Edge of Darkness

by Vikki Romano

  He didn’t know if she could dance--they’d never spent much time together outside of work--but he imagined she could. And well. Thoughts of her in a pretty dress with some high heels, spinning so her hair flowed out like her skirt. That would be something to see.

  His blood warmed at the thought of it, and he cursed to himself. No point in getting worked up when there was nothing but an empty condo waiting for him. He’d spent way too many nights lately relieving himself of the frustration of her, only to feel worse for it. Disgusted with himself about it. Knowing that was all he had. All he allowed himself.

  After pulling into his spot at The Shoals, he made his way up the gravel path once more, the sound of the stones underfoot stirring up some long-faded memory of summers at his parents’ home in Colorado. Smiling, he turned the corner, jogged up the stairs to the breezeway, and, coming to the landing, froze.

  Sierra stood leaning against the railing, her soft hair floating loose around her face from the breeze filtering off the bay, the sun kissing her skin, making her look so beautiful that he wished he could take a picture.

  She turned when she heard him come up behind her. Her eyes were wary, but soft and unassuming.

  They stood staring at each other for several moments before he moved past her to the door.

  After feeding the card into the lock with trembling fingers, Calder opened the door, went inside, and waited with the door open.

  Just act like nothing happened, McKenna. Be smart about this, he told himself.

  After a pause, she gave a soft smile and went inside.

  “I thought you’d be under observation for a bit longer,” he finally said as he gestured to the couches and watched as she went to them, running her hand along the soft fabric before sitting.

  “They released me this morning.”

  “That’s good news,” he said, going to the kitchen. He leaned into the fridge and was about to grab a couple of beers out of habit, but stopped and stood back.

  He didn’t know if she was on any medication and, not knowing where she was with her augment, he knew he couldn’t risk setting off any triggers.

  He shuffled some items around, pulled the pitcher of iced tea out, and poured two glasses.

  Calder handed her one tall glass, sat in the love seat across from her, and took a sip. The silence between them ground his nerves. He wanted to ask her so many questions.

  “So how are you feeling?” he finally got out, setting his glass on the end table next to him.

  She toyed with her glass, her finger trailing condensation on its surface.

  She wasn’t going to answer him. Damn it, did she come here to tell him she was cutting him off?

  He rubbed a hand over his face and sat back, watching her.

  After a few minutes of silence, she leaned forward and set her drink on the coffee table in front of her.

  “You know what they did to me,” she said softly, still staring at the glass. It was more of a statement than a question, and she looked up at him.

  “I do,” he said, bowing his head for a moment. “I’m sorry. I know how hard this must be for you.”

  She let out a ragged breath and closed her eyes.

  “Are you in any pain?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

  The look she gave him sliced through his heart.

  “I have a thing in my head!” she said, her fingers fisting the hair there as she shook her head. She looked tortured, like she was being possessed, and he was sure that was how she felt.

  “I know,” he replied, and leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “I will do whatever you need me to do to help you.”

  “Help me get it out.”

  He dropped his gaze and shook his head.

  “I can’t. That was the first thing I thought to do, but we can’t remove it, not without causing damage that may…”

  “What? Fuck up my brain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s already fucked up. Can’t you see that?”

  Calder let out a harsh breath. He needed to calm her, get her to see that all hope was not lost.

  Pushing up from the couch, he made his way around the coffee table and sat next to her.

  “Your brain isn’t fucked up, Sierra,” he said, leaning toward her, but making sure not to touch her. God knew he wanted to, for so many different reasons, but he needed to give her space.

  “This isn’t me anymore!” she shouted, snapping her eyes to his.

  He winced at that, her words hitting way too close to home.

  “You’re in there, trust me. If anyone knows that, I do.”

  “How do you cope with not knowing?” she asked, her voice wavering as her eyes teared.

  Christ, please don’t cry.

  “Not knowing what?” he asked.

  “What it’s going to do.”

  There it was, her fear of being overcome by an alien object. She was living her nightmare and he couldn’t do a goddamned thing about it.

  Jordan had made sure that her augment wasn’t rogue. There had been no data leakage and no damage to her brain that would cause it to malfunction. Still, this was frightening for her in a very real way. He needed to talk her off the edge.

  “My augment is totally different from yours, let me just say that first,” he said.

  She looked at him with wide eyes.

  “I thought they were the same?”

  “No. The hardware is similar, but in no way are they doing the same things. The type of augment I have was a prototype, an untested Omega-grade processor. It didn’t respond to the programming like they wanted it to and they shut it off, so for years I had a dead piece of metal in my head.”

  “God…” She looked physically ill at that.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t feel a thing, so it was no big deal. In fact, when I saw all the cool things my squad mates were able to do with theirs, I was jealous because I couldn’t. I felt betrayed.”

  “So you didn’t care that you had it in your head?”

  “I chose to get it installed.”

  “What? I thought it was mandatory?”

  “It was, but if I refused, I’d just get shifted to a non-enhanced unit. I didn’t want that. I was chosen for that unit. I wanted to stay there.”

  “So it wasn’t a choice.”

  “No, it was. You could say no, but I wanted it. You have to understand that the direction my life was headed at the time--I mean, I didn’t want to be who I was. I saw the augment as a way of completely and irrevocably changing my path.”

  “We never talked about your childhood, your family. Was it that bad?”

  “Honestly, I had a pretty normal upbringing. Typical Midwest life.”

  “So what was so horrible about your life that you felt the need to mutilate yourself?”

  Those words stung, and he sat back, his jaw flexing.

  “It’s not mutilation, Sierra. It’s enhancement. You have to stop thinking of it like some aberration, like some alien that has crept into your body. It’s nothing like that.”

  “God didn’t put it there, so it is an aberration.”

  Calder closed his eyes. He never knew her to be religious, and he was so anti-religion that just the mention of God being involved made his skin crawl.

  “But God made man and man made the augment,” he said, perhaps a bit too cynically.

  Sierra glared at him, but he glared right back.

  “If God wanted us to be like this, we would already be augmented,” she said, crossing her arms.

  OK, so they were going there.

  “If God did a better job creating man, we wouldn’t need to be augmented.” He crossed his own arms, and when she turned and looked to start fighting, he put up his hands. “I am not going to have a theological argument with you right now. The last thing you want to do is get worked up like this. It’s what triggers that augment that you hate so much!”

  She paled at that
and sat back, her arms going slack into her lap. She looked like she was going to throw up.

  He didn’t want her to be frightened or feel defeated either.

  Jesus, McKenna, stop yelling and help her!

  “It’s OK,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand. It was warm in his and she didn’t pull away. That was a start. “No matter what happens, no matter where this takes you, that’s where I’ll be,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I’m not going to let you deal with this alone. Not when I can help you.”

  He felt it before he saw it. A tear, hot and wet, dropped onto the back of his hand, and then she brought her other hand up to her mouth and began trembling.

  Instinctively, he moved closer and pulled her into him, cradling her head against his chest, stroking the hair that covered the staples of her augment surgery.

  To feel her sob, her body shuddering against him, made him want to weep with her. Sierra was so strong--he had never seen her react to anything in the field--but this was more than she could take. This was the thing that finally broke her.

  He laid his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes. She smelled like a warm dessert, all vanilla and cinnamon, and beyond his immediate arousal at her nearness, something in him began to break as well. Something that he hadn’t felt in what seemed like centuries. Nearness, comfort, and the knowledge that he wasn’t alone. That she wasn’t alone.

  That they would get through this together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  She sobbed in his arms for what seemed liked hours, and he allowed her. She was overemotional, her body and mind hypersensitive to everything in and around it. He had been there so many times before and knew exactly what she was going through.

  As he stroked her hair and breathed rhythmically in time with the rise and fall of her chest, he watched the sun go down and wash the room with a smoky rose hue. And he realized, at that moment, that not only had she stopped crying, but he was totally and utterly relaxed.

  And as he reveled in how her heart was beating in time with his, he was suddenly thrust into a hovering darkness. His mind, disembodied from the real, connected effortlessly with hers and he was enveloped by it. Consumed by it. Helpless.

  This was not the connection he’d had with her at GenMed. Not the harsh, angry mind that he had struggled to control. Gone were the jagged edges and impenetrable walls. Her mind was now an open, curious place. A room of soft white light.

  He felt her tense in reaction, but the tension eased as he wandered in and spread out. Unfolding slowly, tentatively, he reached out to her. Soothed her. The warm rush that flowed through him when the connection to her augment snapped into focus caught him off guard, and he jolted out of the connection. Catching his breath back in the real world, he found Sierra looking up at him, her eyes wide.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, realizing that hers was a look of horror.

  She pushed away from him, her hands hard against his chest.

  “No, no, no Sierra…” he said.

  “What was that?” she said with a gasp. “You were… in my mind. I could feel you…”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. We connected.”

  “Connected?”

  “The initial use of these augments when I was in the service was for soldiers to interact and share documents silently while in the field.”

  “So is this like a habit for you? You’re going to just jump into my brain whenever you feel like it now?” she asked, standing from the couch, hugging herself.

  “No, God, Sierra, no,” he said, standing. “It was me. We were so relaxed and--it just happened. It’ll never happen again, I promise.”

  He could see it in her eyes--she didn’t believe him. He didn’t blame her. He hadn’t given her a reason to trust him at the moment.

  He watched as she went to his door, still hugging herself, and, stopping, she stood there silent, her head bowed.

  Grumbling to himself, he went to her and put a hand to her shoulder. Her trembling body vibrated through him.

  “Sierra?”

  She lifted her eyes to him, tears wetting her cheek.

  “I want to leave, but I have no place to go,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Cursing to himself a second time, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly.

  “You can stay here as long as you need to. The bed is huge and glorious. You’ll love it.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide, and pushed away.

  “No,” he said with a sympathetic chuckle. “I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s just as comfortable as the bed. Please, stay.”

  Wiping her tears, she nodded with a grimace.

  “I can’t stay here, McKenna.”

  “Why not? Come on. I won’t do any augment stuff, I promise.”

  “It’s not just that,” she said, looking down at her feet.

  “What, then?” he asked, putting a hand to her shoulder again.

  “It’s just too painful,” she finally said, looking up at him.

  And he saw it in the brown depths of her eyes.

  “Painful?” he asked, turning her. “Are you OK? Did they not give you any pain meds?”

  He had her covered there--he had a cabinet full of painkillers that he never bothered taking.

  She shook her head and moved away from him.

  What was this about now? She was acting strangely, like she was afraid of him. Was that what this was?

  “Not that kind of pain,” she said.

  “What, then?” he asked. “You have nowhere else, Sierra. Stay. Get a good night’s rest in a real bed, and in the morning, I’ll help you find a new place.”

  Chewing on her lip, she looked away, blew out a breath, then nodded as she turned back to him.

  “OK, but tomorrow I’m leaving. I can’t stay here.”

  “Whatever you want to do, I’m here. I told you, I got your back.”

  He showed her to the bedroom and gave her a t-shirt to sleep in. She marveled at the bathroom, and after some argument, he managed to talk her into taking a bath.

  When he was convinced that she was settled, he grabbed a pair of pajama bottoms and a pillow and headed out into the living room. Stretching out on the overstuffed couch, he tucked his hands behind his head and tried to find sleep.

  Knowing she was in the next room, naked in his tub, did nothing to help him relax. Trying to force himself to sleep just made it even worse. He stared at the ceiling, inspected the pot lights in the darkness, idly tracing the electrical lines with his infravision. After an hour or so, he heard her moving about the bedroom, drying her hair, and then, finally, silence.

  Eventually, as always, he fell into a fitful sleep. In the darkness, he gasped as he came awake and sat up. He was sweating and his heart was racing. Dropping his head back, he swallowed hard and blew out a breath. He needed to get control of himself, didn’t need to go off while she was in the house. She didn’t need to see that.

  Standing from the couch, he opened the French doors and went out onto the porch. The cool night air chilled his sweat-covered body, but he didn’t feel the chill. What he felt was a burn trickling slowly up his spine and settling at the base of his skull. It set off goosebumps over his entire body, and then a wave of heat raced through him and settled somewhere in his chest, making him catch his breath and grasp the rail.

  What the fuck was this?

  His mind began swimming, at first struggling against the intrusion. Had they found him? Had Weller come to seek revenge?

  His heart began to thump in his chest, and he could feel the adrenaline start its spread through his muscles, setting him on edge.

  No, no, no, this can’t happen, not here. Not with her here.

  Hearing the railing start to crack under his tightening grip, he stepped back and shook himself out, tried to focus his mind. He had to find the source, cut it off before things got ugly.

  He let his mind reach
out, search for the signal, and he felt his feet move of their own accord. Heading back into the house, he stopped himself.

  Dear God, are they in the house?

  His heart skipped a beat.

  Sierra.

  He raced through the condo and, throwing open the bedroom door, slid to a stop.

  Sierra was sitting at the end of the bed, her eyes wide.

  His immediate thought was to search the room. He expected to see a gun to her head, but she just sat there staring at him.

  “Sierra?”

  “I had no idea,” she said tentatively.

  “What?” What was she talking about?

  “I didn’t realize it was so easy.”

  “Easy? What are you talking about?”

  And then he felt it again, that rush of heat bursting in his chest, his mind racing, unable to focus.

  And then she quirked her head.

  Holy fuck, she’s connecting to my augment.

  “Sierra, that’s dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, approaching her, and when she stood, another wave of heat surged through him and instinctively he pushed back, his adrenaline kicking in, and his mind took over, offering a surge of its own.

  Sierra stumbled backward, but he caught her, and the minute he touched her it was as if a bolt of lightning passed through him into her, and it was all he could do to stop himself from howling in pain as he held her tight against his body. His shudder passed through him and into her, and she clutched at his shoulders, holding on for dear life. When he looked down into her eyes, they were alive and bright as they searched his, and before he could stop himself, his lips found hers.

  And he lost himself in her.

  Her lips were sweeter than he could have ever imagined, and when they opened to his, inviting him, tempting him, he was undone. It was heartbreaking and glorious all at once, the feel of her mouth so soft against his, the feel of her body against his. And when her hands moved from his shoulders to curl into his hair, he dissolved against her, pushing her back onto the bed.

  “Christ, Sierra,” he said against her lips, then deepened the kiss. His hands went to her face, his mouth capturing and devouring hers. He couldn’t get enough of her. His lips went to her neck, and he nibbled at her ear, tasted the salty skin of her neck.