And Silent Were The Stars - Part 2: The Awakening Read online

trailed behind her as she moved further ahead.

  Two more rows remained. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere up ahead. There was no doubt that the noises she heard were there and that they were real. By an ironic coincidence, her locker was located in the very corner of the room, in the last row. Right where the sound seemed to be coming from. She tried to breathe so as not to make any noise. Having passed the empty third row she was about to look into the last one when, suddenly, she felt someone touch her shoulder from behind and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Wow, chill,” Jen laughed as Rebecca spun round and backed away, hitting the side of a locker with her back.

  “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me…” Rebecca drew in a deep breath and exhaled, holding the towel up with both hands and leaning her head against the locker.

  “Sorry.” Jen smiled and opened the second locker of the opposite row. The door of the locker hid the young woman from Rebecca. The name plate on the metal door said Jennifer Simmons, MED0005. “And I thought that a hot shower was supposed to help you relax.” Jen peaked from behind the door, her eyes smiling, looking at Rebecca who was still standing there, clutching the towel to her breast.

  “Jeez, girl, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She frowned.

  “I… I didn’t expect to see anyone here this late.”

  “Yeah, neither did I.” Jen leaned into the locker and started searching for something at the very bottom. Rebecca felt her heart start to regain its normal pace. She stood still and listened. Now the only sound was Jen cursing while searching for something she couldn’t find. “Where the hell did I leave them…”

  Rebecca made a step away from the locker, her fingers rubbing one corner of the towel, “Jen, have you seen anyone in here?”

  Jen stopped digging in her things and looked out from behind the door at Rebecca, a puzzled look on her face.

  “I mean, when you came in. Was anyone else here? Or did anyone leave?”

  The young woman started to undress. She pulled the top over her head and threw it into the locker. As she reached down and took the purple rubber slippers out she said, “Nope.” She pulled the black legging off, followed by the underwear and slid her bare feet into the slippers. The she added, looking at Rebecca, “No, haven’t seen anyone. Why?”

  “No, it’s nothing.” Rebecca pulled the towel higher up. “Just thought I’d heard something.”

  “Something? Those better not be the guys from engineering spying on us again.” She smiled. “Although, there’s definitely stuff to see here.” She spoke the last words louder and turned first to one side, then to the other, grimacing and acquiring positions aimed at seducing a nonexistent spectator. Rebecca smiled at her antics and shook the head side to side. Jen blew a kiss to the vent in the ceiling and whispered in a seductive voice, “Those naughty, naughty boys.” She then shook a finger in the air, her full, dark lips pouting. Rebecca couldn’t hold the laugh in.

  Jen closed the locker and looked at Rebecca. Her dark skin created sharp contrast with the white towel tucked under her arm. “Seriously, you should get some sleep, girl. You look awful.”

  “I’ll try,” Rebecca lied, memories of the nightmare still lingering in the back of her mind.

  “Well, I’m going to enjoy my shower then. Come see me in my kingdom of the dead. We can have a cup of tea. Irish.” She winked.

  Rebecca nodded once.

  Jen walked towards the showers, singing a song from ‘Let’s Run Away to Mars’, a popular musical. After a couple of steps she turned halfway and looked at Rebecca, putting one palm up to her mouth, covering the lips with the fingertips, and used the towel in the other hand to cover her private parts, a fake shamed expression on her face. They both laughed and Jen walked on. Rebecca watched her as the woman disappeared behind a curve, her voice sounding more distant now.

  Rebecca exhaled and said under her breath, “More sleep… Yeah right…” Before she walked up to the last row of lockers, Rebecca stopped and listened. All she could hear was the water running and Jen singing in the shower. Nothing else.

  Slowly Rebecca turned the corner. The locker row was empty. She gave out a sigh of relief and a soft smile touched her lips as she heard Jen give out a high-pitched note, trying to imitate the female singer. But as she got closer to the locker that had her name on it, the smile vanished from her face. The door was slightly ajar. She could have sworn she had closed it. She always did. Hesitantly, her fingertips reached the door and touched it carefully as if afraid that it was burning-hot. She pulled it slowly open. Everything seemed to be as she’d left it, the clothes neatly folded on the upper shelve, the boots down on the locker floor.

  Rebecca looked at the small mirror on the inside of the door of the locker. There she saw a woman in her thirties. Large green eyes stared at her from under slender eyebrows. She brushed away a wet curl that had fallen onto her tall forehead and took in a deep breath, staring her own reflection in the eyes.

  The feeling that there was something missing took over Rebecca for a moment. She touched the corner of the mirror and then looked down at the floor under her feet. She crouched and found a semi-transparent plastic picture under the bench by the locker. Rebecca stood up and looked at the happy faces, her own and Tom’s. Just a couple of minutes older than her, he looked so young, the illness and all the medication and therapy draining him, leaving his body frail but never able to crush his spirit. She remembered the day they took the selfie. It was more than ten years ago, the summer before the disease took him. Fourteen years, it felt like the longest and at the same instant the shortest time. A time given to them to fight the illness together. It still felt like he was still there, that he’d be there when she’d get back from the mission. Rebecca passed a finger across Tom’s face and put the picture back where it belonged, its corner under the frame of the mirror.

  She reached inside the locker and took the neatly folded clothes out. Rebecca pulled the dark-blue pants on, then the sports bra and a gray T-shirt with her name and number embroidered on it. Then she took the jacket off a small hook inside the locker and put it on. As she reached into the right pocket for the bracelet, her fingers touched something sticky. She took the hand out and looked at it. It was some sort of a clot of a brownish substance, snotty like, stretching between her fingertips. The fetid odor of the goo was slightly sweet. Rebecca look down at the side of the jacket and saw that a large part of the pocket from the outside was covered in the same gelatinous substance, some traces of it on the floor by the locker.

  (•••)

  Rebecca was on her way to the Medbay when the new bracelet on her left wrist lit up. She looked at the words on the minuscule screen and sped up.

  When she entered the diagnostic’s room, Doctor Dawson was already there. She greeted him and after returning the early morning hello, he said, “Our patient’s up.”

  “How long has he been awake?” she asked, coming up to the large screen. The man on the other side of the mirror was sitting on the cot, his eyes staring into the emptiness, his arms in his lap, multiple tubes penetrating his skin.

  “A couple of minutes,” the doctor replied. Then Rebecca watched him change into the biosuit and soon he was on the other side of the glass pane. The patient, Vasily was it, looked at the newcomer with an estranged look and shifted on the cot.

  Doctor Dawson walked up to the man. Rebecca heard his voice in the speakers.

  “Hello, Vasily. My name is Frank Dawson. I am the chief medical officer aboard Syracusae, a class six harvester ship.”

  The man didn’t seem to have heard anything of what the doctor had said. Dawson moved closer and took out a small flashlight out of the belt on the biosuit. He reached out and shined the light first into the patient’s one eye, then into the other. The man kept still, allowing Dawson to slightly move his head.

  “The reflexes are normal.” Dawson spoke quieter and then added, addressing the man again, “Vasily, do you hear me?”

&nbs
p; Rebecca saw the patient’s eyes shift from one corner of the floor to another and she heard him speak, barely audible words coming from the speakers.

  “Medical officer…” The man had a strong Slavic accent.

  “Vasily,” the man looked up at him. “We received a distress signal. From the colony.” Dawson waited for the answer.

  “Signal… Kolonia…” the man looked at him like a child seeing a strange apparition for the first time in his life, then his stare got lost on the tiles of the floor once again.

  “Partial disorientation,” the doctor noted. “Do you understand what I am saying?” he spoke slowly.

  The man nodded hesitantly and then added, “Yes.” He stared at the doctor for a second and then asked, “Where am I?”

  “You are aboard Syracusae, a class six harvester vessel. Have you got any recollection of what happened?”

  “Ya…” Vasily brought his hands to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Vasily, what happened back on the ground?”

  “Golova…” he squeezed the eyelids together and bared the teeth.

  “Vasily, I need you to help me. So I can help you.” Dawson spoke calmly.

  The man opened the eyes and looked at the doctor. “My head, it hurts.”

  “It’s the sedation wearing off. The discomfort will pass soon. Do you remember how you got here?”

  The man shook his