by Claire Davon
Aside from the beings, nothing was moving. There was no wind, no birds, not even any drifting scents from nearby apartments and restaurants. There were no hushed sounds from a distance, nothing, nada, zip.
The fear that began when the subway car hurtled towards her redoubled.
“I…I don’t understand,” she stammered, the strangeness making her inarticulate. “Am I…am I dead?”
Sonder looked from the shiny surroundings back to her, his pewter eyes glittering as well, but with something different–something profoundly sorrowful.
It was difficult to meet his eyes, but she willed herself to remain still and not look away. The weirdness had become almost unmanageable, and he was the one solid thing she had any familiarity with. Even if it was just from her dreams.
“No, Fiona, you’re not dead,” he said after a long pause.
The woman grimaced. “He’s right. You’re not dead.”
She then punched that same index finger at Fiona, who jumped a step back at the fierce gesture.
“You’re not. But you should be.”
Fiona blinked.
“I sh…should be?” She cursed herself. Stammering was not an effective way to get answers.
Sonder sighed, and raked his hair with his left hand.
“We were notified that there was an anomaly, so we came.”
“Here is your anomaly.” Illiria’s voice was cold, matter-of-fact but with an edge. She wasn’t sure whether it was snide or something sinister, or perhaps it was simply fearful of the unknown.
The unknown named Fiona.
“Illiria, there’s no need to scare her.”
Fiona laughed, a choked sound. “Way too late for that, guys.”
“Good,” Illiria said grimly. “You should be scared. You should be terrified. This is unprecedented. Unaccounted for survivors have never happened before. You are a first.” Her tone made it clear she was not a welcome first.
Enough. She may not have some Star Trekian intergalactic space jumpsuit on, she may not know what the heck was going on, she may be way out of her depth–and she might just be dead–but Fiona Jensen was tired of being talked down to.
“Lady, whatever your problem is, all I did was try to get to work. Maybe you don’t know about that stuff, those pesky job things? It so happens I have one, and it’s pretty killer. I have a staff and people look to me for answers. I also work out, have friends, and generally lead a balanced life. So whatever your issue is with me, trust me, I didn’t ask for this, and I sure didn’t want to be standing here in some freaky version of Washington Square instead of doing…” She looked at her watch to figure out where she’d be in her morning routine, but the square DKNY watch ticked no longer. “Well, whatever I’d be doing at whatever time it is.” She trailed off, out of bluster.
Illiria sniffed, and then turned to the motionless third person, still several feet away.
“Lieutenant, we need to get back to base and tell them we have a situation. Do you have enough power?”
He punched in some buttons on his belt and then nodded. “Just enough.”
Grr. She was not a situation. Fiona welcomed the anger, the cold heat of it burning through the persistent fear.
“Then do it.”
The third man nodded and, as Fiona watched, he walked a short distance away from them…and vanished.
Fiona blinked. The air shimmered slightly in the aftermath of his disappearance.
The man called Sonder took a quick look at Illiria and then walked to Fiona. Up close, he was even more imposing, his 6’3” height complimented by ropy muscles which were evident by the way they stretched and filled out the one-piece uniform. His easy stride spoke of strong legs and an overall intense exercise regimen.
A regimen that included dealing with dead bodies? Inconvenient survivors? Fiona shuddered at the thought, surreptitiously scanning Sonder at the same time.
The silence stretched as it became apparent that he was doing the same thing. She wondered what he saw. Her height and weight were easy to figure, 5’9” and weight appropriate. Blonde hair, green eyes, attractive regular features that would never challenge super models, but didn’t get her thrown out of places, either.
She wondered if she ever entered his dreams like he entered hers. They’d seemed like living things, the kind of dreams that echo in your head long after you awaken. Unlike most dreams, she remembered each one of these vividly, and had started keeping a journal to memorialize them.
But dreams didn’t match the reality of him. They didn’t account for the coiled energy pouring off him like a living thing, didn’t account for the sparks that seemed to arc off him. She wanted to reach out, touch him, and see if he was real.
Madness.
She might be dead, this might be some weird version of purgatory, and she was starting to speculate about the horizontal mambo with this guy? Madness.
She realized she was staring at him, and her cheeks flushed. To her satisfaction, she saw his pupils dilate before he looked at Illiria. Fiona wondered if it was to get orders or to hide his reaction.
That was conceited and ridiculous, she told herself. Men liked her fine, but not to the point of flipping out over her, going wild with uncontrolled passion. That only happened in fairy tales and erotic romances.
“What do you think the council…” his sentence trailed off when the air shimmered a short distance away, a displacement much larger than when Gire left.
It was Gire, with three people dressed similarly to her new “friends” but in stark dark black colors with gold piping at the shoulders.
The council, she presumed.
Chapter 4
Sonder straightened further, if that were possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Illiria do the same. Neither appeared to breathe as the three council members approached. The air behind them stopped shimmering and, once again, became that crystal clear gem color.
Authority figures, for sure. And judging from the set look on Sonder’s face, that was not necessarily a good thing.
Fiona found herself surreptitiously checking her clothing for lint as they came nearer when it struck her that her clothes and body bore no evidence of the crash. She hadn’t realized it in all the chaos, but even though she wasn’t hurt, she should have had visual evidence of the crash–dirt, smoke, char, something. Instead, her clothes were as unwrinkled as they had been after the ironing just this morning, and her skin was clear and fresh, stripped of the rank stench of fear she’d felt earlier. She could still smell the slight hint of her morning mist of perfume.
She should smell of smoke and sweat and fear, not the fruity spice of her favorite scent. At the very least, she should be disheveled, her feet and clothes dirty from her rush to safety.
Fiona pinched herself, hoping against hope this was really an extended dream/nightmare. She saw Sonder glance at her arm and back up at her face as she did it, grinning slightly.
A grin that faded as the trio got within earshot. They fanned out to form a triangle, essentially cordoning off Fiona and the other two. Gire was outside the triangle, pointedly looking away.
Sonder and Illiria shared a glance, and then Fiona saw their faces go carefully blank. They made a hand gesture she assumed had to be a salute of some sort. The raised hand, palm out, conveyed greeting while also showing the hand was empty.
“Major Illiria, Captain Sonder,” the female of the trio said, nodding in response to the salute. She looked at Fiona. “I hear we have a…situation.”
There were gadgets of some sort hanging from the belts slung at their hips, whereas Sonder and Illiria’s belts were empty. Weapons, Fiona wondered?
Finally, the enormity of the situation came rushing in, and warring emotions of stark terror, paralyzing fear, and dread flew through Fiona’s mind. All thought fled except panic, and her heart sped up until she could hear the pounding like a tribal drumbeat in her ears.
“Yes.” It was Sonder who spoke, even though the speaker was looking at Ill
iria. “It may be a good situation, Commander.” He gestured to Fiona, a flick of his fingers in a “come here” gesture that she may have been insulted by if she weren’t so terrified. As it was, the idea of being in anyone’s even semi-friendly proximity was welcome.
“We received a warning that this would be an incident. There was no sign of Liberators when we got here, but there was this woman. She survived without incident, and there were anomalous time readings. She had no awareness that it was anything out of the ordinary until after the fact.”
The shift she felt, the flickering of this reality and another had certainly been out of the ordinary, as were these people. They seemed human, but were they? She shivered. What if they were “V” type aliens? They looked human, but.…
The leader’s gaze swung to Fiona and fixed her with a pinpoint laser-like stare. She seemed to have nothing but pupils for eyes; no iris was visible.
“And how did you do that?”
It took everything Fiona had not to turn and run. Sensing that it would do no good to panic, she tried for a casual shrug.
“If I knew, I’d tell you. I have no idea.”
The Commander’s eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to speak when all of their wrist things lit up with a blue light simultaneously, pulsing in the universal beat of an emergency. Fiona watched their faces empty of color from one beat to the next, and each snapped to attention.
“Damn it. Liberators! Five years, Hong Kong. They’re calculating the vortex right now,” Sonder shouted.
“We already have five. We don’t have room for any more.” It was one of the other council members, a large black man with an indeterminate accent. He looked at Fiona, making it clear she was the “any more” he meant.
“I know.” That was Illiria. “This mission is secured, and we can’t stay. There’s no room for her.”
She looked at Sonder, who pressed a large button at the base of his wrist thing.
“Locked in and ready to go. But the girl?”
Fiona didn’t like where this was heading. She certainly she didn’t want to stay in this too-quiet, gem-toned facsimile of her neighborhood. Whatever, and whenever, it was, it wasn’t where she lived anymore, that much she knew.
One of the council members opened his mouth as if to argue, but shut it after a quick look and negative shake of the head by the senior member.
She focused on the button on Sonder’s wrist device. It glowed, showing an image of Hong Kong. Fiona had seen a TV show about the country and recognized the airport in the background.
“We need the girl.” It was a flat statement from Sonder, and his tone told them he wouldn’t accept an argument. “This could be what we want. This could be what Rogald is looking for.”
The Commander nodded.
“I admit it is possible. She comes with us. She’s your responsibility. No argument, Captain Sonder.”
“None given.”
Sonder turned and faced the others. He gripped Fiona’s wrist, a motion that was not quite an embrace and not quite restraint. Yet. She felt the coiled power in him and knew she was no match for him physically.
With his free hand, he typed something into his wrist mechanism and then nodded to the others, his hand still circling Fiona’s wrist. His warmth was welcome, a strange oasis in this increasingly bizarre scene, even with Fiona's sense that he would quickly check her if he deemed it necessary.
“Ready.”
The dark-skinned council member looked at the others. “We are six with the girl. Too many. I will go back to the base, prepare the others for this situation.”
It made no sense, but Fiona saw everyone else nod in agreement.
He moved away from the others, pressed a button on his wrist monitor, and vanished the same way Gire had a few minutes before.
Illiria looked at Sonder. “Ready as well. When you’ve got the coordinates, let’s go.”
He looked at Fiona, and she saw concern that was deeper than their brief acquaintance warranted.
“Grip my wrist, and don’t let go,” he said softly.
She nodded and closed her fingers around him so tightly she thought she was probably going to leave a mark.
“On the count of three…two…one.…”
He pressed the blinking button.
Brookline swirled and then vanished, like it had been sucked into a black hole.
In the inky dark that followed, Fiona screamed, but there was nothing to hear her.
Chapter 5
There was a heavy rushing sound, and she felt a sensation that they were in a vortex, being sucked down into nothing, into forever. It was black, so black, and she felt nothing, no sensation, no warmth, nothing. She needed something, anything, to cling to, but there was nothing. Sensations swamped her, too fast to be named, other than a quick swell of overwhelming terror. Although she could not feel Sonder, she continued to cling to what she hoped was his wrist, hoping that there was something at the end of her fingers.
Then light and air snapped into focus.
She was a little way away from the others, all five of them scattered on the ground in a random pattern that told of their quick exit from their previous spot. Fiona knew without being told that that wasn’t how they liked to do things.
As she watched, they shook their heads and then, as one, looked at Fiona. Sonder strode towards her, punching some buttons on his wrist gadget as he did so. Contraption. Thingy. The flashing blue light faded from all their wrists.
The air was dense as if it was a sheet of opaque plastic. Beyond the obstruction, she could hear chatter, like the regular noise of a city street at rush hour.
“We beat the Liberators to the scene. Good.” Illiria looked at Fiona. “Keep her under control, Captain.” Her tone made it clear that Sonder was to keep her under control by any methods necessary.
The Commander also looked at them, his gaze turned thoughtfully to Fiona.
None of them made a sound. A million questions were crowding Fiona’s mind, but one look at Sonder’s face told her that now was not a good time to ask. She had learned the value of discretion a long time ago, so she clamped the roiling questions down to a small part of her mind and turned the same way they were facing.
“Ready or not,” Gire muttered. Illiria extended her arm forward and made a sweeping motion. The air immediately dissolved, leaving before them a scene of a bustling, crowded city with tall, impossibly tall, buildings.
There was street noise, but everything was frozen. People were in mid stride, cars were in the process of changing lanes, bicycles were weaving between lanes. A shop owner was handing a brown paper bag to a client, who had his or her wallet open to put change away. In the distance, she saw a thief with an older lady’s oversized purse being slung under his arm as she gripped one strap in what was clearly a losing battle, her mouth opened in a scream for help.
They were on the sidewalk and.…
People were frozen right through them. She hadn’t realized it at first, mesmerized by the scene in front of her, but as pedestrians in this bustling intersection were going about their day, they had landed right in a large group walking with purpose towards the red light of their side of the intersection, and the people were half in and half out of their semi-corporeal bodies.
Fiona flinched, the feeling of the other body a tingle at the base of her spine. Hurriedly, she broke contact and moved away from the crowd.
The others followed, joining her near a mercifully vacant doorway.
Oddly, the street lights were continuing to change, and the neon of the shops danced, seemingly not affected by whatever phenomenon gripped the people.
Fiona’s heart was beating a staccato rhythm, its thump so loud she was sure the others could hear. Whatever the hell was going on, she just wanted it to stop. She wanted to be back in her own bed, covers pulled up over her head, catching an extra ten minutes worth of sleep.
For the first time, she wondered what would have happened if she had done that. If she’d sle
pt in, she wouldn’t have been near the scene when the event happened–she would have been, at best, at her front door, or down the many stairs that led to their hilly street. She would have been far enough away from the trolley that the accident, while loud and scary, wouldn’t have had any direct impact on her. She would have been a shocked observer after the fact–or would she have been? Whatever had happened, Fiona had no idea how many people it affected, and why. And how. And…lots of things she had no words for, but all dark and very unnerving.
“Fiona,” Sonder said, his tone gentle. “Look at me.”
She hadn’t heard him approach her, but he was there, big and slightly menacing, his frame blocking her view of the city.
Her wide-eyed look must have said volumes, because his grip tightened and he shook her very slightly, but gently. One hand stayed on her body, once again circling her wrist. This time, it was clearly a cage.
“There isn’t time, Fiona, in….” He glanced at his watch, which was still functioning in this weird half-city. “...one minute, all hell is going to break loose.” He took her and guided her deeper into the doorway. “You deserve an explanation, and I promise you’ll get one, after we deal with the Liberators.”
The others moved back to make room for Fiona, and then closed in front of her, mostly blocking her view of the city. She could see slivers of the frozen tableau, like jagged shards of glass shattered from their original shape.
Without warning, people began to move again, freed from whatever stasis they’d been in. Walkers were walking, cars were riding, and planes were flying.
Then she heard the countdown. It was Gire, looking fixedly at his watch thingy.
“Three…two…one.”
BOOM!
The noise was deafening. From a space about two hundred yards away, there was a huge flash of light, the air displacing. For a minute, everything seemed normal. People were still walking, planes were still flying, and cars were still…