Broken Bonds

Pain shot through her body as a signal that she wasn’t dead, at least immediately. She knew what pain was like, it was not foreign to her, but this sort of feeling still was new. Her body protected her in the past from most injuries. It was difficult to describe, but the only way she knew how to frame it was that it was a sign of being frail like a normal human once more.

She looked around, finding a light catching her attention out of the corner. “Where did I fall?” The pain spiked through her shoulder again jerking her body away only causing more pain in the process. “Dammit…this pain…at least I’m still alive. If it hurts this much, I’m probably not going to die, if that’s any hope…but damn it hurts so much!”

As she focused her eyes on the light not moving, she could see what looked like maybe a hallway. “Did I luck out? Though not sure about the price…” She had to check it out either way now that she was down here.

However, the problem of the injury, which she couldn’t even see more than a highlight from the light on the twisted metal only gave her a guess. She searched out towards the pain in her arm until she found it. Pierced through her forearm was a metal spike or some such thing, it didn’t really matter in the end what it was other than she needed to remove herself from it.

She gripped her forearm above the wound trying to staunch the bleeding that would happen once she removed it. Open wounds like these were terrible as she learned, but she had no way to tear the metal away to leave it in until she got medical help.

Biting down on her teeth, Yumi braced herself as she tore her arm up free from the metal, nearly biting her tongue in the process. Panting and gasping for air, she quickly tore off some of her uniform and wrapped up her wound tightly along her forearm to reduce the blood loss. Holding her arm up against her shoulder, she slowly stepped towards the light.

As she got closer it started to become clear that it was the station, some room or hall whatever. A place safer than where she was now was all that she needed to know. “Almost there…” She had to worm through some damaged paneling and avoid a death trap of shredded metal, but she made it into a room that looked like it had a purpose with all of the equipment inside. “Karen! Can you hear me?”

“Y-Yumi! You’re back on the sensors! Wait? What are you doing in lab 4C?”

“Complicated and painful. I’ll explain later, but can you route us back this way?”

“Let’s see. I hadn’t counted on this, but it does look like there is a clear path back for you now!”

Yumi leaned back into the hole. “Come down this way, Yori! Be careful! Karen’s got a new route!”

Chapter 480 – Broken Bonds

Back at the command center, Yumi stood in the center with Karen finally having finished apologizing for things completely out of her control. Yumi continued to motion with her hands, which might have been another reminder for her. A metal or plastic sort of material covered her wounded forearm like a cast mending the wound. Everything would be back to normal soon. “All finished?”

“Y-Yes…” She still hadn’t composed herself fully, though given how shaken up about the sight of all of the blood and ruining the polished floor of the command center, Yumi could forgive her a little. It just lasted too long.

Staring over at the panels and screens, which were as foreign as everything else, Yumi asked Karen, “Everything fixed now?” Unfortunately, she didn’t reply immediately to her question making it clear that there was something that she did not know. “Karen?”

“Sorry, Yumi. We really appreciate what you did, but we lost the sub-reactor. The explosion that…”

“I see. So it wasn’t another attack.”

The matter of fact acceptance that Yumi had surprised Karen. “You’re not mad?!”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, but it was out of my hands. Besides, it’s not like yelling at you would serve anything.” Yumi rubbed her hand over the smooth sci-fi looking cast, she lacked better words for it. “So what’s the plan now? Are we good?”

“Y-Yes, of course! I’ll vouch for you personally if Miss Sumiko disagrees!”

‘She’s your boss, not sure your vote will mean much if she’s against it. But it’ll probably be fine given the feeling I got from her.’

“But they’re still trying to figure out what to do next now that we lost the sub-reactor. So you’ll have to wait.” She motioned over to an empty room in the back for them to wait. Until their boss came back, nothing more could really happen. Yumi accepted that much and gestured to Yori to follow.

A floor up from the ground floor of the command room and behind a large array of computers, their waiting room had a better impression than the cell they found themselves in previously. Given the highly futurist setting, she had little clue of what sort of function this room might serve. Since they told them to wait in it, she doubted it had anything important or dangerous. It had four walls and few rows of benches. In the far back corners they even had some sort of tree-like thing that was too alien to be from earth. It seemed a little more purposeful than a waiting room, but close enough to it.

Yumi took a seat towards the front to make it easy for them to find her and respond to any summons. However, it was long enough that Yumi started to get bored waiting for them to do something. Whatever the passage of time was, she started to lay on her back trying to find something more comfortable. All the stress of being on a possibly doomed space station played havoc on her body.

Once it had been long enough, she sat back up with some of her energy recovered. The crawling around through the innards of the station put more of a toll on her body than she expected. Perhaps one of the things that Yuki granted them was faster recovery as well. She felt like she should have already been back to normal by now, but her body still dragged in places.

She looked over to the silent brother of hers. It was still a little weird for her to see him as he was with her having aged past him. This was what she remembered of him, but it had been five years, he should have aged up like her. That was what her mind told her. It made things a little disconcerting. “Can we talk?” she tried again, hoping for better results this time around.

Silence.

“As in a two-way conversation. Not me talking to you and you ignoring me.” She was still not getting anywhere with him. The stubbornness streak seemed to have only strengthened further. “Look if we’re going to fix this, it has to be more than me talking. You were never like this in the past. What’s changed about you?”

Silence.

A heavy long sigh came from Yumi’s lips as she dug in for the long haul to try to pry open his lips to actually get a real conversation from him. She stood up in the aisle between the halves of the rows. Her brother remained in the back not even seated in the benches as though even that might have been too much for him. “It’s been five years. I considered a lot of different things that I might have been able to say to you to change the way things went that day. But it was a decision I had to live with. I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever see you again.”

Yumi walked over down the aisle towards the back, though keeping a safe enough distance between them. She didn’t want him running off on her before she even got a chance. “Yori, things have been tense and stressful since we’ve arrived. I’ll admit that I haven’t exactly been as polite talking to you as I could have. I’m sorry for how short I’ve been. So can we talk?”

Silence continued, though she did manage to at least get a look from him. It was only brief and mostly just an upturned face with his eyes glancing at her. Barely anything to count, but she had the first eye contact from him since they arrived. He refused to even seem to acknowledge her existence. ‘What’s going on in his head? He’s so hung up on this…’

Even without a conversation, she found herself having something that finally felt slightly meaningful between them. ‘I want to move on past this… But still don’t know what’s being locked up inside him. I need him to talk to me. If we don’t talk, nothing is going to change…’ Yumi wanted more, but it felt like it was going to be pushing it, if she tried to get in his way.

Every time before when she tried to get him to do anything, it only seemed to make things worse. She sat down on the floor with a safe two meters between them. She never would have imagined that this was where they would end up. ‘First Fumiko…now Yori…who’s going to be next? Is this the price I must pay?’

Fighting the melancholic depression that hung over her head, she turned away towards the front. If he wasn’t in her sights, less of the stray thoughts mixed into her mind. ‘I made my peace with that in my past. I can’t let that continue to haunt me or I can’t move forward.’ She just needed a moment to get her breath as it were.

Pressing her hand against the smooth well polished floor, she gathered herself together from the doubts that tried to worm into the cracks to break her. Yumi slowly concentrated her mind as things pooled. Rebuilding the wall took a bit of effort, but the small breaks were cleaned up. Everything was as it should be within her mind.

Yumi tilted her head back towards Yori. ‘I’m not going to let this be the end. Whatever it takes I will find a way to fix it. Even if it takes another five years or fifty. This isn’t over.’ Her brother held his head down still keeping any sort of connection between them severed.

The door to the room hissed with a slide open as Yumi quickly stood to greet whoever visited them. It was Sumiko followed along by Bravado Boy, both of whom looked to have seen better days. They had bruises along with stains covering them. Whatever happened in the sub-reactor they had no time to do any clean up. Yumi didn’t really understand what the importance of it was to the station.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting, Yumi. We finally got out of the meeting.”

“That’s fine. I understand. We’re outsiders here.”

“You should know that fixing the mirror controls restored the stability inside the habitat.”

That gave a little comfort to Yumi to know that they didn’t lose their effort. Not that she fully understood what it was needed to do. It kept the people alive on the station, she expected. Knowing that was enough for her now, until she got to learn more out of the place.

She stepped forward feeling like they were accepting her more than a stranger. “And what of the situation now? You’ve lost the sub-reactor I heard.”

“Yes, the worst possible outcome came to pass. We were too late in being able to stabilize the reactor and it went critical. We were able to eject it in time before it caused serious harm to the station, but as I heard you experienced some of the feedback caused by our failure. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” replied Yumi with a polite bow. The death of Nerine along with the rest of her friends left her numb still to it all. Knowing that it wasn’t real and that they would be back helped to keep her from dwelling deeply on the emotions. It still hurt, but she could move on from it knowing that they would meet again, just it would be a really long time for her possibly. Though Yumi continued to hope for a quick end to this world with how dangerous their situation was. She didn’t want to stay knowing that they might get attacked again. “But we’re not safe yet are we?”

“You’re correct. Follow me. Your friend can come along too.”

Yumi walked forward catching up with Sumiko and the boy as they exited back to the command room. If Yori followed them it was up to him. He seemed to want nothing to do with the current scenario and nothing that she said was going to change that. There would be plenty of time for her to work on him. It was going to be a project for her.

At the center of the command room, the projector came up again displaying the station for Yumi. Sumiko narrated the damage that they sustained, but quickly got to the heart of the matter for Yumi. “All of this means that we’re running out of time. The station is not going to be able to survive another attack by the enemy. We only managed to delay the inevitable. When they return it will mean the end of this station and with it the last of humanity will die.”