Found in Amber

by Esther Rabbit

  “I think I prefer that, rather than forgetting,” Rufus admitted as Jasper handed him a glass of water. He produced a pill from his belt and Rufus was quick to snatch it. “Does it have like a gradual effect or will I feel it when I wake up tomorrow?” he held the pill between his fingers and inspected it carefully before popping it into his mouth and gulping away.

  “It eases you in. Lilou ran the test a while back so we know it works on the human brain just as well as on ours.”

  Tilting his head at the light strip signaling his en suite, Rufus switched on his explorer mode. “Can I try this time?” Two taps revealed a space like nothing he’d imagined. First off, there was a full wall of—maybe—optan succulents to his right. For sure, plants. He recognized the long rectangular mirror on the other side but failed to identify the vanity, sink, tap, anything remotely familiar. Just another rectangular block of something he couldn’t put his finger on. The mirror though, kept showing symbols and charts as soon as he approached.

  Catching Rufus’s train of thought, Jasper shrugged. “That’s a story for tomorrow. What you need to know now is that the shower is straight ahead so wash and sleep and we’ll go over more details in due time.” There was one thought on his mind right now.

  “What do you mean straight ahead, I see nothing.” No glass window, no rain shower head, no taps. Just an empty dead end. “And the iron throne?”

  Jasper snapped his eyes shut and took a large, exasperated breath. He never thought he’d see the day he’d be training another species on the use of optan restrooms.

  He pointed to the light strip next to the mirror. “Our toilets appear when you need them, there’s no need to have them on display.” He took Rufus by the shoulders, guided him toward that empty wall. “Now you sit.”

  “There’s nothing to sit on.”

  “Man, you’re questioning everything. Just sit!”

  Said and done, Rufus pretended to take a seat mid-air, and the toilet materialized before his behind like in Sci-Fi movies. Or worse, like in the plasin unit he’d just escaped.

  “And the shower?”

  “You take off these clothes and walk naked to the end of the room. Magic will happen when you reach it. Tap twice to get back into the bedroom and follow the other strip for the closet.” Jasper was already a foot out of the en suite.

  “So you’ll just leave me?”

  “I’ll come for you in a bit, just—I don’t know, tap things, play around. I need to get back to Zoey.”

  γ

  “She’s asleep. I think.” Lilou whispered once Jasper came into view. Zoey hadn’t moved from that fetal position since he’d left with Rufus, and Lilou still acted like her guardian. Strands of hair escaped Lilou’s chestnut ponytail and were now glued to her face like a bad reminder of the ass they kicked today. “She didn’t want to take the pill at first, but I insisted.”

  “I’ll take it from here.” He whispered, nearing Zoey’s curled frame. “Take the second door on the right and get some rest. I’ll come for you in the morning.”

  “You fought well today.” Lilou nodded, pursing her lips in a thin line.

  “Fooled you even better.” He pulled a knowing smile and bent to scan Zoey.

  She crossed her arms over her chest in protest. “You could’ve told either of us, you know.” Jasper’s stunt ended up feeling like the worst of pranks right now. “Unless you were planning to get yourself killed.”

  If there was anyone Jasper couldn’t lie to, it was Lilou. “That was the plan. Either get a full recorded confession of who else is in on this madness or die trying to end them.” His hand came on Zoey’s as he slightly tilted his head to get a better look at her. The healing light spread just enough to mask Lilou’s scowl. “But I had a feeling the odds were in my favor.”

  “You had a feeling, huh?” She still had it in her to kick his ass mighty fine. He had her doubting herself, questioning her training and everything she thought she knew. “Who else is in on this?”

  “The holy trinity.” It was no time for jokes, but there was no better name to define the Alliance’s downgraders. “Opt, Zii and Steb.” The three planets who started it all, the dynamic trio at the core of the foundation of it all. “Only the officials know the back-end operation — naturally — their Ministers, Chancellors and trusted soldiers.”

  It sickened Lilou for two very different reasons, the first being how oblivious she’d been to it all. Not even a gut feeling to scratch beneath that idealistic surface and peer inside at the swarming assholes which made her feel ashamed of herself now. She played a part in planets being ransacked, in innocent beings being lost.

  “Do you think they make us like this purposefully?” She thought out loud and asked the next question before Jasper got a chance to answer. “Where do we go from here?”

  “To Chamber of Interplanetary affairs. To clear our name and make sure they don’t twist this into a situation where only Opt is to blame. They’ll all try to cover their asses after this blows up.” He turned to look at her and say something to lighten the mood. Nothing came out though.

  “And it will. Catastrophically so.”

  “We need my father to help us with restoring these.” He held out the earpiece Alex had handed him prior to the departure from the time loop. “They fried all comms back on IG-47. I have all the earpieces though.” He took everything he could, gathered all the intel, befriended all the soldiers.

  Only his dad’s nifty fingers when it came to fixing tech could restore their comms at this point. “I figured that’s why we’re here,” Lilou said making a move for the door. “And Jasper, just so you know, you’ve done the right thing. Not even you could’ve prevented what happened with Etienne. Healing Rufus was the smart choice.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He gently slid his hands underneath Zoey’s legs and back. She felt small and soft against his arms, exhausted and torn from the inside out. Waking her up was bound to happen sooner or later but for now, he carried her on cautious steps toward his bedroom, wondering if she’d blame him for today.

  When the second door on the right opened, his bedroom looked as if he’d never left. A flash of prismatic light cascaded onto the silver floor. It smelled like home, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he dared to hope that Zoey wouldn’t hate it. She’d fallen asleep with her fingers curled in an unnatural grip, blood staining her skin and her sleeves, hair and cheeks. He became aware of her every breath as he lowered her onto the bed. Tears were still caught in the tangle of her lashes and shone through with no intention of drying up.

  He’d never been good at keeping his distance from her, never fully managed to stay away. Nor did he want to anymore. But it all kept getting more complicated. Just like in Etienne’s case, love had been the death of duty. He silently stepped in his en suite, made his scaly uniform retract into his belt and then his boots, only to take them off and throw them aside. He didn’t throw a second glance at the cuts and bruises adorning his hips and arm.

  It was good to be home, in the comfort of the water he’d always known running in streams down his body, restoring the comfort his skin seemed to long for. Earth hadn’t made him homesick yet, but being in a familiar environment felt selfishly right. His mind though, kept rewinding every second spent at IG-47. Every word he’d used on Zoey like a knife, willingly hurting her. Etienne had died both a hero and a villain, yet when he discovered his love for Zoey, he seemed to abandon everything else. Not that Jasper could blame him. Etienne was no soldier, but he fought better than most. He was no ambassador either, but he did a better job uncovering what lay under the Alliance’s rug than any other. All while he’d been naïve enough not to ever question a single order nor to ask himself why the Alliance would ever send an inexperienced ambassador to fix an unprecedented mess. Etienne though, had chosen her above anything else.

  Jasper thrust his fingers through his hair as he waited to dry. What happened on IG-47 was bound to have consequences.

  Zoey had
been asleep for two whole days. Forty-eight hours of dreamless sleep under the effect of an alien pill that was supposed to make her feel better. She opened her eyes exclusively at the sounds of her growling stomach and for a quick second, she even thought she was home. A lingering sweet taste on her tongue snapped her into alertness.

  James. She tried to fight the blissful state of mind she found herself in, and return to that godawful moment. It was exactly like Lilou had warned, a distant faded memory as if it had happened eons ago, as if her bones had suddenly stopped hurting and her brain practically had to dig for it all. Her fingers went straight to her face in search for puffy eyes when she instantly stopped—covered in blood—her fingers were still covered in his blood. When she pulled herself into a sitting position, Jasper jerked up from the foot of the bed. And he didn’t look like himself, checking her out with wary eyes.

  “I must’ve passed out.” God, her voice sounded dreadful. He moved closer, picking up a glass of water from the nightstand and handing it to her. “Where are we?” She heard her broken, foreign voice again.

  “In my room.” Jasper neared her looking worried. “You need to drink. You’ve been asleep for two whole days, Zoey and that’s perfectly normal when you process grief under medication.” The fact that she was gulping away was already a good sign. The way she eyed him though, wasn’t. He sat on the bed beside her, leveling eyes while handing her another pill. “This is to compensate for the lack of food, it will help you sober up, so to speak.” And she needed to be sober alright. Sober enough to ask the right questions and to stop feeling like the fabric of these bedsheets was practically liquid silk under her fingertips. And if the walls of this room kept changing patterns or she was in fact, hallucinating. Where did Jasper say they were again?

  “I don’t like it when you look at me like that.” Her brows pulled together in an uneven frown. “Like there’s something wrong with me.”

  Wow. And that was enough to silence his eloquence. “Isn’t there?”

  She let out a sigh and pushed her hair out of her face with shaking fingers. “James is dead.” Her eyes suddenly glazed at the thought and she looked away. “Everything’s wrong. And logic tells me it’s not my fault, but something inside me screams that it is. Does it make sense?” The pounding head wasn’t helping. Once she bounced on her two feet, the room started spinning. She couldn’t breathe nor think nor fight once Jasper’s arms caught her and cradled her against his chest. She fought it and wanted it all the same. She’d caught his white shirt in her fist and held it tighter than she should have. A silent scream followed as she pressed her eyelashes against him and her body started convulsing again.

  “You’re angry…” he whispered against her ear. “And I’m not letting go of you, Zoey. I’ll never let go again. I can’t undo what I’ve done to you back on IG-47, but that wasn’t me. Richard sent me both times to prove myself, so I put on a show at your expense.” Something inside him broke as he confessed, but his arms didn’t flinch. She felt the longing, the desperate ache in their hold.

  “And I doubted you,” Zoey spoke against his shimmering white shirt. “And hated you without a second thought. I would’ve killed you, Jasper.”

  “You wouldn’t have. You lack the field experience.” There was something in his embrace able to silence her demons and morph her anger into a melted state of self. Either that or the pill Lilou practically jammed down her throat two days ago, was working. She turned into pudding in his arms, tugging at his shirt, caught in a cocktail of anxiety and surrender. She focused on the warmth of his hands against her back, on the softness of his shirt now smudged with all the blood and tears glued to her cheeks. If the soothing came from the sound of his breaths, she didn’t know.

  “When you said this was your room, are we at your base on Opt, or—” She couldn’t even finish that sentence properly.

  “I probably should’ve told you that I’ve never had my own place since the plan for me was to work in another galaxy, so we’re at my parents’ place.” He felt her tense under his hold. “Rufus woke up five hours ago and he’s been unusually giddy—”

  What?! Out of her wits, she jerked up to meet his eyes. “Are they here? Do they know?” The thought of involving even more innocents in this matter twisted her stomach in a knot. The thought that those innocents happened to be Jasper’s parents, somehow tightened that knot.

  “They have an idea about the big picture.” He cupped her head and ran his thumb along the line of her jaw. “You’re safe here.” Safe and mildly embarrassed. Mildly being the understatement of the year. Dressed in blood stained prison gear. Starving, disheveled, and by this whole planet’s standards, possibly a criminal. That was all logic speaking, given that much like Rufus, her body’s current state had been an alien medication induced sort of euphoria.

  γ

  After Lilou woke him up, Rufus had spent exactly three more hours staring at the miracle that was this ceiling. Watercolor hadn’t been the right word to describe this ever-transmogrifying pattern of floating, puffy clouds. The closest thing was in fact, alcohol ink. Creative as he was, he’d followed the shapes morphing beneath his eyes and relished in this new, grief-free numbness. It felt like that first morning on vaycay—waking up without an alarm and rejoicing in that lingering state of warm comfort. He hugged the pillow to his chest, relishing in its softness. Nothing he’d ever touched had been this soft. As if you could actually squeeze a cloud.

  “I want you fully dressed and earpiece in. Twenty minutes Rufus!” She nagged from outside the door like an erratic little bird. Still, she’d been nice enough to give him a pill to silence his stomach this morning. Why did Lilou need him up anyway? “I’ve seen your ass in all its glory, by the way!” And that was enough to shake the devil himself out of his boots.

  “You did what?!” He growled and bolted in a sitting position, beady eyes blinking in dismay at the evidence; he was buck naked and red in the face like Hellboy. Too many memories slammed into him as he got up and headed for the shower. It was all coming back to him.

  He suddenly wondered how Jasper’s parents would react when he’d tell them their guest bedrooms were now fully booked by alien fugitives. Because that’s exactly what they were, and there wasn’t a decent thing in that darn walk in closet. Much like the toilet sprung out of nowhere as soon as he sat, so did the translucent shelves as soon as he reached for them. Since the shower washed and dried you, Rufus pondered if he’d get a personal shopper service out of this weird looking closet.

  “How do they friggin’ reach the top shelf?” He asked out loud, since none of the nearby options seemed to be Viking size. And what was worse, what seemed to be on display was a far cry from the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk fashion wave he’d expected from an alien nation. He settled for rubbing his temples again and pulled out a neatly folded white sweater. Two sizes too small. Optans were all about simplicity, not a color too flashy or a cut too avant-garde, no frills, no prints no patterns. Nothing at all. They’d probably freak if they ever saw his closet. The fabrics though, were like nothing he’d ever touched and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the pill talking.

  It’s either hospital gear or the ice queen’s garments, he thought and rummaged desperately through the frosty white, ivory, off white and a bunch of other variations he was now too sober to name. Soft like a marshmallow and light as a feather, he pulled what looked like another white designer waistcoat with a Loki of Asgard neckline. At least this one looked like it would fit. He didn’t dare dwell on it a second longer and pulled it on, only to see it parting like a tulip right above his belly button. On second glance, it even shimmered a little but fuck it, he was running slim on patience and Lilou hated knocking. The odds had declared war on him when trying to find pants, so he just pulled on the first stretchy pair he grabbed, storming for the bathroom mirror.

  “How’s this for hybrid?” He gracefully ran his fingers through his beard and groomed it as much as he could. It was the only manly thing he still
had on, given that the mirror reflected an oversized, shimmery swan princess. Trainers on, when the door to his bedroom opened Jasper stood all pearly white and sleeveless in what only resembled a shirt and pants of sorts.

  Beside him, Lilou looked like either she was about to cry or burst out laughing. “I can’t!” She turned and hid her face against Zoey’s shoulder. And since Zoey too bit her lip, the outcome proved itself clear.

  “You!” he narrowed his eyes on Lilou, speaking through his teeth “If I wouldn’t be positively sure you’d kick my ass, I’d give you such a weggie right now!” He waved a hand at the both of them “I’m just going to own this outfit and you can both suck it!” A nose-through-the-air-wave later, Rufus neared Jasper in a jittery move. “Are they here? Did you tell them?”

  He nodded with his same glowing confidence. At least Jasper had the decency to suppress his chuckle, even if his pal did look like a walking parody. “They’re waiting for us.”

  It was times like these when Rufus really needed something to lighten the mood. “I’d swallow that smile if I were you,” he raised his eyebrows jokingly at Zoey. “I’m not the one meeting the parents.”

  Watching Zoey flush was the work of magic, an instantaneous dash of pink infusing her cheeks while mild terror clouded her eyes. It was as if color had left certain bits and pieces of her face, moving only to the key points to assure she looked like a poppy in full bloom. Jasper simpered, a little too pleased but didn’t say a word except… “After you.”