The Cell Mate Pt. 03

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Jayn and her cell mate need each other to survive.
8.9k words
4.68
38.6k
24

Part 3 of the 4 part series

Updated 10/31/2022
Created 04/21/2008
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I awoke to whistling wail overhead and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the scorching sunlight. Then the ground shook and the dust around me rippled in the wake of an enormous explosion, followed by a searing heat and a blinding light. I squinted against the shards of rocks and sand that pelted my face and saw the village was burning. From where I lay hidden on my belly in the mouth of the mine I could see three shuttles overhead and now I was awake I could hear the hum of their engines. Another explosion rocked the small valley and stones and dust shook loose from the stone above me. Would they try to bomb the mine? Would they have to? I risked a glance above me and saw a jagged crack expand across the rock face like a line being drawn on a map. Why had we chosen this place? It was so fragile and we were too close to the village. I crawled low on my stomach to the very edge of my shelter in the darkness and strained to see more of the sky. Four shuttles. That I could see. They were targeting the immediate area. Fuck, fuck, oh bloody fuck, what now? I could hear the rock above me now, hear the sharp groan as the split widened, weakened. There was no way this thing would last another firebomb from the village. It was too frail, too dry and weatherworn. Maybe over-excavated. And there was no way I could outrun four shuttles. They were trying to kill me or smoke me out into the open and so far I'd say they were doing a bang up job.

I felt the wind pick up as the fire engulfing the village burned white hot. It was time to make some decisions. I reached down to touch the small swelling in my belly.

"Hey, if I get us killed, I told you so," I said, though I doubted it could hear me and even if it could, it was in no position to help.

I climbed into a crouch position and sighted the four shuttles. They were circling the village. I don't know why; if I'd been hiding there I'd be dead by now. I took a deep, ragged breath and sprinted out of the mine and away from the village as fast as I could, afraid to look back, terrified of seeing the shuttles taking aim. Behind me I heard a fire bomb that shook the earth hard and I heard the mine collapse in on itself behind me. The ground felt like it was coated in shrapnel as it sliced the pads of my feet and cauterized them with the heat of the sand all at once. I felt my heart propelling my body over the hill on the other side of the valley and down again. The space in front of me in every direction was flat and barren. There was hardly any cover, no neighboring mine shafts or dense tree lines on the horizon.

Then my eyes focused on what looked like a huge cotton ball, filmy and white through the heat waves. From all I could guess it was more than a kilometer away and I felt my gut clench and twist as I heard the hum from the shuttles over the roar of the burning village in my wake. I couldn't look back; I kept running. I didn't care what it was and I didn't care why it was there. It was better than being bombed and it was better than dying at in prison, if that was even an option anymore.

I felt the blistering air cut across my skin and felt my naked thighs chafe and burn as my feet tore across the desert sand. I couldn't even feel them anymore. My eyes watered and my throat stung with dehydration. The hum grew louder overhead and I closed my eyes and let my body carry me. I felt my feet hurl me sideways as something hotter than sunlight, hotter than the burning village kicked up the dirt where I had been only moments before. Zig zag, I remembered as the red laser they had aimed at me burned itself out momentarily. I'd be harder to hit but not by much. They had a planetary shuttle and I was naked and without cover. Or even shoes. I scrambled to my feet and felt my body hurl itself towards the big white ball on the horizon. The only possibility of cover, the only possibility for respite. I charged forward and fell back suddenly, avoiding another ray. Either they were out of fire bombs or they were supposed to bring me back alive. The threat of death by rape and torture propelled me faster still. Their laser must be charging. Hah, more money into fortifying the prison than updating the ancient shuttles. I was almost there. The strange puffball loomed above me as tall as a radio tower and almost perfectly circular. I saw an opening in it too, big enough to land a personal cruiser in but not big enough for the shuttles. They'd come anyway. I didn't want to trap myself but there was only so long I could run around the perimeter to avoid them. I sprinted hard and fast through the entrance to the big white ball and stepped inside.

It was cool and dim and the floor and walls were hard and shiny and smooth. The entrance seemed to extend into a passageway spiraling towards the interior. Some kind of animal had lived here once and maybe still did. I braced myself too for the force of the laser blasting or even penetrating my sanctuary but though I strained to hear the whir and hum on the shuttle engines, I heard nothing but the cool rush of air from deeper inside the lair.

I frowned and padded as softly as I could towards the entrance, straining as my eyes tried to adjust to the noon sun as I searched the skies for the shuttles. I counted four little blots on the dusty horizon heading back towards the village and I suppose to the prison.

Oh, fuck me. What the hell would make airborne ships turn around and leave without recovering me and Perikos? What in the name of holy motherfuck would inspire four shuttles to firebomb somewhere they thought I was hiding and to retreat when they had me corned? What did they know that I didn't?

I felt a panic set in, worse than the one I felt in the quarry yard and I felt even more desperate now than I did waiting for the cave to collapse on my head. If I ran away now they could easily come back to get me and Stars alone knew the next time I would find some cover, some shade. Maybe this thing I was standing in was abandoned, empty, just a used husk from some long-dead critter.

Or maybe it was only a matter of minutes before it came back and fucking ate me whole. I should have stayed in prison.

After pacing back and forth for twenty horrible minutes I decided to walk around the perimeter of the ball to see if I could gain any obvious clues as to what I'd gotten myself into. The ball was close to perfectly round, perfectly white and perfectly hard and even. There was no molted skin by the entrance or trail of ooze and I couldn't see any creature roughly the size of the capture shuttles plodding its way towards me from any direction. I also couldn't see any other shelter. The land was wide and scorching. I could see craggy hills far in the distance. From what I remembered we were supposed to be heading north and Kragosa rotated east to west around the sun. That would mean I had ran too far west but not by a lot. The craggy hills were highest in the west. No forests or rivers to speak of and no plants or animals that I could see. I'd die of thirst or heatstroke if I started out from here without knowing if we were to continue North. The days were longer than I was used to and Perikos didn't leave me with directions. In its version of events I would just lay low in the shade and remain peacefully unperturbed till nightfall. So much for that. I looked up at the sun, high and hot in the sky. We were almost halfway through. What did that mean? Eight more hours till sunset? Eight more hours until it wasn't my job to keep us alive anymore?

I climbed back inside the cool white ball and waited just at the lip, poised to scram if I heard or felt anything. I needed to rest. I'd spent over six months in the dark. I looked at my torn and bleeding feet and tried not to think about the gash in my head or how thirsty I was. Only eight more hours and Perikos would help me. I looked down at my belly and felt something flip flop though I don't think it was Perikos. I felt myself moisten at thought of it feeding on me, needing my arousal. My eyes got heavy. I wondered vaguely if involuntarily lubricating would dehydrate me even more…

I awoke to feel the ground shaking beneath me though from within or without the white ball I couldn't tell. I jumped to my feet and dashed from the ball into the open sunlight and saw it. It was as big as my house on Ferox 4. It looked like a frilled lizard with two clawed, muscular legs and a scaled, serpentine back half. It was iridescent white and its face and neck seemed to be covered in strange orange hairs that bristled as it twisted its enormous head to look at me. I froze in place.

The thing let out a screeching, feral roar and its face seemed to expand and the orange hairs bristled, obscuring its eyes and mouth. I turned to run and felt a gust of hot air behind me, feeling its footfall. I ran hard, gasping air into my lungs and I felt the ground shake as it chased me from its home, screeching as I struggled to stay ahead of it. I felt a sharp, keen puncturing pain in the meat of my ass and I think I heard myself scream but I didn't slow. I ran as hard and fast as I could, until I couldn't feel it follow or hear its cries anymore.

I turned to see the white ball, as distant from me now as it was from the mine. I couldn't make out the creature; it must have retreated back inside. It hadn't meant to eat me, just to scare me away. It worked I thought, as I staggered forwards onto my knees and reached behind me to inspect the burning puncture wound in my ass.

I felt something long and thin like a wire protruding from the wound like an antenna. I grit my teeth and pulled but rather than coming lose I felt the wire snap off near the wound. I reached with my other hand and felt something like a stinger the size and thickness of a toothpick poking out from the wound. I tried to clutch it between my fingernails and pull but it hurt so much I couldn't touch it without aggravating the burning puncture mark. I inspected the piece that had broken off and it was long and stiff and orange like the bristles around the creature's face. I pursed my lips. Terrific. Best case scenario, gangrene sets in. Worst case, I have a couple more minutes of consciousness before I die from some sort of neurotoxin. I contemplated punching the hell out of my stomach but I figured all told that would hurt me more than Perikos. I was out on my ass in the middle of a godforsaken desert planet armpit of the universe at high bloody noon and I had better pick a direction and start walking because otherwise the shuttles or the sun or some huge fucking alien monster would come finish me off before I could die from the venom.

North, I decided and began moving that way, feeling a strange internal heat flowing through my arms and legs as I walked. Probably I was making it much worse, spreading the poison through my body much faster by walking. Probably I was screwed anyway unless I lasted till nightfall and Perikos happened to be a sightless tentacle doctor.

I felt like I'd been walking for hours and my feet were worn and properly bloody now. My joints ached badly as I walked and I kept thinking I was hearing the shuttles hum overhead but when I looked it was just a wide, cloudless sky. I wasn't sure I was going to right way anymore, if the right way was north. Maybe Kragosa didn't rotate evenly east to west because I'd changed course a few hours ago, realizing I'd been wrong about which direction was north but now I didn't know anymore. Was it three hours till nightfall or four? Maybe only one. Maybe I'd been walking for longer than I realized. The sun kept speeding up and slowing down. The land in front of me stretched out wide and unremarkable. The craggy hills were only a few kilometers away now. No streams or rivers. My head throbbed inside and out and it felt foggy and heavy. I wasn't hot anymore. Everything below my ankles and a large portion of my backside was very cold and I kept imagining I was walking on fields of snow rather than sand.

"You've probably never seen snow," I told the Perikos. It occurred to me now that it was foolish not to talk to it, rude even, and at any rate the conversation kept me thinking. "I mean, of course you've never seen it, I mean you probably don't know what it is, which is a pity. It's frozen water crystals, you see?" I began to giggle as I imagined the Perikos stretched out in the snow, wriggling its many tentacles to make freakish angel. "It's white and fluffy and very cold – well, you probably figured that out when I said 'frozen', but snow is great. You'd really like it, it's hardly ever sunny when it snows."

It felt harder to breath and the air I took in felt colder, sharper. My fingertips felt like wool and the craggy hills ahead of me looked just like the J.D. Wharton Music Hall in Blythwood on Ferox 4. I had heard the symphony play there twice growing up. They had four hundred different instruments, the Blythwood Symphony Orchestra. My father was right, it was worth the price of admission.

I heard something crackling and felt the fire a few feet from me rather than seeing it. My eyelids seemed to be stuck closed. Something wide and thick and cool was wrapped tightly around my torso and it held me in place as I tried to roll towards the fire to warm myself. Something tickled at my neck and then my earlobe and then it pressed inside. I groaned and reached to swat it away.

"Shh. Please hold still."

That music sounded like Perikos. It was back. "Wha –?" My lips were chapped, my tongue felt like yarn.

"Don't talk," Perikos said. I felt my sticky eyelids part slowly, one eyelash at a time. I felt hung-over, so thirsty and aching. I wiggled my fingers experimentally. Then my toes. I felt a sharp, burning point of pain on my ass and it throbbed like mad. I also felt sore below that, like I'd been roughed up down there. The pain wasn't as sharp but it went much deeper.

"Whatha ell happend?" I slurred.

"You were injured," Perikos' tune was measured, gentle. "Something venomous entered your bloodstream. I do not know if your body chemistry is such that you ignored the paralysis I believe was meant to set in or whether you saved yourself – it feels as though much of the stinger was removed and in doing so, much of the venom."

I remembered pulling away the orange bristle that felt thick like a wire. Well damn. Something that went right. Well, right by comparison.

"I have removed the rest of the stringer and done what I can to alleviate the effects of the venom. I have determined that it breaks down in the presence of heat so I have built a fire. I have kept your lower body elevated and have applied as much pressure as I am comfortable doing to your midsection to prevent any further flow of the venom to your heart."

Knock me down, I thought. Perikos is a doctor. Though from the sound of it I saved myself. And it couldn't have been that toxic because elevation and all the rest are probably too little, too late. Or would have been. Yikes.

"I imagine it is painful?" said Perikos.

"Yes," I said, my mouth finally wet enough to facilitate proper speech. The throbbing inside me continued and I frowned, trying to remember if I'd fallen on something. "Actually, I hurt more…elsewhere, if you can believe it."

Silence. No music, just the crackling fire in front of us. I couldn't see what would cause a fire to burn, couldn't see any wood or paper or anything else but the orange flame set against the chalk white dirt.

"So why am I hurting do you think?" I asked, finding it hard to keep the anger out of my voice.

Perikos was silent another moment. I waited it out, hoping it felt ashamed. Finally, it answered in careful, quiet notes. "I am sorry. You were dying and I became panicked."

I bit down hard on my lip and tasted blood. My throat felt swollen again. "How bad?"

"You are…in-tact. There is…some tearing. And some bruising. You are swollen. The…bleeding has stopped."

I felt my eyes begin to water with the anger and indignation that surged through my chest. I was the pack animal, the weak baggage that hurt this mission more than I helped. I was a hindrance and now the most personal, vulnerable part of me had been halfway ripped apart by a creature that was worried his body cavity and buffet were in jeopardy. I was furious that I even cared. "Let me down."

"I do not think -"

"I don't care what you think, put me down now!" My voice wavered with emotion and I felt even angrier. Perikos complied, setting me on my feet. Everything from my bellybutton to my knees ached and my head throbbed worse still. I felt dizzy and nauseated. I was tired of looking weak and I turned my back to the pulsing mass of darkness and stared at the dying fire.

"I understand your anger," Perikos said softly.

I felt my fist clench hard, involuntary. "Do you?" My tone was so cutting and cruel it surprised even me.

"Yes," it answered. "I understand that you are angry because I could not help you and you were fearful and alone."

I spun around then without thinking and ran at it, raised my arms high in the air and started pummeling it as hard as I possibly could. Of course it felt no fault! Of course everything that happened to me was because I was weak and pathetic.

"You talked me into this!" My screech was shrill and cold in the still night. "You made me leave!" I punched the mass as hard as I could and its muscled density seemed to deflect the entire forced of my blow. "You left me by the mine even though you knew they'd search there!" I struck again, my hand smarting painfully. "You tore me open trying the save your ticket off his hellhole of a planet! Don't say you understand me! You don't know me and you don't care!"

I raised another fist to strike Perikos but when I connected I felt my hand plunge inside the darkness. It closed around my skin, trapping my hand. I used my other as leverage to push against it and that hand too was sucked into Perikos' mass and I stood there facing it, immobilized unless I wanted to risk my feet as well. My eyes were streaming now, my face sun burnt and wet and covered in grime. I stood there dumbly, unable to turn or run or hide my face. Thoroughly defeated.

Perikos stood there in silence as I sobbed and I wondered if it was furious with me for my tantrum, whether it would scream at me or hit me back. I felt humiliated and exhausted and still pretty ill. My sobs became gasping teary hiccups when I finally heard the Perikos' music in my ear again.

"You are sad and angry and fearful that I do not care if you live or not unless it affects my survival. Perhaps you think I would leave you to die when we reach the station rather than share another moment with such an irksome creature as yourself?"

I averted my eyes since I could do little else.

"Would it relieve you to know that I like you? That I could not enjoy your fear as I rested because I could not control its outcome? I have never in my life lit a fire and I detest the flames but I know the method and I helped you yesterday and today I stoked a fire from anything I could find, for it would help you recover sooner. I found a desert plant containing a good deal of water and forced you to drink so you wouldn't die."

I felt waves of shame humiliation burn at my face and eyes and I tried to pull away but the black mass held fast to my hands.

"Due to your heat exhaustion, dehydration and hallucinations you traveled eighteen kilometers west of our course. You have already spent much of the dark hours recovering from your ailments. I do not blame you for any of this. I was very afraid you were too ill to help and in my haste to save help you, I hurt your body and for that I am very regretful. When I feel emotion it is easy for me to forget my strength and power even though I know I must be gentle with your small body."