jeriendhal | Returned to Life, the Final Chapter

“Wouldn't be an... accident...” she gasped. “S' more like an... experiment...” She fell down to the deck and rolled, off the catwalk and into the waters of Terinu's tank.

Instantly, every hair on her body began to tingle, and she felt a wave of warmth wash over her. She blinked, trying to see her way through the greenish water. There was Terinu ahead of her, floating unconscious, a half-dozen tubes emerging from his body, connected to machinery above the tank, glowing as the Boin was leached from his body to power the great ship.

Foolish girl. You should not have interfered, the Gene Mage spoke through the link he'd installed in her. Rachael doubled over, a horrible pain stabbing her in the chest and running down her left arm. I have just stopped your heart.

No! She kicked against the wall of the tank, pushing herself over to Terinu, as black stars crossed her vision. Now, if only the Ferin boy was connected to this new power cell in the same way he'd been connected to the Crust Breaker like Leeza had described to her when she'd first woken up. Rachael grabbed two tubes in each had, and with a final burst of strength kicked hard against Terinu, yanking the tubes free of his body.

It was like she had stepped on the leads of a giant battery. Rachael felt a burning shock run up her body, from her ankles to her head as the soles of her feet came into contact with the Ferin boy. It felt like a thousand bee stings, leaving her numb with overwhelming pain. But even as the shock washed over her, she felt a sudden wrenching her chest as her heart began to beat again. She kicked upward, trying to reach the surface of the fluid to catch a breath, but her ankle had become tangled with the freed tubes, yanking her back to the bottom of the tank.

Terinu, the bion glow fading away from his body, turned to meet her eyes. Awake now, the Ferin boy quickly came to his senses. He turned and before Rachael could give warning blasted the side of the tank with his bion.

The side of the tank began to melt, water boiling around it, before the water's pressure was too much and it began to crack. Rachael let out a scream with the last of her air as the side of the tank suddenly burst and she and Terinu were flung out by the roaring water, flying into the open air in the center of the power cell. It was over twenty meters to the bottom of the cell with a hard steel floor waiting for her when she landed. Suddenly she felt a snakelike arm wrap around her ankle, and she was jerked short just a meter from impact. She looked up to see Terinu grinning wildly down at her, hanging onto the lip of a tank tier while his tail held her ankle in a tight grip.

“The control panel! Blast the control panel!” she screamed. Terinu looked up, a glow forming between his spurs, just before he lanced out with his Bion, blasting the power cell's control panel into shards of burning metal and plastic, forcing the Gene Mage to throw up his hands and back away to shield himself.

“Foolish boy! Do you know what have you done?” the Gene Mage cried out.

“I'm guessing I stopped you!” Terinu shouted back at him.

“You can't feed... power to the ship... if your controls are... busted...” Rachael wheezed, clutching her stomach as Terinu lowered her to the floor. God, her chest hurt right now. Damn the Gene Mage and the cloned, sabotaged body he had given her.

The Gene Mage looked stricken. “You ignorant fools! Now I have no way of directing the energy that the proto-Ferin are creating! It's just going to continue to build until the power cell can no longer contain it!” Indeed, even now the blinding glow from the remaining tiers of power cells began to glow a blinding white of barely contained power, as the little bodies within thrashed in agony. The Varn turned and rushed through the hatch, sealing it behind him.

“Oh, 'blast the control panel,' fraggin' great plan there, Namatjira! Hey, look at me when I'm yellin' at you!” he shouted, as she kept her head down, trying to figure out why she hurt so much. She thought the Gene Mage's signal for her heart to stop had been jammed by touching Terinu's Bion field, but if that was so, why wasn't she dead already? If she wasn't having a heart attack, why did she hurt so much?

“S... s... sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “S... s... seemed liked a--” Rachael coughed hard into her hand, and felt something warm and sticky land in her palm. Blood.

“Oh, fragg! Rachael, you okay?” Terinu demanded.

“Hurts,” she said. Now that the tingle from touching Terinu's Bion field had finally faded, she could feel a sharp pain between her ribs, and something warm and wet leaking from it. “Think I caught... some shrapnel... when you blew the tank...”

“Crap! C'mon! Don't you die on me! We gotta get out of here.”

“'ware below!” a voice called out above them. There was a sharp bang of an explosive charge detonating, and a vent shaft cover from the ceiling suddenly came crashing down, missing them both by barely a half-meter. Then a familiar figure made of fur and carbon composites came whirring down a zip line, dropping next them.

“What the fragg are you supposed to be?” Terinu demanded.

“Why I'm the daring rescue. Now, watch your tongue, boy. I'd feel damn stupid leaving you behind after going to all this trouble,” Gunny shot back. “What happened to her?”

“Shrapnel hit her, when I blasted out of the tanks.”

“Fragg!” Gunny scooped her up in his arm, cradling her as he touched a control at the wire reel attached to his waist with his free hand. The floor fell away at a dizzying speed and suddenly she was falling into the arms of Leeza and Lance, who were waiting for them in the ventilation shaft. A moment later Terinu leaped through the opening, still naked save for the fluid still clinging to his body. “We gotta get out of here,” the boy shouted. “The whole power cell is gonna blow!”

“What about the other Ferin?” Leeza demanded.

“We can't do anything for them! We ain't got the time!”

“Move it! Move it!” Gunny ordered, starting to run himself. “We might still make it to the shuttle, but the girl's wounded bad!”

“You got a med kit in that tin woodsman outfit?” Lance demanded, as they all followed him..

“I did, before those bloody lizards stripped me down!”

“What? Where?” Rachael wheezed, then choked and coughed up more blood.

“Don't try to talk,” Leeza told her, clutching Rachael's hand as they ran. “Gunny managed to find a shuttle and puzzle out the controls. He was trying to use the radio to contact GSA high command, but he managed to contact Rufus instead. He'd stayed in the system searching for us instead of trying to run for help. Gunny docked the shuttle at one of the Mantle Cracker's docking ports, and Rufus is ready to fly cover for us as soon as we can get clear of the asteroid depot.”

“Good, everyone's here...” Rachael wheezed. They must of entered a new section of the ventilation system. The lights were dimmer than before. No, they were brightening again, a blinding white light.

Rachael, it's all done. You can come home now, she heard her dad say.

“Did I do okay, Dad? Is everyone going to be okay?”

They'll be fine. You did fine. Time to come home, girl.

She walked towards her father, and Mum, and Gran, all waiting for her at the base of great, red Uluru. Behind her, somewhere distant and in the past, she could hear a young boy's voice shouting Rachael! RACHAEL!