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"Calm down." A man said, his voice low but firm. Dia was lying on something, strong arms holding her down as she tried to wriggle away.
"Calm down" He repeated for the second time but she didn't stop; she needed air, she needed to be free. Jenkins' death, the image of her rolling head dripping blood on the floor kept coming back in her mind; an unrelenting nightmare made even worse because she couldn't wake up from it. After all, how can someone wake up from reality?
"Calm down!" He yelled this time. His voice sounded oddly familiar.
She saw eyes, blue and cold, staring at her. No, not eyes but eye, it was just one, the right one, the man had a black patch on the other.
"Who...?" She croaked, her throat felt dry like she swallowed all the sand in the desert.
Sand? Then she remembered: the planet, the ship, everything. She frantically dragged herself back, feeling the soft synthetic fiber of a bed under her hands. She looked around the room, seeing a white floor and some medical machinery.
Medical? No, no, no! She'd escaped, she couldn't come back there.
She looked up, trying to calm herself when she saw two people, a man, and a woman. But it was what the woman was wearing that made her feel like someone put a garrote around her neck and started pulling it, the wire choking her little by little.
It was a lab coat.
"She is in shock." The woman said.
"I told you putting her here was a bad idea." The man snapped back.
His voice sounded familiar. However, it didn't belong to the captain, but to the other guy. Omen.
"How could I know it was going to turn out this way?" The woman defended herself.
"For God's sake, Sarah! You are a doctor! How could you not know?!" He lashed.
"We don't know precisely what they did to her. Everything could be a trigger at this point." She said, but her voice kept growing weaker as she spoke.
"Everything, Sarah?" Omen smiled, but without warmth. " I see. And when did you start thinking that putting her here, in a sickbay off all places, was a good idea?"
For some reason hearing the harsh sound of his voice calmed her down. She began to pay more attention to her surroundings, noticing not just the similarities but also the differences between this place and the facility where she had been held before.
For starters the ceiling looked lower, silver-gray not white and made of metal, not plaster; there was a blue light blinking on the rectangular panel circling around the walls, and a lot of medical equipment. However, everything looked much more basic than what she had seen before, inside that white room in the horror's facility. But above all, it was the sound, that deep buzzing she came to know so well, which made Dia realize this was a completely different place.
It was the noise of a hyperdrive.
She wasn't on the planet anymore, but on a spaceship, maybe the same one she saw before starting to lose consciousness. While she was looking around, Omen and Sarah seemed to have reached the end of their discussion.
"I'm sorry, but you know this wasn't my decision." Sarah sighed. She was a pretty woman in her thirties, a couple of inches taller than Dia.
Or it was a couple of inches shorter now? Dia shook her head, she didn't want to think about it. Not now.
"You should know better than anyone I'm not the one who calls the shots around here." Sarah continued.
Omen chewed on his molar, if possible looking even angrier than before. He wasn't overly tall, just a bit over six-feet, square-jawed and muscular: the kind of man you'd want with you in a fight. He looked handsome, though a little intimidating, his clothes simple but clean. Overall, he gave an impression of neatness, which is why that black patch covering his left eye looked so out of place.
But it was his posture---chest out, chin up, hands linked behind the back---that caught her attention. Adding all this with his buzz-cut and everything led to one conclusion: he was military.
At that moment, Omen turned his head and their eyes met.
"Looks like you calmed down." He said, keeping the distance like he didn't want to spook her.
Dia didn't answer that and instead asked. "Where am I?"
Who are you? What did you do to me? She wanted to ask all of these questions at the same time, but refrained from it, choosing to start with the basics.
Omen opened his mouth, likely to respond, when the door opened, and another man entered.
"Thank you, Omen. I'll take from here." He said, with a deep masculine voice Dia recognized at once.
It was the captain. He looked like the complete opposite of Omen; he was slim instead of muscular, messy-–though in a fascinating kind of way—instead of neat. He had an angular face, an unshaven beard, and thick black hair, not curly but just a bit wavy, that came down to his shoulders.
"You can go." He said to Omen and Sarah. "Dia and I have a lot to talk about."
Sarah obeyed immediately, Omen lingered for some seconds, but at the end did as he was told. He didn't look happy, but Dia couldn't think about him, she couldn't think about anything except the man in front of her.
The captain sized her up for a long minute but must have liked what he saw, because he smiled at her, in a roguish kind of way like she was some long lost friend or a past lover. Even Dia was thrown off from that smile, but not nearly as much as what he said next.
"After all, we are old friends, Dia and I."
Dia opened her mouth wide. Old friends? She took a better look at him, but nothing. She didn't know him.
"What the hell are you talking about?" She snapped at the end, seeing he had no intention to continue. After everything she went through, seeing him smirking at her, triggered her usual response, the same she had in the navy with all those morons who thought a pretty woman would make an easy target.
But the captain didn't get angry as she expected. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed. It was a deep and throaty laugh, so infectious that Dia was almost tempted of joining him. Almost.
"I'm wounded Dia." He said, one hand on his heart to show how wounded he was. "Six years is a long time, but I didn't expect you would forget, not after everything it happened between us."
Dia chose to ignore the innuendo. Six years? She shook her head. She was barely sixteen at the time, a young girl still attending the imperial academy on Amerath Prime, her home planet. This man looked in his middle thirties, maybe even older than that. How did we meet?
She asked him that.
"We didn't just meet, Dia" His lips tightening a little, the first hints of what looked a lot like anger showing on his face. "We spent more than a year together, closely together." He said, putting a lot of emphasis on that closely. "You still don't remember?" He asked, noticing her befuddled expression, but Dia shook her head.
The captain sighed like he gave up.
"I'm Nathan, Dia. Nathan Reyes."
When those words left his mouth, Dia lost the ability to speak. She opened her mouth wide and started shaking her head.
This isn't possible.
The captain smiled, smugly, like he was very satisfied with her reaction.
Jackass. Even worse he sounded and behaved like him. But Dia still wasn't convinced, not until she heard his next words.
"Did you miss me, Squirrel?"
And then Dia's brain short-circuited.
breaks.
