Isaac opened his eyes and found the crimson glow around him gone. Laying in bed within the isolation cell in the ICU, his monitor let off a steady tone with each heartbeat. His head ached and ears rang still from the booming interaction with the giant. It took a while for his sight to adjust to the bright overhead lighting and the oppressive white walls.
With agitation, he ran a palm down his face to ease the grogginess from just waking up. As he got himself upright, his chest ached from the impact of the giant’s seal that struck him to the core. It hurt bad enough that it spurred him to peel his medical gown forward and peer down to see if there was a hole down there or something.
The only thing Issac spotted was a birthmark center of mass that wasn’t there before. Unsure if he was just seeing things, and nervous if it was some kind of reaction to radiation poisoning, he shoved his whole arm down the front of his gown in panic. As his index fingertip came in contact with the mark, it singed, and he retreated his appendage, shocked. Anxiety set in, wondering if the mark was going to burn him alive. A sinking feeling in his gut emerged, thinking this was the sign of his end.
“How you holding up?” Erik called out from an ICU bed on the other side of the glass wall. His voice carried through a mounted speaker.
Isaac held his head in his hand, feeling dizzy from the disorientation of returning to reality. “I’ve seen better days.” He ran his fingers through his blond hair and collected himself. “How long was I out?”
Erik cocked his head in confusion while still laying back. “Out? They just brought you in here.”
With a grumble, Isaac smacked his own cheek to rouse himself from the grogginess. Erik cocked an eyebrow, concerned. As the marine opened his mouth to speak, the lifeboat’s doctor, Adeline Meyer, burst into the room and quieted the both of them with her sudden appearance.
The doctor donned a pair of gloves and rushed into the quarantine cell while putting a surgical mask on. “It seems our reactor tech has a habit of getting irradiated lately.” She produced a mediscan gun from the pocket of her white lab coat and pointed it at Isaac. She was young, fresh out of medical academy. She’d lost some weight from the voyage, but her V-neck and pencil skirt still held close enough to her hourglass form, which was only teased from the motion of her oversized coat. Isaac remembered when she first arrived in the medbay a lot of the reactor techs suddenly called out sick.
“What can I say? It’s the hot new thing.” Isaac winced, embarrassed by her observation. “All the cool kids are doing it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Doctor Meyer blurted out, flicking her light brown curls.
“Yeah, I know it’s not—” Isaac started, staring at the blankets over his legs.
“Get up.” Meyer spoke with an authoritative tone.
Surprised in her unusual tone, Isaac complied. Despite the dire circumstances, she usually had a compassionate bedside manner. This was completely out of character.
“What’s the reading?” Isaac looked around, concerned.
“This is ridiculous. 0.12 grays. You’d get more from eating a banana.” She scoffed.
Isaac wasn’t sure that the way you measure radiation from potassium consumption was the same as absorbing it from the environment, but he also didn’t want to prolong freezing from standing under the air vent by arguing.
“Now I have to find you a new jumpsuit.” Meyer looked him over with her clearly stressed yet beautiful brown eyes. She let out an anguished sigh and her demeanor eased. “I didn’t mean to yell at you, I’m sorry. Lay back down until I sort this out, you look frigid.” She spoke with her usual delicate tone.
Before he was fully back in bed, the doctor rushed from the containment cell, leaving the door ajar, and through the ICU doorway toward a different section of the med bay. Moments after the room quieted from the sudden chaos of the examination, a young girl meekly walked in, looking around carefully before edging toward the ICU beds with nervousness.
“Papa.” The girl spoke just above a whisper.
Isaac was only able to hear her because of the amplification from the intercom on the wall. The girl and Erik had similar features. Both of them had raven hair. Hers was long and straight, albeit unwashed. Erik was bald but his beard hairs were straight, well kept. Likewise, their blue eyes almost matched.
A bit louder, the girl repeated her declaration. After, Erik opened one eye which locked onto the little one. The girl stood, frozen. With a weak arm, the marine beckoned. Hesitating, she inched closer toward Erik, a sniffle escaping from her.
“Astrid, come.” Erik flicked his wrist to motion for her to get closer.
Finally relenting as her sniffs turned to sobs, the sergeant’s daughter rushed him. As Astrid collided with the bed and him, Erik stifled a pained groan, wrapping his arm around her.
“I thought you didn’t come back.” She spoke through tears.
Erik looked away for a moment, scowling at his inability to muster a response. The silence between them was broken when Astrid’s stomach rumbled.
“Miss Reiner hasn’t been feeding you?” Erik’s attention snapped back to his daughter.
“The cafeteria was closed all day yesterday.”
Isaac stood up and looked at his own kit strewn out over the table at the far side of the isolation cell and was reminded of the can of beans he took from the meager haul of the expedition. Then his mind wandered toward the sacrifices made to get it and the reactor core out of the ship, to Ivar and Arne. Erik said they had families, back when they were on the tram, which made Isaac wonder what happened to them as well.
Rummaging through the pouches on his belt, Isaac found the can of beans and stared at it for a moment, his stomach growling. Then he looked at Erik talking with his daughter and sighed in resignation. He wouldn’t be here without Erik.
Issac worried that there was a possibility somehow the food could have been irradiated from his clothes. There was a misplaced mediscan gun on the countertop. He recalled from his first aid training that there was a way to check radiation contamination in food. After fiddling with the device, he found the right setting and scanned the can. It came up clean. He left the mediscan, snatched the food up and walked over to Erik’s bed.
Kneeling to get eye-to-eye with Astrid, Isaac presented the girl with the can of beans. “Your dad asked me to hang on to this for him.” He nodded, reassuring her. “Something he brought back for you.
Astrid shuffled, nervous and skeptical. With hesitation, she gripped the can with both hands and slid it off Isaac’s palm. Then she looked to her father for approval.
Erik flashed a puzzled glance at Isaac before acknowledging his daughter with a reassuring grunt. Behind her back, Isaac locked eyes with the marine and gave him an encouraging nod. Erik’s demeanor softened and his body seemed to relax as his head sunk ever so slightly more into his pillow. A sudden moment of understanding came between them in that moment.
“Daddy, how do I open this?” Astrid interjected, wagging the can in his face.
Erik reached for his hip, but in his gown ended up smacking the bed and he scoffed. Looking around for his gear, he was frustrated to be laid up, unable to move around.
“I can help with that.” Doctor Meyer’s gentle voice called out behind Isaac, carrying a clean albeit worn jumpsuit with a few apparent holes.
As Isaac stood, he hoped in the back of his mind those weren’t bullet holes.
Handing him the outfit with one arm, Meyer offered her opposite, outstretched hand to Astrid with a bright smile. “C’mon, we’ll go find something to get that opened up.” She beckoned with her head. “Besides, you know what they say about beans.”
Astrid blinked, confused and suspicious. “No, what?”
Meyer cleared her throat nervously, not wanting to frighten the child with silly limericks. “Uh, th—they’re good for you.”
As the two whisked away, Isaac looked around the otherwise empty ICU, save for Erik, and donned the jumpsuit. It was a little too big, but close enough was good enough.
Erik waited in silence, then let out a determined sigh. “I just want to—”
A wild pain in Isaac’s chest, coming from the mark, radiated throughout his body and a shout slipped from his lips. Stumbling backwards and slamming into the glass, a thin ray of white light overlaid his vision. At the far side, a face hovered. The same face which revealed itself within the reactor core back on the battleship. The cell called to him.
“What? What’s going on?” Erik sat up, puffing and grunting in struggle as he got himself upright.
Overhead, the ship-wide intercom rang out. “Now hear this, all reactor personnel to the power bank immediately.” The voice repeated the message multiple times.
Still leaning against the isolation cell, Isaac groaned in pain before recomposing himself. “I need to go. Cover for me if the doc says anything.” He spun into the isolation chamber and snatched up his equipment. Closing his eyes for a moment, he braced himself to endure the agony in his chest and then burst into a sprint to leave the med bay.
Doctor Meyer rushed into the room. “What was that?”
Erik turned to her. “I stubbed my toe.”
“In bed?!” Meyer recoiled.
As Isaac dashed for the reactor bay, the pain intensified as the light beam that pointed toward the core grew short. The face faded as he drew near, making Isaac even more nervous. Something horrible was happening inside that bay.
