Chapter Text
He woke with a start. There was trembling around him. He wasn't in the Gabthley's cockpit, or even in his pilot suit. Pain surged through him. Every part of him felt like it was on fire. "Lieutenant!", a voice called out to him.
"Mouar?!? LIla?!?"
"Lieutenant, please look at me."
It wasn't Mouar or Lila, it was a young nurse adjusting an IV connected to his arm. The searing pain lessened, the voices were quiet now. "Lieutenant Jerid, are you ok?" He didn't answer.
"Where am I, this doesn't feel like the Alexandria, how long has it..." Kamille had killed her, the realization sunk in. Killed her like he killed Lila and Kacricon.
Despair sank in, like it had when he first felt and saw Mouar die. It should have been him. It should have been HIM. Kamille should've been the one that died. Tears of anguish and rage flowed freely down his face.
The Nurse had turned to give him some privacy. "You've been in and out of it for a couple of days, the Alexandria couldn't offer you proper care so we're being sent to a Titans base." she explained.
After a moment where his tears had subsided enough, he raised his head up to look at her and was rewarded with more pain. She had her back to him and was folding his uniform and pilot suit. "Where are we, where are we going?" he asked softly. So softly he wasn't sure she had heard him until she responded
"We're on a shuttle-"
"We're entering the atmosphere?" Jerid interrupted. The comforting pull of gravity was washing over him. The voices had gone silent.
"Yes, unfortunately our destination is 'too classified' for me to know." the Nurse grumbled.
The trembling had calmed, images of Kacricon and Kamille and Jaburo and a woman with green hair who had lifted him up, pierced his thoughts. With a deep breath he pushed the memories back down. Down with the rest of the pain. The pain that was starting to crawl back over him again.
"How bad are my injuries? You said the Alexandria couldn't care for me." he asked. The Nurse turned back to him. The anxious look on her face told him all he needed to know.
"I increased the dosage, we still have an hour until we get there, you might as well get some sleep."
His protest to this information died in his throat. The drugs she was pumping into his broken arm had kicked in and dragged him into dreams, dreams of Mouar.
~
Jerid Messa woke up in another unfamiliar place, somewhere with gravity much stronger than Von Braun or a colony. He was on Earth again. The classified base the Nurse spoke. The door to his hospital room slid out of and back into place and a doctor walked in along with the Nurse who cared for him on the way here.
"Lieutenant Junior Grade Jerid Messa, I'm Dr. José Smith and this is-"
"I'm Kareen Parson, how're you feeling?", the Nurse interrupted.
"The drugs seem to be doing their job", Jerid answered and then turned to Smith "How bad are my injuries?"
With a deep sigh at his bluntness, the doctor turned and took the papers that Kareen offered him. "Ok, you have a slight fracture in your skull, your arm's broken around the wrist area, and your leg's broken in two places: here at the shins and here at your kneecap" Dr. Smith explained while showing him x-ray images of various body parts.
"The fracture in your skull and the bones around your wrist should heal in about two weeks but your leg injuries might take a month at the earliest but could even take 2 to 3 months to heal."Smith continued.
2 to 3 months to be back in fighting condition? Frustration took hold of him again. What if someone else killed Kamille? After being met with silence, Dr. Smith sighed and turned to leave, calling out "Welcome to Kilimanjaro, Lieutenant." before the door slid closed.
~
It had only been a week since arriving at Kilimanjaro Base when he had been allowed, with a wheelchair and Nurse Kareen's help, to roam the base. Of course, there were places where neither he nor Kareen were allowed access to. One of them was a heavy door behind which he felt on odd pull, a sensation that he associated with Mouar. A day later he felt that pull again when Kareen pushed his wheelchair into the cafeteria.
At a table watched by a stern-looking woman with brown hair and glasses were two girls who emanated that feeling he couldn't quite explain. Like Nostalgia but more solid, made even more odd by the fact that he had never seen them before. "That table there" Jerid pointed out to Kareen. She wheeled him to the front of the table and took an empty seat to his right, next to the girl with purple hair. Across from the girl with long, purple hair was a girl about the same age with short, blue hair.
The older woman with glasses glared at the two of them and asked tersely "and who might you be?"
"I'm Kareen and this is my patient, Lieutenant Jerid Messa" Kareen responded in a saccharine voice.
"Very well, I am Doctor Namicar Cornell, and this is Rosamia Badam and Four Murasame, Kim Kerin should be here, but her tests today took too much out of her" the older woman said while pointing at the others sat at the table.
"Tests, what kind of tests do you run Doctor?" Kareen earnestly asked, haven seemingly forgotten her earlier antagonism.
"These girls are Cyber-Newtypes" Namicar replied casually, as if it would've been obvious from a glance. Jerid, who had been examining the sad, dejected girls, wondering why they felt so familiar, whipped his head around at the words Namicar uttered.
"Cyber-Newtypes?" he asked weakly.
"Yes, Lieutenant, artificial Newtypes, we're conducting training, research and development here" Namicar answered him with pride in her voice.
Thoughts swelled in his head, the thing that could change everything, to KILL Kamille. A sick and twisted joy filled Jerid Messa. The path to take had materialized before him. The path that Lila and Mouar wanted him to travel....