Chương 296: 125.Stranded 1

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"My foot..." Jess's voice was noticeably lower than usual. I angled the flashlight down. The moment the beam hit her right foot, I frowned on the spot. The outside of her thermal boot had swollen completely — the ankle puffed out in a way that had no business existing on a human body, like someone had jammed a small maintenance airbag in right beside the bone.

The leg of her suit bore a long gash where the creature had dragged her, the outer heat-resistant fiber peeled back at the edges, still tacky with a yellow-white fluid I had zero desire to ever identify. Good. Outside: a countdown to a three-hundred-degree storm. Inside: a mutant bug and a casualty. A textbook space-horror game opening. Flickering lights, things floating in specimen tanks that may or may not still count as alive, slime, metal, dead silence, and two spectacularly unlucky female students.

If the words FIND THE FUSE BOX flashed across the wall next, I wouldn't even be surprised. I swept the flashlight down the corridor again. Specimen tanks lined both walls, the fluid inside long gone cloudy, the blue light pulsing, making the dark shapes drifting within swell and shrink. Honestly, I couldn't be bothered identifying them one by one. Keeping a spirit of inquiry alive in a place like this isn't academic passion. It's a death wish. Then, at the edge of my vision — a familiar red cross.

On the right side of the passage, next to a half-open sliding door. The symbol itself was right. The line of text beneath it wasn't — not Federation standard lettering. The strokes ran harder, the structure closer to the kind of Imperial system font that looks like it wants to carve every letter into a saber. Something in my chest jolted. Wait. This... wasn't a Federation facility? As if sent specifically to confirm that unpleasant guess, I swung the flashlight to the end of the corridor.

The beam landed square on a portrait hanging slightly crooked on the wall. The old man in it had a face I never wanted to look at twice in this lifetime. High-collared formal dress, a sash of medals, cold, flat eyes, and that particular quality unique to Imperial high command — the look of someone who treats the entire universe as their personal napkin. Below the frame, a line of Imperial script was engraved. I could read it.

As a Federation citizen, I'd seen this face in propaganda materials, history briefings, anti-Imperial curricula, and wartime instructional films at least a few hundred times, easily.

"Emperor Friedman III." I spat, right there on the spot.

"Damn it. Filthy Imperial swine."

"... That's quite a grudge." Jess, sitting on the floor, pale with pain, still found the energy to needle me.

"Yeah." I pulled the beam back, irritated.

"If you'd been forced to stare at that face in every textbook since you were six, you'd want to throw a shoe at it too."

"Right now I'd rather throw you at the bug."

"Right now you should shut up." I crouched, quickly checked that the clasps on her leg gear hadn't been fully torn off, then swung her arm over my shoulder.

"Can you stand?" Jess tried putting weight on it. The second her toes touched the ground, her whole face twisted.

"... I can. With zero dignity."

"Then don't." I clamped the flashlight between my teeth, one hand on her back, the other hooked under her knees, and simply picked her up. She clearly hadn't expected that.

"Wait, hold on — you're this strong?"

"Shut up. You're not heavy right now."

"That's a dangerous thing to say, Shimo." She leaned into my back, her voice muffled against my ear, a little breathless.

"Talking like that makes it sound like you're sweet-talking an injured girl."

"This is casualty transport. Not sweet-talking."

"Oh — so this is how you usually carry people."

"There's no 'usually.' You're the first."

"Wow. Should I feel honored?"

"You should feel ashamed. You're also the first person to run in here and feed yourself to the enemy." I kept scolding her as I carried her toward the door with the red cross. The sliding door stuck for a second before it gave. A wave of dry, cold chemical smell rolled out first — metal disinfectant, and the particular burnt-circuit smell unique to long-expired equipment. The flashlight swept the room, and it actually looked far more presentable than the corridor. At least no fanged bugs.

Nothing floating in liquid designed to give you nightmares. A few fixed beds still stood, the wall cabinet hung half-open, and the emergency light was still holding on to one faint, feeble bar of blue.

"Looks usable," I mumbled around the flashlight. By our recent standards, that counted as five-star luck. I shouldered the door shut, jammed the half-broken manual lock into place, and only then set Jess down on the bed. The moment she touched the mattress she hissed, right leg pulling back on instinct.

"Hurts?" Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"No, I feel so good I want to cry."

"So: it hurts." I pulled off my visor, shook the sweat-soaked hair off my forehead, and glared down at her.

"Pull that again and next time I'll let the bug do the educating." Jess leaned against the headboard, a little pale, mouth as stubborn as ever.

"Its teaching methods are too rough. I prefer yours."

"I can switch to the rough version right now."

"That works too." I stared at her for two seconds, decided against continuing this nutritionally void conversation with a casualty — mostly to avoid actually flipping her off the bed — and turned to the medicine cabinet instead. Definitely an Imperial facility. Medical module specs, label formats, emergency packaging codes — all different from Federation standard.

Fortunately, the basic logic of trauma first aid runs pretty much the same across the galaxy: stop the bleeding, immobilize, reduce inflammation, prevent infection. Civilization can fracture all it wants — a swollen ankle looks exactly the same everywhere. I quickly found a canister of aerosol anti-inflammatory, a roll of stabilizing tape, and a portable bone scanner. The scanner let out a shrill Imperial startup chime when it powered on, setting my teeth on edge.

"Bear with it." I came back to the bed.

"Tell me what you're doing first."

"Checking whether that leg still belongs to you."

"That has zero reassuring effect."

"I'm not the medical officer." I dropped to one knee beside the bed and cut open the torn insulation around her right ankle. Her legs had always had good lines. Swollen up like this, it just made me angrier. If that creature had a second life, I'd be more than happy to go stab it dead all over again. When the scanner passed over, Jess visibly tensed her calf. I looked up.

"Say something if it hurts."

"The way you're talking right now..." She looked down at me, breathing still a little fast.

"It sounds gentler than usual."

"You're hallucinating."

"Oh? So your face being this close is also part of the medical procedure?" My hand stopped.... Does this woman have any idea she's currently a casualty? I took a breath and threw the scan feed up on the bedside screen. No fracture. Severe bruising and soft-tissue swelling. Some ligament strain on top of it. I finally let out a small breath.

"You're lucky. Nothing broken."

"That's because I'm hard to kill."

"That's because the bug didn't have time to finish taking you apart." I opened the anti-inflammatory spray and aimed it at her ankle.

"This one's actually going to hurt."

"I don't believe you." I pressed the trigger.

"—FUCK!!" Good. Now she believed me. The cold mist hit the outrageously swollen skin and she nearly launched off the bed, one hand clamping down on my wrist with a grip that didn't belong to a patient — more like a cat that still had plenty of bite left in it. I nearly laughed.

"So tough a second ago?"

"I'm still tough," Jess said through her teeth.

"You just administer first aid like you're settling a grudge."

"I'm your lifesaver."

"A few more rescues like this and I might start considering surrendering to the bug." I let out a short "Hah" and started wrapping her ankle. As the tape went round and round, the room went quiet all at once. Outside, the storm was still slamming into the walls, the whole facility occasionally shuddering low and deep, like some invisible beast was grinding the entire high-heat atmosphere against this half-dead ruin.

But in here, the sound was muffled thick — nothing left but my breathing, her breathing, the thin sound of the tape pulling tight, and the dying little lamp over the bed flickering every so often. The atmosphere started to go wrong. Not dangerous-wrong. The other kind of wrong — the kind that gives you a headache. I genuinely hate my own brain at moments like this.

Outside was a three-hundred-degree storm, an abandoned Imperial facility, dead comms, a mutant bug, and no confirmation on whether Maki and D had made it back to the Yukikaze. In theory I should have been entirely focused on how do we get out of here alive.

Instead, my brain chose exactly this moment to get distracted by the fact that Jess's hand was still around my wrist, her leg was resting across my knee, her eyes were still a little red at the corners from the pain a second ago, and lying there on the bed she looked thirty percent less punchable than usual and seventy percent more fragile than she had any business looking. Bad. Worse — she'd clearly noticed I'd gone quiet for too long.

"Shimo."

"What."

"Your ears are red." The tape in my hands nearly knotted itself.

"It's hot in here."

"The medical bay's cooler than outside."

"I just fought a monster."

"So fighting monsters makes your ears go red?"

"You talk a lot today." Jess laughed. Not her usual room-filling laugh — lower, a little thin, like a laugh forced back up after real pain. Her hand on my wrist didn't loosen. Her thumb even brushed, entirely unnecessarily, against the edge of my glove.

"I just think," she said, "that every time you get nervous, your mouth gets extra mean." I clipped the last loop of tape and looked up, glaring.

"I'm not nervous. I'm regretting not stabbing that thing enough times."

"Oh." She blinked.

"So when you charged in yelling my name like that, that was you wanting another shot at me too?"

"Yes."

"Wow. Heartless."

"You earned it." She laughed again, but her eyes didn't move away. That look was infuriating. Not the loud, deliberate, hook-you kind. More like she was simply, seriously watching me — and it was exactly that seriousness that made it lethal. Like she genuinely remembered: I was the one who charged in. I was the one who didn't fire. I was the one who used a blade to pin that thing down. I was the one who carried her in. I was the one crouched here now, wrapping her foot. Her gaze made my scalp crawl.

I ducked my head and started packing the supplies away.

"Done," I said.

"At least you're keeping this leg today."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow depends on whether you go looking for another way to die."

"If I told you," Jess said slowly, "that half the reason I ran in there was to look good in front of you — would that make you a little happier?" The anti-inflammatory canister nearly dropped straight out of my hand. This woman was genuinely sick. And not in the leg. I wanted to fire back with I'd rather crack your skull open and check if it's hollow inside, but the words caught before they made it out. Because the expression on her face when she said it didn't quite look like she was joking.

She was still smiling, but the smile sat lower than usual — low enough that it felt like she was just using the skin of a joke to wrap something true she wouldn't say outright. At times like this, I start missing the simplicity of the bug. Monsters only want to eat you. People always insist on waiting until you're exhausted and completely unguarded, and then throwing something at your chest that's worse than teeth. In the end, all I could manage was dry: "I'd rather hang you at the entrance as a warning sign."

"That still counts as keeping me close to your heart, doesn't it."

"Jess."

"Fine, fine, I'll shut up." She said shut up. Her eyes stayed curved in a smile. The whole mood in the room had gone completely sideways. This was supposed to be casualty first aid. Now it had turned into some absurd, unreasonable, and somehow entirely functional romantic subplot shoved sideways into the middle of a horror movie. Outside: a storm and an abandoned Imperial facility. Inside: a hospital bed, antiseptic, low light, and a casualty smiling at me in a way that had no business working this well.

I genuinely wanted to know at which exact step I'd walked my life into this.

"Rest for five minutes." I stood, working to drag my voice back to something normal.

"I'm going to check if there's a working comms terminal and an exit anywhere in this place." Jess leaned back against the headboard, lifting eyes that still carried a trace of pain to look at me.

"You're not running?" I stopped.

"What?"

"Your ears went that red. I thought you'd be out the door the next second." I glared at her, and finally managed: "... You'd better genuinely have a hurt foot. Otherwise I want to put another hole in you right now." She laughed hard enough that her shoulders shook — which jarred the injury, and she winced, hissing in a sharp breath.

"Serves you right," I said. But I still reached out on reflex to steady her, easing her back down against the pillow. She used the motion to catch my wrist instead, giving it one light shake.

"Shimo."

"What now."

"Thank you." She wasn't smiling this time. I looked at her, and for a second, couldn't find a word. Because it was too sincere. Sincere enough that every comeback, every deflection, every escape route I'd had ready lost its target, leaving nothing but a clumsy, thoroughly unpracticed kind of awkwardness at being thanked. In the end all I managed, very quietly, was: "... Don't charge in so fast next time."