Page 13 of Nebula Hearts
The side passage. The interface. Touching it. Pain. Then... nothing. A gap where my consciousness should be. And after the gap, waking up here on the floor with Aris looking down at me and...
Sarpi.
Sarpi’s body against the wall, his head at that impossible, final angle. Blood pooling dark on stone. Not moving. Never moving again.
The bodies of the dead creatures litter the chamber floor. Six of them. Maybe seven. Armored carapaces cracked open. Limbs twisted. Mandibles broken.
And my hands.
“What did I do?” The words come out rough, like my throat has forgotten how to form sounds properly.
Every muscle in my body aches. The kind of exhaustion that comes from pushing too hard for too long. My hands are shaking.
I know what happened. The feral state removed every limiter, every psychological control that keeps a Zephyrian from tearing themselves apart. And now I’m paying for it.
“You killed the pack hunters.” Aris’s voice. Steady. Too steady. Like she’s forcing calm through sheer willpower. “They attacked. You defended us.”
Defended. That’s one word for it. Massacre would be another. Butchery. Complete loss of control resulting in extreme violence.
I try to sit up. The world tilts sideways and Aris’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Easy. You collapsed pretty hard. Give yourself a minute.”
“Sarpi...”
“I know.” Her hand tightens slightly. “I’m sorry.”
I push past the dizziness and sit up anyway. Need to see. Need to understand what I did even though every instinct I possess is screaming at me to look away and never think about this again.
The chamber is a slaughterhouse. No other word fits. The hunters died violently. The way their bodies lie shows the brutality of the fight.
I did that.
Me.
“I don’t remember.” The admission feels like failure. Like admitting I’m fundamentally broken. “I touched the interface in the side chamber and there was pain and pressure and then... nothing. Complete gap. I killed him.” The words scrape out of my throat. “If I hadn’t gone feral. If I’d stayed in control. I could have reached him faster. Could have stopped the alpha before it...” I can’t finish.
“The alpha killed Sarpi.” Aris interrupts. Firm. Like she needs me to hear this. “Its mandibles crushed his neck before you even reached them. You tried to stop it. You were too late. That’s not the same as killing him.”
“I can’t remember doing it.” That’s worse, somehow. That I can look at this carnage and have no memory of causing it. “What if I had hurt you? What if during the gap I...”
“You didn’t touch me.” She shifts so I can see her face better. “You killed the hunters. All of them. Then you collapsed. You never came near me except to fall over, and I caught you before you hit your head.”
I search her expression for deception. For the polite lie people tell when they’re afraid of triggering another episode. But she just looks tired. Scared, yes. But not lying.
“What happened in the side chamber?” she asks. “You said you touched an interface?”
The memories are fractured. I reach for them carefully, trying to assemble a coherent sequence from fragments. “There was a control panel. Similar to the one in the main chamber but smaller. More active. When I touched it...”
How do I explain? The pressure. The voices that weren’t voices. The feeling of my consciousness shattering and reforming as something else. Something that operated on pure instinct instead of reason.
“Something in that chamber shattered every control I’ve spent years building.” I look at the dead hunters. At Sarpi’s body.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Can I take some readings? Your markings are still flickering irregularly. I want to see if there’s measurable difference in your bioelectric signature.”
I nod. Don’t trust my voice.
“This isn’t going to work.” She studies her scanner’s readout. “I need the ship’s medical bay. Better equipment. And we need to assess our situation,” she says.
