PG 13 - language, adult content.[Thoughts and telepathy]
*Emphasis*~~~~
Scholars who have studied old earth stories can tell you that three was an important number. A third child becoming the hero, three tasks to complete, three aspects of a religion, and so on. But it was due to time’s whims more than folklore that Lyta ‘woke’ late on the third day after the surgeons had fled.
She could not speak, of course, or move, but her eyes worked a little. Once past the initial fuzzy-groggy stage that often comes after heavy sleep, Lyta was able to telepathically send an uncomplicated greeting to the tired man sitting near her. Then she faded into unconsciousness again, setting the pattern she’d follow for the next month. When the lights were dimmed enough, the roiling energy was visible, though towards the end of the month, as her throat tissue was growing back and slight movements no longer ripped stitches and caused her to bleed, the tentacles of light were thinner and stayed closer to her body when they moved. Each week showed improvements. Not evenly; the vital systems were repairing quite quickly, while Lyta’s arms and legs were doing little more than being preserved. Some of the doctors speculated that only so much could be done at once. After important parts were healed, the energy would probably go to lesser areas.
The other doctors mostly agreed, though no one else had been hurt to that extent and lived, so they had no one to compare the progress to. The other patients who had been treated with the serum were bounding back, so maybe that was how it worked with the extremely severe injuries. But not even Zack Allan was brave enough to risk asking about the light swirls. At least not yet. As it was, only those who’d had training to keep their thoughts from leaking were allowed near Lyta, and few of those had clearance anyway. Their leader had enough stress already, just from trying to heal.
They were able to tell Lyta some of what had happened. Who was safe, who became upset to what degree before going to cryo, who was dead. News shared in patches between naps, usually distressing - but the bandaged redhead was insistent. None of the medical staff wanted her to risk a stroke by trying to scan information out of someone, so they told her the answers.
Lyta, psi-ing because she was unable to talk, begged Zack’s forgiveness, an apology for running away. He was able to tell her - in full honesty - that they were quite sure that the bombers didn’t track her there. They just plain targeted the hotel. Lyta apologised anyway - for making him worry all those times, and promised to never play hooky again.
“Easy promise to make - you can’t walk right now,” he pointed out, but smiled and said, “Thank you.”
When asked during the next visit, Lyta claimed she didn’t remember any actual explosions, just ‘waking up lost’ above the ruin and eventually latching on and overriding someone familiar. Lyta knew it wasn’t her body, but couldn’t remember having any sort of conscious thought on the matter ... just that she had to figure out where her real body was. And - this was remembered clearly - wondering if she was a ghost and dead ... until she woke up. [I hurt like nobody’s business ... I want to sleep again,] she thought to him, and he dimmed the lights again to let her rest. As Zack walked quietly towards the room’s door, he glanced backwards. The now-smaller mass of tentacles was barely touching her, and seemed slower and weaker than the last sighting. As he watched, the mass gradually sunk into her torso until it was almost submerged, and he wondered why.
~~~~
Lyta was not the only one in the hospital. Lauren Kyle was in the same wing and on the same floor, and had been visited by Rashelle before the young telepath was send to cryo. Whatever had been said to the unconscious Ranger wasn’t known, but Deveax was mighty suspicious. They’d done a quick medical check on Rashelle before freezing her - all the teeps had been checked before being frozen - and “Boy, is that girl going to be in trouble once she gets thawed.” Deveax confided that she had a good idea who the father was too, but since he didn’t make it, she would not start trouble in his name. Also in the hospital was Levi Steele, though he was in the psychiatric ward after collapsing near the hotel’s ruins. Near the end of the second day of digging, they had started to find Shannon’s remains. It had taken a DNA screening to be sure who the cooked jelly chunks had been. Now Levi was under sedation and 24-hour watch.
Others - from the team, hotel staff, passers-by, and Rangers - were being cared for. Some of the less-seriously-wounded team members had been released and were now in Ranger custody, out of sight and out of target range. They were still working as much as they could. Just because they had been hit didn’t mean their world no longer needed seed grains. If anything, they were trying to work even harder, to make up for lost time and dead comrades. “They’re a good group,” Deveax said to Lyta late on a Tuesday.
[I know,] Lyta had sent back telepathically.
No one wanted to tell Lyta that the ones responsible for the bombing had not been caught yet. They were barely able to trace where the missiles had been fired from, but the Rangers were still angry and were still hunting. But she did not ask, thankfully. Perhaps she suspected.
~~~~
Just into the second month after the attack, Lyta’s condition was stable enough that they were able to move her into the same underground Ranger base that cuddled the rest of her team. The hospital was glad to be able to go fully back to normal service. No other attacks had come, no threats. The hospital had been able to accept new patients after the first week, gradually, leaving the one teep-used wing still firmly guarded. Staff members were still jittery, though the business soon overruled lingering fears. Death did not need to come on missiles, it still had smaller forms for them to fight.
Away from the media and other prying eyes, the telepaths were taken out of cryo one by one, for a few hours each, with several days between each because of how tired Lyta was. It was the bare minimum required to keep them sane, but no one else had died while frozen. It seemed that the lessons learned during ‘The Running Years’ were remembered sufficiently ... no new deaths would result from the secret addiction. Hysterics were calmed down, stories were told and details pried out, and several of the envoy members had to be restrained to keep from damaging a still-fragile Lyta in their eagerness to see her and feel her.
Before February was over, the telepathic members had all had at least one ‘turn’ with Lyta, listening to the Music, and leaving her with terrible headaches. A few of the less-frantic ones, those who could control themselves, were allowed to stay awake. The unfrozen state allowed them to resume healing on their own, allowed them to get back to work.
Lyta was still bedridden and unable to move most of her body, but by then could talk and breathe and eat without machines. The miraculous healing process had slowed down exponentially - the doctors debated giving her another dose, on the hopes that maybe the serum would work again. When they mentioned this to her, Lyta said no.
She knew that the tentacles had become thin and slow; for days they hadn’t been seen at all. Lyta was recovering at a ‘normal’ rate now. A flurry of requests to try again, to see if the doctors “could repeat the procedure, perhaps be able to study it and reproduce it easier, just think of the lives that could be saved!”
Lyta had laughed, just a little, quickly overwhelmed by pain from the movement. After shooing them off her, she gradually explained, because words were difficult for her mind still, that she’d already had the serum inside her. [... From before - the planetside assassination attempt that almost took my head off...] - their eyes shifted to where the neck scar lay buried under layers of cloth and sterility - [I was first dosed right after that. Which is why I survived then. Mostly I am surprised that the stuff worked again. It was supposed to be used only once in a lifetime...]
~~~~
Early in March, third month after the attack, Lyta had another visitor. They both were glad to have worked out that one person equals one body; the visitor was still under house arrest because of the time her body had held two people. Neither one could remember what had been done, but the surveillance record and other information was enough to make both apologise for it. The guard gave Newton a level stare when she didn’t leave after the first minute, but Lyta sent him a quick telepathic scolding, so he left them alone.
[So. What have you been doing with your time? More than I have, I assume, since I just lay here,] Lyta mentioned.
“Ain’t you supposed to be talking out loud? I hear rumours from the nurses, you know.”
[Hurts. I practised that already today.]
“Oh... Mostly I eat. I’ve been exercising too. They have this enclosed garden thing, I go there a lot. I miss trees, see. I miss sky, too, but that’ll be back soon. Reading a lot. Got to talk to Red’s family a little - that was awkward. You already know his mom met me at the gate first getting off the ship... And I’ve been working, of course. I always try to work when incarcerated. Want to hear on what?” The change of topic at the end made her visibly cheerful.
[The problem of self-corroding circuits?]
A slight pause. Then, “Right. Same as on the Sophocles, but I’m further along. And helping arrange passage back for people and their stuff. They needed extra help before, but now they really do.” The visitor paused again. “I couldn’t track the assholes who shot at you. Whoever they are, they’re very good at not leaving traces. At least not ones I could find. I have programs still roaming, looking for clues. To help Levi - you heard what he asked to do?”
Lyta gave the mental equivalent of a resigned nod, fatigue entering her body, this time via the emotional window that had been cracked open by the remark. It was not something she wanted to discuss, and she had already been very tired. [Will you visit me again? I have your name on the list already.]
The visitor nodded, and sat watching Lyta doze off. While sitting there, Newton wondered about the tentacle light thing that had been mentioned, and got up to flick the lights on and off a few times. She couldn’t see it on Lyta, and had already tried with herself with a mirror in the dark. No luck either way. Newton wondered where it went, or if it died - [Was it even alive to begin with?]
There were no answers.
~~~~
(End part 11)