Murmansk-13

Katja woke with a sputtering cough, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths, a wave of nausea forced a bolus of stomach acid into the back of her mouth. She swallowed it back down. Her jumpsuit was clammy against her moist skin and sticky where new blood spotted. She felt a strong grip attempt to envelop her and her sleep addled reaction was to push it away, fight it. THEY WERE COMING!

“Are you OK?” Tala pinned Katja with a tender strength as she tried to pull away. It took Katja another few seconds to remember where she was and who she was with. “Bad dream?” Tala asked, her face drawn with concern as she looked down upon her. Katja had sprawled across her lap and somehow fallen asleep.

Even within her dreams she hadn’t been able to escape the mind corroding touch of the station.

Her metabolism had worked to expunge the remaining sedative Arty had used. She nodded and sat up stiffly, rubbing hot, scratchy eyes. She’d draped herself awkwardly across Tala in her drug-numbed state and now had a new set of muscular kinks to add to an elongating list of aches and pains.

They hardly seemed to matter anymore. She’d grown so weary and so hurt Katja started to feel a disconnect from her corporeal self, as if her broken body was merely a tool for the mind she was gradually receding into. A large, remotely operated means of conveyance that had grown old too fast, poorly maintained and starting to show the inevitable signs of dereliction.

“You want to talk about it?” Tala asked, placing a gentle hand on her knee. Her features were hard but expressive, a strong jaw sat beneath unfeminine brows and angular cheekbones and the stark Grace flattop gave her a mannish severity. While Tala bore so many of her own injuries, she seemed to channel Katja’s pain and fear as if hoping she could somehow absorb them and unburden her. Katja could see in Tala’s soft, almond shaped brown eyes the depth of her need to make Katja better, that was why she’d tried to drive her away, Tala would hurt herself to save Katja.

Katja shook her head. “Not really.”

They were still in the cell. Bright antiseptic strip lights fuzzed in the corridor beyond, shedding retina tiring neon white through the bars. The cell measured three meters square, a single steel shelf, bolted to the bulkhead and furnished with a thin, stained mattress, constituted a bed and beside it a stainless steel toilet without a seat provided the only adornments.

Katja had an urgent needed to piss, but couldn’t summon the exhibitionism required to urinate in the presence of men.

Captain Tor, the wild eyed, blond haired man who she’d escaped from after the morgue, slumped catatonic against the opposite bulkhead. He’d abandoned Tala to her fate when the EVA suit she was using malfunctioned. She would have died returning to her ship and he’d been given little choice. Tala’s anger at abandonment had softened, but what remained Katja felt was misplaced. His decision had brought them together.

The Captain had become deeply broken since Katja lay pinned by hoards of infected, pressing down upon her, in the service corridor. He’d stopped mumbling and his intense, unflinching eyes fixed on some unseen image or event that demanded the concentration of his entire being. Were it not for the occasional movement of his eyelids and the near imperceptible rise and fall of his chest, he could be assumed dead. Katja imagined if she started to openly piss in the middle of the cell it would not distract his attention.

Beside him, an innocuous looking Latino man with teak brown skin called Diego stared at Katja with thinly veiled resentment. The essence of stale urine still drifted from the helmet coupling of his EVA suit, his catheter having apparently detached or been incorrectly fitted. At first Diego had worn a mien of shame and shock faced resignation in the cell. But slowly, she’d sensed a teenagers envy subtly twisting his face as fear gave way to nervous boredom. He was in love with Tala, of that Katja was certain and even when faced with impending death, the snubbing hurt.

Perhaps impending death made the unrequited feelings rawer.

They’d not talked as a group since Katja was brought to the cell. It was like pouring salt on a fresh sore but Katja had managed to recount everything Arty told her, before setting upon her. Before she’d killed him.

Katja informed them about the party arriving at the station, about their status as unwanted observers, then the memories of the interrogation room spinning caused her lucidity to flee. Katja couldn’t remember if anyone said anything in response before she fell asleep. She didn’t think so and she had no point of reference as to how long she’d slept, how long until they expected the party to arrive and eliminate the witnesses. Eliminate them.