It was perfect. Until the night you summoned me to your room. You’d gradually taken each of the others as a lover, and I protected your privacy and theirs. You were happy and that made me happy, but that night you were alone. You asked me to lock the door and sit down.
I would have to have been dead not to realize you wanted to seduce me. “They all think you and I have been lovers from the beginning.” You wore this long, ruby red nightdress. It left your shoulders bare and dipped in the most exquisite vee at your breasts. Perfectly feminine and utterly distracting. “I’d like to make it real.”
But my duty hadn’t changed… “Valda,” I told you, even as I kept an iron fist on my libido. “I want to give you everything, but if I take you to bed, I risk compromising my vigilance. Something might get to you because I was too busy admiring the shape of your ass or imagining how slick and hot you felt against my cock. The memory of your taste on my tongue, or how it felt to press an intimate kiss against your sex and suck on your clit as you screamed in pleasure…”
Even then, my balls ached at the idea of creating a memory where they slapped against your ass as I fucked into you. Your lips parted, and your eyes dilated, and the way you responded to my words—it drove me wild.
“I can’t put my lust or needs above your safety.” The assignment had been an order, but taking care of you? That had become my true pleasure.
“What if what I need is you? What if what I desire most is to explore all those ways? I need—I love them. I love you. I could…I can’t choose between all of you.” Then you put your hands on my chest and every particle of my being focused on you.
“I would never ask you to choose.” It came out perhaps a bit strangled. You were so damn beautiful, and I hadn’t been lying about being so distracted by you that it compromised my ability to be rational.
“But you’re asking me to choose to not have you. To let you stand as a silent sentinel, always here but always apart.” When you rose on your tiptoes and kissed my jaw, my resolve shuddered. “Dirk, I need you. I need you to be a part of us…”
While I’m was certain you said more, the words didn’t register. You were in my arms and then I carried you to the bed. I told you then what I told you now—everywhere else, you lead. There, it was me and only me. That night sealed us, and the next morning, we all came to breakfast together and it was our time.
The next month was perfect. The guys—my brothers and I—became a unit with you at our center. We worked together and with you to tackle each of your goals. One evening you emerged from the lab. Victorious.
The first of hundreds of RNA vectors you’d tested worked. You were delirious, exhausted, and excited. We drank, we ate, and we danced. It was a uniquely perfect evening. At dawn the next morning, you walked into your lab and never came out.
Oz found you, unconscious on the floor. You’d decided to test the vector on yourself. We discovered the plan in your journals. Success could only be measured by how it treated the person, not the idea. How the person reacted, not only to the item being cured, but by the cure itself. You had to stand against testing it on others, you had to be the gateway, and you decided it was easier to apologize than ask permission.
“Something I learned from each of my men—my wonderful, beautiful men who’ve brought me to life. I never realized how much of my existence had been gray, going through the motions, obsessed with my science. You each broke me out piece-by-piece, and together? Together you’ve become my reason for being.” Those words haunted me, because we couldn’t wake you up. Whatever you’d done put you into a coma. Oz believed it irreversible or worse—locked in syndrome. That you were there and aware of every passing moment and interaction, unable to respond.
I couldn’t live with that answer. None of us could. Brain activity suggested life was possible. You were inside, locked away from us. Andreas understood the philosophy of the brain turning on itself, Oz the science, and Hatch—that damn pirate of ours—clever bastard stole the technology.
If you were locked into your mind, then we were coming to get you.
When the last word left his lips, the alarms on the machines began to go off one at a time. Valda’s respiration increased. Oz was across the room, and he reached for one of the syringe. “We need to stop now,” he said.
“No,” Valda managed to squeeze the word out. Her hand was in Dirk’s and she pulled herself to a sitting position. “How long? How long have you been doing this?”
Each time in the past, when they’d been forced to tell her the truth or she’d discovered it—that had been the moment she nearly slipped away, and they’d been forced to start all over again.
“Five years,” he told her. The truth—they needed the truth. All of them. “The alarm earlier—you noticed something off.”
Andreas pushed away from the wall to come to the foot of the bed. He touched her leg and her gaze went to him. “The mind is a very delicate thing and probably the strongest of our internal organs. It will fight to protect itself. Some glitch only you could see told you something was wrong. The alarm was actually the equipment. You rejected the reality, and it nearly thrust us all out.”
Hatch came to stand next to Dirk’s side of the bed. His expression pained. “We can leave the machine. I’d ejected for a short while. We all do, periodically. We have to. We schedule it so we can take care of our actual physical needs, and I wanted to find a book of yours in your room. I couldn’t remember the title, and I wanted to…I wanted to get it so I could surprise you by reading it. Then you went to my suite…”
“The lifepods. That’s how you arrive in my mind, how you start the scenarios…how you rebuild….” Woman was fucking brilliant. She glommed onto the facts and began sorting them out. “And the missing panels…?”
“Kill switches to let us out. Then we can come back in.”
“The biosphere,” Oz spoke as he set the syringe up to the IV port. “Is your mind, Valda. This is what you built for us when we appeared. It changes, though rarely. The lifepods are how we enter…”
“That’s why I have to be there when you emerge. I have to let you in.” She glanced at the IV and the syringe. Then both simply winked out of existence. Mouth open, she stared at where they’d been. “I create this reality.”
Somewhere above, the alarm went off again. The klaxon screamed, deafening them. Dirk’s heart fisted. It was his job to protect her. His job.
And he failed all over again.
Their time was up.
Chapter 19
Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all. - Emily Dickinson
VALDA
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Nothing they’d said registered as real, and at the same time, I craved the picture they’d painted. I wanted to believe them. Then I made the IV and syringe simply vanish. I didn’t want them there, I didn’t want to be sedated. My mind, my rules—right?
“Breathe,” Andreas ordered me. The brusque, combative note was so much more appropriate than the worried expression he wore. “The mind resists challenges to its reality. If you decide we’re not real, this whole place comes down, and we have to start all over again.”
“Then—then you’re fine?” A fifty-pound weight seemed to be sitting directly on my sternum. Breathing hurt. “What about when you were poisoned?”
The psychologist shook his head—no wait, he was priest. A priest! I’d seduced a priest. Maybe that was why I was in hell. As they’d spun out their stories for me, a part of me just—just couldn’t accept it as truth. Maybe he was right, maybe it was true for them. Maybe my impressions had been utterly different.
Who would know? Oh right. Me. The coma girl.
I considered how much damage it would do if I threw up all over again.
“No, the poisoning happened because I was exploring everything. The landscape changes—sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes more overt. The biosphere level, that was utterly new this
time. You’d never had that before. So, I thought something there could be helpful and…”
“And you tested the food.” Hell. Definitely hell. They were in my mind.
As discomforting a thought as it should have been, it settled my racing pulse. “I did,” he confirmed. “Oz about kicked my ass. Pretty impressive when a doctor and a priest get into a fight.”
Hatch snorted. “If you mean sad, then yes—impressively sad. He’s all intense and you’re all moody. A real fight is when you try to dislocate the jaw, as evidenced by my impressively bruised face.”
The comment drew my attention to the pirate. Yes, Hatch as a pirate I could believe. Utterly. Hadn’t he found hidden treasure for me? A lock of his hair fell over his forehead, and he wore an unrepentant smile. Yet, even behind the brightness of his grin lurked another emotion.
“You didn’t remember when we got here?”
“A bad test,” Oz said. “We decided only Dirk would remember immediately, that maybe if we were all new this time, then…then we could recreate our first meetings easier.”
As I studied each of them, my gut twisted. He didn’t add that it hadn’t worked, at least not as they had hoped. They were all afraid. I knew the truth, so now what?
“You said you’d done this before?” If I wanted to figure this out, I needed all the facts. “Told me the truth.” Not—whatever living in this fantasy world my brain constructed might be called.
“The first time,” Oz confirmed. “Hatch decided ripping the band-aid off was the way to go. He and Andreas cornered you and tried to make you believe everything.”
I doubt I would have responded well at all to such an overt challenge.
Though I hadn’t said the words aloud, Dirk nodded once. “You went into cardiac arrest. The stress and the absolute denial—priest’s words, not mine—rejected every part of the scenario. You shut all of us out. Oz barely managed to stabilize you on the other side.”
Other side. The real world. The whole idea made my head hurt. The room around us trembled. Dirk took one hand, Hatch had the other. Oz moved until he could grip my calf, then Andreas mirrored his action. They were here. They were real. But they didn’t belong here, and I needed to get out of this self-constructed prison.
“Breathe,” Dirk reminded me, and I exhaled harshly. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath.
“Stop giving me orders,” I ordered them all. I needed to think. “What happens if my mind rejects it now?” It hadn’t so far, right? I seemed to have maintained all my cognizant faculties. They were still present.
“We start over again,” Dirk said without hesitation, and each of my men—my men. Damn, when do I get used to that idea?—nodded.
“And again and again? In a vicious loop. Define insanity, gentlemen?”
“Define love, Valda.” Andreas squeezed my leg. “We’re not leaving you here. This isn’t alive, and it isn’t dead. You’re trapped.”
Yes, I was. Apparently. “So, the four of you are what? On the other side? Somehow linked to my mind. What happens to you there? Can your bodies sustain this level of immersion?”
The projects I’d been obsessed with when I woke up. The hours I spent in my lab. Did they take turns stepping out of this prison? Refresh themselves?
Of course they did. “Never mind, you would have to. I don’t know what technology Hatch stole…” I didn’t doubt it, and he didn’t deny it. “Does it have an expiration date? How many more attempts?”
One by one, their expressions reflected a combination of concern and confusion. Great. They didn’t know.
“I need more facts…the truth didn’t work. The first time. What did you try next? I need simulations? Data? Results?” If we could parse out the path out of here, then I could leave. The only thing keeping me calm as I tried to puzzle it out was the assurance they would be fine. “You’re fine, right? If this all went to catastrophe in a moment, and I died, you could get out?”
Dirk’s scowl arrested me, and held me captive as he leaned in. “You will not die. I won’t allow it.”
“Not an answer.” I refused to be intimidated. Hope was vital to the condition of living. When hope went away, so did the will to keep fighting. The lack of hope could kill a suffering person—whether through illness or failing organs. If I couldn’t get out of here. If this…if this was my existence, then I didn’t want to take them with me.
The room shook again.
“Sweetheart,” Oz spoke carefully, as if he weighed and measured his each and every word. “We could go over all of it, but Andreas is right. Each scenario we entered held subtle differences. At first, it was only your lab and the suites. There were no windows, no attempts at decoration or seasons. Not even a place to make meals.”
Closing my eyes, I tried to process his description.
“Later,” Hatch joined in. “You added other rooms—the community area, the breakfast nook, and the workout equipment. Sometimes we’re on a ship, other times, we’re at the facility near Auckland. Subtle changes, but ones we recognize.”
“The oddest one—the one we believe linked to the fact your brain knows this isn’t real is…” Andreas trailed off as if he didn’t want to finish the thought.
“The windows.” My facility in Auckland, the house—it was all windows. I’d grown up on this tiny island in the Pacific. We lived outside as much as in. My work aside, I hated to be closeted away. If I couldn’t be outside, I wanted to see it. “I know it’s not real, and I know I can’t look outside.”
“But you built the garden level this time,” Dirk said then pressed a kiss to my forehead. An act I hoped comforted him as much as it did me. “You brought the outside in…”
My daily yoga routines and moving it to the beach. Running in the green grass with Andreas. Exploring with the others. But every day I retreated to my lab, until curiosity about what they were doing brought me to breakfast. They had a relationship, the four of them. A partnership. A brotherhood.
I’d felt excluded.
I hated the feeling.
Yet they’d never cut me out, I was the reason the four of them even knew each other. Why they’d worked to build the unit, as Dirk called it. They were still here… “How long can you do this? Realistically.” I squeezed Dirk and Hatch’s hands, even as I glanced to Oz and Andreas. “Life continues on the other side, as you call it, and you’re trapped in here with me. It’s not right.”
“Forever,” Dirk said. “We can do this forever.”
The pressure on my chest increased, and I glanced at Oz. The machine alarm sounded. There was no escaping what the noise meant, the chill in my limbs and the pressure in my heart. I’d heard the truth, but my mind wanted to protect me. It shredded me to think of taking them with me.
“I can’t hold you to this,” I said, forcing the words out. It was harder to speak with every passing moment. The klaxon outside seemed to drill through my brain and my ears rung. I hated that noise. Why the hell did it have to be so loud? The room shook and, somewhere, an explosion echoed. The klaxon cut off abruptly.
“We’re holding us to this,” Dirk reinforced. “Don’t you dare give up on us. Do you hear me? We’re not losing you, and you aren’t losing us.”
Another shudder went through me, and as selfish as it might be, I didn’t want to lose them. “I won’t. I promise…give me this puzzle to solve next time.” It needed all of us. Dirk had been right about that. I needed every one of these men. They were more than helpers, they were a reason to breathe. “Don’t let me obsess on the job. Make getting out of here the job.”
We could do it.
I knew we could.
“Now go,” I warned them. The pressure in my chest expanded until even the shallowest of breaths hurt. Explosions rocked through the facility, and I could almost picture the detonations shattering the beautiful illusion we’d built.
Oz swore, then pushed passed the guys to kiss me. “We will come back. Hang on for us.” He vanished.
“Believ
e it’s possible,” Andreas said, then blew me a kiss before he winked out.
Hatch dipped his head and his lips massaged mine, the contact brief and yet stretched to infinity. A part of me never wanted to let him go, even though I knew he couldn’t stay. “We’ll be back, gorgeous… You owe me a night next time. I miss you.”
I missed him. Tears filled my eyes. Maybe my mind couldn’t remember, but my heart had no trouble. Then he was gone, and I choked back a sob.
Dirk slid into the bed next to me and pulled me against him. “You have to go,” I said, trying to stave off the tears. But the walls were peeling around us, and the equipment exploded into glitter one by one before they too vanished.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said, his grip fierce. “When it goes, I’ll be ejected. But I’m not leaving you alone. I swore you an oath. Forever, Valda. We’re forever. Believe that.”
The world winked out and took Dirk with it.
Chapter 20
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. - Jean-Paul Sartre
“Welcome, Dr. Valda Bashan.” A computerized voice penetrated the fog of waking up with the worst hangover. “You will find an IV bag with fluids and nutrients on a table to the left. Please attach it to the port already placed in your arm. Your vitals are registering in the acceptable range.”
The disembodied voice kept talking while I fumbled with the attachment. Outside of the pod, it was cold and a shiver worked over my flesh.
“Current temperature is 15 degrees centigrade. Heaters are adjusting to warm the room to 25 degrees.” The computerized voice had an almost feminine hint to it, but there was too much mechanical to give it any warmth.
I had no moisture in my mouth to do more than grunt an acknowledgement. The tubing fit where it was supposed to, and I released the cap on the bag so that fluids would begin to drip. The cold penetrated my arm, but it was an illusion. I was chilled.
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