"Kosso..." she says, sadly. Words slur with blood. Her hands are pressed to her navel, tight against the skin where something is seeping through her fingers to drip soundlessly onto the tops of her shoes. I bought her those shoes for her birthday he thinks, the thought fresh and absurd and wholly out of place as he rushes to catch her when she slumps towards the ground. The green pair, with the straps in that pattern she likes.
She's lighter than she should be, a breath of fading air in his arms. Her eyes roll around, seeing nothing. When he presses his own hand against the dampness of her stomach, she blinks slowly and looks up at him as if he's a stranger. "Kosso?" She says again, confused. Her mouth is trembling, the corners twitching. She's either trying to grimace, or to smile. He doesn't know which is worse.
Around the two of them, shadows are moving. A siren cuts through the clamor of his thoughts. He looks up to watch the other mercs step away, eyes wide, eyes closed. When he looks back down, she's gone. A pool of water lies in her place, oily and glistening. He can still feel her blood running warmly on his fingertips.
He stands quickly, turns to move away. The environment is dissolving, changing. The open spaces of the ward are being swallowed, replaced by cramped corridors and closed doors, walls stained dark and silent. Somewhere the steady beeping of a heart monitor echoes, calling him. He runs. Each door opens to a new hallway, each hallway leads to more doors. Each step is soundless, the carpet soft and wet beneath his feet. The beeping in his ears stays steady, no matter which way he turns. Each distinct “ping” drives a spike of pain through his head. He feels panic growing, throbbing somewhere behind his left eye. Each breath hurts, lungs strained and damp. There’s water on his lips, in his eyes, in his veins.
Finally a door opens to a room that seems familiar. A ship's mess hall, chairs askew, half-finished coffee still steaming on the table. One whole wall is missing, ripped apart as if by some giant and terrible beast, and beyond there is only the yawning void of space. Tanya is standing there, gazing out with arms crossed. She turns as he enters, kills him with a grin, crooked and sad. She shrugs. "I think we're fucked." She says, as if it should be obvious. Behind her, the stars are moving, roiling in the waves of a fresh storm. He opens his mouth to shout a warning, but the saltwater waves come crashing through the breach, roaring. He loses sight of Tanya in the foam and thrash, and then the ocean takes him, tearing at his limbs even as it reaches cold fingers down his throat. The water rushes down, filling his lungs, spilling in waves through his veins. It surrounds his heart in a cage of salt and fury, and then it squeezes tight.
Kosso woke in a whirl of tangled sheets and frantic breaths, gasping. One hand clawed at his breast, trying senselessly to dig through and rescue his heart. His throat was convulsing, desperate to cough up a torrent of saltwater that didn't exist. Damn it, pull it together! He swung himself out of bed, still wheezing. The room was dark and unfamiliar, filled with clutter to trip over as he made his way over to the desk. Eventually he found the room's only chair, and he settled into it with none of his usual grace. He sat there for a long time until his pulse finally slowed and the shadows of his dream had lost a bit of their edge.
Damn. He hadn't had a dream that bad since...well, since he left Nova. All of a sudden, he missed the Jalopy, missed it more than he thought was possible. Never should have sold that junker. Never should have agreed to this. Never should have...fuck. His thoughts trailed off as he struggled with past mistakes. No. I'm just being stupid. Get a grip, it was only a dream. Nothing new.
But it had been something new: Tanya had been in this one. He remembered the way her face had vanished beneath a wall of cascading water, and a chill shot up his spine. Suddenly the room seemed unbearably dark. He fumbled around the desk surface until he managed to find a light switch. The compact desk lamp flicked on, illuminating the tiny room in a dim glow. It could hardly be called a "cabin," small as it was, but it suited Kosso just fine. He actually liked the spartan aspect of it: less distractions that way. From what he could tell, the previous occupant had been an Asari (the same Asari he'd shot outside the bathroom on the lower deck? It did no good to dwell on that possibility), and she hadn't had much use for decorations. A true military spirit, that one. Everything here was up to code, straight and rigid and perfectly placed. It felt cold, and did nothing to comfort him now.
The majority of his stuff that didn't belong in the room's tiny wardrobe had fit into a single desk drawer. He opened that drawer now and extracted a tiny white bottle. The pills inside rattled against the plastic, staccato and somehow foreboding. if ever there was a time for this stuff, it's now. But something else caught his eye as he unscrewed the bottles lid. There, in the drawer, tucked away in the back, was a splash of color. He paused, stared at it for a moment, and then screwed the lid back on with a sigh before tossing the bottle back in the drawer and drawing out the colorful object.
It was a painting, less than a foot across on any side. It depicted a Hanar, rendered in soothing pink watercolors, being torn asunder by a terrifying creature with dark, beady eyes and a thousand horrible, hooked teeth. "A shark," Tanya had told him when she gave it to him a few weeks after their mission on Kahje. She'd been smiling then, and though he'd tried to hide it, so had he. He smiled again now, looking at it.
"Fine then," he said, after a moment of introspection. Rising, he placed the picture on his bed. When he returned, he'd find a way to affix it onto the wall. A distraction, maybe, but a welcome one. Returning to the desk, he closed the drawer with the Hallex. The drawer beneath it caught as he did so, clicking open. Inside, like a gift from the gods, was a half-bottle of Asari Whiskey. Well well, not such a military spirit after all. Guess this is just what I need. It tasted like fire, a blossom of warmth in his mouth and in his chest that helped to drive out the taste of seawater that still lingered there from his dream. Alright, he thought, capping the whiskey and moving to exit the room. Guess we'll try this a different way first.
His room was two doors down from Tanya's, with Iosef's between them. That sight put a damper on his relatively chipper mood; he'd wanted to claim that room for himself, until that damned human had staked it out first. Now he was an entire room away from the one person on the ship he actually trusted, and one room was enough to make him nervous. He shook the frustration off.
Tanya didn't answer her door, so he knew there was only one place she could be: the hangar, probably tinkering with some machine. The ship might change, but Tanya never did. The whiskey felt warm in his hands. "Well, I suppose she can suffer my company," he mumbled to himself with a quiet smile as he went looking for the ship's elevator.
But when he arrived in the hangar, he stopped at the doorway. Tanya was there, alright, but so was Iosef. The two Humans had their backs to the door, looking over some metal...thing, lost in their own world. He watched them for a moment from the door, one hand around the alcohol and one in his pocket, curling itself repeatedly into a fist. There was a feeling in his chest he couldn't recognize, something he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before, or at least hadn't felt for a long time. He considered entering, making some quip. Tanya would turn, with a smile, maybe, a smile that would widen when she saw the whiskey. But something made him turn on his heel and stalk back into the rest of the ship.
He wandered aimlessly then, for a few minutes that seemed longer than they were. Eventually he found himself in the ship's mess hall. The empty tables and chairs reminded him morbidly of his dream; he wasted no time in finding a glass and filling it to the brim with alcohol. Then he settled onto one of the metal chairs and gulped whiskey for a while in silence, trying to think about nothing, and failing.