Nebula
The Nostromo Medical Bay
Two Light Years from Avina
“What’s wrong with her?” Gamora asked as she watched Nebula’s unconscious form. Or what she could see of it. Her sister’s torso was covered by a diagnostic panel from hips to neck. Gamora had raised some concern about the state of Nebula’s mind should she wake up in what certainly looked like a restraint. Banner had assured her that Nebula would be out for several hours . . . he thought. In the interim, it was helping them figure out just what Nebula’s cerebral implant was doing to her.
“Her implant’s triggering pain directly, as if her brain was receiving impulses from her body,” Banner said. “I’ve sedated her. That’s about all I can do. As to treatment you’d have to ask them,” he added, indicating the cluster comprised of Rocket, Stark, Vision, and Friday off in one corner before turning back to the stasis pod in the corner.
The first thing Banner had done was to administer the sedative suggested in the med bay’s database as effective on Luphoids. Thankfully the database had also been able to identify Luphoids. Then he’d turned his attention to his other patients.
Gamora had required bone regeneration on her broken ribcage, but the med bay had been up to that task. The rest of her injuries had pretty much healed of their own accord before he’d had a chance to do anything.
That left just Drax. Vision had taken one look at the blue berserker and put him in stasis the moment Groot had dragged him aboard. That had only slowed the wound’s deterioration to a barely noticeable crawl, meaning he was probably going to be forced to operate on an unknown species with unfamiliar tools. Or he could just let their nominal ally die.
“Well?” Gamora asked, turning on the group ending the hour or so argument they’d been waging. It had started shortly after they’d clustered there and continued like some sort of war as they worked through the code in Nebula’s head.
“Well,” Rocket said finally “we’re fairly certain we’ve found the algorithms responsible for her condition, and we’ve changed the frequencies that activated them.”
“Good, get rid of them,” Gamora ordered.
“We can’t,” Tony replied. “Those algorithms are woven through the implant’s operating system. If we were to simply delete them . . .” he added with an apologetic shrug.
“It would kill her,” Vision finished.
“I believe it would be possible to leave the algorithms intact while disabling those specific functions,” Friday added.
“But such an act would require a thorough study of the entire system,” Vision finished.
“Would you two stop that?” Rocket asked, irritated. Vision and Friday had been on the same wavelength since they’d started working together. Tony’d never realized just how annoying that could be to an audience, but apparently it was even more annoying to evolved racoons.
Vision looked uncertainly to Stark, then back to Rocket. “I am unsure of the source of your irritation,” he replied.
“You!” Rocket almost yelled.
“It’s the way you and the AI keep finishing each other’s thoughts,” Gamora explained.
“That’s an odd thing to get upset over,” Friday commented.
“Indeed,” Vision replied.
“Would you two just go away?” Rocket demanded.
“That would not be wise,” Vision replied.
“You need our help,” Friday agreed.
“Right there,” Rocket yelled holding his arms in front of him in frustration “You just did it again!”
“They have a point,” Stark put in.
“Oh please,” Rocket sneered. “An hour ago, none of you’d ever seen this language.”
“Which puts us on the same starting point as you,” Tony reminded him.
“You’d never seen this language before, Rocket?” Gamora asked, adding a slightly surprised look to the question.
“Well, it’s similar to a couple I know,” he said slowly with a glare at Stark “but it appears that your psycho daddy created his own programming language for his torture implements.”
“That sounds like him,” Gamora replied, her entire countenance darkening like an eclipse. “Wait,” she added as his words sunk in “are you suggesting that her cerebral implant is just a torture device?”
“It does provide certain benefits, such as faster processing ability, better sight rendering, and a certain base level scanning ability,” Friday replied.
“But it does appear that its main function was to serve as a means of punishment,” Stark said.
“But it only started torturing her recently,” Gamora argued.
“Not quite,” Rocket said uncomfortably tugging at one ear. “The program has a setting for how much pain she feels. We’ve dialed that down as low as it can go, but we can’t get it to drop below twenty percent.”
“So . . .” Gamora said, asking for a clarification she was fairly certain she didn’t want to hear. Tony and Rocket shifted uncomfortably. It seemed that they were all equally reticent to provide an explanation as Gamora was to hear it.
“Based on my medical database,” Friday answered finally “it would probably feel like a hyper-extended joint . . . all over her body.” Gamora emitted a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a growl as they all turned to look at the object of their discussion.
“How high was it?” Gamora asked, partially afraid to find out.
“The level was set at 100%,” Vision stated bluntly.
“What would that have felt like?” Gamora whispered.
“It would be akin to being submerged in lava,” Friday supplied. Thus followed a pregnant silence, as they all tried to imagine exactly how terrible that was. None of them could truly grasp the implication, perhaps due to a safety set on their psyches.
“I’ll have Friday keep working on it,” Stark assured her eventually. “In the meantime, I’d like to know what The Collector meant about the stones not getting along,” he added stepping past her to a terminal.
“What do you mean ‘the stones don’t get along’?” Gamora asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Tony said as he began running searches on the galactic information net.
“That’s what the collector told us,” Thor explained from the doorway “while the star thief was off collecting you.”
“It’s Star Lord,” Gamora corrected without thinking.
“You rang?” Quill asked, as he squeezed past Thor. Gamora’s cheeks turned a darker shade of green; a sign of embarrassment.
“I believe this belongs to you,” Thor added with a wave indicating the rogue.
“Sounds close,” Quill replied, crossing the room to the green tinted woman.
“You have any problems?” Stark asked without looking up.
“None. Their ship is lashed to the deck and I’ve had Heimdall set course for Earth. He estimates we’ll be there in two days.”
Meanwhile Quill had made it over to Gamora. “Gamora,” he said, taking her hand “I will always be your Star Lord,” he told her, bringing the ensnared hand up to his mouth for a kiss.
Before he could finish that particular maneuver from the book of suave (page 34 2nd paragraph) Gamora yanked her hand free, suddenly irritated. “Quill stop it,” she snapped, angling past him towards the other end of the room.
“Yes, please stop it,” Banner replied from the other end of the room.
“I’ll second that notion,” Stark agreed without looking away from his console.
“Thirded,” Rocket piped up. “Is that right?” he added uncertainly.
“Fourthed,” Thor responded before anyone could put forth Robert’s Rules of Order.
“That’s not exactly,” Banner started before deciding it was a waste of time and finishing with “never mind.”
“You all lack romance,” Quill complained before shrugging and stepping over to where Tony was working. “So, what’s this about the stones not cooperating?” He asked.
Tony granted him an irritated glance. “You now know as much as I do,” he said finally, fingers flying over the interface. The first thing he’d had Friday do when he’d begun overhauling the Nostromo was to convert the user interfaces to English with a standard keyboard. “I’m trying to locate any information on the stones I can, but it seems that your galactic data net is somewhat lacking.”
“Well move over old man,” Quill replied, stepping between Tony and the screen before Stark could possibly have moved out of the way. “Let me show you how to run a search.” Um,” he added, noting the strange configuration.
Tony gave him an annoyed look and reached past him to hit a button that reverted the user interface to standard.
“So how is Drax?” Gamora asked as she approached Banner. She took a quick glance into the statis field before turning away. The tiny scratch the berserker had suffered had expanded to a blackened gash covering nearly half of his right pectoral.
“He’s stable for the moment,” Banner said, looking up as if he hadn’t noticed her approach. “Whatever was on that staff began necrotizing the tissue around the wound at an alarming rate but the stasis field seems to have slowed its progress considerably.”
“You mean it’s still killing his cells off, even while in stasis?”
“Yeah, and the rate seems to be increasing,” Banner told her. “If he’d gotten more than scratched, he’d have never made it to the ship.”
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
“Well this is a bit out of my field, but whatever this is seems to act much like a cross between cancer and Necrotizing Fasciitis. It’s commonly called flesh eating disease, although that term is a bit of a misnomer,” he explained to her blank look.
“So, what’s the treatment?” Gamora asked.
“I still haven’t isolated the cause,” Banner told her. “The best I could do would be to treat it the same way we treat flesh eating disease. That would require me to cut away the healthy tissue around the necrotic area, but there’s no way to do that while he’s in the stasis field. Even then I don’t know what will happen. If whatever’s causing this has gotten into his bloodstream there may be nothing we can do.”
“Let me take a look at it,” Rocket replied as he worked his way over to the table.
“What are you thinking?” Banner asked, clearly still getting used to the idea of getting help from a dire raccoon.
“Well, you can’t penetrate a stasis field, but I might be able to adjust the equipment to narrow the field so it only covers the affected area.”
“Wait, Rocket you know about medical technology?” Gamora asked in surprise.
“Eh,” Rocket replied with a shrug “my first rule is usually ‘do some harm’ but I’ll give it a go. Of course, this will create one minor side issue,” he added.
“Which is?” Banner asked.
“Well, since Drax won’t be in the stasis field anymore he’ll be awake while you start carving big chunks of his chest off. And I’m not going to be the one trying to hold him down,” he asserted.
“Thor could probably hold him,” Banner offered.
“Or that beasty you turned into,” Rocket added. Banner glanced away with a look mingling shame and discomfort. “What?” the talking raccoon asked.
“Let’s just,” Gamora cut in “focus on adjusting the equipment. Then we’ll worry about whose holding who.”
“You mean besides you and Quill later tonight you mean?” Rocket snickered without looking up from his work.
“Just get it done,” Gamora demanded through clenched teeth. She would have loved to bounce the rodent off a few walls for that remark, but she needed him serviceable for the near future. After that . . . well it would depend on how she was feeling.
“You see, there’s your problem,” Quill announced from where he’d pushed Stark out of the way. “You’ve found all the information the data-net has on the stones already,” he explained in a more normal tone.
Tony grabbed the monitor to double check before replying with a scathing look. “Hey, don’t give me that look pops,” Quill replied. “I tried.”
“This can’t be all there is,” Stark added, muscling his way back in front of the monitor. “How could there not be more data on something as old as the stones?”
“Well, I didn’t say that was everything,” Quill told him, earning yet another dirty look. In Tony’s mind’s eye he could see himself pummeling the cocky upstart with an armored gauntlet. There was a certain amount of catharsis involved in that act, imagined though it was.
“Pops?” Quill asked snapping him out of it, clearly unfazed by the minor luck that looks didn’t kill.
“You said this was everything,” Tony ground out. It was shocking how easily the kid could get under his skin. Usually he was the one throwing people off balance.
“Everything on the data-net” Quill corrected. “There are certain agencies that might have data on the stones that they’ve failed to share with the galaxy,” he said. “The Collector, for instance, knew more than we have here.”
“Are you suggesting we go back?” Tony asked, taken aback at the suggestion.
“Any database Taneleer Tivan may have possessed is no doubt rubble,” Friday pointed out.
“And we don’t have time to find any backups he may have created,” Quill agreed. “But he’s not the only one that might have such information. You see-”
“You know where another stone is?” Tony asked.
“Uh, yes,” Peter responded as he attempted to ascertain how Tony had figured that out.
“And you’ve waited until now to tell us?” Tony snapped.
“Well, they knew it too,” Quill said with a wave at Gamora and Rocket. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering to try and redirect the blame on this. The older man had a way of catching him off balance like no one he’d met; not even Rocket.
“Where’s the stone?” Tony demanded, ignoring the feeble attempt to pass the buck.
Quill glanced at the others for guidance. After all, he’d only met these people an hour ago; for all he knew they were working with Thanos. But Gamora was no help, unless you counted an ever so slight shrug as help. Which he didn’t. And Rocket’s only response was to hold his paw out in an ‘iffy’ gesture.
Realizing he had little choice, Quill sighed in surrender. “It’s on Xandar, in the Nova Prime vault,” he told him.
“Show me where Xandar is,” Stark commanded, indicating the monitor. Quill stepped back to it, bringing up a map with one blinking star.
“Friday?” Tony asked.
“The indicated star system is only slightly off our current course,” the AI responded, anticipating his request. The ship on the monitor sprouted a red arrow that fell short of the blinking system, and a little to the left. Distances to the two systems were displayed next to them, as well as the ship’s speed next to its icon.
“Well then we need to change course,” Quill replied.
Tony squinted at the screen. “Based on this data we’d only save a few hours,” he replied. “We’re better off continuing to Earth.”
“Then we’ll head straight there on our ship,” Quill said, already headed for the hatch.
“We’d lose almost as much time unlashing your ship,” Thor replied. “Tony’s right. The best course is forward, together,” he added, earning an odd look from the technologist.
“What is on Earth that is so important?” Quill demanded.
Before anyone could respond Nebula woke up. While that in itself might not have been much of an interruption she was also waking up in an unknown room surrounded by strangers, with some sort of body device pinning her to the table. And she’d been handcuffed to said table.
It took her only a split second to take these details in and factor them into a rather pessimistic risk analysis. Then she raised her arms, as if curling a heavy weight, shattering the panel. She flipped herself off of the table, snapping the handcuff’s chain mid twirl, and landed next to the neighboring wall. She took one look at those suddenly watching her, reached behind herself, and ripped a stanchion off of the wall. She then adopted a posture consisting mainly of holding the makeshift club over her head in such a way as to suggest that the first person to come within reach would probably be sporting a slightly used stanchion . . . permanently.
“Nebula,” Gamora called out, approaching from the other side of the room as if she were a frightened dog “it’s okay. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Explain this then,” Nebula growled, holding her right arm up to show the remains of the handcuff.
“What?” Gamora asked before realizing it wasn’t a bracelet and shifting a glare at the group further down the bay. “Which one of you ingrates chained her to the table?” she demanded. There was no response. Gamora glared more.
Finally Rocket spoke up. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said with a shrug.
“Rocket!” Gamora yelled, chastising him.
“What?” he protested. “It’s not like she was really restrained. Obviously . . .”
Gamora sighed, choosing not to respond to that comment. Sometimes she wondered how she’d ended up being a school teacher for a bunch of ten-year-olds. “Nebula,” she said instead “would you put that down? I promise, you’re safe.”
Nebula glanced uncertainly at Gamora. It was clear she wanted to be able to trust her nominal sister. It was also just as clear that she didn’t, at least not fully. Be that as it may, she did eventually lower the improvised weapon, though she maintained a tight grip on it.
“And I thought the Asgardian version of sibling rivalry was bad,” Thor commented from where he’d been watching the drama unfold.
“Yes,” Tony replied as if reminded of something “where is the god of lies anyways?” he asked. Thor grimaced at the nickname but let it slide. At some point one must simply recognize a lost cause and move on.
“Thanos has him,” he said finally.
“Wait, let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Quill replied. “Thanos has the god of trickery?” he asked. “Well I guess that gives his army a whole new dimension,” he added before anyone could respond.
“He won’t break,” Thor replied, thinking back to his conversation with his father.
“He’s got a point,” Banner asked from the back of the room. “He’s more broken than a china shop in hurricane season already. I can’t imagine anything Thanos could do would make that worse.” Thor responded with another of his patented glares, despite the fact that Banner was technically supporting his position.
“Indicating a lack of imagination Thanos does not possess,” Nebula responded in that gravelly voice. “Everyone breaks.”
“I suggest you speak not of what you do not know foul mistress,” Thor replied, advancing on the blue woman. Nebula glared back, seemingly unfazed. “You have enough to answer for already.”
“Yeah,” Quill jumped in “like ruining our chances of getting the Aether.” Nebula shifted her deathly gaze at the rogue, but said nothing.
“You never had one,” Nebula replied, shifting her gaze to Quill.
“Why did you do it?” Gamora asked, sounding more hurt than anything. “You didn’t even give us a chance.”
“What happened to you, sister?” Nebula asked suddenly irritated.
“This has nothing to do with me,” Gamora replied. Nebula simply stared at her, as if unable to believe what she was hearing. There had been a time when Gamora would have instantly recognized the foolish futility of attempting to get someone like Taneleer Tivan to release any of his possessions. But that Gamora was gone, somehow replaced with a far more naïve shadow.
She scanned the room, but found only detractors. “You’re all imbeciles,” she declared, disgusted. “Taneleer Tivan has been searching for the Infinity Stones even longer than Thanos. He would never have handed it over,” she added, making for the exit. Thor stepped in front of her. Thus proceeded the sizing up portion of the fight.
Fortunately for the ship it never got further than that. “As much as I hate to side with her,” Rocket replied, in an uncharacteristic attempt at mollification “she does have a point.”
“You were the one helping her!” Quill shouted in disbelief.
“No, they’re right,” Tony cut in without looking up from his terminal. “He’s called ‘The Collector’, not ‘The Distributor’.”
“Did you figure that out all by yourself?” Nebula sneered making an aside glance at him.
“Well, we can’t all know everything,” Tony replied coolly, still not taking his attention from the information.
“We can’t all pull your liver out of your mouth, either,” she snarled. For some reason his cool sarcasm was more infuriating than Thor’s angry threats. She wasn’t sure why.
“Nebula, stop it,” Gamora snapped before she could pursue that thought. “We have to work together if we’re going to stop Thanos.”
“You people can’t stop the drool from sliding down your chins,” Nebula growled, causing Quill, Thor, and Rocket to check their chins as surreptitiously as possible. “I’ll take my ship now,” she added.
“It’s lashed to the hull,” Thor replied.
“Unlash it,” she ordered, adding a glare for emphasis.
“We don’t have the time,” Stark told her. She turned a threatening glare on him, but otherwise said nothing. “Starting a fight isn’t going to change that,” he added. “Once we get to Earth, if you want to go, you can go,” he added.
Before he could respond Gamora jumped back in. “Nebula you can’t do this alone,” she pleaded.
“I don’t need any of you,” he snarled again as she started for the exit again. Thor thought for half a second, then stepped out of her way.
“Really?” Stark asked, halting her half way to the door. “Cause, I would have thought you’d be feeling much better after our intervention,” he added.
“And you want a ‘thank you’?” she asked, without turning around.
“That’d be nice,” Rocket replied.
“The only reason I was in pain was because I saved your idiotic lives,” she added. “Did you thank me?”
Stark stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment. “You know, I think my time would be better spent elsewhere,” he said, heading to the door.
“Where are you going?” Thor asked.
“Figure out what Taneleer was talking about. And make a phone call,” Tony replied. “You coming?” he asked with a glance at Quill.
“Yeah,” Quill replied, following him. Gamora couldn’t help but note it being the first time he’d ever followed anyone.
“That is of some interest to me as well,” Thor said, following the other two. That left the two sisters glaring at each other at one end of the room, with Vision observing, almost like a referee. Rocket and Banner did their best to focus on helping Drax.
“What is wrong with you Nebula?” Gamora hissed. Nebula simply stared at her with that blank deathly gaze, which did not improve Gamora’s mood.
“You know,” Vision said into the silence “this is starting to seem more a family matter. I think I’ll take my leave.” And with that he passed through the nearest bulkhead. Nebula stared at the wall he’d left by in surprise until Gamora brought her back to the argument she seemed determined to have.
“Do you know that they were trying to help you?” Gamora insisted. “They lowered the pain setting on your implant. They even thought they might be able to remove it completely; not that they’d probably try now,” she added bitterly.
“Good,” Nebula replied, gaining a shocked look from Gamora.
“You’d rather go on like this?” she asked disbelievingly. Again, Nebula simply stared at her.
“You don’t have to be in pain,” Gamora insisted. “You can live a normal life.”
“So I can be like you? So I can forget what was done to me; what’s still being done to so many others?” she replied acidly. This time it was Gamora’s turn to simply stare. “Perhaps,” Nebula continued just as caustically “I can find some boyfriend somewhere. We can even run away together and pretend to be intergalactic cops.”
Gamora opened her mouth to respond, but whatever she had to say died in her throat as those words registered. Try as she might she could not discount them. She tried telling herself that Nebula was just playing on her guilt for being unable to save those other girls. There was no certainty that Thanos could be defeated, no matter what she thought. Nebula’s plan had backfired incredibly quickly after all.
But the nagging thought that Nebula might have been right scared her. Here Nebula had been pushing on to eliminate Thanos on her own. And it sounded as if she was on the right track before they’d stumbled onto her plan. Had Gamora simply used Thanos’s perceived invulnerability as an excuse to avoid trying?
She couldn’t tell anymore, and that irked her. Moreover, she just couldn’t deal with Nebula staring at her in that cold way of hers. There was no point in continuing this conversation right now. All that would come of it would be a shouting match. So, instead of speaking, she closed her mouth and stormed passed Nebula, out of the room.
“Wow, and I thought Loki was a few screws shy of a coat rack,” Banner commented from the other end of the room.
“Oh, like you know crazy humie,” Rocket muttered.
“I think I have a good grasp on the subject matter,” Banner replied.
“Oh really?” Rocket asked. “You know what it’s like to be torn apart into pieces, to be reassembled to someone else’s designs?”
“You saw what I turned into,” Banner replied. “You have no idea how painful that is.”
“Who did that to you?” Rocket demanded.
“Well . . . I did it to myself,” Banner admitted. “It was an accident.”
“That’s not the same thing at all!” Rocket yelled. “You don’t know what it’s like to be conscious and powerless to stop someone from doing it to you. You don’t know what it’s like to dream of revenge when you sleep, to fantasize about it while you’re awake, and to plan it in between. You don’t know what it’s like at all.”
“I guess you do?” Banner asked.
“Damned straight I do,” Rocket replied. “But I got my revenge,” he said proudly.
“And did that help?” Banner asked, bringing the rodent up short.
“I guess . . . not really?” Rocket hedged. “I thought I felt better. But it wasn’t until I met Groot, and then Quill and the rest of this floating circus that anything changed.”
“How do you know what happened to me?” Nebula demanded.
“Gamora,” Rocket replied.
“Do not compare your sorry excuses for torment to me,” she sneered. “You know nothing about me.” Then she turned and stalked out of the room.
Rocket turned to Banner. “No, you’re right,” he told the biochemist “she’s crazy.”