by Natalie Reid
Now his tablet lay discarded on his desk, and Denneck stood by his window, staring out at the clouds that had formed underneath the air base. His fingers gripped at the window ledge, and the heart-beat in his fingertips pressed hard against the cold metal frame.
The numbers on the Bandit fighter had been ones that haunted his dreams for many years. Yet, it had been the first time he actually encountered them in the field, and it was leaving a profound effect on him.
Her name had been Rachael. She had once been beautiful; she had once loved him, and her name had once been Rachael. They had flown in the same squadron together, had always watched each other’s backs. But then she got herself into something that he couldn’t bail her out of, and she had been taken up to that black cloud in space. Then Denneck found that, one day he had loved a girl, and the next he had to go back up in the skies and fight an enemy she was now a part of. Ever since then, each Bandit he’s shot down, each time he aims his gun, he’s afraid that it might be her he’s shooting at.
The image on the screen disappeared for a moment as his tablet beeped. He walked over to find a message waiting for him, telling him to report to Lieutenant Carver. Denneck pressed his palms into his eyes until they hurt, and then pocketed his tablet and made for his door.
He found Carver waiting for him in his office. His tablet was out on the table, and it seemed to have been playing video of Jessie’s crash as well.
“Sergeant,” Carver said when he walked in. “It’s come to my attention that you knew the Bandit that took down your soldier’s plane.” He paused before asking, “That’s not going to be a problem for you, is it?”
Denneck shook his head, tried to wet his tongue by touching it to the top of his mouth, and voiced a brief, “No.”
“Right,” he said with a stiff nod. “Good. That’s all I wanted to see you about.”
Instead of leaving right away, Denneck rubbed absently at his forehead and stared at a corner of the room. “I was thinking, sir,” he started carefully, “with everything happening with Jessie…”
At the mention of her name, Carver shook his head and placed a fist on the table. “I would not put too high a hope on the outcome of her recovery.”
“But, if she could be saved from the Bandit, then others could be turned back as well.”
“Listen to me, Denneck,” he snapped out in an abrupt tone of anger. “You need to let go of the irrational hope you carry that you’ll ever get your girl back.”
Denneck’s mouth fell slightly in surprise. He didn’t think Carver had known about that.
“And as for Jessie,” he continued, “a whole number of reasons could be behind why she isn’t a Bandit right now. Most importantly, we don’t know if she’ll continue to make it. We can’t go around placing hopes on the entirety of the Bandit army based on the outcome of one case. I know that Jessie has been an extremely valuable asset to your squadron, but you’re confusing small scale importance with life-changing ones.”
“With all due respect, sir, I think you’re underestimating what’s going on with her.”
Carver shook his head. “Not once in the nine years she’s been here have I ever underestimated her. I know her full potential. Ending the war with the Bandits is just not part of it. Now, I’m ordering you not to let her back on this base unless I give you the clearance.”
“You’re acting as if she’s not even going to make it!” Denneck turned away from his Lieutenant and shook his head.
“She probably won’t.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little bit cold?” he said, snapping his head back to face him.
Carver took in a breath through closed lips, as if trying to subdue his temper, before responding. “You know, before seventy-five percent of the world died in the Contamination, military standards were a lot stricter. Officers could put personal feelings aside and concentrate on the duty at hand. And they were a lot more effective at their job than we are at ours. So you can call me cold, Denneck, but I’m an essential part to what’s keeping us alive.”
* * *
The recovery room that Jessie was given was supposed to act as her own personal home away from home. Since she had lived in a military base nearly all of her evolved life as a human, she never really had a nicely furnished room. So the one she was assigned to at BLES took a bit of an adjustment. It seemed nearly anything she touched turned something on. In fact, just touching the walls actually changed them into a different color. Jessie had tapped them several times before deciding on a plain, soft white color. However, when she climbed into bed and rested her head against the backboard, the wood bumped into the wall, and the color turned to a bright green.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she bunched her hand into a fist and punched the wall again. Now it was pink. She hit the wall even harder. It turned into a tropical rainforest, and when she looked up to the ceiling, she could see mist coming in through the canopy of trees. She banged her fist on the wall two more times, this time sitting up in bed and swinging around to directly confront the wall. It turned to orange, then the black and starry night sky. She continued to pound over and over, but it seemed that there was no end to the amount of colors that the wall could turn into, and that soft white that had looked so perfect before now seemed lost in the endless array of designs spewing out of the wall.
After several minutes of pounding, she let out a frustrated growl, left her room in a striped brown and orange pattern, and made for her door. More than two weeks had passed since her crash, and she found that she could walk around more easily now. In fact, her breathing only felt strange on rare occasions, and she found that each day she was allowed to walk around, she felt immensely better.
As she padded out into the hall this night, at one in the morning, she felt as if she never wanted to lie back down again. Her legs were beginning to feel stronger, and just standing upright helped clear the haze in her head. It may have been soon, but she felt the transformation back to her old self was nearly complete. Now all she really wanted to do was to get back up in the skies.
Jessie walked up and down the length of the hallway several times. There was hardly anything to do in the day, and so at night she felt just as restless. Perhaps the worst part was that a key was needed to open up each door. Each scientist at BLES had one. They were small cylindrical objects filled with a blue liquid that could be punched inside of a circular hole in the wall next to every door.
She had been given one a few days ago. At the very top read the words: visitor. She had been excited to receive it, only to find out that a visitor’s key could only open very few doors, and only in specified hours. This meant that, at one in the morning, her visitor’s key was virtually useless.
She was about to give up her pacing and head back inside her room, when the door to her right made a quiet clicking noise, indicating that someone was about to open it. Jessie ducked into her room before the door could open all the way. She peeked out as a man in a blue lab-coat passed by. When he was only several paces from her, she slipped from her door, closed it silently behind her, and crouched out into the hallway. She stayed low to the floor and watched the man intently as he came closer to the door at the end of the hall.
Just as he pulled out his cylinder key to press into the slot, she slipped hers from around her neck and placed it on the ground. Soon the man went through, and the door was beginning to close. As it made its progress back to its frame, Jessie slid the cylinder across the polished floor, relying partly on the accuracy she learned as a pilot and sharp-shooter, and partly on dumb luck. But she wasn’t called Chance for nothing, and just as the door was about to close shut, the cylinder key slid into the door-way and kept it open a few centimeters. It wouldn’t be enough to draw suspicion from the other side, and Jessie could wait for the scientist to walk out of sight before fully opening the door.
When she finally did step out, she was in the main center of BLES headquarters. She had been wheeled around it plenty of times before, but for
some reason it seemed even more amazing now that she was by herself. The layout of the building was structured so that five segments branched off from the main circle. It was built this way because in the center stood the main BLES database. This was the sight that was truly amazing. Much like the cylinder keys, the main database was a large tower filled with blue liquid. It stretched from the bottom floor, all the way to the ceiling, and even rose beyond that so that those looking from far away could see the very tip of the blue tower.
Jessie was on the seventh floor of ten, on the second section of the building called the Sap Complex. Tom had once tried to explain to her that it was a play on the name Homo sapiens, because this part of BLES dealt with all things human, but Jessie still thought it was a horrible name.
There was a railing that circled around the blue database, a structure that most scientists referred to as The Eye, and Jessie could walk its circumference and find the entrance to each of the five branches. She hadn’t really been outside of the Sap Complex. Her initial operating room was located there, as well as her current recovery room and Tom’s laboratory. But the other sections were somewhat of a mystery to her. All she knew was that the first section was reserved for Aero Government work, the fifth section was for military advancement, and the third was for electronics and mechanical advancement.
Walking along the outside corridor, she stayed below the railing that prevented people from falling down, and kept an ear out for anyone that might be walking nearby. So far, aside from that first scientist, she was the only one up at this time of night.
When she came to the third complex, she found a locked door with a cylinder key hole. Obviously her visitor’s pass would not open it up. But she wasn’t about to turn around and go back to her room. She knew she wouldn’t get any sleep if she went back now. So she kept along the railing, pausing at a few intervals to look up and past The Eye to make sure that no one else was patrolling the corridor. Apparently so much security was required to get in that they didn’t bother to put much inside…at least, to her knowledge.
Jessie almost walked right past the forth section, when the name on the plaque drew her back.
The Desolar Complex.
It was hard to believe she had almost forgotten about it. Her encounter with the Potentian had felt so intense, yet her mind appeared to have worked hard to try and forget it. But here it was again, just begging to be re-opened. And the strangest thing was that there was no hole in the wall, no slot where a key could be inserted. Could it be that anyone inside of BLES could just waltz in and open the door?
She tested the handle to the large door. It turned and gave way. Jessie couldn’t believe her good fortune, but instead of trying to analyze it any further, she slipped inside and entered the Desolar Complex.
Unlike the rest of BLES, the walls here were not blinding white, but a painful gray. This gray was just as harsh, and almost mimicked the color of metal. She reached her hand out to touch the wall, half expecting it to be smooth and cold like the metallic surface it so well resembled, but it proved to be nothing more than plaster.
There were no doors on either side of the hallway that she entered, just one at each end. She was about to start forward when she noticed a blue dot up in the far corner of the corridor. It was the sign of a camera. Glancing up, she saw there was another one in the corner above her. Both cameras each moved from side to side, but she realized that there was a big enough dark zone in between that she could run across the hallway and make it through the other side without being caught on camera.
She took a deep breath and stared up at the camera. It swung out and then in. She waited. Out… The second it swung back in, she sprinted across the hall. Her eyes flicked to the other camera half-way through. She did not slow down, seeing that she would be crossing over into another dark zone. And then, one second later, she was at the other end of the hallway and through the door. She had begun to smile to congratulate herself on how easy the whole thing really was, when she caught sight of what waited for her beyond the door.
The light in the Desolar Complex was dim to say the least. It did not flicker, for there was nothing wrong with it. Yet the light was turned down so low that it made the walls appear dirty in color. There were no blue cameras lights either. It seemed that the initial hallway was the only thing being monitored. Once actually inside the Desolar Complex, it appeared that BLES didn’t want anything to be recorded.
Before her was a long hallway that gave the impression of stretching on forever, with countless doors on either side. These doors were metal, and had square windows up at the top. Jessie went over to one and looked inside. There was a small raised box in the corner, like a crib, and she could just barely make out the baby face of a few month-old Potentian poking out through the fabric of the blanket. Standing very closely next to this was a machine. It was the same she had seen Ben wheeling next to him. It bore the mark of a Protector’s Band, and it was this makeshift machine that was keeping the Potentians alive without their real Protectors. This machine, this mechanical Protector, was bolted to the wall, and seemed to be the only measure needed to keep someone from stealing the Potentian. If this child was taken more than a few feet away from the machine, it would die within a matter of minutes.
Jessie managed to tear her eyes away from the room and continue down the hall. She couldn’t bring herself to look into each of the rooms, and she almost hated herself for passing up each and every one of them in search of the Potentian Ben. But there were so many rooms; she knew she didn’t have time to search each one.
She thought back to the day that Tom had received a message from his tablet, and then had left to retrieve Ben. He hadn’t been gone that long. In fact, she doubted if he even needed to change floors. Since his lab had been on the tenth floor, she looked for a staircase and decided to climb up to the top.
The stairwell was rigid and metal, yet wasn’t exactly a staircase at all. It sloped in unnatural angles, inclining not in steps, but in waves. Jessie figured it must have been the easiest way to transport the Potentian machines when the elevators couldn’t be taken.
When Jessie took the wave stairs up as high as they could go, she found herself in yet another hallway. She went to the first door on her right, but the room was empty. She wasn’t sure whether to feel glad about that or not. Then she went to the door on her left. This one contained a small bed, and she instantly recognized the mop of black hair on the pillow. Yet, the boy inside wasn’t asleep. She saw him turn over in his bed and look up at the ceiling. The same dirty dim light of the hallway lit up his room.
Jessie looked down to the door. It seemed she could just push it open. Ben’s machine had been bolted to the wall with a chain, so it would have been superfluous to lock his door. If his machine couldn’t go anywhere, then neither could he.
She stood in front of his room for what felt like ages. She did not have the courage to walk through, but she also found that she couldn’t just leave, not after trying so hard to find him. She sat down in front of his door, folding her legs and suddenly feeling very tired. She rested her head on the metal door, careful not to make a noise, and let out a slow breath. Her hand came up to cradle her head, when suddenly a thought occurred to her.
Earlier in the day, out of boredom, she had found a piece of paper and had folded it into a Sakana. She reached inside her pocket and smiled when she felt the crisp edges of the paper fish. She took it out, turned it over in her hands a few times, and then slid it under the door. She wasn’t sure if Ben had noticed, so she stood up to peek inside the window. Sure enough, the small, black-haired Potentian was sitting up in bed, and went over to retrieve the object that had slid across his floor.
After he bent down to pick it up, Jessie knocked softly on the door. Ben’s bright blue eyes flew to the window, and she turned the corner of her mouth up at him through the glass. Then she raised her hand up so he could see, and pointed to the side of the door. When she saw him give a small nod, she slowly pushed the
door open and stepped inside.
When she was in, she didn’t know what else to say other than, “Hi.”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
It wasn’t a mean or accusative question; it was just simple and emotionless. Jessie didn’t quite know why she was there herself, so instead of answering, she took a seat on the floor in front of the door. Ben slowly walked backwards and took a seat on the edge of his bed. They stared at each other for a few moments before Jessie felt she had to speak.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “And I couldn’t stand being cooped up in my room.”
Ben’s eyes held her gaze stronger than any adult she had ever met, and for the second time she felt he was trying to communicate strictly through his eyes… as if the things he wanted to say did not exist as words yet.
“Does it hurt?” Ben suddenly asked. He pointed with his finger, and she looked down at her chest. “Doctor Tom told me what they had to do to you.” His eyes grew wet with moisture as he said this, though he did not seem as if he was about to cry, just that he was momentarily saddened by his words.
“It did when I first woke up,” she admitted with a smile. “But now I hardly notice it.”
Ben looked down with a nod and fingered the Sakana in his hands.
“My Protector gave me that after I evolved,” she explained. “Well, not that exact one, but the same design. It’s supposed to be a symbol of determination and perseverance.”
Ben flipped it over in his hands three times, as if performing a ritual for wishing, and then looked up and asked, “Why give this to me?”
She was about to shrug her shoulders and brush off his question, when she thought better of it. This boy had been abandoned by his Protector and needed to know that he was still special.