Starlit Night

[Capt Ayers 0]

Nick wakes up shivering in a cold sweat with his heart racing. Even as the nightmare fades he remembers what it was about. The recent temporal incident had caused everyone that had been on the Control Tower to experience what were far too realistic deaths. The nightmare had recounted those..the deaths he had experienced along with the experience of watching and feeling Ethan and the others around him die. Privately he muses that it's no wonder he'd had a nightmare about it. It was pretty much one of the things that he fears the most. The psych test he had faced over twenty years earlier while he was a cadet in the Academy had focused on exactly that fear. He had nightmares for a week after that test. And now it was like it all came roaring back.

 

He slips out of bed and moves to his closet to retrieve some clothes to change into. He exits the bedroom and steps towards the door that lead to the corridor. As the door opens he reaches down to catch the kitten that Ethan had adopted. He scratches the kitten behind the ears causing it to purr. He softly murmurs "Furrball, you really need to learn to stop that. This station is much too big for you to run around in." He sets the kitten down and makes sure the door closes without the kitten slipping through. He turns to walk down the cooridor and within a few minutes he finds himself outside one of the holosuites. He has the computer bring up a program and start it. That done, he steps through the doors.

 

He finds himself standing on a grassy hill overlooking a field. A lone tree adorns the top of the hill and it's to the tree that he walks. The gentle breeze whips through his hair which seems to be glowing spectrally under the full moon. Reaching the top of the hill he sits down under the tree and then lays down on his back. He stares up at the star lit sky and he does so the breeze picks up a little, bringing a haunted sound to him. He continues to stare up at the stars as he loses himself in his thoughts.