Chapter 81 of All the little lost boys and girls is here! For a snippet, read on; for the full chapter, check out the link and enjoy!
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Ensign Dwight was still hard at work on her manifesto, screed or whatever it was when Alexei approached her cell. She must have heard him approach as she turned, eyes widening in surprise as she realized it was Duty Before Glory’s captain and not one of her gaolers. She put the marker down and came to a shaky salute that would have embarrassed even a first-year cadet. “Captain.”
Alexei returned the gesture. The young woman looked like she was going through everything everyone on this ship was all at once. She was twitchy and anxious, yet clearly exhausted. Her unwashed hair hung down around her face like limp vines. Her eyes were sunken and dark, but danced with an unsettling energy. Her fingers twitched and every so often she broke her pose to scratch at the back of her head.
“At ease,” Ragnikov told her, the woman relaxing marginally. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing better, sir, thank you. Getting my three squares and they’re letting me write. That helps.”
He nodded. “What are you writing?” On one section of the wall, there was a paragraph of synonyms for black. On another, she’d written what looked like targeting calculations for bombardment of deep-shelter bunkers. Elsewhere, she’d just repeated the phrase ‘wolves beyond the fire’s light’ over and over.
Dwight looked over her shoulder, her face muscles twitching as if she couldn’t settle on one emotion. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know if it’s anything, but it’s all inside me. Noise and noise and noise and it keeps piling up. The only way I can get it out of my head is by writing it all down.” There were stacks of honest-to-God papers in stacked one corner and under the cot. She wasn’t allowed something like flimsies or datapads and even if she was, she’d said that those didn’t help. The words needed to be ‘real’. “If I don’t, it just gets louder and louder and it hurts more and more… it starts to feel like my head will split open and all the noise, every bad thing I hear inside my skull, will come pouring out…”
“That won’t happen,” Ragnikov tried to assure the woman. “Doctor Pullman is working on something to help you.”
“She shouldn’t waste her time,” Dwight replied, picking up the marker again. “It won’t do anything.” She might be more right than not; they’d tried enough sedatives on her to put out a Ferskt and there’d been almost no effect. Standard anti-psychotics were only minimally impactful on the ensign’s mental state. Even now, she was doped up enough that she should be little more than a glassy-eyed, placid lump. That she wasn’t just ambulatory, but coherent and still suffering from from her mental break had flummoxed Medical. Right now, all they could do for her was keep her away from the other crew and let her write.
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