G/T YouTubers (One Shots and More)

Serendipitous Rescue (Mark & Jack) (Part 2)

Mark's head was spinning. His mouth was dry as sand. His whole body ached, and his stomach still felt like it was on fire. He opened his eyes slowly, taking several seconds to hold them closed before his vision finally focused, and he let his eyes wander. He was in the escape pod. The monster was nowhere to be found. He was safe.

He tried to sit up, but a groan quickly escaped his lips. His whole thorax throbbed with agony, and his shoulder blades quickly slid back down against the cold metal floor.

"Yer awake." Mark turned his head and squinted. Jack was perched on the dashboard up front, doing something with a water bottle that the engineer couldn't quite see from his angle. "How ya feelin'?" The small alien asked. Mark's arm twitched. He ached to get up, but he knew he shouldn't. He couldn't anyway.

"Th... thirsty..." He mumbled hoarsely. He let out a weak cough and closed his eyes, exhausted.

"Gimme a sec." He heard something like a zipline, and then the small clank of something landing. A few seconds later and he felt something cold press against his lips. They were pushed apart, and the delicious taste of water trickled over his dry tongue. Mark drank gratefully the refreshing liquid, and when it stopped and was pulled away he licked his cracked lips, feeling a little bit better.

"The... the monster..." He tried to ask.

"It's gone. It's far away now. Yer safe."

He opened his eyes again, and this time his vision focused a little faster. Jack was going over to a medkit that was splayed open on the floor, a wad of cloth in his hand, and a loop of string in the other. Mark tried to sit up again, but to no avail. He groaned and finally gave up, laying still with a tired sigh.

"Don't get up yet." Jack pushed an empty syringe out of the kit and rummaged through some bandaids. "I managed to get that metal thing out, but ye bled pretty badly. It's gonna take a while before yer back to full health." Mark remembered the bullet wound with a flash. He pulled his shirt up and felt around before his fingers brushed against carefully placed gauze wrappings. He felt his bad side; also wrapped, coarsely yet effectively.

"You... y-you... f-fixed...?" Jack turned toward him. His eyes glowed brightly in the dim shadows of the pod; they were unreadable, but not cold.

"I just tied the skin back together." He kicked a rather empty bottle of antiseptic aside and uprighted a roll of remaining gauze. "Yer gonna have to keep still if ya want it to heal, though." Mark mumbled wordlessly in agreement.

"Thank you." Jack paused for a few heartbeats.

"... Yer welcome." Mark watched as the alien set back to work; he was moving to and fro across the pod floor now, looping string around a hook in the base of the wall that hadn't been there before. The engineer let his eyes wander, and after focusing for a few more heartbeats he noticed that a good deal of the whole ship had been deliberately strung up like a system of zip lines. They were probably how Jack was moving larger things around, like that water bottle- it was more than twice the extraterrestrial's size, after all.

After Mark's gaze landed dazedly on the front window of the pod, he suddenly thought of something and tilted his head to look for Jack once more. "Is the pod still moving?"

"Yeah." Mark blinked and found his eyes landing on a different location; how had Jack gotten up to one of the panels at the ceiling? "It's a little low on juice by now, but we're drifting to preserve the energy for landing," the alien added as he fidgeted with one of the wires.

"Landing?"

"Yeah?" Jack looked back down at Mark, his head tilted despite currently being upside down. "Unless yer species can somehow survive in the void of space. I'd assume not though, considering yer space station had an artificial atmosphere and dedicated food rooms."