Lost to the wind

[Serpentis]

//Attempting using paragraphs and such to make it easier to read, but I am not good where to put them and I kind of liked the blocky way of writing But yeah, let's see if this works for you guys!//

A dark metal room, laying on a table of some sort, hands and feet latched to it. He moved his head to the right, seeing a desk with bottles and instruments on it. Next to it stood an advanced looking contraption, it had several implements, long drilling devices and what seemed to be two large see through container attached to the top, one filled with a blue liquid, the other red. He felt out of place, confused, disturbed, his chest felt like it was under pressure, something heavy and hard. He looked straight ahead, right up towards the ceiling, a round object that had several smaller circles on it.
“Lamp?”, Sergei thought to himself.
As he heard the voice in his head, it sounded wrong, distorted? No, just, wrong, it was darker than he expected. He turned to the left and saw another table, this one had a large box on it, it was cracked open and he could see what he believed were cybernetic components. Next to it sat a smaller box, this one some kind of tool box, it had pliers and some kind of hammer.
“Nope, don’t like that. F*ck, my chest.”, he wanted to place a hand on it, but what good would that do, even if his arm was free. There was an eerie silence in the room, until he focused and heard a dripping from somewhere further into the darkness. Eventually it was all he could hear.
“Drip drip drip..” he couldn’t let it go, “Drip drip drip..”. He grimaced as he lay there, unable to relax at all. After what seemed like hours, there were heavy footsteps from somewhere outside of the darkness. He heard voices, speaking loudly and intensely.
“No, Project Babushka needs to continue, the Premiere did not allocate millions on this project for it to be abandoned after the first step had been done!”, it was a familiar voice.
“But sir! We do not know the consequences to replac-” the man was silenced by the former voice.
“You are the expert in this, find out the consequences, or they both will die and that will not please the Premiere.”.
They stopped arguing and the footsteps were heard again, moving away. Then a door clicked and there suddenly was light at the end of the darkness. A man in white overcoat came in, he sighed and walked over to the desk and clicked a button and a monitor appeared. He cleared the desk from bottles and the medical instruments.
“How can they expect me to be able to finish this.. It's not some regular technology, think damnit, THINK.” and he slapped the side of his head a few times. Sergei could see the monitor on, but not what was on it, he tried to focus but all he managed to do was wince and groan from the pressure the movement caused. The man in the coat turned around, seeing Sergei awake he rushed to the side of the bed.
“You are not supposed to be conscious, here, let me help you sleep.” and went and filled a syringe with some clear liquid from a container near the desk and walked back over to Sergei.
“Don’t worry, it will be fine, comrade, just.. Close your eyes and rest, you’ll need it.” and he injected the liquid into Sergei’s arm and in moments, Sergei felt so tired, so incredibly tired.

He didn’t wake up in a panic this time, the ending of the dream almost felt as it was affecting him in reality.
“Cause this was.. Reality, right?” he silently thought to himself.
As he got up from bed he got dressed and yawned heavily, it had been a restless sleep it seemed, the nightmares kept returning, always something new. He groaned and picked up his tablet from the desk and headed down to the mess hall.
In the mess hall, most of the crew was eating breakfast, Jurgen however, had not left his room since yesterday when they came back. He did feel sorry for the kid, he was abused and humiliated, most likely for the first time. As he approached the kitchen, Stein again was in charge of the kitchen, he smiled at Sergei and handed him a plate of eggs and bacon, not fresh of course, but good enough. Sergei went to sit down next to the others, idly listening to their chatter, most of them were in good moods, he liked that.
After breakfast, Sergei brought a plate of breakfast over to Jurgen’s bunk, he was lying there, curled up in a blanket. Sergei put a hand on the kid's arm and squeezes.
“Hey, kid, you need food, sit up.”. Sergei was soft spoken, he knew he could break if he was rushed or stressed. After a few seconds, Jurgen turned around, his eyes were red and he was a bit pale. Sergei frowned and sat down next to him, placing the plate on the bed behind him.
“Kid... Jurgen, these things happen in this line of work, but look, you survived and this is an experience you will have use of in your life. If anything like this happens again, which I hope it doesn’t, you know how it feels and with time you can learn to resist it.”, Sergei placed a hand on his shoulder, the kid was looking down at his hands, they still had marks from the cuffs that they put on him.
“I’m sorry captain, I should’ve.. I could have fought back.”, he took a deep breath, most likely to focus and not cry in front of Sergei.
Sergei was both disgusted by his own weakness that he felt sorry for him and Jurgen’s own weakness of not toughing it out, like he would have made it through this easily, even untrained.
“Jurgen, would you like to go home?”, he asked plainly, better to rip off the band aid than letting the kid try to force himself to stay. Jurgen was quiet for a while, then he took a deep breath and shook his head.
“No, captain, I want to do this. I just.. Need a little help with these kinds of things.”.
Well, that brought him back, he straightened and took a grownup decision, Sergei actually felt pride at that moment, he slapped Jurgen’s back and said with a smile.
“We’ll teach you, don’t you worry. But, eat some breakfast and go help down in the kitchen today, no need to stress yourself out immediately, ok?”.
Jurgen nodded and Sergei left him to eat. As Sergei walked down the corridor to the bridge, he was annoyed he just didn’t kick Jurgen off the ship and on a transport to Rheinland, better lose the weakest link than it becoming a risk later. But that’s not what he did.

Karl was already on the bridge and was working on the navigation console, he nodded at Sergei as he walked in.
“Boss, today is the day, right?”, Karl said with a light smile.
“Yeah, just waiting for Li Hana to call.” Sergei walked over to the console Karl was standing at.
“Anything interesting?”, Karl shook his head in response.
“No, just checking our nav charts, we have some information about Shikoku and the location of Morioka thanks to her coordinates.” Karl points at a part on the map and then at another symbol on the charts.
“Think this might be a jumphole, but I have no idea where to.”, he taps the symbol a few times.
“Right, well, good to know if we need to run. But wait..” he checked the charts and zoomed out, seeing the systems near that edge of Shikoku.
“Kepler or Galileo most likely. Kessler had been going through a dark matter storm or something, right?”, Serge tapped the Kepler system symbol and Karl went over to another console and checked the net.
“Yeah, it is, so let’s not try that jump hole.”. Karl sighed and walked back over to the nav station.
“Well, we’ll just see what happens, we got the cloak if sh*t hits the fan.”
Then they went back to their duties, eagerly awaiting the communications from Li Hana and making some good credits. As he sat by his console on the bridge, Sergei began to feel a light stinging sensation in his implant, a frizzle almost and in the corner of his eye, the text from before appeared.
“BABUSHKA; Subject not connected. PROJECT LEAD; Ivanov, Doctor; ATTEMPTING TO SEND SIGNAL.” and the sudden sting of pain deep in his head caused him to wince and lay down against the console. “SIGNAL ERROR; SECOND INSTANCE; UNAVAILABLE; SHUTTING DOWN:” and the pain stopped and so did the text. Karl was suddenly at his side.
“Boss? You ok?”, he looked concerned and by god so was he.
“It’s fine now, the implant just went batsh*t on me.”, Sergei sighed and hit the side of his head twice, he knew it did nothing, but it made him feel better.
“Boss, you have a nosebleed.”. Karl took out a piece of cloth and offered it to Sergei, who took it and wiped the blood from his nose.
“F*cking sh*t..”

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