Countdown (The Shadow Wars Book 9)

by S. A. Lusher

  “Wow...I'm sorry,” Allan muttered awkwardly.

  “I know. But that wasn't the only problem. I loved you, I did, I really did...but love wasn't enough. When I realized that I was changing, it made me...really worried. It made me think about the future. You were my first serious boyfriend, Allan, and...I...panicked, when I thought I might be stuck in the relationship.” She looked away. “That's what kind of motivated me to...do what I did. It was a super shitty thing to do, but part of me was kind of hoping you'd find out so that you would break up with me, so that I wouldn't have to break up with you. I didn't know it would go that far and obviously I was being not only stupid as fucking hell but incredibly selfish.”

  She took a deep breath and let out it in a heavy sigh, looking at him again. “I should have broken up with you. Or, at least, I should have tried harder to make the relationship work...somehow. I don't know if you came here looking for an apology, but I do have one to give. I've been wanting to apologize for fourteen years. I'm so sorry. I regret it so much. I wish I could take it back, I wish I would have had the guts to break up with you myself.”

  “I forgive you,” Allan said. “And I'm sorry. I do remember being angry. And hating. I've...never really been a happy person. For as long as I can remember. I don't really know why. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired, but I'm making a real effort to get happier. And I am sorry for negatively impacting your life and dragging you down with me.”

  “I forgive you, too,” Amy replied.

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They simply stared at each other from across the table. Then, Allan's mind seemed to catch on something, something he had seen earlier but not really registered, as his mind had been too busy to catch on other things. Slowly, he glanced down at her left hand.

  And he saw it.

  She followed his gaze. She was wearing a wedding ring.

  “How long have you been married?” he asked.

  “Two years now,” she said, quietly.

  “How is it?”

  “It's great. He's...fantastic,” she said. She laughed uncomfortably. “Feels a little weird talking about my successful marriage with you...”

  “It's okay. Who is he? What does he do? How did you meet?”

  “I moved here about five years ago, after I got sick and tired off all the shit on Frontier. I wanted somewhere that was the polar opposite, somewhere quiet and peaceful. Somewhere where I could actually hear myself think, get my life sorted out...”

  Allan remembered thinking the exact same thing to himself when he'd moved to Lindholm. Apparently, it had actually worked for Amy.

  “My parents had only ever successfully saved up for a single vacation. They took it here. I was eight when I came here. I thought it was...heaven. Paradise. I never wanted to leave and I never forgot it. So I did the research, I knew I could get a job here if I tried. I managed to put myself through two years of tech courses after we split. I sold everything I owned and bought a ticket here and put down a deposit on a tiny apartment. I had enough money saved to last two months...and that was if I didn't buy any furniture.

  “It was terrifying, but also exhilarating. Everyone here is just so fucking...nice. It's nuts. I started picking up little jobs here and there. Fixing this and preforming maintenance on that. Making money in bits and pieces. I still do it. I've got a few more permanent gigs, but I love freelancing. I love that people come up to me and ask me to fix things for them. Everyone likes me here. Everyone knows me here. A year in, I met a guy who opened up his own guided tour of the island. I went on it just as he was starting out. We hit it off. His name is Daniel. He's...great. Happy, easygoing, laid back, funny. We dated for two years, then he proposed and we got married about two years ago. We've got a place together on the other side of town.”

  “That's...awesome,” Allan said. Again, he was surprised by how little it hurt. If this was even a month ago, he wasn't sure he'd be able to handle this conversation at all. He knew it was selfish but he also recognized it was human to see someone you once loved more than you loved your own life happy with someone else, that that someone else was doing what you apparently never could. He could really understand why he'd tried to kill himself. It obviously hadn't been the right choice, but he could at least understand it.

  “What about you?” she asked suddenly. “What are you doing? How are you doing?”

  “I'm okay,” he replied. “Better now. I work for Security-Investigations. Security side for thirteen years, Investigations for the past year. I'm pretty good at it.”

  “And...”

  “And...what?”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “Oh, heh. Yeah. I'm...seeing a woman. We've been together for about a month now. It's gotten kind of serious lately. A bit quick, I know, but...well, she's SI too and we lead kind of a dangerous lifestyle. When guys are shooting at you more often than not it kind of leads you to cut to the quick and hang on to what makes you happy. Her name is Callie.”

  “Is she here too?”

  “...yeah. We're staying in a hotel room, though I planned on leaving tonight.”

  Amy seemed to consider something for a moment. “Maybe...maybe we could all get together,” she said, a little uncertainly. “Do a double-date kinda thing...”

  But Allan was shaking his head, and she smiled sadly. “You're right,” she said, quietly. “This should be goodbye.”

  “It should,” he replied.

  They both stood up and walked out of the gazebo together. For a moment, they stood in front of it, staring at each other.

  Amy reached out and hugged him. He hugged her back, holding onto her for a moment. Then they let go of each other and took a step back.

  “Goodbye, Amy,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Allan.”

  She turned and started walking away into the warm sunshine. Allan watched her go. Then, before she had fully disappeared from sight, he turned and began walking back towards the hotel. Towards his new life. Towards Callie.

  NECROPOLIS 4 – TERMINAL

  CHAPTER 01

  Cold.

  The entire universe was cold. And dark.

  He awoke encased in an icy cocoon of endless obsidian, his mind stripped of logic, reason and memory. For a segment of time that could have been half of a second or an entire era, he was floating in pure nothingness. His mind was empty. Not even confusion took up residence. For that moment, there was absolutely nothing.

  Then, as it was with the Big Bang so long ago, a seed of emotion popped into existence. Something from nothing. The seed grew exponentially. It was fear. Unfiltered, raw, blind terror. He tried to move, to surge up, but he couldn't. His body was a prison of numb flesh. His senses told him nothing. He couldn't feel, hear, smell, see or taste. But the fear grew and grew, forcing him into action, any action.

  The first thing that came to him, like a precious beacon of light, an anchor to latch onto, was his name.

  Mark Collins.

  Marcus Edward Collins.

  It was a cold splash of water across the fiery torrents of his mindless terror. It calmed him for just a moment, enough for him to realize that he could actually feel something. There was something on his face, sealed over his mouth and nose. Knowledge floated to him: there was an oxygen mask helping him breathe.

  Why the hell did he have an oxygen mask on him?

  Mark tried to gather his thoughts, but it was like walking through quicksand. He tried moving again. This time, there was a response. He could move, there was nothing actually restraining him, it was just that his body was weak. Why? So many questions. Where the hell was he? He still couldn't see anything but he began to get an idea that he was inside of something. This awareness made him feel claustrophobic, made the terror that had begun to recede swell once more and he jerked his arms up. This time, it worked.

  In the sense that he actually moved his arms.

  All he got for this effort, unfortunately, was a dull, distant pain he slammed the back of his wrist
s up against some hard, unyielding surface. That only made things worse. He cried out, his own voice sounding hoarse and muffled and pitiful, and he started thrashing around. It felt like he was in a cold, metal coffin.

  For a moment, he went away, lost completely in his panicked litany of mute pain and sharp anxiety. Eventually, he exhausted himself. He lay there in the perfect darkness, chest swelling and receding, and he jerked again as the atmosphere he was being fed became very cold. For a moment, blind panic forced him to pull the mask away from his face. Reason quickly made him put it back. The air was still air...it was just cold.

  Mark tried once again to calm himself.

  He was trapped. That much was obvious. But he could reason this out. Well, it didn't really matter whether or not he felt up to it, he had to. Or he would remained trapped. Maybe someone would come for him...why was he even here in the first place? Where was here? Mark closed his eyes. Visibly, there was no change, but the mere act of doing it helped him think, helped him focus. Okay, okay...he was inside of some metal thing, hooked up to oxygen, and it had suddenly become cold. That sparked a thought somewhere inside his brain.

  Almost all stasis tanks had emergency protocols. If the oxygen you were on ran out, then the tank would open up vents along its exterior and start attempting to draw oxygen from the environment around you. Not an ideal scenario if there was no atmosphere around you or if it was compromised somehow, but it was better than suffocating for sure, which you would do if the vents didn't open and your oxygen had run out. So if it was cold outside of the tank, it would make sense that the air being vented in would be cold if this is what had happened. It didn't quite answer any questions, but it helped focus him.

  It also gave him another idea.

  Oxygen vents weren't the only emergency protocols in stasis tanks, which he was beginning to suspect that he was in. You could get out from the inside if you absolutely had to. There was an emergency switch or a button somewhere...

  They would put it in a place that was technically reachable but you wouldn't likely bump into on accident. Mark calmed himself to the best of his ability and began reaching around, feeling along the smooth, chilled interior of the tank. Where was it...where was it....He felt a familiar panic beginning to return when, suddenly, he found it. He could just barely get his arm up over his head. The tank had rounded edges and corners and as he felt along the top, near his head, he found an abnormality. It felt like a button.

  He pushed it.

  At first, he couldn't get it to go in and the panic nearly rose up and consumed him. He pushed harder and suddenly there was a loud click. Relief surged through him as the lid popped open and a thin gray light leaked in through the cracks. Movement was still difficult, but he was highly motivated. Mark pushed up against the lid, realizing that whatever thing he must be in had to be lying flat on the floor somewhere.

  He strained and groaned, his muscles feeling weak, sluggish and unresponsive, but he with a final, powerful shove the lid swung up and over. A dull clang sounded as it hit metal. Pulling the mask away, Mark sat straight up, straining to see the world around him. He gasped, trying to catch his breath, finally free of the claustrophobic environment. It was difficult to see. Wherever he was, the light level was very low and a soft gray mist seemed to obscure everything. But what he could see confused the hell out of him.

  A field of stasis tanks surrounded him.

  Slowly, painfully, he stood up, trembling. Only no, he wasn't trembling, he was shivering. He was freezing. In fact, he was so cold that he'd gone beyond cold and fallen directly into numb. Not good. His legs were weak and he tried to step out of the thing that had been his tomb, but his foot caught on the metal lip and he stumbled forward. Crying out, arms flailing, he barely managed to keep from smashing his face on the adjacent pod by bringing his hands up. Dull pain shot up through arms as he caught himself, his palms smashing against the other pod, his knees banging on the cold metal floor. He let out a hoarse bark of misery.

  Mark sat down heavily, clutching his knees to his chest, trying to get his strength back. He felt lost. Utterly, completely lost. Where the hell was he? He tried to remember and found that he could actually recall where he was supposed to be. He was a technician, a sort of jack-of-all-trades tech hired by a corporation that specialized in biological research. The Axiom Corporation. He was aboard...the Cimmerian.

  A deep space research vessel. If he remembered right, they were supposed to gather specimens from distant planets and look for...something. He didn't know the details, though that wasn't because of faulty memory, it was because he hadn't ever really looked too hard into it. He was a tech. All he needed to know was how the systems worked and how to fix them. And, well, this at least resembled the ship he'd been on.

  For all he knew, however, he could be on a completely different ship or even a space station or...anywhere. But why was in a damned stasis chamber? Where did they all come from? If he had to guess, he'd say he was in a cargo bay or...something. Mark sighed and tried standing up again. It was still difficult, but not as bad as last time. When he was sure that he wouldn't topple over, he rubbed his eyes and tried to look around again. This time, some of the fog in his head had cleared and the mist and low light level didn't seem quite so intimidating. He spied a door across the way. Well, it was as a good a place to go as any, so why not?

  Mark slowly navigated the maze of stasis pods until he reached the door. With numb fingers, he hit the open button. The door opened, mercifully, to a locker room. Not only was it marginally brighter, it was a reasonable temperature. Unfortunately, a reasonable temperature for him meant almost unbearably hot. Mark looked slowly around the room. The walls were covered in slim gray lockers, almost all of them closed. Metal benches sat in silent rows in front of the lockers. There were three doors, one of the far right that turned out to be locked and another two to the left, one of which led to a shower area, another leading to a communal bathroom.

  Mark desperately wanted a shower, but he also knew it was a bad idea to throw hot water on a practically frozen body. Since this wasn't exactly an emergency, he walked, stiff-legged, to the bathroom, stood in front of one of the urinals and took an incredibly long piss. It was about this time that he realized that he was naked.

  The fact that it had taken him this long to realize it was startling in and of itself.

  Mark finished pissing and walked to the nearest sink, washing his hands quickly. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked pale, and maybe a bit thinner, though he couldn't be sure, but otherwise he looked okay. No bruises or cuts or scrapes...so why couldn't he remember what the hell had happened to him?

  For now, thinking was still too hard.

  Mark turned away from the mirror. His temperature was slowly returning to normal. He retreated back to the locker room and began searching the open lockers. There were only a handful of them. The first was empty, the second was just a scattering of random crap that tended to accumulate in lockers given enough time, none of it useful. The third locker, however, was a jackpot. He found a blue jumpsuit, the kind he'd gotten used to wearing on this job since it was standard issue for all technicians, and some boxers, socks and a nice, sturdy pair of black boots. Mark knelt and gathered these items up in his arms.

  Before he did anything else, he knew he'd need a shower. His head was still fuzzy, his brain feeling like it was wrapped in wool or clouds maybe. It was how he sometimes felt when he woke up after not getting enough sleep...or getting way too much. A hot shower always helped clear his head. He walked into the shower room, finding about a dozen stalls ringing the exterior of the room. Setting the clothing down on a counter near the door, Mark selected the nearest stall and turned on the water, making sure to preheat it to a comfortable temperature so that it wouldn't come out in a stream of frigid water. Although that would wake him up, too.

  For a long while, five or maybe ten minutes, he simply stood there and let the water wash over him. As he did, his brain slowly came b
ack online. Before long, he grabbed a bar of soap and cleaned himself off. He quickly washed his short dark hair, then turned off the water and stepped out. After a moment of hunting, he located a towel, dried off and pulled on the clothes. As he finished zipping the jumpsuit into place, he surmised that he felt a lot better.

  And that made him very scared.

  Now that the confusion was mostly gone, he could fully appreciate just how fucking bizarre his situation was.

  He had apparently been kidnapped, knocked out, stripped naked and stuffed into a stasis tube for...who knew how long. And, by the looks of all those tubes out there, it seemed that he wasn't the only one.

  It seemed his course of action was obvious.

  Mark headed back out into the main bay.

  * * * * *

  Jennifer North snapped her eyes open.

  An uncertain figure was standing over her and something was attached firmly to her face. She was groggy, disoriented. The figure was saying something but the words were distorted for the moment, distant somehow.

  She reached up, her limbs somewhat unresponsive but not unworkable, and pulled at the thing attached to her face. An oxygen mask. Why? Had something happened? She realized she was cold. No, freezing, actually. She sat up.

  “Who are you?” she asked warily as the face came into focus.

  A thin, pasty-looking man with short dark hair wearing a blue jumpsuit stood cautiously next to her. Jennifer realized she was in a tank of some kind. It reminded her of a coffin.