Aetheral Space

"She's a beauty, ain't she?" grinned Skipper.

He flexed his new arm, watching with obvious fascination as the artificial muscle fibres - like shining silver strings - stretched and contracted accordingly. Without its exterior casing, the prosthetic arm seemed fairly flimsy, to tell the truth, but Dragan couldn't deny the intricacy of the engineering that had gone into it.

They were in a hospital room on the planet Taldan - somehow, Skipper had managed to pull in enough favours from his contacts in the UAP to get a private room at the Anna Sait Memorial Hospital. Dragan didn't imagine Skipper's new prosthetic could have been cheap, so those contacts of Skipper's must have been very high quality.

The room was a sterile white, reminding Dragan somewhat of a Supremacy cruiser - but the white seemed more sleek than stark here, intended to provide comfort more than present an unyielding image. Architecture designed for luxury rather than intimidation.

Outside the expansive window, a sprawling cityscape could be seen. The section of Taldan suitable for human habitation wasn't too large in the grand scheme of things, but the planetary government had packed that small area with as much civilization as it could hold. The planet and the city were both called Taldan - buildings built upon buildings, stretching as far up as the eye could see. A tower made of towers.

Even in this upper section, the sunlight was partially blocked out by the monolithic skyscrapers that towered above.

"Mr. Skipper," said Serena from her chair, peering at where Skipper lay in his hospital bed.

"Yes, Serena?"

"That doesn't make any sense."

Skipper smiled. "What doesn't make any sense?"

"You're a boy," Serena said. "So how come your arm is a 'she'?"

"It's just an expression," Skipper said - a weariness in his tone suggested that these kinds of questions weren't too uncommon. "You don't have to take it literally, okay?"

"Did you steal it from a robo-girl?" Serena frowned. She seemed genuinely distressed at the prospect.

Bruno chimed in, his exasperated expression taking precedence over Serena's for an instant. "No, Serena, he didn't. We came here and bought it with money, remember?"

Ruth nodded from the corner, where she was standing with Dragan.

Serena's expression didn't brighten up. Instead, she crossed her arms and grumbled: "Could be a set-up."

As Skipper, Bruno and Serena continued their - for lack of a better word - 'argument', Dragan leaned in to speak to Ruth. "Is it always like this?" he muttered.

"Yep," she said. Her eyes were still focused on Skipper's new arm, traces of the sadness she'd displayed back on Caelus Breck still visible in her eyes.

It was annoying to talk to someone who was clearly unhappy, so Dragan decided he might as well try to cheer her up - or at least, change the direction of her train of thought. "She knows it's not actually from a robot girl, right?" he chuckled. Stating the obvious wasn't the gold standard of his comedic repertoire, but he supposed that it was better than nothing.

Ruth nodded. "Mm. She understands more than she lets on. She's not stupid, she just … looks at things differently."

Dragan thought back to the death glare Serena had given him back in that cave on Yoslof, when he'd mentioned the name 'Cott'. Yeah, he could see that.

He tapped his foot against the ground as Ruth's gaze returned to Skipper's arm, searching his mind for conversation topics.

"Feels weird," he muttered after a moment.

Ruth glanced at him. "What does?"

"Not being in Supremacy territory," he said. "I've never left it before. There's this sense, you know - like I shouldn't be here."

"Like you don't belong here," Ruth nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I get ya. I got the same thing first time I set foot outside the UAP."

"You're from these parts, then?"

It was a stupid way to phrase it, really. The United Alliance of Planets was a loose but massive coalition of worlds united solely by the fact that they didn't want to be invaded. There was hardly a consistent culture that would make the planet's similar enough for Ruth to feel any nostalgia here.

"Not these parts exactly," said Ruth quietly. Her shoulders tensed up - bad memories, clearly. Dragan frowned: his objective had been to cheer her up, but he'd clearly done the opposite.

"You two planning a mutiny over there?" called out Skipper from his bed. "Gimme a warning before you pull the guns out if you are!"

Serena followed his gaze, face dropping as she did. "Don't, Miss Blaine! Even though Skipper stole that girl's arm, he's good deep down! I'm sure of it!"

Dragan rolled his eyes. "Mind your own business, old man," he said. "If I wanted to mutiny, you'd already be out the window."

Skipper put his new hand to his heart, face a mask of mock-indignation. "Old?" he whispered, as if the word was a deathly insult. "You wound me, Mr. Hadrien. You really do."

"Shame. I was aiming to kill."

Skipper's gaze turned to Ruth. "You see, Ruth?" he said sadly. "I give an arm for this boy, let him stay on my shiny new ship, and this is how he repays me. It's unbelievable."

"You only got the ship because I broke you out of prison," said Dragan. "Any debt there has been paid in full."

Skipper shook his head. "Stingy."

There was a beep from the door, and a helmeted doctor poked their head in. It had surprised Dragan at first, but it seemed that every member of medical personnel at the hospital wore these helmets - able to discern infection and injury with a glance, as well as provide perfect sterility. The featureless black face of the mask was a little intimidating, to tell the truth, but Dragan supposed providing a level of detachment from their patients was a function of the mask as well.

"Doctor Wiston is ready for you now," the doctor said, their voice smoothly modulated to be as calming as possible. "He just needs to attach exterior protection to the arm. Are you ready?"

Without waiting for an answer, the doctor tapped the screen of their script and a hoverchair gently floated into the room, a few inches over the ground. They'd applied anaesthetic to Skipper when they were attaching the arm, so it was no surprise they didn't trust him to walk around right now.

"Yessir," grinned Skipper, grunting as he pushed himself out of the bed, putting his organic hand against the bedside table to keep himself steady. "Just, ah, just gimme a sec."

He looked up at Ruth for a second, his gaze lingering, before his eyes snapped to look at Dragan instead.

"Mr. Hadrien," he smirked. "If you wouldn't mind, this old-timer could use a helping hand."

-

"You're not being very gentle with that, you know," said Skipper worriedly, gripping the arms of the hoverchair tight as Dragan roughly pushed it down the hallway.

"I'm sorry," Dragan lied. "I'm not used to this kind of medical equipment. I really feel bad about it."

Dragan had never much liked hospitals - he didn't see how anyone really could. Unless you worked there, the only reason you would go to a hospital was if something was wrong with you, or if you were visiting someone who had something wrong with them. Those circumstances didn't lend themselves to the most optimistic environment.

"Just this way," said the masked doctor as they passed two of their similarly-clad colleagues, their voice made bizarrely soothing by the modulation. "It should only take a few minutes to get the exterior attached. Don't worry."

"Me?" grinned Skipper, leaning back in his seat. "Worry? Not once in my life. Right, Mr. Hadrien?"

"Mm," Dragan grunted.

"I didn't quite catch that, kiddo."

"Right." He packed as much disdain into the word as it could carry.

As they walked, they passed through some kind of relaxation area, where patients were lounging around in comfy-looking chairs and watching a holographic videograph display. Even a few members of staff were watching too, masked doctors and nurses following the screen with obvious concern in their body language.

Dragan looked at the videograph as they passed by, listened in. It was a news broadcast, apparently regarding the bombing of a low-level news office that had taken place several days earlier.

"We have now received confirmation," the Pugnant newsreader was saying, eyes obviously scanning some kind of display just off-screen. "That the explosion that took fifteen lives earlier this week was indeed the work of the terrorist known as the Citizen - or, at the very least, that they have claimed responsibility for the attack."

The display changed to show an image of the office after the bombing - the wall of the square building exploding outwards with a bright fiery light, raining metal all around the surrounding area. Fifteen deaths didn't seem so many for such an attack, but Dragan supposed he didn't know the circumstances.

The screen switched back to the newsreader. "Now, we here at Brighteye Taldan have received a video message claiming to be from the Citizen along with this claim of responsibility. Due to S4's new anti-terrorist measures, we are not permitted to air this message, but I have been told we can read you this excerpt."

The newsreader cleared his throat. "'These deaths are tragedies, but they will not be unique. This is mere prologue'," he intoned, golden eyes scanning the message. "'Until the shackles of this society snap, the Citizen will continue to appear. None are exempt. If you bear responsibility, you too will see his face.' A chilling threat to the people of Taldan. I'm now live with Professor Ricard Blaise from the University of Greice, who specialises in criminal psychology. Professor, what does this message say to you?"

As the newsreader switched to his interview, Dragan felt a cold metal finger tap his arm. He jumped and looked down at Skipper, who was looking at him with an eyebrow raised.

"These kinds of things catch your interest?" he said, glancing at the videograph.

Dragan shrugged. It was just interesting to get a sense of the local politics.

-

Ambran Roz was going to die. He was almost certain of it.

Shedding his hair as fast as he could - having new black locks grow in their place for camouflage - Ambran huddled in the alleyway, watching his apartment from a safe distance. His discarded hair fell into clumps at his feet, its replacement so long it served more as a dark cloak than anything else. Sweat poured down the Umbrant's forehead, soaking into his new locks, but he did his best to keep still. He couldn't risk whoever was coming to kill him catching a glimpse of his movement.

This wasn't fair. This just wasn't fair. He was a reporter, for Y's sake - he didn't get paid enough for this kind of peril.

He knew the information he'd stumbled into was deadly, but it wasn't like he'd wanted to find it! He'd be fine keeping quiet with just a little bribe!

This section of the city was crowded beyond crowded, apartments smashed together as close as they could go while still technically being considered rooms. Cars flew past so quickly they were just black blurs, briefly cutting out the lights from the neon advertisements that coated nearly every surface.

The walkways were full to bursting with crowds, the metal paths seeming precarious over the urban plummet. The perfect path to blend in, if Ambran could get out of the alley without being noticed - and that wasn't something he was especially confident in.

An uncertain solution slowly congealed inside of his head, like rotting fruit. Incredibly unlikely to work, but it could give some peace of mind.

There were people who wanted to kill him - what had happened back at the office had made that clear enough. But there were also people who wanted to make him surrender what he knew before they killed him. That information was his lifeline, at least for a while. He needed to safeguard it as long as he could.

His pain tolerance was nearly non-existent. He'd break before the torture even started, if it came to that. The only way he could stop himself from giving up the information was if he didn't know the information.

There was a thing only Umbrants could do - part of the package of half-baked features their Gene Tyrant creator had put into them. Ambran took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and consciously forgot.

What exactly he'd forgotten he no longer knew - the memories would be completely inaccessible for a week exactly. If he was captured, he'd bought himself a week before they killed him. Thinking of it, though, they could still just torture him to death looking for information he didn't have.

Still - the burden of his shoulders felt so much less heavy. Whatever he'd just forgotten, it had been truly awful.

Sneaking himself away into the darkness of the city, Ambran didn't even turn to look as his apartment burst into flames behind him.

It was business as usual on Taldan, after all.

-

The plating they'd put on Skipper's new arm to cover the delicate inner mechanisms was good work. It consisted of a series of interlocking metal plates, painted to match Skipper's natural skin tone. Hell, from a distance Dragan was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to tell the arm was artificial.

The waiting room was smaller than the one Skipper had been resting in - but in a hospital like this, ‘small’ didn’t mean much. It was still bigger than Dragan’s Supremacy quarters. This room didn’t have any windows, making it more like an enclosed box free of the vista they’d previously been enjoying. With the doctor gone for the moment - and the walls muffling sound - it seemed like Skipper and Dragan could have been the only ones in the building.

A shiver went down Dragan’s spine at the very thought.

"Nice work, huh?" said Skipper, turning his arm over again to inspect it. The doctor had left him and Dragan alone in the room for a moment while they went to fetch the final paperwork. "You wanna touch it?"

"No. How much did that thing cost, anyway?"

"Don't worry about it. What are you worried about, by the way?"

Dragan blinked. Had he heard that right? Skipper's tone had snapped from playful to serious mid-sentence - no, mid-word. The man wasn't even consistent about his emotions.

"Huh?" he said.

"You're worried," said Skipper, looking at the wall from his chair. "Or, at the very least, something is playing on your mind. There's no point hiding it. What is it?"

Dragan sighed, resisted the urge to grit his teeth. He really did hate the way this idiot could read him.

"I want to know," he said quietly after a moment.

"Know what?" Skipper's tone showed he already knew full well.

"I want to know why you kidnapped me."