by S. A. Lusher
He’d reviewed the information as he was shot through space at faster than light speeds in first class, feeling a strange sense of dislocated unreality. Looking over the intelligence made him feel like he was preparing for one of his missions. In a way, he supposed he was. He just wanted to see her again, to know if she still felt anything for him, to see if...she would take him back. They’d been apart for over a year now.
Greg looked out the window as the last white wisps of clouds fell away, revealing a vast, dazzling landscape of green and blue and brown below. He could see forests and lakes and farmland surrounding a colony, the one he was headed for. Kyra had gone here almost immediately following their stint on the frozen, unnamed world, retrieving Matheson. She’d officially been transferred to Security-Investigations, although she had a new job now on the Investigations side as a communications technician.
And she hadn’t left the planet since, apparently.
A part of Greg felt weird, gathering all of this information on her, and it felt wrong, but he was just beyond the point of caring right now. It wasn’t like he was going to do anything bad with this data, he wasn’t going to stalk her or harass her. He just...needed to talk to her. Part of him argued that he should have just called her, but he didn’t want that either. He wanted to be there, face to face. It was too easy to hang up on someone when talking over a comms device, it was harder to walk away from them when they were right there in front of you.
Greg wasn’t sure why he kept assuming the worst case scenario, that Kyra would hate him and not want to talk to him.
It was probably all of the fucked up situations he’d found himself in literally since the moment his new memories began inside that wrecked ship full of corpses, in the middle of a rainy wasteland at night, surrounded by zombies.
That tended to fuck you up.
Greg sat back and waited for the shuttle to land, closing his eyes, trying to center himself. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he saw her, he only knew that he had to see her, even if it was the last time in his life that he did and she told him to fuck off.
* * * * *
The colony was drenched in sunlight.
Greg thought rain would be more appropriate and found himself actually missing the rain as he was driven through the streets by a silent taxi driver. His military ID was enough to get his sidearm through any security checkpoints, which he’d opted into taking with him because he couldn’t go anywhere without a gun ever again, and he’d been a little surprised at that. He’d assumed that Hawkins would revoke his status the second he set foot off the Dauntless.
In a way, it was endearing.
The old man still had hope that Greg was going to come back.
“Here we are,” the taxi driver said as he pulled up to the curb in front of the Security-Investigations building. He obviously didn’t want to fuck with the process of getting into the parking lot.
“Thanks,” Greg replied, swiping his thumb over a pad and leaving a twenty credit tip for the hell of it.
He stepped out of the taxi, hefted his black duffel bag and made for the security post that granted entrance to the parking lot. He wasn’t sure if it was his demeanor or maybe the way he was walking or just the look on his face, but the man stationed in the post took immediate notice of him. His hand dipped out of sight, below the glass, and Greg knew almost by instinct that it was now resting on the butt of his holstered pistol.
“Can I help you, sir?” the man asked as he approached.
“I need access to your facility,” Greg replied. “My name is Greg Bishop. I’m with Special Operations.”
The man, though he really didn’t look older than his early twenties, just a kid with a buzzcut and a uniform, frowned.
“I’ll need some verification,” he replied, indicating a scanning pad mounted on the side of the small structure. “Retinal there, thumbprint there,” he added.
Greg swiped his thumb and moved his eye up to the pad. A few seconds passed as the sentry scrutinized the information.
Abruptly, he snapped to attention. “I apologize for the delay, sir, go right in,” he said, opening up the blockade that kept cars from getting in unless security wanted them to. “Should I inform them of your presence?” he asked, fumbling his words slightly.
“No, it’s fine,” Greg replied, walking past him.
He felt weird as he walked across the sun-drenched parking lot. There were a few SI personnel out and about, coming and going, and they glanced at him in the same way the first guy had. Jeez, did he really look that dangerous? He suppose it was a good thing. The average person wouldn’t bother you if you looked dangerous. Of course, it did attract a certain kind of asshole that had to prove how tough they were.
Right now, Greg just wanted to be left alone.
He made his way in through the front doors and into the lobby, scanning the immediate area. He sighed when he realized he was looking for threats. Force of habit that was extremely useful in his line of work. As he crossed the room, approaching the front desk, he suddenly wondered what the fuck it was he thought he was going to do if this actually worked out. Join SI again? It seemed to have worked for Kyra.
“Hello, sir. I understand you’re with Special Operations,” the man behind the desk said. Well, it made enough sense that the kid had called ahead. Everyone covered their ass. “We were not informed of your arrival. What can we help you with?”
“Oh, I’m not here on, uh, business. I need to speak with someone. Kyra Mercer.”
The man began to respond, but stopped as an all too familiar voice cut through the air. “Greg?” He slowly turned to his left.
There she was, suddenly, maybe fifteen feet away. It looked like she was just passing through the lobby, but now she stood frozen, staring at him with those blue eyes of hers.
“Greg...what are you doing here?” she asked. He had honestly never seen her look so surprised or at a loss for what to say.
“I...need to talk to you,” he replied cautiously.
She blinked several times, then looked around quickly and started approaching him. “Um...fine, come on,” she replied.
He turned and followed her across the lobby, through a door, down a hallway and through another door. They came out to a brick path that led away from the building, into a fenced in area, a garden, complete with flowerbeds, trees, a little pond with koi fish and a small stream that wound its way through the area.
It looked empty at the moment and they walked over to a bench. She sat down and he sat down beside her.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this, I...haven’t been having the best time. And I needed to see you,” he said.
“I...it’s okay. I’m just surprised. What...what happened, after I left?”
He laughed. “Well, that’s a long, classified story. The short version is we shut down Rogue Ops, saved the galaxy and then formed up a special division to deal with unique threats, like the shit we were dealing with. I faced down the same things we fought on Dis. Trent and Enzo are dead. We’ve added some new players into the mix...” he trailed off, having a hard time getting around to why he was here. Instead he tried to delay it.
“What about you? What happened to you after you left?” he asked.
“I...god, this is a lot. Trent and Enzo are dead? How’s Drake handling it? What happened?”
“Enzo betrayed us, Trent got killed as an indirect result of it. Drake...is managing. He’s managing better than some of us, surprisingly.”
“Fuck...” she whispered. “I, um...I came here, after I left. I had Hawkins ship me here. I’d always intended to get transferred here. Everyone kept talking about it, but I got shipped out to Dis instead. Um...Hawkins pulled some strings, got me a job here. I was Security for the first couple of months, but I felt like I could be doing more, so I switched over to Investigations. And that’s...basically been my life ever since. What happened? Obviously something happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be here like this,” she asked.
“How in the hell...nevermind, I don’t want to know. I believe you,” she murmured. “And I’m sorry. I can’t...I don’t even know what to say to that beyond, I’m sorry you had to go through that. But, that still doesn’t answer why you’re here,” she added, cutting to the meat of the situation as she always had before.
He chewed on his lip for a moment, suddenly nervous. More than nervous, seriously afraid. Now was the moment of truth.
“When you left, you told me that because of my addiction to dangerous situations, we couldn’t be together. That it wouldn’t be fair for either of us to ask the other to stay. And you were right. But, I...I’m not sure I could go on another mission like that again, and you know I don’t have anything else. Without my memories, the only two things in my life I’ve ever given a shit about are my life with my friends there and...you.”
A slow, dawning kind of realization spread across Kyra’s face. “Oh, Greg...you don’t...” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. “You came here to get back together with me.”
“Yes...Kyra, I never stopped loving you. I want-”
Kyra opened his eyes. “Greg,” she said, raising her hand, “stop. Just stop.” She turned her hand around and for the first time he noticed it. She had a ring on her third finger.
“I’m engaged,” she said quietly.
Greg felt his self control slip a notch. “You’re...engaged?”
“Yes. We met a month after I started working here and started dating and...he proposed to me just last month.”
“But...” Greg stood up suddenly, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “Kyra, I love you! I came all the way here-”
She shot to her feet and stared directly into his eyes, her gaze hard and flat. “Greg, I know you and I know you’re better than this. Stop being a selfish fuck,” she said, her voice calm and somewhat dangerous.
“Selfish!? What the fuck-” he began.
“What did you expect me to do, Greg!? Did you expect me to just stay single for the rest of my life on the fucking off chance that you’d get tired of your job and show up here and pronounce your love?! Did you do that?! Did you wait? Don’t answer, because it doesn’t matter. Something goes wrong and you just decide that you’re going to come find me and hook back up? Greg, I know you probably didn’t mean it to be like this, I’m sure you didn’t, and I’m sorry for what you went through, but that’s incredibly selfish.”
“Kyra-”
She shook her head angrily. “Nowhere is it written in the stars that we were destined to be together, Greg. We aren’t soul mates, you aren’t the only one for me, I’m not the only one for you. We met, we fell in love, it didn’t work out. That’s not our fault. It’s not your fault or my fault, that’s just the way the chips fell. But you know what would be our fault? If we tried to force the relationship to work. That would be our fault.”
Greg didn’t know want to say.
Her words were like a cold splash of water across his anger and hurt. She was right. She was right about everything.
Her features softened and she lowered her voice. “Greg, I really am sorry that you’re in this situation. I never wanted you to be hurt. Don’t think this is easy for me. Leaving you was...it was really difficult, and it hurt like hell, but it was the right thing to do. I still believe that, and I think you do, too. But I can’t help you. I had to move on, and you need to do the same thing.”
He still didn’t know what to say. In a way, it felt like his life was falling down around him, turning to ash in his hands.
Kyra stepped forward and hugged him, just briefly, then stepped back. “Goodbye, Greg…and good luck.”
She started walking back towards the SI Headquarters. Greg watched her go, still feeling the phantom impression of her hug.
He stood there for a long time.
He was lost.
* * * * *
Awake again.
Allan felt like he was lost in a sea of groggy, incoherent confusion. He couldn’t move, not an inch. His whole body was numb, like he’d been put on ice for several days. It was a struggle to open his eyelids and his senses were feeding him distorted bits of information. He was moving, he could at least piece together that much.
Around him, he saw metal and bleak, bright lights.
He was strapped down to something, lying on his back, being rolled somewhere.
The sensations began to slip away and he was thrust back into a world of darkness.
INTO THE VOID is the fourteenth novel in
THE SHADOW WARS.
Out now. Purchase HERE.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean A. Lusher was born in the Midwest. Raised on a diet of Goosebumps and YA Horror, he eventually graduated to mature fiction and began cutting his teeth on the likes of Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series and Bob Mayer's Area 51 novels.
Lusher has been writing seriously for over a decade now, though he only began to get any good at it over the past few years. (And there's still some debate over that...)
Currently, he lives in Columbia, MO with his wife and two cats.
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THE BLIND WAR. Copyright © by S. A. Lusher. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.