Chapter 142: 142: Resurrection

As I came too, my head was spinning and my mouth was drier than a desert. 

Waking up in floating hospital beds was becoming a habit that I was hoping to break in the future, it wasn't a fun experience in the slightest. 

"You're awake!" A voice from my bedside gasped, it was Fal the Lyrin. 

I lolled my head over to the side to look at her and gave the lizard girl my best attempt at a smile, though I had no idea how the expression translated through whatever cocktail of drugs the doctors had me on. 

"Hey Fal," I croaked, "Nice to see a friendly face, nice to see you're okay." 

"You're one to talk!" She laughed, her eyes glowed with the yellow of happiness. "We all thought you were never going to wake up after the first couple of days. Comas aren't exactly a thing that happen very often, you know." 

I'd been… in a coma?

I cast my mind back, bits and pieces came back slowly. A jumbled up mess. 

I remembered the fight with the remnant, and I remembered talking to BB just about. He told me that I'd managed to unleash my true power, somehow. A primal force of the universe itself. That if I did it again before I was ready I'd wipe myself out in a colossal explosion. 

Probably not best to tempt fate, then. 

"Needed to repair," I rasped, "Used way too much power, nearly burnt myself out. That wouldn't have been good." 

A look of worry passed over Fal's face, but it was gone within a moment. 

"Can I get some water?" I said, my mouth still bone dry. "Feels like I've been licking a beach for the past week." 

"Uh… Yeah, sure," Fal replied, shooting me a small smile, "I'll be right back." 

Idly I wondered where I was. 

Had I been taken back up to my ship, was this the medbay? Or was I in some kind of hospital down on the surface of the world, with everyone securely moved into their homes. 

There was a lot I could have missed. 

<You're back on your ship, I made contact with the onboard AI. You won't remember it, but you've actually been helping out with the move from within your own head> BB said, once more just a voice in my head instead of an actual presence with a body.

Part of me was a little sad that my AI helper didn't have a physical presence in the real world, but I imagined that there wasn't anything I could do about that. At least not in the short term. 

<Well, why would you want to get rid of me, anyway?> BB asked, but I could tell the questions was more sarcastic and rhetorical than legitimate. I didn't want to get rid of him, and he knew it. 

Fal came back into the room, a glass of water in her hand, with another alien close behind her. 

The lifeform had a crab-like body, scuttling along the ground on spindly legs, but his torso rose up to be bulbous, tall and strong. Two armoured arms poked out of the carapace on the alien's shoulders, though where a crabs would have ended in claws his ended in dextrous robotic hands. 

It had been said that, on Earth, life actually leaned toward crab-like evolutionary paths. There was nothing to say that the same couldn't be true on other worlds in other universes. 

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"Jacob Lyre, I believe," The crab alien said, glancing a bulbous eye toward a chart that floated down by my feet. The creature had a strangely German accent to him.

"That's me," I croaked, grateful as Fal gently brought the cool glass up to my lips and very slowly dripped some water down my parched throat. 

"We were uncertain if you were going to wake at all until your mind started communicating with the ships onboard systems," The doctor said, "It is good to see you awake at last." 

"Good to be awake, Doc," I responded with a weak smile, "Feel a little bit fragile still, but I'm sure that'll pass after I've got some food in my belly and some training under my belt." 

"Indeed, indeed it likely shall," The doctor replied, "Allow me to disengage your hover-bed and we'll see how fragile you truly are. Fal, be a dear and get ready to catch your friend should he fall." 

Fal gave a quick nod as the doctor moved over to some control panels. 

A few button presses later and I could feel the gravity field that was surrounding me ebb away. 

I was lowered gently back down to the ground and winced as my feet hit the floor. 

I was expecting pain to wrack through my body. I was expecting to collapse against Fal, or even down onto the ground. 

I wasn't expecting the ground to crack slightly under my feet. 

<Ah, that's… interesting,> BB muttered from somewhere in the back of my skull, <You're going to want to take a look at your system display, and you're going to want to do it right now.>

I had very purposefully not looked at that little flashing icon at the bottom right of my vision. 

I had decided to put it out of my mind completely. 

There was something ominous about the way it was blinking, something that made me want to just ignore it forever. 

I glanced down at the spiderweb cracks under my feet. 

Okay, I wasn't going to be able to ignore it, then. 

I flicked my eye over to the notification to bring it up and had to suppress a maniacal chuckle. 

{Alert! Limiters are now back online at 99.7% total efficiency! Power bleed of 0.03% is not fixable, but is within accepted parameters!}

When I'd knocked the walls of my limiters down I'd damaged them irriparably in some ways. This was the result. A tiny little bleed of power, trickling through into my body. 

It wasn't much. 

It was nowhere near as much as I had displayed against the Remnant. 

But it was enough to be noticeable. 

I was going to have to be careful.

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