The Soulmate Curse

PINE (for healing)

Finn work up with a start! There was a weight on her chest! She was pinned. Her nightmare bled into real life. The boulder was crashing her. It was on her chest and it was crashing her. She looked down, ready to find that she was still at the creek, slowly dying. Ready to finally give up. Give in. Then she saw the arm. Zhen's arm wrapped protectively around her as she slept soundly next to her. Details of where she was trickled back to her. She wasn't at the creek. She wasn't dying. Far from it. She was in a lab, lying on a day bed, in Zhen's arms. Still, she wasn't completely okay.

She had to get out from the hold. As carefully as she could, she disentangled herself from Zhen and got up from the sofa, hopping a few feet away and clutching her chest in an attempt to calm down her beating heart. She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. This nightmare had plagued her every night from the first time she woke up in the hospital. And now, to find out that she couldn't even have Zhen hold her without her becoming a panicking mess... Finn bit back a sob.

To get her mind off the dream, she did a full mental body check. When she was telling Zhen about there being no record of rejects for bioprinted organs, she'd been only about eighty percent sure of that. She noted gratefully that she was no longer nauseated or feeling both hot and cold. Everything felt a lot more normal. Even the pain wasn't as bad as the day before. It was still there, but it wasn't debilitating. Having shaken off the last bits of the nightmare, Finn turned back to the sofa to make sure she hadn't woken Zhen. Finn took a second to study her. She realised that she'd never seen her this vulnerable. This open. Her face was at peace, her breathing was easy, and she was sprawled beautifully on the sofa.

Looking away from the day bed, she saw Harv asleep at his desk, his head bent in what was undoubtedly an uncomfortable way. The room was being lit by the orange light of the rising sun, which made everything seem slightly too whimsical. She headed to the bathroom with her backpack. A few minutes later, with her dressing changed, her teeth brushed, her hair looking less like bed head, and feeling more in control, she woke the others up.

"What time is it?" Zhen asked, sleepily.

Before Finn could give an answer, the door crashed open and two women in uniform walked in, hand on the weapons in their hip holsters. Zhen was up and beside Finn in a flash. Harv was groggily getting up from his desk, his eyes dazed and hands on his head like it hurt.

"Could you guys not be so loud?" Harv asked, almost comically.

"Finnegan Darrow! Zhen Roberts! Place your hands where I can see them!" said one of the cops, completely ignoring Harv. "And please tell me that you're here for any reason other than trying to run away. Again."

"Don't say anything," said Zhen.

"That's fine by me," said the policewoman. "We can continue the questioning at the station."

"She has to go back to the hospital," said Zhen, pointing at Finn.

"She seems fine to me," said the cop. "If she's fine enough to be here, she's fine enough to come down to the station."

She grabbed Finn by the arm and led her out of the room. The other lady did the same to Zhen. Before they were out of the door, Finn turned to Harv.

"Harv, send the report," she said.

"Where to?"

"Everywhere!"

The trip to the station was the kind of quiet that makes you think about how your life went so wrong. Despite their talk last night, Zhen was currently the manifestation of Zen. Her face showed barely any emotion. Cucumber cool. Finn wondered how she did that. Even in the middle of the wilderness, both merely clinging to sanity, she was able to look like she was just out for a stroll in the park. It eased Finn's mind to see that calm. The anxious nausea that had been building up inside her suddenly stopped. She almost smiled at the effect. Never had she felt more strongly that she would forever need Zhen in her life.

Suddenly, Finn understood why it had taken so long for her mum to move on from her dad, even though it visibly hurt her mum to even see him. There was no escaping that soulmate curse. No escape. Ever. And for the first time, Finn was afraid. Afraid that she would never be able to love anyone else with as much fire as she loved Zhen. The thought chilled her to the core. There was no way they could be together without being bulls in a china shop and breaking a whole lot of stuff around them, and there was no possibility of her feeling this way for anyone else ever again in this lifetime. Exactly what kind of freakishly miserable future was she heading towards? Did she really want to get there?

"Let me get this straight, Ms. Darrow," said the detective. "You happen to come across a trial on TV about a serial killer engineer; somehow you figure out that the evidence was wrong and that the engineer was innocent; you decide to go prove this theory by visiting the Outskirts, alone, to search for answers... How am I doing so far?"

"I'd actually met with Jesse in a public place, a night club, with friends, before visiting the warehouse at the Outskirts," said Finn.

"Uh huh," replied the lady, sceptically. "Then your friend tells you information about the engineer acquired from illegally hacking into police databases. At the same time your other friend finds more damning information by illegally hacking into MechSoft's database while on the International Space Station; then you both decide to go to the moon and try to steal from the Mechsoft lunar facility; but someone puts you into a lunar module for your efforts and tries to kill you by sending you off into the vacuum of space. Am I correct, so far?"

"My other friend was actually in the ISS 2," said Finn. "But yeah, that's how it happened."

"Then you come back to Earth, and MechSoft blows up the helicopter you're in..."

"It wasn't MechSoft," Finn corrected. "That was... an accident."

"Sure," replied the lady, no less sceptical than before. "Then you decide to run into the woods, even though you knew that rescue was on its way for the downed heliplane. Why?"

"I couldn't risk..." started Finn. However, she decided to change the story a bit at this point. "The pilots and other passengers were down. I figured we could get them help."

"The cameras show you choking one of the pilots into unconsciousness," said the detective.

Finn sighed and decided for the truth. "Fine. I had a piece of the metal that MechSoft was trying to hide from the world. I needed to get it to the right hands as soon as I could."

"And that is the lab we found you in earlier today?"

"Exactly."

"And you don't think any of this sounds farfetched at all?"

"I'm telling you the truth."

"I highly doubt that."

"Ask Zhen. She'll tell you the same thing."

"We are interrogating your friend too, don't worry about that," said the cop, gathering her things to leave. "We'll find the truth, sooner or later.

The door opened and in walked a uniformed cop. "Detective? You have to see this."

"I'm in the middle of something."

"Trust me. You are going want to see this," said the cop. He looked at Finn. "You too."