Chapter 16: Reacquainted

As they arrived, the group found that the landing pad was pitch dark. Sarah held onto Charlie's hand and squeezed it tight, an anxious little whimper escaping her mouth. Nicole, however, never being much scared of anything, huffed in irritation. “You'd think they'd at least leave a light on or something, I mean jeez.”

Charlie stroked Sarah's clammy hand with his finger, offering her a comforting smile he knew she couldn't see. “Perhaps they're trying to save power? Let's just try to find our way out of this-”

Just then, a horrible burning sensation coursed throughout Pen's body. His muscles shuddered and contracted, causing him to collapse rather ungracefully onto the floor in a terrible coughing fit. His mind grew confused for a moment as to where he was and flashes of visions replaced the darkness like a dream that was slipping away from a waking mind. Then it dawned on him that this was just the nanomachines in his mind, recalibrating after what must have been a surge of electricity. He could hear his new friends groaning through grit teeth, and his heart dropped. They'd been hit too, and they sounded hurt. Just as his senses were returning to him, the lights flickered on, bathing the group in disorienting brightness. Pen forced himself to stop coughing and gave a wincing glance over at his friends, who all lay prone on the floor, groaning and twitching.

Nicole's helpless groan turned into a ferocious growl as she slowly adjusted to the light and the pain. They'd been ambushed and she couldn't even move. She hated being prone like this. 'If only I'd brought Courage,' she silently lamented, chastising herself for her lack of forethought. 'He's an escaped prisoner. I should have seen this coming.'

As Pen's awareness grew, he noticed they had company. He wasn't surprised by that. After a greeting like that, he expected to find Gorgonin forces behind it. However, as his eyes adjusted to the light and the figures came into focus, he saw something he certainly wasn't expecting. So many words attempted to come out at once that at first, he only made a choked muddle, and then managed “why? Why do this?”

Maita stepped forward from the small crowd of Gorgonins, holding up a smoldering gun-like contraption, looking back at him with an icy, dark and faraway stare. “Why indeed.”

Dark eyes like pools of deep space glared hatefully at one another for a long moment in the uncomfortably silent room.

Nicole looked from spaceman to spaceblond, shuddering as much as her near-paralyzed body would allow, feeling deeply disturbed by an undercurrent she couldn't quite comprehend, but felt viscerally nonetheless.

The lavender blond holstered her weapon and motioned for two OmSaEe members to pick the criminal up off the floor. They held him up for her. “I know the truth now. You misled me into thinking you were innocent in all of this.” Pen's eyebrows nearly hid his eyes as he glared at her. “Maita,” he growled.

She continued, “but you're not, are you. You're as guilty as they come!” Maita snapped. The prisoner kept his defiant stare. “Maita, I've only ever been honest with you.”

Nicole snorted in disbelief as she was picked up and restrained by two Gorgonins, both of whom she gave dirty looks. “Yeah! He's not guilty of anything!” she huffed.

Pen shook his head at Nicole in response, willing her into silence.

Maita strained to remain collected. “Honest? Hardly! When were you going to tell me that you killed my friends, my family? When were you going to tell me the explosion was no accident?”

The resolve dissolved from Pen's face, replaced by haunted confusion. His eyes lost focus, staring off into a distance only he could see.

His friends all looked for some sort of promising reaction, and Nicole especially hoped for him to deny that claim with some witty remark or other, but there was no twinkle to be seen.

“I... I don't remember. No matter how hard I try. I don't remember anything in my life before. I'm sorry.”

Maita broke her gaze in a moment of insecurity and then looked up at a looming Gorgonin in the shadows. “He's all yours,” she declared, waving her hand dismissively. Pen was handed over to two Gorgonin officials.

The mysterious figure replied, “All right. Put his companions in the old dungeon for now. We'll be interrogating them further.”

“I understand,” Maita uttered submissively. Nicole was traded hands and the others were picked up. “No! You didn't do that! Tell them they're wrong Pen! Tell them you'd never do that! You can't be a killer!” Nicole berated as she was lifted forcibly. He didn't even move. “Pen? Pen! Say you didn't! Say something! Tell her you didn't do it!”

'

Nicole and friends were separated from Pen and herded through the growingly familiar ancient seeming dark halls of the unusually round shaped underground building. Nicole found it especially odd there were no built in windows anywhere to be seen; instead everywhere she looked were rounded out grooves with crystalline lights glowing faintly bluish. “And now that I think of it, what originally appeared to be skylights in the interrogation room must have actually been these same lights, only bigger and brighter. How cliché, but kind of cool I must admit,” she thought to herself. She then noticed shadowed figures garbed in Gorgonin robes following them silently, not too far behind.

The OmSaEe already had this covered, and yet they themselves were being watched. This didn't sit right with her. Did these two factions still not trust one another? Then why were they working together? Did the OmSaEe not believe Pen was a criminal after all? Was that what the Gorgonins were watching for?

“You guys aren't even going to cuff us?” She baited, testing the collective reactions of their captors. Charlie looked forward at Nicole's nearly prone form as it was held on either side by two (presumably hanor) men in OmSaEe garb. “Are you insane?! Can you not see the position we're in? Just keep your mouth shut and maybe they'll let us go in peace!”

Nicole's face went red as she bit her tongue, the frustrated arguments coming out in a muffled scream.

Sarah looked backward towards where they came from and noticed the Gorgonins lurking behind them. Her eyes glistened with the threat of tears. “Pen,” she moused before forcing herself to break her stare and look straight ahead once more.

The humans were silently patted down and their technology confiscated before declared harmless and brought to one of the deserted cells of the long forgotten underground habitation.

ʤ

Once certain they were alone, Charlie gradually adjusted himself into a position seated on his knees, rather than the undignified position he was placed in, and began to help the ladies sit up. “Up-see-daises girls,” he cooed softly. With his assistance, Sarah managed to shakily get herself seated in S form. “How can you move so easily Charlie?” she mouthed, afraid to break the silence.

“I've been electrocuted a few times before, fixing machinery” he mused with a charming smile. Sarah tutted him, momentarily forgetting their predicament, “you bum! You're too careless.” Nicole smiled at her best friends as she leaned against the wall, her legs spreading out flat against the floor of the crowded cell. The happiness was only momentarily, and collectively they sighed as they all took in the situation.

“Speaking of careless,” Charlie shook his head, “I can't believe Pen-”, he started, but was interrupted by the short tempered one. “Charlie, he'd never do such a thing. This is bull-hogey! I know you've never really liked him, but I can't believe you'd think he's some sort of killer!”

He gave Nicole a look and sighed deeply. “Are you done?” Nicole nodded, starting to feel sheepish. “Oh, sorry. I just- never mind, continue your thought.” With that confirmation, Charlie proceeded, “as I was saying, I can't believe Pen didn't deny it. He just isn't the type to kill people. Why would he say he couldn't remember?”

Nicole bobbed her head to the side in thought. “The thing is, he's told me he has no real memory of his past and he seems fuzzy on a lot of details, even his own name, so denying it happened probably feels impossible for him. For all he knows, he was a completely different person before. But honestly, deep in my heart I know he's just not capable of a crime like that.”

Sarah brushed some errant blond hairs out of her face, her hazel eyes widening. “Poor Pen; his situation sounds terrible!”

Charlie huffed and rolled his eyes. “Poor Pen? Poor us! We're stranded, I mean totally and utterly stranded in a foreign galaxy with no way home except a guy who can't even remember his own name!”

“Er, I guess poor everyone then?” Sarah shrugged.

⌂

The deadly fire and screams swept around the madman's prone form, causing his head to pound and his body to sweat profusely. Her scream was especially deafening. “Whose scream is that? She's somebody important... Nicole. Nicole is important. Nicole? That's gotta be the dumbest name I've ever heard. Nicole is dying? No. No wait! This doesn't make any sense!” he screamed inwardly. “This isn't happening. This is a dream. It's just a dream!”

His brain registered the sensation of cold metal against his sweaty back. It felt so refreshing that he couldn't help sighing in relief. His eyes flickered open and the world around him slowly came into focus. The burning room transformed into an uncomfortably bright lamp pointed at his face.

Pen instinctively attempted to raise his arms to block out the light, but he realized his wrists were locked in restraints. At this, he croaked out a dreary laugh. “Even when I'm half dead you're still restraining me?”

“Precautions, prisoner 485,” came a calm masculine voice from beyond his vision. He glanced about, searching for its origin. Something about that voice felt familiar.

The hanor sounded handsome, kind even, and yet there was something sinister and slimy laying just underneath that thin coating of sugar. It was like a large, poisonous pill that was being forced down his throat. It very nearly made him retch. He swallowed his disgust back down. “My name is Pen,” he contended as confidently as he could muster. A droplet of sweat trickled down his cheek.

After a moment's silence, his captor let out a condescending chuckle. “Oh, so you have a name now, do you?”

The imprisoned madman narrowed his eyes, his heartbeat quickening as his stomach turned. “Everyone has a name, and mine is Pen,” he reasserted.

The man bent forward, blocking out the light, his face disguised by shadow as he reached over, forcibly opening Pen's mouth with a gloved hand. He playfully shook the captive's head back and forth with a little chuckle. “'Pen'? What an interesting choice. 'Pen'.”

The captured scientist forced his mouth shut as he looked off into the far corner, refusing to make eye contact in fear of revealing anymore than he already mistakenly had. The sinister man forced himself back into his point of view.

“How appropriate. 'Pen', has a nice ring to it. Sounds exotic,” the man enunciated as he began to pace back and forth in the empty, small room. Pen couldn't help following him with his eyes suspiciously, as if his captor were a predator and he the trapped prey.

The familiarity tugged at Pen's mind even more once he'd thoroughly taken in his captor's features. Unlike most Gorgonins, this hanor's hood was off, which was against firm policy. “Unity is uniformity,” the Gorgonin policy preached. So apparently this guy wasn't much into being indoctrinated. He had dirty blond hair pulled into a looser version of the official bun. It was hard to tell what color his eyes were, but they were probably blue or green. The exposed skin of his china doll neck and face was flawlessly uniform, unnaturally so, even in this age of nanomachine technology. His face was partially obscured by a germ mask, and even so looked like that of an ancient god's muse, childlike, delicate and innocent.

Pen became violently ill from his revulsion for this horrid creature. His body bathed itself in its own sweat, wet dark locks of hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks. His digestive system was preparing to reject everything inside of it. The nausea hit in strong waves, syncing with contrary chills that ran down his spine, and without much warning he had to focus all of his efforts in order to stop himself from expelling from both ends. He swallowed repeatedly, frozen in place, hardly able to breathe as postnasal drip trickled down towards his trachea but he was too afraid to cough.

The sadistic hanor watched on as he paced with barely hidden glee and just a hint of selfish concern. He then stopped and turned his back to his prisoner, hands casually folded behind him. He allowed himself a long, meandering, drawn out and torturous pause before he continued.

“What's more appropriate than naming yourself after the device that gave you your second chance at life?” He unfolded a hand to flaunt that he held the ornate silver PIT device.

The sheer surprise shocked Pen's body into momentarily forgetting its illness. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, causing him to tremble from more than his cold, wet body. “What?”

The dirty blond turned around to again face him and pocketed the PIT as he headed towards a side table. “Now now. Don't waste your precious strength. We already know so much,” he cooed as he held up and dangled Pen's prisoner band. The escapee winced in instant understanding. The man continued to explain as if merely to taunt him as he headed toward him with the collar.

“It may have been out of our range, but this collar was still recording everything, prisoner 485. What's really funny is that we actually found this place thanks to your collar. Thank you by the way. At least something good came out of your dramatics.”

Pen swallowed again, shaking his head.

“This is going to sting a little; you know the drill.” The sadistic Gorgonin snapped the collar back on and swiped a card near it, causing Pen to jolt as far off the table as his restraints allowed with a yelp of pain.

The captor continued on with a poorly hidden smirk. “I was being nice when I placed a model 22 around your neck. This was a symbol of trust, and you've broken that trust. Do you understand that? What am I supposed to do? I have to punish you now. But, I suppose you can make it up to me...” he trailed off, retrieving the PIT device and dangling it precariously in front of Pen's face. “Tell me how this thing works and beg me for forgiveness and I'll let you off with a minor slap on the wrist.”

Pen licked the sweat from his lips and forced his eyes back open. “I...” He struggled for breath. His captor leaned in a little closer, waiting patiently.

“I'll teach you how to write, you incompetent b**b.”

The captor's eyes nearly bugged out of his sockets as he raised his free hand threateningly, but an announced voice over intercom interrupted the 'interrogation'. “Arcon sir, please come outside. It's urgent!”

The angelic faced sadist rolled his eyes as he lowered his arm and instead grabbed Pen's hair and tugged at it. “What kind of urgent?”

“The results are in and our fugitive appears to have some foreign illness, very likely highly contagious. Immediate quarantine is required for all who have come into direct contact!”

Pen smirked, and before Arcon could distance himself, he faked a wet, gooey sneeze that landed all over his captor's arm and torso.

“You're nothing! You'll never be anyone! If it were up to me, you'd be dead!” Arcon slammed Pen's head back against the table with an aggravated growl and walked out of the room to disinfect himself, pointedly carrying the PIT device like a trophy.

Author's Note

What do you think of the direction this is going in? What do you think of the interactions between the characters?