Darkside 2

by Aaron K Carter

  “You’re doing something for Vindicta?” I say, sitting up and pushing my tangled hair out of my face.

  “Yeah,” she says, nodding, “I am.”

  “Is it to do with the guy?” I ask. The guy who used to have me. the one who tied me up and hurt me.

  “Yeah, we think we’ve finally tracked him down. he moved after the police found you,” Jo says, nodding.

  “Are you gonna kill him?” I ask.

  “Maybe not me. we haven’t even cased it yet,” she says, shrugging, “Once you tell us it’s him, though, we can arrange for you to go somewhere else.” she thinks I want to leave. I don’t. I’m safe in here.

  “Okay,” I say. I’m not leaving.

  “We’ll find somewhere good for you, I promise,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say. but I’m not leaving. I don’t want to leave. In the past few months this warehouse has become my home. I like it here. I don’t know how to live places and I’ve learned how to here so I’m fine. and Jo isn’t too annoying. She’s okay. I wouldn’t miss her. she’s fine, but I don’t want to leave here. I flop back down.

  “You’re pale, you need to get out in the sunlight---I’ve got the oxygen tank, for you, why don’t you and I go for a walk before I have to go to work tomorrow?” Jo suggests, she knows I don’t like leaving. Not in the day. It’s okay at night.

  “I want to sleep in, can we get ice cream when you get back?” I ask. I don’t mind going out after dark. That’s okay.

  “Yeah, we’ll see how late it gets, I’ll try to hurry,” Jo says, reaching out almost to stroke the hair out of my face but she thinks better of it.

  “Okay,” I say, rolling back over into the pillow, ending the conversation.

  “Bye,” she calls. I don’t answer. I don’t like saying goodbye.

  Chapter 27

  I still can’t shake Thorn from my mind. He’ll get his. I’ll give it to him. Pairing MY Major Tom with that lovely young handsome thing. How dare he. I’ll see them both get theirs before this story is out. But Thorns murder and Captain Ziegfeld’s mutilation will come at another time, I’m afraid. for now, to cheer up.

  I see her lying in the grass, looking at a tablet, dark hair a veil around her face. I soften my steps so she doesn’t hear me come up behind her. her legs are bare and brown from beneath the short grey pants she’s wearing. It’s a warm day, nice to be outside in the sun.

  I bend down carefully and lock one hand around her mouth, the other around her waist, lifting her into the air quickly. She kicks in annoyance but I easily hold her away from me.

  “What have I told you about letting people sneak up on you?” I ask flipping my daughter upside down and finally releasing her mouth.

  “Put me down, Dad,” she laughs, hanging upside down and wiggling, trying to kick my face, “I was ruminating on my classes.”

  “You must always keep a portion of your brain dedicated to self defense, you know that,” I say, letting her down. she immediately hugs my legs. I can’t stop from smiling at her. Bouncy, happy, clever little thing. Terribly clever, my copy, my clone. I do not foresee ever ceasing to worship her. Not that she needs to know that, cocky devil she is my clone after all, it wouldn’t do for her to know I would never harm a hair on her head, possibly not even to save myself.

  “Yes, sir,” she says, looking contrite, “But you are more skilled than most, others would not have gotten the better of me.”

  “Nobody can get the better of you, ever, because you are the best,” I say, tipping her chin up and stroking my hand through her thick dark hair, a shade lighter than mine though still a rich brown deep almost ebony in parts.

  “Yes, sir,” she says, nodding.

  “What were you studying?” I ask, nodding for her to walk with me.

  “Mathematics,” she says.

  “I’m well aware you’re on summer break.”

  “I’m working ahead so I can get into a higher grade next term,” she says, skipping a little bit.

  “Good, I’ll quiz you tonight if you like,” I say.

  “Your face is looking better,” she says.

  “Quit trying to placate me it does not work I know when you are being false,” I say.

  “Okay. Aiden says if I fake it people will like me better,” she says. Aiden. One of the scrappy little sub par Project 10s my offspring is regrettably allowed to mix with. I would have had her moved except most of them are scrappy and sub par. I know Aiden’s father, or knew him. He was one of the Spacemen I betrayed in the process of convincing the Isylgyns I was not loyal to the human race. Hopefully Tess will be able to do similar to this fellow, but for now she seems to hold him with a childish affection. I need to explore that.

  “Why bother? Do you care what people think?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, immediately, “But people can be useful.”

  “Yes, they can, and there may come a time when you must manipulate people, but I do not want you to waste energy on that. your mind is better devoted to your studies than understanding these people and their ways. You’re like me, and I hated being trapped in the nothingness of them. wanting to be one of them yet knowing I wasn’t, trying sometimes to pretend I was only to know deep inside I’m something very different. It’s lonely. but it’s less lonely if you are who you are, then gain allies that way,” I explain, “Leave any manipulation and charm to me, sadly I’ve had to learn it. I don’t see why you should when I can clear the way for you.”

  “Okay,” she says, nodding. She’s quiet but she’s soaking it like a sponge. I know she is, she has everything I’ve ever taught her. “How is your day going, really? I want to know because I’m curious, I miss you when we’re apart.”

  “I’ll tell you for your education but don’t miss me,” I say, stopping and looking at her, “That’s a waste of energy. Missing.”

  “How do you feel when we’re apart?” she asks.

  “I look forward to seeing you again because I have so many things to teach you, and I love watching you learn and grow,” I say, petting her hair and kneeling down in front of her. “What do you think of?”

  “I think----I’d like to be with you---”

  “You will be someday. Out in the stars. I promise,” I say, immediately. “But go on.”

  “I think sometimes it would be nice if you were here, or when we can’t talk it’d be nice if we could talk to each other---”

  “But those emotions are curiosity based,” I point out, “Not ‘missing’. ‘missing’ is a selfish emotion from the lower region of the brain. Linked to anxiety and other wasteful syndromes.”

  “There was something else. When they said you weren’t coming back, “ she says, looking down at her feet, “I wasn’t what people call sad. I didn’t want to cry. I could imagine a future without you in it. but I felt...restless. Like I couldn’t settle my mind down.”

  “Odd,” I say, nodding, “Perhaps it was solely the anticipation of a possible change in our situation that was overstimulating you.”

  “Maybe,” she agrees.

  “Why don’t we discuss it at length at dinner? I’ll do some research based on changes and loss and the neurological effects on the brain, and you do the same? But that is all inconsequential as I will, always. Always. Always. Come back, understand?” I ask, “Nothing is going to stop me from coming back for you---I take that back, one thing. If you ask me not to. if you ask me not to come for you, I won’t. But so long as you want me, I’m here, understood?”

  “Yes, sir----why would you think I wouldn’t want you?” she asks.

  “I don’t anticipate it, however I felt the need to add the caveat as it is true,” I say, “But, I never did answer your question. My day is total shit. Major Tom has a handsome new flight partner who isn’t me---”

  “Is he scarred from acid?”

  “No, thank you so much for reminding me. and he is charming as well as clever and in tune with emotions and not likely to psychologically neglect her, everything I am not,” I
sigh, “And I’ve been assigned a trainee.”

  “Really what’re they like?” she asks.

  “I don’t know yet. Instead of picking him up I came to visit you to see how he handles disappointment.”

  I wake up with my tablet still in my hands. Two in the afternoon, lovely. I only got off at six am and made it back here at eight, probably didn’t fall asleep till nine---yes I should still be asleep, I need at least seven hours. I’m so tired. I look at the webpage I had pulled up. It’s the glossy information packet on Project 10s. They updated the page a couple months ago. new photos of the dorms, updated pictures of the dorms, different wording on the explanation of coursework and activities.

  I soak it all in. blurbs and obviously staged rooms, with wooden beds and fluffy comforters and pictures of children reading tablets while they sit in a perfectly arranged room with toys ever so carefully laid about. it’s obviously staged but I love it anyway.

  I need it. I shouldn›t do this to myself yet I do. somehow it makes me feel better while the hole inside of me burns. My daughter is in there. one of them. my beautiful little girl. She’s eight years old now. old enough to still play with dolls, they must let them have dolls in the picture there are dolls but who gets them dolls? Nobody, there’s a ‘token and reward system’ in which cadets (not children, cadets) may ‘redeem tokens for pleasure items such as educational toys or personalized room items’. So if she failed a test or didn’t do chores she didn’t have enough tokens to buy a doll or a new blanket? Kids shouldn’t have to save up to have blankets or alarm clocks or posters. Those things should be there like food and love.

  Love. ‘each floor for ages 6-12 has nursing staff, available to meet the children’s emotional and physical needs 24/7’, so a staff member, comes to make sure she’s brushed her teeth and put away her books and put on her pajamas. For 0-6 they were two to a room, with one nurse per room, rotating twelve hour shifts. Different people, always different people no bonds no attachment.

  Stop. She’s clean and clothed and fed and warm and safe today. She’s probably out playing in the sunshine with friends just like she would be if she were with you. You’re halfway there. halfway, damn it. she’s eight. At sixteen she can contact you, she’ll see the message. She’s bound to be curious. She’ll want to meet you. you’ve made it half way.

  That doesn’t help. it should help but it doesn’t. All the comforting shit I told myself before I let her go. That she was getting a universe class education. That we’d get to meet when she’s sixteen. That doctors and scientists and everyone clever has formulated a perfect formula for caring for them they want them to succeed it has to work.

  Bull shit. I want my baby. My stomach, where I carried her for those precious nine months, burns. It feels empty, all the time. I know very well it’s psychosomatic but knowing it doesn’t make it go away. when I’m half asleep or just waking, sometimes I’ll feel her move inside me, like those precious nights when I was pregnant, and we were together, and I would lie there, rubbing my swollen belly, singing softly and telling her how much I loved her. I was sick as a dog the entire time I carried her, but I didn’t care. It was so stupid, I didn’t care. I loved her anyway, more than I ever thought I could love something.

  I roll over, turning the tablet off. Continuing to look at the words won’t bring her back to me. I fell asleep holding a floppy bunny. I got it a year ago, almost. On her seventh birthday. Sometimes I get her things that I would get her if she were with me. Half the time I throw them away, sobbing, because when I meet her she won’t want blocks or rattles or stuffed toys. I have my spare room set up. I go in and wash the sheets and fluff the pillows. Waiting for the day she contacts me. Tells me she wants me to be her mom.

  But each day is harder and harder even as I know I’m a day closer. I’ve made it eight years. Hell, the first week I didn’t think I’d make it one. Make that the first day. And look how far I’ve come. Half way. Half way there. but all that time left to cover God I can’t do this. I clutch my burning stomach. It hurt so much when I got home I couldn’t eat. Now I just want to sleep. Because in my dreams, I see a little girl with long hair, laughing, and playing in the grass. Sometimes it’s a baby, and I’m lying on a blanket, watching her look at the sun.

  But more often I dream I’m standing waiting for her. Or trying to find her and I’ve lost her. or I am looking at an empty crib and carry basket and bottles and everything and I can’t find her and I know she’s supposed to be here and I hear her crying but I can’t get to her.

  But even that is better than reality. Reality being I’ll never meet my little girl or baby. I’ll meet a young woman, who will have grown up without me. have done all the missing me she wants to do and now she’s just curious and she doesn’t need her mum anymore because she’s more interested in dating and being popular and all those things popular media would have us believe sixteen year olds care about.

  It’s odd I never think of the father. whatever man, whoever’s child I carried. That never really enters my mind. that I bore some man’s child, some man I’ve never met, who could be anybody I could meet him on the street and never know. I don’t know if he kept custody. I can’t think about that. I doubt it, he had to match my IQ which is pretty high, it’s bound to be some poor academic, why would anybody that clever be in the military?

  Chapter 28

  “T

  itus did you get paired with a cadet?” it’s sad that I have an innate sense when he’s not doing what he’s supposed to be.

  “Yes.” he doesn’t sound like he’s nicely indoctrinating some sixteen year old and showing them around the base. He sounds like he’s balancing his precious eight year old girl on his shoulders probably while reading something and walking.

  “And did you go and pick them up?” I ask.

  “Um----are you going to quit talking to me for a while if I say no?”

  “Titus! How long have you left the kid waiting there?” I ask, annoyed.

  “Ah----somewhere between one and two hours, definitely no more than ten,” he says.

  “You self-centered jerk, quit being AWOL----don’t deny it I know you are---and punishing Thorn just because you aren’t going to be back in space for another year it’s protocol you know that if it were up to Thorne he would send you as far away as possible,” I lecture.

  “I’m not---”

  “Just because Riley is AWOL doesn’t make it okay you are,” I say. I know for a fact they both frequently go AWOL to go and visit their kids at the Academy. Which I don’t mind on the principle that I wished somebody’d visited me at the Academy, but I do mind when they are intentionally shirking their duties to do it.

  “All right, fine, I’ll go and get the cadet. But it won’t be entertaining,” he says. that means he’ll do it slowly.

  “Yes it will, you have so much fun with your daughter, why? Because you get to teach her things, tell her how to be like you---it’ll be really similar with a cadet, and you’ll get an excuse to spend hours and hours on the flight simulators,” I point out.

  “That true I’m excited about that---but my daughter’s little and she listens to me sixteen year olds-----”

  “Yeah, when you were sixteen, you wouldn’t listen to anybody truth be told you probably never did, but this is different, first off, thank god, this cadet isn’t you, second off, remember how excited you were to get actual flight training? You listened to Lt Col Ziegfeld, because she was teaching you something you wanted to know,” I remind him.

  “You’re right, as usual, Major Tom,” he says, his voice cheering a little, “I’ll go fetch him.”

  “Good,” I say, “I’ll see you at dinner, WITH your cadet, all right?” I ask. He would try not to or just forget to feed the kid.

  “Yes, ma’am, see you then,” he says, and hangs up.

  I sigh. My cadet is looking at me nervously.

  “Now, don’t say I’ve never done anything for you,” I say, pointing at him.

  “Yes, ma�
�am, thank you ma’am----,” he stumbles. He said that one of his classmates had not been collected and I know I was late because I was doing Titus-management-projects for Thorn, so I put one and Titus together and got a pretty good idea who might have left a cadet waiting around for eight hours. “Only, I was worried, you were one of the last ones to pick me up and Cadet Starr was still waiting---thank you, ma’am---was that---?”

  “Would you like another round?” a bartender is standing looking at us expectantly. I never said I wasn’t AWOL too.

  “No, the first three did the trick, more orange juice for him,” I say, as my cadet nods happily. The precious little ginger haired thing likes sweets, apparently, and just got out of being deprived them at OTS.

  “You were saying, Cadet Jordan?” I ask him, doing my last shot. I’m going to need it.

  “Ma’am, may I ask who you called?” he asks, nervously.

  “Major Card, he’ll be training Cadet Starr,” I say, putting mint leaves into my mouth. I need to get rid of the smell of alcohol, but I won’t be able to do what I’m going to do without the alcohol.

  “The---Major Card?” he asks. I forget sometimes that to cadets and civilians, Titus Card is a living legend. Besides being the most daring pilot the force has, he’s been caught by the Isylgyns twice and lived to tell the tale, his bravery and talent is known planet wide. And he’s a complete and utter pain in the neck most of the time, the rest of it he’s just an idiot. A hyperactive, too clever for his own good, idiot.

  “Yes, the one who recently got the Kepler Medal of Bravery,” I say. It would be more annoying to relate Titus’ accomplishments, but I’ve got my share of medals, and Jordan was suitably impressed to have me training him.

  “Ma’am, will I get to meet him?” he asks, still nervous.

  “Unfortunately yes,” I say, dryly. I’m not pleased with Titus today, Thorn had me in meetings all morning, signing paperwork to the effect that I’m actually semi-responsible for anything he does over the next few months when Thorn has to be exposed to him. it worked well enough when it occurred to Thorn to make me in charge of him at OTS, so he’s figuring it will work now. I would rather baby sit hungry velociraptors, but this was not a volunteer opportunity. “Major Card is unique, as you heard from my side of the conversation with him.”