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Forest
didn’t say anything. Instead, she stood there, looking as
stiff-lipped and severe as a statue of a vengeful goddess. But
finally, she nodded her head. It was a curt move, but it sent a
thankful wave of hope rushing through him.

“It
could be the only chance we have to find out,” he
continued.

It was
Forest's turn to put a stiff hand up in a stopping motion. “Enough,
Lieutenant; you have already convinced me. And you are right; in a
situation as uncertain as this, we must look to every possible
clue. I will clear a priority transport route for you, but I will
not clear your whole team. You will have to go alone. I do not want
the Force to leave Earth, not now,” she added in a far-off tone as
she stared past Carson at the door.

Carson
didn’t want to know what she was thinking about. He could guess
though.

With a
shiver, he snapped another salute, and this time it was firm and
perfect. “Thank you, Admiral.”

“Don’t
thank me, just prove me wrong. Bring me back that scanner from
Remus 12, and shed light on this rapidly darkening situation. I
want to know what that blue energy is, and I want to find out if it
can spread.”

“And
you want to save Cadet Harper’s life,” Carson added.

He
shouldn’t have, he really shouldn’t have. Forest had just given him
what he wanted, and now he was subtly correcting her.

But he
had a point. A terribly good one.

While
everything else was critically important, they couldn’t forget that
a cadet’s life was on the line.

Far
from reprimanding him, the Admiral nodded. “Yes, we need to do
everything we can to save her life. Now you are dismissed. Go back
to your apartment before I have a security detail escort you
there.”

With
that threat ringing through his ears, he turned on his heels,
didn’t bother to offer a goodbye, and half jogged from the
room.

As the
doors closed behind him, he closed his eyes too and gave a brief
prayer of thanks.

It
felt good to have a plan; it felt better to have the permission to
go ahead with it.

As he
strode through the hospital corridors, he couldn’t help but notice
how many security guards were dotted around the place.

And
not just your average security guards; he recognised the specific
black armour and red insignia of the Academy Elite
Forces.

He
knew some of those men and women, and he nodded at them as they
passed.

Though
they returned his greeting, they did not seek to engage him in
conversation. Instead they stood there, looking supremely watchful
and powerful, their weapons ready at their sides.

The
other thing Carson noted as he strode through the hallways was the
lack of staff and patients.

It
appeared they had all been shifted to another floor of the
building.

Of
course they had.

If he
were in Admiral Forest's position, maybe he would have done the
same thing. She had to keep this under wraps, and the best way to
do that was to minimise how many people came in contact with
Harper.

With
every step through those halls, it dawned on him how terribly
serious the situation had become.

It
seemed like only a few minutes ago that he'd caught Harper
slumbering under that oak tree. Well now she was in a locked down
hospital, under some kind of stasis field, whilst every senior
member of the Academy tried to figure out what was going
wrong.

As he
finally made it out of the hospital doors and into the cool,
pleasant night, he couldn’t even muster a smile for the gentle
breeze and the brilliant night sky above.

Even
though this city had a great deal of light pollution, you could
still see the stars glittering down from on high, and it was one of
Carson’s favourite pastimes to stare up at them and indulge in
their unique beauty.

Well,
right now he didn’t have the time. And the only feeling he could
indulge in was guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t seen what was happening.
That he hadn’t figured it out. And that he hadn’t, importantly,
stopped it.

Though
he made it back to his apartment in short time, as soon as he
walked in the doors, he was at a loss.

Though
he wanted to take off his clothes, shower, and grab some food, he
couldn’t.

He
simply ground to a halt in the centre of his lounge room floor,
within distance of his couch, but without the energy to walk over
to it and flop face-first into the cushions.

So
instead, he simply stood there and slowly surveyed his
house.

There
was artwork on the walls and on the tops of the furniture. Tribal
masks, intricate boxes and vases, holographic pictures of alien
planets. All souvenirs he had brought back from his
travels.

They
drew the eye, trying to distract him with their intricate and
unique beauty, but again, there was nothing he could fix his
attention on other than Harper.

. . . .

He
closed his eyes. Pressing his thumb and forefinger hard into his
eyelids, he watched stars cascade through the dark.

Though
he wasn’t a child, and knew better, he kept on pressing and
pressing until his eyeballs hurt and the flashes of light merged
like glowing trails squirming in the dark.

It
took a long time to force his hands to drop to his sides, and even
longer to walk over to the couch.

Then
he sat. He rested his head against the high back of the couch,
eventually managing to close his eyes.

Now he
would have to wait. It sounded like a simple enough task, but he
was not naïve, and knew it would be almost impossible.

And so
it was. He spent a restless, truly horrible night in his apartment
until early the next morning he finally received a call.

Cadet
Nida Harper

She
was awake now, if you could call it awake. The doctors were keeping
her so drugged up, she could hardly slur a sentence together, let
alone keep her eyes open long enough to assess what was going on
around her.

. . . 

And
there was a lot going on around her.

Anarchy, in fact.

She
had realised some time ago that she was back in the
hospital.

With a
brief stab of anxiety, she had worried they’d brought her in for
being a hypochondriac. Perhaps the doctors of the Academy had
finally grown weary of her constant visits, and had decided to
admit her on psychiatric grounds.

Quickly that particular worry died. And hard.

All
she had to do was look up to see the incredible, crackling, glowing
force field in place around her bed to realise there was something
far more serious going on.

She
could feel the power of the field; it set her hair standing on end,
and sent hot, dancing tickles crawling over her skin.

The
force field flashed between orange and blue, and it was one of the
most distracting sights she’d seen. Though she worked for the
Academy, and had certainly viewed holograms of stasis fields like
this before, it was her first direct experience of one.

. . . .

Which
was just as unnerving as it sounded. For, even though she couldn’t
remember her lectures on the technology of stasis fields that well,
she could remember one fact: they absorbed enormous amounts of
power, and you only ever bothered using them if you had
to.

As
dismay poured into her mind, clutching at her throat with a
frighteningly tight grip, she tried to reason why she would be
trapped in a stasis field.

Then
the doctors came.

But
not too close.

With a
brief look around the room, she realised she’d never been to this
part of the hospital. There was an enormous amount of equipment
around her, and as far as she could tell, she was occupying the
only bed right in the centre of the room. It was a cavernous
expanse, too, and you could easily fit about 40 beds in
here.

. . . .

She
shivered, and as soon as she did, several of the doctors working on
a console a few meters to her right looked up sharply. She could
see them peering at her even through the crackling arc of the
field. The oranges and blues and reds dancing over the surface of
that energised bubble made the faces of the doctors colourful and
garish.

It did
not, however, obscure their expressions.

Grim
didn’t even begin to describe how serious they appeared.

She
tried to speak, but quickly realised she couldn’t control her
tongue and throat. Everything felt limp and wobbly. But,
nonetheless, she kept trying until she managed,
“what . . . .
What's . . . happening?”

She
heard the doctors mumbling, but their voices were too indistinct,
and the crackle of the force field was too loud to hear
over.

She
repeated her question, trying even harder to control her
uncooperative lips and vocal cords.

They
wouldn’t answer. They simply kept muttering amongst themselves,
their voices quiet, but the tone of worry ringing through them
painfully obvious.

If she
wasn’t already nervous, she now became powerfully
anxious.

The
force field, the stern-looking doctors, the cavernous room with
only her in it . . . . Something was very, very
wrong.

Then
she remembered.

In an
excruciating, crippling flash that felt like a flare going off
behind her eyes, she recalled the club.

She
remembered Carson shouting at her, something about her taking off
her wristwatch . . . . Then that pole. The
TI pole that had shot towards her.

Shaking now, the memories came faster and harder, slamming
into her as if they were more substantial than mere thoughts, and
somehow had the force of fists and insatiable, groping
hands.

She
remembered collapsing on that park bench; she remembered Alicia
saving her from the club . . . .

Then
finally, Nida remembered the rest.

The
dreams. The horrible, horrible nightmares.

The
visions that had raged through her mind whilst she had remained
unconscious.

In
striking detail, she recalled everything she had seen, from how she
had walked through the Academy crushing it, to the horrible destiny
she had faced on Remus 12. She remembered every scrap of dust and
rubble that had whirled around her like a tornado with her body as
its eye. She even recalled the stars going out, only to reignite as
they streaked through the sky, ploughing down on her as if she was
the gravitational centre of the galaxy.

She
shook more violently now, and she couldn’t stop it. Her body
convulsed with terrible, involuntary shakes.

She
heard the doctors speak louder, their tones coalescing into a
collective note of panic.

Then
she felt something dart up from the base of the bed. With wide,
shocked eyes, she saw a robotic arm twist up with a syringe gun
clutched in its metallic fingers. Without pause, it injected the
gun into her neck.

Immediately she felt a powerful numbing sensation wash through
her. It felt as though she had just been injected with detachment,
in its purest, most distilled form.

Her
body stopped shaking, and the horrible flashes of her nightmares no
longer strangled her mind.

She
simply lay there, her body forced into a false calm, induced by
whatever powerful drug the syringe gun had injected into her
neck.

She
waited for unconsciousness to take her, but it didn’t. Only the
numbness did.

Then,
finally, she was aware of somebody walking up to the edge of the
field.

She
struggled to turn her head, and eventually managed it.

“What's . . . happening?” she tried again,
and this time she had to put in herculean effort to force her numb
lips to form the words.

The
woman on the other side of the field didn’t answer. She simply
looked at Nida carefully, calculatingly, and coldly.

“Please,” Nida managed.

The
woman’s previously stony expression softened. “You are stable,” she
answered.

Nida
struggled to repeat the word, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stared
imploringly through the force field at the woman.

“You’ve had an accident,” the woman said in a low, firm tone,
“and you are being looked after.”

Despite how much energy it took, Nida shook her
head.

There
had been no accident.

She
could remember exactly what had happened, and it wasn’t as if she’d
simply tripped over her own feet and smashed her face into the
pavement.

It was
the light from that planet. From Remus 12.

Nida
did not pause to wonder how she knew that, instead she shook her
head again. “Take me home,” she now announced, her voice far more
controlled, every note of fatigue dropping from it as if Nida had
returned to full, vibrant health.