Unanswered Questions
06 Sep 2020Zamen Kensata
Dr. Tukka Rask awoke suddenly to the loud zooming hum of a personal shuttle landing somewhere outside of her apartment. Most likely at another residence next door. She felt as if she had just endured a heinous nightmare. The ones where a person would suffer some violent death just before their eyes shot open and the dream dissolved into the still air of reality. Daniel was with her beneath her sheets and she rested her arms and head on his broad chest. With a deep breath she took in his unique scent, unfiltered, without deodorant or cologne. Tukka loved listening to his heartbeat and feeling her head rise and fall with each breath. She hadn't felt such peace and comfort since her childhood, when her father would tuck her in and leave the hall light on until she had fallen asleep."Did you win?" Daniel's voice was raspy and laced with sleep.
"Win?" Tukka asked.
Daniel let out a long sigh while wrapping his arm around her and cupping her shoulder in his rough, callused hand. "You were fidgeting pretty hard over there. Kicked the covers off me a few times. Putting those kickboxing lessons to good use in dreamland?"
Tukka smiled at that. "You're the one who taught me so I probably got my ass handed to me."
Daniel chuckled. "You don't remember the dream?"
"No." Tukka briefly searched her memory. "It's too foggy."
"You know, there is a certain cheese you can eat that helps you stay lucid and remember." Daniel suggested.
"I don't want to remember." Tukka said with a brief flutter of unease in her chest but then giggled. "You'd just complain about how gassy I'd get anyway."
"There's nothing about you I feel needs complaining." Daniel said with a grin. "But," he added with some thought; "Your farts are pretty goddamned smelly."
"Shut up." Tukka said with a light shove and a feigned, comical expression of shock.
"I'm just saying, if the place ever gets overrun by bugs we won't need an exterminator." Daniel's tone held no hint that he was joking.
"Shut up." Tukka laughed.
"Come here." Daniel said with a gentle squeeze on Tukka's shoulder.
Tukka lifted herself up and leaned her face over her lover's and gave him a light kiss. However, instead of pulling back she felt a sudden compulsion to kiss him deeper. An almost unnoticeable, pin prick sized fear of pulling away began to stir in the center of her chest. She suddenly did not want to open her eyes for fear of...what? Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, Tukka gently pulled her lips back but her eyes remained closed. The unexplained anxiety began to intensify.
"Tukka?" Daniel's voice changed slightly, but abruptly.
Slowly, Tukka opened her eyes. The sleep induced blurriness faded and then the veiled dread exploded inside her and a horrified shock took hold of her expression. An undead man lay beneath Dr. Rask, on his back, gazing up at his wide-eyed, mortified lover whose mouth hung open but mind could not articulate any words. A familiar, terror filled gaze of shock was etched across his bloodied and scarred face. Adding to her angst, a thick green pulsating alien appendage writhed like a dying worm from a large hole in Daniel's chest. Torn flesh and cracked bone dangled from the fatal wound as somehow, beyond all reason, his chest still rose and sank as wet, gurgled breaths flowed in and out of lungs that could not possibly still be intact.
"What's wrong, bunny?" Daniel's voice was deep and almost unrecognizable, but it was still his.
Instead of letting the bile and vomit rushing up from the hollow sensation that overtook Tukka's stomach eject from her throat, the doctor shrieked in absolute terror and despair. Her screaming continued for what seemed like an eternity as Daniel only stared at her with widened eyes. An excruciating, sharp pain abruptly exploded along every inch of Tukka's body. Darkness overtook her vision and she jerked violently against her bed and dead lover. When her eyes opened again she found herself strapped down and convulsing atop a metal seat. The pain was unbearable and her head spun in every direction her restraints allowed. There were other people with her, standing close by, staring at her with expressionless faces. Tukka could feel herself grunt every now and again as she shook. She could hear her cheeks and lips flapping as her body's survival instincts fought to intake air and endure whatever was causing her so much pain. It was as if a forest fire had been set off beneath her skin; or a continuous supply of electricity was being funneled into her blood stream. She tried begging them, the men surrounding her to just kill her and end the pain but the attempted sentences only came out as pitiful grunts and whimpers; something one would hear from a wounded puppy.
Tukka did not know how much time had passed when she finally felt her body slump forward. It was strange; her mind told her the pain was still just as unbearable but, her body had at last ceased with its convulsions. Every few moments her body would endure a sudden spasm but she could actually feel herself breathing now and slouching forward was far more bearable than sitting upright.
But the pain was still agonizing.
Tukka's white-knuckled hands clenched the steel arms of her seat and the forest fire slowly subsided into a stream of flame, flowing through her veins. More whimpers would escape her lips with every third or so exhale and her vision constantly blurred out of focus. She could make out a grayish metal floor and walls. There was a bed in the corner and that was it, save for the chair she suffered upon and the men who stood around her, watching.
"What...what?" Tukka could barely understand the word she was attempting to pronounce. Why was this happening. Why did she have to feel such torment? "What?" She tried one word with each breath. "What...is...going...on?"
None of her captors answered. Tukka recognized their uniforms. They were the same mercenaries who had helped her take the Perseverance. Although none of them belonged to the group she had personally hired. They were all members of The Shield of Justice. Such a stupid name, she managed the clear thought in spite of the pain.
"Wh...why?" She tried not to whimper while speaking but couldn't help it.
Again, there was no answer. One of the men placed a hand over a device on his shoulder and spoke into it.
"She's awake." The mercenary said with a dry tone.
Moments later, another of the mercenaries entered the room. While dressed similarly; all black cargo pants and shirt, he did not wear a utility vest like the other mercs. Nor did he harbor any of the assault rifles or sidearms the other men carried. He stopped two feet in front of her and stared. Even while attempting the seemingly impossible task of enduring the intense discomfort pulsating throughout her body, Tukka could still notice that something seemed off about the new arrival. The way he stood was awkward. Tukka couldn't explain it but it was as if the man didn't know how to stand, leaning a little off to the side with his head tilted slightly. He stared as if he hadn't ever seen another person. His unnatural gaze only intensified Tukka's unease.
"Who are you?" Her breaths were still labored but the pain had subsided enough for her to speak in full sentences.
The man continued to stare for roughly twenty seconds before his lips finally started to move. "I'm the leader."
Tukka half expected the man's voice to be distorted and inhuman like Dan's in her recent nightmare. Dan! Tukka's sagging eyes shot open.
"Where's, Dan?" Tukka tried to shout the question but only managed an elevated half sigh with her words.
"What are you?" The man asked.
"What?" Tukka asked with genuine confusion. "Where is, Dan?"
Anger began to swell within her chest, replacing the fear and bewilderment. What am I? What kind of crazy question was that?
"What did you do with him?" She demanded.
"What are you?" The man calmly asked again. His tone was subdued but the way he spoke was as odd as the way he stood. As if english wasn't his first or even third language.
Tukka's fury had reached its boiling point. She was too overwhelmed with emotion to care how odd the man was or that she was still strapped to a cold metal chair or that she was still in intense inexplicable pain. She wanted an answer to her question.
"Where the fuck is, Dan?" It hurt like hell but Tukka didn't care as she finally managed to scream at the top of her lungs. This time in defiance instead of intense pain.
In what seemed like an instant, the strange man closed the distance between Tukka and himself, slamming his hands on top of hers and leaning forward, staring directly into her eyes and causing the doctor to recoil in shock, pressing her back against the chair. Though his face remained mostly dispassionate, the man's eyes seemed to darken with a subtle intensity and grew wide as he spoke again.
"What are you?" His voice came slower this time, each word pronounced louder and with purpose.
The stranger's wide eyes combined with the pain on Tukka's wrists from his iron grip jolted her mind with a recent, unwanted memory. Daniel's lifeless body flashed before her eyes, held up by a hideous green and black monstrosity. Several thick tentacle like appendages stretched from a form half hidden behind Daniel's corpse. Each extremity flowed slowly through the air, seemingly with a mind of their own. Two pulsating, muscular legs held up the form behind the dead pilot and one final tentacle stretched forward from his back and out through his chest.
"No!" Tukka wailed with fresh tears streaming down her face.
The stranger leaned back upright, never removing his frightening glare from Tukka's emotional gaze and then turned.
"Wait!" Tukka demanded. "Who are you? Why did you..." She choked back more tears before being able to finish but as the figure continued to walk away, fury restored her resolve. "What was that thing on the bridge? Why did it kill him?" With her final question, she again managed a guttural shout. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Rude." The nameless man said before disappearing through the door at the front end of the room.
"What?" Tukka again recoiled back, this time at the approach of the two mercenaries in the room. "No! Get the fuck off me." She struggled futilely.
One of the mecrs pulled a syringe from a pouch attached to his utility vest.
"No!" Tukka shrieked through tears. "Please, not again." She begged as she felt the needle puncture her skin. "Kill me. Just kill me. You have the ark. I don't have anything. I don't have anyone else." She wasn't screaming at the mercenaries anymore but instead the universe and whatever sick entity that decided to create it. "You took them from me." Her voice once again fell to a whimper. "My mom, my dad." She barely noticed the fluid from the syringe entering her bloodstream. "My sister." Her head sank and her eyes lowered to the floor. "My nephew."
Almost unnoticeable at first. A slight burning sensation that felt like a small pin prick emanated from where she was injected with the syringe.
"Dan..." Tukka whispered with one final breath before she couldn't speak again.
In what seemed like an instant, the extreme fires inside her body returned and then faded. The pain was beyond imaginable. One deep breath was all she could manage before releasing a bloodcurdling, near inhuman bellow that echoed along several decks of the Perseverance.
Consciousness left Dr. Rask for a second time. For how long she wasn't certain but she eventually awoke to the same groggy and terrible ache as before. Yet this time there were no happy dreams that turned to nightmares. This time she remembered Daniel was dead and at the same time, wondered why she was tortured with still being alive. When her vision returned she was alone, still strapped to the chair. Through labored breaths her body slowly regained composure before another set of unfamiliar sounds startled the young physician. Two muffled blasts that sounded somewhat like concentrated plasma echoed from outside the room and then two loud thuds from the floor. The door opened and another man she didn't recognize stepped in. This one seemed more confident in his movements. Like a normal human. She watched him as he took in the sight of her. His face was stoic but Tukka caught a glimpse of something behind his eyes. Perhaps pity?
"You gonna stick me with another needle?" Tukka managed through more labored breathing.
"Looks to me as if a needle is the last thing you need." The new stranger responded with a young yet reserved tone.
"And you are?" Tukka wondered if this man would be different.
He took another step into the room, holstering his sidearm before answering. "My name is, Garen and I am here to arrest you."