Chapter Text
[Day 26]
Yvette came in and out of consciousness a few times, the first couple of times was to the sound of whispered arguing between a few different people; a woman having a searing discussion with a younger man, an older man's voice. Most of the times they woke up, it was to them being moved around, or to the pain in their leg. The pain dulled as they drifted back into unconsciousness, eyes and mind struggling to even attempt a waking state.
There was only one thought running through their mind when they finally woke up: everything itched. It was like accidentally falling into poison ivy all over, desperately needing to scratch at dry skin until it was red and raw. The sensation was not helped by the dryness in their throat, worse than it typically was when they slept too long through the night. Their hands were so dry the blanket over them felt horrible in their grasp.
Shooting up, they scanned the space around them blindly, the only thought on their mind was their need for water. They were in one of the small portioned off areas of the medic, which consisted of barely more than the bed they rested on and a table. The walls were white, and the lighting was dim, like they were in a hospital room at night.
On the nightstand sat a water bottle, a metal one that was surely full of water. A tantalizing offering for the thirsty, and boy were they thirsty.
Yvette lurched for the bottle, tumbling out of the bed in their haste, the blanket tossed on the other side of the cot. They fell onto their side with a thump, the bottle fell too, clattering to the ground with a metal sound that made their ears ring. It wasn’t hollow, and the sound of water sloshed inside.
They grabbed it finally with a hiss of pain, their leg loud protests of the movement were ignored in their rush to open the bottle and drink its contents. Once the water was gone, they relaxed against the cot, letting out a sigh of relief. Their throat was still dry, but it was lessened than before.
Then they finally noticed it, their leg burned with pain. They shifted in their sitting position, taking a hold of the ankle of their injured leg to get a better look at it. Their pajama pant leg had been cut off at the knee, and their calf had been bandaged carefully.
It took a moment of thinking to remember what happened, the memory a blur of color in their mind. Sleepily wandering, the chill of the water, nearly drowning as they fought for the surface. They remember kicking something, and then pain…
Moon at bitten them.
Their head fell back against the cot, a huff of a sigh leaving them.
Their moment of quiet was interrupted by the medbays doors sliding open, hurried footsteps approaching the cot. The curtain was pulled back, and by the time Yvette thought to turn, there was someone standing there. He rounded the cot in a quick moment, dark brown hair a mess and purple shirt ruffled under hastily thrown on white coat, a tray of food in his hands. Lingering behind him was a blonde woman who seemed irritated.
There were other humans here. Their mind supplied the observation but did nothing to truly process it.
“What the fuck.” Came a young mans voice, barely older than Yvette, confusion filled his expression. “Why did you throw yourself out of bed?!”
“Mike, they just woke up.” The woman’s voice snipped, “Calm down.”
There were other humans here.
Wait… other humans? Why were they calling them humans instead of people…
‘Mike’ glared at her, but only opted to mutter under his breath rather than provide a retort, handing the tray off to her. He rounded the cot to stand before Yvette, sighing when they just stared at him, distinctly muttering, ‘I am not paid enough for this.’ under his breath.
They blinked, the thought finally settling in, “What.”
The man has them by the arm, heaving them up with the effort one would use to lift a milk gallon. “Honestly, do you know how hard it is to fix an alien bite wound? And near drowning?”
The woman grabs their other arm with her free hand, helping them to their feet to sit back against the cot. The tray of food is set in their lap once they were sat properly. Its nothing more than a ham sandwich and some apple slices, but its more than they had been eating for a while.
“No…?” They watched him with wide eyes, bewilderment felt like an understatement for their confusion at this point.
“It’s not fucking fun, let me tell ya. How you got into that situation is beyond me” the bottle of picked back up from where they’d dropped it, set on the nightstand, “Now eat something as I make sure nothings torn.”
They do as told, taking of bite of the sandwich as the strange man before them unwraps the bandages from their leg to examine the wound. They winced when they caught sight of the injury; it looked as bad as they thought such a wound would look, a curved line of puncture wounds carefully stitched closed.
“How did you even manage that?” The woman asked, nose scrunched up at the sight of it.
“Kicked a fish.” Yvette muttered into their food. “A very mean fish.”
Calling Moon a fish felt like calling a tiger a cat; not technically wrong but not accurate of a description.
“A fish.” Mike deadpanned as he began cleaning the wound to reapply the bandages, “A fish with a mouth bigger than your head.”
“This is also an ocean planet. There’s a lot of fish.” The woman added, “Gonna need a better description than that.”
Yvette groaned, setting down their half eaten sandwich, “Hes a big ass mermaid, thing, I dunno. Probably venomous.”
“Wait wait wait- mermaid?!” The woman yelled, the sound strained and startled, “What sort of planet did Henry bring us?”
“The quarantined one, you knew this was going to be a weird experience going in, Vanessa.” Mike sighed, hands finishing up on the wound dressing, “If you think hes venomous, I can do some blood work and check for anything out of the ordinary for you.”
“Okay…” they gulped down another bite of food, not realizing until now how hungry they were.
The newly dubbed ‘Vanessa’ scowled at his words, looking like she just ate a lemon. She responded, but Yvette couldn’t hear her words under the sound of their thoughts. Nor could they hear his response.
They added the new information into their mental folder, and found themselves asking more and more questions. Another group arrived, three members they knew of… The planet was officially quarantined, and outsiders had no idea what was going on. Mike, Vanessa and Henry. Normal names brought some sense of comfort.
Their free arm was pulled, startling them from their mental questions. Right, blood work. They held their arm up more, allowing the medic to feel for the right vein. Not their first time getting their blood drawn.
Vanessa had left to grab his supplies from elsewhere in the medbay, they realized, finding the spot where she stood empty. This left them alone with the grump medic, who said little.
“Your skin is dry.” he commented eventually.
Suddenly they could feel how dry their limbs were, almost itchy and most definitely uncomfortable.
“Yeah, i noticed.” Yvette said sarcastically, “So is my throat. Did you not give me water while I was asleep?”
“Henry did, I was busy setting up with Nessa.” Mike sassed back, holding this thumb onto the spot he planned to draw the blood from, “You were only out for a couple days, it shouldn’t have gotten that bad so quickly.”
“You didn’t do a blood test before?” They asked, opening and closing their fist to tense their arm, “Did me mentioning possible venom freak you out that badly?”
“You had already lost a bit of blood from the bite.” Mike explains simply. “I was meaning to do it as soon as you were awake, actually.”
Vanessa came back once he finished speaking, carrying a bag of medical supplies. “This it?”
“Yeah, set it down on the bed-” Mike began to instruct.
The blood draw went as expected of such a process, Mike walking away with two vials of blood and Yvette finishing the apple slices from the tray with their good arm. Vanessa took the tray once they were finished, taking it out of the room.
They were left alone for a while, sat on the cot staring at their injured leg; it was as if the fact of the recent events were finally settling in. Their mind raced, thoughts beginning to press against their head until an ache began to form and they needed to lie down.
Sleep was easy to slip into once their head hit the pillow and their blanket was pulled close to their chin.
They couldn’t remember their dreams, just the sense of confusion they caused.
Yvette awoke to the sound of the medic doors opening, accompanied by footsteps, they squinted at the small clock on the bedside and found it had been a few hours since they woke up the first time. They turned over to face whoever was approaching before they opened the curtain, finding Mike and another man on the other side. Mike seemed unphased by their tired eyes or messy hair.
Henry, likely, was an older man with dirty blond hair and dull green eyes tucked behind a pair of glasses. He was average overall, shaped like a middle aged father. He wore plainer clothes compared to the other two; a light blue button up and slacks to match. He looked the least prepared for the planets environment, but he had likely just changed to be more comfortable in the base.
Mike stayed back as Henry approached them, his armed crossed.
“Hello.” Yvette yawned, sitting up groggily. They rubbed the sleepiness from their eyes.
“Hello! It’s good to see you awake. Had me worried for a second there.” Henry laughed, “I’m Henry, I’m the leader of this squad. Mike has spoke of you, but I don’t think he asked for your name.”
“Yvette. Yvette North.” Yvette extended a hand to shake.
Henry accepted their hand, his own warm compared to their cold one, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Yvette.”
“Likewise.”
The two shook twice, then retracted their hands from each other.
“Now, ahem… I have some questions regarding your stay here.” Henry began, his voice calm and comforting. He sat on a chair Mike had placed by the cot prior, weird that they had just noticed it. “Nothing too difficult, just…”
They glanced out beyond the curtain, finding Mike gone
“The place is weirdly empty and you wanna know why?” Yvette guessed, shrugging. “It was like this when i arrived.”
“You came alone?” Henry’s eyes went wide, his brows furrowing, “That doesn’t sound like FazTech…”
“Mission was technically canceled right as I got on the ship, too late for me to get off.” Yvette offered in explanation, “I was hired for my diving experience, so I’ve been doing dives and trying to fix the mess that I was left with.”
“How long have you been here by yourself?” Henry asked, cautious with his words.
“Like… three? Four weeks?” They shrugged, staring at their hands for a moment, “Guess I lost count, days here are longer than on earth.”
“I did notice that…” Henry muttered, shifting back in his chair, “What do you know of the other squads?”
“One of them wiped a shit ton of data from the servers, one of the messages the previous squad left mentioned a Dave, so I’ve been assuming it was him.” Yvette shifted to lean back on their arms, sighing, “There uh… looked to have been a struggle before they left.”
“A struggle?” Henry said, as if he was tasting the word in his mouth, “How… How so?”
“Blood, looked like someone, lost a lot of it. The message there their captain died, so I assumed it was his…” Yvette said, carefully adding on, “Meeting room, I cleaned it best I could when I arrived, but the stain wouldn’t come out all the way.”
“I see… And you don’t know where they went?”
“Nope. Message was cryptic as hell, didn’t mention where they were going.” Yvette shrugged, “Though, I’d wager they went towards the main continent to the west of here.”
“Oh, that? Why do you think they went there?” Henry asked, there was a curious glint in his eye, brows furrowed.
“Its the biggest spot of land, and they have children with them.” They said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“They have… I see. The children are still alive.” Henry sighed, relieved, his glasses lifted as he rubbed his eyes with one hand. With a shake of his head, he looked back at them, “I know it's what you were hired for… but would you help me look for them?”
“Of course.”
-☆-
[Day 28]
Two days with the new trio of people threw Yvette for a loop, honestly; after weeks of being mostly solitary, having not one but three others around you can be disorienting.
Vanessa was usually in the larger dock, tinkering with one of the submarines the previous squads had trashed on their way out; they’d find her cursing them out under her breath during meal times as she looked over notes. Henry was often in the meeting room or main living areas; he was the most invested in his work but also the most willing to spark up conversation when prompted. Mike was usually in the medbay cleaning or the kitchens; he made sure their leg was healing properly and could cook a decent meal with the extra supplies they brought with them.
Yvette was crutch bound, unable to walk by themselves but mobile enough to hobble about the base. Their leg didn’t hurt as badly after the first few days, actually, but Mike insisted they take it easy; he sure worried for a grump. They usually spent their time in their room or sat on a stool in the main room looking through old maps of the area.
They had been avoiding the main dock and, by extension, Sun; not out of any sort of fear, but just needing a moment of space from the water and its inhabitants. They had warned Vanessa to refuse entry to any mer who attempted to get into the base through it or the side dock. Not that Sun or Moon had tried, they seemed to be avoiding the base for a little; even Moons nightly hauntings of Yvette’s window had ceased.
Though Sun’s bright coloration would slip past the various windows or cameras that allowed the four inside the base to view the outside, he seemed more focused on other things. They would linger on the footage sometimes, watching as he hunted or foraged - they had not been aware he foraged - and he seemed frustrated in the grainy pixilated images the cameras provided.
Had… Had he known? Had Moon lied about what happened? Why were they overthinking his opinion of them and their actions?
“Yvette.” Mike’s voice pulled them from their screens, he was stood by the medbay doors, a tablet of his own in his hands, “I finished your blood work and…”
“And…?”
“Its… weird.” He shrugged, crossing the room to set the tablet onto the counter-top in front of them, “I think there’s something messing with my machines.”
Yvette peered over at the screen, but found they couldn't understand most of what they were looking at. They knew nothing about bloodwork tests.
“What exactly…?”
“The venoms gone but something else is there?” he points at something on the screen, “Its latched onto your blood stream. I can't tell what its doing, but its been there for a while.”
“I have a weird parasite or something?” they asked, mind searching for whatever could've latched on to them.
“Possibly… have you been experiencing any weird symptoms?” He began to list common symptoms of parasitic infections.
“I don't think so?”
They had been thirstier recently, and their skin had been itchier, especially after Moon bit them. But those weren't really anything notable, even Mike had known about those. But their words didn't feel true.
The look Mike gave them told them he did not believe their words either.
“Tell me if anything changes about that.” He took his tablet back with him, and stalked away.
“Okay…”
How the hell were they supposed to respond to that information…
-☆-
[Day 30]
Yvette couldn't sleep very well at night; it was like the dark was rejecting them. It gotten worse since the bite. They had begun to take naps throughout the day, which wasn't helping their sleep schedule but was caused by their lack of sleep at night.
This night was no different, sleep evaded them. They laid in bed for hours before they decided they couldn't sleep and turned on a light above their bed and opened a random book off the shelf.
It was a cheap mystery novel about mermaids -the previous owner of this room quite enjoyed such material- and a killer who would turn his victim into mermaids with magic before killing them. It was more stupid than scary, with ridiculous dialog and various plot holes.
Half way through their reading, they noticed lights on the other side of the glass in Yvette's room at night. They flickered past the cracks in the curtains, not the dim glow of Moons. These were brighter, like headlights cutting through the dark of night on a back road in the middle of the woods.
Yvette shuffled out of bed, dragging their extra blanket with them to the window. They tugged the curtain open a crack, finding two little lights glimmering in the shadows of the water. They floated, attached to some shadow Yvette couldn’t quite see until they squinted.
A pale face, small and rounded like a child's, sat between what were obviously lures, shadowed by the darkness. Light glinted off red facial frills marking the corner of a wide human like eye, green as an emerald. They could only see one eye, the other set behind what looked like hair over an eye.
Yvette tilted their head, and the form on the other side of the glass copied, the lures bobbing with the motion. There seemed to be an unspoken conversation as the two stared at each other, trying to figure out what the other was.
It lingered there, human like eyes scanning their staggered form until they landed on Yvette’s injured leg, narrowing. The shadow shifted down, clawed hands pressing against the glass to try and grab at their limbs. It bonked against the glass comically. They frowned, floating back up to stare at them normally again.
Closer now, they could see the white stripes wrapping around limbs, stark like the shade upon their face. Red frills stuck out from below the eyes and adorned their gills. A lighter grey bled into their torso, and crawled up their tail fin.
Another mer, as dark as night and as haunting as a ghost.
This one was much smaller than Sun or Moon, with a childlike face and wide eyes. They were lithe, with little extra frills and smooth scales; likely built to haunt deep water caves and draw in and disorient prey with their dual lures.
The little mer tilted their head when Yvette stepped back, watching them with wide eyes. Their staring contest lasted a while, two people watching each bother in the dark of night.
“I think I'm starting to imagine things.” Yvette muttered, tugging at the curtain to close it. “Sleep time…”
They ignored the scratching at the window as they turned to slip into bed again, letting sleep take them finally.