by Natalie Reid
His eyes caught hers, a wary expression held inside. “It was a mistake. Just forget it.” He took a step back to the door.
“You can tell me anything Tom,” she said, not wanting him to leave.
His hand reached for the doorknob, and he looked at it sadly. “Not this.”
He slipped out the door, and soon she was across the room, calling out, “Wait!”
He hurried to the door across the hall, used his key to open it, and shut the door behind him. She stared at the closed door in an expression of anger and sadness. A scientist walking down the hall eyed her in suspicion, and she realized she couldn’t use her key to open up the door without drawing attention to how she got one in the first place.
Resting a hand on the door, she breathed out, “Bye Tom,” before walking away.
She gripped her fists into her pockets as she walked down the hall, wondering why it was so much harder to live after being brought back from the dead. Life had never seemed this complicated the first time around.
Chapter 10
Paid to Leave
The small confines of her room, and its four close walls and simple cot had never felt more comforting to Jessie. She lay on her bed, closed her eyes, and pretended that nothing had happened since the last time she had slept here. She hadn’t crashed, hadn’t been exposed to that Bandit smoke, hadn’t met Ben or Tom. After several minutes passed, she sat up and shook her head. Ual would scold her for doing this. He had always told her that it was unwise to wish anything of your past away. It was the mark of a lazy, unyielding person. To be great was to accept even the hardest facts of the past, and have the strength to work with them.
She had just gotten up from her bed and was standing in front of the window, when there was an impatient rap at her door.
“Guess who?” a voice called out in unrestrained excitement.
She smiled and took one last look at the billowing clouds below the window before going to answer the door. When she opened it, she had barely a second to prepare herself as Trid leapt through the door and wrapped his arms around her in a tight and suffocating hug.
“Trid!” she exclaimed with a laugh.
“I told you you were in for it when you got better!”
It had seemed so long ago, but she remembered with a smile when Denneck had to keep him from jumping on her bed and giving her a hug. She had forced herself to forget about how much she had missed her friends in her time away. They had only been allowed to visit her once or twice because they were on active duty and had no time to leave.
“You didn’t get into too much trouble while I was away?” she asked, stepping back to study her friend and make sure he had no new scars. Her eyes were instantly drawn to a small nick under his eye that was still red with blood.
“What happened there?” she asked, raising a hand to his face.
Trid did not respond in the casual, playful manner that she expected him to. Instead, his face darkened and his shoulders tensed.
“Ah, I just had an argument with Dale. I went to visit my mom on my free time off, and on my way back I ran into him on the streets.” He gave out a bitter-sweet laugh, adding, “I guess he wasn’t happy to see me.”
He tried to lighten up and play it off as he normally would, but Jessie knew that he was extremely sensitive when it came to his twin brother. Trid and Dale were part of a very few group of people that could say they had a sibling. Most women only gave birth to one Potentian, if any, and after twelve years of being their Protector, didn’t care to go through it again. But Dale and Trid had been twins, and their mother couldn’t bear to terminate one and not the other. So special arrangements were made before they were born. It was rare, but not unheard of, for a Potentian to be hooked up to his father and not his mother. The child took much better to the mother, but could still survive with a father as a Protector. They were even said to be stronger because of it. Or, perhaps, that’s just what Dale insisted every time he wanted to gloat in front of his “younger” brother Trid.
People even said that the two brothers would have been identical, if the evolution process hadn’t changed them. Now they were subtly identifiable. Dale was more muscular, and his face was defined in sharp features. Trid, however, was considered bony, and continued to support the baby face he had as a child. But, what drew the brothers even further apart and made one completely different from the other, was the fact that Dale had joined Task Force, while Trid had joined the military. Never before had one family housed members from both sides, and the combination did not mix well.
Jessie gave Trid’s arm a gentle nudge and asked, “Wanna go dump water on his head?”
It was a joke, and he knew it, but his smile was forced and fleeting. No matter how many times they fought, she knew that Trid felt it was special to have a brother.
“Trid, I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head.
Finally the smile came back to his boyish face. “You’re not gonna let an agent like him ruin your first day back are ya?”
“You kidding? I was planning on an elaborate heist to raid the kitchen and make off with all the pudding packets.”
Trid slung his arm around her and led her quickly out of the room. “The heist will have to wait. First you have to come see what me and Aaron did.”
He led her through the hallways as quickly as he could, heading towards their hangar. For a moment she thought about telling him that she wasn’t cleared for active duty, and so wouldn’t be able to fly, but she decided that she’d tell him later. He seemed so happy, like a bouncing kid with a secret, and she didn’t want to spoil his fun just yet.
When they came out in the hangar, at first she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at. Everything seemed to be in its rightful place. Then she realized that that was the problem. Everything was just how she remembered it, including her plane, stationed in between Trid’s and Aaron’s, polished and repaired and ready to go.
Aaron walked out from the underbelly of her plane and threw her a smile. “Sorry we didn’t visit more.” He playfully patted a hand on the metal behind him. “We were a little busy with your boy here.”
She stared in amazement at the two of them, man and plane, and shook her head. “How in the world…” she breathed.
He laughed at her reaction, and wiped his hands on his shirt.
“Told ya she’d like it,” Trid said with a smug nod.
Aaron came over and cuffed him on the side of the head, saying, “It was my idea, you jerk!”
Jessie ignored the two boys as she walked up to her plane and placed a hand on the hollow metal. Slowly she brought her head closer and pressed her ear up against it. She felt a powerful connection with her plane. She and him had gone through the same battles, survived the same crash, recovered from the same injuries. Now they were both back in this hangar, patched up with different parts than when they first started, but still hanging on.
When she turned back around, she found both boys no longer fighting, but watching her expectantly.
“Welcome back, Chance,” Aaron said warmly.
Emotion began to well up in her chest, and rather than let them see it, she stepped forward and slowly wrapped her arms around Aaron. Unlike Trid, Aaron held her softly. He held her like she had just come out of her crash and didn’t want to bruise or break anything. Before, Jessie might have blushed and felt uncomfortable at being held so tenderly, but now she took it as another reason why she should be glad to still be alive.
“How ‘bout giving it a test run?” Trid asked when she pulled away from Aaron.
Her face fell and she rubbed at her neck. “Actually, I’m not cleared for combat yet. Lieutenant Carver’s placed me on paid leave.”
“What?!” her two friends voiced simultaneously.
“That’s crazy!” Trid stated.
“They’re really going to ground their best pilot?” Aaron exclaimed.
“Has Carver gotten his head checked out recently?”
Suddenly a
voice boomed from behind them. “The mental fitness of my brain is no concern of yours, Trid.”
The young soldier winced in guilt as he slowly turned around to see his Lieutenant standing there.
Carver stared at him harshly, saying, “I would worry a little more about the health of yours, since it sees no problem in allowing you to insult your superior officers.”
“Yes sir,” Trid said humbly.
Before the matter could be taken further, Carver turned to Jessie, saying, “Follow me.”
She nodded and dutifully fell in step closely behind him. Of course, she wanted more time to spend with her friends, knowing that they would be ordered to go out soon. But she wasn’t about to argue with Carver, not when he held the fate of her future in his hands.
When they reached his office, he began to go over the terms of her paid leave. He ordered her to be back at the base by nine o’clock each night, to report for several hours of clean-up duty in the mornings, and to refrain from piloting any aircraft. Once she had agreed to all of these terms, she thought he was about to dismiss her, when his expression changed. A look of honesty crossed his face. It was something that she had only seen on very rare occasions.
“I know you must not like me very much for keeping you from active duty.”
“No sir,” she replied simply. “That’s not true.”
His shoulders, which always seemed wound up in stiff tension, sagged a little as he rested his arms on his desk. His voice, however, was just as commanding as he said, “I took the liberty of bringing someone up here. He’s just in with Commander Hender now, but I told him to come here when he’s finished.”
She creased her forehead in confusion. She couldn’t understand why Carver would bring someone up to the base for her. And for what purpose? Certainly it couldn’t have been to cheer her up.
She softly cleared her throat, asking, “Who, sir?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot my name already!” an amused voice commented from behind her.
She swung around to see Ual standing in the doorway, holding a brown box under one arm.
“Owl!” she exclaimed with a smile. She wanted to rush over to him and give him a hug, but her Lieutenant was still in the room.
Then, as if he could sense her apprehension, Carver stood up and excused himself. Jessie glanced briefly at the man that had so suddenly surprised her, before running over to Ual and crushing him in a hug.
“Oh! Jessie girl,” Ual said, pulling away. “You’re going to shatter your present!”
“I don’t care about the present, Owl.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I should hope you would! I spent a long time searching for it!”
He extended the box out to her, and she looked down at it, asking, “Why are you giving me this? My birthday’s not till the end of the year.”
“Well, when Carver called and asked me to come up, I figured I couldn’t wait that long to give this to you.”
Jessie gingerly took the box in her hands and placed her fingers around a string that had been carefully tied around it. Instead of pulling on it to unwrap the present, she looked back up to Ual, asking, “What did he say to you?”
“Who, Carver?” He shook his head. “It was a little odd. He didn’t really ask, so much as order me to come up. Of course, I didn’t need to be told twice!”
She bit her lip in thought, but Ual urged her to open up her gift, saying, “Go on; put me out of my suspense!”
She smiled at him teasingly and began to disentangle the string from the box. She let the brown paper fall from its surface. The flaps at the top of the box parted slightly, and she caught a glimpse of what was inside. Her heart caught in her throat, and her hand froze just above the top of the box.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get this to you,” he said. “The government is very careful in erasing what it doesn’t want found. In fact, I only found this by a happy accident.”
Jessie felt a lump forming in the back of her throat, and her eyes were stinging with tears. It had been years since she last cried, but she knew there was no way she was going to stop it now. Her hand shook as she reached in the box and pulled out a simple wooden picture frame.
The photo inside was not digital. It did not disappear and reappear in perfect high-definition quality like the one in Tom’s lab. In fact, this photo was grainy and washed of almost all its color, but it was, without a doubt, the most beautiful picture she had ever seen.
She wiped furiously at her eyes so she could see the face in the picture more clearly. It was a face that she hadn’t seen since the morning she first evolved. She remembered with painful clarity how she felt when she was taken to all those rooms in the Bank of Social Numbers and forced to take test after test. She had hurried through each one, just hoping that she would get to see this face at the end. Yet here she was, nearly ten years later, and this was the first time since then that she was able to look upon her mother’s face.
Her shoulders began to shake in silent sobs, and Ual stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. She hugged the picture to her chest and buried her face in his shoulder. She did not hear herself cry, but she knew she must be because the fabric of his shirt was growing wetter around her face.
Then, hearing a creak down the outside hallway, she hastily pulled away from him. She waited a moment for someone to come walking down the hall, but when no one did, she turned her attention back to Ual.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice weak from crying. She placed a hand on the darkened part of his shirt from where her tears had stained it.
“It’s just a shirt, Jessie girl,” he told her gently. “I can put my jacket back on so no one will see.”
She gulped down a stream of hot tears and looked once more at her mother’s picture. “How did you find this?”
“You’ll never believe it!” he started. “I hardly believe it myself! I was in my house one evening when suddenly there was a knock on my door. I looked out to find a package waiting on my doorstep. When I opened it, there was a book inside. An actual printed book! It was entitled Advancements of Aero City, and there was a note on the front that said: Delivered by your request. I thought there must have been some mistake. I looked to the address on the package and, sure enough, it had been meant for the next house over. But my curiosity had been piqued, so I started to flip through the pages, and that’s when I saw…”
She looked up to see that Ual was wiping a hand across his eyes.
“It was in a section about Aero City expansion,” he continued. “There was a picture of a small team of government workers from the Expedition Branch standing in the forest just outside the city, and your mother was one of them. I cut it out and found a way to enlarge it. I know the quality’s not that great, but…”
Jessie reached forward and gripped Ual’s hands. “Thank you so much. This is… it’s…”
“I know,” he said, giving her a warm smile.
She gave him another hug, and realized that it was probably time to leave Carver’s office. As they walked down the hallway, Ual warned her to keep the picture hidden—not to tell anyone about it. Jessie would have done so even if he hadn’t told her to. Though the picture of her mother filled her with such a wide range of emotions, she still kept a level-head, enough to realize that this picture was a message. Someone had sent that book to Ual specifically knowing that he would find this picture. There were only two possibilities that Jessie could think of for doing this. The first was that they realized Ual’s sympathy towards her and her mother, and gave him the book as a present. The second was that he was given the book as a test to see what he would do with it.
When Jessie said goodbye to him later that night and watched as his transport ship faded in with the rest of the lights of Aero City, she began to worry. Ual had once told her that she didn’t know all the players in the game she was playing. Well, there was someone out there pulling strings and making moves, and this time Ual found himself in the dark as well.
* * *
The next morning, after reporting to the mess-hall for clean-up duty and suffering through several “accidental” breakfast spills by Trid, she was free to spend her day however she wished. For the nearly ten years she had spent in the military, she did not have many opportunities to go down into Aero City. In fact, her recent stay at BLES was her longest trip away from the air-base.
As she rode the transport ship from their hangar to a ground station on the outskirts of the city, she stared out the window, taking in every piece of scenery she could. When they were still high enough in the sky, she could see the rugged and rocky mountain peaks in the distance beyond the borders of the city. She used to look at those peaks as the guardians of Aero City. As a child, she would imagine what it would be like up at the top of those mountains. She would imagine herself braving the climb up there, getting whipped by the howling wind and blowing snow, but finding something up at the top that made it all worth it; a ray of light, a lush meadow, her father. Especially her father. He would be a calm looking man with kind eyes, and he would explain to her that he had been watching her from this mountain peak the whole time, never taking his eyes off her.
Jessie turned her head away from the snowy summits and narrowed her eyes at the boarders of the city’s southern agricultural district. A childish hope sprang up in her mind that she might visit the location of her old home, but she immediately quelled it. Jessie didn’t consider herself special, but she at least accepted the fact that the government was closely watching her. Going back to her old house would just make them more suspicious.
The mid November air was sharp and biting as she stepped off the transport ship, yet the city looked dull and gray. Some people joked that Aero City just didn’t do mornings. It was sluggish and tired and only looked like a mess of cement and steel bracings in the morning. The only things of any real consequence happened in the night, when the city was lit up and people generally agreed that it was safe to indulge themselves in the things they couldn’t during the day.