Page 40 of Bred

If not for the emergency auto shielding systems we have installed to put force fields in place when a breach is detected, we would have lost oxygen and been sucked out into space. The creature moved through that barrier as it moves through all others—as if it wasn’t even there.

Rushing to Lyra’s side, I touch her gently, try to get her to respond, but there’s nothing. She’s breathing, but that is about it. Her eyes are open, and her natural coloring has returned, but nobody is home.

I swing her up into my arms and I race her to the medical bay. Doctors begin work immediately, but with no obvious injuries, what can they truly do?

“She has brain function,” the medic assures me. “But she’s not responsive to outside stimuli. It’s almost as if she’s tuned to a different frequency right now.”

“Is she going to get better?”

“Sir, I have never seen anything like this in my life. The closest state would be a coma, and those are unpredictable. She may come out of it in minutes, or days, or...” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I do.

“Or not at all.”

“Unfortunately, sir. Yes.”

“Let me know if anything changes. I want you researching ways to bring her... around.” I want to say bring her back to me, but something stops me. I wonder if I’ve lost her forever, if she was ever truly mine to have in the first place.

“Captain, we need you on the bridge.”

I’m almost glad that I’m being summoned. There’s something to take my mind off one tragedy.

One of my lower bridge officers is sitting in my chair when I step back in. He springs out of it a second too late and momentarily cowers beneath my scowl before brightening with an irrepressible grin.

“Good news!” His smile and that statement are so wildly incongruous with what is going on right now I don’t know whether to laugh or knock him on his ass.

“If I see your ass anywhere near my chair again, Ensign, you’ll lose it.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he stammers.

“What is it?”

“We’ve been monitoring the creature since it departed, sir. Our instruments indicate that it left the ship and returned to the rift where it emerged. And...”

“Yes?”

“The rift appears to be closing behind it. The damage done to subspace seems to be repaired,” he beams. “It looks like it went home and shut the door behind it. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but...”

“Go ahead, it seems to be your specialty, Ensign.”

“I think it’s over, sir. There are no more anti-matter readings from that part of space. It’s smooth sailing. And unless we create another rift, I don’t think it can come back.”

He looks at me with a broad smile, expecting me to be happy. I’m far from happy.

It took the woman I love, the essence of her and it sealed itself away behind an impenetrable barrier. With the creature gone, there’s no way to ever truly discover what it did to her, though it would have been nearly impossible even if it had stayed in this realm.

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