS. I need to have a word with you."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There was a terrifying blank in his memories and Steve knew exactly why. That sudden silence in his head scared him, more than anything GLaDOS had pit him against, more than the taunts and the teasing suggestions that he'd only considered in his darkest states of mind-- who knew if they were true? Maybe he was a mistake. He couldn't handle it. He had been gone.

For the first time since his death, he'd lost control.

He clung onto Luke until he caught a glimpse of his hands, patchy with the swollen green of Veronica, twisted the wrong way. His eyes widened and he pulled them away, though it was too late to hide them. And there were things ripping out of the side of his shirt, twitching along like they were totally normal.

He shrunk away from Luke, gasped in a breath and managed to speak in a hoarse whisper. "--t's wrong with me?"

"You were..." Luke looked for the right word. "Changing. You didn't hurt anyone though--see, I'm fine," and he spread his hands again to show he was unharmed, the beachwear he'd come up in unripped and no blood anywhere. "And you stopped it. You did it, Steve, you got control."

The turmoil in the Force wasn't going away, and it worried Luke. He'd hoped Steve would calm down once he'd stopped the changing. He hadn't thought that the young man would start panicking more.

This didn't calm him down whatsoever. Steve choked down another series of sobs and tried to inch further away, turning his back. He felt embarrassed and exposed, hated Luke seeing him like this, wishing he could just disappear into the floor.

He felt suddenly exhausted and dizzy, like the stress of the change was catching up to him. He could have leaned over and fallen asleep. Maybe he should drop dead, a dark voice suggested in the back of his mind. He was a mistake anyway, right?

"Freak," he muttered. "-m' a goddamn freak..."

"That's not true, what kind of talk is thaaat?" Some of that farmboy incredulity had come back into his voice. It was a certain kind of twang that crept in every now and then, usually when Ben had just done something ridiculous like paint the walls with food. But it had its uses here. "You're not any more of a freak than I am and that's for sure."

He pressed forward, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "You're very brave. Do you think it's possible to be a brave freak?"

"Will you just shut up for five seconds and look at me?!"

It was the snappiest Steve had ever gotten with Luke-- and with one blood red slit-eye glaring over his shoulder, it only added to the dark tone in his voice; anger, terror and sorrow all rolled up into one.

It was escalating again, and he started talking faster and louder. "She called me in here and made me run through rooms like-- like I was a rat in a maze. Stress test. Someone gave permission and-- I got hurt. I could've died. I was gonna die. I was gonna die-- she said I was- I was a-" His voice died in his throat and he broke down again, gasping as his chest tightened once more.

Even in the face of all this, Luke responded with calm, still that rock, the still pool in the torrent. "It doesn't matter what you look like," he insisted gently. "Neither of us is going to be winning any Galactic Beauty awards anytime soon, but appearance is not what matters. Whatever that AI said about you doesn't matter. You're not dead, and you're in control of this thing again."

He kept his hand on Steve's shoulder, kept the channel of calm flowing from his mind to the teen's. "And whoever authorized that test is obviously not someone with your well-being in mind. But it's over now. That was just a moment in time, now, and you have to let it go and keep moving onward."

Luke would sit here, being the voice of calm and reason to his friend, for as long as it took. He knew he had to get Steve to the med bay and get back to Mara--who was probably wondering just what he was up to--but however long that took, was how long it took.

Steve forced himself to take another deep breath, holding it in until he willed the ache in his chest away. His whole body was still trembling awkwardly, he still felt achy and far too warm, and there were still tears stinging his eyes. He couldn't remember feeling this horrible. Medical was going to flip when they saw him.

He tried to focus on Luke's voice and the calm he was projecting, but something he said was starting to dawn on him again. GLaDOS had said it. But he never got any real answers out of her. She had probably been lying anyway, but Steve felt a wave of nausea pass through him as he spoke again.

"Wh-who would... do this to me?"

Luke's face closed up; for a moment a few ideas popped into his head as to the nature of what would happen to the person who'd hurt Steve this way, in the lowest way possible, but he knew that the Jedi didn't do things like that. Much more Vestara's style of justice, which ran counter to everything Luke believed. Still, as a parent it was hard not to want to cause bodily harm to the person who'd hurt your child. Even if that child wasn't your flesh and blood.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I'll let Security know when they get back on board so they can find out, and I'll help as much as I can. But that's not important right now. We've got to get you to the med bay so you can rest and recover--that, Steve, is more important to me than showing who did this to you the business end of my lightsaber. Think you can walk?"

It was apparent from the look on his face that Steve's thoughts were a million miles away at the moment-- somewhere scary and dark that he hadn't been in quite a while.

He let out another desolate sigh and tested his weight on his knees. He tilted and wobbled like his balance was missing, then reached for Luke's arm to help himself stand up.

"I hate this," he muttered.

"It's not pleasant," Luke agreed, "But not worth hatred. And the more you hate, the more you suffer and cause suffering."

Taking Steve's arm, Luke looped it over his shoulders and put his own arm around the other's torso. His fingers brushed the extra, slender arm, but it didn't bother him. Many species had more than four limbs, and Luke had worked alongside several of them. Slowly, making sure Steve could keep up, Luke began walking toward the door.

"Hopefully the door opens, or I'm gonna have to make my entrance wider." He looked a little sheepish. "I hope Stacy's not mad I cut her up. I had to get to you."

Steve flinched and pulled away at the touch on his new... whatever those were. "No. I'm pretty sure I hate it," he replied deadpan.

Everything hurt-- like the growing pains you felt in your legs when you were a kid, except everywhere and all of them, ever, at once. He limped along with Luke and eyed the hole in the door. He'd had no idea what was going on and didn't even notice it before now.

"Probably gonna give you a violation," he said under his breath. "Figures."

'Speaking under one's breath' didn't apply with Jedi, who had Force-enhanced hearing when they wanted to. "Hopefully the fact I did it to rescue you will be a mitigating factor, but if it's a violation, then that's what it is." Luke shrugged the shoulder that wasn't supporting the other's weight. "Your life's more important to me than that."

Luckily, the door opened, and Luke made his slow and methodical way out with Steve in tow. "What were you doing up here, anyway? I thought all you kids would be down planetside."

"I was," Steve said, his voice a mixture between irritation and a groan of pain. Luke might have noticed him holding on a little tighter. "I had to come get my treatment in medical. I-I was going back down and they called me to the sensorium, and that's when she-"

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "A lot of goddamn good treatment does, huh?"

"You're better off with it than you are without it, I've found." Luke shifted his grip, using the Force subtly to help lift Steve, make his steps easier. "And I'm sure all the Rogue Squadron pilots would agree. They've done their time in bacta tanks."

He smiled a little. "And now we know not to talk to strange AIs, right?"

"Yeah, maybe I would've grown arms on both sides if I didn't get my shots." It was easier to walk for some reason, and it let him stop tensing quite as much. He still held on tight to Luke.

"It didn't sound like her," he protested, a glare set on his face. "S-somebody set me up."

"Or maybe you'd have lost it completely," Luke pointed out. "Which was probably what whoever started this wanted, and what you refused to give them. Like I said, Steve, I'm real proud of you. This doesn't change anything with me."

Steve didn't have much to reply to that. He wouldn't even have known if he did lose it completely, thanks to the virus turning his brain into scrambled eggs for a few minutes.

He stopped, readjusted himself on Luke's support and took another shaky breath, punctuated with groans. "God, it hurts."

"It doesn't look like a walk in the park," Luke commented, looking around with interest at Steve's new arm when they stopped and he shifted his grip on Steve's body.

"Here, I'll support you with the Force a little more to make it easier. Or I could just float you along, if you like. I've been told that's kinda fun."

He eyed Luke almost suspiciously, trying to cover them up with his hand.

"I can walk myself," he murmured. This was already completely humiliating, he didn't need to be carried all the way there like he was a child, too. He didn't sound especially convinced about it, though.

Besides, they were almost there.

Steve leaned on Luke for a moment to reach up and attempt to scrub the sticky tears and the remnants of blood from his face.

"Did I really... attack you?"

Luke shook his head, limping them along. "No. You were about to, but you didn't."

Despite Steve's insisting, Luke used the Force a little more, but also took more of the teen's weight onto his own shoulders. No need to add more injuries to all this, even as they finally got to Quarantine and Luke paused by one of the beds, gently lowering Steve onto it.

"You stopped yourself," he continued, expression serious.

He thought so.

Steve lay his head back on the bed and it was like all the pain had quickly rushed back into him. He gave a long sigh, then reached up to clutch at his forehead like he was getting a headache.

"God," he mumbled, "What are they gonna do to me?"

"Worry about that when it comes," Luke said. "Dwelling too much on the future clouds it, because the future isn't something set in stone, no matter what we may think."

That, Luke thought, was a point he'd learned the hard way. Absently he reached over with his left hand and gripped his gloved right hand.

"For now, all you have to do is get better." He put his left hand on Steve's forehead, pressing the Force inward. Healing techniques with the Force weren't his strong point at all, and not for the first time Luke wished that Stacy had woken the Mon Calamari Jedi Cilghal, or her Chandra-Fan apprentice Tekli, both of whom were much better healers. There was something he could do, though.

"I'd like to put you in a healing trance," he said. "It's one of those Jedi things, but trust me, it works. And it's perfectly safe--I've done it many times, and I'm still all in one piece. You'll wake up feeling better."

Steve reached up instinctively and grabbed Luke's wrist, like he was going to pull his hand away. "No-" he said instantly, and he sounded panicked.

But when Luke explained himself he relaxed a bit, still grasping his wrist.

"What does it feel like?" he asked after a few seconds. He had felt both mindlessness and death before, and didn't much feel like experiencing either of them at the moment.

"Like a deep sleep," Luke replied. "And I can make it so the medics have a phrase that'll wake you up when they speak it. And you can pick that phrase." He laid his right hand on top of Steve's. "How does that sound?"

He still didn't look thrilled about the idea, but Steve didn't look especially thrilled at anything right at the moment.

"I don't care," he said quietly. "Whatever makes it stop."

A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)