Butterfly Ops

by Jen Doyle

  Malek muttered, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

  Honestly? Right now a Great White would be preferable, because how the hell were you supposed to fight…what? The wind?

  Taking cover would be a good way to start. Not that he needed to give an order. Everyone had already turned to the shore—it was pure instinct to get out of this thing’s way, or at least to not want to be out on the water when it hit. And they should have made it. It was three boat lengths for heaven’s sake; Ian could practically touch the shore with his paddle.

  No matter—it was as though the canoes had been hooked from behind and dragged right back out into open water. The gentle breeze of a minute before skipped right over brisk wind to full force gale, its blustery gusts sending water slamming against the canoes, threatening to spill over the sides as the boats dipped and shifted from side to side.

  “I’m guessing now’s not the time to tell you I get seasick,” Malek said, or, shouted, rather as he struggled to stay in the boat.

  “No worries,” Brooks yelled back. “I’ve got some Dramamine in my bag. Always be prepared, I say.”

  Lyndsey looked over at them. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  Despite their fighting for control in a canoe that had turned into a bucking bronco, both men looked over and smiled. Well, hell—if you’re going to go down, it’s good at least to have a sense of humor about it. Ian turned his attention away from them. To say things were not going as he had hoped was a bit of an understatement. “Lyndsey, how about putting that helmet back on?”

  As though to emphasize the point, there was another blast of air, punctuated by Malek shouting, “Fuck!” right as his paddle snapped.

  Ian looked back over at the other canoe, stunned to see that in seconds they had somehow drifted about a hundred feet away. How the hell had that happened? Malek was reaching for the spare paddle that was strapped to the side of the boat while Brooks struggled to keep the canoe on a straight line as the wind pushed them sideways, sending them back towards the cliffs. Their smiles were gone. Brooks looked up for a second, his eyes connecting with Ian’s and he shook his head. It was an acknowledgment the wind had taken them out of the game.

  That didn’t concern Ian at all—he only cared about somehow getting to them before they were pushed back against the cliffs. He was not about to sit helplessly as they smashed into pieces. With Lyndsey’s strength and this ferocious wind behind their backs, they could make it in time. “Lyn—”

  There was another burst of wind and—just like that—they were turned around, headed in the other direction.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ian muttered, craning his neck to see the other boat as the rain started to fall. Huge, fat drops falling with such force they hurt as they hit the skin.

  “Ian!” Lyndsey yelled. “Where’d the shore go?”

  Her voice came from in front of him, not through the comm. So much for state-of-the-art technology. And it wasn’t exactly a good sign that when he looked to where the shore should have been, the beach had turned into a sheet of gray, obscured by rain driven horizontal by the wind.

  Well, shit.

  Ian turned back to look for the other boat. It had completely disappeared. “Brooks!” He couldn’t help but try, even though if the comms weren’t working there was no hope of getting an answer. “Brooks! Mal—”

  He was knocked backwards as the canoe dropped and then rose just as suddenly. Lyndsey was still holding onto her oar, leaning forward into the wind and paddling furiously in the direction where the shore used to be, to no avail.

  “Lyndsey!” he shouted. “On your knees!” Lowering their center of gravity might help a little.

  Right. That was some wishful thinking. With these winds there was a less than zero chance of a smooth ride.

  He was at an absolute loss. A ghost princess was one thing; Mother Nature another entirely. Put the two together? Talk about Hell hath no fury… Right now, all they could do was fight to keep the canoe from dumping them into the raging water.

  “Matt, I’m not sure if you can hear us…” Though it seemed just as futile as everything else at the moment, Ian started reciting details into the comm in case anyone could hear. Maybe it was just his audio that was affected and everything he said was at least being recorded somewhere. Plus, hadn’t Matt said the storms were just a flash? This wouldn’t last forever. If they could just keep—

  He whirled around. Had someone just been laughing?

  Of course not. Between the wind and the rain he could barely hear his own thoughts, much less an actual voice. And who could possibly be laughing? They were in the middle of a fucking hurricane, on open water, with no other boats in sight and comms that didn’t work.

  But there was definitely someone laughi…

  He nearly dropped his paddle in shock as he heard a voice—a different voice—calling his name.

  The wind playing tricks on him. No doubt about it.

  Or throwing Lyndsey’s voice so it sounded like she was calling him from behind when the sound was really coming from up ahead. Except it didn’t really sound like Lyndsey. Not like her at all—it must have been distorted by the wind. Had to be.

  “Lyndsey!”

  She glanced at him, offering a brief smile before turning back, ducking as the rain hit her face head on. She seemed as unsure of what to do as he did, leaning forward as she redoubled her efforts, even though she probably didn’t have any better idea of where the shore was then he did. No, that actually wasn’t true. She probably had some special Sekhmet radar telling her where to go.

  Did it really matter? Absolutely not. Where she goes, I follow. If that was the only thing he could figure out to do, then, damn it, he would do it with gusto.

  His muscles screamed as he dug his paddle in, desperately trying to get enough leverage to help propel them forward. Coughing as he swallowed water—not sure if it was rain or the waves that were washing over the sides—he heard the low, rumbling noise grow louder.

  Heard it? No, that wasn’t right—he could feel it coming toward him. Could feel it advancing, bearing down, the air becoming charged as it got closer. What ‘it’ was, he still had no idea; he couldn’t see a damn thing.

  Then—for just a moment—everything froze: the rain hung suspended in the air and the wind ceased its roaring.

  Not good.

  No, he thought, as everything started up again. Not good at all.

  The rain became hail, pelting him with all of nature’s force; the roaring wind became an unbearable shrieking, screaming in his ears. And as he looked down, he could see a dark, pulsating mist bubbling up from the surface of the lake, a watery carpet stretched as far as the eye could see.

  He tried to move forward but the wind seemed to be pressing down on him. It was pushing against his chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.

  Dropping the paddle to the floor of the canoe, he grasped its sides and hunched over as he forced oxygen into his lungs. Overcome by dizziness, he struggled to raise his head when he heard his name called again. As he finally lifted his head, he could see Lyndsey bringing her hands to her face, protecting herself from the black sheets of rain that were bombarding her, attacking her arms. She held up her paddle, batting at the water.

  Ian was trying to figure out how that could possibly be an effective way to keep the rain out when he realized it wasn’t water overtaking her any more than it was a mist rising up off the lake’s surface. It was…

  Jesus Christ. This had to be a fucking joke.

  Butterflies.

  Thousands, maybe millions of butterflies, their wings rupturing the air, creating an unbelievable noise as they slowly closed in.

  Lyndsey disappeared from view and he fought his way forward, trying to reach her, trying to battle this most bizarre of forces and just get to her. But it was futile—their wings were fluttering against his skin and beating him back… Surrounding him, crawling all over him, under his clothes, coating his skin… A piece
of plastic, molding to his face, suffocating him… Keep away from small children and…

  Fuck.

  30

  As Lyndsey woke up, she could hear voices coming from somewhere above her, voices that sounded distorted, like they were coming from underwater.

  Or maybe she was the one underwater, because everything seemed really warbly. Kind of…bubbly.

  Not in a good way.

  A woman asked, “How long do we have to keep her in those things?”

  “The Colonel said until she’s awake,” a man answered in return.

  “It just seems cruel.”

  The man laughed nervously. “Speak for yourself. Did you hear what she did to that bear? And then she almost killed…”

  Lyndsey wasn’t sure if she had blacked out or if they just stopped talking for a while. It was probably the first thing because now it felt like someone was standing over her, where no one had been just before.

  “How is she? Has anything changed?”

  Matt?

  Who was he talking to? Were those other people still here?

  Lyndsey’s eyes didn’t seem to want to open.

  Well, tough. She forced her eyelids up, letting them fall closed again when her head screamed in protest at the light that had suddenly been allowed in.

  “Did she just…? Lyndsey?”

  Pain is good. Absence of pain equals absence of life.

  She opened her eyes again. Everything was blurry and there was an entire team of construction workers playing with power tools in her brain, but yes, that was definitely Matt. And Sprague behind him, perched against a table.

  She tried to pull herself up. “Matt…”

  She turned her head to see a machine gun pointed at her. Pure instinct made her surge up, battle ready. Something a lot stronger than she seemed to be at the moment kept her from getting more than a couple of inches off the bed.

  Things started to come a little more into focus: that the gun was attached to a man wearing a uniform, that there was a woman standing a few feet to the left of him. That steel restraints seemed to be attached to her own body.

  Steel restraints? She looked back at Matt.

  He stood watching her, his arms folded against his chest. After what seemed like a very long time—although she may have just blacked out again—he nodded to a second man, one in the same black uniform as the guy with the gun.

  The man hesitated, “Sir, you said…”

  Matt’s voice was cold. “Do you really expect me to tell you again?”

  “No, sir.” The man moved forward and undid the steel restraints, all the time watching Lyndsey carefully.

  Right at that moment, the door opened and Tommy came in. His eyes took in everything—Lyndsey, Matt, the guy with the gun… “Christ,” he said. “Sorry. That was obviously the worst time to step away.”

  Everything was very strange, very…disconnected. She could see Matt acknowledge Tommy’s comment with a slight shake of his head, could see the woman taking the things off her wrists… It just all seemed to be happening to someone other than her. She sat up through sheer force of will. “Where’s Ian?”

  Matt looked at her very oddly; then he looked at Tommy and Sprague.

  “Where’s. Ian?” she said again, concentrating on pronouncing each syllable. “And Brooks? Malek?”

  There was a moment in which time seemed to stop, a moment of complete silence and total absence of movement. Matt broke it by pulling a chair up to the bed. He glanced back at Tommy.

  With a way too blank look, Tommy came over to the other side of the bed. Sprague, on the other hand, straightened up and said to the others in the room, “We’re out of here, guys.” As the woman started to protest, he cut her off, saying, “You can check her out in a few minutes.”

  A sense of dread began to come over Lyndsey; she tried to push it back down before it turned into panic.

  When the guards hesitated, Matt barely even looked at them. “Out.” He sat down in the chair and ran his hand through his hair. For the first time, Lyndsey noticed his eyes were rimmed with red.

  Oh God. That didn’t look good.

  That looked so not good.

  “What happened?” she asked, feeling sick to her stomach. A quick look at Tommy did nothing to help. “Where’s Ian? Where are Brooks and Malek?”

  There was a moment of hesitation before Matt said in a detached voice, “Joe pulled Brooks out of the water about ten minutes after we lost contact with you. He’s at the hospital in Atikokan. As far as we can tell, he’s going to be okay; that Goddamned jacket he was wearing saved his life. Malek is with him there.”

  Fine. That was Brooks and Malek, but…

  No. She refused to let her mind go where all the big flashing signs were sending her.

  This wasn’t happening.

  Was.

  Not.

  Happening.

  “Matt…” She sat forward and grabbed his hand. “Where…?”

  “Lyndsey…” Matt looked away. His voice trembled as he said, “I’m sorry.”

  No.

  No, no, no.

  He had it all wrong. Joe wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there. He couldn’t have pulled Brooks out. And if Matt was wrong about Joe…

  “Matt, no. It was the—” She stopped abruptly, unable to actually say that killer butterflies had, in fact, attacked. She turned to appeal to Tommy; he liked her much better than Matt did after all. “We need to go back. We need to get—”

  “Lyndsey.” Tommy’s voice was full of empathy as he sat down in a chair next to the bed and took her hand. “They already found the body. He’s dead, Lyn.”

  “No.” Ian was not dead. Most certainly not. They’d done this to her once before and she was not going to fall for it again. She turned to Matt. “Prove it to me. Let me see him. I want to see the body.”

  Looking down, Matt’s eyes filled but somehow didn’t spill over. “No, you don’t. I saw him before they took him away. His body…” He was battling for composure. Pulling his hand away, he stood up abruptly and turned his back on both Lyndsey and Tommy. It was a full minute before he could turn back and say, “It’s pretty much unrecognizable.”

  Trying to shake the confusion out of her head, she said, “Took him…?” Her eyes teared up, but she refused to cry. If she actually cried, it might mean she believed what Matt was telling her and there was no way this could be true. Absolutely no way. “Who…? I don’t—”

  “A firefighter found him.” Matt spoke quickly, as though he had to get it all out before he lost it altogether. “Joe’s tribe took the body. The land belongs to them. They refused to release him.”

  Blinking the tears away, Lyndsey protested, “If you couldn’t… If he was… How do you know it was him?” Panic rose within her. There had to be another explanation. “We weren’t anywhere near the forest fires. This doesn’t…”

  “Yeah,” Matt mumbled. He wasn’t rushing his words any more, wasn’t fighting for control. Now he just sounded tired. Tired and old. So very old. “I know. I’m having a hard time with this myself.” He reached into his pocket and dropped something into her hand. “This was a pretty big kick in the ass, though. I guess it’s what you might call proof.”

  Her heart stuck in her throat as she looked at the simple gold band.

  Ian’s wedding ring.

  She knew she’d begun to cry because she could see the tiny drops of water fall, dropping and crashing over the crest of the ring, rolling down its sides and seeping into the palm of her hand; she couldn’t feel it, though, because she was numb. Utterly numb. “I… I don’t…”

  “Joe managed to get it off the body; Julianna convinced them to let us take it. They thought the kids might want…” Matt’s voice broke. He put his hand to his eyes for a few moments before saying, “I’m sorry, Lyndsey. I know this doesn’t really help, but I can’t remember ever seeing him as happy as he’s… As he was these past few weeks.”

  Few weeks? she thought, watching Matt walk aw
ay. She lay back down in the bed, closing her eyes and holding the ring tightly in her hand, mostly unable to breathe.

  The universe couldn’t truly be that cruel. After the sacrifices she’d made in her life, the sacrifices Ian had made—shouldn’t they be allowed this one thing? Such a small, tiny thing. Tommy’s hand squeezed hers and the tears overtook her.

  When she opened her eyes again, it was clear time had passed. How much, she had no idea; she just knew she wasn’t alone. The guards were back, weapons included. Sprague was back, too, standing next to Tommy and watching the guards. And the woman—terrified, if her startled jumps every time Lyndsey moved were any indication—obviously had a job to do. Otherwise, she’d probably be clear across the...

  “Where are we?” Lyndsey asked as it occurred to her she had absolutely no clue. This didn’t look like a regular hospital room and it seemed very loud. Much louder than normal. Plus, things seemed to be vibrating.

  The woman glanced up at Sprague and let him be the one to answer, “We’re on the transport. Matt wanted to get you back to Boston; have you checked out by our own doctors.”

  Lyndsey’s head was pounding so hard she barely even cared they were bringing her to their doctors, who, for all she knew, had been part of the crew conducting experiments on her back in the day. Hell, the nurse who was this very minute checking lines and taking readings and doing all the things nurses did look about the right age to have been around back then. That would have bothered Lyndsey on any other day. Right now, though…

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “Colonel Fox was…” She stopped what she was doing and looked down at the floor, a lone tear escaping to run down her cheek. “He was a very nice man.”