Mac opened one eye and very slowly turned his head to see his caretaker. It was something of a shock that sunk an ice ball the size of a small country into Mac’s stomach when bright red curls backlit by the lamp on his nightstand filled his vision. Further determined inspection revealed some kind of paper hat clipped to the mess of said red curls billowing gently in the draft from the ceiling vent.

  He began struggling to scoot away as quickly as he could, which only woke the sleeping mechanic from her daze like a famished lion from its afternoon slumber.

  “Hey there, laddie. Stop struggling,” she reached out and touched his injured chest with a pale hand. Mac involuntarily shuddered to a stop as a wave of pain swept his body. “Aye that’s better,” the angelic voice said a bit sleepily as if she was still considering falling back asleep.

  “If you die, I’ll be in even more trouble,” Amethyst continued wearily. She tilted her head as she spoke revealing a red nurse’s circle drawn on the paper hat with a crayon. “So, stop struggling, or I’ll have to poke your rib again,” she added menacingly.

  “Why are you…?” Mac managed to whisper.

  “Someone has to since the medical AI has been quarantined,” Amethyst explained in obvious annoyance. “It should have been the vampire who broke your ribs in the first place, but no. I got forced to take care of you. They even made me wear this… ‘so I would remember it’s a human, not a machine.’” Amethyst stood up revealing a cute but modest nurse’s outfit that couldn’t quite hide her figure. “Didn’t want me ‘trying to replace a limb’. Whatever. I only did that one time. Aye, just once… with an arm… It worked out in the end. The lad’s fine. He can even shoot a laser out of one finger. What human wouldn’t want that?” Then, she added belatedly, “I probably should have given the anesthesia a bit longer to set in… I’ve got the timing figured out… now. If you’re interested, I’ve got everything I need in my bag, laddie.” She looked down at him hopefully like an optimistic sprite awaiting a contract.

  The tendrils of fear creeped out of Mac’s mind paralyzing his limbs in abject terror, but he gave no answer.

  “You have no sense of adventure,” Amethyst complained as she sat back down on the chair beside the bed with her freckled cheeks between her fists and a dangerously attractive pout on her red lips. “I could be working on Nessie right now. But, here I am stuck with your careless and utterly boring rear end. It’s so unfair.”

  It hit Mac right then, with all the saline solution that had been added to his system, he really needed to take a leak. For the briefest moment, he considered just wetting the bed, but his mind followed that idea to its logical end, and he decided against it. The bathroom though only a few meters away might as well have been on the other side of the earth. He’d have to find some way to first stand and then get to the toilet. Crawling in front of his tormentor was not an option.

  “Hey Amethyst?” Mac voiced softly.

  “Aye, what is it you careless lunk?”

  “I need to pee.”

  “So, get up already.”

  “I… need a little help,” Mac admitted with a blush, only realizing how that came across when it was too late.

  “If you think I’m going to help you…!” the red-head stood up angrily with a burning look in her eyes.

  “No, No. Not like that,” Mac reassured the emotional time bomb. Nothing like that. “Just help me stand up. Please,” he added.

  “Okay, laddie,” Amethyst put her hand on her hip and eyed him suspiciously. “You try anything ungentlemanly, and I’ll fix you for good. Now, can you roll over onto your stomach?”

  Mac carefully tucked one arm under his side and very slowly rolled toward his unwilling caretaker. The weight of his internal organs smashed his delicate ribs against the mattress, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…” Mac cried softly as he lay there, pain blinding his mind to everything but her angelic face. There lie madness, he warned himself as he rolled back.

  “What are you, an idiot?” the green-eyed mechanic berated him. “Tuck your arms under you to either side of your chest.

  Mac tried fruitlessly to muster enough strength to get his arms under but only made it worse on the follow-up attempt. The pain threatened to knock him unconscious, but Mac drew on his natural dread to maintain his grip on reality.

  “Fine, I’ll help you.” Amethyst leaned over him, her bright red curls forming a terrifying wall of flame to either side of his vision as she got close enough to squeeze his arms into proper position. She didn’t smell like grease at all, more like soap… and the strawberry shampoo provided by the barracks… that he used.

  “Ugh, you smell terrible laddie,” Amethyst wrinkled her nose cutely as she stood back up. “You might want to shower while you’re in there. At least your pilot suit is getting cleaned.”

  Mac blushed as he realized he was wearing sweatpants and a button shirt. When had he…? “Amethyst?”

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  “That’s my name, laddie.”

  “You didn’t… uh… you know… uh,”

  “Out with it, laddie,” she replied impatiently.

  “Where’s my pilot suit?” Mac asked as indirectly as he could.

  “Oh, that,” the mechanic leaned down close again to position him so his legs could slide off the bed.

  “Thankfully, the medic took care of you in the locker room and then helped me drag your sorry rear end back here. Now, up you go,” she reached around his stomach and helped him stand on his own feet. She managed to jab the knuckle of her thumb into his tender diaphragm as she did so, drawing out a gasp. The pain almost kept him from noticing she was… soft… where she braced his back. No, not a thought to even gently entertain. She would probably kill him given the chance and plausible deniability.

  Amethyst lifted his right arm and stuck her head under it to support him as he took his first few steps. “Watch that hand, laddie, or I’ll introduce you to the floor.” Only then did he glance to his side to see his fingers dangling far too near a complete catastrophe. How close to death had he come before that warning?

  Mac carefully shuffled to the bathroom doing everything he could to avoid leaning on the mechanic turned nurse. He strongly doubted the mechanic turned nurse would accept any incidental contact as an accident. Maybe she was just looking for an excuse to just finish him off and go back to her precious machines.

  Amethyst helped him stabilize himself on the counter and carefully backed away watching for any sign he might just topple over. Whether she followed up with a foot stomp to the chest to end him, branded him a pervert, or actually helped him back to his feet was anyone’s guess. No matter the result, Mac would suffer additional pain.

  “Are you sure you’re good, laddie?” Amethyst quizzed as she stepped backwards out the door. “I don’t want to have to lug you around longer because you hurt yourself again.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Mac assured her as he closed the door on the red-haired monster and then took the longest pee of his life.

  XXXXX

  Mac crouched his battle suit behind the line of trees hoping the swift moving, white type-VI would pass him by without noticing. “Haley, prep main cannon,” he advised the AI.

  “System ready,” Haley replied from over his shoulder. She was wearing an officer’s uniform today.

  Mac carefully lifted his weapon and sighted down the camera scope filling the upper right quarter of his vision. He couldn’t help but narrow his eyes out of habit, “You’re mine…”

  “Excuse me?” Haley interrupted and cut the feed from his scope. “What did you say about that she-devil? I thought…”

  “Haley! What are you doing?!” Mac protested, “Turn that scope back on, right this instant!”

  “I thought I was yours?” the pouty AI seemed on the verge of tears.

  “It’s an expression, Haley!” Mac shot back fully irritated as he tried to track his target manually, “Turn on the feed already!” It was with some effort that he refrained from adding several derogatory comments about her programmer and the parentage of her gerbil after the command.

  “I heard that,” Haley replied with a distinct lack of amusement followed by a truly confused, “…and what does my gerbil’s…”

  Scope! Now!” Mac shouted at the AI.

  “Fine, Fine,” the petulant AI flipped the aiming scope back on at a quarter of its normal size.

  “Haley…” Mac’s voice could have frozen a dragon.

  The pop-up returned to its normal quarter size, just in time for Mac to see the type-VI leap up and out of his sight.

  “We have incoming,” Haley stated flatly.

  “I wonder whose fault that is?” Mac replied sarcastically as he desperately searched the sky for his attacker. “I can’t see her. Haley, are you manipulating optics, again?”

  “It’s not me,” Haley replied genuinely.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Mac shouted even as he tried to leap to the side. Haley balanced his step and sent out two holograms in other directions.

  Pain laced through Mac’s body as the white type-VI sideswiped him into a tree. He caught a glint of the pilot’s green eyes as she closed in to punch him in a follow-up direct attack.

  “You need to wake up,” Amethyst threatened, as she landed a punch on his shoulder that made the world blink.

  Shouldn’t that have hurt more? Mac wondered as he struggled to regain consciousness.

  “Wake up,” Amethyst commanded as she struck him again, this time in the cockpit.

  “What? Why are you…?” Mac stumbled through his words, not quite able to say them aloud as everything around him seemed to pulse.

  “Wake up, Mac,” said the terrifyingly familiar North Anglic Accent as the world blinked out of existence. “Now hold still. Keep that up and you’re going to hurt yourself, and then I’ll be stuck here with your sorry rear end even longer.”

  Mac’s eyes blinked open, revealing Amethyst hovering over him in her nurse’s outfit with both hands on her pleasantly curved hips. Where had she gotten that grease stain, and was her skirt an inch shorter than last time he had seen her?

  “Don’t you be getting any wrong ideas, laddie,” his caregiver admonished him as she tracked his slow-moving eyes. “You were having another nightmare.”

  “Are you sure that was the nightmare?” Mac questioned skeptically.

  Amethyst frowned at him then leaned over and flicked his chest with a finger sending arcs of pain though his body. “Aye, quite certain.”

  “That doesn’t strengthen your case,” Mac replied breathlessly through the radiating pain.

  “You might as well wake up, laddie. It’s almost time for breakfast.” Amethyst straightened back up with her dainty, heavily scarred hands back on her hips. A closer look revealed several more long scars running down her forearm.

  “Help me sit up, please,” Mac requested even as he closed his eyes again.

  “You better not try anything,” Amethyst threatened as she leaned back down and put both hands behind his back to help him sit up.

  “You’ve been helping me for almost a week already,” Mac grimaced as he sat up with her help. “Have I ever once tried anything?” Mac continued in exasperation as he slid his legs over the side of the bed, “I thought we had established a mutual understanding that you want me to hurry up and heal so you can go back to taking care of machines, and I agreed with you.”

  Then, Mac noted what looked like a piece of a battle suit on the floor beside her when he glanced down in frustration. That explained the oil stain. His eyes returned to Amethyst’s embarrassed green eyes.

  “I can explain…” she held out her scarred hands helplessly revealing the long scars down her forearm in more detail. One of them was decidedly not like the others.

  Mac reached out and gently caught the scarred arm in his hand. He’d seen a scar like that one before even if the others mystified him, “Where did you get this?”

  Amethyst snatched her arm back from him, hiding it beneath her breasts as she turned away from him, “Got caught in an engine when I was younger.”

  That might explain the other scars. It might even have been a half-truth, Mac reasoned as his face softened, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Aye… lucky,” Amethyst repeated the word back to him flatly.