He woke and blinked hard a few times at the light. It was quiet, and he was alone, sprawled on his back. He noted rather numbly that he was in medbay. The always-clean walls glistened whitely to his left, and a thick foam curtain blocked out sounds from the lab to his right. Though his vision was clear, he felt a little cloudy, as if he’d been sleeping too long, or maybe not long enough. He closed his eyes again and lay there a minute or two, feeling the gentle breeze of the reprocessed air slithering over his face.
An elastic tightness about his chest suggested that someone had confined the broken rib. Experimenting, he took a deep breath--deeper than the shallow gasps he’d been getting, anyway. The sore side of his chest complained, but only with a dull ache, not the blinding electric spasm it had been. He took another breath. The rib was positively comfortable compared to the rest of himself. The cot beneath him seemed to consist of a thin mattress over an uncomfortable grid of flimsy springs.
He tried to sit up, but found that padded restraints held him firmly to the bed rails.
“Hey!” he shouted hoarsely, struggling to loosen the fasteners. “Somebody get me out of here!” Nobody answered, and panic grabbed hold of him. The restraints were secured above his head, out of his line of vision, so his attempts only succeeded in chafing his wrists. Not caring, Lucas pulled harder. His sore rib felt like it was on fire. Behind him, a hatch slammed open, and he became even more frenzied. A strong hand pushed the foam curtain aside, and he thought his heart would explode.
“Lucas. Lucas! Relax!” It took him a moment to turn his head far enough to see the face that matched the voice. Bridger.
Coherent speech had been swallowed by panic. “Out--out of this! Let me go!” the boy demanded brokenly.
The captain looked confused at this outburst. “Shh. Relax, it’s all right.”
He tried again. “Off!” Lucas could barely gasp the word out. He shook his hands quickly so that the buckles clanked against the metal bed frame.
Only then did Bridger fully grasp the situation, and his hands began flying to undo the clasp mechanisms. Lucas sat straight up, and nearly flung himself into the arms of the captain. It was an unconscious reaction on both their parts, and they clung there desperately, each seeking assurance that the other was still there.
Lucas was the first to recover his self-consciousness. Never one for physical contact, he pulled away gently, and Bridger let him.
He pushed some disheveled hair back off the boy’s brow, and it drooped forward again as usual. “You gave us quite a scare, kiddo.”
Lucas looked away from Nathan in shame. “Me too. Me too,” was all he was able to say in return.
The hatch opened again, and Lucas was instantly alert, trying to peer around the curtain. Every time someone came through that hatch, he woke nervously from his shallow doze. Maybe it would help if they just left it open. Or glued it shut. Bridger squeezed his arm reassuringly. “It’s just Dr. Smith.” Lucas shook off the captain’s arm and sat up straight.
“Captain, I had no idea you were here.”
“Well, Ford has everything under control on the bridge, so I came by to check on Lucas before the security meeting at sixteen hundre--”
“Why was I restrained!” Lucas vehemently interrupted. Bridger was about to give the teen a warning for his rudeness, but thought the better of it before the words escaped his mouth. Now was not the time. Had their places been switched, he’d have done the same!
“Lucas, you were totally out of control. In fact, that’s the first complete sentence I’ve heard out of you since--the incident.” Wendy pulled up a chair by the cot, opposite Bridger. He looked at her: stung, incredulous. “Lucas, do you know what day it is?”
He scowled at her. She was changing the subject. She was patronizing him. But worst of all, he didn’t know the answer to her question. “Wednesday, I think,” he replied with as much confidence as he could muster.
“It’s Friday afternoon. Tuesday night, you left medbay despite a broken rib and extensive psychic damage. Do you remember why?” She pursed her lips and waited for an answer.
“Friday! Three days!?” He shook his head. Why had he left? It took forever to even parse the question into a meaningful thought. “I--” Why? This was the question he’d been asking himself in the tunnels. “Not sure.” There was so much more to it than that! “Important,” he amended. He hoped that Bridger’s meeting would start soon. Being in this state was worse than humiliating. He felt like pulling the sheets over his head and disappearing until he recovered. If he recovered.
“Mmm.” Dr. Smith paused, and asked again, “Do you remember what you did after you left?” For some reason, she seemed a little softer this time. She actually looked at him for a second.
Lucas did his best to stay focused. “Not much. Stayed in the comms tubes mostly?” He was really getting sick of playing twenty-questions. “Just--stop! Stop. What happened,” he said crossly. Bridger remained silent, but gave him a mind-your-manners look. “What’s happening?” he asked more quietly, gesturing with one hand to indicate himself.
“Lucas, I think you’re going to be fine. Physically, that rib will heal itself in a few weeks. Until then, Tony gets the top bunk.” The teen looked even more concerned than before, and she realized that he didn’t know the first thing about what had happened to his mind. “Mentally, you’re suffering from externally induced interfusion. Remapping your essential matrix has already taken place, judging from your behavior. The rest should fall in line eventually.”
He blinked at her. “Eventually.”
Dark hair bounced around her chin as she nodded reassuringly. “Exactly. Just as the aura can be perceived or manifested in many ways, it can be organized in just as many ways.” Her eyes looked at neither Lucas nor the captain. She was off in her own universe of parapsychological abstraction. “I think that Clay actually shattered the geometry, and built the matrix anew. So all your thoughts and memories are there, but the paths have been diverted with Clay’s energy.”
She kept talking, going on about energies and auras and how the trick had been done. She was so calm! He tried to follow along, but his ability to connect words with their meanings was diminished. He felt slow and stupid and tired. Sitting back, he tried to look attentive. Some parts almost made sense, especially the mathematical jargon. Matrices and geometries and energies he could deal with! But not today.
Out of the entire lecture, he retained one word. “Eventually.” How long would that be? Weeks? Months? He was useless to the seaQuest and Captain Bridger now. Would they send him back to his dad, to be alternately insulted and ignored? If the man couldn’t be pleased by a genius, what would he say now? Or worse yet, maybe he would have to go to his mom. That would probably be the case, since Lawrence was on-site for some confidential project. His stomach shrank into a small cold knot.
While he fretted, Wendy was still talking. He watched her mouth move, and heard her words, but they might as well have been in another language. They were just sounds, rhythms, mesmerizing him. Bridger seemed to understand what she was saying. The captain nodded and asked questions. They both seemed very far away.
“Well, Doctor, I think that we ought to leave the rest for later. I have security review in five minutes.” The captain stood up and stretched. “Now, Lucas, you listen to me. You do exactly as Dr. Smith instructed, or I’m the one you’ll be answering to.” It wasn’t quite a threat, but it had enough force to bring him briefly to the present.
“Yes, sir,” he said sincerely. Hopefully, Smith’s instructions were to get a lot of sleep, because Lucas’ head hit the pillow the second Bridger disappeared into the corridor.