Blood Impulse

Part 7.4

Present day, Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity

"I had a feeling you would be here, Miss Scarlett."

She did not respond, remaining statuesque as she faced the bed. She seemed not to register that Macintosh had even spoken.

The doctor shoved his hands into the pockets of his white coat. "It makes sense," he agreed. "He's on his death bed and you would want to be with him." He calmly joined her in looking at the Admiral. The man rarely seemed so helpless. "They say that love breaks all barriers, but I never believed it. At least not until I heard about you, that is." He chuckled, "The Haunted Singularity. Now that I doubt."

The white-haired woman was silent. Doctor Macintosh began to wonder if she could respond. What did he know about ghosts? He produced a cigarette from his pocket, contemplating lighting one for the first time in years. Any more alcohol would render him tipsy, so this was the next best coping mechanism.

He flicked his lighter open, and raised it to the end of the stick. "Don't smoke in here."

Macintosh was momentarily unsure where the objection had come from, but eventually realized it was the ghost who had spoken. Without turning around, she had known what he was about to do. He closed the lighter. "Smoking. It's a nasty habit I picked up on my last assignment." He shuddered, remembering his days healing the miners of the Gamoran Moon outpost.

"I am aware of your record and I am telling you not to smoke," she answered coldly.

Doctor Macintosh dropped the lighter into the depths of his lab coat pocket, but kept the cigarette between his lips. "Whatever you say, Miss Scarlett."

"Do not call me that." She turned halfway around to look the medical officer in the eye. "I am not Lieutenant Scarlett."

"Well," he shrugged with a vague hand gesture, "Not anymore." Clearly, a lot had changed since the Kansas' disappearance. She wasn't really human anymore, and it could be argued that Admiral Gives was not technically either.

"I was not and never will be Lieutenant Scarlett." The very insinuation that some creature like her could have ever been that lovely young woman was an insult to Samantha Scarlett's memory. I am nothing more than a monster.

"Then what is your name?" Macintosh asked, unsurprised. His original guess had never been any more than a theory.

She returned to silence, but Macintosh was not through. He had questions, and while was not sure agitating the Singularity's infamous ghost was a smart idea, it wasn't everyday he had the chance to speak with her. In fact, until today, he had never heard it rumored that she could speak. "Then you are indeed Samantha Scarlett." Without offering up an alternate identity, she would be stuck with that. "It's okay. I won't say anything to the crew-"

"I am not Samantha Scarlett." Anger of a special variety rose in her eyes, fiery self-loathing. "I am the monster that killed her." A disgusting, vile creature who soiled and killed everything she touched, mourning the loss of the mission she could never fulfill.

The ship's burly medical officer faltered under her sharpened gaze. "Killed her?"

"Murdered. Maimed. Wiped from this plane of existence." The thought would never not anger her. "Yes, I killed her." It was sick. But that was her existence: blood and guts, and pain. So much pain. There was a brief time in which she had almost been free of it, almost brought joy to someone, but that was all crumbling down around her in ashes, flames and death.