Aeolus Investigations Episode 8

Available on Amazon.com

Over the first seven episodes in the series, Lexi Stevens has grown from an interstellar insurance investigator to be the Marshal of the Accord. The job entails protecting the Accord from all external threats.

In Episode 8 she encounters an alien race with a technology that scares her to her core. On the largest starship in Accord space, one dwarfing even Glaurang, she meets the Badowine. They’re looking for a new home.

We all know Lexi married Ron and at the end of Mom, is expecting their first son. We also all know Lexi’s mother, Violet, died when Lexi was four even though sometime after she was buried, her body went missing. In Samurai, Lexi not only meets Violet for the first time since she was a child, she discovers she has a fourteen year old sister.

And yes, there are zombies.

Samurai– Chapter 1

This time was different. Disturbingly so.

Normally, she felt fully awake after no more than a few hours’ sleep. Sure, there had been a few extreme occasions when she slept longer than that but still, awake for her was always awake. She never had to deal with grogginess, with getting the old engine turning over. She never needed that cup of hot, black coffee to get her started. This morning, getting her mind in gear felt like watching her Dad start his old car in sub-zero weather. It took a lot of work. She wasn’t sure she was firing on all cylinders, either.

The air in her room was quiet and chill, with a slightly odd tang to it. She wasn’t able to identify the soft background noises that surrounded her. After a few minutes of lying in bed, trying to get a sense of her surroundings, she finally opened her eyes. She found herself in a rather ugly, clinical-looking room. Why the hell would anyone choose that ghastly color to paint the walls?

Rough-weave curtains mounted over the row of windows, more assumed than proven, stretched across the width of the room from six feet above the floor up to the drop panel ceiling, blocked most of the light. One of the ceiling panels had a round, brown, water stain. Sunlight gave up trying to alter the room’s innate lack of ambiance as it failed to stream into the room. Along the same wall, below the windows, a shelf held toys and a small collection of children’s books.

Glancing to her left, she noted two nearly empty IV bags dangling from a hook on a stand at the head of the bed. Her gaze ran down the tubes from the bags to where they attached to the back of her left hand. The vein looked fine, with no signs of bruising or inflammation.

Looking down at both of her arms and her hands, she saw only smooth unmarked skin covering an extremely well-defined musculature. She reached under the bed covers and the shapeless hospital smock she was wearing and discovered she was in a diaper. Her hand also encountered a small, hard object that seemed to be implanted in the wall of her abdomen. Based on its placement, she assumed it was the external, button end of a gastric feeding tube. The other end would be in her stomach, making it possible to pump liquid foods into a comatose patient. Primitive, but effective. They wouldn’t implant a G-tube unless I’ve been in this condition longer than the six weeks a nasogastric feeding tube, inserted through the nose and into the stomach, can be safely used. So where am I? More to the point, how the hell did I get here? How freakin’ long have I been unconscious? Why have I been unconscious?

She lay back onto the pillow, closing her eyes on the dim fluorescent lighting and old-style suspended ceiling. She felt her heart beating with a slow, rhythmic beat. Her breathing was also slow and steady, drawing chilled air deep into her lungs before expelling it back into the room. She felt the weight and texture of the sheet and blanket weighing down her legs and feet. She wiggled her toes. When she lifted her unencumbered hand to feel her face, it felt like her face. No scabs or contusions. No scar tissue that she could feel. Pulling her hair in front of her face conveyed that it was long and a deep shade of red. Exploring her skull, all she could determine was that she was overdue for a shampoo. Clearly, this is a hospital room. Mentally, I’m groggy and I’m confused, but physically, I feel fine. No sign of any damage. Not even any shaved patches on my scalp. Nothing hurts.

Even in her current, limited mental condition she realized she must have options. There were almost always options. She wasn’t helpless. She knew, without knowing how she knew, she never allowed herself to be helpless. Still, she could just wait and see what happened. Not her normal operational style perhaps, but then again, no one was torturing her. That’s kind of an odd thought to jump to, isn’t it?

She wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable. It did appear suspiciously like she was hospitalized, possibly sedated. Her own personality aside, that first option was fairly easy to implement. As far as she could remember, she had no pressing business elsewhere. On the other hand, as option two, she could easily disconnect herself from the drip tubes and go exploring. With a shrug, she felt around for a call button. Make that option one-b.

As the minutes ticked by with no response, she reconsidered implementing option two. Unless she was in Raccoon City during a zombie apocalypse[Resident Evil], someone should answer the call bell. As silly as that movie is, I always liked Resident Evil. Of course, if she had really been out of it for longer than six weeks, the ringing call bell might not be as closely attended as it should be. So she sighed and waited.

It was nearly twelve minutes before a short, heavyset woman, dressed in pale-blue scrubs covered with cartoon animals, bustled into the room. She looked more than surprised, shocked might be a better term, as her patient’s eyes followed her into the room. “Why good morning, dear,” the nurse managed to say. Her name tag proclaimed her to be a registered nurse named Martha Kurtzman. Martha needed to brush her teeth, Lexi noted. She didn’t appear to be a zombie, though, so not Raccoon City. “You just lay there quietly, sweetheart. I’m nurse Martha. I know this is a little scary, isn’t it? You’re safe here, Lexi. How are we feeling this morning?”

Martha beamed happily at her when Lexi answered, “OK, I guess.” Her voice felt strange, like she hadn’t used it recently. “I’m hungry.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I can’t get you anything to eat until your doctor sees you,” Martha apologized. “It’ll be a just a little while before the doctor can get here. Your mommy and daddy will be here soon, too. They’re going to be so happy you’re feeling better. Would you like me get you a toy to hold while we wait for them?”

The woman’s tone and syntax as she spoke suggested she was speaking to a child. Lexi’s self-examination indicated her body was that of an adult woman, not a child. Her offering a toy for her patient to hold kind of underscored Lexi’s assumption. Lexi glanced at the shelf at the far end of the small room. She recognized a number of stuffed animals from her childhood, mostly dinosaurs and a big teddy bear named Fluff, were arranged there. She didn’t know how long they had been on that shelf, staring at her, but she didn’t see any accumulated dust. That damn Barbie was sitting in Fluff’s lap, looking stuck-up as usual. Lexi noticed Barbie was missing one of her red pumps. Not surprising really, Barbie spent a lot of their playtime screaming for help, running from the ravenous dinosaurs. Fluff, big enough to handle any dinosaur, almost always got to her in time to save her. Admittedly, it was usually close. And, yes, unfortunately he couldn’t always save her footwear. Lexi shook her head as she said, “No, thank you.”

The nurse smiled at her and said, “OK, sweetie-pie, let me go make those calls. I’ll be right back to sit with you.”

Lexi watched as the woman bustled from the room. While she was gone, Lexi pulled the IV needle from her hand. She couldn’t tell if the drip was drugged or not, but just in case it was, she wanted it stopped. She brushed the small drop of blood away with her other hand. Then she watched as the hole in the back of her hand closed, leaving smooth, unblemished skin by the time Martha got back. She didn’t know what to make of that.

Mommy and Daddy will be here soon? That didn’t sound right at all. What about Ron? What is going on?

Sanurai is available on Amazon.com