11. Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
“Open your eyes.”
The words filtered in, like they were coming through gauze or dirt.
Kieron had buried himself in snow and sand enough times on Hadrian’s Colony that he knew the experience inside and out—granular, suffocating, surrounded in a way that clung and stung.
This … was not like that. Nor was it cold like snow would be.
He was surrounded by something soft and wet and warm. A bath?
No. The smell was too bright for that, too medicinal.
“Open your eyes; I think they’re going to work this time around.”
Regen tank. Kieron assessed the feeling of cooler air on his face, especially around his eyes and nose and mouth—he’d been wiped clean, but he wasn’t being let out yet. How long had he been in here?
“Eyes, Sparky, or I might start thinking it’s just me you don’t want to look at.
Is that it? I’ll leave if that’s it, but if I were you, and I’d been staring at nothing but the back of my own eyelids for five days—excepting those times when you didn’t have eyelids, or eyes for that matter—I’d definitely want a change of scenery. What, am I not pretty enough for you?”
“Shut … up …” Kieron managed after a moment’s effort to muster up his voice.
“Sparky!” Elenus sounded way too enthusiastic for Kieron to deal with, but there was no escaping the man right now, not when Kieron was up to his neck in a Regen tank.
“There you are at last! I’d been thinking I might have to dunk you under again after all, but you’re finally coming around.
Perfect. Now open your eyes, I want to make sure this set is actually working. ”
“Set?” Kieron squinched his eyelids tight, then blinked them open. Everything was a blur above him—which was strange. He’d never experienced that side effect from Regen before. A head came into his field of view, slowly resolving into a familiar face. Still blurry, though. “Why … sets?”
“Why?” Kieron thought Elenus was smiling, but it was hard to tell when his voice was such a mixture of earnest and manic.
“Oh, well, it turns out that there are some things even complete submersion in Regen can’t cure right off the bat.
You were melting when you got back to Cloverleaf Station, Kieron—literally melting.
“I want you to pause and think about that right now, m’kay?
Think about how it felt to drag you into the clinic, only to literally have to pour you into the fucking Regen tank.
Have you ever poured an individual anywhere before and expected them to live through the process?
Because this was a first for me, and if I never have to go through it again it’ll be too soon. ”
The memory of what he’d been doing to get so messed up finally resurfaced in Kieron’s mind. His hand bumped the top of the tank in a futile effort to reach out and grab Elenus. “Catalina made it back okay?”
“She did.” Elenus’s smile softened, becoming more genuine in an instant.
“She was in pretty rough shape herself, but she’s recovering nicely.
Nothing like a little TLC to bring my baby back to tip-top condition.
Mentally, it’s a little rougher,” he admitted.
“She’s startling at everything and anything.
It’s a good thing I was able to get her a private hangar because her trust of people and machines right now is at absolute zero on the Kelvin scale with the exception of me … and interestingly enough, you.”
Kieron was nonplussed. “Me? Why?”
“Are you kidding me? You sailed in out of nowhere to save her! You’re basically her knight in a shining greenie suit. She won’t stop asking about you—honestly, half the reason I’m glad you’re awake is so she can see for herself that you’re getting better because shit, is she worried about you.”
“Your … ship is worried about me?”
Elenus sighed. “Not just a ship, remember? Catalina is sentient. She’s an entirely new AI-based life-form, and she’s got all of the hang-ups that come along with that, including unreasonable crushes. I think it’s safe to say that she’s crushing hard on you.”
Kieron would have thought this was all a dream if not for the fact that you didn’t dream on Regen. He decided to change the subject—ships with feelings for him were just too much to deal with right now. “Why are my eyes blurry?”
“Ah.” Elenus patted the side of the Regen tank. “Did you know that there’s actually a limit to how much radiation damage Regen can repair at one time, without completely draining the tank and renewing the fluid?”
“I …” Kieron did know that, actually, but that was a huge amount of radiation, far more than any person would ever be able to survive long enough to need fixing.
“Well, I drained and refreshed this puppy twice for you. Slow and steady progress was made each time, but there were some unintended side effects, and one of those was consistent malfunction of some of your more delicate neurons. Not in your brain,” he added, and Kieron breathed a sigh of relief.
“Your brain actually came out of the bullshit you put it through way better than I’d have thought.
The greenie helmets are better shielded than the rest of the suit since they’re not intended to be flexible.
But enough seeped through that your vision, your sense of smell, and your sense of taste are going to take some time to reemerge.
“The first few attempts at new eyes were completely scrapped by the Regen, in fact—the neurons just wouldn’t connect the way they needed to in order to be effective.
” He shook his head. “Congratulations on surviving something that the computer put your chances of living through at point three percent.”
Huh. “When did you calculate that?” he asked.
“When I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with you after you went silent, of course,” Elenus replied, and now there was no lightness whatsoever in his voice, nothing but a flat tone with a faint edge of desperation.
“You didn’t think I was just going to stick around back here, waiting for you forever, right?
I was halfway through making a plan to massively upgrade your ship’s shielding when Catalina announced her presence. ”
He sighed again. “I didn’t know what had happened to you.
I thought maybe you’d hit an asteroid and lost functionality or been crushed altogether.
I did not think you’d free-sailed your way through radioactive space to retake Catalina by force, but to be fair, I don’t think anyone in the known universe would have gone with that option.
” He hesitated, then reached out and pressed the flat of his palm to Kieron’s face.
Elenus’s skin was even warmer than the Regen, and the pressure against his brand-new skin was startling enough to make Kieron gasp.
“Thank you,” Elenus said, “for bringing my baby back to me. I know you don’t really understand her yet but try to accept that you probably saved my life when you rescued her from Deysan. I appreciate it more than I can ever tell you, but … Kieron, I never wanted it to cost you your life.”
Elenus must not know about the bomb. “I didn’t have a choice,” Kieron said.
Elenus snorted. “There’s always a choice.
Are you thinking of the little present Deysan stuck to the ship?
Just off the top of my head, I can think of three different ways you could have gotten that bomb off the top of the Lizzie instead of flying through space, and I’m sure you could too if you put a little effort into it.
“Listen, I’m grateful, all right? Just … you’re not unimportant in the grand scheme of things, Kieron. Not to the universe, and not to me. Okay?”
Kieron didn’t know if he could accept that as truth but hearing it made him feel unexpectedly emotional. He swallowed. Now wasn’t the time for arguments, and besides … it was kind of nice to hear that someone thought he was important even if it was just a tender lie. “Okay.”
***
Being stuck in the Regen tank for another full day was embarrassing.
But getting out of it was even worse. It was one thing to hear that Regen had done all it could for you, and that the only thing left for it was nature and time—it was another to feel his arms tremble as he tried to push himself upright in the fluid.
Tremble. Tremble. Kieron had never felt so weak in all his life, not even when he was a child. And now, a fully grown man capable of surviving incredible feats, he was on the verge of collapse just from sitting upright? Ridiculous.
“—might think about adding some handholds in parts of your room, and—whoa!” Elenus stopped his idle chatter as he looked at the readouts on the side of the machine when Kieron, determined to get out of the fucking tank by himself, heaved his upper body over the side and basically slopped himself down onto the floor.
“What are you even doing? I’m here; ask me for help, don’t throw yourself overboard like you’re living out your illicit pirate fantasies, good fucking grief.
” He had his arm around Kieron and was helping him upright again in an instant, completely unmindful of the Regen fluid staining his fancy clothes or Kieron’s nudity.
Ah. Right. Kieron was naked because that’s how you had to be in a Regen tank, and now he was naked and gooey and cold on the floor, and his ass hurt, and he was quivering with fatigue that had no place in his body, no place, but he couldn’t stop himself, and it didn’t hurt, but it seemed like it should hurt.
Kieron realized a second later that he was hyperventilating.
He tried to slow his breaths down, but he couldn’t—the shock of being helpless was too strong, the discomfort of his situation too present.
Was he ever going to get back to normal? Was this what he had to look forward to for the rest of his life?