Rewind, p.19
Rewind, page 19
part #2 of Time Captive Series
“How long?” I made it to the end of the railing and stood there, half holding myself up with the rails.
“They’ll begin clearing in three days.” Three more days until they began to excavate? Really?
“Where?”
“I don’t know where they will begin digging…”
“No.” I bowed my head. “Where are Dirk and Hatch?”
Andreas sighed. “I don’t know.” Then he checked his wrist and drew my attention to the device he wore. The digital watch wasn’t his style. Then it hit me. Dirk was all about security.
“Trackers.”
“They aren’t active, which isn’t a bad thing…” Andreas covered my hand on the bar, then he slid his free arm around me and pulled me to him. Exhausted, I leaned into him. “They’ll activate them when they’re ready. We’re all implanted with them. We made that call when the skirmishes broke out.”
Skirmishes?
“Do they know who?” I pressed my forehead to his shoulder. I had so much catching up to do. Had actual war broken out? Who was fighting who? Not for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel invested on any side. My heart was with the people stuck in between. It was always the innocents who were ground up in the war machines.
He hesitated. The silence told me a great deal. “No,” he lied.
Closing my eyes, I sighed and then pushed away from him. It wasn’t as firm as I might have liked, but I managed. Then I took a step away from the metal bars. One foot in front of the other. A person had to crawl before they could walk. I needed to run.
I settled for the agonizingly slow steps, aware that both Andreas and the Assistant shadowed me. I made it as far as the platform, then lifted my gaze to find Oz had left.
Avoiding me seemed to be the good doctor’s newest habit. He only spoke to me when he absolutely had to, and then it was only medical questions. Uncertain of whether I could attempt the steps themselves, I glanced at Andreas and then the Assistant. “I’m done.”
I half-expected the machine to carry me back up, but it was Andreas who lifted me. He said nothing until he got me settled, then he stared at me. “I know you’re angry, and I know you feel helpless and frustrated. Don’t be stupid about it, and don’t be rash. I’m telling you what I can, because there’s literally nothing we can do it about it yet. Our primary concern is getting you on your feet.”
Not remotely chastised, I lifted my hand to touch his cheek. “I love you, too.”
He sighed, his shoulders sagging.
“You have to stop protecting me now,” I told him. “We’re in this together. I need to know who took them.”
“No,” Andreas said, startling me. Though why his being difficult should be a surprise, I had no idea. The man knew how to argue with me, and no matter what misgivings he might experience about his faith, he didn’t waver from a course once he decided upon it. “You really don’t. This is what will happen…you will turn the idea over in your head, and examine it. Then you will parse it for possible responses. Then you will decide upon one, and as soon as you are physically able, you will do what you deem is best without a thought for anyone else.”
The remonstration in the last stung.
“You will do it, fully cognizant of the effect it could have on you, but disregarding how it will affect anyone else.” He ran his fingers through my hair. It was gross, and I needed to shower and wash it, but I hadn’t been able to do much beyond sit in a chair in the shower while he took care of it for me. “You want to save the world. You always have. You work with a singular blinding purpose. It shouldn’t surprise you when we do the same thing. Your singular purpose right now is to recover. When we can do something, I’ll tell you. I promise.”
What could I do, but agree?
Then Andreas leaned in and rested his forehead against mine. “We’re on your side,” he whispered. “All of us. Even when we struggle with it—or maybe because we struggle.”
Though he didn’t say his name, I heard the warning implied in his sentiment.
I was losing Oz.
Or maybe I’d done worse…maybe I’d driven him away.
Three weeks after waking…
I sat in the chair, staring at the screen. Walking I could do now, and I’d made it from the bed I loathed to the workstation. Internet connections were weak, and signal jamming had taken down a number of websites. The U.S. backbone had been broken, creating a wild, fractured network that needed specific IP addresses to access.
Not all of those were up all the time.
I’d begun to piece together what happened while I lingered in a coma, wandering the virtual worlds they constructed for me. Social order within several major countries, already on the verge of deconstruction, had begun to shatter. War had broken out within the U.S. itself between multiple parties. It appeared three factions were rising to the top of the food chain.
Europe had also immersed itself in a wide array of disputes, collapsing economies, food shortages, and poisoned water led to fights over resources. France’s army had walked away—just abandoned their posts. The UK closed her borders. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway were on the verge of doing the same as the threat of refugees from the south including Portugal, Spain, and France would tax their resources.
Zealots now officially controlled all of Italy, and edged into Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. A nuclear detonation in Ukraine had left thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands more poisoned with radiation sickness. All reports seemed to agree it was an accident and not an act of war, but it hadn’t stopped China and Russia from rattling sabers at each other.
Nationalism didn’t exist so much as those two countries were now home to most of the world corporate superstructure, and they were vying with everything from clean up contracts to resettlement. It was all about a profitable bottom line—but the people? Yeah, there was very little about the people.
Scrolling through the screens, I searched for anything on the Blossom Foundry. Most of the results led to broken links. The company was one of a network of underground research corporations. Research—the devil word of the mid 21st century, being second only to science in how poorly it was received. At least that was what they told everyone, and their hateful web of lies was told in the flesh of their victims.
“You shouldn’t be looking at that,” Oz said, setting a tray down on the desk. There was some kind of stew—it was military rations, so it might have been soup or mashed potatoes for how appetizing it looked in all its gray wonder.
“Thank you,” I said, returning my attention to the screen. Eating real food was still out of the question, even if I chewed and chewed and chewed, I ended up spitting out anything that wasn’t soft. I couldn’t swallow it. The swelling in my throat would go down—eventually. The bruising would heal—eventually. Dirk’s men up top would come for us—eventually.
“If you’re going to stay there,” Oz commented as he snagged my blanket off the bed and carried it over to drape around my shoulders. Then he took my wrist, rather arbitrarily, and checked my pulse.
I was torn between yanking my hand away and savoring the few seconds he graced me with a touch. The latter won out, pride notwithstanding. “I’m fine. It’s warm enough in here. The air recyclers are struggling.” I’d noticed the sound earlier.
“They had to clear some debris. They’ll be through in a few hours.”
First I’d heard of it. The insulation on the bunker had to be impressive not to even let the sound of their working in. Oz remained, surprising me, and when I glanced at him, my stomach curdled in dread.
He wore a fatalistic expression. Whatever he’d wrestled with all these weeks, he’d decided.
“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded once, glancing down, then up to meet my eyes. “You were right…what you said in the memoriam. We made decisions and calls for you that were above and beyond. We—I played God.”
Dammit. “I…”
He raised a hand. “No, don’t say it. I’ve had all the arguments with myself, and Andreas has argued with me for days. You were right. We took liberties we shouldn’t have, and we risked everything we loved about you and you yourself, because we were too afraid to lose you. I told myself it was because I loved you, but…I think it was more that I was in love with the idea I’d turned you into.” He licked his lips, then slid his hands into his pockets. The man always looked so crisp and together, even when he looked like hell.
“I’m a doctor,” he said, his voice low and calm. It was the same soothing tone he’d used with me when I’d first woken. The tone that instructed and comforted. “I took an oath to do no harm…and then I let this happen.”
“Stop…” I needed better words than I had. “Don’t.”
“I have to.” Then he knelt down, and for the first time since I woke, he put a hand on my knee—the touch both intimate and casual. It was everything I’d been missing. “I let this happen to you, the woman I’m supposed to love. I let saving you become a game I had to win at all costs. That cost…I didn’t realize or think through what it would do to you. I’ve watched you push yourself for days to even walk again.”
“You did save me.” Had I done this? Had I broken the man I loved? What the hell was wrong with me?
“It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself for this. I am an adult, just like everyone else in this relationship. I knew who you were when I agreed to stay, and I’ve not regretted a single moment with you—save this one.” A tear slid down his cheek. “I should have let you die the first time you asked.”
The memory was foggy, but… “Oz, I didn’t understand then. I may have hated this, but I’m here.”
“Yes, you are. The world is a brighter place today, but I’m in the shadows. In making my life…in making saving you everything, I forgot that loving you means not only what I need, but what you do, too. You told me to let you go, and I’m asking you to do the same right now.”
My heart stilled in my chest. Oh, the organ beat, but that piece which belonged truly in my amygdala froze over. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the States maybe. It’s all gone to hell. I’ve made sure there will be a physician on hand where you’re going. Andreas is going to work with John Campbell, he’s the guy in charge with Dirk gone. They’re putting together a plan to find Hatch and Dirk.” He started to withdraw his hand, but I covered it with my own. I wasn’t ready to let go, not yet. “You’ll find them, I know you. You can do anything.”
“I don’t want you to go.” The tears I refused to shed clogged in my already pained throat. Clasping the ache to me, I tried to ride the tidal wave of loss. “I can’t do this without you.”
“Yes you can,” he said, and he smiled. He had such a beautiful smile, so kind and warm. It pulled you in and made you the center of his world. It was a smile I wanted to bask in forever. “You can do anything. You’re Valda Bashan. You’re brilliant. You understand how the world works better than any of us.”
I scoffed. “I live in my lab, I avoid those interactions. If not for the four of you…I would still be coldly going through the numbers.”
“You are many things, my lady. Cold was never one of them. You hid behind science, you used it as a shield to disguise the heart, which is so full and so big, you want to save everyone. We distracted you for a while, then we pushed you, and you tested it on yourself.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “Lady, you’re as passionate as the summer sun is hot in Atlanta. You feel everything deeply, and though you deny it, you own the responsibility for what happened to the world. It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault, that you didn’t create the problems or feed into them. You told yourself for years that if you could solve this problem…if you could fix what the pandemic did, if you could come up with an anti-viral to prevent it from spreading…well, you told yourself it was your obligation to undo what everyone blamed your mother for.”
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Your obsession existed even in the memoriam. You lived in that lab. You worked tirelessly, over and over again. It didn’t matter what stage of the project you found yourself in, you wouldn’t let it go…”
Until the last time.
“Look at you now.” He smiled again, but all trace of joy left him. With a nod to the computer, he said, “You’re brushing up on the world. Learning what’s changed and where the dice landed. You want to solve the puzzle. God, I wish I could be a part of it…but I lost me somewhere in all of this. I lost sight of who I am and what it means to be me.”
Bowing my head, I whispered, “Are you going to come back?”
The long silence answered more than any words. Then leaned in and brushed a kiss to my lips. “I love you. Do what the doctors tell you. Take care of you. The world isn’t riding on your shoulders. Don’t let the weight cripple you.”
Then he rose, brushing a caress to my cheek before he walked away. I wanted to scream for him to come back. I wanted to wail. I could barely process the thought that Dirk and Hatch had been out there for weeks and we didn’t know anything, and now Oz was leaving.
Clasping my hands together, I kept my head down, and I kept forcing one breath after another. If I let the sobs out, they wouldn’t stop.
I did not want him to go.
But I couldn’t make him stay.
I hated my life.
I hated who I’d become.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, only that my hands had gotten cramped and sore from being clasped so tightly.
“Valda,” Andreas called, and I sniffed once before raising my head. Even my eyes hurt, but the tears stayed locked away. “They’re here.”
“I’m ready,” I lied.
Chapter 16
“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” – Lao-tze
One month after waking…
The sun kissed my skin, the heat a visceral weight wrapping around me. The surf rolled in, and the rising waves the promise of increasing wind and storms. I never thought to return to this place. Ever. My last visit…my last visit ended in tragedy, and I had no desire for this to be the same.
“Valda,” Andreas called from behind me. If I turned, I’d see him making his way across the sand, but I didn’t release tree pose. As brutal as my trembling muscles reacted to the exercise, I needed it. I needed to regain my strength and clarity. Ten days…ten agonizingly long days since I’d been forced to say goodbye to Oz. Longer still since I’d had even word of Dirk or Hatch.
How long would word take to reach us here? The island, located within Fiji’s chain and not a well charted one at that, was an ideal sanctuary if we wanted to disappear. It had been off the grid when I’d been born here. Dirk chose it as a fall-back position. How the hell had he even known about it?
“Hey,” Andreas said as he joined me. At least he’d finally given up on shoes. It had only taken the four days for him to stop trying to make his way across the sand in anything other than bare feet. Four days since our boat weighed anchor off the shore and Dirk’s men to set up a perimeter. A dozen, highly trained, and effective army jerks—just none as effective as my army jerk. “I guess you’re doing better today.”
“Don’t pout,” I said, and immediately regretted the comment. “I’m…”
“Don’t apologize.” There was a trace of laughter in his voice. “You haven’t corrected me in weeks, I’ve missed the acerbic side of you.”
Accepting his directive to not apologize, I released tree pose and rolled myself slowly into downward dog. “No, you haven’t,” I kept my retort calm. This was all about breath and restoring strength to my body. These were the easiest of poses, and they wore me out. “You just don’t like feeling as if you have to make decisions for me.”
Silence greeted the statement. He hadn’t expected the response. Good. Maybe I was getting more of myself back. The memories were hard enough to process, sorting what was real from what was memoriam, to what conversations I really had with them, to conversations they had with the version of me I’d been.
At some point, I might actually need to talk to someone about those broken bits.
Not today.
“You know then,” he said slowly. I hadn’t, not one hundred percent for sure. There was something about the way they only had conversations out of my earshot, and the speed with which we’d been evacuated. It gave me a few ideas.
Saying nothing, I waited. If he planned to tell me, then he needed to speak. Otherwise, I needed to concentrate on my healing. Coming home to where I grew up both eased and distressed me. To tell him that would mean explaining why, and I didn’t want to dig up my mother’s research or the lab, which sat a few hundred meters behind us, well-camouflaged with two decades of growth.
Carefully, I changed positions to utthita parsvakonasana, or extended side angle pose. It made my legs shake to hold it. The flexors around my hip ached, and the pull along my lateral abdominals was definitely less than happy. Each position I achieved settled one of those broken bits inside of me.
“I told him I would wait until I thought you were ready,” Andreas admitted. “They would have to be patient until then.”
They? Him? He was playing the pronoun game.
Breathe.
“We received word about three days before the team was able to excavate the stairwell.” The explosion had been a full out demolition of my facility. The house, the rooms—it was all rubble. The ruins had spread out like a blackened bruise against the shoreline. Whatever they’d used to level it, they’d been very intent on destroying it. The ache of a lost home didn’t match the pain I’d experienced when Oz made sure I was settled in the vehicle before he walked away.
The lump in my throat might never go away. I rose to mountain pose, then took another breath. Waiting. Talking only when necessary preserved my throat.
