by L. B. Carter
She wasn’t here. She was gone.
Then something else occurred. “Where’s Dad? Why aren’t you with him? Who’s—”
“Relax, he’s fine.” She blinked back the tears, gave a brief smile, and then collected herself, bustling over to her desk and sitting down, folding her hands on top. “Please, sit.” She gestured, and the two dropped into the chairs before Ace’s mother at her authoritative command.
“I see where you get it from,” Nor said out of the side of his mouth.
Her eyes snapped to him. “And you are?”
“Norton… Stanley.”
“Hmm.” Her pursed lips made it clear she didn’t believe his honesty for one moment. “And you’re also from BTI?” Her concern was razor-edged.
“No, ma’am. A private non-profit—Green Solutions.”
She nodded. “I’ve heard of you. Bodyguards for science.”
“In a sense,” he acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “My parents run—ran the company. My mother passed not too long ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I think I read one of her papers once. Very eloquent. Now, Ace.” She turned to look at her son coldly. “Would you like to explain to me why you brought this fine gentleman—” One hand uncurled from the other to indicate Nor. “—and not the person you were supposed to bring?”
“I left her in a safe location. If you send transport, I can direct them to the correct area. She’ll be here within a few hours.”
Thin brows rose. “And where is this location?”
“A small farm east of the bridge.”
“The Juarez family,” Nor put in. “She’s safe. We left my brother with her. …if you don’t mind having him brought in too, ma’am.”
“Mmm, well collecting them is going to prove difficult now that you’ve gone and blown up the only link between there and here, now, isn’t it?”
Ace cleared his throat, gearing up for the long explanation that he had no doubt would be poorly received regardless of the circumstances or whether he’d made the right decisions at the time.
But she wasn’t done berating him for this disaster, which was not entirely his doing. “A dozen or more injured, possibly killed—I haven’t gotten the final count yet—hundreds of people stranded, a major economic transportation route disconnected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure damage that will come out of taxpayers’ pockets.” She stared.
It was going to take quite some time to explain about Professor Tate and the kid in the glasses who had a fixation on Sirena, particularly as Ace’s mom didn’t know about that experiment of BTI’s yet. Really, it was all Jen’s fault for bringing her lab toy with her. He had just been doing as he was told, bringing Jen. Actually, Ace realized, if he told his mom about the miracle that was Sirena, she might forgive him for adding another person whom they needed to collect.
Before he could start, she jumped in again. “And, I might add, using our resources at a desperate time, when we need to be assessing the damage and responding to distressed citizens, for pick-up and medical attention for a different girl whom I definitely did not ask you to bring.” One brow rose.
Henley. “Is she all right? Have you heard?” Ace burst out, adjusting in his seat.
His mom’s other brow rose. “I haven’t. I’ll get Richard to inquire when he reports back, if it means that much to you.”
Ace sat back in his chair, ignoring the smirk on Nor’s face.
“And who, might I ask, is this girl whom you decided to add to my personal worries as well as those of the entire nation?”
Chapter Fifteen
Pain. Agony. Ache. Throbbing. Torture. Torment. Discomfort. Suffering. That was eight. Fewer than her list of criminal acts.
Henley continued to list the synonyms that she could conjure to describe her current state of being in the attempt to distance herself from the impact of those actual words.
It wasn’t helping. She wished for more drugs to carry her back to the padded world of sleep.
It was the second time in her life she wished she could just turn her brain off and not… be, just for a while. In fact, it felt just like the last time.
She tried a happier mental thesaurus. Joy. Glow. Happiness. Euphoria. Cheer. Glee. Delight. Jubilance. Also eight. She needed one more to tip the scale. Hope.
She tried to pull in those feelings, ground them in her center and kindle their radiance. When was the last time she was happy? A memory might actualize what she desperately needed. Henley wracked her past memories, rapidly skipping over the most recent with a wince.
There. Peace. Contentment. Warmth. Serenity. Comfort. Bliss. Faith. Pleasure. One more… Love. Nine.
She pictured golden fields, a rising sunrise above a long, empty stretch of white road, a lulling rumble in her ears and wind whipping across her face, solid warmth at her back countering that chill, and secure, strong arms and legs wrapped around her own, enveloping her, a chin pressed to her collar.
…But they left. She left. Because he was just using her.
Henley couldn’t help the groan that slipped free.
“There now, almost done, dear.”
Henley peeked a lid open a sliver to eye the elderly nurse who smiled knowingly back.
“Just one more bandage to re-wrap. You’re doing wonderfully; anticipating my next move—it’s very helpful. Speeds things right up. Have you seen this done before?” she asked, with praise.
“A long time ago,” Henley replied, shutting the eye again. Over seventeen years.
“Well, then you probably know what I’m going to tell you next.”
“Don’t scratch,” Henley said in a monotone.
“Good girl,” the nurse rewarded as if she were a puppy.
Henley sucked in a breath through her teeth as the bandage pulled. She thought of Buster again, whose fault it was that she’d had to face off with that wretch of a professor.
Anger. Wrath. Loathing. Hate. Infuriation. Rage. Ruin. Destruction. Eight again.
“Oh, should I come back?”
“Murder,” Henley snapped aloud, the power of all the words swelling through her mind erupting behind it.
“I’ll come back.”
“No, no. I’m just finishing. About done… There.” The nurse rearranged Henley’s blankets. “Come in. There’s a chair up near her head. I’ll leave you to talk. Just push the button if you have any discomfort okay, duck?” She chuckled to herself. “Hen—duck.” Her laugher faded.
“Discomfort.” Henley snorted, muttering to herself. More like agony, torture, suffering…
“Can I… do anything?”
Henley peeked open an eye at Buster. “You’re increasing my discomfort,” she informed him.
He sighed and looked away, but didn’t leave. “I just wanted to check that you were okay and to say, sorry.”
Her brows flew up, and she winced as it pulled at the healing skin on her forehead. There was very little of her that wasn’t in pain. Aching. Throbbing… “I didn’t know you knew that word.”
His eyes connected with hers again. “I am sorry,” he repeated sincerely, “that you got hurt. I never wanted…” He paused, sorting through thoughts. Emotions were tricky for him to understand. Talking about them was probably near impossible. One thing the great Bus couldn’t do. “I never wanted to sit next to …someone in a burn unit again,” he admitted. She didn’t think that was what he was originally going to conclude his sentence with.
“Yeah well, I didn’t really want to be in a burn unit again.” Then she frowned, the little her cheeks allowed. “Who did you know in a burn unit?”
“I’m about the same age, remember. I was around for that huge fire.”
“That was south of here.” The nurse had told her their location. She was closer to home than she’d been at BTI, but her current condition made it almost as difficult to get to her family. She needed to reach them.
Buster nodded again and swallowed. “My father was a fireman. He got cal
led in. It was spreading so fast, threatening so many. He tried to do what he could.”
“’Was’? Did he… not make it?” Like her father? Anguish. Torment. Grief. Despair. Hopelessness…
“He’s still alive.”
“How long was he in the burn unit?” She could compare to her time spent there and get an idea of the extent of his injuries without being so rude as to ask. Ace was finally being open, and Henley soaked it all up.
“Long.” He gave a small smile at the throwback to his short response when they’d been wandering through the cornfields. It was just as irritating now as it was then. “But I visited longer—after he came home to finish recovery.”
She let him think for a second, his dark eyes fixed on the floor. She twisted her head a little further to more fully take him in.
“He asked me to check in on one of the people he saved for him. He said someone had to watch over her, protect her, because he hadn’t been able to save all her family. Guilt comes with the territory when you’re in that profession,” he explained unnecessarily to quickly bypass over what he was inferring.
“Who was it?” she whispered, wanting her hypothesis confirmed aloud, wanting the truth from him.
“A little girl. A little girl who lost a limb.” He was staring right at her. “And who then grew up to not only repair it but improve upon her hardship,” he said with respect, “and become one of the best minds BTI had the misfortune of losing and I had the fortune of gaining to my… team.”
She smothered the elated new words zipping through her mind like exam flashcards. “They lost me because of a lie you told me.” She turned back to the fluorescents in the ceiling. “Why should I trust any story you tell me? You expect me to believe you brought me with you out of some honor-bound promise to your father to watch over me? One - I don’t need to be observed. I’m not an experiment like Sirena. And as you said, I have skills and have advantages over others. Other humans, at least.”
“Yeah, with the capability to punch and electrocute.”
She rolled right over that indictment. “And B - you said you needed me. Like a business asset. So which is it? You’re going to put me to work just like BTI did, here, for the government?”
“Two.”
“Huh?” That threw her off her rant.
“You started your list with one and then switched to B. You should have said two.”
“Semantics,” she grumbled, and he chuckled. Henley tried not to clench her delicate fingers.
“Well, in this instance, it’s not a matter of determining one correct solution. Both are right. I did want to protect you, because though they don’t terminate their students in the literal sense—and honestly, I know you’re intelligent enough not to think a legitimate academic institution is going around killing each of their protégés like some barbaric—”
“Ah, but clearly I am dumb enough to listen to you, so my stupidity is far greater than you give me credit for.”
He gave her a look.
“Okay, I’m not stupid. I’m overly optimistic, laying my trust where it doesn’t belong. And if you spent as long as me in the robotics lab, you’d be amazed at the progress BTI has made, how futuristic their products are getting. How was I to believe they weren’t dystopia-like eliminating the waste and weak parts like a failed prototype? Heck, they’re already infiltrating the airports and post offices… Right? You weren’t lying about those, too, were you?” She turned her head to level a suspicious look.
“No, that part is true. As is what I told you. I simply said they’d terminate you. You’re the one who made the extra step to literal life-ending.”
“As you intended.”
“That’s why the second part—B as you call it—is also an accurate motive.”
“Aha, you do want me to reveal all the designs BTI has come up with that I saw during my five years there to the government.”
“Four years and eleven months,” he corrected. “And no. Well, my mom might want that, now that you’re here. She’s the one paying for your medical expenses after all—her department. She’s the Director of the Natural Disaster Department in the United States Geological and Climatic Survey,” he answered the question on her face. “And she’s not very happy with you right now, so in a way, you owe her. But—” He held up a hand to stave off her next question. “But, what I want is what you designed all on your own, not BTI’s models.”
She was baffled. Her face would have been screwed up if it could.
He let out a long breath. “My father lost the use of an arm that day. And it crushed him. Unlike you, he couldn’t repair himself. He refused to accept assistance from Mom because it would have been a sort of acknowledgment to her I-told-you so; she hadn’t wanted him to go help. She’d said it was too dangerous.” His eyes met hers. “He believes his hand was worth the lives of those he saved—your life. But it also cut him off from his job. He loved what he did. Without it, he hasn’t known what to do with himself. He feels useless, no longer a hero.”
Henley couldn’t stifle the little bit of culpability that twirled around the empathy crumbling from inside the burned exterior of her heart. She knew just how that felt. It had taken her a while to get her model up to full capacity, and that intermediate period had been misery. Suffering. Distress.
“I think he’d accept a hand from you though, literal and figurative this time—no lie. From the last girl on his list of those he saved.”
She looked away, the salty tears stinging her skin as they slid down her temples onto the pillow. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll go. But first,” she bartered, “you take me to my family like you promised. I’m not letting that one be a lie.”
His fingers were gentle but still sent a stab that caused her jaw to tighten as he wiped the wet trail from the corner of her eye. “Deal. In that order?” He smiled.
“Those are the terms.”
He laughed, a deep sound that didn’t really pass through his vocal chords so much as built and expanded in his chest until it leached as if through wire tendrils, reverberating out through his feet into the floor and extending in a rootlike system to everything else in the room. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to cause you more pain—again, literal and figurative. But I need to tell you…”
“Two,” Henley said.
“What?” Now he was confused.
“You said sorry twice now. I need to keep a tally. It’s an improvement.”
His lips quirked on one side. “I can be modified, too, with the right engineer working on me.”
“And to speak longer sentences, divulging something without me even asking.” She feigned utter shock. “What is this tidbit you’d like to offer me?”
“I’d rather not tell you. But I know your curiosity will probably burn you from the inside if you don’t get answers…” He winced. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”
“Three.”
His lips gave the ghost of a smile then flattened. “It’s not your fault—well, we can’t prove that without a control; there were two variables. Sirena’s stalker blew up the bridge.”
Henley was quiet, worry starting to chill her chest. She looked back at the ceiling tiles. “I’m not a civie, I’m EE; I can’t help you fix that monstrosity. Unless you want your bridge coated in a waterproof flexible nanomaterial.” Her heart sank with her tone. “Then again, that also needs to be modified, since I… overlooked making it fireproof. Sorry for the electrocution.”
“Apology accepted. It was a shock,” he joked. “Well, honestly, if you’re focusing on fireproofing…”
Henley still felt terrible but his lightheartedness helped repair it; it was a new side to him. “If you don’t spit it out, my next project is going to be teaching you to answer questions. And I’ll use electrocution to train you.”
“It’s happening again,” he said with regret. She took in his somber expression, hers fading to match. “Another fire. And it’s spreading fast. Which is partly why I’m here. We need
to get to your family soon …if you’re up for it.” He scanned her mummified body skeptically.
“I can do it.” She swallowed. She needed to. “You’re coming with me right?” He nodded. She wouldn’t have to use a memory to focus on happy emotions. She could have the real thing. Then what he’d prefaced with hit her like a spark to the system. “It was me.” Her voice was a whisper but it seemed to ooze heavily into every crevice of the room, coating everything. She’d known but hadn’t accepted it. “I started this fire.”
Ace looked away.
“That’s why your mom’s mad.” The overhead lights began to blur as Henley’s face crumpled. “Me. I’m the reason more firemen will get hurt, more little girls will lose their hands… more kids will lose their parents,” she wailed, her body jerking. It pained her immensely, but it was just another layer on the heartbreak sawing through her.
“What is going on in here? Young man, did you upset my patient?” The nurse bustled in.
Henley paid her no mind either. She’d have a burn unit full of patients soon.
Buster rose and made to leave.
Henley’s hand snapped out and snagged his, her padded fingertips catching his palm.
He turned to look back, pain marking his features, too.
She blinked a few times, sniffing. “Oh no, this is your fault, too. Don’t think you can plow through the hallways away from me again, Buster. I need you, too.”
His nose scrunched. “Okay, there’s one more thing I lied about and then only honesty from here on out.”
Her hand dropped back to the bed, another shooting ache flaring up into her shoulder. She held her breath until it passed, embracing it. She needed to get accustomed; she had a sister to warn and a fireman to assist before an inferno engulfed their lives and destroyed everything again.
“My name is Ace Acton. Not Buster.”
Epilogue
“So you work for the government? On top of BTI?” Henley asked aloud while Ace drove the government-issued truck through the mountains. It was a lot quieter and newer than Lindy’s, with technology more similar to BTI’s. Though Henley had been assured it was made in-house to avoid any potential for compromise or bugging. It didn’t comfort her.