by C. M. Adams
“I can’t,” a tear-filled whisper broke from her voice, and his hands were suddenly turning her around at her shoulders.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t—” Brian’s sentence was cut short when Birdie launched herself at him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug as she sobbed. His arms enveloped around her, squeezing her just as tightly, and joined her in her happy tears.
Birdie was only marginally aware of them lowering to the ground. She was torn between wanting to look at him, and not wanting to let go of him. She was now in his lap, unable to tear herself away, in fear that this might not be real; that it might only be a dream, and she never wanted to wake up from it.
* * *
The entire ride home, or rather to Brian’s apartment which she was told was also hers now for the time being, she was still too stunned to speak. It wasn’t until they were at the front door, that Birdie turned to Emmett and Reesy.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” there was anger laced in her tone, and Emmett could tell that she was holding back from slapping one of them.
“We couldn’t,” he explained. “Not until you were briefed and ready to leave rehab.”
“You would’ve been too impatient to get out,” Reesy added. “You wouldn’t have gotten what you needed.”
“You could’ve brought him to me,” Birdie replied.
“We didn’t tell him, either,” Emmett told her, glancing past her to see Brian setting his computer down in the kitchen, out of earshot. “You’ve gotta understand why on some level, honey. The line of work you were in; you know we were in a difficult position.”
“What matters is that now you know,” Reesy said. “You’ve got him back, and that’s more than anyone could dream for.” Birdie swallowed, letting both of her friends’ words sink in. She knew they were right, but it was difficult to judge whether or not she was ready to let go of the anger she felt. “Please don’t hate us, Birdie,” Reesy pleaded.
Birdie looked up at her, then. Reesy had never really asked for forgiveness for anything; not from her, anyway. It somehow managed to make any hard feelings leave her. “I don’t hate you,” Birdie assured them both. “I’m still mad,” she said, unconvincingly. “Might take a few more housewarming presents for me to get over it completely.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Emmett stepped forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will?”
“Well, I’m kinda tied down to this shopping trip, now,” he shrugged.
“I forgot about that,” Birdie looked to Reesy.
“It’s okay,” she assured her. “We’ll do it tomorrow. I wanted to do it before your reunion with Brian, so you’d have something besides those rehab clothes to greet him in. But Em insisted we not wait any longer.”
“Well, then,” Birdie turned back to Emmett and grabbed his hand, “Looks like I don’t really have anything to be mad at you for, after all.” She pulled him back to her and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“No love for Reesy?” Reesy made puppy-dog eyes.
“I can’t believe that’s why you two were fighting this morning. You go home and get your love from Jodie,” Birdie made a smug face, but then let it melt into a grin. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
She went into the apartment as her friends headed back to the car, and closed the door behind her. “I should take a swing at you,” she said to Brian as she made her way towards him where he was sitting on a stool at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “But I’m waiting for the surreal feeling to fade away, so I can use my entire upper-body strength when I do it.”
“As long as you still love me,” he glanced at her with a bit of a grin.
Glancing at the closed laptop on the counter in front of him, she shook her head and huffed a breath of laughter. “If you only knew how absolutely insane it made me when I found out that thing was missing,” she told him. “All of my law enforcement experience, and I had zero ability to figure out what happened to it.”
“In my defense, I wasn’t the one who took it,” Brian told her. “I was glad when they gave it to me. But I would have dealt with the loss, had it given you some peace of mind.”
“I… I’m not exactly sure it would have,” she admitted. “I didn’t have the closure I needed, that’s for sure. Hell, I thought someone had robbed your dead body. Or maybe had been in there with you and let you die. That’s what was so frustrating about it; the scene hadn’t been processed for anything. I found you, and Sinese processed the scene as though you just overdosed. It wasn’t until later, that I realized your laptop was missing…” her eyes wandered the air, in the memory. Her fingers played absentmindedly on the corner of the book she’d set down on the counter along with her journals.
“What’s that?” he asked, wanting to change the subject, for both their sakes.
“Uh,” she glanced down at the items to remind herself. “Just my old journals and a housewarming present Emmett got for me.” She handed the book to Brian and sat down on the stool next to his. “I had the entire series, back in Dagsboro. But they could only grab the journals.”
“You like Phantasmal?” he looked at her with curious and surprised eyes.
“I love it,” she confessed. “Colt is this amazing writer that just kinda popped up out of no where with this amazing story, a few years ago. There’s usually a new book out every few months. I really like the series because the main characters kind of remind me of us,” she looked down a bit, sheepishly, then up again, meeting Brian’s seemingly judging eyes. He let out a bit of a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t laugh at me!” she smacked his shoulder. “You should read it before you get all judgmental.”
“I have, actually,” he countered.
“And you don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that,” he cocked his head to the side. In that instance, something beside him on the wall caught her eye. It was a framed certificate of some kind. The bold writing stood out, before anything and she found herself reading it out loud.
“To S.W.Colt, acclaimed new sci-fi writer of the year…” her sentence tapered off and her gaze fell back on Brian. “No way,” she shook her head, disbelievingly. Brian couldn’t hold back a smile. “No way!” she said, louder.
“I can’t believe you’ve been reading them this whole time,” he said. “I mean, I’d hoped. But I never figured you for actually going out and buying books.”
“I didn’t… I wasn’t,” she explained. “The first one was just kinda sitting in a drawer in my new office when I took the job in Dagsboro. No one knew where it came from, so I kept it; took it home and decided to try it out…”
“That… seems almost too convenient,” he let out a nervous laugh.
“After this past week, I’m honestly not surprised.”
“Not that you were ever before,” he smirked. She felt the corners of her mouth tug up, maybe a bit involuntarily. Then she looked away a bit, thoughtfully; her eyes settling on the book that now laid on the bar between them.
Remembering something vaguely, she took the book and opened it, flipping past the copyright page and table of contents until she found what she was looking for. “This,” she pointed, handing the book back to him, “This is what made me start reading.” It was the dedication page, and she decided to read it aloud, “To my sister; my best friend. Until we meet again on the other side.”
Brian smiled sadly, avoiding her eyes for a moment. “That was my only way to communicate with you,” he told her. “That’s why I’d hoped you’d read the books.” Birdie watched him as his eyes darted around the counter top. Then they settled on hers. “Did you read all the dedications?” After a moment, Birdie nodded. “Do you remember the second one?”
“Off the top of my head?” she made a face something between incredulous and ashamed.
Brian smiled and stood, heading to the bookshelf in the living room. She followed after him, sitting down on the couch where he met her with
the book in question. He handed it to her, the dedication page open. “I miss you every day, more than anyone,” it read. No name mentioned.
“This was for me?” she asked, not looking at him just yet, as she willed herself not to tear up.
“Yeah. Is it stupid?”
She looked at him, then. “You’re an idiot if you think this is stupid.”
“Guess I shouldn’t think that, then.”
“Damn straight,” she replied. Then she couldn’t hold back the grin that was fighting its way through, so she looked back down at the book to hide it. “I missed you, too, ya know,” she said, softly, looking back over at Brian once the grin faded. “Nothing was the same after you…”
“It killed me, not being able to let you know that I was okay, Birdie,” Brian told her, looking apologetic.
“I get why you couldn’t,” she replied. “I’m not angry. I’m… confused, mostly. About all of this. This place is… kind of insane,” she said, with a small, nervous laugh.
“That, it is. Definitely takes some getting used to. Especially the part where we can’t go anywhere outside of the island unattended.”
“Well, apparently I’ll be one of those people that does the attending, since my profession before all of this was law enforcement. But that’ll be after I’m here for a while, aka when I’ve been cleared for loyalty of not running off the grid.”
“There’s only ever been one reason I’ve wanted to leave here unaccompanied. Now, it’s no longer a factor.”
“There’s really no reason for me, either,” she gave him an amused but sincere grin.
The serene conversation was interrupted by a rumbling noise that was quickly joined by the room shaking around them. Vibrations rattled the glasses in the cupboards, and made the bookshelves teeter a bit.
“What is that?” Birdie looked to Brian, wondering if this was a regular occurrence on the Island.
“Incoming aircraft,” he stood and went to the window, just as it passed over the apartment and came into view. “This rarely happens,” he told her.
“Who is it? Do you know?” she stood and went to stand beside him.
“Military,” he told her. “CIA, I think. Bunch of old guys, usually. They don’t come around much, and no one knows why they come here. Only that they go to the Observers.”
“Observers?”
Brian looked to her, “Well, you, basically. Or your superiors, rather. Eventually, it’ll be you. They come to talk to them. About what, no one really knows. No one ever sees them, either. They’re in and out pretty quickly.”
“How do you know about them, then?”
“About six months after I got here, they showed up. I asked about them, just like you did me. Someone I’d considered a friend at the time. He didn’t know a whole lot, but it made me curious. They didn’t come again for a few years. By then, I’d had a plan set. Snuck over to where I discovered they landed the plane beforehand. I watched them through binoculars. They never knew I was there.”
“Oh my god, dude,” she cracked a smile. “Is that where you came up with that idea in book five?”
“Totally,” he smiled back.
“Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” she told him.
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” he raised a brow.
“Someone knows what they come for. I intend to find out what that is. And you know I can get information out of people if I want to.”
“Oh yeah, I bet you did all kinds of interrogating in Dagsboro,” he laughed.
She punched his shoulder. “I’m talking about before I left the DEA, jerk.”
“Still packing a punch, I see,” he grimaced, rubbing his shoulder. Birdie smirked.
Then suddenly they felt the floor rumble beneath them, and outside the window where they’d not long ago seen the plane land, rose a giant rolling ball of flames and billowing smoke.
For a moment, they both stared unable to speak. It was Birdie that broke the short silence. “That’s… not supposed to happen, right?”
“No… No, it’s not…”
* * *
Chaos had become the only word to describe the upper east section of the island where the Proprietors resided. People had abandoned their posts and taken shelter underground. Brian had been explaining this to Birdie, as they made their way toward the runway. The air was thick with what smelled like plastic cooking in a cast iron pan.
“It’s probably the Defectors,” Brian shouted over the noise as he led her, holding tightly to her hand, toward the crash site. “They’re Proprietors like us, that deserted the island.”
“Why would they do that?”
“They don’t like rules, I guess,” he replied. “I don’t really know. But they’re always causing trouble and getting themselves caught because of it, too. They nearly get themselves and, in turn, the rest of us exposed.”
“Why don’t the Observers do anything about it?” she asked.
“They do. Well, they try to, anyway. Defectors are hard to find. Because they were given a new life, separated from their past, it’s hard to track them down very quickly. The ones the Observers have found and brought back are usually in need of debriefing again, and then rumor has it they’re locked up until they can be completely rehabilitated.”
“Does that even work? I mean… it sounds like trying to get someone off of drugs…” Brian inwardly flinched at that.
“Rarely,” he told her, not brushing off the comment, but accepting the right she had to use it. “Those people are brainwashed. There’s a leader amongst them all. That’s what I heard, anyway. They fill their heads with these ridiculous stories, and before you know it, someone you know is suddenly a whack job.”
“You’ve known one of them?” she surmised.
He glanced over at her for a moment, then back in front of him as they continued on. “That friend I mentioned earlier.”
“The one that told you about the planes?”
“Yep.”
“He became a Defector?”
“One day, we’re having coffee and conspiring about what I should put in my next book. The next day, he’s trying to convince me that the island is our enemy. Can you believe that? We’re all the same, here. This is a safe place for us, and he was trying to convince me that we were prisoners.”
“That must’ve been awkward.”
“It was. And it really sucked when they arrested him right out of the cafe. It was embarrassing as hell.”
“Is that why you kept to yourself, after that?” she asked. He looked back at her again, in question. “In the coffee shop, it was just like before you died; always keeping to yourself. I know that before, it was more because you were too busy for friends. But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it…”
“You saying I’m a recluse?”
“That’s not what I said!”
“Hold it right there!” a man in a white hazmat suit appeared before them.
“What’s going on?” Brian asked. “We saw the explosion.”
“There was some kind of bomb on the plane,” the man explained. “Some kind of toxic chemical was spilled over a hundred yard radius. No one should pass through here without the proper gear.”
“That would’ve hit the precinct,” Brian said.
“It did,” the man replied. “Everyone on duty is down.”
“The precinct?” Birdie asked. “As in the Observers?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man replied. “We’ve got less than a dozen off-duty officers coming in to take over. Who are you?”
“This is Amber Farran,” Brian told him. “She’s technically an officer now, too. Just came top-side today.”
“They’re probably gonna need you, then,” the man told her, then turned to Brian. “Do you know where the old Observer station is?”
“Yeah,” Brian replied, nodding.
“They’re gathering there for supplies. You should take her there.”
“Are people in danger?” Birdie asked.
“The threat’s been contained,” the man replied. “But we’re vulnerable until we can get everyone rehabilitated. That could take a while. We can use everyone we can get…”
THREE
“Welcome to the force, Agent Farran,” a blond-haired woman as tall as Birdie, and around the same age, shook her hand. “I’m Agent Kale. I was actually the one assigned to train you, though I wasn’t expecting to have to start for a couple of days.”
The old Observer station was underground, just like the debriefing area. Only it wasn’t a submarine. If anything, it seemed more like a subway station, sans the tracks and ticket booths. And despite its description, the old station didn’t look unused at all. It seemed like there were walls of never-ending storage that had regularly been organized and kept up. There were several empty desks, void of people but still occupied with items that portrayed they had a purpose.
“Nice to meet you. And sorry…”
“No need to apologize. Aside from the obvious setback, I like a little unexpected. Gets a bit redundant around here, sometimes. Some action is always welcome, as far as I see it,” she gave a half grin. Birdie returned it. “I read your file,” Kale continued. “I think you’ll fit in real well here,” she turned to lead her up the hall, and Birdie turned to Brian, making sure he followed. He was, of course. But he was very studiously observing Kale’s very fitted black uniform. Or rather the curves it accentuated.
“Um… thanks,” she replied, looking back to Kale. “What are we looking at, here? I mean, do we know who did this?”
“More than likely, Defectors,” she told her. “I’ll need to read you in.”
“No need,” Birdie replied. “I’ve heard a fair share. What’s the sitrep?”
“As you saw, there was a bomb on the visiting plane. Everyone within a hundred yard radius was killed. Proprietors were put in RR… uh, Reanimation Room,” she elaborated, “In case you haven’t heard about it. It’s basically where we go if something happens to us, until the reanimation begins.”