Chapter 4.2

The room began to swim for a moment, darkness coming from every side. I threw my arm out, flailing for something, anything to grab onto.

My feet staggered to try to keep myself upright. A metal hand grabbed onto my arm. “Tawny?” Nick asked.

My head sagged forward to see his other hand wrapping my waist. For a moment, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. A hand tightly clasped my waist, the knuckles nearly white and the fabric of my pants bunched up tightly underneath his fingers. But for all of this effort put into holding my waist, I felt none of it. Then I realized I couldn’t feel my feet nor the usual pressure from the bionics pressed against the remaining flesh of my legs.

Vicki’s hands were on my cheeks in an instant. She forced one of my eyes to open completely and pursed her lips. “Did she hit her head?” she asked.

“I don’t,” Nick started.

“Henry! Did she suffer any head trauma?” Vicki snapped.

Panic built in my chest as I struggled, in vain, to move my feet, to take some of the weight from Nick. I leaned forward a little too much and my knees gave out with no power to support them. It took everything Nick had to keep me upright. He lowered me carefully, laying me down on my side and keeping my head cradled in his hands.

“You should have brought her to me the instant she got home,” Vicki said. “Especially with head trauma.”

“You know we can’t afford your prices,” Nick snapped.

“I’m, I’m fine,” I muttered, trying to push myself away from Nick but my feet refused to move and I couldn’t lift my torso. That required abdominal muscles and if my bionics weren’t working, the nerve connection between my spine and everything below my diaphragm had been severed. So that’s what this was. “I can’t move my legs,” I said.

A feeling a true helplessness seeped into my chest. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t draw my legs up underneath me or pull myself into a sitting position. My chest constricted as I began to panic. The last time I felt this helpless, I had been in a hospital bed without my legs and bandages swathing my chest. “I can’t move my legs,” I whimpered. “Felicity, I can’t move.”

I heard Alener suck in a breath and he started digging through his bag. “I’ll call for medics,” he said.

“No,” Vicki held her hand up. “No need. Henry, carry her into the bedroom.”

Before I could argue, Nick scooped me up and pressed me to his chest.

“If she’s seriously hurt, she needs a real doctor with real medical equipment,” Alener said.

“It’s not a medical problem,” Vicki said.

Nick pushed through into my pitiful bedroom and lowered me gently onto my crappy mattress. My room really didn’t even deserve to be called a bedroom. A small chest held the clothes I owned and my bionic maintenance kit. My mattress sat on a shelf built into the wall with a small table next to it that contained a holographic clock and the only picture I had of my parents.

My mother was short compared to my father with bright blue eyes and dirty blonde hair that was more brown than blonde. She had round cheeks, soft pink lips and a pale complexion. My father was a totally different story, tall, towering nearly a foot over my mother. He had a tan complexion with dark brown hair that bordered on black. His eyes were the same color. From what I could remember, his hair was usually combed flat but in the picture it was spiked up in a variety of directions. Muscles laced his arms as he held my mother around the waist. Tattoos sheathed his arms from his wrists up to where the skin vanished underneath his shirt and then poked out again, crawling up his neck.

Vicki unlaced my boots and removed them, before she rolled my pants up to my thighs. I lifted my head to try to see what Vicki was looking at but the fabric blocked my view.

“Tawny, where’s your kit?” Vicki asked.

I told her and she turned to the crate, digging around for a few minutes before she pulled it out and passed it over to Kai.

“Nick, keep the lieutenant busy,” Vicki instructed. She walked over to me and pulled me into a sitting position so I could see the damage to my legs.

“What am I supposed to do?” Nick asked.

“Play the part of the pissed off boyfriend,” she said. Nick walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.

I examined my leg as Kai looked through my maintenance kit. The men who had attacked us had dented one of plates next to my knee and a few wires stuck out at an odd angle. There were spare parts in my kit. Kai started onto my leg as Vicki sat down next to me.

“How did you end up with a guard?”

“I don’t know, I was dismissed and then the captain followed me. I tried to turn it down but he wouldn’t let me,” I said.

Kai pulled the dented plate off and flicked a small flashlight on. Reaching into my leg, I felt something click into place and a shock ran through my body as the nerves reconnected. A short cry of pain burst from my lips. He placed a replacement metal plate on the side of my knee and pushed the kit aside. I pointed my ankle and rolled my foot, curling each toe in turn.

“Vicki, step outside,” he said.

Vicki nodded and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be right outside,” she said.

I nodded and she left the room. Kai leaned against the wall across from me and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’m going to be frank with you Tawny, the only reason I brought you in on this is because Victoria vouched for you,” he said. “She is the only one stopping me from murdering you and that Dead Head sitting out there. She vouched for you and I am willing to believe her, but if you screw us over, I will make you wish you went to an extermination camp. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” I said. “If I could just have some time to get rid of Alener, maybe some information for them to go chasing down a group of men that go against your views.”

“Just lay low until they go away,” Kai instructed.

“Are you sure? I can—”

“It’s my way or not at all,” Kai said. “Learn that quickly or you’ll find there are scarier people out there than Dead Heads.”

He walked out, the door closing behind him. I looked over to the picture of my parents and sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I went with you two,” I said.

“You would have died,” Nick said. “Come on, did Jason fix your leg?”

I looked over at him and smiled weakly. I nodded and he extended his hand to me. “Come on, Vicki and Kai are leaving, so we are left with Alener to ourselves,” he said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to control him.”

Famous last words. After Vicki and Kai left, I got started on dinner, which involved a run to the market with a handful of kredit and an argument that I needed a guard to go buy vegetables and a few bad cuts of meat. So they both came with me and it took way too long to buy what I needed. Then, I served a dinner that was subpar by Alener’s standards but was the best I had eaten in months. I’ll spare you the details for the rest of the night, but by the time I lay down on my thin, lumpy mattress with Nick beside me and Alener in the front room on the couch, I wanted to strangle the both of them.

Laying there that night, the nightmares came back. The feeling a freefall wrapping around me and filling my chest with fear. The nightmare never changed and no matter how many times I had it, I never got used to it. The mechanized altitude count down from thirty thousand to zero ringing in my ear, the uncontrollable freefall, the flashing brake failure flashing across my vision and the sickening crunch I heard when I struck the ground. I woke up screaming and drenched in sweat more than once, waking Nick in the process.

And that’s how the week passed. Nick didn’t leave for a week, at least not with myself and Alener there. Vicki and Kai stopped in occasionally to check in on us, pulling me into the back room for some ‘maintenance’ on my bionics. For the first time since my accident, I had company again. Vicki would stay when Nick and Kai had to do something. I made up a bed on the floor for her. I worked on five ‘bots in that time, installing the software on them and biding my time. Becker showed up twice and questioned me. Then one day, Becker came and took Alener away as I finished my work with a ‘bot. When I returned home that evening alone, I found my house empty as well. Nick had vacated, taking all of his stuff with him.

That night, the nightmares were the worst. It didn’t change, but something was different this time and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I woke up gasping and sobbing, sweat running down my face in rivulets. I grabbed my pillow and buried my face into it before screaming as loud as I could. With the walls closing in on either side, I pushed myself from the bed and didn’t bother dressing. I ran outside in my loose tee shirt and shorts, dropping to my knees on my porch and feeling the cold seep in from all sides.

I cried for what felt like an eternity before I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see my neighbor from below knelt in front of me. His wife stood a few steps away. He helped me to my feet and they took me inside, counseling me the whole time. She fell asleep on my couch and he excused himself to take her home but didn’t return. I guess he fell back to sleep. Myself, I didn’t sleep anymore that night. I nearly fell asleep while soldering a new mother board the next day. It was almost two weeks before I saw Vicki, Nick and Kai again and the instant I walked into my home, I wished I hadn’t.