Jim Raynor had left that morning long before his wife usually got up, and thus, not much later she had gotten only so far as dressing in underwear and kimono, wandering around the kitchen and humming.
The door opened. She heard a faint groan. Brow furrowed slightly in concern, she walked over to it.
Her husband stood in the doorway, covered in blood, cradling his left arm. More blood, fresh blood, ran from him like water. He groaned again, and staggered across the threshold.
‘James!’ Immediately she rushed to support him, taking the weight of his massive bulk without effort. She manoeuvred him into a chair; he collapsed like a sack of potatoes. She knelt before him, trying in vain to ascertain where he was wounded. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘A Ghost…’ he whispered.
She searched his body frantically. Nothing except blood was visible, blood that was now pooling on the floor. ‘You’re too bloody – I can’t see where you’re hurt—‘
‘Arm…’ he breathed.
But she was bundling him into the shower, turning it on full. Water gushed down on him, turning instantly crimson. It circled down the plughole in an incarnadine spiral. He opened and closed his mouth spasmodically.
Kerrigan was pulling his clothes off him. He collapsed into the bottom of the shower tray and sat with his legs drawn up before him. Blood flowed off him in rivulets, but began to show his true form beneath.
The wound was still fresh in his forearm, huge, gaping, ugly and red. Kerrigan could not suppress a gasp of horror at the sight of it. She turned off the taps and pulled her husband to his feet.
‘Come on. Move.’
She dragged him into the kitchen, dumped him on the chair again, and began to wind crepe bandaging around his forearm with cruel pressure.
The first layer turned crimson, and the one after that, and the one after that… After the bandage was almost as thick as his arm itself, it had faded to white.
‘That wound’s pretty severe,’ murmured Kerrigan. There was no response. She glanced up sharply, to see her husband leaning back with his eyes lolling back in his head.
She slapped him, hard.
‘Come on. Get up. Move. Space Marines don’t pass out from blood loss. Not if they want to wake up alive.’
His eyes opened, wearing a frown.
‘That’s better,’ she muttered. ‘This bandage isn’t good enough. You probably need stitches.’
‘What’s going on here?’ he said weakly.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders in exasperation. ‘You tell me.’
‘Water,’ he croaked.
She moved to attend him, but he moved first. Getting up and pushing past her, he leaned heavily on the counter top to retrieve a pint glass from the cupboard. He filled it from the tap, seeming to hold himself up against the sink. He took small sips, like a dehydrated victim.
Kerrigan watched him with narrowing eyes. ‘So a Ghost did this to you?’ she said.
He turned to face her. Some strength seemed to have returned to him.
‘Yes – a Ghost I had never seen before, one who says I killed her brother who I can’t remember ever hearing of. What’s going on here, Sarah? And where are my clothes?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but stalked off in the direction of the bedroom, still slowly sipping water. She was forced to move out of his way and stared after him, tight-lipped.
He went over to a cupboard, threw it open, and began to root through it with one hand; but for the time being, his attention was on Sarah.
‘One Ghost disappears, another one appears. What the hell is going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said tightly. ‘I cannot tell you. What are you holding?’
Raynor had picked up a wad of clothing indiscriminately. Clearly not concentrating, he put his glass down and pulled it over his head. ‘I mean, since when did people try and kill me who I haven’t even seen before? I’m used to them trying to kill me, just not for something I haven’t even done! And there was that Zerg battle-‘ Too late, he realised he wasn’t supposed to talk about the Zerg battle. His clothing fell over his head.
Kerrigan gasped in horror and shock. Her hands flew to her mouth, and she stared at him, eyes wide.
‘What? Er. Oh. Zerg battle. It must have, er, slipped my mind-‘
‘What the hell are you wearing?’ she shrieked.
Surprised, Raynor wheeled to the mirror. He was wearing some kind of green robe, with a hood over his head. Some unpleasant memory jogged him, but refused to fully surface.
‘Don’t know. Beats me.’ he muttered uneasily.
She continued to stare at him.
‘Yeah, so me and Kazansky found this Zerg battleground. It was nothing, nothing to be worried about really…’
‘Where did you get what you’re wearing?’
‘I just found it! Why is it so important?’
‘Just found it?!’
‘Oh, and shall I show you what else I just found?’ snarled Raynor, growing incensed by his wife’s obtuseness. He stalked over to the door, forcing her aside once again. He picked up the Protoss artefact, dropped and forgotten by the door. He turned with it in his hand, ready to speak- -and his wife yelled out and hurled herself backwards across the room, flattening herself against the wall. She readied herself to fight – and stopped suddenly.
What’s done is done.
‘You recognise this, don’t you?’ said Raynor in quiet wonder, staring down at the cylinder. ‘You know what this is for. Magellan was doing tests on it, I killed that girl with it, I’ve been carrying it all this time, and you know what it is. What is it?’
‘James, put that thing down,’ said Sarah, slowly, unsteadily. Her kimono had come open as she hurled herself back, and it began to slip down her shoulders as she moved slowly and carefully towards him. She seemed to make no attempt to stop it.
She was wearing only underwear. Raynor ignored her.
‘Naked again? That won’t help you,’ he said slowly, wonderingly, wondering why he said it. He looked down again at the Protoss cylinder. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, clad in green robes.
Something in his head started to feel very uncomfortable.
‘James, we have to talk. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.’ said Sarah huskily.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ said Raynor absently, gesturing with the artefact. The girl complied immediately. He was staring at his own reflection. What did these clothes signify? Why did they look familiar?
A whole range of emotions began to rise in him, like the tide. Chief among them, panic.
‘Why don’t I know what these things are?’ he asked in terror. He strode towards his wife and grasped her shoulders in his hands. She gasped. ‘Why can’t I remember?’
‘Remember!’ she said in shock. ‘It’s just a Protoss weapon you’ve found. Throw it away, it’s too dangerous.’
He didn’t let go, and kept the weapon pressed between his palm and her. She winced at the pressure of his fingers. ‘Why wouldn’t you help find Belinda Lister?’ he said softly, but with mounting terror. ‘Why do you know this is a Protoss weapon? What am I wearing?’
‘James, this is very important. You have to listen to me,’ she was saying. She was blanked out by a roaring in his ears. A pressure built up behind his temples.
A memory, a dream, Zeratul, Tassadar, shouting, gesturing…
‘What is going on here? What am I doing on this planet? What happened to my life?’ Raynor began to scream into her face.
She scarcely blinked.
‘James, I’m so very sorry. But it isn’t your baby. It’s Kazansky’s.’
‘What the hell does that have to do with anything?’ he screamed full-lunged at her.
Her eyes went suddenly cold. ‘Fine. Nothing. It’s a lie.’
‘It’s a lie? Then what the hell else is a lie? What happened to that Ghost? What about that Zerg battle?
‘What happened after I attacked Char?’
‘James, you really need to calm down,’ she said, but in her voice was not compassion, but coldness. It was the sense of someone trying to talk down an obdurate prisoner, not a husband. A distinction that was horribly obvious to Raynor.
‘Who are you? What am I doing here?’
She raised her hands and easily smashed his arms out of their grip. He dropped them to his sides, shocked.
‘I am Sarah Kerrigan and you are here married to me. Now shut the hell up and forget all this, otherwise you can forget the whole thing!’
Forget…
‘Yeah, forget it!’ he shrieked. ‘None of this is real! It’s all fake! A phony! You’re a phony!’
He knew not what he said; but as though triggered, reality seemed to waver horribly before his eyes. His wife’s image distorted as though via a heat haze, and seemed much blacker, more twisted.
True horror gripped him then. He wished with all his might to see her, and keep seeing her, as a beautiful human woman once again. But at last he began to realise something of the truth, and his head was pounding with pain…
… and she, herself, had obviously decided that there was no point any longer in keeping things the way they were.
‘A fake, am I? Forget the whole thing, can I? Very well then, Jim Raynor. You bring this upon yourself.
