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Jack awoke, finding it difficult to breathe. He gasped, trying to fill his lungs, confused as to where he was.
The last thing he remembered was going to bed. He looked down.
He was in a lifesuit. Okay, so he wasn’t in bed. He tried to draw breath again, fighting against air pressure that simply wasn’t there. His suit was pressurized, meaning he was in low pressure. Or no pressure. But then the suit should compensate. He tried again, his lungs heaving, feeling adrenaline release through his chest as his heart rate accelerated.
No air.
That’s why he couldn’t breathe. There was no air in the suit.
He tried to move, feeling disoriented, like he didn’t know which way was up. He tried to twist, to sit up, but then again, he wasn’t in bed. Waiting for his eyes to acclimate to the sheer darkness, he tried to figure out where he was. Everything was black. He tried again to sit up, but a few moments later he realized he was floating in nothingness. That meant there was nothing to push against. As he twisted around in panic, he caught a glimpse of some light, off to the right somewhere. At least he was wearing a helmet — which meant he was in space. But what was he doing there?
Fuck, he thought to himself, what a time for this to happen.
Jack had a problem. A problem he mostly was able to hide — from his employers and from the people he would meet. His problem was time.
Ever since the age of four he had lived with these episodes, blackouts where he couldn’t remember what had just happened or what was going on. Sometimes he seemed to remember events out of sequence, destroying any sense of cause and effect. The cognitive specialists called it Jasmine Fever — or temporal lobe time-cognition disturbance, when they were speaking formally.
There was no way he could even function without keeping careful track of events in case he had a blackout. If it hadn’t been for his exceptional abilities in conflict negotiation and crisis management — and the support of someone very well-placed in the Federation — there was no way they would have let him out into the field. As it was, there were certain details which didn’t appear on his official records anywhere.
It was all irrelevant now. He must have suffered a blackout while on a mission, made a mistake of some kind, and been expelled out the airlock. Out in space, with only moments to live, he would never know what had gone wrong — nor would it matter.
And yet there was something else. Something more specific. A feeling of betrayal.
The only thing that he could associate with that feeling was the moment his mother had left him in the research facility when he was five. It was a moment he’d replayed over and over in his mind throughout the years, but that couldn’t explain what was happening now. He was about to die, and the only thing he could think about was that someone had done this to him. Someone he trusted. The anger was followed rapidly by utter blind panic, and he noticed himself flailing about but couldn’t seem to stop it.
Jack woke up again, this time for real. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body. The sheets were wet with sweat, and his heart felt like it wanted to beat its way out of his chest.
He tried to scream, but no sound came out.
He tried to breathe, but couldn’t draw in any air. His body was still mostly paralyzed, apart from his arms and legs, which had been thrashing around in panic as he suffocated. As soon as he became conscious, he focused on breathing, and gradually, he began taking in air again.
His body was still in panic mode though, and it took several more seconds to acclimate to the new, waking reality of air and safety. He slumped back on the drenched sheets, kicking off any remaining covers to try and regulate his temperature.
He felt sick and overheated — and something worse. The sense of betrayal stayed with him, even as the adrenaline dissipated.
Another nightmare.
His therapist would love this one, he thought, tapping his left arm with the index finger of his right hand to activate the implant, and bring up his personal holo. He started tapping notes into the holographic screen that appeared, scrambling to get the main details down before they evaporated from his awareness.
Floating in space — that was a new one. He dragged the notes over to the dream diary tag and continued to make notes of the key points: In space. Can’t breathe. Mother, betrayal.
Well, nothing new in those basic components, he mused.
He lay there for another few minutes, trying to get back to normal before he faced reality. Whatever that was.