Chapter twelve:
The next three weeks seemed like an eternity to Jason. Day after day he was run through test after test. And some days after working with Nathan he was then put through additional interrogations. Sometimes it was just simple questions, other times they injected him with drugs that had him remembering every little detail of his life from when he was just a child. It was like they were looking for something but he didn’t know what. They were gathering information that made no sense to him. Some of the drugs even made it possible for him to recite conversations that happened years ago word for word! Jason was also puzzled, as Jared seemed to disappear. At first every time his cell door opened he had expected to see him. Yet for the past three weeks he hadn’t seen him at all.
Jason was relieved that he seemed to have lost interest in him, yet the memories of Jared from his first two days of captivity haunted him and he couldn’t shake the feeling that one day he find himself at his mercy again. Jason wondered if his sister felt the same way about the man who had been stalking her. Did she still feel such fear even though it had been a long time since he had bothered her? Jason tried to put it out of his mind but he found he couldn’t. It was especially bothersome during some of the interrogations as there was one particular drug they used on him that had side effects that he would rather die than be experiencing around Jared. Those sessions were the worst as the whole time the drug was affecting him he was terrified Jared would show up to take advantage of the situation.
The only thing that kept Jason from feeling like he would go mad was Nathan. The alien had turned out to be more like a father figure than someone trying to enslave his planet. Jason still wasn’t allowed to see Celestia and Nathan had made a point of telling Jason every time he saw him how she was doing. Jason was wary of him being friendly at first but he did something the other day that convinced him Nathan sincerely cared about Celestia’s and his welfare.
A few days after he had been brought on board the aliens had placed a metal band one inch wide around his neck, wrists, and ankles. Apparently they were some type of disruptor device similar to the one that had been used to torture Celestia the very first day they had been captured. He had been informed that they were programmed to turn on if he wandered into areas of the ship he didn’t have clearance to be in. He was still escorted around the ship and his cell door was kept locked, but they no longer bound his hands when he was escorted from one area to another area of the ship. He found out one day just how effective the devices were.
Jason had been taken to another session of testing with Nathan, but he hadn’t arrived yet. The guards left him in the computer control room and ordered him to go to a side room to wait for Nathan. Other than to watch him enter as the door would automatically lock once it closed the guards didn’t stay as they had other things to attend to. Unfortunately the side room had not been cleared for Jason to be in, he had taken only two steps in when the door closed behind him, locking him in. A split second later he collapsed from the excruciating pain caused by the electrical energy from the disruptors. He found he couldn’t even move or cry out for help.
It seemed like an eternity before Nathan opened the door and found him there. Jason knew Nathan couldn’t turn the devices off so he was surprised when Nathan quickly picked him up and carried him back into the other room causing the pain to stop immediately. He vaguely remembered Nathan cursing as he called the doctor down to the control room before he passed out. Later when he came too he found himself in a bed in the medical bay.
Celestia couldn’t believe that four weeks had already passed. She would have thought by now that the testing and interrogations would have finished. Several things bothered her, as they didn’t seem right. Although Nathan was kind enough to tell her how Jason was doing she still had not been allowed to see him. It just didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t allow her to see him She wasn’t too happy about the disruptor devices they had put on her either, as she couldn’t remove them.
Then one week ago they removed them only to replace them with new ones, no explanation was given as to why they switched them. Jared was strangely absent and some of the drugs they used during the interrogations caused side effects that really bothered her. Celestia had heard of drugs that could stimulate a person in that manner, though she had never experienced it before. Just thinking about it made her feel uncomfortable. But what really bothered her most was about a week ago Nathan quit telling her about how Jason was doing and though she really wanted to know what had happened she didn’t want to ask him. Part of her was afraid that something had happened to Jason and she was afraid to find out.
What really bothered her was the nature of the interrogations led her to believe that they were searching for a resistance cell down on Earth. If her dreams were accurate then if there wasn’t one there now, there had been one in the past. Celestia even got the impression that they were making sure there wasn’t a resistance cell operating on the ship. If there were inconsistencies in their stories it would give them a place to start investigating. Perhaps that was why her and Jason had been kept apart since they were captured.
Celestia sighed to herself, the only bit of information she had managed to keep to herself was how she got the information to be able to write her programs. Somehow she got the impression that she didn’t want them to know she got it from her dreams. She found that even with the drugs she could phrase it along the lines that she saw the images in her mind of what to do. Celestia didn’t know why, but she got the impression that if they knew it came from dreams she would regret it. She had also been able to honestly say that almost everyone on the ship resembled the images in her mind.
Celestia still had the nagging feeling that she knew Nathan from somewhere and she didn’t want them to know about it. Nathan and the ships doctor Crystal were the only two people on the ship that didn’t frighten her. She didn’t want to be reassigned to someone like Jared. Just the thought of him caused her to shudder. Celestia had only spoken with him once and although she knew it was unlikely, she hoped she never saw him again. She had seen movies and read books that spoke of people who enjoyed hurting others and how they profoundly affected the people who ran into them. Celestia had dismissed such encounters as nonsense. Now she knew better.
She hated to admit it, but she knew that until now her ability and money had protected her from most of the problems other people encountered on a daily basis. The only grief she had experience before was when her mother died and she was put in an orphanage, as she had no living relatives. But she had only been four and truthfully she barely remembered her mother. So that hadn’t been too difficult as she had never experienced anything different. Celestia lay down on the bed in her cell not bothering to change into the nightgown that had been provided for her. She turned so she was facing the wall and cried herself to sleep.
