Escape from Endeavor by Daniel A. Jones
***
Angelica woke up on a thin mattress. Her head was pounding to the beat of her pulse. The room was dark except for two small red lights. She tried to concentrate on healing herself but her headache was too intense for her to focus. She could hear someone sobbing in the room and tried to look around. Moving her head caused pain to radiate from the base of her skull through her head to the back of her eyes; it felt like her eyes were going to explode. She’d never had a headache this bad before so she just lay there, praying it would pass quickly, trying not to think or move until she felt her pulse slow and the pressure in her head decrease.
After a while she carefully started to think about healing herself. The pain in her head quickly faded as her healing ability began to repair the damage and relieve the pressure in her skull. Once the pain had faded she realized she could feel Daemon again. He wasn’t dead! She reached out to him through their link and found that he was fully healed and moving toward her. He was still a long way away, but he was coming. She had no way of knowing how long she’d lain there before she felt strong enough to sit up.
The motion detector in the lights noted her movement and turned on a larger red light in the center of the room. It didn’t illuminate the room much, just enough to let her make out shapes. The sobbing had stopped a few minutes earlier and now Angelica could make out someone lying in another small bed across the room from her. The room was cramped, with only a few feet between the beds. There was a door at the head of the beds, separating them. A desk and chair were at the foot of Angelica’s bed, a small door was on the same wall as the other bed at the foot of it. A locker cabinet was past the small door filling that corner of the room.
Angelica slowly got to her feet and checked on the person in the other bed. She could barely make out Sara’s profile in the dim light. Angelica could feel the remnants of the emotional turmoil Sara had been in before she fell asleep so she decided to leave her be while she looked around. The door between the beds was designed to slide into the wall but Angelica couldn’t figure out how to get it to move so she left it alone. The desk computer came on when she sat down. It illuminated the room slightly. Angelica had read about computers like this but had never seen one. The keyboard was a holographic projection with the display projected in the center of the desk. Angelica didn’t know how to use it so she got up from the desk and checked the cabinet. It had clothing hanging in it and a few shelves at the bottom. The small room was actually the bathroom which immediately reminded Angelica she needed to relieve herself. Inside, she found a small sink with a mirrored cabinet facing the commode. There were buttons on the wall near the door and more near the faucet.
A light in the ceiling came on as soon as she stepped inside so she pushed the button next to the door with the symbol of a door on it. Angelica relieved herself and figured out how to turn the water on to wash up afterward. She experimented with the other buttons next to the door to find out what they were for. The button next to the door button had a circle with lines spreading out from it when she pushed it the light went off. She pressed it again to turn the light back on. The button on the other side of the doorframe was marked with a water drop. Angelica yelped in surprise as water started spraying down from the ceiling when she pushed it. She took a few seconds to figure out what was going on and pushed the button again, hoping to turn off the shower. The surprises weren’t over because when she hit the button the water was replaced by jets of warm air blasting her from every angle. In her haste to turn off the air, she hit the button more than once and started the cycle all over again. Angelica took a deep wet breath and calmly hit the button twice to turn on the air and then turn it off again.
She left the bathroom soaking wet and annoyed with herself for being stupid. She didn’t know where her pack was so she checked the cabinet for a change of clothes. She found a set of coveralls that looked like they would fit and changed out of her wet clothes. She hung her clothes up on the end of the bed and the back of the chair to dry before she sat down on the bed to think.
Angelica wasn’t as worried now that she knew Daemon was still alive. She figured she was on the ship, which meant she was safe from any of the forest predators and most of the Rift monsters. Jimmy had knocked her and Sara out but hadn’t hurt them, which meant he wasn’t planning on killing them, at least not immediately. Sara was an emotional wreck but that could be from the stress of the past few days. The door being locked was to be expected. Angelica needed to know more about what was going on before she could figure out what to do to help Daemon rescue them.
Angelica lay down on the bed and forced herself to relax. She let her mind drift; if the future was starting to settle down and become more predictable, she might be able to get a glimpse of what was to come. It had been days since she’d been able to glimpse anything, which was common when too many variables were in play and could affect what was going to happen.
It was just minutes before a vision started to form. The vision was of her fighting a blonde man slightly older and taller than she was. He was trained in hand-to-hand combat and took his time beating her unconscious. She could see Daemon’s ghostly form watching the fight, unable to help her. Daemon was furious at his inability to protect her. As soon as she started to think about the vision it disappeared like wisps of smoke, leaving her staring at the red-lit room. She didn’t understand it all but she did understand she was going to need Daemon’s help soon, and if he arrived too late he would be in a killing rage.