“Does anyone have any idea what was going on with her?” Dylan asked his crew, looking from face to face, stopping on Harper’s. The engineer squirmed under his gaze, before speaking.
“I…I came into the Maru and she was like…in a trance. She just had these pieces of glass in her hands like that,” he feebly tried to demonstrate, “and she was squeezing them so hard…and I think she’d crushed the mirror with her hand as well…”
“But Harper,” Dylan broke in, “why would she do something like that?” Harper shrugged.
“I don’t know. It seemed like she didn’t know what she was doing. I…I slapped her, and…Well, sorry!” he said as Trance gave him a reprimanding glance, “but I had to snap her out of it. And it seemed like it worked, cause she did. She snapped out of it, and she stopped hurting herself, but she still acted strange. She kept saying ‘someone’s here’ but there was no one there apart from us.”
“It seems like she’s been taking this harder than we thought,” Rommie stated. “Maybe we…expected too much of her.” Dylan held his hands up.
“Whoa, whoa!” he said, “what does this possibly have to do with her…well, traumas?” He stopped suddenly and his face grew panicked. “She’s not…on…flash?” Trance shook her head.
“I checked. There’s no sign of any substances impairing her judgment, though…” Harper looked at her as she trailed off.
“What?”
“A classical sign of depression is a lack of endorphins and serotonin in the blood stream, something which seems to apply.” Dylan held a hand up.
“Hold on,” he said, “I can completely understand if she’d depressed after what happened. But with depression you cry, you punch things and you might have trouble sleeping, or nightmares. You don’t bury shards of glass into your hands!” Trance gave him a sad glance.
“I’m sorry Dylan, but there are very many types and stages of depression. There is something else that you might want to see.” She walked over to the bed where Beka lay, heavily sedated. Lifting her arm up, Trance pulled up the sleeve to reveal scars, crisscrossing each other, some of them closed and bright red, some of them still cuts; only protected by a scab. It seemed there hadn’t been enough space as her arm was almost covered, and some of them were overlapping. There was no sound coming from the crew as they stood there, staring at the sight in front of them for several moments. Eventually there was a snort from Tyr as he turned around to leave. Harper, for some reason unbeknownst to him, couldn’t let this go unnoticed and turned to the large Nietzschean.
“What’s wrong with you?” He knew his tone was hostile but he somehow found Tyr’s attitude quite offensive.
“I’ve had enough.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Tyr spun around.
“Let’s just say I expected more of her. Letting herself become a prostitute? Lowering herself to this pathetic, whimpering mess?” Harper couldn’t help himself but to lash out towards the big Nietzschean. He would probably have been mashed had Dylan not interfered.
“That’s enough Tyr,” he roared. “You have no right to judge her actions, or this…whatever’s going on with her now. And no, we don’t want to hear the story of how you were slaved at 16 and your whole family killed, etcetera, etcetera.” Tyr looked stunned for a moment, then, with his last ounce of dignity, left the room. Harper stared at Dylan doumbfounded. He had never heard his captain quite like that before. Dylan shrugged. “It had to be said.” As he looked back at Beka, Harper forgot all about Dylan, and Tyr. What was going on with her?
“Can you wake her up?” he asked Trance. The purple-skinned medic nodded.
“Yes, but I’d rather not. It seems like she has quite a lot of sleep to catch up on.” Harper nodded.
“When will you?”
“I’ll probably wake her tomorrow morning, give her some time to rest properly. Maybe things will make more sense if she’s not exhausted.”
****
She was lying in the same position as she had more than twelve hours ago when he’d seen her last. Trance had, thankfully, pulled her sleeve down again, which he suspected she’d be grateful for. Part of him knew that she had probably done it to herself, but some other part hoped there was another explanation, something that would be easier to fix. Besides, he couldn’t figure why she would do it to herself. Why would it make things better? No, he decided it had to have happened some other way.
He wondered briefly…could it be Tyr? The Nietzschean’s outburst was surely reason to suspect him? The way he’d spoken about Beka with such…disgust. Harper had always had the impression that, out of “mere kludges” she was the one he’d seen mostly as an equal. Maybe that’s why it worked him up so much when she, as he would call it, “showed weakness.” Though he didn’t see it as weakness. Tyr obviously did though. But did he really despise what she’d done so much that he’d physically hurt her when she was already so weak? That would be low, even for him. Still, he decided it was the most plausible explanation.
The door opened to reveal Dylan and Trance. It was time to wake her up. Trance walked over and grabbed an injector. She smiled at the two men.
“Ok, I’ll wake her up now. Just remember to be calm, all right? No screaming and shouting about what happened.” They both looked offended.
“You know we wouldn’t,” Dylan said. “We all want the same thing here.” Harper didn’t answer that. The more he thought about it, the more he believed Tyr was to blame. How he could do that to her when she’d already been through so much, he couldn’t understand though. The Nietzschean was even more heartless than he’d thought.
“Ok then,” Trance said, “I’m waking her up.” She put the injector to Beka’s neck.
