Harper’s eyes widened in horror.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” he cried. “She can’t be, she can’t…”
“Harper!” Rommie cried. “I don’t mean she’s gone as in dead, I mean she’s gone as in…gone. She was up for an exam and they can’t find her.” Harper seemed to calm down considerably, but was still fidgeting like a rabbit.
“She’s run away? But why?” Rommie shrugged.
“I’ve issued a planet-wide message, telling everyone not to let her get on a ship. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m currently also running a search based on her nanobots. We will find her, Harper. Meanwhile, I think you should go down and talk to Liz, see if she knows what’s going on.” Harper nodded, then squirmed as he moved to walk off.
“I don’t know though, Rommie,” he moaned. “If she was unhappy enough to run away like that, we can’t ask her to go back. There must be…there must be another way.”
“There might not be, Harper,” Rommie sighed. “It hasn’t worked out when she was here, it didn’t work out in the hospital…it seems we’re running out of options.” Harper didn’t answer, but started running towards the Maru to take it down to the planet. He answered Rommie’s statement in his head though, even if he didn’t say it to her. If only he told her how he felt…everything would be all right.
****
Beka stumbled across the open field, breathing heavily after planlessly walking for what felt like hours, but probably wasn’t. There were so many thoughts, running free in her head, intently refusing to let go…she wanted to clam her hands over her ears, but the thoughts were in her head and she couldn’t shut them out.
She sank down in the grass, finally allowing herself to cry, the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks and splattering on the cold dirt under her.
She’d lost everything. She couldn’t go back to Andromeda; she’d lost her friends forever. If she went back to them, they’d send her back to the hospital. She couldn’t go back there. And she’d rather die than tell them what had happened.
They’d despise her. They’d hate her. Well, they wouldn’t show it of course, and maybe they wouldn’t hate her…but things would never, ever be the same again. Somehow it seemed it would be better never to see them again than to be there every day, seeing them slip away a little every day. To know they were speaking to her less and less, to see the companionship she would, or could, no longer be a part of. It would hurt too much.
She wasn’t sure if it was possible to hurt any more though. And the strangest thing, that she couldn’t even understand, or even take in, herself, was that she knew the illness, the disorder she was dealing with was the problem. It was the cause of all of her problems, but yet she embraced it, held it tighter to herself instead of rejecting it.
It was as if it was her only lifeline, the only thing she had yet to cling to, and despite how she’d lost everything since it started, she didn’t recognise this. It was now her only friend. Her greatest enemy, perhaps, but the comfort and sense of identity it brought clouded everything else over.
The only one who still cared…
****
He barged into the hospital to find Liz, who was somehow managing the task of looking distressed to the point of boiling over as well as dead calm. She quickly walked up to him, but he wasn’t about to take any speeches about taking it easy.
“What happened?” he cried, “where’s she gone?”
“We dun’ really know that yet, luv,” she said in a clamped down, cool voice.
“Why did she leave?” Liz sighed.
“I think ye’ might wanna sit dewn, luv,” she said and pulled him down on a chair. “Ye see, she ain’t really been doin’ all that well, has she?”
“You tell me!” he said defensively.
“We suspect she’s been losin’ more weight than she’s been gainin’, if ye catch me drift. We put ‘er up fer an exam, a check-up of sorts, an’ I think tha poor girl got freightened.”
“What would have happened…if she had lost weight?” Liz looked down at her hands, then up again.
“Well, that depends, ya see, luv. If she’d lost a little, they’d probably jest put her on surveillance, check she ain’t gettin’ rid of it somehow, but if it kept goin’, ye know, they could have sent ‘er to a proper high security place, one where they lock ye in yer rooms, they put the proper mad people there, strap ‘em to the beds sometimes. She’d be force-fed through a tube some of the time…it ain’t pretty, luv.” It took a few minutes before he replied.
“And she knew this?”
“Nah,” Liz admitted, “but she might ‘ave suspected, ya know, girl ain’t stupid.” Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and Harper looked up, surprised. A dark woman with short, cropped hair was standing in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.
“Um,” she said, “I think I might know…what’s been going on.”
****
“He asked her to have sex with him?” Harper stood up, almost screaming at the poor girl, who took a few steps back.
“She didn’t though, and that’s when he said he’d make her life hell,” she submitted weakly. “I know he’s…he’s done it to others too.”
“This is a ve’y serious claim, Fee,” Liz said with a frown. “Are you sure Nathaniel did this?”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Fee snorted, “but it’s true. Ask Beka if you want.” There was suddenly a beep from Harper’s comm device, that drew him away from the rapidly heating conversation.
“Rommie?” His voice was filled with hope, and somewhat, dread. Her answer was short and direct.
“I’ve found her.”
