Chương 297: 125.Stranded 2

Jess looked at me and blinked, slowly.

"So will you still come save me next time?" I was quiet for half a second. Then, uselessly, I found the answer didn't need any thought at all.

"Yes," I said. The room went quiet again. Outside, the storm was still slamming the walls; inside, the lights kept flickering; that irritating face of the Imperial Emperor was probably still hanging out there at the end of the corridor, and the bug's carcass was probably still rotting somewhere in the passage. By any reasonable measure, a normal person right now would be prioritizing how do we get out alive. And of course, right at this moment, Jess smiled again. And of course, I didn't pull my hand back.... Good.

The mood was officially sideways again. Jess's hand was still hooked around my wrist. Not gripping hard, but with no intention of letting go. She'd worked through the worst of the pain by now; her color was better than a moment ago, though her eyes still carried a faint, physiological redness at the corners.

It made her look a little less like the type who'd want to get one more smart remark in even as the sky fell, and a little more like something that could make you forget, if you weren't careful, that she was actually a walking disaster. Dangerous. Especially for someone like me, who was theoretically supposed to be mapping an escape route right now, and instead had every internal alarm going off just because she was holding my wrist. I cleared my throat.

"You can let go now."

"No."

"... You're injured. Not regressing down the evolutionary tree."

"I just about got torn in half by a giant bug. Holding onto my life-saver's hand should still fall inside reasonable compensation territory, shouldn't it?"

"That's not how compensation works."

"Emotional distress damages." I looked at her, expressionless.

"Keep talking and I'm switching you to silent-recovery mode."

"What's that."

"Sealing your mouth shut." Jess's smile only widened.

"Shimo, right now you look exactly like the type who's completely panicking inside and doing a bad job of faking calm."

"I'm not panicking."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"You are." She gave the hand still holding my wrist a small shake, dropping her voice on purpose.

"And every time you panic, you start saying very stern things with a completely straight face." I wanted to argue, and uselessly found she wasn't entirely wrong. Which made it worse. I tried to pull my hand back. She tugged it downward instead, forcing me to lean in another step closer to the bed.

"Hey."

"Hey what," Jess blinked.

"I'm a patient right now. Be nicer to me."

"Being a patient doesn't mean you get to take advantage."

"Then why are you blushing?"

"It's hot in here."

"This is the medical bay. There's a half-dead AC unit running."

"I just fought a monster."

"So fighting monsters makes your ears go red?"

"Jess."

"Okay, okay," she said, dragging it out with a laugh, then suddenly dropped her voice.

"I just want to confirm one thing." I went still. She was looking at me. Not her usual deliberately teasing look, and not obviously joking either. More like she genuinely had something stuck in her throat, and habit made her knock on the shell of a joke first, letting whatever was underneath show through slowly.

"What thing." She was quiet for half a second.

"When you charged in — you were actually scared, weren't you." I didn't answer right away. Because that question landed dead center. I could mock her. Could yell at her. Could tell her she deserved it. Could tell her that if she pulled this again, I'd strap her to the lander seat myself.

But if she wanted me to deny what I'd actually felt in that instant — the way my head went completely blank the second I heard her scream, no room left even for fear, just one straight line of she can't die in there — I couldn't get the words out. So I picked the least dignified option available.

"You were loud," I said. Jess stared at me for two seconds, then laughed.

"Oh, I see."

"See what."

"I see that even now, this is still the only way Hoshino Shimo knows how to admit things."

"Admit what."

"That you care about me." I nearly stuffed the rest of the tape roll straight into her mouth.

"How did you get there from what I said?"

"Because if you didn't care, you'd have stood in the doorway and calmly run a risk assessment before deciding whether to come in." She said it slowly.

"But you came straight in. Didn't even fire a shot. Just threw yourself at it with a knife."

"That's because a shot would've gone through you too."

"I know that part." Her smile didn't fade.

"But you still came in." I stayed quiet. At times like this, silence looks a lot like an answer. Jess watched me. Whatever usually sparked and skittered in her eyes drew in low, and close. Close enough that I found myself, absurdly, thinking of that kiss in the Keiun I wasn't supposed to think about — and then, right behind it, that earlier "friend kiss" that had felt more like a theft. I decided my head genuinely needed to be taken apart for maintenance.

Preferably starting with whatever circuit automatically overheated the second two women got too close. She said, low, out of nowhere: "Shimo."

"... What."

"My foot's hurt right now. I can't run."

"So?"

"If you wanted to kiss me right now, I don't think I could get away." I turned to stone on the spot. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Outside: a scorching storm. In here: an Imperial biological weapons research station. Possibly still lying just outside the door: the giant bug I'd just stabbed to death. And Jess, in the middle of all that, delivering that line without so much as a change in her breathing.

I stared at her for a full three seconds before I finally found my voice.

"You really did hit your head, didn't you." Jess's shoulders shook with laughter — which jarred her leg, and she hissed sharply, face crumpling.

"Serves you right," I said. But my hand had already moved first, steadying her calf so she wouldn't actually tear the fresh wrap loose. She glanced down at me. Then added, light and thoroughly infuriating: "But you didn't deny it." I nearly cinched her tape one loop tighter.

"I'm denying it."

"Too slow. Inadmissible."

"Is this an Imperial medical bay or your personal courtroom?"

"A provisional military tribunal." She lifted her chin, delivering total nonsense with complete solemnity.

"The accused, Hoshino Shimo. Charge: staring at the casualty for an excessive length of time."

"I was checking whether you were going into shock."

"Oh." She drew it out on purpose.

"So checking made your whole face go red?"

"Jess."

"Fine, fine. I'll stop." She said she'd stop. Her mouth stayed curved up. Looking at that face — fresh off being nearly eaten alive and still finding the energy to tease me half to death — I found myself genuinely wondering how little a person had to fear dying to keep this attitude up in an environment like this. Then I remembered the scream. Remembered the tear in her suit at the shoulder where it had had her pinned. Remembered what it would have looked like if that foreleg had pressed another half-inch deeper.

Remembered that if I'd been one step slower, she wouldn't be lying here on this bed running her mouth at me — she'd be one more disgusting thing added to the tanks out in the corridor. Whatever restlessness she'd stirred up in me finally settled, slowly, back down. I pulled my hand free and stood up straight.

"Rest once you're done laughing." Jess looked at me. This time she didn't answer right away. All that was left in the room was the low, dull thud of the storm against the walls outside, and the intermittent standby chime of some ancient piece of medical equipment. The blue-white emergency light cut the line of her cheek soft — softer than anything this place's backdrop had any right to allow. She asked, quietly:"Were you really scared I'd die?" I closed my eyes.

Just how far did this woman think she could push me today? But I answered her anyway. Not loudly. Not gracefully.

"... Yeah." She looked at me, and for a moment her eyes went quiet in a way that didn't suit her at all. The quiet lasted only an instant — short enough to be a trick of the light. The next second she smiled again, small and easy.

"Then I came out ahead."

"Keep talking like that and I'll start considering whether to hit you with enough painkiller to put you straight out."

"Shimo."

"What now."

"Once we make it back alive, you can go right back to being as stubborn as you want." She paused, eyes still on me.

"I've got plenty of time, after all." The words came out light. But they were more trouble than every ridiculous thing she'd said before that. Because this wasn't teasing. This was starting to sound like a declaration. I didn't know what to say to that, so I went with the safest, least brave option available — pretending I hadn't heard it.

"Get some rest." I turned to grab the flashlight and an emergency tool I'd pried off the wall.

"I'm going to see if there's anything usable out there — equipment, a comms terminal, another way out." Jess didn't let me go right away. A split second before I turned, she reached out and caught the hem of my suit. Barely any pressure behind it — if anything, it carried that particular weakness that comes with being hurt. But it was enough to stop me completely.

"Shimo." I didn't look back.

"What."

"Be careful." This woman really does know how to pick her moments. A minute ago she'd been dragging the whole mood somewhere it had no business going. Now her voice dropped low enough to sound like she was genuinely afraid that the second I walked out, I'd vanish into the dark past this Imperial medical bay and never come back. My throat moved once. In the end, all I gave her was:"Don't move around either." She finally let go.

I resealed my visor, clicked the flashlight on, and re-holstered the thermal sidearm somewhere I could draw it fast. After what had just happened, this place didn't qualify as "temporarily safe" anymore. At best, it was "somewhat more compatible with staying alive than the storm and the bug outside." The door cracked open. Blue light and a deeper dark bled in together from the corridor. I looked back at Jess once.

She was half-propped against the headboard, right leg immobilized, still a little pale, but at least breathing steady now. The face that usually broadcast I'm about to say something ridiculous had gone unusually quiet. She almost looked... well-behaved. The thought surfaced, and I cursed myself for it on the spot. Well-behaved, my ass. This woman had just nearly fed herself to a bug. I pulled the door shut behind me, leaving just enough of a gap that she'd hear me if I called back, and stepped out.

The corridor was even quieter than before. Not the safe kind of quiet. The kind that settles over a facility that's been dead a long time, still running on scraps of power, still pretending it hasn't finished dying. I kept the beam low. The creature's carcass was still jammed against the half-collapsed framework and the wall plating, yellow-white corrosive fluid trickling steadily into the floor drains — like the whole place was slowly eating it back. The entrance was sealed solid with rubble.

The dark red sky outside only bled through the smallest gaps, like a wound that hadn't stopped breathing. Every time the storm hit the outer wall, the light through those cracks pulsed hotter, redder, and the whole corridor shuddered faintly with it. I headed for the main console across from the medical bay first. It was a terminal half sunk into the wall, most of the panel cracked, but one stubborn square of blue light still held on in the lower right corner.

All the text on it was Imperial, but I wasn't picky anymore — anything still lit counted as hope. Fortunately, military system icons tend to be more honest than the language attached to them. I spent about thirty seconds guessing at buttons and finally woke it up into a secondary operational layer. The moment the display fully opened, my stomach dropped half an inch. This wasn't an ordinary mining outpost. Most of the category tabs across the main screen had degraded badly, but a few keywords were still legible.

Biological Sample Management Host Response Log Extreme Thermal Environment Adaptation Trials Weaponization Assessment I stared at those lines and felt my scalp crawl, inch by inch. —A biological weapons research station. And not some fringe project that only sounded academic. This had already reached the stage of hosts, adaptation trials, and weaponization assessment. Which meant that thing I'd just stabbed to death almost certainly wasn't a natural organism at all.

It was something the Empire had bred, tested, and possibly meant to deploy — grown right here on this scorching planet. I very nearly wanted to spit at Friedman III's portrait a second time.

"How much creative ambition do you people even have," I muttered under my breath.

"Couldn't just stick to mining the ore like everyone else. Had to raise bugs on the side, too." The terminal still had more to give. I scrolled down two more pages. A facility name and designation code came up, badly corrupted, just barely enough to make out that it belonged to some fringe Imperial military research division. The next page was worse — batch after batch of test-subject ID numbers, environmental tolerance charts, and a set of heat-zone logs flagged as Successful Colonization. Successful colonization.

Good. So these things hadn't just been kept in tanks. They'd actually been let loose to see what happened. I took a breath and forced the nausea back down. Right now, holding a moral tribunal for the entire galaxy wasn't the priority. Finding comms equipment was. An emergency-comms icon was still lit in the corner of the main interface. I opened it. Signal module present. External antenna connection present. But output power was pitiful, and the main array had probably died a long time ago.

The display said it could only manage a short-range directional burst right now — no guarantee a full packet would punch through the storm outside. For me, at this point, that counted as mercy from above. I plugged my wrist terminal in immediately and started pinging the Yukikaze's standard rescue identifier. First attempt: nothing. Second attempt: just static. Third attempt — finally, buried in the turbulence, a faint echo in familiar Federation format. Every nerve in me came alive at once.

"Yukikaze, this is Hoshino Shimo." I kept my voice low, every syllable as clean as I could make it.

"Repeat: this is Hoshino Shimo. Jess McCallow and I are trapped on the surface, inside an abandoned Imperial facility. Jess has a leg injury — not currently life-threatening. Facility identified as—" A heavier impact hit outside. The whole screen flared, the signal bar dropping to a single flickering notch. I gritted my teeth and kept pushing the transmission through.

"—identified as an Imperial biological weapons research station. Repeat: Imperial biological weapons research station. Large-scale, heat-adapted experimental organisms present. Entrance collapsed. External conditions: ultra-high-temperature storm. Please acknowledge." The system let out a short shriek. Static rolled up like a sheet of red-hot iron sand grinding across the channel. And then, buried somewhere in that noise that barely qualified as sound at all, I thought I heard something. Very short. Very broken.

Very familiar.

"... Shimo..." I went completely still. Maki. It had to be Maki. The voice held for only an instant before the storm and the dying Imperial hardware smothered it whole. But that instant alone was enough to take the thing sitting hard and tight in my chest and sink it into something heavier, and different. She was still out there looking. And she knew I was alive.

I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, pushed the transmission power up as high as it would go, and dumped every last scrap of location and environmental data I had in one final burst.

"Yukikaze, if you're receiving, mark our coordinates. There may be additional exits and usable power sources deeper inside. I'm continuing the search. Repeat: I'm continuing the search." No answer this time. The signal bar bottomed out completely, leaving nothing but an undignified wall of static. I wasn't too disappointed. Because at least I'd gotten the message out. And this place wasn't just a shelter anymore. Wasn't just a monster's den. It was evidence. An Imperial black site.

A biological weapons research station. Another nail hammered into the same spreading black rot that already connected the Kushima thread, Hook, and the helium-hydrogen reactor. I turned and looked deeper down the corridor. The lights were dimmer that way. The specimen tanks packed tighter together. Here and there on the walls, half-scraped ID codes and containment warnings still showed through — like the whole facility had tried to hide itself and simply run out of time before it could bury everything.

I tightened my grip on the flashlight and the thermal sidearm.

"All right," I said, low.

"Since I'm already here — let's see exactly how much else you people have been breeding." Then I glanced back once, at the thin gap under the medical bay door. Quiet inside. Jess was probably still awake. Or maybe faking sleep, to give me one less thing to split my attention over. Either way, she was in there. For now. And I had work to do. Not just to get us out alive. But so that when the Yukikaze finally did find us again, we wouldn't just be walking out with our lives.

We'd be walking out with enough evidence to keep certain people from sleeping soundly for a very long time.