Chapter Text
Clear waters flowed all around, cooling her body. She drifted through a pool on her back. The pool was barely deep enough to reach her taut shoulders when standing, but she knew how to stay afloat, to tread idly, with ease. Massive koi, explosions of oranges and whites and blacks, scaled calicoes, sailed by in the electric blue waters. Despite the vivid glow beneath her the sky above hung black, vacant, giving the impression of a grotto over her. She knew better. There was no sky, no roof, not even water or fish. This was her restful, idle state. This is the dream her mind had conjured during…
Attention: Beginning Thaw Procedure
Fran scowled. Was it that time already? There was no way… What time is it?
2314 Local, October 1st, 2756
WHAT!? This is three years, seven months, and a day early! DAI, give me a status!
Nominal. Thaw initiated manually via local controls.
Oh dammit, if they’re waking me up the hard way this early…
Fran flexed her senses and tried to wiggle her consciousness back into her physical body. Even if they didn’t rush the process, this was going to suck, royally.
Thaw Procedure expedited via local command.
SUNOVABIIIIITCH
Fran’s mind thrashed as she tried to grasp at what felt real within herself. The koi scattered in a frenzy, leaving her to rise upwards in a whirlpool of blue lights and bubbles. No matter how hard she tried to focus it felt as though her body was being folded into a pretzel and sucked into a tub drain half her size.
DAI you better tell those assholes who woke me up to expect a fight if we’re not already in one! This is SERIOUSLY NOT COOL!
Message delivered, pending response.
Fran raged within herself, her skin tingling with pins and needles while hot lances of searing agony ran like stitches up her spine.
Welcome back CPO-2A Francesca Bates. Please stand by.
PISS OOOOFF AAAAAAAAAAA
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Fran opened her eyes. Sticky slime ran like egg whites over them, irritating her. She made to speak, then to yell as she discovered her tank had only just barely started to drain, and that her nutrient line was still ran down her throat.
What is this amateur hour!? They’ve barely popped my cork! I could fucking drown like this!
A dim bluish light filled the clear pudding-like liquid all around her. Above her head a dark space spun in circles with her vertigo in full effect, but it told her that the lights in her bay were still off. No muzzle flashes or explosions, though. Nothing that would demand the attention of one the most senior security supervisors on board.
Then what the hell is the point of kicking me out like this!? Gaaaah!
Fran squirmed. Her arms cut through the gelatin with the straining force she pressed into her quivering, spasming muscles. Her right hand pushed hard towards the side of her tank, into a blinking red pad. Her body rocked upwards as the plexiglass shell split like flower petals and fell away in a tidal wave of stasis slime. With the fluid draining faster her hands slapped onto her face, narrowly finding their goal as her mind reeled and floundered. She grasped her face and began to massage her nutrient line up and out of her esophagus. The soft ribs of its plastic tubing scraped her throat and tongue, thudding against her teeth as it went. With a final pull she retched fluids all over herself and the half-full tank around her.
“YouuuuuffffuuugginmuhfugginKILLYOUasssssssshooooooollleessginnaonceI” she took a deep breath “MURDERtheefforlovinshitoutofyoualllllhomyGAAAAAAAAHHHHHH—” Fran threw up once more. She groaned as it spilled across her bare chest and down her side. “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakaaaaayyyyy…” She groaned, loud and irritated, and rolled onto her side. With fumbling hands she tore off her head harness and vitals chest plate. Free of those she tried to sit up, wincing and gasping as her muscles woke up. “CAN I GET A FUCKING COFFEE AT LEASTAAAAaaaaaa…” Finally upright, she pitched to her side and leaned on the lip of her stasis tube, loosing a deep, whimpering groan.
Fran fought to catch her breath for several minutes.
She wiped her eyes and looked around, blinking clarity into her sight as she fought to catch her breath.
“Hello!?”
A massive wall covered with blue, glowing stasis tubes like leaves on creeping vines stretched out to both sides of her. Apart from the tubes she saw no other light. Across from her was a ruddy grey metal bulkhead of their ship, and some distance to the right on that side was a mightily tall window with a view into space. The window let in starlight to little effect.
Not a soul was in sight.
“Helloooo!?” Fran sat up again before falling to the other side, catching herself this time. “Who the fuck woke me up like this!?” No one answered her echoing voice. “DAI, is there someone else here!?”
A jingle preceded a pleasant feminine voice emanating from the small console attached to her tube.
“Yes, Chief Petty Officer Bates. One lab technician is within two meters of you.”
Fran whipped her head around despite how it aggravated her vertigo. “Are you sure? I don’t see anyone! Who is it!?”
“They are not on the departure manifest.”
“What the fu…” Fran froze. With calm determination she looked up… “Oh thank God.” No strange person hung in the air above her, staring down like a macabre human spider. Like THAT would’ve happened, Fran thought with a small laugh. “Nobody here? Weird…”
She groaned one final time. “Alright Fran… time to… get your old ass up then.” Fran deliberated a few moments longer. She placed her hands on the plexiglass rim of her tub and with a deep gasp pulled herself up. “AaaaandthereweeeeAAAHFF—” Her muscles gave out and she landed on the metal floor below with a splat. “I hate thiiiis…” she moaned, “I wanna go back to sleeeep…”
When she finally righted herself into a sitting position she wiped her face. She leaned forward and pushed a wobbly leg beneath herself, but before she could rise something caught her eye.
A foot covered in a black sock stuck out past the end of her tube’s dais.
Fran tensed. “Uhhh… hello?”
No answer.
She finished standing and waddled towards the end of her tube station, supporting herself against it.
“Who are you? Identify yourself!” She edged closer. “I can still kick your ass like this!” Probably, she finished, mentally.
As Fran finally cleared the end of her tank she was taken aback by what she found.
“What the hell… are you?”
The thing sprawled on the floor certainly had the clothes of a person: a white lab coat, black wool sweater, and what could be capris or long, tight shorts cut from a dark khaki material. But the rest of it, this thing, raised many questions.
Their physique was thin, haggard, drawn, emaciated like a victim of starvation. Their pale skin clung to their figure like a burlap sack wrapped around a tree branch. Their hair lay long across them and the floor: a deep oily black that obscured most of their face. But what Fran could see sent a shiver down her spine. The one visible eye was solid black, sclera and all, and sunken deep into their face. Their dry mouth, lips cracked, was set amid gaunt cheeks and gasping gently for air. And in that mouth… was a pair of massive fangs that jabbed at their own lower lip when they protruded.
Vampires weren’t real, Fran knew better. But if someone were to be one, this is pretty damn close to what she’d imagined they looked like. She took a step back. She had an idea of what this was.
“You’re… gene-modified?” They nodded with a short, jerky bob of their head. The next obvious question was why, but this person wasn’t in any condition to be answering questions that elaborate. In fact they probably shouldn’t be asked any questions apart from how they wanted their remains disposed of, because viral gene mods needed to make a person into something like this, let alone a vampire looking monstrosity, were unbelievably fucking illegal and a death sentence in more restrictive places. Like this. Quite explicitly like a colony ship, in fact.
Fran knew she should have knocked it out, smashed its head in, throttled it, destroyed it, or something to to snuff it out. Protocol demanded it be destroyed due to the viral threat it potentially posed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she did find it a kind of revolting. Supremely unnatural, highly illegal, very much a health risk… Something about this pathetic bag of bones struck a chord inside Fran, though. She didn’t dare touch it, but…
“Are… you okay?”
Despite their condition they formed an expression that spoke for them. Seriously?
“Alright, fine.” Fran rolled her eyes as she wiped cryo fluids off of her legs. “What… what can I do to help you? Took the time to wake me up, after all. You need something, that much is obvious.” That made the most sense in her head. People didn’t seek out law enforcement unless they needed serious help, and this was absolutely the case, here.
They raised an eerily white, clawed hand, gestured between them. Their voice sounded like pieces of paper being rubbed together on the far side of a wide room; rasping, weak.
“Help… or… kill… me… don’t… care…”
“Goddamn…” Fran muttered under her breath. The exhaustion in their tone (probably her tone?), the look in their (albeit weird) eyes, the way they barely clung to life, it all rooted around in Fran’s heart for a kind of pity she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. For a reason. But there it was again.
Fran scowled and relented. “Help it is, then, I guess.” She took a step closer but froze. “Wait, are you gonna try to bite me?”
They nodded, eyes wide and… afraid?
“Seriously? Glad I asked but you’re just gonna tell like that? Straight up?”
They shook their head. “Instinct…” They wheezed. “Can’t… control… it…”
Fran bit her lip. “Alright, fine. Can you hand me your… lab coat? Why do you have a lab coat?”
They wiggled on the floor, grasping and flailing at their jacket in a vain effort to remove it. It didn’t take long for them to give up, letting themselves fall flat on the metal deck in a battle for breath. They shrugged.
“Okay. We’re doing this my way, then.”
Fran closed the distance and stood directly over them. She knelt down and grasped their shoulders, firm. In a fit of curiosity, though, she raised one of her wrists over their head. They eyed it like a fiend possessed and leaned up for it, gnashing uselessly in the air as they were too weak to reach her. Fran couldn’t contain a smirk. But as she rolled them face-down and jammed a knee in their back her smile evaporated instantly. They began to cry, tears dripping onto the cold metal deck as they choked out weak apologies in a brief burst of lucidity.
Fran gulped, suddenly extremely self conscious. “Uhm… sorry about… all this.”
She grabbed their coat by the collar and worked it down their shoulders and back before sliding it free of their arms. She rolled it up part ways between the sleeves and, grabbing the top of their head, worked it around until the rolled up lab coat filled their mouth, gagging them. Fran tied the sleeves behind their head. Then she pulled the sleeves of their sweater top down, using the stretchy wool fabric to tie their hands behind their back beyond their hands. Near the collar a bright Tiffany blue color caught Fran’s eyes; bra straps. A she it is, then. Well, maybe that depends on what the mutagenic compounds left behind…
With a grunt Fran hoisted the woman up into her arms, and the difference between them became glaringly apparent. Fran outclassed in width, weight, and height by a significant degree. Fran was no featherweight, regardless: Five feet Nine inches, two hundred pounds of mostly muscle, she was built to the nines for security work. But the lithe little thing in her arms was the complete opposite: no guess on height above five and five but maybe… ninety pounds? They were starving, after all.
That was painfully apparent as Fran stood up straight. She bumped her face uselessly against Fran’s clavicle, mindlessly fighting a pointless battle to feed on the larger woman. Fran grimaced. God you’re in a bad way in all this… She swallowed a long-buried pang of grief that tried to worm its way up out of her core, but she pressed it down with a thought.
“DAI, is there anyone else awake right now?”
“No, Chief Petty Officer Bates.”
Fran groaned. “Just call me Fran, if you could. Can you turn on the subsystems in the nearest medical bay for me? And get a floor-line going for me, I’ve got no clue where I’m going right now.”
“Yes, Fran.”
A red line ignited on the floor and ran down the huge length of the cryo bay, to the left of her pod, before it snaked around a corner in the distance.
Fran groaned a final time and began to plod across the wide space. She winced as she looked back at the wet mess of cryo-slime on the floor that she left behind. Glancing down at her senseless charge she snorted. “I’m gonna make you mop all that up, afterwards.”