Contraction
22 May 2022User319792
When I came to, I was bound to the Captain's seat in the bridge. My hands were taped to the armrests face up, with a layer around my palms and my fingers curled over with another layer binding them into a fist. My magboots had been tampered with and my feet were completely immobilized. My ankles were strapped to the base and my thighs bound to one another and tight against the seat. Another three loops held my waist against the crook of the seat and seat-back, and my elbows and shoulders were pinned against the armrests and seat-back with four loops apiece. I turned my head to the left and the right and heard the man in the black suit let out a low-guttural chuckle. I could see him from the corner of my eye, peeking around my head, my eyes catching the slightest smile on his face before darting away. He looked wary and I tried to ask him to let me out, but with the tape around my mouth all I could manage was a throaty moan.
"Its nice to see you rejoining us, Cadence. Gimme a second."
He slowly removed the tape from my mouth, and I felt every millimeter peeling off my skin. Common fare was that its better to just rip the stuff off and spare yourself the continual agony but he worked it slowly, gently. The sensation of a searing flash of burning flesh, that I'd felt often in training with Coral and Callie, never materialized and I felt only the slow tugging of my skin, intermingled with a regular snapback of the hairs on my skin returning to place. He stopped halfway to punch in a code on the Captain's seat's interface and a video appeared on the screen.
The video showed Coral striding from the med-bay with deadened eyes, shoving past some of Rosie's crew. I felt the last hair snapback into place and the man in the black suit disappeared from view and I felt a slight pressure against my left shoulder and a gentle rocking, back and forth, as he set to work on the loops around my shoulder. Coral walked straight into the bridge, picking up a mug from Captain Green's desk and, as I turned to look over at her, quickly darted her eyes toward the bridge crew's holodesk. My eyes followed hers and she cracked me against the base of the neck with the mug and my legs gave way, my body crumpling into a pile in front of her. She shook the now sharpened handle at Captain Green and her navigations crew, as if to invite them to question her actions and Captain Green straightened her arms and hands at her side, puffing out her cheeks and letting out a puff of breath.
A rush of warmth shot through my arm, stopping at my elbow, and I felt a gentle pinch and the slow rocking back and forth at the fore of my right armpit. I watched Coral drag me by the ankles through the bridge toward my seat, grabbing my coat by the shoulders and hoisting me into the chair and walking out before returning with my magboots, which she placed onto my feet. She then proceeded to tape me to the chair in all the ways described. I felt the same rush of warmth through my right arm before the gentle tugging at my waist as the man in the black suit began working to cut me free. Coral stood in front of me, staring at me as I slowly came to, before a growing crowd of onlookers including Captain Green, Rosie, and Lance. I collected myself and we locked eyes. I watched myself slowly turn my head to the left, our eyes never leaving one another's, and I began screaming.
The man in the black suit moved to my left and the blood returned to my forearms and then to my fingers, which had grown numb and I worked them opened and closed as he worked to release my leg. Coral spoke to me, slowly, her face betraying no emotion. The video was silent and I turned to the man in the black suit, who began to explain that she had been in Division, holding on the dock on her way to Upaniklis to continue observations on the Artificers Clan dredger as we awaited confirmation for egress from HR 32. She'd failed to clear the landing pad in the standardized allotted time and N.O.S'. automated defense system opened fire on Division, destroying her ship in short order. I watched as she continued speaking to me, her words coming slowly and her lips moving with precision. I felt the warmth rush through my legs and heard the metallic clang as the man in the black suit undid the clasp on my magboot. He slowly pulled my foot from my boot, stretching my leg out to full extension and moving to my right side to work on the rest.
My head tilted to the left as pins and needles that covered the left side of my body spread into stars that speckled my vision and I watched Coral continue. The crowd had grown to nearly the whole of the bridge, refueling, and repair crew. Opal had joined the crowd and Jazleen was peering over Dorothy's shoulder. I felt the warm rush of blood course through my right arm and a pinching at my thigh as Orion jogged into view on the screen. Coral looked toward him and he looked back and forth between Coral and I before he made his way around Coral, stopping just behind her and kicking her just behind the top of her left calf-muscle. She listed as her center-of-balance shifted outside of her body and he caught her by the chin in the crook of his arm, the back of her head pressing against his chest, and he dragged her off screen to the shock of the crew, who gave the pair an extreme degree of space as they retreated from the group.
The pins and needles made their way from one side of my body to the next as the man in the black suit gently removed my right foot from the magboot and stretched it to full extension. I began to move my arms and legs, savoring the feeling of the pins and needles in my right leg. The man in the black suit appeared on screen and began shooing people away. I'd been screaming through the whole of Coral's denunciation and had lost consciousness just as Orion made his way in. The man in the black suit checked my vitals by hand and on my Pilot's Federation vitals monitors before squatting into a crouch, his head down and his stomach contracting in a quick rhythm. He stood back up before walking behind me, pulling out a holodeck and busying himself as I sat, seemingly lifeless, and the video log ended. I stood up as he was balling the tape and he looked toward me before nodding his head toward my Captain's quarters, following me as I walked past the crew, who kept their heads down, avoiding my gaze.
I could hear Orion's screams before I entered my quarters and I stepped in to the sight of Coral staring at her peas. Her jaws were clenched tight and she was shaking her head almost imperceptibly, rolling her eyes as he went on about conducting herself in the way she did. I glanced toward the structure and a single pea wobbled in place just in front of a light that shone through an empty polyurethane compartment, casting a shadow on the ground that looked like a single, piercingly blue eye. Orion continued reaming Coral about how the audience that watched our little burlesque show weren't just a random crowd of boozers. I crept forward, catching Orion's eye, and he continued,
"Her crew needs to know that she's in control of this ship! If there's a single person that should understand she needs to inflict, at the very least, a lingering phobia of her willingness to jettison them through an airlock in their sleep, it has to be you!"
I looked away from them both, my eyes widening and my lips pursing at the thought. I thought to interject, but Orion continued, his voice bombarding her. She grew more indignant with every salvo from Mr. Roehner, and I could see her jaw working itself as she ground her teeth. I turned again to the eye on the ground, waiting for Orion to finish, and the man in the black suit finally spoke up,
"Orion, she gets it. Ease up."
Orion turned to the man in the black suit, his jaw clenching shut as he looked back toward Coral and his lips curling with such tension that his canines peeked out from behind the smallest opening through which he sucked air through them. He clenched his fists and I could hear his knuckles crack even over the muted sounds of N.O.S'. idling thrusters. He curled his arms upward, flexing his biceps stiffly before turning away from us all. The man in the black suit approached Coral from behind her and whispered something. She stiffened, turning her head toward to him before jerking her head away, again, her jaws clenched tight and her head still shaking.
"I'll talk to Dorothy."
Both Orion and the man in the black suit turned toward me and I saw Coral's head slowly tilting toward her shoulder. Orion's mouth slowly turned upward into a gentle smile and the man in the black suit began waving his arms in front of him, shaking his head with his eyes wide and his lips tight. In a reflection on one of the cans of her structure, I caught the briefest glimpse of her eyes widening and her mouth twisting into a mixture of rage and disgust.
As I watched her depart for Sirius from the Captain's seat a few minutes later, I could see the man in the black suit sitting on my bunk with his elbows on his knees chuckling, with Orion a few feet in front of him staring upward, neither man meeting each others' gaze. Captain Green appeared to my left, asking me if I should make any of the adjustments I'd scribbled onto a notepad before leaving my quarters. I looked into her eyes and her normal, pleasant, confidence drained away, leaving only an unresponsive sentiment of inadequacy in her hazarding glances. I decided I'd relieve her of command the moment we left Imperial space, shedding her and her crew along with any vestigial relics of the crew's previous weaknesses.