Beyond: Book Four of the State Series

by M. J. Kaestli

  “Why don’t I just go to the cafeteria and get it myself?”

  Cameron hesitated. “I think it would be best if you let us get your meal for you.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Am I a prisoner then? I was abandoned by my team, and now I am a prisoner?”

  Cameron stood and squared his shoulders. “We do not yet know what you are. We are trying to find answers. We feel it is best to not have you parading around the mountain until we have those answers. I’m sorry if that makes you feel like a prisoner, but it is necessary for our investigation.”

  “Fine.” Hope shook her head and held her gaze off to the side, her jaw tense. “I don’t like cauliflower. They always seem to serve cauliflower as the side vegetable. I would prefer it if you brought me a salad.”

  Cameron nodded. “I will personally see to it there will be no cauliflower on your plate.” With that remark, he left the room.

  She got the sense he was, in a way, walking on eggshells around her. This was a good sign. It didn’t mean she was safe, but he was at least confused. Confusion was her target. Confusion could buy her more time. Confusion would keep them from sending her to be executed.

  ***

  When the door opened again, it was not Cameron on the other side but two military personnel instead. One stood guard in the open door, while the other walked in with a meal tray. He set down the tray without communicating a single word to her. He made his delivery, and left the room as quickly and nonchalantly as he had arrived.

  Anxiety coursed through her. Her stomach fluttered and a feeling of nausea whirled around her insides. Somehow the cold, detached mannerisms of the guards brought up her walls. They were, in fact, treating her like a prisoner. She completely understood Cameron’s comment about her parading around. She was supposed to be dead. If she ran into her former teammates, it would raise a great deal of concern. Yet the fact she was being treated like a prisoner led her to suspect she might actually be one—permanently.

  She looked down at her meal and almost smiled, as Cameron seemed to be a man of his word. Despite the fact they treated her as a prisoner, she could at least still make meal requests. As soon as her eyes landed on her plate, a deep hunger set in and she devoured her food. Even through her ravenous hunger, she was nearly startled by the taste. It was bland, lacking any spice or real flavor. Although she hadn’t mastered the skill of cooking in her time spent married to Joshua, she knew there were spices and herbs available to cook with that apparently the State hadn’t deemed necessary.

  It would be an adjustment to adapt to this way of eating. Just as the thought struck her, she realized the food inside the mountain had been more exotic, or at least more abundant than it had when she was growing up inside the dome. Here they were given options when dishing up their meal instead of a plate being delivered. She contemplated the foods she would miss that Joshua prepared for her and then realized how silly such a thought was. She didn’t know for certain if she would live. What kind of food they served her and the flavor combinations or lack thereof was a trivial matter.

  Once she finished eating, the door popped open again. There were two people standing behind the door once again but this time it was a little different. The same guard came in and retrieved her meal tray, while Lottie stood in the doorway until he had left. She closed the door, securing them alone together inside. She wondered for a moment if Lottie would ask her the same questions and go through the same drill as Cameron had, except in a mean or nasty manner. Cameron had been nice and gentle with her. She assumed Cameron was now sitting on the other side of the mirror while Lottie took her turn to interrogate her.

  “Hope, it is nice to see you are alive and well.”

  Hope shrugged. Although she knew exactly what Lottie meant by this statement, it was imperative that she kept up the pretense she believed it was the same day she had left.

  “I would say the same to you, but I never assumed you were dead—something which still hasn’t been explained to me.”

  “As Cameron informed you, we cannot explain your abandonment until we understand it ourselves. This is merely an investigation into your disappearance. The more you work with us Hope, the sooner we will have answers for you.”

  Hope nearly had to suppress a smile. Lottie had made a mistake and she would capitalize on it. “My disappearance? How is being abandoned disappearing? To say I disappeared implies I am responsible somehow for my team leaving me. And I didn’t go anywhere. I was in the exact spot I was meant to be in when I was left.”

  Lottie softly sighed. She knew she was frustrating her and it felt rather gratifying.

  “Hope, I was hoping perhaps some new memory may have popped into your mind since you spoke to Cameron. Particularly in the timeframe of the device being turned on and the time you were picked up by the military vehicle.”

  Hope shook her head and breathed out a heavy sigh. “No. I don’t understand what you are waiting for. I wish I could remember more. I understand it makes little sense as to why I was lying on my back and everyone disappeared from simply turning the device on. I understand something is missing, and I wish more than anyone here that I knew what that something was.”

  “Hope, when you woke, did you take off your helmet?”

  Hope let out a sarcastic, bitter laugh and hoped it would be enough to convince her. “My helmet? You want to know if I took off my helmet?” She laughed again. “Clearly, I didn’t. If I had taken off my helmet, I wouldn’t be here speaking to you because I would be dead!” She looked around the room manically. “What the hell is going on here? Where is Weston! Why hasn’t he come to see me? Why would he leave me there?” Her eyes filled with tears as her voice continued to rise in volume and quicken in speed.

  Lottie sat back slightly in her chair and waited for Hope’s outburst to be completed. Hope let herself shed a few tears before she pulled back on the theatrics. Her face was red and blotchy. She looked pathetic as she peered back at Lottie.

  “Let me repeat this back to make sure I understand. You were on the far side of the craft, you saw a bright light, woke up on your back with your team having disappeared, and you never removed your helmet. You got up off the ground and walked down the road towards the mountain and saw the truck approaching. You waved them down and never once strayed from the set path of the test sight and mountain. Is that your full and complete report of this incident?”

  Hope rubbed her face and sighed heavily before responding. “Yes.”

  Lottie picked up her tablet and scrolled through it. “You got up this morning, and you headed to the test site with Weston as though it were any other day, and other than being abandoned by your crew as you claim, nothing else out of the ordinary happened?”

  Hope moaned and groaned in frustration before replying, “Yes! Why is this concept so difficult for you to understand?”

  Lottie put down her tablet and looked back at hope. “Hope, you are clever and gifted. You are far more gifted and intelligent than I could ever be. I’m sure you can appreciate my confusion. Maybe if I share that confusion with you, you might come up with a suitable explanation.” She looked up at Hope expectantly. Hope nodded, still displaying her aggravation. “What if I told you that today was not, in fact, the day you went out to the test site?”

  Hope did her best impression of looking at her confused and hoped with every ounce of her being she was convincing. “My first instinct would be to ask for clarification if there is an unexplained time difference. Is right now the previous day to the test or after that day? I think I know the answer to that question, as you all thought I was dead. I would have to assume I was laying there for more than a short period of time.” Hope looked off to the side and scratched her chin. “But, if I had been there longer, assuming that we jump forward, what, a day or so in the future, then why didn’t I run out of oxygen?” Hope nodded and let out a heavy sigh. “Which would be why you were asking me if I took my helmet off.”

  “Yes, we are stuck in quite a pa
radox. You were missing for a greater period of time than your suit would have oxygen. If you were knocked unconscious and your suit ran out of air, you would have suffocated. We also checked your oxygen tank. Although we can’t precisely measure the amount of oxygen consumed, at least not down to the minute, the timeline matches from when the device went haywire, and you were found. So what this means is, there are two possible conclusions. The problem with both conclusions, is neither one of them seem possible. Either you removed your helmet and somehow survived on the surface, which isn’t survivable, or you were somehow taken somewhere where you didn’t need your oxygen and returned simultaneously.”

  Hope nodded and looked down at her fingers.

  “You said today wasn’t the day I think it is. Is it tomorrow? Is it the next day? How long was I missing for? How long do those oxygen tanks last? And could I have been consuming less oxygen if I were unconscious, making it last longer than you would expect?”

  “It was considerably more time then your suit could sustain, even though you were unconscious.”

  Hope shook her head and looked back at Lottie. “You said the device went haywire? What did Weston say happened? What did our team glean from the data?”

  Lottie looked up at the mirror for a moment and hesitated before she responded. “I’m sorry Hope. There is no kind or gentle way to inform you of this. The device created an explosion. It killed Weston and your escorts.”

  Hope gasped and flung her hand over her mouth. She bent forward.

  “Their bodies were not salvageable, nor identifiable.” Lottie continued. “There was not enough of their body mass left intact. We assumed it killed you alongside your team. The data showed the explosion, and we sent a truck out for recovery. The side of the truck closer to the device sustained significant damage, and it needed to be towed back to the mountain. We did not know you were on the other side of the truck during the explosion, and it seemed to have shielded you and saved you, and you alone. When the recovery team was on site, they assumed your body was amongst the others. You were not laying on the opposite side of the truck or the device, you weren’t there.”

  Even though Hope remembered seeing everything that Lottie was describing, hearing it made it much more real. When she saw the shredded remains which were once her partner’s body left on the field, she didn’t remember who she was, or that she had a partner. Weston may not have been perfect, but he had been her best friend, her only true friend for so many years. She had never allowed herself to properly grieve his death because she had already been married to Joshua. He already felt threatened by her previous life, she couldn’t expose her grief. Now she had lost both men, there was nothing she could do to slow, let alone to hold the tears running down her cheeks.

  Lottie handed over a handkerchief. Hope sat hunched forward with her elbows on the table propping her head up with her hands over her eyes as she wailed. Before she could hear anything or become aware, Lottie had brought the military personnel back into the interrogation room. They lifted her by both her elbows and guided her back to her room. They locked her inside and this time they turned out the light. Hope assumed her interrogation had finished for the day and she was relieved. She let out every single tear she could muster and hoped they were listening.

  Chapter 23

  In the morning, Hope was awoken by two military personnel at her door. They escorted her to the end of the hall and searched her. She rolled her eyes at the mere thought of her pat down. A pat down implied they thought she may have made a weapon or would try to harm either them or herself. She didn’t know if they had been instructed specifically to search her or if they were simply following procedure.

  Once they finished searching her again, they handed her a clean change of clothing and sent her to shower. The moment the hot water came beating down on her skin she let out a sigh of relief. The hot steamy water was luxurious on her aching body. The shower was so much more soothing and comforting than anything she had experienced while living with Joshua.

  The plumbing in their homes was so archaic and minimalistic that hot water from the tap wasn’t a part of their life. They boiled water and poured it into a bathtub if she wanted to bathe. She had tried it once but found the effort to heat the water and fill the tub not worth the investment. Most of the washing she had done was in the basin with rags.

  She couldn’t help but to overindulge in the luxuriousness of something so simple as a hot shower. She lathered every inch of her body in suds, marveling at the clean soapy scent and then rinsed her body thoroughly. When she couldn’t justify staying in the shower any longer, she finally turned the taps off and grabbed her towel. She reached for her clean uniform and stopped and smelled the clothing.

  She hadn’t realized how much she missed the artificial scent of laundry detergent or soap used inside the dome. She would have stepped out of that bathroom feeling like a whole new person if it weren’t for the two escorts waiting for her outside the door. It brought back the sharp reminder she was, in fact, a prisoner, fighting for her life.

  They brought her into the same interrogation room she had been in the previous day. As they guided her inside the room, it surprised her to see Cameron sitting at the table already. There were two trays on the table and he was eating off of one.

  “I would have waited for you, but you took too long—got hungry.”

  Hope nodded politely. “Thank you for bringing me breakfast.” She had spent her time yesterday focusing her intentions on appearing angry and threatened. She knew today she needed to change her behavior to coincide with dealing with responses to trauma and grief. It was natural for humans to go through many stages while their mind processed tragedy. If she didn’t have fluctuations in her moods and temperaments, that alone could show her hand.

  “How did you sleep?”

  Hope nodded and kept her body language rigid and her speaking tone polite. “I suppose I slept well enough, under the circumstances.” She took a timid bite of breakfast, carefully cutting a small square section.

  “Really? I’m envious. I didn’t sleep at all. Maybe you can teach me a trick or two about how to sleep at a time like this.”

  “I believe I cried my way into total and complete exhaustion. It’s not much of the secret, or a trick I would recommend, but you are welcome to my techniques if you wish.”

  Cameron took a few more bites of his eggs and then looked back at Hope. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  She chewed methodically before responding. “Indeed, it is.”

  “I’m sorry, about Weston. I wish we didn’t have to treat you this way when you are undoubtedly in a great deal of pain. I hope you can appreciate our need for caution and discretion during our investigation. This could really rock the boat regarding our safety.”

  Hope couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or if he was toying with her. She gave him a little push to see which direction he leaned towards. “What do you think happened? I mean this makes no sense and doesn’t seem possible. How is it I am still alive?” She let her eyes well up softly with tears to show her genuine vulnerability. She may have felt she had a good chance of outsmarting them, but that didn’t change the fact she was utterly terrified.

  Cameron shrugged. “That is exactly what we are trying to figure out.”

  Hope nodded. “I know that is the purpose of this investigation, but what I am asking Cameron, is what do you think?”

  He shook his head and blew out air. “Hope, there are so many smarter people in this mountain—yourself included—who are better suited at solving this puzzle than I am.”

  “What do they think happened? What possible ideas or theories have been thrown out?”

  Cameron shook his head once again. “I was really hoping something might have jogged your memory. Maybe you previously missed some detail you thought insignificant. You’d be able to tell me what you couldn’t tell me yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my memories are the same. I don’t have any ne
w details of the incident which could make this all makes sense.”

  “Okay. How about a new theory? Any ideas how any of this could have happened? I mean, I don’t even truly understand what it is you kids were doing out there, or what this device is you were testing. You know so much more about this project than Lottie or I put together.”

  Hope nodded and began slowly. “I do have a theory,” she let out a heavy sigh of air, “but it sounds…well, nuts—even to me.” She smoothed down her bushy hair. “My mind has been spinning and spinning, and it’s the only thing that makes any sense—well, closer to making sense than anything else.”

  “Oh? Well considering the fact this entire situation has been just plain bat-shit-crazy, I would love to hear your theory, Hope.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was it, the moment of truth. This is when she found out if she was capable of lying as effectively as they did.

  “Although we were never told exactly how the device was to work, Weston believed it had to be creating a wormhole.”