by Smith, Glenn
Dylan watched her for a few more minutes, but when she’d read several pages and it appeared as though she was going to read for a while longer, he lay back on the couch to rest his weary eyes. He reran what he’d just seen in his mind’s eye, hoping that his neighbor’s lovely image might chase those of the other women away for good. The women who’d left him in body—one through tragedy, the other by choice—but who, like the creature that haunted his dreams, continued to dwell in his subconscious.
* * *
Combat. Reinforcements. Shin collapsed motionless to the dirt.
—Poor girl.
Something burned his thigh.
He was hit.
His right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground.
He was hit again. Badly.
“Sergeant Graves is down!”
“Marissa!” he cried.
—Strange. He hadn’t done that before.
The pain faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight.
His head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed.
“Marissa!”
Warm blood flowed into his eye and down over his cheek and neck.
He was hit again. Very badly.
Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Time to die.
“I love you.”
—Why had he said that? He wished he could have meant it, but he couldn’t. He never should have said it.
The world faded untyil all was darkness.
“Dylan? Are you awake?”
He rolled his head across the pillow to see who it was who’d so thoughtlessly roused him from his drug-induced slumber. Carolyn.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“About what?”
Her eyes fell to the hand she cradled in hers. “About us.”
He didn’t speak.
She looked down, then faced the bed again. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled off her wedding ring and tossed it onto the blanket. “It’s over, Dylan. I’m divorcing you.”
She hurried out of the room.
Right into his arms. Suddenly it all made sense.
He was alone.
“Sergeant Graves?”
—Her again. He knew her voice. What was she doing here? Why was she here?
“May I come in, Sergeant?”
“Sure.”
—Why did he say that? Why did he always let her in?
She closed the door. Took a seat. Cautious. But of course.
Lots of talk. Get to the point.
“What the hell was that...that thing that almost killed me?”
“What thing that almost killed you? You mean the Sulaini soldier who tried to beat you to death with his rifle?”
“What? What Sulaini soldier? What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
Was it really feasible she didn’t know how he was wounded? Not likely. “I’m talking about that thing that was hiding out in the Sulaini commander’s office building. That...alien...creature that would’ve snapped me in two if Marissa hadn’t turned it into Swiss cheese when she did.”
“Alien creature? I’m...I’m sorry, Sergeant. I must have missed something. What alien creature are you talking about? What did it look like?”
“What alien creature am I talking about? The alien creature that burned Marissa! The one that damn near crushed my ribs into powder!”
Nothing. A blank stare.
“It looked like...like...awe hell! I don’t know what the hell it looked like!”
“You’re seeing something in your dreams.”
“It’s not just in my dreams!”
“Yes, it is! Dylan, listen to me.”
—All right.
“Think back, Dylan. Think about the battle. Replay it in your mind. Do you really remember this alien creature being there?”
“Yes, I really remember it being there! I see it every damn night!”
“I’m not talking about in your nightmares! Ignore them for the moment. Think about the actual battle ten days ago. Go through it, step by step, as you actually remember it.”
He thought back.
—Why was he thinking back? He knew the truth. Why was he listening to her again?
It wasn’t there.
—It should have been there.
He remembered Marissa being wounded in a chemical explosion. He remembered being beaten repeatedly with a rifle in brutal hand-to-hand combat. And he remembered being shot...three times.
—But that wasn’t right. The creature was supposed to be there. It should have been there.
“Do you remember this alien creature of yours being there?”
“No.”
—Why did he say ‘no’ again when he knew it had been there? It should have been there.
“Of course you don’t, because it wasn’t there.”
“But...it was so real.”
* * *
It was real.
No, it wasn’t. He’d known for some time now what really happened in the middle of that island forest that night. His conscious memories of the battle had never agreed with what he saw in his nightmares, but with the doctors’ help—as much as he hated to admit it, those professional doubletalkers who didn’t deserve to call themselves doctors had actually done some good—and after sitting through a complete mission debriefing, he’d eventually worked that out. “Then why do you still see the damn thing in your nightmares?” he asked himself.
Speaking of his nightmares, this was the first time since he’d been wounded that he’d dreamed of something other than the battle itself. And although he’d just woken up he wasn’t feeling even a hint of a headache. So, for the first time in as long, he allowed himself to hope for something that he hadn’t enjoyed in nearly a month. A full night of restful sleep. Disregarding with little consideration that ever-dimming spark of morality that told him to leave the girl alone, he decided to take one last quick look across the courtyard. After that, he promised himself, he’d go to bed for the night.
She still lay half naked on her couch, reading her book. She reached up with her free hand and turned the page, then laid it back on her stomach and continued reading. Apparently, she intended to read well into night.
Dylan set his binocs aside, got up, and started toward his bedroom, but as he passed by the window, a small flash of light caught his eye and he looked out again. The girl had set her book on the coffee table and was getting up.
He dashed back to the couch and resumed his surveillance just as she snatched up her robe. She pulled it on as she bounded up over the two steps to her front door, then tapped the intercom button. She closed it and tied it off as she spoke. Then, after a quick look at the small video screen above the intercom, she keyed the door open.
Her visitor appeared to be a human man in his early to mid forties—a human man of Terran stock as opposed to Cirran, that conclusion based on the fact that he had brown eyes. Assuming that he wasn’t wearing colored lenses, of course. He was tall and muscular, with curly black hair and a thick moustache, was dressed in gray slacks and a green shirt, and carried an overnight bag under his arm. He held some sort of identification up for the girl to look at, but Dylan couldn’t make out what it was. After a brief exchange the girl stepped aside and invited him inside.
The man dropped his bag down beside the couch. Then the two of them sat down—him on the left side of the couch as Dylan looked at it, her in the chair sitting caddie-corner to its right—and began talking. Dylan watched their mouths closely, hoping to make out a few words and maybe figure out what they were discussing, but he had no luck.
He knew he should have taken that lip-reading course in high school.
A few minutes into their conversation the man reached down over the arm of the couch and
opened his bag. He pulled out a handcomp—Solfleet-issue from the looks of it—activated it and made some adjustments, then moved closer to the girl and handed it to her.
Things were getting interesting.
Several more minutes passed as they discussed whatever it was they were discussing, passing the handcomp back and forth between them, but Dylan didn’t learn anything. The man eventually took back the device and turned it off, but their conversation continued for a while longer. Twenty more minutes at least. Perhaps thirty. The girl eventually got up and went into her bedroom, but this time Dylan held his eyes on the stranger, hoping that he’d do something before he got up to leave that might provide some clue as to exactly who he was.
It soon became apparent, however, that he wasn’t planning to leave at all. He pulled his shoes and socks off, then took off his shirt—damn, he had a hairy chest!—and set it aside. Then he took a small hygiene kit out of his overnight bag, opened it, and set it on the floor in front of the couch. He lay back, then quickly rolled over and reached for the kit as though his life depended on it. He missed it, adjusted its position, then lay back again and repeated the exercise...twice. After his hand plunged right into the bag on the third try, he lay back and relaxed once more, seemingly for good this time. A few seconds later the curtains closed and the living room lights went out.
Dylan shifted his gaze to the bedroom just as the girl came out of her bathroom, still in her panties but carrying her robe in her hand. She draped it over the back of her dresser chair then walked over to her bureau and pulled on a loose white tank top. Then, as she climbed into bed, her bedroom curtains closed and the rest her apartment lights went out.
Dylan set his binocs aside for the last time and finally went to bed. As he shed his clothes and climbed in under the covers, he wondered what in the galaxy the girl could possibly be involved in that would have brought that mysterious stranger into her home. For reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, he suspected the man was with the S.I.A.
But maybe he was just being paranoid.
Chapter 43
He caught a glimpse of Shin as she collapsed motionless to the dirt. Then something burned his thigh. He glanced down at it, and just as he realized that he’d been shot, his right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground, dragging the girl down on top of him.
“Sergeant Graves is down!” Marissa hollered as she bent down to pull the girl off of him. But she lost her balance and fell as well. She struggled to her hands and knees, only to fall face down into the dirt again.
The world was spinning. The battle raged on.
The pain faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight. But as he plodded forward, unable even to raise his rifle, his head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed, his legs bent up underneath him, his buttocks on his heels and his shoulders and the back of his head on the ground. Somehow, through sheer force of will, he managed to sit up again, and he felt his own warm blood flowing into his left eye and down over his cheek and neck.
Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Idiot! Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!
The world faded until all was darkness.
* * *
“No!” Dylan screamed as he shot up, his eyes wide open, hands grasping the sides of his sweat-drenched head. As usual, it took him a moment to realize that he was safe at home. But this time, just like earlier when he’d nodded off on the couch, his head didn’t hurt—a sure sign that he’d gotten at least a few hours of restful sleep before the nightmares returned to torture him. He reached for his medication anyway—he wished he could have slept through the entire night, just for once—but all he found beneath his fingers was the surface of the nightstand. Then he remembered he’d taken the bottle into the kitchen sometime during the day.
He tossed his blankets aside, climbed out of bed, and headed that way without bothering to put anything on. As he walked through the living room he realized that he wasn’t limping and that his leg didn’t hurt anymore. He also noticed that the curtains were backlit where they hung across the windows and the sliding door. Had his bedroom been as bright just now? Could it be dawn already? He hoped not. He wanted to go back to sleep.
He walked over to the curtains, pulled back the edge and peeked out, and felt relieved to find that it was only the moonlight. He glanced up at the clock and saw that it was only a little past 26:40 hours—barely twenty minutes before midnight. He still had the whole night ahead of him. Plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep. But the outdoors looked peaceful and inviting at that moment, so he decided to go down into the garden for a while first, just to sit under the glowing moons in the cool breeze and enjoy the peace and quiet.
He went back into his bedroom, pulled on a pair of jeans and his Flyers jersey, then slipped on his shoes and headed outside.
The air had cooled some more since earlier in the evening but the tall plants with their thick foliage that lined the garden’s perimeter held back most of the breeze, so the clothes he’d put on were sufficient to keep him warm without a coat. The larger of the moons shone full and bright at its zenith, so only the most brilliant stars were visible. Its smaller brother, on the other hand, hung low in the deep purple sky, barely visible between two of the neighboring buildings and mostly obscured now by distant charcoal-gray clouds. Most of the flowers had retreated into nocturnal dormancy, but their sweet fragrances still perfumed the air. Faint sounds of battle echoed in the far distant foothills and served to remind him that somewhere out there military training continued without him.
He chose a bench near the center of the garden where two paths intersected and sat down in front of the spot-lit ivory stone statue that watched over it from atop its marble pedestal. The intricately detailed statue of a tall, overly muscular man, probably one of the myriad of Cirran gods, holding a slender young woman in his arms—her meager clothing torn almost completely away and her legs wrapped loosely around his hips—while he kissed her bare, ample breast and made love to her. Which god and/or goddess the statue represented, he couldn’t say. The Cirrans had so many of them, who could keep track? Carolyn, who’d always been interested in art and culture, had probably researched it, but he’d never really cared enough to ask her. One thing was certain though. It didn’t leave anything to the imagination.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh, cool, cleansing, flora-scented air that seemed to revive and relax him at the same time. He began feeling truly refreshed, almost as if he’d finally gotten that full night’s sleep that he’d been coveting for so long. He found the garden so soothing and peaceful in fact, despite the sounds of the distant mock battle, that he felt as though he could remain there forever. Or even longer.
Strange. The nightmare that had awakened him yet again—that same nightmare that had played itself out over and over in his sleeping mind—had been so much more vivid this time than ever before. So much more real. Why would that happen? Why, when all other dreams and nightmares faded away over time, would this one only grow more coherent?
“Hi.”
Dylan leapt to his feet and whirled around to face the voice’s owner, crouching low, prepared to defend himself against the invisible enemy and if necessary, to kill it. He was all Ranger now. There was no pain.
The sudden silence that met him told him that whoever had spoken had frozen in his or her tracks, still hidden in the shadows. But then time resumed its flow and the voice quickly broke that silence. “I’m sorry,” it said meekly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” It was the voice of a young woman, or perhaps of a teenage girl. Might it be her?
Dylan straightened and partially relaxed, but remained ready to defend himself if he had to. “That’s okay,” he replied, embarrassed at having been caught off gua
rd like that. No one had ever been able to do that to him. Well, not since Tamour anyway.
The girl appeared as little more than an indistinct shadow as she approached through the darkness, coming up the path from the direction of the building adjacent to his own. “Couldn’t sleep through the war games?” she asked.
Dylan still couldn’t make out any of her facial features, but when he saw the Solfleet uniform his hopes began to grow. Then she finally stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight and dashed those hopes just as quickly. Her uniform was Army green and black. Her dark hair and shorter height confirmed it wasn’t her, and then he recognized her as the young woman who worked in the apartment complex’s management office as Solfleet’s liaison to the local housing authority. She was carrying her duty jacket over her arm and her long, straight black hair was flowing freely down her back.
“Actually,” he responded as he relaxed more completely, “I didn’t hear the war games until I came outside.”
She stopped beside the bench. “Mind if I sit with you, Sergeant Graves?” she asked.
Dylan gestured toward the bench, inviting her to do so. He waited for her to sit down first, then joined her. “You work here in the office, don’t you?” he asked her, just to start a conversation. There was nothing he hated more when crossing paths with someone familiar than that uneasy silence that occurred when neither he nor the other person knew quite what to say.
“That’s right,” she answered with a polite smile.
“That’s how you know my name.”
She nodded. “Right again.”
“You didn’t just get off work, I hope.”
“No,” she answered, grinning as if the very idea were totally ridiculous. “I stayed home all night after work, so I didn’t bother to change.”