Chapter 55 Anguish
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Malachi woke to the sound of pure anguish. A scream pulled from the depth of his heart. Moving his head felt like moving his body, but the sight that greeted his eyes brought him to his feet in less than a second.
What he knew could only be a body laid on the floor, up against the wall. A crumpled figure covered in shredded, blood-soaked tatters.
"Oh, no." He knew what had happened before he reached her.
Nurse Tammy laid with her back against the wall. One touch told him she was alive. A deep tissue scan showed that she was losing blood from over a dozen deep cuts.
"Tamar, oh my Tamar." He shook his head, then with some effort, stood just as Doctor Peters entered.
"What? Who did this?" His eyes implored Malachi to make some sense of what he was seeing.
"Tamar did." He answered as he walked towards the door.
An unexpected arm on his chest barred his path.
"Look, I've given you great latitude here. I haven't questioned what went on between the two of you down on the planet. But if she was this," Peters pointed to his nurse, who was now being tended to. "Dangerous. Then why in the hell did you bring on to this ship?" The hostility buried just below the surface by years of control did not pass Malachi's notice.
"Doctor, I need to find her. Every second I wait here, she's getting further into this ship. The only one with any shot at finding her is me."
"Let the Captain send some of our men to find her. You need to answer my question." Peters doubled the pressure with his hand on his chest.
"Doctor, if anyone finds her but me, and you'll be bringing them back into very small pieces." With no apparent effort, Malachi walked past the doctor's arm and to the door.
"Doctor, I know you have to report this to security. But please, just give me five minutes. After that, do what you have to do. I don't want any of you to get into any trouble." He turned to leave and stopped. With his back to the door, he called over his shoulder.
"She was made to be nothing but a weapon. Whatever she did here, you have to believe me. She was more terrified than you are."
"How do you know that? That girl's a walking time bomb. Who's she going to kill nex..." The doctor's mouth clamped shut as Malachi moved so fast he might have teleported.
"Choose your next words ever, ever carefully. She, against her will, was made into something no one should have to endure. If she kills anyone onboard this ship, it will NOT be her FAULT!" his scream took Doctor Peters off his feet. Before he could clear the stars from his vision, Malachi was gone.
Gotta run somewhere, anywhere, away from him. He'll kill me. Tamar's thoughts screamed inside her head. Her panic mounting by the second.
When she come to in their room, Tammy had been in her hands and she'd froze. Her blood had been everywhere, on the floor, in her fur, even in her mouth. The realization of what she had done had hit her like fist, the next was an emotion she was most accustomed to, guilt. Malachi would never forgive her for this, not this, never this. So without trying to find out whether Tammy was alive, she bolted.
It was what she was good at, running. While she was running, nothing else matters. The entire world dissolved into a seamless blur where nothing else mattered but the beating of her heart and the contracting of her muscles. She didn't care where she was going. The only thing that mattered was putting as much space between her and Malachi. Not that she seriously thought he would stopped looking for her. Part of her took comfort in that knowing, that part wanted to stop and run back into his arms, those warm comforting arms.
No! Not this time. No one is that understanding. I will not have him have to defend me from everyone onboard this ship. He's done enough for me already."
"She's already outside the occupied areas, sir. She'll soon be outside the powered sections. Once she gets there, everything goes black, literally." Claw told Malachi, trying to get him to talk.
"What are we going to do once we find her? She's not in the best of head spaces right now."
"Power up all the sections of the ship she's heading towards, all of them." Malachi spoke for the first time in over an hour.
"The captain is not going to like that. You know I'll have to run this past Central, and anything I tell him always makes its way back to him."
"Right now, I don't care what the captain likes or what he doesn't like. Just get it done, or I will." Malachi picked up his pace to the best he could maintain. "Besides, I know where she's going."
"Stay out of my head!" Tamar screamed, dropping to her knees. She could feel Malachi's touch, him sifting her thoughts, so with a mental slap she shut him out. If he was going to find her, he was going to do it the old fashion way. He was going to have to look for her.
"That didn't go well. But at least I got a fix on the current location." Malachi shrugged. Tamar was sixteen miles and twelve levels ahead of him. He had a lot of ground to make up.
Starting slowly, he began to jog at a steady pace. When he felt none of the expected pain, he began to increase the pace. Relaxing, he upped the speed of his strides again, glad that he was at last healed. That was when his body decided to let him know he wasn't as healed as he thought.
Pain lanced up his side, bounced off the top of his skull and rebounded all the way to his toes, bringing him to a trembling halt.
"Okay, not as healed as I thought." In frustration he set off again, limping every time he put weight on his left side.
If he could have, he would have heard a pain filled scream echo from where Tamar was just climbing up a lift shaft. The sympathetic pain locked up her nervous system and dropped her back to the bottom of the shaft.
"At least I was only one story up." She shook her head.
"What does he think he's doing? He's barely healed. He should still be in his bed."
Did you think he wouldn't come to find you? No matter what shape he's in.
Tamar dropped to her knees. But what would he do when he found her? She'd left one of his shipmates dead on the floor. If she hadn't woken up when she had, she gagged. There was no telling what she would have done. So when she did wake up, she'd panicked and ran. Now she could stop, yet wanted to with everything she was.
So with a low growl, she picked herself up and scaled the walls of the lift until she reached the twenty-eighth floor. Bracing her body on her feet, she worked her claws into the crack between the doors and with a slight shove threw them both into the outward stops.
Crawling out into the darkened passageway, she stopped as every light came on. Her ears picked up the low whir of the air circulation system coming to life and sighed. Malachi, it was always Malachi. He had turned on this part of the ship so she wouldn't be in the dark, alone in the dark.
But she was in the dark. The inside of her head was full of so much black. Ever since she could remember, she couldn't trust her own thoughts. Every action she took had to be thought through and deliberated, because once she let herself slip, even an inch, her inner darkness came out, and once it did bad things happened. Things she'd never be able to forgive herself for, things she would never be able to forget.
That was when she stopped. She couldn't go on, didn't want to go on. Why was she even here? She couldn't be trusted, would never be loved, no matter what he said. He'd be like everyone else and throw her away when he was finished with her.
So she dropped to her knees, curled into her tiny ball and waited. Waited for him to find her, for all the yelling and ranting. Waited for him to tell her how much of a failure she was, and how she would never be enough for anyone. In that hell she created in her own mind, she waited.
With the energy flowing through this area of the ship, Malachi was able to use the lifts and conveyors to work his way closer to Tamar. He was glad they worked, because in his current condition he wasn't sure he would have made it without them. His entire body ached, every step he took send pain down his left side from his rib cage to the bottom of his foot.
Now that he was drawing closer to her he had no idea what he was going to say. She had run from him because she was sure he'd hate her for what she'd done. He couldn't hate her, he knew her almost as well as she knew herself. Her body had been on auto pilot, nurse Tammy had come in while she was still asleep and startled her. Tamars body had reacted the way she been made to, it was a simple as that. Everyone else wouldn't see it like that, but they didn't count.
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