The designer of the bedroom Eva moved to in the Casa del Mar, or House of the Sea, had oriented the bed so the residents of the room would see the ocean in the distance as soon as they awoke.
For the fourth morning in a row, Eva awoke to what should have been a stunning view, but was instead more storm clouds, more cold rain, more grayness, more miserable skies. For the fourth morning in a row, she flopped back on her bed and wanted the rain to just go away, wanted to just lay there and sleep until it did.
The previous three, she’d forced herself out of bed, forced herself to use the gym the Hrwang had built, forced herself to share it with the other soldiers driven inside by the tempestuous weather, and forced herself to believe that what she was doing made a difference.
She told herself this morning that she had to exercise. She had to stay in shape. She had to keep herself both physically and mentally alert. She needed the workout.
She couldn’t bring herself to crawl out from under her covers.
A feeling of dread accompanied her despair and the recollection of being trapped in the Agency safe house terrified her. It had become a prison and after she was freed, she had vowed to kill herself should she ever become trapped like that again.
She almost felt that way this morning.
If she could even simply look up the weather on the internet, even just get a hint of when the rain might end, she could face the day. The Hrwang surely had weather forecasters, the U.S. military did, and she considered asking around to find one. Would they even know how to predict the weather on a different planet?
She had to do something different. She had to get out of bed and do something to get over the black mood that had settled on her like the black clouds outside had settled on California’s coast. She had to get moving.
She pulled her blanket up around her head and asked God to make the rain go away. She apologized to him for occasionally saying she didn’t believe in him, then waited a hopeful minute. She peeked out.
It still rained.
She threw her covers off in frustration, screamed at the ceiling, growled, and got out of bed.
A strange thing happened on the way to the gym housed in the basement of Casa Grande. Out in the rain she ran to stay drier, as if that magically helped, but instead of running toward Casa Grande, she found herself running away from it, running along the paved, winding road that led down to the Hrwang command center.
“You’re gonna get soaked,” she said out loud to herself and found she didn’t care.
And not caring helped.
She ran happily through the cold rain, her tank top and shorts soon clinging to her, her socks and shoes squishing each time they hit the ground, her hair plastered to her head.
And she still didn’t care.
The tsunami had washed out part of the lower road and all of the visitor’s center. The Hrwang had built their command center on the same spot, but since they didn’t need it, they had never rebuilt any of the road. There was a passable dirt trail she took when she ran down to the beach, but she worried it would be too muddy to run on today.
And then she decided she didn’t care.
The road ran out and she sloshed through the mud on the trail below, slowing down to keep her balance. She fell once anyway, falling back on her rear, gooey silt oozing into her clothes. She laughed, stood up, wiped herself off a bit, and kept going.
She walked in places to get past more treacherous parts, and soon she arrived at the command center. Hrwang military vehicles came and went, their officers huddled under umbrellas or ponchos, waiting in line to download information and reports and upload new orders.
She took a path that swung wide of the aliens, although some probably still saw her and wondered why she ran in such bad weather.
She headed to the beach.
There were no man-made structures along the coast; if there had been any, they’d been washed away by the tsunami. Some remnants of the road bed remained, but all the asphalt was gone.
Eva reached the beach, where she walked out on the sand and sat down to take her shoes and socks off. Sand clung to her wet body everywhere, mixing with the mud, and when she stood, she knew she was a mess. She decided against rinsing off in the ocean water, though, after looking at the angry waves assaulting the shore.
Her feet chilled quickly while she stood and watched the waves, and to prevent the rest of her from getting cold, she took off running again, heading south, leaving her shoes behind.
The cold and rain sapped her strength and she ran slower than usual. Occasionally she worried about stepping on a broken beer bottle, abandoned and forgotten by tourists eons ago, or running into debris deposited by the tsunami, but the beach seemed clean, washed smooth by the powerful wave that destroyed everything it encountered. She ran and ran, seeking comfort but not finding it, finding instead distraction, her thoughts focused on the sand under her feet, the path in front of her, her muscles straining themselves to keep up with what her mind demanded of her body.
She didn’t know how far she’d run, it must have been several miles, when on her left parts of the highway reappeared, spared from destruction somehow. Eva stayed on the beach.
A dark mass appeared in front of her, obscured by the wind and the rain, and she kept running until she discovered she’d run out of beach. A large rock jutted out from the coast and into the water. The cliffs it formed weren’t high, but she wore no shoes and the rocks were slick with rainwater. She backtracked a ways to find a spot she could climb up and when she found one, she went up it. She didn’t know why, she only had a sense of wanting to keep moving forward.
Was she running away from the Hrwang?
She answered herself, no. She had a mission to fulfill and she wouldn’t abandon it because of bad weather.
The igneous rock on top of the cliffs and now under her feet was hard and uneven, sharp in places, and she didn’t relish the thought of crossing much of it barefoot. But something ahead caught her attention and she picked her way toward it. As soon as she finished investigating, she’d turn around and head back.
She saw a pile of tanks crashed into each other.
“Hello,” she called out, not expecting a reply. “Hello?”
It made her feel better to hear the sound of her own voice.
Wishing she’d left her shoes on, she moved closer to the tanks. They were an old model, she couldn’t remember what type but she’d seen them before on television, and other than damage from crashing into each other, she couldn’t figure out what had destroyed them. Most had black scars, but the damage looked superficial, like someone had burned the paint. The ground around them also looked scorched.
She made her way carefully around the pile, calling, “Hello,” a few more times. She climbed up on one with an open hatch.
“Is anyone in there?” she called inside but still expected no response. These tanks had been in the rain a while.
There were no bodies either and she puzzled over why they would all simply crash into each other. Even more puzzling was a set of tread tracks that ran toward the ocean. She followed them and they ended at the cliff. She couldn’t tell if the tank had gone into the water, but she didn’t know how it could have avoided it. There were no treads marks heading back, no sign of the machine even going back in reverse.
She remembered the Lord Admiral’s conversation with his general the night he took her swimming in the Roman Pool. She wondered if this were the result of that conversation. Had this been the same unit that had attacked Griffith Observatory, forcing the Hrwang to flee ahead of schedule? Had the aliens then thwarted this attack on Hearst Castle? If so, how?
She knew the Hrwang used an electrical weapon against aircraft. They charged it when they reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Could it be used against tanks? What good would it do? Tanks were tough. They weren’t planes. They couldn’t fall out of the sky and crash
when their electrical systems shorted out.
But they could crash into each other. They could drive off cliffs. With electrical systems fried, they wouldn’t be able to control their vehicles.
She tiptoed over the sharp rocks back to the pile up and looked at the burn marks again. They could be electrical, which meant the Hrwang might have used the same weapon technology against them as they did against aircraft.
Maybe it had shorted out the electrical systems. That’s why they had all crashed, but there were no bodies. It all made sense, but Eva also reminded herself she could be jumping to conclusions.
She slowly crossed the rock in bare feet and headed back to the sand.
Her legs and lungs had finally had enough and Eva walked on the beach back the way she’d come. Rain pelted her. Waves snarled and roared, crescendoed then faded, in the ever present cacophony of beach and storm sounds.
Much of the sand and mud had washed off her legs and arms in the downpour, but her feet flicked up more sand with each step and sand coated her up past her ankles. She gave up trying to fix her pony tail holder and finally pulled it off and allowed her hair to sit limply on her head. She wore the holder on her left wrist, moving it around occasionally when it dug into her skin too much.
She’d run a long way and the walk back took longer than she expected. She felt relief when she saw landmarks indicating she was close to where she started. Her shoes and socks should be lying in the sand, not far ahead.
As she got closer, she knew exactly where they were.
Right where the Lieutenant Grenadier waited.
She walked boldly toward the man, remembering their kiss in the gym.
Did he suspect her? Why was he on the beach in the rain?
She moved closer to him and when she was about ten feet away he yelled over the sounds of the surf and the rain.
“He said I could kill you,” he shouted in English.
Eva moved closer, not sure of what she heard.
“He told me I could kill you,” he shouted again and this time Eva knew she heard him correctly. She didn’t have to ask who he meant. She simply walked fearlessly closer, stopping right in front of the alien lieutenant.
She should kiss him again.
“He said if I ever suspected you weren’t who you said you were, I could kill you. I didn’t need permission.”
She stared at him, discerning pain on his face. Had he decided to kill her?
She tried to see with her peripheral vision if there were others with him, or if he was alone. But she didn’t want to stop staring at his eyes. His eyes would hold his intent, and at this second his intent seemed to be coping with some sort of pain, not yet ready to strike out at her.
Should she carry on her act? Or should she simply ask why he hadn’t killed her when he’d learned she was a spy?
Never confess.
She continued staring at him.
He wilted under her gaze.
“I love you,” he finally admitted. He didn’t move.
His eyes held a longing, a need for acceptance and understanding. Maybe even a need for vindication. But this man had killed for the Lord Admiral. Eva was certain of it. But she had to know for sure.
“Did you kill my dog?”
He nodded.
Her fist surprised even her, flying out and smashing the soldier’s nose. He staggered backwards and she leapt forward, twisting her body like she’d trained and catching him in the chest with a powerful side kick.
He went to the ground.
She kicked him again with her heel, wishing she had shoes on, and he stayed on the ground.
The man was powerful. She couldn’t kill him with her bare hands and she didn’t know if she even wanted to. But he lay helpless before her, covered in wet sand, a shattered expression on his face. He would do anything for her if she forgave him.
She knelt next to him and he flinched. He’d started crying.
Whoever this man had been before his current assignment as chief of the Lord Admiral’s security, which really seemed to mean chief lackey, he was no longer that man. The Lord Admiral had destroyed him.
Eva didn’t know how, but when the time came she knew she would kill the Lord Admiral. It would not make restitution for all the evil he had done, but perhaps it would prevent more. Perhaps it would prevent men like the Lieutenant Grenadier from turning into sniveling wrecks.
She wondered how many people the man in front of her had killed in the line of his duty to the evil admiral.
She tried to muster sympathy, tried to express the way she would feel if Juan or Mark lay injured in front of her, and asked, “Are you okay?” in Est. Speaking the man’s language might provide more comfort.
He nodded yes, then shook his head no. He reached out and she went into his arms.
Even as he sobbed on her shoulder, she thought about dragging him into the waves and drowning him. His heavy boots and uniform jumpsuit would be a disadvantage to him in the dangerous waves kicked up by the storm.
She’d read about these types of waves, seen them in news programs. They reached up and grabbed inattentive beachgoers, dragging them back with them and carrying them off into oblivion. If there were lifeguards still alive and working on the beach, they’d be planting red flags down the length of it.
If men like the helpless soldier on the ground in front of her hadn’t killed those lifeguards.
Perhaps oblivion was too harsh a sentence for this man. Or perhaps not harsh enough. Perhaps it would be better for him to suffer for his sins.
And perhaps she could use him against her enemy, her lover.
He wasn’t the only killer on the beach that morning. She, too, had killed. She’d killed the boy fleeing the gun battle in Las Vegas. She’d taught Juan how to use a grenade and he too had become a killer. She’d even used the lieutenant himself to kill Shay, the border guard from Utah who had defected to the Hrwang. She had tricked the grenadier into killing for her just like the Lord Admiral had had him kill for him.
Was she any better than the Lord Admiral?
She held the man tighter now, this time with honest sympathy, sitting down next to him in the rain on the sand while the pains of his misdeeds racked his body. She began to be cold although it must have been close to noon on an August day. His arms around her warmed her some.
He finally cried himself out and pulled his head away to look at her. Blood from his nose had caked on his upper lip, sand still covered part of his face and hair, and his eyes were red.
“You’re messy,” he said in English and she laughed at the truth of his statement. He meant she was a mess, but she was indeed messy. It was a messy operation, infiltrating the Hrwang with little support and no plan, flying by the seat of her pants the entire time, relying on her cold hearted ability to manipulate men to get close to the alien leader.
But she wasn’t cold hearted enough and her emotions were also messy, only her ability to maintain a perfect poker face saving her from discovery and death.
“I apologize I punch your nose,” she replied in faltering Est.
She thought he said, “I deserved it,” but she wasn’t sure. He almost started crying again. She kissed his nose gently and he smiled.
“I’m glad it’s not broken,” she said in English. He wouldn’t have smiled at her kiss if it had been.
“I love you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Her heart almost stopped. She knew what that meant. She knew the Hrwang reverenced the sanctity of a name, and what a man asking a woman’s name meant.
“The Lord Admiral must never find out,” she said.
He despaired, but nodded.
“Eva. Eva Gilliam,” she whispered.
“Tomes Nadovi,” he whispered back. “It will be our secret.”
By Hrwang standards, they were engaged to be marr
ied now.
She hugged him so he couldn’t see her face and it was her turn to despair. She wasn’t sure she could keep up so much deception. Shakespeare mocked her.
“What a tangled web we weave...”
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