X

by J. D. Glass

  “Stand by for injuries.” The announcement came from a speaker several feet above his head, harsh and metallic over and through the whine of the rotors, the words etching into the vibration of the craft, his elbows bouncing with it.

  Ben looked curiously down the length he’d just frog-marched to watch the pigs scramble. His eye line went no higher than mid thigh as jumpsuited crew with helmets and insignia he could barely see raced out from what he could now confirm was their med bay as he caught glimpses of the interior. He wondered for a moment if it was Anna or whatever her name was, but didn’t recognize the first person carried past him. Serves the fuckers right, he thought. Fuck the Man!

  Even if his mission hadn’t been completely successful, at least they got one of them! It filled him with a satisfied smugness as he shifted his shoulder and leaned back against the curved wall behind him to release some of the ache in the tendons.

  There was a rush to and from the med bay door to receive the next casualty, and booted feet raced quickly past him, exchanging terse words, words he wouldn’t have heard or understood anyway as he recognized Charli’s jacket—he’d pulled it from the front closet before they’d left her apartment what seemed forever ago—on the limp form they loaded in.

  “She’s dead!” Cooper yelped from his perch as first the med bay door slammed shut, then the outer ramp closed. “That’s not what’s supposed to happen,” he said, not even realizing he spoke or that someone approached and knelt next to him as he stared at the closed interior doors. The pain and discomfort were now nothing but background annoyances as he strained against his restraints to catch a better glimpse, but he could see only a pair of heads moving through the window. “That’s not the plan.”

  “And what exactly was the plan?” Even though it was a barely heard shout, again more felt than heard despite the breath that warmed his ear, he knew that voice and he twisted with renewed surprise to gaze up past the black of her clothes and the length of her hair pushed to the side of her neck where the tendons stood in sharp relief, to once more see the woman he’d known as Anna Pendleton focused on him. His pale face was a study in confused shock, eyes darting between her and the gloved fingers wrapped around the SIG aimed right at his temple as the whine of the rotors overhead increased.

  “All hands secure for take off in five,” a male voice echoed over the rumble and thunder, and she nodded in automatic response. “If Charli’s hurt—or worse,” and her words spoken almost directly against his ear chilled him through the increased shake of the frame he sat against, “you’re more than just an accessory to murder, Cooper. You’ve killed her. You.”

  In seconds she sat directly across from him, her focus and aim unwavering even through the lurch of liftoff.

  He tried to stare her down, the enemy he mistakenly thought he’d defeated, but the bruise on her forehead stared back at him with purple reproach.

  “You don’t hit girls, son,” his father had told him when he was a young boy. It was one of the days before his mother had left. His parents had yelled—screamed, really—for what seemed like hours, and afterward the door had truly and finally slammed shut, she on one side, he and his father on the other. Blood streamed down the side of his father’s head, and bits of porcelain littered the ground by his feet.

  “Why not, Daddy? She hit you first.” He’d watched as his father wiped the blood from his face with the faded blue bandana that was almost a part of his jeans.

  “Because you don’t, son,” his father had answered him with a heavy sigh. “You just don’t.”

  It was in the gaze that accompanied the strange silence that Ben first noticed, really noticed, his father’s eyes. “You don’t hurt things that aren’t as strong as you,” he said while Ben stared into the muddled mix of green and brown, the whites that surrounded them a cloudy red. “Promise me you won’t, Ben—not ever—I want you to be a good man.”

  Ben gave his word, the most solemn little-boy promise he could muster, and the words echoed back at him down through time as he stared at an accusing bruise. The color stood out in sharp relief to the pale skin that surrounded it, wasn’t hidden by the tendrils of hair that drifted over it.

  Suddenly Ben noticed, perhaps for the first time, perhaps since the initial few weeks when they’d first met, or perhaps it was simply that he finally remembered that the person who sat across from him was a woman and—it bothered him to admit it, made strange sensations crawl through his stomach and up his thighs that not even the vibrations of the helo could mute—a beautiful one at that.

  He didn’t know it was possible for the craft to shake even harder, but it did, and in his mind, her words—their lack of inflection, the flatness despite the shout of her voice—replayed over and over, while the darkened hardness and simple accusation of her eyes upon him sank in, created a unified message. And quite suddenly, he got it.

  She’d held power over him, but hadn’t abused it or him—not now nor in the past—and he was able to admit that Charli aside, shooting her with deadly intent was some very obvious provocation. Meanwhile, he…he’d broken his promise, the solemn vow he’d made to his father, that good man, to be a good man himself. Shame rose through his gut even as the full meaning of his long-ago promise, manifest and apparent, stared back at him, and he understood one more thing as he dropped his eyes from that unflinching gaze: she no longer cared whether he lived or died. And in that instant, buried in the ruins of broken promises and plans, his mission failed and his dream dying, neither did he.

  *

  Cole Riven wasn’t a man given to many idle fancies, but he’d always prided himself on having a certain amount of imagination, a bit of creativity, a special spark of something, he brought to his command, assumed it was the reason behind the good work he got from his crews. As a result of this thinking, it had been more than a mere shock for him to read the last psych eval he’d received. “Intelligent, but lacks creativity,” he’d read, then read the bold black letters over again, realizing his feelings were actually hurt. “Old man, you don’t know me,” had been his first incredulous thought as he repeatedly reread those words. He had shared the results with his sister during their next conversation.

  “Dude—they don’t know you—that’s just a whole bunch of crap,” she’d said and reassured by the echo of his own thoughts, he laughed with her about it before they spoke of other things. Cole was a marine engineer and a Navy officer, but he was old school—“haze gray and away,” as they said—a true sailor who went to sea, not a career administrator who kissed scrambled-egg ass on land.

  Like any true sailor, when he was at sea, he dreamed of being on land, and when he was on land, he dreamed of being at sea. And then there were the nightmares that all true sailors shared: drowning and death, destruction of their ships. A Scheherazade of a dark and dripping doom sang in their dreams, every night, for a thousand and more. These were the fantasies and phantasms of sea men, of true mariners.

  Yet these men and women who dreamed of death still answered the siren call of the sea, answered with an obsessive love unrivaled by any, wooed and loved her with a romantic intensity displayed in songs and sweat, imaginative feats of daring, a love that could and would one day be equaled and returned to these stalwart lovers by the only possible reward: her final salty embrace.

  So when Cole woke before the alarm clock went off at 0600 local time on his “free” day with dreams of a fire in his head and his sister flashing through his mind, this man of reported small creativity paid attention. It left him with a nagging sense of unease, set him to showering and dressing quickly, determined to stop by his office to log onto his system and check in at home.

  Besides, he hadn’t heard from Charli in a couple of weeks, so when he entered his office, he sent mental greetings to pictures he’d taped to his screen, pictures of his parents, a snapshot his sister had sent him from a beach party she’d attended. “My kind of work function,” she’d said in the e-mail that had accompanied the group shot.


  He booted his computer, and despite the tingle of warning that haunted his head, he grinned back at the open smile she wore, the surfboard she leaned against on one side, and the woman whose hand rested on her waist on the other. He couldn’t remember the name offhand—Andrea? Anna? Ada?—but Cole liked the way her eyes rested on his sister. He wondered idly if Charli had started dating her by now—it wasn’t so much that he’d disliked Raven per se, it was simply that he thought her too shallow and somehow failing in some fundamental way to truly suit his sister.

  That train of thought derailed as he typed in his passwords, and when his mail system opened, he was pleased but not too surprised, the nagging sense of concern momentarily dismissed, when he saw Charli’s e-mail address pop up in his inbox. To his way of thinking, he’d thought of her so strongly because she’d thought of him. A strange thought to many, perhaps, but not to Cole, for in his experience, such happenings were common and more importantly, accurate.

  He settled into his seat, filled with the happy anticipation of the friendly and fun exchange he’d have with his sister, and he smiled again at the picture taped to his screen as the message downloaded. The smile disappeared as he read, and he’d already picked up the phone before he hit the last line.

  “I need Commander Ridgeway in Intelligence, and I need to arrange for an immediate transport back to the United States—I have a family emergency.”

  In that moment, Charli’s gamble had paid off.

  *

  # grep –n –A 12“void.*send_reset”

  Tabula Rasa

  It was warm, it was dark, and many things hurt. She didn’t realize she’d made a small sound, but in the instant just before she did, a voice soothed her and a smooth hand gripped hers. “Shh…it’s okay, you’re okay. Sleep if you can.”

  Yes, she knew that voice, that touch. It was Anna’s voice and Anna’s touch. She remembered, because she’d fallen asleep to it earlier.

  “Anna,” she said, her throat tight and sore, her own voice no more than a strangely painful whisper she wasn’t certain she heard herself as it burned through her neck. “I had the strangest dream…” She drifted, and images, disjointed, unreal, floated through her mind. There was the water, there was a fire. There was softness and warmth, there was a man and a gunshot—for a moment she struggled to breathe and she held the hand in hers tighter. The imperative that drove her turned to desperation. She wanted to sit, to open her eyes, and fueled by adrenaline, for the space of a few heartbeats, she did. “I dreamt you died, Anna—Coop, Ben Cooper, he—”

  She didn’t notice the IV lines that ran into her arm, and she registered the oxygen mask she wore only as an uncomfortable pressure across the bridge of her nose, overwhelmed as she was by the pain that tore through her chest, a heavy bruising pressure where there had only been ice before, the ache timed to her pulse. Although she felt their sting, she didn’t recognize the tears that filled her eyes and made everything she saw waver further.

  “It’s okay, Charli, baby, I’m okay—I’m right here.”

  The humanoid shadow moving in her peripheral vision meant nothing to her as she reached for that voice, the only thing she could focus on, the only thing that mattered. “You’re okay,” she repeated as she grasped Anna’s hand, and her face, the face Charli had been certain she’d never see again, her jade eyes large and luminous, swam into focus. She held on tightly, suddenly both convinced and terrified the sight would simply disappear if she let go. “You’re okay.”

  If that was true, and the full green eyes before her, the touch of lips against her fingertips and the sense that flowed from them said it was, then there was something Charli had to tell Anna. It was big, super way big, and she had to tell Anna, she had to know, and Charli’s mind grasped at the most familiar thing first. “I sent everything—the server, Cole, he—” Despite the panic that drove her, a heaviness held her down and warm softness invaded her again, weighed her eyes, set her back against the pillows.

  “It’s okay, Charli, I’m okay, it’s all been taken care of.”

  Partially satisfied, Charli nodded against the softness that held her, that drew her back to dreams. Still, though, there was something…something more, something other…one more thing she had to say, much more important than anything else. She couldn’t think, couldn’t find the right words, she was sinking, everything was just so heavy, and all she had left floated up in a whisper—primal, childlike, nakedly honest in its simplicity. “Anna…don’t go.”

  The familiar and welcome touch gentled along the back of her hand, against her fingers, and she barely felt the kiss that was again laid on them. “I’m not going anywhere, Charli. Go back to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

  Soothed, comforted, Charli slid back into a dreamless sleep.

  *

  Elaine sat there for hours, watching, waiting, for what she didn’t know, and as she sat there, Charli’s hand curled tighter in hers, her breathing aided by whatever voodoo it was that the medical people applied. Sedation, upped when Charli had come to briefly just a short while ago, very obviously confused, upset and panicked, still ran through her veins. As far as Elaine could understand, the intent was pain management so that the broken rib Charli had sustained, and the worst of the burns and the inhalation damage from the fire, would neither hurt nor disturb her.

  It was frightening in ways Elaine could barely explain to herself, how still, how pale, how absolutely silent Charli was at that moment, when normally, Charli always seemed so much larger than life. Elaine could see her in her mind in a thousand different ways, a thousand different moments, the way Charli focused on her screen or on the shore, the energy that seemed barely contained when she walked, the fierce welcome in her eyes when challenged by work or waves.

  She stroked Charli’s hand, fit their fingers together, remembered how they’d played over her and how they felt stroking against her cheek, her chest, how they had so fully mapped her, drawn her entire body to vibrant life, then fit so beautifully within her.

  Even in their most naked, most vulnerable moments together, Charli had never seemed fragile, not the way she did now. And the tears in her eyes when she’d woken for those brief moments…Elaine knew those tears were for Anna, and they had pierced through her with a force that made her breath catch and break, created an answering smart she couldn’t and didn’t try to stop. She realized she had never, not once, ever really seen Charli cry before, not so openly, not like this, the searing, tearing pain of it an actual physical presence, not even when—

  Their last conversation once more played through Elaine’s head as monitors hissed and beeped in the low light of the ward.

  She stroked the shoulder under her fingertips, still afraid of reacting, of saying or asking too much, of breaking the fragile trust Charli had finally returned.

  “How…” She swallowed and tried again. “How old were you?” She was proud of the careful neutrality she heard in her voice, the successful containment of the flood that swirled through her.

  Charli shifted, a restive twitch to her shoulder, and Elaine released her, sensing that she needed the bit of distance. Still, though, their bodies connected along their lengths, Charli’s thigh resting just over hers, and she neither pulled away nor protested when Elaine reached once more for her hand. She heard the breath Charli took as she curled her fingers through Elaine’s.

  “Seven, I think, just about eight when the whole thing started, nothing major, just some stupid touching shit, you know, no big deal, but that…it was the summer after my freshman year of high school,” Charli told her, her tone very matter of fact. “That was on the overnight back from soccer camp. I, uh, I kinda ran away when Uncle Ted fell asleep, walked about a mile or so to some supermarket and found some nice mom-like lady to ask for a ride—”

  “Jesus, Charli—you could’ve gotten hurt!” Elaine hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t thought it consciously, but the words were out past the power of recall, past her determination to remain neutral, nonreact
ive.

  She caught the wry grin Charli tossed at her. “I didn’t think at the time it could have gotten too much worse, and I got home just fine.”

  In possession of herself once again, Elaine was grateful for the training that allowed her to place her emotions on the side as she absorbed information. She wondered what it cost Charli, who had certainly not been similarly trained to repeat the tale in such calm tones, so matter-of-factly, almost as if it had happened to someone else, as if it didn’t matter. But it did, it did, it mattered a lot.

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “You see, Anna, you have to understand…” Charli stopped and turned her head, shifting as she did so that instead of connect, they barely touched. She did not let go of Elaine’s hand and Elaine gave her the lightest of encouraging returns of pressure, the physical reminder that she was there and listening—hearing—that she cared.

  “He showed up at my parents’ house, before they sent me to Virginia. He stood right at the door—he was drunk, he was screaming. He’d lost his job, my aunt divorced him. He said…” Charli took a deep breath and gazed down, staring fixedly at the space between them.

  Elaine let the silence continue for the space of a few more heartbeats before she sat up, then stretched careful fingers for Charli’s face. She ached, ached with a fullness that threatened to burst through her ribs and swamp her beneath it.

  “What, Char?” she asked, once more catching the amber glow of Charli’s eyes with her own. “What did he say?”