SK Ch. 7 OUCH

Chapter Seven: Ouch

Sweat pooled beneath Cassian as his body writhed out of his control. Every breath was short and shallow as he struggled to consume enough oxygen. They had thrown him in a small cabin and left him there, shuddering and shaking as if he had contracted Rift Sickness. 

“You should try relaxing,” the symbiote sounded bored as it continued to change him. 

“Easy for you to say,” Cassian chattered through a shaking jaw as a wave of convulsions wracked him in painful contractions.

“This is difficult work. You’re a poor template and, well in all honesty, there’s a lot of you that needs to be improved. I don’t know how you humans walk around with all of this inefficiency.”

Cassian didn’t respond, he couldn’t. A new wave of pain had robbed him of all thought as his vision went white and then disappeared. 

“Ohhh, that was the optic nerve. How unfortunate. Let’s improve that shall we?” 

“F…u….c….k. Y…o…u!” Cassian managed to grit out through clenched teeth. 

“You’re very ungrateful. I’ll have you know I cleaned out your arteries of plaque and reinforced the blood vessels…well everywhere. You would have likely suffered a cardiac arrest sometime in your late fifties! Or eighties, hard to tell with you meat sacks.” 

 Cassian didn’t bother to respond. He panted and shuddered as he finally stopped shaking. The sudden cessation of pain was enough to make him feel as if he was floating, drifting on a cloud of euphoria as he stared at the individual grains of wood that composed the cabin’s roof. The cabin was nearly pitch black, a simple mana lamp making the cabin gloomy rather than pitch black. 

His eyesight shouldn’t be able to see in that good of detail.

“I told you, you have been improved.” 

“Thanks, didn’t ask for it.”

“I know, your childhood self-dependence has produced a toxic level of independence. Statistical models show the odds of you asking for help are below two percent.” 

“What?” 

“I’m doomed.” 

A knock thundered through the small room, the sound amplified so loud that Cassian groaned in pain and grabbed at his ears as he turned on his side to try to escape the sound. 

“You should regulate the sound intake,” the armor said, a sense of superiority filling its tone. The door opened before he could think of a proper insult and Henri walked in with a concerned look on her face as she took in his wretched state. 

“You look like shit,” she said. 

“Thanks, my lady, you look fantastic as always,” Cassian groaned, raising an arm to cover his eyes from the piercing rays that came through the now open door. 

“Of course I do. I shower and wear clean clothes, which is more than you’re doing. Come on, up and at ‘em sailor, umm, knight? I don’t know, just get off your ass and find a bath, you stink.” Henri fled his apparent stench as Cassian struggled up to his knees and then finally to his feet. 

His body felt like he had been rolled down the hill in a barrel. Filled with stones. That had multiple ditches. There wasn’t a single spot on him that didn’t hurt or ache, each stretch caused a cramp and  within a step he was grabbing onto the door frame to hold himself up. 

“What did you do to me?”

“You’re suffering from severe dehydration and lack of nutrients and minerals. I suggest large quantities of water, sodium, and potassium along with red meat and carbohydrates.” 

“What?”

“Go drink water, eat a steak and have a roll with some fruit,” the voice didn’t sound quite so smug now. 

“Why didn’t you say that you asshat. What the hell is a carbohydrate?” 

“You’ll figure it out in a century or two. Barbarians all around me,” the voice sank away into mutters about barbarians, unwashed and uneducated masses, and the failures of the education system. Cassian was busy fighting his way though narrow corridors that were poorly lit as his stomach curled up inside of him, growling in great need.

“Oi, get to the baths. You reek!” A soft, feminine voice barked out at him. Cassian turned, a scowl already furrowing his face as he stared down at a woman who could barely be five feet tall. Platinum blonde hair was tied up in a tight ponytail and her uniform of blue with crimson trim was immaculate. A soft black felt tricorn was in one hand, while a short boarding sword rode on her waist.

“Who the fuck are you?” Cassian growled as the pain and hunger overrode his basic survival instincts. 

“I’m the Captain of this ship, boy,” she leaned forward and somehow managed to make it seem like she towered over him. 

“No, Major…ummm…hells what was his name….anyway the Major was in charge,” Cassian argued back.

 “You’ve been out of it for awhile, pissing and moaning in my cabin. Damn thing has the stench of a sewer in it now!” 

“Who the hells is you and why are you shouting at me?” Cassian snapped, his natural street accent slipping out from the posh airs he affected around Henri and her peers. 

“I am Captain Billings, the owner, operator, and I am the only Law on this vessel!” she thundered, her voice amplified by the tight confines. 

“Threat detected, countermeasures deployed.” Cassian’s headache expanded to a full blown migraine as the world around him lightened, the dark confines of the poorly lit passage revealed to him in all of its squalid glory. The ringing in his ears faded away instantly while his breath was suddenly amplified. Cool liquid encased his head, wet and porous allowing him to breathe while at the same time coating his throat and mouth, flooding his lungs. 

“Helm activated. Shock absorbent gel deployed,” his symbiote said, but its voice lacked its normal smugness. There was a weariness now to it, the sound of a man who had worked hard in the factory for sixteen hours and then trudged home just to go back and do it all over again. 

“Fuck!” Captain Billings stepped back, her hand reaching for the hilt of her sword while a gray light spawned in her other hand. 

“At ease, Captain! He doesn’t have control of his armor functions. Yet.” Sergeant Hull was moving at a quick pace, faster than a walk, but slower than a jog. 

“Fuck off with that bullshit Beryl. Boy is in my cabin for days, stinking it up. Get told where to go and what to do and where to sleep on my own damned ship. If I had wanted this life, I would have stayed in the Army.” 

“Nicolleta, you need to calm yourself. If ma’am hears you talking like that she’ll start thinking you're a threat to the mission and we don’t want that now, do we?”

“Let the brat threaten me all she wants. I don’t give a damn who her sire is! My ship Beryl! My fucking ship!” Captain Billings was restrained enough not to stamp her foot and scream, but it was a close thing. Cassian just hugged the corridor as tight as he could while looking about himself with the helm on. 

“She won’t threaten you. She’ll tell me to take care of it, and we both know how I take care of things, right?” 

That seemed to freeze the irate Captain. Her eyes grew squinty and she drew herself up to her full, diminutive, height as she stared down Sergeant Hull. A tension filled the hall, a whisper the wrong way and blood would shed. Cassian could feel it, his senses razor sharp from a lifetime of bloody tension.

“Beryl, you couldn’t get me on your best day, and it’s far from that day. I would shed a tear and a bottle of wine after I finish disposing of you and your men. Remember who I am,” Captain Billings whispered the words, so soft that Cassian was certain he wasn’t supposed to hear it.  

“I know Nicolleta. It ‘s why you were paid a king’s ransom for this job. Give the boy a bit of space, he’s a strange one. After this is done, you won’t have to worry about work ever again. Nice big mansion behind big, thick, wide wards. No more sleeping with an eye open waiting for some rift beastie to try to eat ya,” Hull crooned. 

“Only reason you’re on the ship. Clean up the lad and get him out of my hair. I have to try to bribe someone to go and scrub my cabin.” Billings marched off, back straight as a iron rod and with a palpable rage over her. Hull slumped and rubbed at her eyes with one hand. Her other hand put away the long knife she had been keeping behind her leg. 

“That’s a mean one lad, don’t go making her angry or you’ll find pieces of yourself no longer attached,” Hull spoke. There was an exhaustion in her voice and the bags under her eyes were deep and dark. 

“What’s going on? I went down in that rift, and we were coming up, and that’s all I remember,” Cassian asked. 

“Yeah, lots happened. Let’s get you to the baths, you fucking stink like a ten day dead rift beast,” Hull nudged him with a boot and they started to make their way down the cramped corridor. 

“Veronica has a mission, and you’ve all been recruited to it. Nice and easy, you do what we say, go where we say, and I don’t have to kill any of yas, understand?”

“No. Can’t say that I do,” Cassian slipped back into his learned speech patterns. It was a good disarming technique, made people relax around you, they thought you had class. 

“Don’t pull that shit with me. I knows your real voice. Heard it in the corridor. Your a rat, just like us. Don’t go fretting and pulling at your drawers now trying to sound like those other snobs.” 

“Preposterous.”

“Spell it,” Hull said with an evil grin. Cassian looked back at her, his glare lost in the helm’s embrace. She was looking rather smug with herself.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a dick?”

“Only every day my little rat. Take the damn helm off so I can see your face.” 

“I…I don’t know how.” 

“Tell the voice in your head you idiot,” Hull snarked as she rolled her eyes. They passed a sailor who looked at them strangely but didn’t stop. A narrow door of bronze sat in the wooden frame and Hull rapped on it twice before entering, pushing Cassian in front of her. 

The room was hot and steamy, copper pipes running into tin tubs placed around the room in tight confines. Small privacy curtains had been erected around each of the five tubs and two of them were currently drawn tight. 

“Strip boy and get rid of the helm. The first change is the worst, you lot smell worse than rift beast shit in the summer.” 

“You’ve been around a lot of knights?”

“Part of my job. I keep you lot alive while you’re learning the ropes and becoming monsters. Easy to kill a monster when it’s a baby, not so much when it’s full grown.”

Cassian tugged his clothes free of his body with a tearing sensation. They were coated in a tacky substance that stuck to him like glue. Each of the individual garments hit the ground with a wet plop and Hull discreetly kicked them away from the door. 

“Hey, can you get this helm off of me?” Cassian asked mentally. 

“I can.” Cassian waited for a minute as he slowly lowered himself into a vat of hot, sudsy water. The relief to his cramping body was immediate and a groan of relief forced its way out of his lips. 

“Will you?”

“Fine,” the voice was definitely more tired sounding. The helm retreated, the gel falling down his face as the world brightened considerably and noise came rushing back in. 

“Ma’am, he’s covered,” Hull said, looking over to one of the privacy screens. Veronica pulled back the screen revealing her face as she met his eyes. She smiled widely and Cassian had the sudden realization of what a mouse felt like when it saw a cat.