Second foray into the mind

You start sifting through files at your desk, but something is wrong. These aren't your notes and test data anymore. They're are old report cards and notes on things you did growing up. Across the files someone has taken to writing over them in red with notes like "Disappointment" and "Failure". There are also news articles with death tolls of Defels and Arahn. Each of them has a huge stamp across them saying "Your Fault".

Then you hear that voice again that turns your veins to ice water.

"Can't you do anything right?"

You look up and your father is standing in the corner of the room.

Artemis pales to the colour of bleached bone. He stands, frozen, at his desk, staring at the terrifying form of his father. He has no answer to excuse himself. He can't do anything right. He hasn't succeeded at anything. Not even the---

Voice barely above a whisper, Artemis says, "I managed to become a Jedi Knight. I'm not weak in the Force."

"And has that given you the power to bring back all those you've killed?"

He takes a step towards you, anger in his eyes.

Artemis narrows his eyes and begins to back away. The fury in his father's face still has power over him.

"No, of course not," he says. His fists clench to hide his trembling, and his fingernails dig into the soft flesh of his palms. "But I can stop the destruction. I can stop it from getting worse! That's the best that I can do! That's the best that anyone can do!"

"That's the problem, your best was never good enough. You can't stop the destruction. All that you've done has only made things worse. Now our people are dying because you trusted the Defel. You should have killed them all when you had the chance."

As your father continues to step towards you you're unsure if he's getting taller or you're getting smaller.

Artemis backs away until he feels a wall impeding his retreat. A surging desire to run battles with the terror that seems to have severed his nerves. Finally, when he speaks, his voice is an outright scream.

"Get away from me!" he yells, fingers curling into claws and digging against the wall at his back. "What do you want? I've done everything I can think of! I've done the best I can think of! What the hell do you want me to do?!"

Then, something clicks. A breath afterwards, his eyes clear slightly. "Wait," he whispers. "I should have killed them all when I had the chance? No... that's not right."

As your mind clears a bit you realize something. Your injured hand that clawed into the wall is throbbing in pain. As you look at it you see you've left deep claw marks in the wall, likely due in part that your previously gnarled fingers have grown some thick black claws at the end of them.

Your father laughs at you as he gets closer you're certain he is getting taller and as he stands in front of you while you haven't changed he looms over you as if you were four again looking up at him.

"Daddy, I'm doing my best!" He chides you in a mocking tone. "But it wasn't your best was it? I kept pushing you and pushing you to strive for more. Without me you'd be nothing! Now finish what you've started!"

He slaps you across the face leaving a red mark and a deep burning sensation on your cheek.

"Finish the Defel."

Artemis's father had just made a mistake.

For the past three years Artemis lived in grief over what he had done to the Defel. Not once had he placed blame on them. Not even when Dr. Da'ryan revealed his own retaliatory virus. The Defel as a race were not to blame. Artemis knew this. He knew this as one of the truths that kept him awake, staring at shadows dripping from changing ceilings night after night.

So when this manifestation of his father ordered him to do the same horrific evil he'd done before in the depths of insanity, suddenly Artemis knew something else; Father was wrong.

The pain in Artemis's hand provides him a grip for his mind to latch onto. The pain in his cheek focuses his attention on the looming figure before him. Father is wrong. Finish the Defel? No! That is not his mission! No! His mission is to stop Galatea and the Vox virus. Stop the circle before it could turn once more around.

He stares up at his father with an expression of growing clarity. "I'm not here to continue the circle of revenge," he says. "But you are right about one thing." Artemis straightens, and his eyes narrow. He can hold on to this epiphany he was given. "I would not be what I am now without you influencing my entire childhood."

As he finishes the sentence, he activates lightsaber combat and combat sense, and in a crackling hum of black and green his lightsaber flashes to life.

"You need to leave now."

As your confidence grows, your father shrinks back down until you're looking each other eye to eye. It looks as if he is also activating a lightsaber buy you then realize it's an oversized laser scalpel he wields which crackles with black and red energy.

"You don't have what it takes, boy."

Seeing his father's height shrink only further bolster's Artemis's confidence and his belief that he is in the right, not his father. This is all in his mind, Artemis remembers. He came to find the source of his insanity, and he found it. Well, at least part of it.

And it was going down.

"Try me, asshole," Artemis growls, and a thrill of adrenaline spikes through his chest. Defiance. For the first time in his life, he'd realized that he could defy his father, because he was strong enough to defend himself. "You have no power over me anymore. I don't need your approval, and I don't take orders from you. So get the hell out of my head." He strikes, using all of his precision and all of his focus, determined to erase this malevolent presence.

What follows is a series of lightsabers strikes equal to that of any of the epic lightsaber duels in the movies. As your defiance grows your father continues to shrink until you deliver the final blow and he dissipates in a red mist of dark force energy.

You slump to the floor on your knees exhausted by the ordeal and feeling just a small bit of peace you've never known.

There's the sound of a great number of people clapping and when you look up you see you're in an operating theater with rows of Defel seated above. A UV light shines on them showing them as in your flash backs, not as shadows but creatures of a brilliant multitude of colors.

"Well done docotor," says the lead Defel standing next to you. He's the same defel from the earlier OR. "Now are you finally ready to accept responsibility?" He extends a clawed hand to you.

Artemis stares at the offered hand, and he wonders what, exactly, the Defel has planned. He knows that he needs to. He has to accept responsibility for what he has done... what what does that entail? He's already found a cure for the Vox virus. He's already released the truth about himself to the galaxy. He's all set to work on a cure for Galatea when he wakes up... if he's sane.

Once more he wonders what good anyone could gain from him giving himself up.

Maybe I already know what I need to do, Artemis thinks. Maybe I just need to open myself to the possibility and see where it guides me to.

Fully aware that this could backfire, Artemis reaches out and accepts the Defel's offered hand. "Yes," he says, and then admits. "But I don't know what to do."

As you take the offered hand the Defel helps you up off the ground. The applause grows as you stand together.

"The operation was a success gentleman!" The Defel declares.

As you look upon the operating table you glimpsed at before, you see yourself already lying there. Eyes removed as were your counterparts in the lab. As you stare in horror at the vision of yourself without eyes you feel yourself being drawn into those empty sockets.

Finally everything quiets and you wake up in darkness and silence. You're fuzzy as to what exactly happened in there. Unable to quite remember the confrontation. In fact anytime you try to think of your father you draw a blank, as if he had never even been in your life. Surely he was there, but you remember nothing about him. Your hand aches and you can feel that the claws really did grow onto your hands as they did in your dream. You feel around in the dark looking for the lightswitch. At last you find it and it clicks but nothing happens. Perhaps the power is out on the ship, you should go ask Mina.

Considering how this ended (claw-handed and blind!), it might make more sense for Artemis to not have woken up after all until tomorrow's session. It's not like I did anything with him last time anyway!

Already took that into account for anything I decided to do to you here.