As the pain subsided I realized the machine had released me and someone was dragging me out of the machine by the arm. Once the dragging stopped whoever it was started checking my pulse, and tried lightly shaking me.

                “His vitals are fine; the seizures have stopped. If he wakes up soon we can see how he feels. You can point the gun elsewhere Miss Stahl. I’ve told you I don’t actually work for med-corps, I’m a contractor sent in from my company.” He sounded tired, his voice a tighter than any of the times we’d talked in the last couple of years.

                 I can hear betty adjust where she was standing, “I’m not sure you aren’t working for them Doctor, but I’d rather not take my chances. Once Shawn gets here with our transport out we can test the validity of your statement. Until then you are suspect, at best, in my mind” This didn’t sound like my betty. It was betty’s voice, but colder, more direct. All the softness I attributed to her voice was not there.

                 This is surreal, why has she attacked the tech, and point a gun at the doctor? While I’m on that WHERE did she even get a gun? Shawn was already outside with our car, why would we need it, were still on the fourth floor, not even close to an exit. Deciding I had enough control of the pain to try talking I decide to try and get some answers.

                 “I’m alive. In pain, but alive. What happened doc, why did the machine do that?” opening my eyes and looking at betty I start my list of questions to her. “Why did you attack the tech? why are you pointing a gun at the Doc? WHERE did you get a gun? What is happening.

                 Talking brought back some of the pain, my head was swimming in confusion.

                As I asked the question I got the feeling that I knew the answers. The same feeling you get when you studied for a test, but when it’s time to give out answers they’re just out of reach. The thought about it made my head hurt anymore and I curled into a ball on the floor. The act reminding me that I had been laying in the middle of the floor spread-eagled, but ass naked in front of Betty turned my cheeks red.

                 “We don’t have time for answers, things are moving too fast, and the plan has already turned to ash. We haven’t even made it out of the building, everything will make sense soon. I know this is strange, but I need you to trust me like you always have.” The warmth is back in her voice when she talks to me, almost like she’s the betty who helped walk me to my car this morning.

                 With that thought a quick stabbing pain hits me at the base of my skull and a part of a memory slams into my mind. Betty’s voice, “…Be brave. Follow me and move. If I go down; listen to the man in your head….”

                 “You know I trust you betty, I’ll follow whatever it is you’re doing.” The idea of whatever is happening is terrifying to me. Was betty some kind of criminal, am I going to go to jail because betty has a sordid past?

                 Reaching up to her ear betty gets a faraway look to her face, “Roger, initiate exfil.” Her eyes focusing again betty looks at me and the Doctor, “move him behind the machine and keep your head down.” Switching her eyes back to me, “how are you feeling, can you walk? We don’t have to move far, but we’re going to need to move fast.”

                Trying to keep myself covered as the doctor helps me move I hadn’t realized until she asked, but I was moving almost freely. My arms were going where I wanted them to, and my legs didn’t feel weak and achy like they always did. If I’m honest almost all the pain was centered in my head.

                 This is the best I’ve EVER felt. Most of my life I have spent in at least a small amount of pain the joints of my arms and legs the usual perpetrators. If it wasn’t the joint, or spine pain it was the random nerve firing at the wrong time. I was sore everywhere, but it wasn’t the overt pain associated with my day to day existence.

                 “Are you ok Baron, you stopped moving?” The doctor touched my shoulder and asked.

                “I don’t hurt…why doesn’t it hurt?” I can see a look of confusion cross his face for about half a second before I his eyes grow a couple of sizes in surprise and he stops in confusion.

                “Get behind the machine!” betty yells at us and drags me over by my arm.

                The doctors face is sliding between multiple emotions, from the fear from before to outright curiosity. Before he can settle on an emotion. The building is rocked with an explosion right outside our door, blowing it open halfway off the hinges.

                 The blast has laid out everyone in the room, the pressure from the blast causing my headache to worsen. Dust and debris are floating through the air, drying out my mouth and clogging my nose. I’m still recovering when Betty starts to lift me and assist me in walking towards the door.

                I pull back from going that way, there was an explosion there, why are we going there? We need to stay where it’s safe, “Betty there was an explosion out there! It could be a terrorist attack, we need to keep still until the police get here!”

                 I can see her mouth move but only catch the word, “…trust...” I imagine we’re going back to the listening to her thing. Is she with a terrorist group? Betty’s never led me wrong before, but something about this is not sitting right with me at all. What kind of person can turn that hardness on and off, what kind of scientist sees an explosion and decides to move towards it?

                 So many questions, but I decide I’m already in it. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’m smart enough to know the camera’s in the room saw her knock out the guard then hold the doc at gun point. I try to shake some of the cobwebs loose and test out what walking feels like without pain.

                 There is still a lot of soreness, but walking is much simpler when your muscles aren’t actively fighting you or refusing to work altogether. It’s not the easiest thing to do, my body has spent a long time in a hunched state, half bent over walking with a crutch. My muscles are not built for the speed Betty is trying to force me to.

                 As we get to the door she props me up on the wall, and puts her gun out and checks both ways of the hallway, when she reaches back to grab me I can see relief on her face.

                Pulling me out of the door and turning towards the window I can’t help but be shocked. Where the window had been is not a giant metal door leading into a hallway sitting on the floor, Shawn is sitting off to the side of the door on the other side of the hallway with a rifle pointed into the hospital.

                 “Nice to see you up and about Baron,” he’s got a smile on his face, “you have permission to come aboard.” I realize at this that it’s not some kind of hidden hallway, like I had assumed, it’s a flying ship of some kind. The door and hallway are the color of sterilized steel, whereas the wall behind Shawn is light gray color.

                 “what?” I hear the doctor speak up behind us.

                 Cursing betty lightly pushes me towards the ship, “get in the ship please.” Spinning around at an almost inhuman speed she points her gun at the doctor, “what are you doing?”

                 I half turn and walk towards the ship while watching the exchange.

                 The doctor coughs a few times, taking a step back as the gun is pointed at him again and starts talking, “I’m guessing you have heard the rumors about Med-corps. Doctors that have been working for them for years go missing, die mysteriously, or stop being heard from eventually. I feel if I stay here I might become one of those cases, please take me with you.” His eyes flick in my direction then back, “plus I’m a scientist and he is a miracle. By every test performed in the last two years his health was stable, not getting better or worse. Now he says he isn’t in pain, and I can see it. That’s quantifiable. I would like to come with you all, if not as a curious scientist, then as someone who doesn’t want to die.”

                 It sounds like an honest request, but I can see Betty starting to shake her head already, “No way Docto- “

                “Let him come Betty, you said yourself you can test his truthfulness. If there’s a chance he’s being honest he deserves to live. We can’t leave him.” Plus, the doctor is the only person I know who’s acting like they should be in this situation, and I could use some normalcy.

                I can see her tilt her head a little bit, like she does when she’s thinking about something, “Alright Doc, here’s the deal. We’ll let you on board, you’ll be locked in a room until I can get to you. There’s not a guarantee that you survive with us though, and if you do and you are lying; I’ll push you out of an airlock. That’s the option, take it or leave it.”

                 By the time she finishes her speech I’m at the junction where Shawn is, “She wouldn’t actually do that.” He says, I start to sigh when he says, “she’d have one of the bots do it.”

                 “Alright buddy, I know this is not how you thought today was going, but it is the way it is. Move to the end of the hallway behind me, turn right and then take the stairs up to the cockpit. Have a seat in any of the blue seats and strap in. move as fast as you can, we’ll be coming up right behind you.” He still hasn’t taken his eyes off the hallway.

                 I hobble past him into the hallway and see that right is the only direction I can go. It leads into a room with the same color floor as the hallway, the walls are the darker gray color, and there are stairs on the far side leading up to a short catwalk. I can see there are a couple of pallets on the floor strapped down.

                As I walk into the room I realize there is a set of stairs on myside as well, inside I get a better feel of the dimensions. It’s twenty-feet across, and about thirty, or forty-feet lengthwise between the stairs. The ceiling is a bright white color, with a large upside-down dome in the center. Up the stairs and centered on the catwalk is an open door with a few steps up. I can see what looks like the edge of a seat. I guess that’s where I’m going.

                I start making my way up the stairs when Betty rushes past with the doctor, taking him to the front of the cargo-hold and into a door I hadn’t seen before. Towards a room to lock him in, I guess. Shawn comes in behind her pushing a red colored splotch on the wall.

                The button turns yellow and starts blinking after he touches it. A panel in the hallway swings out and closes, cutting off my view of the hallway. From where I am I cannot even see any crevices between the two. Shawn comes up the stairs behind me.

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                 “I’ll help you the rest of the way, we have to go now. Security was at the end of the hallway, they weren’t shooting at us though so they probably want to take us after we break atmo, less clean-up planet side.” I’m sure he thought he was being helpful with the information, but it was all Greek to me. It sounded like he was quoting lines from a sci-fi novel.

                 I went with it, moving as fast as I could up into the ‘cockpit’. Stepping up the stairs I can see that there are four chairs all facing out towards a wall with monitors mounted on them. The two in the rear back to back with a few feet between them, the two in front of the catty-cornered, and the one in the center fading the front. As far as I could tell there weren’t any windows, and it looked comfortable, if a little cramped.

                The seats were all the type of seats you would see in a sports car. All one piece, contoured to fit the body; very sleek looking. With what I had seen so far, I half expected them to be giant egg-shaped things that held you in with gravity fields or something.

                Despite the unfamiliarity of what was going on, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d seen something like this before. Like a remembered dream. Shaking my head, I move to the right-hand seat inside the door and sit down.

                Once my butt hits the seat the screen in front of me lights up, information cascading from the top of the screen to the bottom like a waterfall that broke through a dam. I was so surprised by the screen that I almost miss the seat-belt buckling itself on me. “Cool.”

                As I'm marveling at the seat-belt, Betty runs in and jumps into the seat off to Shawn’s left, “Cargo secure, locked him in the mechanics quarters, I had the seat restrain him so he should be safe enough for evasive maneuvers.” Back to the business Betty voice, she turns to look at me, “are you strapped in? this is going to get rough. Grab onto something if you need to, you aren’t authorized crew yet so none of the controls will respond to you.”

                 Without any other words, she turns and runs her hands over the controls in front of her, “Docking hall is disengaged, ship status as combat orbit exfil.”

                 Shawn’s seat has pushed forward so that he is halfway under the controls now. His eyes are closed, and his hands are on a set of joysticks that are now sticking out of his armrest’s, “All systems green, white-shift point selected, commencing operations.”

                I hear a faint humming as the ship engines take on more load, and a little jolt as the ship starts to move, thinking to myself how much I wish I could see anything, the screen in front of my lights up. Giving me a split screen view of everything outside the ship.

                 In one picture, I can see the hospital fading below us, the parking garage was flattened, and the area I assumed we had left from was caved in from the ship bulling its way inside. In another screen, I can see a couple of gray dots growing in size. After a few seconds, I realize the gray dots are some other type of ships coming right at us. The picture starts to zoom in and give me a clearer look and I can see they an ellipsoid shape with one of the pointed ends coming right for us.

                 “Kree ships incoming, they’ll be on us before the mana-drive finishes charging, can you take them down?” I’m not sure how Shawn knew that with his eyes closed.

                 “Yes, I have a firing solution, I am waiting to clear atmosphere before I take the shot. Firing a physical projectile at this angle might land in the city if I missed.” Betty seems to know what she’s talking about.

                 In one part of my brain I am geeking out. If this isn’t a dream I’m on a spaceship, on my way into space. In another part of my brain pieces of memory are fading in. Pieces of Betty saying our chances of survival are not guaranteed, once the realization kicks in on the reality of that fact I start to panic, “shit. Shit. Shit. Are we going to die? What are those things? Why did you guys destroy those buildings? Are you aliens? Why are you taking me?”

                 Ignoring my panicky questions betty says, “you’re going to have to wait for later for those answers.” Continuing to push buttons, and turn dials at random on her console.

                 “Upper atmosphere detected, White-shift in twenty seconds.” A British sounding man’s voice says, I didn’t see any speakers on my way in, but I wasn’t exactly looking for them.

                 “Engaging.” As betty talks, one of the screens in front of me shows a tube pop into view off to the side angle and three small eruptions of fire spray from them. Behind us one of the ellipsoid shaped ships explodes and disintegrates , the one behind it shows some smoke coming from a couple of spots on the front.

                 “One Kree ship destroyed, second damaged. Second ship has sent a wide spectrum data burst,” betty says aloud.

                 “White shift in 3…2…1..Shift initiated.” The British man says again. My body feels like someone has forcefully sucked off the air from my lungs, and a weird almost warm sensation touches my skin. At the same time, a bright white light blinds me and I close my eyes as fast as possible.

                 “Shift completed, craft is stabilized. Approximately three-days until shift-out to destination.” I still can’t find where this guy is talking from. Unless he’s hiding under the console he’s not in our room either.

                 Looking over I see the seat Shawn is in sliding out from the console while the flight-sticks retract into his seat. Hitting the button on the center of his chest to release his harness I can see a look of relief on his face.

                 “Godamn it feels good to be back out here. Terra-1 isn’t a bad prison, as far as they go, but it’s still a prison.” He smiles in my direction, “hungry?”

                 Betty hasn’t moved, or said anything so I take it I’m supposed to wait a little bit for answers.

                 “I guess, if it’s not that gross gray stuff from the ‘Aliens’ movies.” I force some levity into my voice, answers are going to have to wait. I hadn’t eaten today, and have worked up one hell of an appetite.

                 “Alright man, be careful getting up. The first shift is always the worst. I’ve lowered gravity to seventy-five percent of earth so movement shouldn’t be too rough on you. Push the green button on the center of the harness and it’ll let you go.” I had forgotten I was strapped in.

                 Hitting the button, the harness opens and releases me. By the time I have gotten myself out of the seat Shawn is outside the door on the catwalk, standing with one hand on the rail.

                 It’s the first time I see what he’s wearing. It’s a full body suit, a dark gray color from neck to foot. The bottom looks like it has an integrated boot on it, I don’t see any zippers or buttons anywhere, but maybe they’re hidden. After I walk a bit closer I see that there are little subdued squares on his shoulder and the outside of his wrists.

                 Deciding that his choice of attire is much further down on my list than everything else that has happened today I put the thought out of my mind.

                 “Ok Shawn, let’s get some food. Maybe I can get some answers at the same time? It’s been a hell of a day boss.” Shawn smiles and gives a light shake of his head.

                 Moving towards the left side stairs and down, opposite the way we came in, he goes through the door under the cockpit and there is an open room almost as big as the cargo hold. In the center of the room is a rectangular table, the far side has what looks like an overly large microwave. There are also four doors, two on each side of the room across from one another.

 “I’ll grab us some cubes. Any flavor you’d like?” Like I’d know what the flavor options are.

                 “Surprise me.” Moving around is amazing to me. I had been marveling at it all the way down the stairs, and into the room. After realizing that the pain in my body was gone I had realized I could stand up straight. That may not sound like a lot to you, but it is to me. I cannot even describe the difference. It’s been so long since I had stood straight-backed that I had to make a conscious effort to do so.

                 Coming out of my distraction Shawn is standing at the table with a huge smile on his face, “It has to be different for you. I’m glad your pain is gone, you have no idea how much it hurt me and Betty to spend years watching you sit around in pain. It was the hardest part of the job.”

                 Finally, looks like I might be getting some answers, “Alright man, let’s talk about what is happening.” The smile on his face fades a little bit, but it looks like he’s going to give me something. Waving his hand at the table I notice a couple of brick size cubes that look like ice-cream, with some cups that looked like sports drink lids, “Lets dig in and I’ll tell you what I can.”

                 As I sit in the chair next to him he takes a bite of his brick, “Try it, taste’s like lasagna.”

                My interest in how something that looks like an ice-cream brick tastes like lasagna piques my interest and I take a timid bite. The texture is soft like ice-cream, but it’s warm. The flavor is not close to what I expect. I once took Betty to a very expensive Italian restaurant for her birthday and had some lasagna, it was the best I’d ever had. Until now. This lacked the texture of the food itself, but it tasted perfect. The flavors of everything balanced the way they should be, somehow layered inside the brick. “Holy shit, that’s delicious.”

                He chuckles a little and finishes his bite, “Ok. We’ll start with the important stuff. This is a space-ship, its technically a shuttle to our actual spaceship. The earth you knew was not actually the earth you think you knew.” Taking another bite of my food, I let him mull over how he’s going to continue, partially loathe to interrupt, partially too busy with food in my mouth. Looking like he’d come to a decision he continues.

                 “Your parents were royalty, not high up royalty, but royalty all the same. If I had to describe it I would say your mother was the third niece to the king of Aelva, not in direct line for the throne, but still a position of power. Your father was just a common man that she met and fell in love with. At some point one of the political powered parties opposed to the monarchy decided to start killing off the royal family. Most went into hiding, some stood up in the light so that they could try and bring those parties to justice.”

                 He stopped for a minute to take a drink from his cup before continuing, “The royal family has been hotly debated for at least a millennia. But since the royal family never flexed their power to interfere it was left alone. Your mother and father were eventually caught a few years after your birth, you were taken and placed in care of the Kree to keep your parents compliant. It worked for a long time, I think your parents came to believe you had died and stopped giving into the demands. They were executed. I’m sorry to drop that on you like that, but it is a hard truth that you have to live with.”

                 It hurt a little bit to know my parents had been alive for longer than I had thought, but the sting wasn’t as bad since I had already thought them dead. I took a breath to compose myself and nodded for him to continue.

  “Betty, I, and a few others are all that is left of the royal guard, the rest are on the ship we are headed to. There aren’t many of us left, and even fewer of us are actually what would be considered ‘combat capable’ the royal family has been decimated, there are rumors that a few of the ones in hiding are still alive, but you are the last known living, registered, member of the ruling family of the Aelvans.” The last part he said in a whisper.

I stopped in the middle of chewing, dumbstruck by what he’d said, “I’m royalty?” there were more pertinent questions, but that was only thing I could get out.

                 “you were royalty. The ruling family has been decimated, a government has been put in place to replace what was destroyed, and we were nowhere near as powerful as we needed to be to stop any of that.” The further he gets along the redder his face gets, I can see the controlled rage at their impotence to stop what happened.

                 It was a lot of information to take in, and the way it was being given was like riding a roller-coaster. I can’t judge Shawn too hard though, I can see from the way he is reacting that the things he’s revealing are deeply emotional to him.

                 In the end, it doesn’t change much for me, I’m still some random kid in space. But one question does pop up that I need an answer to.

                “If the royal family is dead, and replaced, why save me? Why risk your lives getting me out of there? Wouldn’t it have been safer to get yourselves out?” I don’t think I could leave a friend behind like that, and don’t believe they could either, but I still wanted to know.

                 “Because my life’s duty up until now has been to protect you. Because you bring legitimacy to our claim of vengeance on those that attacked us. But most importantly, because you have become one of my best friends"