Author's Note

Heed my warning, this sucks. I'll be rewriting it after I get part I done for sure, but for the sake of continuing it, I will post it. 

Also, I'm super excited about the next Star Trek coming out tomorrow! Trying to convince someone to go with me, but unfortunately, I'm like the only Trekkie I know. 

Hope y'all enjoy. 

Her heart is in her stomach as she takes in the accusation. Love and united becoming a mantra screaming in her mind as her breath sped up, her heartbeat raising, thumping wildly in the cage of her ribs. She felt her pulse in her fingertips. 

"United Republic of Earth?" Rose's lips tremble with the unfamiliar words, her brows crunching in confusion. She focuses on the things she can make sense of. United Republic of Earth. United Republic of Earth is tangible, and there has to be proof of its existence. Facts. Facts that cannot be applied to Fenris. 

Charles's hesitates before speaking again, as if the doctor is contemplating if they should go on or not. "All remaining countries have come together, united-- it's great really, but Elysium, Elysium is independent, and it plans on remaining independent."

Her lips twitched up as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Is this what hysterical feels like? Is this how she acts without her Elysian near? 

"What-- you're," her voice breaks in half, and she hates it-- hates that it's dipped in fear and anger and and the intense desperation of seeing her Elysian. "Where is Piper? I would like Piper, and I'd like to talk to your commanding officer, and I'd like, I'd--" Her voice is rising, rising, rising. 

"Rose, please," Charles's eyes have blown wide, as if they hadn't expected this kind of implosion of her senses. Their hands come forward, as if to anchor her back, or maybe to just shut her up again. "Don't work yourself up, we can continue this conversation but only if you remain-"

"Where is Piper?" I need Piper. "That's the only fucking question I am asking. That's the only one I'm going to ask. Where is Piper?!" Because she didn't care about any of this-- if there was a bigger plan, a much larger plot to the universe she lived in, it was not concerning to her. The only direct threat, the only thought that harassed her mind was Piper, and where she was, and if she were scared. 

"Only if you calm yourself down," Charles replies easily, in a soothing voice that does the exact opposite. 

"I'm not going to calm down!" Rose yanks at the IV until she begins to feel the sting of the needle pulling against her skin in a way it wasn't meant to. Her heartbeat is rising and the machine above her is blinking in rage; she doesn't care. "Tell me, please. Please." 

"She's on Earth," the voice that says it isn't Charles, but Fenris, who leans against the door frame with one hand stuck in his pocket. He's observing her again, his expression now blank other than his ticking jaw. 

Rose's face turns into a brilliant grin at the news. Piper is alive. Piper is breathing. Piper is-- "Proof," she demands, and it's not the proof Fenris wants to show her, that much is obvious with her next words. "Give me proof of Piper." 

"What do you want?" Fenris asks her, voice deep as he takes a step towards her. The way he speaks sounds like he would push through Heaven and Hell to do just that-- get her exactly what she wanted. He hovers near the hospital bed, unsure of himself, although the look in his dark eyes made it clear he wanted nothing more than to scoop up her hand and sooth the wrinkles on her forehead forged from stress. 

"A recording," Rose demands. "A recording of her telling me she isn't your captive-- and her, her explaining all of what I've forgotten," because Piper had been in every memory that had ever mattered. She could recount everything, even the little things-- Piper would not just connect the dots, but create them, give Rose an outline of a life that was stolen.

"Can't," Fenris shrugs, giving her a long glance before he continues on. "Intergalactic feeds are never secure, you know this." 

"Do you know what I'm capable of?" Rose wonders aloud, giving him an incredulous look with her eyebrows tightly crunched. "Give me a computer; I know every in and out of Elysium--" 

"Programs made from Elysium are not the only threats," Fenris continues. "Elysium may not have many allies on Earth, but there are entire galaxies helping them out from the backdoor."

"I know," Rose fumes, wishing that her IVs weren't restricting her from feverishly batting her hands around to put actions to her distress. "If I remember correctly, I was raised in the Republic of Elysium and given the second highest security clearance," she turns to Fenris, and then to Charles, before she spoke seriously. "I wrote these codes." 

"No," Fenris shook his head. "No, if you make one wrong move, if they catch any wind of the presence of your artificial intelligence, they will track it here. They'll come for you, and everyone on this ship will be executed because they don't leave tracks."

"I don't make wrong moves," she replied sharply, narrowing her eyes with disbelief. She may have woken up in a world she doesn't remember, but the steady thrum of any electronic heartbeat had always been as familiar as her own. 

"Do you know who is on this ship?" Fenris tells her with a deep voice full of anger, as if he felt betrayed. "Entire populations of civilizations you don't even remember-- all of them, migrating to Earth because their dying planets were taken advantage of by the Republic of Elysium," he crosses his arms, and as he does it, the worn leather of his jacket squeaks. "Rose Ramsay cared about that-- she still might, too."

"Then why did I forget it?" She finally screams in frustration, her fingers tightly curled in the white sheets beneath her. 

"Your Root," Charles speaks from where they had seemed to retreat; the doctor is tucked into a corner with countless screens that light up with different graphs, all analyzing something about Rose. 

Rose rolls her grey eyes, trying to think of a way to convince them that they had gone out of their minds. "Listen-- the Root is not--" 

"When you remove a Root," Charles interrupts her with a calm voice, their hand moves to a glass container beside one of the screens. "You can't take it all. It's grown into nerves, curls around the brain stem. These tiny tendrils," the doctor holds the jar in front of her, where a Root, in all of its fine, painstaking design, sets squeaky-shiny-new. "They all have a different job."

She studies the way the Root looks so powerless, alone in a jar, without anything to hold onto, with no purpose other than to be studied. The Root is so blue it tricks the eye into believing its staring at the darkest shade of black. It's shaped like a spider, with hundreds of tiny wires made out of clear graphene, all wired with a different purpose. It looks dead, even if it had never been animate.

"The head," Charles points to the thickest part of the Root, where the blue is most prominent, and continues. "Is the easiest to remove, a bigger target. It's also where some of the most valuable implements are located. The tracker, communication with a paired Elysian, the tiny charged body that will send currents of lethal electricity if programmed to do so." 

"But these," it's unsettling how the doctor says it; even Fenris takes an unsure step back, as if he were scared of what a completely useless Root could to do. "These tiny tendrils all have one unique job. They monitor, they control. They can completely change the balance of chemicals in a brain. Luckily, without the head, most of these go useless or die instantaneously." 

Rose listens, having a tremendously hard time of taking the doctor's words as anything but lies. She had been raised with a Root tucked safely into the back of her head. No proof of malice had ever been apparent. 

"They can't remove everything, though," Fenris speaks next, his eyes stuck on the glass container, as if he were paranoid of the lifeless Root's potential. "We call them Weeds for a reason, Posie," the nickname rolls off of his tongue before he can stop it, and it sends a thrill of warmth through Rose that she refuses to acknowledge. His voice and the name a comfort from a life she doesn't remember. 

"We believe that the memory bank, a tendril that is almost impossible to remove, had enough carnage left to activate," Charles tapped the glass with their fingers, towards the longest, limp tendril. "And activation, unfortunately, means a one-way wire to Elysium. I hypothesize that a hacker managed to catch a signal on your Root, and instead of ignoring it, took your memories." 

"What good is it that they have my memories?" She glanced from the both of them with agitation, before she turns to stare at her hands, angry and itching for something to take her anger out on. "I'm an Elysian, but there are hundreds of us."

"Rose," Fenris speaks from above her, his dark eyes staring directly into hers as he reached out to touch her hand. She watches as it made its way towards her own, before he pulls back on second thought. Rose releases a breath she hadn't known she had been keeping captive. "You're much more than an Elysian now." 

"What then?" She demanded the answer, her brows hitching up with desperation as she tried to think and remember be whole again. "Whatever I was before this morning is gone now." 

"Rosie, that isn't true--" 

"I don't remember anything. I don't remember Charles, and I don't remember this ship. I don't remember ever having Piper one second out of my sight," she pauses, folding her hands into her lap as she brought up her knees until they sat close enough for her arms to wrap around. "I don't remember you, Fenris X."

But I know I should.

Author's Note

I know, I know. Tell me what you thought, what confused you. Sorry, I am so sorry. I apologize. 

Tell me what you liked, what you didn't. I love Charles.