Her tongue danced between my lips and met my own. “For what I wanted to do this morning.”
“And that was?” The last shred of anger fell away when her hand touched my neck. That she might film whatever happened did not stop the need that raced through my body as she pressed against me. With her face tilted up to mine, I did not hesitate the way I had before. Our lips crashed together, and her tongue danced into my mouth.
She stepped back, breaking the kiss, and began to strip off her top. Her skin was tanned and her breasts full. When I stepped into her arms, the heat from our skin touching felt like heaven. Fumbling for each other’s pants, we shucked them and embraced in the warm tent surrounded by our wet clothes as our tongues met and our hands roamed. Berkeley pulled me toward one of the inflated couches at the side of the tent then smiled up at me as she lay down and guided me to her.
I lost track of everything after that.
After, when the conversation was quiet and soft, I smelled strawberries in her hair and asked, “Where did you grow up?”
“Oregon. The Corvallis district. Went to school there for journalism.”
I grumbled. “So, you’re a reporter.”
“No!” She rolled off my chest and leaned against me. Her eyes flashed as she said, “Nothing of the sort, thank you. I make films.”
“Like documentaries, right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Mmhmm.”
“And I’m the subject of your next one?” That it came out surprised me. I shut my open mouth with a click.
Shaking her head, she smiled. “No. My plan had been to spend a full season hiking the Continental Divide from the edge of New Mexico all the way to Canada. Then I met you, and the plan changed.”
“Risky—I mean going all alone out here like you planned.”
Berkeley chuckled. “That’s the kettle calling the pot black.”
Even backward as the statement was, I had to admit she was right. Walking across the wasteland that had been my country seemed like a worse idea by the moment.
She’d changed her plans for me. I didn’t know what her motives were, but I was glad to not be out here alone. “Why don’t we change the subject?”
“Okay,” Berkeley said. “Do you always sleep with strange women on the first date?”
I wondered if she knew about Opal. “You don’t seem all that strange to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have a full set of teeth.”
Berkeley rolled onto my chest, and her hair cascaded down around my face. “I know how to use them, too.” The second time was better than the first, and it dawned on me that I was falling for this beautiful woman I didn’t fully trust. Despite my hopes, I believed I was in for a rough time.
Chapter Thirteen
Operations Report, Day Seven.
Apologize for no report for the last three days. Subject is presently stationary for the night approximately sixty-two kilometers to the southwest of reference point vicinity Cortez, Colorado. Hexhab is in use, and secondary monitoring is intermittently available pending satellite coverage. Expected to remain in this location twenty-four hours. Torrential rainstorm became blinding snow. Over eighteen centimeters has fallen to this point. Subject is 42 percent to Stage Four integration. Has begun to have memories of family, primarily father, and experiences as a young man. No other significant integration-related progress to report. I am moving into the next phase beyond physical connection.
Subject has not asked many questions regarding the state of the frontier. Belief in patriotic values as reported is low, or the subject is repressing emotion. Believe the latter is the case. Significant conversations with guidance protocol regarding what he sees, but little other communication.
Guidance protocol remains unhacked. Significant coding of an unknown nature continues to thwart efforts to break into the data feed using passive measures. Subject responds to questions according to expected baselines, but I do see emotional responses building. Do not, repeat, do not recommend active measures unless the subject is compromised. Rushing the integration process artificially risks cerebral hemorrhage. My identity is solid. His protocol continues to scan and search, but all links remain active and secure. The anomalous data noticed earlier is still present, though in substantially lower quantities. Whatever the protocol is processing, she is learning to manage it effectively.
Physical connection engaged. Emotional manipulation on schedule. Believe that emotional connection will enhance the subject’s ability to integrate.
Bennett
The report left much to be desired, but Crawley closed the transmission without a response. The sun set against the tall, sleek spires of Paris and showered his hotel windows in golden light. There was much to learn during this first full integration. Over ten years of experimentation had brought them to the precipice of success. Yet a full integration was very different than a simple memory transfer. A decade of research and partial experimentation had left too many variables. The human mind was the ultimate puzzle. Manipulating the nooks and crannies, while not Crawley’s first choice of action, could prove successful. Short of giving the subject all of the information needed to process himself, which would leave him curled in a fetal position and worthless to the war, any possible avenue needed to be used.
Bennett’s theory on emotional involvement was going to be put to the test. She maintained that the process could be manipulated by emotional response. A man without an identity would latch on to the first relationship he formed. The full range of human feelings would produce an emotional response that would drive integration. At what cost to her and the subject? Crawley thought with a grimace. Giving yourself to science is one thing, but risking a failed emotional relationship for it? Sleepy, as they’d taken to calling the subject, would take a failed relationship badly, as would Bennett. The girl was crazy, academic honors and awards notwithstanding. Or not crazy exactly. Young and dumb, even for a scientist. Positively naive. Crawley grinned. That could be the answer. The bigger question was not how the subject would respond to it. He’d already proven somewhat malleable after the surfer girl’s overdose. That whole thing smelled of Penelope Neige and her idiot minions. They loved the nice, cut-and-dried ending to things. If they caught Sleepy, they would kill him before asking anything at all. That Sleepy had gone to California and into the backcountry without interception by the Terran Council was nothing short of miraculous. Now, they’d have a hard time stopping him. If they tried, Bennett might have a thing or two to say about that.
Drumming his fingers on the small leather-bound book that never left his side, Crawley wondered how Doctor Gwendolyn Berkeley Bennett would respond when the shit hit the fan.
Realization shot through Mally’s circuits like a lightning strike as the dream began. In the streams of data that she could see, it was not a pleasant dream at all. Centers of his brain, particularly those dealing with loss or regret, fired up. Understanding his regretfulness was one thing, but the palpable hurt he felt in the dream, which would be present when he woke, was something else entirely. This was useful, particularly in dealing with the woman asleep in his arms.
She would have to be dealt with—sooner rather than later. Threat-potential indicators hovered at a 42 percent probability. As he approached Stage Four, the likelihood that Berkeley’s threat index would climb was only surpassed by that of a stop-all-movement order on the frequencies from the near attack in Sydney.
Perhaps it was time to find out who owned those frequencies. Mally had a pretty good idea where to search.
During midsummer in Georgia, sweat soaked me just from walking outside. My heart raced. I ran back into the apartment, a sad two-story affair built for starving college students like me. The bricks were worn and chipped around the base of the old buildings. I went upstairs and into my room then rummaged through a drawer before bounding back do
wn the stairs. Not exactly my best romantic move, but it was going to have to do.
Outside, I caught the arm of a porcelain-skinned girl with short black hair and a you’re-not-good-enough expression. Stepping into her arms, I could not help noticing that look in her amethyst eyes—the look I loved and feared, the one that said, “I am so much better than you, but you’ll do.” But I knew I was lucky, and all that mattered was that she would be mine. The opinions of my friends and my family… my family… none of it mattered. I knew she would say yes when I asked. Whether it would be the truth, I could not be sure.
She’d lied to me so many times—told me that if another man had merely asked, I’d have been kicked to the curb. She’d alienated me from three of the best friends I ever had. All because I was stupidly in love and thought she was the one for me.
I didn’t remember her name in my dream. I didn’t care to. If that memory faded, it would be just fine with me. I saw myself opening the box and her greedy eyes examining the diamond. She wore a false smile. She made no excuse for her search for the bigger, better deal. I was a stepping-stone, no more.
Don’t do this, I wanted to shout to myself. But all of my doubts didn’t matter. I knew she was the one. She had to be. Everything about her was completely…
“Wrong,” I said aloud into the howling darkness.
Berkeley scrunched closer to me under our shared blankets but did not stir.
<
I stared up into the warm darkness and shook my head then chided myself that Mally could not see me.
<> Mally replied with a lilt as though she was smiling.
How is that even possible?
<>
Point taken. I let out a shallow, lingering sigh. I wish you would record my dreams, Mally.
<>
You’re right. I wouldn’t want to replay them anyway. I chuckled to myself. Berkeley’s backside was warm against my side, and I was awake in the middle of a raging snowstorm. What is the message this time—“Don’t make the same mistake twice”? I wasn’t sure I was in love with Berkeley, and she clearly didn’t feel that way about me—or at least, I assumed she didn’t. What had just happened between us was utterly stupid, and I’d end up regretting it. I’d served a purpose for her, and whatever it was, she’d certainly made the effort to convince me she was genuinely attracted.
You said she was using a lot of bandwidth and that she might be broadcasting. Is she?
<
Where is she sending it? Can you interfere with it?
<
I allowed myself to slide back into the blankets and curl against Berkeley’s offered side for warmth. I draped a hand across the curve of her waist and settled my nose in her hair. Everything about her called to me. If the questions in my head would stop, I could see myself loving her.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked softly.
I took a breath and lied. “The storm woke me. It’s really howling out there.”
“And you’re lying here awake, thinking about what?”
I sighed in the darkness. There was something about her subtlety that appealed to me. “There’s something wrong with being here, isn’t there?”
“No, that’s to the south. This is just fairly uninhabited country.”
“I’ve noticed.” I chuckled. “So, why no people here?”
“Limited access to water.”
“There’s plenty of water here,” I said.
“All of the water on the Continental Divide is hoarded and pumped westward to California. They own the water rights. Remember when we stopped to drink? If we were caught, we’d have to answer a lot of questions. Californians don’t want anyone messing with their water.” Berkeley rolled over onto her back, and my hand rested on her warm, flat stomach. “That started two hundred years ago—the whole fighting-over-water thing. It only grew worse.”
“Global warming, right?” I smiled.
Berkeley snorted. “True enough, but Earth has been cycling through carbon dioxide levels for millions of years. Yes, mankind was putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the planet did what it always does and evolved. Adapted. Global warming was a rallying cry for every superhurricane or F-six tornado. Mankind caused all of it. While people argued, the corporations did what they do best: they started hoarding resources. When drought did come to Colorado, all of the farmers on the plains sold out to the elevated farm corporations. With 99 percent of the water diverted to California’s widening territories, most of the people chose to simply move west into Utah and Nevada until those states were partially absorbed by California. The economy never recovered.”
She sighed. “And there are settlers and farmers out here. Some prospectors, too. We’re likely being monitored now just to make sure we don’t take anything we are not allowed to have or ‘jump a claim.’ Is that what you call it?”
I nodded. “You’re not worried about that?”
“Not at all.” She looked up at me. “This girl can take care of herself.”
I smiled and felt her hand snake behind my neck. “Then what’s this girl doing with me?”
She laughed. “Tell you tomorrow morning.”
Of course, she didn’t tell me anything when the sun rose the next day or during the additional days we spent inside until the storm abated. We slept, ate, and made love in cycles. I asked a million questions, and she answered them. Mally made sure to correct me, especially on Berkeley’s version of the fall of the United States. It was way more complicated than the inequality she described.
<
Did you say “Dixie”? You’re joking, Mally.
<
Why?
<
Like what? I rubbed the corners of my eyes and yawned.
<
So, Berkeley’s tale of corporate greed and the bulk of the population revolting isn’t true, and it wasn’t all due to economic failure?
<
So, where do I come in? Mally didn’t respond, and I had to smile. Of course you can’t tell me that ultimately I’m part of that culture of wanting more and doing less. Sleepers are supposed to fight for people who forgot how to fight for themselves. Why else would they bring me back? I’m a dead American soldier, and no one would miss me if I had to die again.
<
Sleeper Protocol Page 16