The Terminals

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  “Shut up!” Donnie barked as he and Tegan lowered her to the ground. “She can walk. Get her out of here.”

  “No! I’m staying. Ari!”

  Owen stood by the police car, casting anxious glances at the officer in the backseat. “Hurry up!” he yelled into the field. “He’s sure to have called for backup or an ambulance.”

  Zara and Wally arrived at the Charger to help. They took charge of Jules and led her back to the BMW. Cam stayed, trying to see Ari through the cracked windshield.

  “He’s tangled,” Donnie said. “Let’s just turn this thing over.”

  Donnie hopped down, and, with Tegan, began pushing on the car to turn it upright. Two guys shouldn’t be able to flip a car, Cam thought. But when they set their feet in the dirt and shoved together, the Charger immediately tilted, and then went over with the tortured squealing sound as the ruined passenger door swung on its broken hinges, and a heavy thump as the tires hit the ground.

  “Hurry. Get him out!”

  Donnie was inside. “Come on, teammate,” he was saying. “Hang in there.”

  In spite of Donnie’s encouragement, Ari died. It was clear to Cam as soon as they brought him out. Too wilted. Too broken. He’d seen death several times now, and he found that he recognized it immediately. It was not so much the injuries as an absence of energy. The Ari he’d known radiated life. The body they held was a shell. Empty. Inert. Cam didn’t need to be told. They laid it at his feet, and the head lolled to one side. Donnie listened at his chest, and then felt for a pulse. Finally, he looked up at Cam.

  “Hey man,” he said, “I’m sorry. I know you liked him.”

  That was all. Tegan threw Ari’s body unceremoniously over his shoulder and ran for the cars.

  * * *

  Pilot had them back at the beach in under four hours. Jules was still dazed, either from the horrific events or the sedative Pilot had given her. Cam tried to walk her to her condo, but she shooed him away.

  “I need to think,” she mumbled.

  Ward warned her that thinking too much after a mission wasn’t a good idea. “Just relax for now. Wind down. We’ll debrief in forty minutes,” he said.

  Cam was left to trudge down to his own condo alone. He’d made peace with their losses during the four-hour trip, but the small place still felt empty without Ari. His roommate’s dirty clothes were still piled in the basket beside his footlocker. His notebook still sat on the desk. Cam turned it over, and then picked it up. There would be notes in it, he thought. Smart-guy notes. Strategy and survival notes. Maybe he could learn something that would keep him alive for a few more missions. Cam eased it open. There was indeed writing, and lots of it, the sort that poured out when the hand couldn’t keep up with the brain. Cam flipped through. Months’ worth of hurried-looking script filled page after page. It was a narrative, not just notes. A diary, Cam realized. He flipped through it until he reached a page where Jules’s name caught his eye, and then he read too much before he could stop himself.

  They’d done it. Sex. In the condo before Cam had arrived. Cam wondered what it must be like on TS-9. Three lines later, Ari answered him with a single word. “Unbelievable.” Jules was passionate and emotional, the diary said. Cam believed it. He could immediately picture her demonstrative face showcasing each emotion as it came and went—her big smile so open and welcoming, her oversized eyes so wide with delight, her gasping breaths so deep and abrupt that her eyelids would suddenly mash together tight. She was a bundle of exaggerated feelings. Enhanced feelings. Ari’s physical description of her was also complimentary, almost poetic, like a mortal worshipping a goddess.

  Cam closed the notebook. He suddenly felt guilty peeking in on Jules’s heart and body without her permission. Although she might give me permission now. She and Cam had both lost their roommates. They were both available. It could work. She was sensitive—she’d need companionship, and not the cold sort Zara offered. With Ari gone, Cam was the obvious choice for her anyway, and though she was a little odd looking, she was by no means ugly. Besides, she was the only person who could have left him the suggestive notes.

  He suddenly hated himself for what he was thinking. His best friend was dead, his body only a few hours cold, and Cam was already raiding his memories. Worse, he was using them to make plans to scoop up his girl.

  “You are such an ass,” he swore at himself.

  Then he heard a sound. A sigh or a scrape—he couldn’t tell—but it was definitely under the condo. The burrowing animal, Cam thought. He tossed the notebook on his bunk and hurried outside.

  He stopped short of the hole to study the ground. He had to cock his head and squint to make it out, but when he did, he saw that there was definitely a disturbance in the sand along the beach, a subtle but regular pattern leading from the cliffs to his hut, or vice versa. Some sort of vague tracks, Cam thought.

  He bent to peer under the condo. It was dark, and he had to drop to his hands and knees. He heard a shuffling sound. Something moved deeper into the hole away from him. Something large. He glanced back at the tracks. The sand was swept back and forth. A boa constrictor, maybe. He shuddered and scooted away another foot. He didn’t want whatever it was to come barreling out at him. His eyes were beginning to adjust. He could make out a dark lump in the far end of the hole—not a snake. There was a low growl.

  “Easy there,” Cam cooed. “Don’t want to have to get a dart gun.”

  The thing shuffled its feet, adjusting itself, perhaps for a charge. A large monkey? A boar? Do they have jaguars in the Amazon or leopards? And what’s the difference? Ari would have known, Cam thought. The thing was crouched. Too big for a monkey. It was a jaguar, he decided. Nothing else he knew growled.

  Cam’s heart began to beat faster. He backed away slowly, speaking in a soothing voice, “Okay, Mr. Jaguar, stay cool. I’m going to go get some help.”

  “No!” cried the jaguar.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  23. REVELATION

  by Breathe

  24. GROWTH SPURT

  by The Lucky Ones

  25. MY HEART OR YOURS

  by Love-n-Stuff

  “You were something I didn’t expect…”

  “Who are you?” Cam asked.

  The girl was halfway out and squirming through the sand. “Don’t tell! Please. Don’t call for them.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Cam repeated.

  “My name wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you,” she said, spitting dirt and climbing to her feet.

  She was Caucasian and spoke English. Her physique was slender, with wiry muscles, and she crouched as though ready to bolt or spring. She glanced around the corner of the condo toward the bunker.

  Cam took a step back, wary. “Well, what are you then?”

  “Can I trust you, Cam?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I heard it from under there.”

  “You’ve been spying on me!”

  “Spying.” The word lingered on her tongue, and she looked like she wanted to chuckle, but couldn’t. “Isn’t that what we’re all here for?”

  She was dirty, Cam saw. Her fingernails were black, and her ratty brown-red hair hung over her face like limp yarn. Her worn clothes were ripped in places.

  “You’re the one who left me the notes,” he realized.

  “I left the notes,” she confirmed. “I won’t lie. I need help. Your help. But I’m trying to help you too.”

  She gave him a piteous look. She wasn’t just slender, Cam realized. She was downright skinny. Malnourished.

  “Did you growl at me?” he asked. “Because that was weird.”

  “I was scared.”

  “Me too. I thought you were a jaguar. What did the notes mean? And what do you want? And where the heck did you come from?”

  “So many questions.”

  “Well, maybe you should start answering some of them.”

  “You should be asking questions about your trainers, not
me.”

  “We have asked questions. Lots of them.”

  “Not the right ones.”

  Cam heard a whistle and turned. They were gathering. It was time to debrief with Ward.

  “I have to go,” she said, her eyes darting past him, watching for the others. “I’ll contact you again soon. I have to trust you. Don’t tell them about me.” She was pleading.

  “I trust my teammates more than I trust some stranger who appears from nowhere and sneaks into my hut.”

  “I understand, really I do.” She started up the beach toward thick foliage at the base of the cliffs, wiping her tracks away as best she could considering the hurry she was in. “Because this used to be my hut.”

  Then she was gone. Cam stood for a moment, puzzling over her last words. Then he began to get a sinking feeling. He leaned under the condo, reached in, and felt around. His fingers sifted through sand, but found nothing. Dammit! he thought. She took the diamonds.…

  * * *

  Cam was late, and the room was in an uproar when he walked in. Jules and her powerful emotions and goddess body were up front. She stood, facing Ward, tears pouring down her face. The sedative had obviously worn off.

  “Take me home! I wanna go home! I’m done with this! All of it!”

  Ward was in damage control mode, his arms open in a comforting gesture.

  “Everything is fine.”

  Jules wouldn’t let him near her. She waved her own arms for space, trying to control her breathing. “It’s not fine! It isn’t! My best friend was murdered. My boyfriend was killed in a car wreck.”

  “I can field all of your questions,” he said calmly. “Please sit.”

  “I don’t have questions! I understand ‘dead’!”

  “I have questions,” Cam said.

  Everyone turned at the sound of his voice. They hadn’t seen him enter. Jules stopped sobbing.

  “And I have answers,” Ward said. “Can you help your teammate, Cam?”

  Cam went to her, and she seemed to calm, but when he tried to help her into a chair, she shoved him away and stormed out. Ward let her go.

  “We’re moving on,” he said. “Take your seat, Cam.”

  “I’d rather stand,” Cam said. He didn’t really want to stand, but he didn’t want to take orders just then either.

  “As you wish. Please stand there.” Ward pointed to a space against the wall. “So that everyone can see.”

  It was a compromise. Cam accepted it and moved to the wall.

  “I’d like to start by congratulating you,” Ward said.

  “But the mission was a massive failure,” Cam said.

  “We don’t even know what the mission was,” Wally mumbled.

  “That’s why you’re going to calm down and listen up,” Ward said patiently. “Look, I know this process is hard. You are losing teammates. But stay strong.”

  Donnie glared around the room. “Yeah, shut it and listen to Ward.”

  “The mission,” Ward continued, “was a complete success.”

  They did listen this time. And the statement was so contrary to the experience that Cam wasn’t sure how to argue.

  “We sent you to end the political ambitions of a man secretly backed by militant rebels who would have ousted all foreign businesses from his country and driven his people into poverty. His election is in two weeks. Thanks to you, he was found by local police in a room in a foreign country with a naked young girl. He had her blood on his hands. His knife killed her. And this team right here kept his guards from doctoring the scene until the police arrived.”

  Ward paused to let it all sink in.

  “He was probably traveling anonymously, which will look suspicious. But he won’t be anonymous after the Brazilian police take him into custody. There will be full news coverage. It doesn’t matter whether they find him guilty. The scandal will be enough. His career in politics is over.”

  “How did Calliope get him to stab her?” Owen asked.

  “She stabbed herself,” Ward said, eliciting stunned silence. “Don’t worry, she coated the knife with poison from the dart she was carrying. She will have felt almost nothing.”

  Cam put a hand against the wall to steady himself. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Would you have let her do it?” Ward let the question sink in. “You’re a bunch of heroes. You would have tried to stop her, to ‘save’ her. But this is what she wanted. This was the time she chose. I wasn’t there, but I understand she received a standing ovation.”

  Zara was fascinated. “She died a rock star.”

  “But what about her body?” Donnie asked. “We didn’t recover it.”

  “When we set up the gig, we gave them a phone number. They’ll call it to tell us what happened. The autopsy will be quick—fairly obvious cause of death. We’ll give them instructions to deliver her body.”

  “And Ari? What about him?” Cam asked. Calliope was being efficiently explained away, but he still felt empty, and he wanted something to remain angry about.

  “He drives too fast,” Ward said simply.

  “Drove,” Donnie whispered to Owen. “Past tense.”

  “Killed by a pothole,” Owen snickered back.

  Cam shot them a dirty look.

  Ward held up his fist for attention. “He made a mistake, but he died helping the world and doing something he loved, Cam. His actions were philosophically consistent with our purpose here, and he was precisely on task. He kept the police from detaining all of you at the stadium. Correct?”

  Cam nodded. He had to. Ward was right.

  “Do you see what we’re doing here?” They all nodded, except for Cam. “Do you get it?” They nodded again, satisfied.

  It still felt wrong to Cam, but he couldn’t figure out why.

  Ward saw that he’d won the others over. He looked directly at Cam. “Are we missing something, Cam?”

  Diamonds, Cam thought. He’s missing some diamonds and a note-writing girl from the jungle. Cam wondered if Ward knew he was keeping secrets. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t breaking any of the “unbreakable” rules. But the man sure could stare. Like Zara. Everyone was staring. He felt the collective weight of their gaze. I’m the odd man out, here. Perhaps it was time to ’fess up, he thought. Time to get with the program.

  “Can I talk with you privately?” Cam asked Ward.

  “Of course. We’ll debrief individually. We can talk then.”

  They moved on, and Ward filled in the details of their mission. It all made sense. And except for crappy Brazilian roads, it would have gone exactly as planned. A “variable,” Ward called it. “Unfortunate.”

  When the meeting ended, Ward told them the order of their individual debriefings. Cam was second to last, which meant he had some time, so he went to see Jules. When his turn came, he’d tell Ward about the diamonds and the girl under his condo, he decided. He didn’t want the group hearing about it. Donnie would fault him for not coming clean, for not being a team player, and he sure as heck didn’t need that.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  24. GROWTH SPURT

  by The Lucky Ones

  25. MY HEART OR YOURS

  by Love-n-Stuff

  26. DICE

  by One Shoe Magoo

  “Gotta grow into these wings.”

  Jules looked up. She sat in a pile of fern fronds she’d arranged into a sort of soft chair. Behind her, shells were arranged decoratively on a shelf. Her eyes were red from crying, but tears were no longer flowing. It appeared as though she’d cried so much that she’d cried herself out.

  “I can’t do it anymore, Cam,” she sniffed. “I can’t.”

  Cam moved to comfort her. He joined her on the pile of fronds and held her, trying not to think of Ari’s glowing description of her goddess body as she pressed it against him, which was not easy.

  “Can’t do what?”

  “I can’t stay. I have to go home.”

  “We can’t go home. We’re dead, remember?
This is our home.” It sounded as wrong when he said it as when he’d heard it, and he hated himself for lying to her, but there was no choice. If they didn’t pretend this was a home, they had no home.

  “They’ll let me go,” Jules insisted. “I’ll tell them I sent a message. Then they’ll have to.”

  “A message?”

  “To my sister. At the Internet kiosk at the stadium.”

  “No! You didn’t.”

  “Cam, I had to. I just had to.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Just that I’m okay.”

  Unbreakable, Cam thought.

  Jules frowned at him, reading his concerned expression. “I didn’t tell her about Deathwing, if that’s what you’re worried about. Like that even matters anymore.”

  “It matters to the organization. You shouldn’t even tell them you contacted her.”

  “It’s the only way they’ll send me home. Now if they keep me here it’ll be kidnapping.”

  “You’re going to blackmail them?”

  “No.” She harrumphed. “I’m just going to tell them I have to go. This is a special situation.”

  Cam sensed something. He turned and jumped, startled. A figure stood in the doorway. Zara.

  “Dammit, woman. Don’t do that.” He wondered how long she’d been standing there.

  “Jules, it’s your turn to debrief,” she said.

  Cam met Jules’s eyes. He shook his head—one last warning. She shrugged—one last defiance. Then she stood, turned her divine body away from him, and went to meet with their personal trainer.

  * * *

  Cam’s turn inevitably came. The last debriefing had been easy. Just an opportunity for him to ask questions. They hadn’t grilled him about diamonds or secret notes. So when he was called this time, he felt reasonably calm.

  “I hope you don’t mind if Pilot sits in,” Ward began.

  “I don’t mind,” Cam said. This is different, he thought. Ward talked a lot, but Pilot listened. He wore sunglasses and held his head at an angle like a bird of prey. It was unnerving.