Vertigo

Cassiopeia opened her eyes. This name gave the impression to be familiar to her, so she assumed it was hers.

Now that she had woken up, she was starting to have trouble breathing. It felt like something was forcing on her respirations. From below the bulky but comfy synthetic blanket, her hand crawled up to her mouth. A mask.

She pulled on it and withdrew it. Much better.

The air was saturated with greasy odors and the fragrance of rust. This put her at ease, to her surprise. They didn't have a delicate nor complex scent after all. She tried not to get more distracted: where was she?

As her consciousness came back to her mind, jolts of sensation ran through her body. Cold metallic bits adhering to her skin. A needle, deep into her left arm. She understood she had been hooked up to some kind of device.

The girl squirmed around. Sleeping on a flat hard surface had tensed up her back. So much so she couldn't repress groans of discomfort when attempting to find a more pleasant position.

Her head rolled on its side. A hand-sized circle of brown fur stood right there. Or was it a sphere? It took her a few seconds to process those were hairs. A person was sitting, his entire upper body slouching forward. It was describing a nice ninety degrees arc. Couldn't be good for his neck, she judged.

When she felt embarrassment at staring at this unknown man, her gaze strayed to the rest of the room. Bits and pieces, tools affixed to the walls, gizmos and strange contraptions. The scent stuck in the air made more sense now. The curiosity was taking her torpor away. Fully awake, she gathered her strength and raised her body in a seated position.

Too quick. Her stomach rumbled, her head became light and her arms limp. The moment after, she was back on her ribs, puking whatever her stomach contained. Mostly bile, leaving her a sour aftertaste in the back of her throat.

The sound of the whole incident woke the stranger. He jumped out of his chair, sending the latter flying behind him.

"Who's there?" The sight of vomit on the ground brought him back to his senses. Haul left the hangar, only to return a minute after. In his right hand, he was holding a towel, while a bucket and a mop occupied his left hand.

"Here, clean yourself with that. You should stay down a little while longer. No sign of blood or anything else, so it's probably just vasovagal syncope."

Cassiopeia followed his advice, wiping any stains surrounding her mouth.

"You got me scared for a second." The young man continued, mopping the floor to remove the fluids. "Aside from… 'that', how are you feeling?"

"Who are you?" The girl's interjection got him puzzled. He dismissed the idea she was being impolite and answered promptly.

"I'm Haul, nice to meet you."

"Whole? Whole what?"

"Not, not Haul Watt. It's actually Haul Dovonaria. Is that someone you know?"

"Huh?"

"Hm?"

This time, both of them had to stop to process what had just been said. Haul managed to repress a burst of laughter when he realized the miscommunication that occurred.

"So…" He changed the subject. "What's your name then?"

"Cassiopeia… I think."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, it feels right."

There was a limit to what the young student was willing to put on vertigo. He was starting to believe the prolonged cryo-sleep had indeed caused some long lasting effect on her brain.

"Leave the lassie alone." Professor Aurussium made his entrance in the hangar, a pile of clothes in his hands. "Can't you see she's still out of her mind?" Ichtyophons lacked delicacy; it was a known fact.

He left the attire on a close-by table and joined the monitor of the med bay in a scuttle. After a rapid look, he shared his analysis of the situation. "Looks like she overdosed on Ambrosia."

"How is that possible? Didn't we injected her the bare minimum?"

"We gave her the minimum recommended amount by the USF Medical Association. This turned out to be too much, nothing we could have predicted without trial and error."

The tiny humanoid confronted his student. When he grasped the bewildered look in Haul's eyes, he added. "Her body is over-stimulated by the excess Ambrosia, but her vitals are stable. Give her a few hours, and she'll wake up again. With a mild hangover at worst."

He then pointed back at Cassiopeia, indicating she had already fallen back into a slumber. Her snores were perplexing, but reassuring to Haul. The student picked up the chair he had slept on and sat once again.

"What are you doing?" Aurussium pestered in a stern tone.

"Shouldn't I stay in case she faints again."

"Absolutely not!" He exaggerated every syllable to convey his point across. "I need to start working on the items we salvaged from her ship, and you need to prepare some food."

"Why do you want me to cook? We received the batch for this month's rations just yesterday."

"What! Our guest had a terrible five hundred year night, an awful morning. You'd want her first breakfast to consist of military grade rations instead of a proper meal?"

Ichtyophons may have been indelicate, they nonetheless were part of a social specie like Humans. As such, they expressed a bizarre sense of camaraderie to anyone they met. Haul had gotten used to this, over the two years they had spent together on Poseidus 3.

"I get your point. I'll inspect what we have left in the greenhouse."

The duo vacated the hangar, leaving Cassiopeia to her nap. Compared to her previous lethargy, this was a proper rest. She eventually started dreaming.

She found herself on top of an extensive wall of marble stone. In front of her, an endless tundra spread to the horizon. Winds blew on the plains below, causing the powder snow to circle in the air. A cold dried air it was.

To the stranded girl, it felt so familiar. Was this her home?

She then noticed it. At the foot of the wall, someone else was standing, looking right back at her. She leaned over the edge, trying to gain a better view of that unknown person. They were a copycat version of her own appearance.

She couldn't stop being startled by it and took a step back to escape being watched.

When she turned around, everything that laid behind the wall was nothing but an empty abyss. A black body straining in every direction her eyes would set on. Panic. Dread. Turmoil. They all grasped her in an instant and activated her fight-or-flight response. There had to be something there. She knew it.

Seven lights appeared. Pale lavenders flickering glow, shining through a veil like a lighthouse behind the sea fret. They felt like eyes, or projectors one would point at an escapee. More than never, Cassiopeia wanted to run away.

She recoiled, hoping to feel the low wall she had watched the scenery from a moment ago. It had disappeared as well. One step to many, and she fell. The impenetrable mist caught her and engulfed her.

She spent a few moments in absolute darkness. The lack of visual – or any other – stimuli had caused a false feeling of floating. Or perhaps she was in fact not moving. In any case, she couldn't tell.

Just like when she was on the wall, points of light appeared within the shadows. While none could banish the ambient obscurity, it promptly produced a nebular environment.

This time, Cassiopeia was certain of it: the cloud of lights and fumes was shaping to resemble… something. The fact it exhibited life-like characteristics without calling back to any existing creature remained the unsettling part for the exhausted girl.

The shape crept closer. From within her head, Cassiopeia heard multiple familiar voices echoing in unison. "ARE… YOU… AFRAID?"

She woke up, clutching at the heat sheet and twisting it as stress relief. She was still in the same hangar she had awoken in earlier. The mess present in the room and the soothing smell of rust were revivifying.

A few minutes were required for her to calm down. If it had not been for the bile aftertaste left in the back of her mouth, she would have preferred to lie on the medical table a little while longer.

She noticed that she was naked. Thankfully, a pile of clothes had been left nearby. And it was rather apparent it was for her.

She sat by the side of the table, removing each sensor one after another, the monitor next-by beeping every time. The same was done for the catheter, and the needle was hastily withdrawn.

This attire consisted of a white shirt, grayish pants, a jacket covering her upper body to the mid-thigh and a short cape covering her shoulders and her upper arms. While the pants were baggy and the jacket required a belt to be held closed, Cassiopeia was surprised at how fitting this was.

The garments were thin, breathable and impressed the girl even more with their flexibility. Their texture prompted the question of whether they had been crafted out of organic or synthetic material. Not like it really mattered, she concluded after remarking she was starting to lose herself in admiration.

Maybe it was time to encounter the people that had saved her.