First Contact Fallout by Aer-ki Jyr (novels for teenagers .TXT) 📗

the coma. By the time the Kich’a’kat repaired it and restored the flow, your mind was locked down in emergency survival protocols. Had it not been you would have been reduced to a hatchling and retrained from the beginning. But so long as your memories are there we are going to try to retrieve them…most of them,” the healer corrected. “Some have been permanently lost, but the experience gained over millennia is worth spending some time to recover, for it will be far quicker than starting over again.”

“I am fatigued but cannot rest, yet I do nothing to be fatigued. I do not understand this.”

“Then perhaps you do need to do something.”

“May I go into the jungle?” he asked, looking at her again.

“To do what?”

“Explore.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps so. You have never asked to do that before. Do you promise to stay with me and return when I say?”

“Bargain accepted.”

“Very well. Follow me then,” she said, stomping off on her heavy bipedal strides with her tail swaying behind her just above the paved promenade so it would not drag.

Tu’vac was relieved to follow her, and when they came to the gates and he was allowed to pass through a tiny bit of the resistance in his mind gave way. Most was still there, but he felt freer here than inside as the pair slipped into the foliage and disappeared beneath the greenery on one of several well worn paths.

“Others come out here?”

“Zen’zat mostly, but they keep the trails large enough for our use.”

Tu’vac sniffed the air, which was unprocessed and raw with the scent of life and decay. The Zor’do must have had an atmospheric shield covering it to keep the scents out. Perhaps it also had a…

He huffed. Yet something else he knew but could not remember.

“Are you feeling better?” the healer asked after a few minutes of trail hiking, all of which occurred below the canopy in the shade where most of the sunlight could not reach.

“Moderately so.”

“Explain please.”

“A coolness.”

“In your mind or body?”

“Mind. It is small, but present.”

“Interesting. Perhaps I should have brought you outside sooner. Is the terrain familiar to you?”

“No.”

“Does it feel safe?”

“It feels anonymous.”

“And you wish to run away into it where you can think things through alone?”

“You said you could not see my thoughts.”

“We have spoken many times before. From those talks I know some of your thoughts because you have told me of them. I am extrapolating now. I cannot let you go alone, but we can run if that would help?”

“Will you let me lead?”

“Stay on the paths,” she said, stepping aside and crushing brush to make room for him to slide past.

Tu’vac didn’t hesitate, and that surprised him. It was almost as if his body moved on its own while his mind struggled to process. Before he knew it he was running with heavy strides in the…high gravity. That he could remember. He wasn’t tired, the gravity here was heavier than most planets, but it was no different than inside the Zor’do. Why hadn’t it been altered there?

He ducked down to travel underneath a branch as thick as his arm that had not been removed, his muzzle staying parallel to the ground as his back flattened out. It was an old trick that caused him to stumble now, but his feet felt the curvature of the stones in the crude pathway that appeared to have been hand laid in a somewhat erratic pattern, and with that feel came an immediate response adjusting his stride.

“Good. Your balance is improving,” the healer said from behind as she kept pace.

Tu’vac ignored her and continued to run through twists and turns until he came to a long downward slope that was more or less straight. He stretched out his legs and increased speed, feeling his muscles warm in protest until halfway down where their fatigue did manifest and caused him to misstep. Tu’vac’s right foot caught one of the tiny stones, prying it out of the ground as he crash/rolled forward and spun multiple times before his tail slapping on the ground stopped his momentum.

His head hit the ground multiple times, and he almost felt like the spike in his mind was coming loose when it did…but then the firmness returned as did his vision and balance.

“Can you get up?” the healer asked.

Tu’vac huffed, then stood back up easily. He thumped his tail twice on the ground to insure his balance held, then before the healer could ask another question he took off running downhill again, this time at a more secure pace.

The Era’tran ran and ran until his legs could take no more. Tu’vac knew they should, that they were weak beyond the norm, but he had to kneel down and lean back as he breathed heavily, looking up through the trees and the tiny pinpricks of sunlight that made their way down through them.

He stayed there for more than a minute, unmoving aside from the heaving of his chest, then the healer reached out and tapped him on the side of the neck with her claw.

No response.

“Tu’vac?” she asked, tapping harder, but he stood staring at the sky lost in thought as he had many times before. His mind was now in an endless loop that could not be broken, meaning he had reached for something new and didn’t find enough pieces to process it, but enough to stick on.

There was nothing she could do to bring him out of it. They’d have to take him back to the lab and do another restart.

Mario’topa, she said telepathically to the jungle, knowing the Zen’zat would be somewhere nearby.

I am here.

Bring a barge. He has seized up again.

That was fast.

He has not wanted to run before. I believe too