#slave949

     “Get over yourself already!”

     It had been weeks.  Maybe three, maybe four -- but when most of her days consisted of staying in a small and sparse room, even a single second felt like ten of them.  Restlessness was no longer an emotion.  It had long since become a state of being, so much so that anymore, it was the only thing she ever felt.  She missed people.  One of them she missed the most, so much so that despite that restlessness, she felt hard pressed to get out of bed because her heart hurt so badly.  An emotional hurt so bad that she didn’t talk to either brother about it.  One would just give her snark.  The other, she wasn’t so sure if he’d understand.

     Today had started out to be one of those days, too.

     Through Lore’s needling questions about what she saw with Soong’s installation and his cutting remarks, Red pushed and persevered -- mustering whatever patience that she could to do so.  Most days, the android left frustrated and empty handed.  A couple days, the conversation left Red bristling, but ultimately, she left her mouth shut for the sake of herself and the one bright spot in this whole situation.

     B-4.  Ironic that she called him a ‘bright spot’ this entire time.  He had been her kidnapper, threatened to hurt her if she didn’t comply, all because something bad was going to happen to him.  He had started it this horrible situation, but he didn’t contribute any more to it.  Red had come to terms with it quickly -- he was naive because that was how he was created.  For an android, it seemed he had delicate feelings and an even more fragile sense of the universe around him, along with the people always rushing about within it.  People that they never saw, but she desperately tried to teach him about when Lore wasn’t looking or didn’t feel like forcing his opinions on his older brother.

     Maybe that was what made her snap at Lore today.

     It had been a particularly biting remark delivered while Red spoke to B-4 about her process when creating music, the android having stumbled on her mumbling lyrics to a new song that she had been trying to work out while in captivity.  Maybe it was the same level of commentary Lore had always contributed whenever her presence was near, and she was tired of it, or maybe it had been ever-so-lovingly crafted to really dig in deep, just for today -- but enough had been enough.

     She snapped.  Before she even realized that it was happening, she snapped.

     “I’ve been nothing but civil to you!  I’ve been compliant!”  Her words raised in near hysteria, her hands clenched into fists and held at hip level.  “I’ve tried respecting you, learning about your mission!  And yet it’s poke, poke, poke!  Why?  I haven’t done anything to you or against you--”

     And then she did it.  The thing that, no matter what the subject matter, she had tried to avoid doing since they left her vessel floating in the void of space weeks ago.  She gestured back towards B-4, and thus, got him involved.  Her voice raised as she continued, sapphire eyes bright with rage.

They had called it disciplinary action. A decision made to save both time and face.  He saw it as an excuse to get away from that damn space station, seeing no point in staying aboard Helios when most of his privileges were revoked. Jack had thought the punishment he’d earned extreme-- in his mind all he had done was commandeer a unused Hyperion satellite, re-configuring it to serve his own purposes during his tenure spent observing Pandora for the company. It in no way deserved a suspension-- and yet that was what he had been served with.

It was a sour loss to accept, especially when he realised how him being caught red handed would delight that rat Tassiter. All the work he had conducted, with little to show for his efforts. That needed to change, not only to help his reputation recover in the eyes of his employers. And so, deciding a change of scenery, Jack gathers up what few possessions he has and heads down to the hanger bay, bribing the guard to let him borrow one of the ships parked there on the pretence of returning it soon. Not only would Jack not do this, by the time he had finished using the vessel it would be reduced to a pile of scrap on a distant world.

As for what that same very same destination would be, he remained undecided, frowning at the projection of a star map as he takes a seat in the ship’s flight deck, ready to depart. From the list of options available, the majority of planets that he could see boasted inhospitable climates, being either a frigid hell or a blazing nightmare. Once he eliminated the negative matches however, he was left with two dozen or so planets to choose from, all existing in solar systems that his current craft could be pushed to travel to. Thinking this sample still too large, he applies one last filter to it, in the hopes of returning a particular match: planets that had the potential to house the mythical Vaults of legend. 

Initiating the launch sequence, he places his fate in luck’s hands, deciding on a whim to feed the few sets of coordinates that are retrieved from his filtered search into the ship’s flight navigator, leaving the on-board computer to choose which destination to visit first. With that done, the ship’s landing gear retracts, thrusters kicking in to bear the craft aloft as the main engine started to cycle, building charge. Letting his fingers whisk over the switches and dials that surrounded him, Jack pulls up a screen that presents him with one last look of Helios. The sight manages to annoy him more than it should. Knowing that he was not wanted back here until his suspension had expired causes the frown he wears to become a grimace. All they did was hold him back anyway, turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the numerous opportunities he had tried to bring to their attention.