WHAT REMAINS, Ch. 13: The Left Behind
The care team consisted of a nurse with a cart, a doctor in hunter-green scrubs and a lab coat, and another giant orderly with a cybernetic arm. The guy who tranq’d Sora must’ve left for the day, or staff decided to keep him out for his own safety. The nurse scanned Sora’s cybernetic arm for her vitals.
The doctor, a mid-height blonde, began speaking without introducing herself. “How are you feeling, Sora?”
“Like I’m swimming through cold molasses.” Sora kept her eyes averted, hating the typical Indoc “we own you” patter of people doing things to her without asking.
“Depressed heartbeat,” the nurse said busily to the doctor.
“Set her up with IV fluids and a banana bag.” The doctor focused on Sora while the nurse went to the cart and started setting up. None of them even spoke to Novak for the moment. “You had a bit of a sedative today, Sora. Any nausea, memory issues, confusion?”
Sora rubbed at her rejection sites, which burned and itched like hives. “Just groggy. Could probably use some hydrocortisone cream if you’ve got it.”
The doctor took a step closer. “Cybernetic contact site rejections? That’s unusual this long after implantation.” She glanced at her workpad. “It’s been three years, right? You mind if I examine them?”
She was already reaching for Sora’s shirt, assuming a yes, but Sora pulled away.
“I do mind, actually.”
The doctor blinked, obviously surprised. “I’d prefer to make an examination before prescribing something—”
“It’s hydrocortisone cream. I can pick it up at any pharmacy with no advice,” Sora reminded her, voice hard. “If I wasn’t locked up in here. Admit it, Doc. You’re just curious. It’s been three years, so you’re wondering, ‘oooh, wonder what those rejection sites could like after this long?’ It’s not interesting, okay?”
The doctor frowned at her reaction. “If you’re embarrassed about taking off your shirt in front of your roommate, we can—”
“We were in water polo together,” Sora said stiffly. “This asshole’s seen everything I’ve got. I said no, and you’re not gonna talk me into it, Doc.”
The doctor sighed, but she had to move away to give the nurse access, who used a clever little hanging inset in Ensign Wallace’s bunk to hang an IV device. She got a line going in Sora’s real arm and hung a big yellow bag full of water and vitamins, then showed Sora how to pause, clamp and detach when she wanted to use the facilities. Sora waved her off when she tried to make her demonstrate her understanding of the setup.
“Yeah, yeah. You people had me in here for like a century when I got the arm. Don’t worry. I remember the ropes.”
The orderly just loomed, tall and tick and menacing, eyeballing Novak several times—as if waiting for the guy to jump him. The doctor quirked an eyebrow when she saw Sora looking, then turned to focus on Novak.
“How’s your hip doing, Jaesan? We brought in another shot of anti-inflammatories.”
“Thanks,” Novak said hoarsely, glancing at her with a quick squint of dislike and distrust.
“You two should have something to eat.” The doctor inputted something on her workpad. “Let’s get that shot into your hip, then you can have a little dinner.”
“Um… are we on some kind of lockdown?” Sora thought to ask.
The care team glanced furtively at each other. The doctor spoke for all of them.
“That’s really something for Wang and Kalgari to discuss with you. I know your door will remain locked until tomorrow, and that we’re to make sure you have medical care and meals. I think you’ll probably receive a minimal breakfast in this room, then you’ll be allowed out for Group.”
Sora swallowed, rage filling her throat. Trapped. Locked in. Fed like prisoners in Confinement. I’d rather be in the fucking brig.
“Fine. Great. No Kalgari trying to hit on me at breakfast.”
The nurse fixed Sora with wide eyes. “Kalgari? But—I thought he—”
The doctor patted the nurse’s shoulder and shushed her. “Don’t question his methods. Go tell the stewards to find these two a ration box each.”
The care team went about the business of giving Novak a shot in his hip, during which Sora settled back and studied the underside of Ensign Wallace’s empty bunk.
The care team left shortly after, leaving her no hydrocortisone cream if she wouldn’t submit to an examination. Sora resolved not to give a shit. A steward (again accompanied by a glowering orderly, mean and ready for cybernetic horseshit) brought a couple tackle-box-shaped ration containers from the fridges. The nurse scanned Sora and Novak’s arms, then left the rations at the feet of their bunks.
She pointed to Sora’s and looked her in the eye. “Buddhist, yes? This one’s strict vegan.”
Sora opted to thank her instead of trying to explain what a bad Buddhist they had on their hands, instead reaching for the ration box. It felt cold to the touch, though she was hungry enough at the moment not to care about what she ate. She found inside a couple peanut-butter sandwiches on oat biscuits, a pouch of pureed apple and banana, another pouch of strawberry-flavored soy milk, a resealable cup of peach slices, and a cup of steamed broccoli florets under a drizzle of herbaceous oil.
“Holy crap.” Sora laughed, immediately tearing into her soymilk and wolfing down a sandwich. “This is exactly what I ate in primary school when I needed an alt vegetarian meal. Usually on Republic Meatball day in the school mess. What’d you get, Novak?”
Novak too examined his box, smiling briefly. “Vat-chik salad on multigrain, chocolate soymilk, strawberry-banana puree, apple slices, and I think sauteed zucchini and carrots. It’s like being a kindergartener again.”
“Yeah. Locked in my dorm room for fighting, Cyborg Edition.”
Novak laughed in a sudden relieved boom, sounding relieved. “Glad you’re awake… that you’re doing okay. Spent a lot of hours in here by myself wondering if they’d fucked you up permanently… crazy as that sounds.”
“Pretty fucking typical of this place, making you observe me the whole time I was out.” Sora quickly dispatched her pouch of pureed fruit in a couple strong squeezes. “Thanks for going after that orderly. I fucking knew one of those bastards was gonna take me down.”
“Yeah, well… thanks for, um… what you did,” he said hesitantly, not even able to name what she’d done. Sora took a bite of oatmeal biscuit and peanut butter while she thought.
“I was gonna say sorry, actually. I know you don’t need me getting in people’s faces, being all protective and shit. Especially if it gets you locked up with me. This fucking place makes me feel like I’m in high school. Guess it makes me act like it, too.”
Novak cleared his throat. He kept his eyes on his sandwich, and Sora remembered what he looked like while struggling for words.
“I’m sorry for what I said—that’s we’re not buddies anymore,” he said lowly, voice hoarse.
“Man, it’s fine. It’s been years—”
Novak sighed. “Just let me apologize, okay? I never thought you’d still feel that kind of loyalty to me. Put me to shame, honestly… made me feel like such an ungrateful bastard. That’s what you would do for one of the Barcas—or for your sisters. It’s what I would have done for Kae, standing up for him. Never thought I’d need a backstop, not that badly.”
Sora examined him. “It’s also what the Barcas would do for me. Doesn’t, like… anyone ever stand up for you anymore, man?”
Novak smiled, drinking his soymilk, his eyes averted. With his face cleanshaven and a ration box of school foods, he suddenly looked a lot younger, weirdly vulnerable. Like the young guy she’d known.
“Kae would’ve been pissed over that death wish of mine. He wouldn’t get it. He was so much smarter than me. I figured he’d go farther in the service, so I thought, like… it was my job to protect him. Meathead jock big brother, you know? Seems fucking bizarre to me, that I’m the one left alive.”
Sora swallowed. “Yeah. I always felt that way about Cass. Like, hey, you’ve probably got fifty IQ points on me. Why don’t you go study, and I’ll beat the shit out of these idiots? But she’s always stuck by me.”
Novak nodded. “Tai Dubois told me you completely beat the shit out of him when he accidentally got into bed with Teli while she was visiting you at Academy.”
Sora looked up quickly, remembering the incident. “Oh man—yeah, my freshman year. Fuck, the kid was what? Fifteen?” They reminisced about Sora beating the shit out of Tai Dubois, and the guy finding himself scared straight afterwards. A knot in Sora’s stomach began to loosen as they spoke, as she watched Novak smiling.
With the closeness came the beginnings of a new anxiety, realizing Novak had a much rosier view of her relationship with Teli. Sure, she protected the kid; she’d sleep with purple aliens on nightmare pirate ships to get intel for her, and she’d have begged Nell on her fucking knees to help the Odyssey fight Pyramids if she had to, and she would absolutely beat the ever-loving shit out of the Tai Dubois-type guys of the world, if they touched her kid sister.
But… she and Teli didn’t get along. Sora had been pretty harsh on the kid during fights—and of all the worst things that had ever been said to Sora, Teli said the lion’s share of them. Her little sister knew way too much about the things that made Sora tick.
“Um… how’re all your friends from Academy?” Sora changed the subject, curious and trying to recall her sophomore and junior years, through the haze of post-death trauma and all the other crap that had happened to her. “I remember you ran with the old Roddam set, and the water polo team. You and Rory Ardelean were roommates. I remember you running around with his friends a lot.”
“You know Rory and I go way back to primary at Roddam.” Novak shrugged, closing his eyes. “I never made friends like yours. I was close to some of the guys from water polo, since we came up through Roddam together, but we haven’t really kept up. A couple of them sent me messages after Kae died, but I think I sorta… you know, closed off a little. So that’s my fault.”
“I guess they don’t know you’re in here?” Sora asked. “Or even that you lost your legs.”
“I think most of them lost track of me,” Novak said evasively. “Rory sent me a message around the the Titan turned up, basically saying he was relieved to find out I was alive, but I only read the message months later. I was way too fucked up to read shit before that. I was too… whatever… to follow up with him. Also… I mean, I just didn’t wanna have another argument.”
Sora frowned at him. “What d’you mean?”
Novak examined the vat chicken salad, keeping his eyes fixed on it. “Every time I’ve admitted how I’ve felt since the Fomorian blew up, since I came back with these legs… people just argue with me, or they feel bad for me. They don’t listen, and they don’t get it. They don’t want to. They just want it to go away, and it’s hard not to feel like… maybe I’m right. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d been on the Fomorian bridge with Davis.”
Sora nodded mutely, throat thick. She couldn’t speak right away, but Novak took some encouragement from her silent nod and went on.
“So… I didn’t want to see Rory and ‘catch up’. What the fuck were we gonna talk about? Either we’d talk some bullshit, which I can’t stand, or I was gonna be honest. Then he’d do the exact same thing my parents and crewmates all did, which was tell me I shouldn’t feel this way. Like you can argue someone out of a fucking feeling.”
Sora nodded, numbness allowing her to speak at last. “Got it. That’s why you didn’t argue with me, when I said I felt like I was gonna see Ensign Wallace’s corpse in the bunk above me.”
“Yeah.” Novak’s lip twitched into a half smile. “I mean, what am I gonna do? Tell you someone’s corpse isn’t up there? You know that. You’re not a toddler saying you’re afraid of monsters in your closet. I’m not saying it would be objectively preferable for everyone that I fucking died. It’s a feeling. It’s not gonna go away just because it makes some motherfuckers uncomfortable around me.”
Sora felt a hand grip tight in her stomach, that old gnawing sense of isolation, not just from the things she felt, but also the impossibility of talking about them and being understood. It wasn’t just that drinking with the marines and throwing herself into danger was the easy way for her to exist—it felt like the only way for her to exist.
“If it’s any use to you, man,” she said, looking at her one fleshy hand like it had some answers, “I’m glad you weren’t on the bridge of the Fomorian. Then I’d be stuck here alone with fucking Remy and Viorel.”
“When the Omacatl blew up, didn’t you wish you’d been there with them?” Novak’s eyes felt piercing, his question abrupt and unexpected.
Sora closed her eyes, remembering it all in a rush: hearing about the Omacatl’s destruction. She’d been remanded to Logistics, sleeping in bachelor officer’s quarters and living in fucking infamy after Loren’s parade of lies to the admiralty. Back then, she’d thought if that fucking ship full of horror and nightmares and ghosts ever went down, she’d fall to her knees with the force of… something… but she hadn’t.
Something in her just broke off and left, and she distinctly remembered becoming smaller inside, less flexible, full of fewer possibilities. It aged her soul.
“No,” she said honestly. “I felt guilty that I escaped. Guilty and haunted, like Death was gonna do an audit and come find me, explain that he made a mistake. I still feel like I’m on borrowed time—stolen time, even. But I did feel like I’d escaped, like I was lucky to have my life, like I was supposed to do something to make up for it. That’s why I….”
She trailed off, having been about to say That’s why I threw my stupid ass into SNI. She felt like a cat, churning through available lives at an incredible pace, all for the Republic. She wondered why she didn’t resent it, but the idea of doing so hurt too much to think about.
Novak looked thoughtful. “I guess you served under Captain Sun, and he wasn’t exactly inspiring,” he said in a searching voice. “But the XO was a big deal in 2150. Commander Loren, right? I remember him giving guest lectures, watching him receive medals during the First Praezorian War. He was up for a command forever, that guy.” He examined her carefully. “What was it like being on a ship with him?”
Hell. Sora stared into nothing, her head full of cotton, not sure what to say. She could hear a sort of high-pitched internal screaming, fuzzing up her ability to think.
“He… um. I started serving in June of 2150. So right into the First Praezorian War. Commander Loren was extremely susceptible to mind weapons. I think it… had some kind of cumulative effect on him. I probably didn’t see him at his best.” She paused, trying to turn the crank on her brain and remember being back in school, being buddies with Novak—what he might know, what he was really asking about. “You saw him lecture, huh? He was at the academy all the time, before the war. What’d you think of him?”
Novak blinked, then narrowed his eyes for a half-second.
“I think half the girls in that lecture hall had a fucking crush on the guy by the time he was done talking,” he said carefully. “You could imagine him as a captain, and I could tell he’d been imagining it himself for ten years or so. I think he resented his position. Seemed like a powder keg to me, especially looking back on him now that I’m older—and now that I’ve been an XO for a while.” He stopped, thinking.
“Yeah.” Sora could barely hear herself, and no further words emerged.
“He seemed like he knew exactly how much power he had at all times, and he was comfortable using it.” Novak waited, eyes on her, and she realized he knew something. He had to. “But you’d know more about that than me, right?”
A sudden flash of hot and cold subsumed Sora’s spine, her heart skipping and her lungs freezing up for a millisecond. She winced, staring at the floor.
“Novak… are you trying to fuck with me? Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know? Come out with it, man. Say it.”
Novak spoke with surprising gentleness. “Not if you don’t want to tell me. I know Wang and Kalgari are gonna lean on you in Group, but I don’t want to be the one who makes you talk. Whatever it is that happened between you and Loren, I don’t think it was simple. You wouldn’t be so ashamed if it was simple. Would you?”
Understatement of the fucking year.
Sora felt like she needed to say something. The man was dead—and he was a man, a soldier, an incredible officer, not just a twisted monster… much as he’d seemed like one in his last few months alive.
She took a deep breath, her limbs—real and cybernetic—trembling. “He got us through more than a dozen close battles alive. He knew Captain Sun couldn’t command in a complex strategic conflict—the guy just didn’t have the instinct for it. So Loren rolled out of bed at every whisper of a new contact on DAISS, practically lived on the bridge, never took R&R. He slept like a cat. The Praezorians found his brain every single time they hit the ship, like they were looking for him, like they could feel him there keeping us alive. They hollowed him out, one piece of his fucking sanity at a time.” She swallowed hard. “I know. I watched it happen.”
Up close and personal.
Novak frowned, watching her closely. She could tell there was something he thought he understood, and all his facts didn’t add up; even when he said he didn’t want to force it out of her, she could tell the dissonance frustrated him.
“I… I know it can’t have been appropriate, Kuromoto… but it sounds like he was lucky to have you there with him.” Sora’s heart clenched and her stomach contracted. “Were, um… you and Loren in some kind of relationship? It seems like you got extremely close, like you—”
Sora stood up quickly, stumbling when the dizziness from the tranq hit her. She stabilized herself with a hand on the bunk over Novak’s head, then half-ran to the shower room. She barely made it in time to pitch forward and throw up, glad she’d had nothing but easily upchucked school foods… and that she had a damn good reason for her cheeks to be wet with the force of vomiting.
She felt Novak’s presence before she had the nerve to look up at him, in a brief, humiliated glance. He’d come to check on her, maybe watch over her, his face pale and drawn. She couldn’t interpret his expression, but she couldn’t stand looking him in the eyes anyways. All she could focus on was cleaning herself up, splashing cold water on her face, washing out her mouth… and not daring to examine herself in the mirror.
“I, um… should take a shower.” Sora strained to keep her voice steady. “Tranq’s fucking with me.”
“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Novak asked softly. “It’s still leaving your system. I’m kinda scared to leave you alone.”
Sora touched his forearm with her real hand in thanks as she passed, going to the bunkroom to grab clean scrubs.
“Maybe I’ll just, like… leave the door cracked so you can hear that I’m okay?” she suggested. “That way, if I pass out or something, you’ll hear me go down.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, returning to his bunk for the moment, making himself small and nonthreatening—adorable lie that it was. “Good idea. I’ll, uh… I’ll be right out here.”
Sora nodded, glad to smooth out his worries, and crouched to grab new scrubs from her footlocker. She left the door to the shower room cracked, as promised, and didn’t take off her clothes until she stood in the dry shower, tossing them over the door and shaking violently in the cold and exposure.
Get your fucking shit together, Kuromoto.
No matter how many times she thought it, the trembling refused stop. She turned the shower to high heat, stood under the blistering water, and waited until her body began to still itself. All she wanted was to finish her shower and discover she was back on the Fenris, that she’d never hurt Wyn, that she could crawl into his bunk and let him close the privacy hood over the front of it, so he could hold her in the dark and silence. She’d valued her time with him more than she’d realized, and yet her body clearly was not her own, and the past didn’t give up its control over her; she could so easily damage and lose the relationships she most needed and valued, completely without deciding anything for herself.
Would it happen again with Novak? He had cybernetics and twenty-five inches on her—better chrome than hers—but no training in hand-to-hand combat. Maybe an even match. Maybe not.
But then again… she’d valued and lost him once already, hadn’t she? Sora knew Novak could go smoke on her. They’d already crossed that Rubicon.
Sora had long since given up on seeing him, before pop… he appeared at Murphy-Meilin, of all places. Could they be buddies again? She’d never tried to fix something this broken—well beyond slug fests or shouting matches. And the people… well, they were broken, too. She couldn’t even stop herself from ralphing when Seth Loren came up.
When she finally returned to the godawful ensign bunks, she found Novak messing with his tablet—whatever new one they had slipped into the room during lunch—and she noticed that he’d contributed his chocolate soymilk to her little pile of remaining rations.
“Thought you liked the chocolate ones, man.”
Novak met her eyes in a brief glance, mouth twitching. “I do. Mostly in coffee. Thought you could use the calories, anyways.”
Sora grinned weakly. “Hey, yeah. I remember we used to do that at the canteen—share a chocolate soymilk between our coffees.” I used to do that in my senior year… missing you. Her eyes burned. “What’re you up to, man?”
“Trying to find a weakness in the security apparatus and get into the main vid archive.”
Sora studied him, seeing the frown line between his eyes, like he’d get when focusing on hitting the leaderboard on a VRcade game. She picked up her own tablet.
“I could probably restart one of these and force them into setup mode, see what these clowns have done to hide options in the UI, and toggle that shit off so we can get back on the network.” She paused, seeing him study her with newly twinkling, intrigued eyes. “You wanna risk more trouble with these assholes? I’m not gonna do it unless you’re onboard.”
“Have a soymilk and show me.” He moved over on his bunk, pointedly making space for her.
Sora grabbed her untouched strawberry soymilk. Sitting down on his bunk and not caring if her leg brushed the hard chrome under his scrubs, she forced a restart on her tablet and showed him how she did it. Novak leaned over to watch, no longer leaving an obvious quarantine zone between them. His presence felt friendly, comfortable, unselfconscious. Sora felt suddenly and deeply grateful for it, for a human being she wasn’t going to break, who wasn’t afraid of her.
“I’m betting if we get on the network, pull down a couple grindhouse movies to local storage, then jump off again, they’re less likely to notice,” Sora said. “Also less likely to care. We’ll jump on once a day to get movies and check for messages, late at night when the doctors aren’t here, and bounce as fast as we can. Sound good?”
By some miracle, Novak didn’t ask her where she’d learned to brute-force civilian and institutional gadgets; maybe he could guess anyways.
“Good plan,” he said softly. “Think we can find Cybercutioner?”
“Hell yeah.” Sora finished the soymilk like a shot of melon vodka, now feeling a damn sight better. She reached across the bunks and snagged the chocolate one. “You sure you don’t want this, man?”
“I’m good. I only like coffee and banana flavored straight up.”
Sora laughed. “Banana? Man. I haven’t seen that one since primary school.” She tore into the soymilk. “I thought everyone liked chocolate.”
“I had chocolate soymilk every day of fifth grade at Roddam,” Novak told her in a low voice, like someone might be listening. He had his own tablet out and was following along with what she did—dude was a fast learner. “I stood up for Kae against this group of asshole fifth graders, and I made myself some enemies. They came after us every day for months, so we spent lunch hiding all over campus. Fucking miserable year.” He watched her for another minute, toggling his options precisely as she showed him, and then restarted his tablet when she said so. “You okay, Kuromoto? I know you’re tough, and you’re not a pansy or whatever. Just checking on you. Seemed like… like a hell of a thing.”
Sora knew he would follow up; there was no way she could end a conversation by stumbling off to ralph, taking a shower with the door cracked so Novak could keep an ear on her, then expect him to be completely silent on the matter.
“No, man—of course I’m not okay.” She checked the UI on her tablet as it came back up. “You think I’d be in this godawful program, locked up in this hell room and trying to kill engineers, if I was okay?”
Novak shook his head. “No. ‘Course not. I’m not asking about how you’re doing overall; I know dying and getting that arm fucked with you. I mean right here, right now. If you want to hang out near the head… and you need someone to hold your hair back… I’m down to help.”
Hesitantly, Sora touched his forearm again in thanks. “I appreciate it, man. Thing is, I know it’s not just the arm. I probably wouldn’t have the arm if I wasn’t fucked up in the head already when I died.” She met his eyes, finding his watching her, deep and understanding. “I think… I was running toward Death before it got me, and I had no fucking call to be surprised when it did.”
Novak surprised Sora by placing a hand over hers, holding her eyes for a long ten seconds in silence.
Then Sora’s tablet chimed, noting its readiness to continue to the next step of her breakout process.
She logged onto the nurses’ network, then got Novak’s tablet onto it using the same password, grinning as she went.
“Okay, three grindhouse movies each. Go, go!”