Gravity (Male x Male)

Chapter 1 - The Dream

"Keep still."

The doctor's needle pierced my arm and slipped under the skin, red liquid slowly filling the syringe. Seconds later, the needle was withdrawn and replaced with cotton wool for me to hold onto my arm.

I recalled the day the doctors brought me to this medical facility. I'd been fifteen years old and I'd been practising some daring stunts with friends on our hoverboards. I'd flipped the board over the central ring, lost balance and fallen off, breaking my arm. Breaking my arm had been annoying, but the reason I'd been taken to hospital was because I'd also hit my head, and despite it being covered by a helmet, the angle I'd fallen at had meant that I'd created a wound that had been bleeding.

I'd been rushed to the nearest hospital after one of my friends called for an ambulance, and I remember the concerned look that my Mum had worn as she burst through the door to my hospital room. The doctors had taken good care of me, and had reassured me I would be all right, but the worry had still been etched into her features.

I'd tried to reassure her that the injury looked worse than it really was, and that I'd be out in a few hours. I hadn't seen what all the fuss was about. Teenage boys had accidents like this all the time. I'd assumed Mum was overreacting, although I knew it could have been partly because she didn't like hospitals and we'd managed to stay away from them until my accident.

Shortly afterwards, one of the medical team had come into the hospital room and told us they'd found an anomaly in my blood that needed investigating. I hadn't really known what that meant.

It turned out it meant I needed to be quarantined in a medical research facility on Selenia, one of the moons of a planet called Omega 6 that I'd never heard of before that day.

That was three years ago, and I'd been here ever since. For my own safety apparently, even though I'd been perfectly fine living on Earth with my mother up until that point. I couldn't understand why my safety was suddenly in question now. Nobody seemed to be able to quite explain to me what I was doing here, other than this blood anomaly. The doctors and scientists in their bright white lab coats had said they would let me know when they had answers.

In the meantime, I was well looked after. I had access to books, films and games, and my Mum visited me every day. I taught myself how to pilot different types of spacecraft from flight manuals and simulations, in the hope that one day I might actually get to fly one.

But still, they couldn't give me the one thing I wanted more than anything. To get out of here. To go back home and get on with my life. Freedom. I was so bored with being poked and prodded and tested. With all the physical exercises and measurements of my heart rate and blood pressure. With the blood that got taken from me three times a day. What on earth could they be doing with so many blood samples?

"Mr Miller?" A lady's voice brought me back to reality. She was on the other side of the transparent forcefield that kept me in my living area. She was pretty, with strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes, and her name tag read 'Dr. Milan.' I didn't recognise her, so I assumed she was new.

"Hmmm?" I'd totally missed the question.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, or from her point of view, probably repeated.

"Yeah, I could eat." I smiled at her. "What's on the menu?"

She smiled back. "A little birdy told me you like the burgers."

She wasn't wrong. My smile broadened as I agreed to a burger. The food was good here, at least.

Several minutes later she returned with a large juicy burger, with a side salad. They all knew I was one of the few people that didn't like chips, and they had stopped offering them to me. As soon as the forcefield dropped, the amazing smell of the steaming hot meat and warm bread hit my nose. I thanked her and sat down to eat. Whatever was supposedly wrong with me, it clearly hadn't affected my appetite and the food was gone within minutes.