Fractured Mind Episode One (A Galactic Coalition Academy Series) (4 page)

Out of the sea of cadets and commissioned
officers out on the grass, only one person could catch his
attention.

Cadet Sinclair.

She was walking – not towards the Academy
main buildings, but away from them.

Presumably back to her apartment.

She had her head tipped back as she stared
at the sky, an odd, distant expression on her face.

It hardened his resolve.

If she dodged his class once more, she'd be
out on her ear.

Karax just needed one good reason to kick
her out.

Deliberately cutting class may not see her
kicked out, but it would worsen her already appalling record.

So, despite the fact it was quicker to head
up through the center of the campus, he found himself following
her.

...

Cadet Sarah Sinclair

She shouldn't be doing this. But she
was.

And a part of her just didn't care.

A part of her just couldn't put up with the
Academy anymore.

When she'd first joined, she'd been filled
with so much hope. So much potential.

Then the dreams had started, and....

She sighed and shook her head.

Instinctively she clutched a hand on her
upper left shoulder.

Her fingers hovered around a very specific
spot – just at the nape of her neck.

The skin was always red, always irritated,
nail tracks permanently etched through it.

She couldn't count the number of times she'd
woken up in the middle of the night scratching and clutching at
it.

She... it sounded crazy, but she knew
something was buried just underneath her flesh.

She'd told the doctors a few times. They
could find nothing.

She shivered as she shoved her fingers
harder into her skin.

She could feel it – that thing – just
underneath the surface.

A cold tight sensation shifted hard through
her shoulders, and she took a quick gasp.

Sometimes she felt as if someone was walking
over her grave.

It felt... it felt like she was dead, and
this was all just a dream. The real her – she was somewhere
else.

Sarah was nothing more than a walking
talking corpse.

She'd never shared these particular thoughts
with anyone – she didn't need to give the doctors any more reasons
to think she was crazy.

Without realizing it, Sarah found herself
taking a circuitous relatively secluded route back to her apartment
block.

Though mostly she could ignore people's
stares – even the muttered comments – today her natural resilience
was diminished, flushed away by the vestiges of her violent
dream.

She just wanted to be alone.

She needed to curl up on her bed and fall
asleep.

... And then what? Have another one of those
dream?

She caught herself just in time. “They
aren't dreams.”

They were memories. Or maybe she was somehow
tapping into someone else's consciousness. Maybe a part of her
shifted through dimensions at night.

It sounded crazy – but something was
happening to her.

She dropped her hand, noting a few flecks of
blood under her nails.

The skin along the nape of her neck smarted,
but she made no attempt to check on it.

There were times she wanted to take a knife
to her neck and cut the object out.

As Sarah made her way forward, that cold
dead feeling – the one that felt like someone was walking over her
grave – grew worse.

She had to stop and suck in a reassuring
breath. It couldn't reassure her. It couldn't stop the nerves that
ignited in her gut.

That thing in her shoulder felt like it was
on fire.

At the same time her consciousness felt like
it was slipping through her fingers.

She staggered to the side, clamping a hand
against the wall beside her.

As she started to lose her balance, she
walked her sweating fingers down the wall until she crumpled into a
ball.

As soon as her eyes closed, she returned to
the dream.

The ice planet opened up before her. Her
limbs instantly froze with a cloying, digging, numbing
sensation.

She hunched down, wrapping her shaking hands
around her body, her gloved fingers squeaking over the waterproof
fabric of her torn snow jacket.

As her body gradually grew accustomed to the
sudden shock of appearing on this planet, she straightened.

She realized she'd made it to the
facility.

Occasionally she made it this far.

There were weapons in here.

Trapped far within the cold grey walls were
guns and knives.

She was standing in the cavernous doorway,
wind whistling past, catching along the powdery drifts and
gathering the snow into an impromptu blizzard.

She pulled up a hand and protected her eyes
as she shifted through the doorway.

She had no idea what this facility was, but
she guessed it was either an underground base or a mining
operation.

The massive gate-like doorway led down into
a long wide ice-covered metal tunnel.

It was treacherous. She couldn't count the
number of times she'd slipped on the icy tracks and broken a
leg.

This time, she kept her balance as she
spread her hands and walked down the tracks as fast as her boots
would allow.

Behind, she heard the hunter.

Its footsteps sped up.

It knew – just like she did – that there
were weapons in here.

Instantly Sarah threw herself forward. She
slipped, but she controlled her fall, rolling and shifting onto her
ass as she began to slide down the incline.

She used all her muscular control not to
roll head over heels. Do that, and the ice would burn great tracks
of her cheeks and forehead off.

Fortunately her pants and jacket were
sturdy enough to protect her from the friction, but they couldn't
stop a desperate scream shaking from her throat and echoing down
the cavernous expanse.

She slid for a whole minute until she
reached the bottom of the shaft. She rolled, back striking a hard
metal crate.

Though it winded her and a few splatters of
blood jumped from her mouth and dotted through the snow, she didn't
wait.

She forced her shaking body to stand as she
locked her gloves on the side of the crate.

It was closed.

She yanked one glove off, forcing her
rapidly freezing fingers against the ice-covered lid.

Instantly her fingers threatened to stick
against the frozen metal.

She didn't let them. She tore them back, not
caring that she left a few layers of skin behind.

She dug her nails into the gap between the
lid and the rest of the case. With a desperate groan, she managed
to shift it back.

Her back twinged, her broken left leg shook
and threatened to buckle – but she held on.

With a grating noise that echoed through the
tunnel, she shoved the lid off.

It fell to the side, split the ice-covered
floor, and struck the metal shaft below with a thunderous
clang.

She dived into the crate, half jumping
inside as her stomach pushed against the high edge and her feet
kicked out behind her.

With her breath freezing into white puffs
that pushed around her cheeks, she scrabbled through the contents
of the case, looking for the combat knife she knew would be
there.

Just as fear ricocheted through her sternum
and down into her gut, her frozen fingers grasped it.

She plucked it up and fell to her knees as
she twisted and spied the hunter.

It was already half way down the shaft.

Her eyes bulged, the fear rising through her
throat as she scooped up her glove, clutched the knife, and pushed
into a sprint.

Her broken leg buckled a few times, and she
fell to the ice-covered floor, cutting her cheek.

She always pushed herself up, always kept
the knife out at a safe angle.

Once, she hadn't been so lucky, and she'd
sliced through her own throat as the knife had twisted in her
grip.

She'd had just a few seconds to note the
blood pouring from her neck before the hunter had caught up and
finished the job.

Though Sarah knew she'd done all this
before, it didn't change the immediacy of the situation. Nor the
reality.

So Sarah grunted through her pain, crammed
her glove on, and flicked the combat knife into action.

It immediately jerked open, revealing a
blade that theoretically would never go dull and could slice
through most objects, even armor.

As she clutched the knife, her fear gave way
to anger.

She wouldn't run forever, as soon as she
found stable ground, she would fight.

She was done being hunted....

...

Lieutenant Karax

He kept following her, even though reason
and simple decency told him to turn around and head to the admiral
ASAP.

Reason and simple decency couldn't win out
when he was dealing with Sarah Sinclair.

He knew his hatred for her was way out of
line.

He couldn't control it. He couldn't forgive
her, either. She ran around pretending to have faced true hardship
– murderous, violent hardship.

But it was all pretense.

All for attention.

He couldn't forgive that. Couldn't even
begin to understand how anyone could pretend to have gone through
what he had.

She took a circuitous route between the
buildings, obviously picking a secluded path so no one caught her
going back to her apartment during class.

He tried to tell himself – no, beg himself –
to turn around.

When she muttered, “They're not just
dreams,” his resolve hardened.

She'd already been warned on multiple
occasions that she had to keep up with her treatment or be kicked
out.

According to her counsellor, Sarah had
accepted her dreams weren't real.

Well clearly Sarah had lied.

A part of him knew he was using Sarah as a
distraction from other, much harder problems. He could kick Sarah
out of the Academy and feel like he'd achieved something – like
he'd saved people down the line.

But the fact was – it wouldn't make a
goddamn difference to his real problem.

He had to find a way to train Coalition
soldiers to survive the Ornax, and he was failing.

Just when reason won out and Karax almost
turned around, Cadet Sinclair stopped.

Her shoulders shook a little, and she let
out a trapped breath.

She teetered on her feet, pushed a hand out,
and steadied herself against the wall.

Just as Karax's mind tried to tell him she
was faking it, Cadet Sarah Sinclair crumpled, her head striking the
cobble beneath her with a thud as her hair spilled across her
face.

It was like she was a robot and someone had
just switched her off.

He jolted forward.

That part in his head that kept telling him
she was a faker was shoved to the side as genuine fear goaded his
gut.

He skidded down to his knee, grabbed her
left shoulder, and shifted it. “Cadet? Cadet? Wake up.”

She didn't wake.

He jerked his hand back and slammed it on
his WD. As he did, he noted the blood on his fingers.

He'd seen her digging at her shoulder.

He frowned at his fingers as he ordered his
WD to connect to the med bay.

A second later, it clicked to signal the
call had been received.

He didn't wait. “I'm requesting a medical
team to my current location,” he flicked a button on his WD that
would broadcast his location, “A cadet has blacked out.”

“Sending a team. Can you identify the
cadet?” the medical technician on duty asked in a professional
tone.

“Cadet Sarah Sinclair.”

There was a long pointed pause.

He knew exactly what it meant.

“... Are you sure she's injured?” the tech
questioned.

It wasn't standard procedure to question a
lieutenant's assessment like this.

But this wasn't a standard situation, was
it? From the little he knew about Sarah, she'd been to the med bay
more times than any other cadet in the history of the Academy.

She had a deserved reputation for making
things up and wasting people's time.

Though he usually agreed with that
statement, he couldn't quell the fear curling around his gut. Every
second it tightened little by little.

He cleared his throat. “She's not faking it.
She blacked out. She needs help.”

The tech sighed. It was loud enough that it
echoed around the cramped confines of the laneway him. “Fine, we'll
send a team. They might take a while – we've got some serious cases
back here. Just watch over her.”

“I don't have time—” Karax began.

The tech cut the line off.

Karax wanted to get pissed at the tech, but
he had to remind himself he would have done the same thing in the
guy's shoes.

He settled for hissing through his
teeth.

Sarah jolted.

At first he thought she was waking, but she
wasn't.

Her head twisted to the side, her face
pressing hard against the cobble at his feet, her hair scattering
further across her face.

He stood there and watched her for a few
seconds. Experimentally – and kinda cruelly – he prodded her
lightly with his boot. “Wake up, cadet – I know you're faking
this.”

No reaction.

That worry wound around his gut tighter.

She couldn't be faking it. She'd had no idea
he was behind her.

Plus, she was sweating, her brow so slicked
her fringe now stuck to it in clumps.

... He suddenly realized something. She was
having a nightmare, wasn't she?

While nobody believed the wild tales Sarah
span about her dreams, it was a fact that she did have them.

She wasn't being transported to some other
dimension, and nor was she momentarily inhabiting someone else's
mind.