Beep

Chapter Thirteen

I panicked instantly. How was I supposed to help him? I grabbed all the spare papers I had stashed in my drawer so I could at least communicate with him. 'What's wrong?' I wrote and held it up for him to see.
'ISAC turned himself back on.' He replied. To that I just drew a question mark. 'I turned him off and now he's on again.' That didn't even make any sense, that wasn't possible. But really, what about the last month or so had made any sense?
'Where are you now?' I asked.
'In my room.'
'Are you safe?'
'For now.'
'How would you like me to help?'
'Speed up my ship so I can get to you faster.' He chuckled noiselessly as he held up the sign.
'Maybe that's not such a bad idea, you'll just have to do it on your own.' He drew a sad face in response and I giggled quietly. 'Good luck'. I wrote. 'I love you'.
'I love you too.' He wrote back. He let out a sigh and looked at me once before hanging up.

So of course I didn't get back to sleep after that, how was I supposed to? It was excruciating waiting for a call from him. All I had to keep me company were my thoughts, and those always went to the worst possible scenarios. How did his ISAC even turn himself back on?

"Andromeda, I do know what you're doing in there." The sound of ISAC's voice made me jump. I had... at least I thought I had... I muted him as soon as I got in the room. It looked like Evans's version wasn't the only one that had a little more power than he deserved. "If you're going to keep talking to him no matter what I say, just come do it out here."
"How do I know you won't do something crazy?" I asked.
"Do you really think I'd want to hurt you like that?"
"You already did, once."
"Well, that was awful of me and I've changed. Am I happy with your choices? No. But will I accept them? I really have no choice now." I hesitated for a moment, not sure whether to trust him or not. Carefully I decided,
"Fine. Then I need your help." I made my way to the main room and sat in front of the mainframe computer. "Evans has an ISAC on his ship, of course, but he's a little more malicious than you. When he's angry, he doesn't make the lights flicker, he kills people. Now you may not care what happens to Evans, but I don't want him to die, so is there any way you can help?"
"What could I do?"
"About as much as I could, I guess. I just..." My voice trailed off.
"He'll be fine, trust me." His tone went passed the point of genuine straight to like he was actually sure.

Just then a call came through from Evans. "Oh, I guess that's how you could tell we were still talking." I realized. I had forgotten that even though I had hidden used my personal laptop to call him, any call he made didn't exclusively go to my personal laptop. Before ISAC could respond, I picked up the call. I saw Evans's hand was up against his head and his clothes were slightly ripped. "Geez, that's the last time I go out there again." He remarked.
"You're speaking." I said. He removed his hand and underneath was a big red cut. "Oh, and you're hurt!"
"Yeah, he knows now what I'm up to now, so what's the point of trying to hide what we're saying?"
"Okay, but you're hurt."
"You're very cute when you worry, but don't."
"Evans you have a bit gash in your forehead, even if I wasn't your girlfriend I'd be worried."
"I did manage to do what I set out to." He told me, obviously trying to change the subject. Then he did hold up a sign. 'But let's not talk about our plans out loud, okay?', it read. I nodded in response. "All right, I'm gonna try and fix this up and I'll talk to you later." He said in reference to his forehead.
"Okay. I love you, Evans."
"I love you too." He hung up after that.

Days passed and he didn't call me much, mostly since we had nothing to talk about. Now it was all just about his mad dash to my ship. Whenever he called me he had a new bruise or cut or something along those lines, and every time he told me not to worry. Honestly, I didn't worry, the ship- even though I wasn't sure why- definitely wasn't looking to kill him, or else it would have just done it already. He kept talking about how his ISAC shut off all the power except what was going to the computer and how (of course) he kept getting attacked and so on and so forth, but his ISAC didn't really seem interested in anything more deadly than a paper cut.