Into the Black Hole

Chapter 10: Remaining in Fabricated Reality

I open my eyes to coruscating white lights and scaly tentacles writhing above me. I sit up immediately to skirt away.

Big mistake. My head pounds, and dizziness overwhelms me. I reach up to press my eyebrow, but my hands stop halfway to my face. Horrified, my vision clears, revealing shiny black shackles handcuffing me to the handlebars on both sides of the hospital cot I'm lying on. My arms drop back down, and I realize that gravity has returned, most likely due to spaceship acceleration... unless I'm on a celestial body. I struggle against my bonds.

"Woah!" a deep and heavily accented voice comes from my right. "Easy, or you'll fall off the bed, sweetheart." His gaze drops to the shackles. "Well, maybe not off entirely, but you'll certainly catch yourself in a very... uncomfortable position, to say the least." I gawk at the thirty-something-year-old man getting up from a nearby chair and slowly approaching my cot. His palms face me to indicate he's coming in peace, but his demeanor tells a different story. His charcoal rimmed eyes are wide with curiosity, and a bandana with strings of nanopods and small animal bones covers his forehead. Three-dimensional microchips and beads are weaved through his dreadlocks. A mustache and interesting goatee twitches along with his evershifting smirk.

I wasn't sure before, but now I am certain that I'm hallucinating. Am I alive? Or is this Hell? Not that I particularly like ICUs, but everything here is too sterile to live up to my imagination. Maybe the demon in front of me is planning to conduct some kind of weird genetic experiment. Despite the intrusive nature of whatever look he's going for, the twist of his mouth is just as playful as it is intimidating.

As my headache marginally subsides, I look at the ceiling again and realize that the tentacles I saw previously are just twisted metal wires and pipes. An IV sticks out of a vein in my left arm delivering clear fluid, a nasal cannula is in my nose delivering oxygen, and a pulse oximeter is clipped onto my left forefinger. I lift my gaze up to a man on my left lying on a similar cot, unconscious.

Timour.

I wrestle with my restraints, the metal cutting into my bare wrists as I reach toward him.

"Hey, hey!" Bandana guy moves into my field of vision, blocking my view of Timour. "Your boyfriend's alright. We're not going to hurt him."

Ha! Like I believe that. No emblem exists on his all-black getup, but the red lights lining the walls around me signify we're on Martian premises. In addition, a symbol is embedded above the door—a sword with a curved blade reminiscent of an upside down cross.

The shackles prevent me from lifting my arms high, so I bend down in order to rip the nasal cannula out of my nose.

Before I can, Bandana guy protests, "Not that I would complain, but you might want to keep that on unless you prefer I give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

I don't know this man, and I'm not about to take orders from him. Besides, the device is irritating me. I glare at him and challenge, "I'm fine. And he's not my boyfriend."

He raises a brow. "You sure about that?" He points to a navy spacesuit hanging in the corner. "He gave you his suit."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, when we, you know," he begins, making a sweeping gesture with his hands, "rescued you from darkness and took you two on board, you were inside that suit. The IF wouldn't issue one of its dear Keepers a uniform any less than a perfect fit."

Fear pulses through me at the thought that Timour might suffer brain damage from anoxia. I cover my emotions with annoyance. "That bastard."

"Aw, come now, don't be so harsh on him," Bandana guy smiles knowingly. "After all, he had his arms around you while he was dying. Quite the romantic display. Good thing we found you and the poor lad in the nick of time; he's stable."