A Wave from Space

No one to trust

"Mike! I-" he tries to say something but I cut him off immediately.

"Get away from her. Now," I'll need him somewhere that he can't escape without having to face me. "Between those two tall beds close to Maria. Move."

"Mike, look. Things are-"

"Now, or I swear I'll smash your head open." His face is unreadable. He doesn't look scared. But he does what I said.

I walk to Maria. She half opens her eyes. Fresh tears swell up as she sees me. I try not to lose Derek from my peripheral vision, but I can't seem to be able to take my eyes off her. I can feel her pain. I want to just fall on my knees next to her and cry with her. She says something, no louder than a whisper.

"Thank you.... thank you... You shouldn't... But thank you..." That is all she manages to say. I pull the IV out of her arm and put some pressure for a while to stop the bleeding. After that I take her hand in mine. She squeezes it very weakly and I squeeze it right back.

"The hell did you do to her?"

"I just gave her a sedative." He sees me reaching for the restrain button. "I wouldn't do that. There is a good reason why she is restrained. She is one of those bastards that attacked the Hub. If you let her go, she'll kills us. "

It's not a conscious decision but I stop squeezing her hand. She understands the meaning of this gesture. Her lips quivered and then pressed together shut. She is hurt. But so am I.

All the pain I felt about losing my best friend and it could be the fault of another friend I had. Could Maria be a saboteur? Could she be acting so friendly because she wanted everyone to trust her? Yes. That is exactly how someone who wanted people to trust him would act.

The thing is, it was effective. It's not easy to hate people you like. Even if she really did it, I can't bring myself to be angry at her. I'm not feeling a murderous rage. Just unbearable sadness.

"It happened right after the storm. People started dying when no one was looking. We lost so many people."

Images of my coworkers dying in the showers or in Storage flash before my eyes. I flinch. But Derek's face is as unemotive as it always is, if not more so. Is he that careless about other or is that how he deals with pain?

"We later realised what was happening. Did you see that the door for the Quantum computer room was breached?" No, I haven't, but I don't let him know that.

"Well, they tried to do something in that room. No doubt something that would give the technology to those who send them. We were barely able to defeat them. They were many more than I would expect. Tony, Andrew, James..."

I am just absorbing the information, too depressed to process it, but Maria shocks me back in reality. She is getting stronger without the sedative IV.

"Don't you dare stain their memory like that." It took her all her power to scream that. After that she was gasping for air.

"Innocent, cute, little Maria. Who would suspect her. She personally-"

"Shut the fuck up Derek. Jesus. Let me think for a second." Maria really broke me out of some kind of darkness induced apathy. What Derek said sound realistic, only if I believe that people I know turned into murderers overnight. Now that I'm out of this trance I start to see some cracks in his story. I'll start with the most obvious one.

"Why are you preparing her for a brain implant? Why are you having one?"

"Orders from higher up, may even be from the president himself. They ordered us to install this slightly modified brain implant. I don't know why."