Ryo didn’t want to open his eyes.

His body felt like lead, his brain caught in a vice, slowly squeezing his brain to the point of torture.

He’d had migraines like this before and they were never pleasant, to deal with, let alone face the outside world at the same time, but he had exhausted his resistance, his stomach and bladder screamed at him, one to be filled the other desperate to be emptied.

‘Can’t even face the day, coward…’

The voice hissed at him, a whisper in his ear and a knot in his chest.

Ryo forced his body to move, dragging his legs over the bedside before he finally pried open his eyes. The dark of his bedroom gave the shadows more license to move, they shifted and slid without sound from the corner of the room to the corner of his eye.

Always there, never welcome.

He decided to kill two birds with one shower, water to drink and a place to piss. He felt around for the taps but not the light switch, even the brightness from the window was enough to cause painful pulses behind his eyes. The hot water hit his skin and did nothing to relieve the pressure in his head, yet Ryo stood there hoping in vain that it would change. He let the water flow over his face and drip into his mouth.

It stank of chlorine and tasted of plastic.

Old water, stagnate water, tank water that’s been sitting for god knows how long.

‘Just perfect for you…’ the voice jeered again.

Ryo closed his eyes even in the dark, he was forced to hear the truth, he didn't have to look at it.

He haphazardly threw on a dark t-shirt, sweatpants and hoodie, pulling over the hood to keep his head warm, before heading down to the kitchen, to search for some paracetamol. No drawer in the stainless steel room was left unopened, in the end, he found some forgotten blister pack of ibuprofen, 6 tablets left in the tab. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but it was better than nothing, either they did work (anti-inflammatory relieving the pressure in his head or relaxing the tension) or the placebo effect would get him through.

He swallowed them dry and shoved the blister pack back into his pocket.

Ryo stood in the kitchen for a few seconds, trying to decide his next move, he didn’t want to go back into his bedroom with the shadows jeering at him all day.

Then he remembered the speakers up on deck.

Little Miss Sunshine had an entire band set up plugged in, amps base and everything, he figured he could find some sort of music to play and help him drown out the world around him.

Ryo shuffled his way up the stairs without having to open his eyes more than necessary, it wasn’t long before he met his first, big obstacle.

“Hey, Ryo!”

Sunshine and Beau were already on deck. Even with his eyes closed, she was still too damn bright. She waved at him and said something, but his brain wasn’t in the mood to listen to any voice other than his own. Ryo contemplated turning around but he hated the shadows more than her, he'd just stay out of her reach until the migraine went away.

He raised a hand in acknowledgement and walked through the bar to the speakers.

She was still trying to talk to him, choosing a wide birth and no eye contact as his answer.

Sunshine wisely took the hint and returned to talking to her alien sycophants.

Ryo was left alone to inspect the sound system, a couple of the guitars lay in cases but a car stereo had been ripped out of a dashboard and placed neatly between the amps.

Several CD files were splayed open, he searched through their contents.

Everything was in English or Portuguese, smatterings of other international disks but nothing before 2010. Old tech, old songs. Ryo then decided if he couldn't listen to his own music, he was going to listen to something loud.

He picked something at random, a disk with blood, skulls and spikes on the cover and let it autoplay. Norwegian death metal shrilled in his ears, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as he was expecting, but it was enough to drown out the latent words of the shadow.

He sat back on one of the sunbeds on deck and finally took notice of what Beau and Sunshine were doing.

Beau was shirtless, holding up padded gloves for Sunshine to hit. She was in a loose shirt and shorts throwing punches in time to the music.

Beau was teaching her how to box while the aliens watched with amazement at the demonstration. Ryo gritted his teeth in disgust.

It was fucking pathetic.

What the hell were they doing? They were sitting on an alien spaceship, that they were free to explore and all they can think to do is stay on a yacht and pretend to punch each other…

It wasn’t what he would do.

He’d seen the other items in the hangar, the fabricators, the crates of weapons, the fighter ships, just sitting there while dull alien scientists got them working again.

It wouldn’t take much force to take a ship, hell, if Sunshine asked they’d probably just give it to her.

But no, they were stuck playing pretend that everything was ‘fine’.

‘Like you’re any better…’ the dark voice cackled, ‘why haven’t you taken a ship yet hmmm?’

While the death metal band blasted themselves into a sick rift, Ryo turned the music up.

The loudness itself didn’t drown out the voice completely, but the ringing afterwards helped.

Little Miss Sunshine stopped sparing and walked over to the speakers, turning it down enough that she could talk to him.

“Hey uhh, you doing okay?” she asked him.

Ryo barely looked up.

He felt like shit.

“I’m fine” he lied, shrinking into himself on the deckchair.

“Oh, well, did you want to join us?” She offered him a set of gloves.

“No,” he lied again.

“Oh, okay well, if you change your mind…” she left the gloves on the floor beside him and walked back to the others.

Ryo felt the wave of warmth fade as she turned around, it was a small reprieve from his headache, which was lost the moment she wasn’t in range. The pain came flooding back and he rubbed his temples.

The music level was low enough the voice began creeping back in.

‘Coward…’ it hissed, lingering in his ear, ‘like you’d have a chance anyway…’

Ryo’s eyes watched as Jasmine threw another punch into Beau’s hand, as she changed stances, as her shorts shifted when they threw a punch.

She wasn’t shy about showing off her legs.

He bet her thighs were soft.

‘She’d fuck the aliens before she’d even touch you…’

Ryo turned the music back up.

He felt her before he saw her.

The bright heat became like the unforgiving summer sun, determined to burn him for his digressions. Jasmine stormed over to the speakers and ripped a cable from an extension cord, the music died instantly and she threw the cord down in frustration.

“What?!” she demanded, hands on her hips and slightly out of breath.

Ryo’s heart flew into a panic while the rest of him wanted to fall into a hole and die, she hadn't heard that, had she??

“What?” he answered dully, getting ready to dive into his own grave.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Jasmine demanded again, “I get that you’re not happy with your situation but sitting there pretending you don’t want our attention isn’t fucking healthy.”

The relief that she hadn’t heard what the voice had said was brief, cause her anger caused the sun to burn with more than just heat, her frustration seared his senses.

Too hot and too bright.

‘Fine, you want to know my problem?’ he growled through his mind, he stood from the sunbed and glared from bloodshot eyes, ‘My problem is that you’re pretending like nothing’s wrong,’

“Fucking what?!” Jasmine shouted, giving him a chance to reword his answer before she ripped into him, but Ryo didn’t.

‘You fucking heard me,” he replied, feeling the punch of the swear as he fired back at her “You’re over there, all smiles and sunshine while we’re prisoners aboard an alien ship, and you have the audacity to think this is okay.’

Ryo’s words felt like poison dripping from his mouth, while she was the blazing sun he was the darkness lashing out from the depths.

“Well, what the fuck do you want me to do then?!” with her statement came a flash in his brain, a vision of her alone, small and lost, “I can’t do anything until the councillor arrives!”

‘Why the fuck are we waiting for the ‘councillor’s?’ he fired back, the memories behind his words, the monstrous things he had seen and felt these aliens do, he saw her eyes flicker as he mind-screamed back, ‘Why the hell haven’t we commandeered a spaceship and left this god damned hell hole?’

Jasmine clenched her fists, ready to bite back.

“And then what genius? Be chased for the rest of our lives? Charge out into the void of space and go where?” The vastness of space hit him like a truck, the emptiness, the infinite, the chances of being alive under such circumstances... The desperate need to find security.

“We’d fucking starve before we got anywhere. I’m trying to forge alien-human relations-”

‘Forge alien-human relations?’ He remembered the clinical room where they cut his head open, the cold, callus words of the so-called ‘doctors’ ready to dissect him alive. There were no relations as far as he was concerned, ‘You’re prancing around like a goddamn idol, sucking up the adoration from these stupid fucking monsters. You haven't done anything worth a damn!’

Ryo threw the evidence in her face, when she was laughing and singing, trying on different outfits and lounging around the yacht, she could have been doing so much more to help them escape from this nightmare.

“Oh, I haven't done anything worth a damn?!” Her voice raised louder, fury burning hot, “You’ve been nothing but a selfish asshole the entire time you been here!”

Ryo saw visions of himself, the disgusted look on his face when she offered him a drink, the harsh shove he gave her when they first met, when he shot the back window of her car...

“You think you’re the only one with trauma?! You think you’re the only one who is scared and angry?!” she cried, voice cracking under the pressure.

He saw the fear.

Her body splayed open on the table.

The needle in her eye.

The indifference they treated her with.

Ryo stumbled back, she knew, she knew all of this and still wanted to play ambassador?!

‘At least I’m not pretending I’m the goddamn saviour of the universe! These aliens are fucking monsters, they don’t care about you!’

Ryo felt the memories coming to him easier, throwing them like weapons, to show her the truth, to hurt her with it.

‘They’ll cut you up the moment you’re not useful to them, and you would offer us up on a silver platter.’

He showed her the cryo-vats, the thousands of decaying bodies, the insect soldiers dying to capture him and Beau, and the white caped captain who finally did.

Jasmine’s clenched fists opened and wrapped themselves around her, to protect herself.

“You think I don’t know how precarious our situation is?! Do you have any idea how this world fucking works?!”

Ryo was bombarded with faces and names, hierarchy structures and contract codes.

Executive Directors, Companies, Galactic Governments, Imperium, Princes, Princesses, Rangers, Knight Commanders, Engine Lords, Pirates, Rouges, Creators, Modifiers, Users, DNA Contracts, Citizenship, Progenitors, Benefactors… An entire world was shoved into his brain.

“It’s horrifying, every time I learn something new I have to try not to break the fuck down!” She screamed, her voice cracking with despair.

The Rajava’s holographic spectre consumed the universe.

Melting those she loved with acid and made new into unthinking, unfeeling zombies.

“I thought everyone was dead, I thought the Rajava wiped everyone out…”

Earth was alone and lost.

Humans would rather burn the world than suffer such a fate.

The unsaid words her heart believed.

“I did what I needed to survive before I got sliced up for a production line! You’re right, I am pretending everything is okay, because if I felt how I really felt I would have accidentally killed everyone on this station already!”

She showed him the Doctor’s she injured and paralysed.

Their bodies lying unmoving by her own hands.

The pain she had caused Xant…

Jasmine’s body slumped forward, breathing heavily from the screaming.

Ryo stood stiff, his body like stone, eyes cast down to the floor.

He was so tired.

So angry.

He just wanted all of this to stop.

‘You’re weak and a coward…’ Ryo’s voice involuntarily whimpered, a memory from the not-so-distant past, ‘Crying won’t help you now, get the hell up-’

Jasmine lunged forward, her hands grabbing his hoodie, shaking him with tears in her eyes.

"Coward?! Coward?!" she repeated, the fury in her so strong he could barely breathe, "I'm not going to let a shit-cunt like you call me a coward!" She had rescued Sieglinde and the other dogs from mistreatment, stared down the engine lord when he threatened her and kept her head during galaxy-level political discourse. She would never anyone cross her like the Rajava had done again.

Ryo raised his hands to defend himself, waiting for the blows to follow, but... they never came. She was so angry, furious at him, he deserved to be hurt, he deserved to be punished. He lowered his hands and stared back at her, a soft thought from her mind slipped through the blaze.

"I don't want to do this, I hate fighting, don't make me do this Ryo..."

Ryo felt a tickle creep down his cheek.

A coldness wrap around his throat.

The shadow formed in front of his face and his father’s voice screamed at him.

‘No ones coming to save you, you’re not special, you’re a piece of shit like the rest of us, so just die already!’

Jasmine screamed.

Her hands let him go and clawed at the apparition, trying to get a hold of it.

Trying to fight it.

Watching it melt through her fingers and then staring back at him.

Ryo’s eyes went wide.

She could see them, the bugs, the shadows.

He turned his head and saw the aliens freaking out, Xant trying to remove the bugs while the dinosaur literally began sinking his claws into his face and tearing into his skin.

Ryo ran.

He panicked, he had to run, he had to get away, he heard Jasmine scream again.

He tried to get off the yacht, away from the aliens away from all the psychic bullshit, but the hefty weight of Beau’s entire body mass pile tackled him to the ground.

The force of which knocked the wind out of him, Ryo could barely breathe let alone answer the man. Beau quickly and easily grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back like he had done so many times before.

Ryo struggled to get out of his grasp, but Beau held him tight.

“Let, me, go!” Ryo tried between struggling breaths.

“No, what in the hell is happening here?!” Beau demanded. Beau didn’t have a translator, he couldn’t have felt or seen what had happened between Jasmine and him.

He glanced back over at the deck.

Jasmine was calming down the aliens while trying not to freak out herself.

He looked up at Beau, expecting him to be angry, disgusted.

But he wasn’t.

He was concerned, scared, and searching for answers.

Ryo stopped struggling, his English sucked, his head hurt and non-existent bugs were crawling all over his face.

“What is going wrong?!” Beau asked again, voice filled with worry.

Like a parent.

Ryo answered Beau using the only words he knew how.

“I’m... sick”