“This is really quite fascinating,” Sunny said, not giving anyone a chance to contradict him. “We have been waiting for over a year to see the virus mutate, but definitely didn’t expect it to recombine. Dominic told you that theory already? Of course it will be another week until I can confirm this completely, but if you look at the first blots that we did—“
There were way too many lanes on that SDS-PAGE gel and western blot that Sunny was raving about, making me tense up before my mind was even able to sift through the details. None of the lanes were signed with anything but numbers, but I’d seen the results of way too many time progression experiments in my time not to make sense of this. Although, time progression was not the applicable term.
My throat closed up and my stomach dropped out from underneath me. It was impossible for me to tear my gaze away from the screen, and I didn’t hear a word of what Sunny kept going on about. When I finally managed to shake myself out of it, I reached over and pulled the stack of papers from his hands that he used to explain what exactly which blotch on the screen signified. I didn’t care about the diagrams and jotted notes, but kept rifling through the pages until I found the sheet that held the sample order for those first assays that Sunny had shown me. It was all abbreviations, of course, because scientists were lazy fuckers through and through, but it wasn’t hard to decipher them and match them up to what I knew they had to be. Right there it was, black on white, that harmless-looking “P” and “E”—short for “placenta” and “embryo.”
Air left my lungs in one explosive burst and I felt the sheets slip through my suddenly slack fingers, tumbling all over the floor. My heart seized up inside my chest, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. My mind ground to a halt, trains of thought clashing against one another without affecting anything.
This couldn’t be happening. Of all the things that had gone down, not this.
But it had happened, because there was the data. And didn’t it make so much more sense that Nate would shush Sunny to shut him up before he could blab about inconveniences, rather than to spare me another deluge of grief? Because what was going on inside of me had never mattered to him as much as virtually anything else.
Anger came hot on the heels of denial dropping away, anger so hot and deep-seated that it made me see red. I felt my ragged fingernails bite into my palms as my hands curled into fists. I needed an outlet for that anger, and I knew that if I didn’t leave here, right fucking now, it would be someone’s face rather than an unlucky inanimate object.
Turning around slowly, I stared at Nate. At least he didn’t have the audacity to ignore me. And, oh, he knew that he’d screwed up. I could see it in the guilt on his face, the anguish in his eyes. But he stood tall and defiant as ever, not giving an inch when he should have been groveling in front of me.
I held his gaze until I couldn't stand to look at him anymore—and then I left.
Chapter 12
You know you’re in trouble when all of a sudden a corridor that is wide enough for five cars to drive through side by side is closing in on you.
That was exactly how I was feeling as I stormed out of the command center and flew blindly down the hallway. My only instinct was to get out, but with my mind all but scrambled I took the wrong turns, and rather than reach the hangar, I ended up stepping into the converted gym. There were a few people in there, training on the mats across the room, but I didn’t even really see them. My eyes fell on the punching bag suspended from the metal rafters overhead, and suddenly I had an outlet for all the anguish that was tearing me apart right now. Screaming, I exploded toward the bag, first hitting it with my fists, and when that did nothing, I pivoted on my bad leg and kicked the bag as hard as I could. Leather ripped, the bag slamming into the wall as it tore off its suspension hook, and it fell down in a heap on the floor, sand escaping through the tear at the top. I stared at it, panting, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
The silence in the room was deafening, making me turn around slowly and glare at the others on the mats. “What?” I ground out, but got no reply, just more incredulous stares.
The door to the gym fell shut with a bang, and when I glanced over, I saw that the Ice Queen was standing next to it. She ignored me, instead zeroing in on the others. “Out,” she barked, her commanding tone allowing no disobedience. One by one, the others filed out, a few curious glances directed at me but mostly straight forward at the door. The last guy that scrambled outside hastily closed the door again, essentially locking us in here together.
With one exception, Pia was the last person I wanted to be alone with right this moment.
I stared at her, my shoulders heaving, my teeth clamped together so tightly that they hurt. She held my gaze easily with that infuriating kind of calm that made me feel like a child throwing a tantrum. I fucking hated her guts right now.
“Are you here to clean up his mess?” I shouted across the room, ignoring how all the concrete around us made my voice echo. “You know what he did, right? Of course you do, because you always fucking know everything. It’s me he constantly shits on,” I accused.
The venom dripping from my voice didn’t affect her in the least, but then I hadn’t expected it to.
“That’s not why I’m here,” she said.
“Then why? To tell me to get my shit together and stop acting like a spoiled brat?” I tried to remember if she’d ever done that—I had certainly deserved it a time or two—but came up blank. There wasn’t much else my mind was revolving around than what had my pulse up at one-eighty.
As before, what I said didn’t even seem to get through to her. “Not particularly, no. You look like you need to vent some steam.” She paused as she looked away, but held my gaze easily when she caught it again. “I’m here to tell you a story.”
“I don’t fucking need to hear any stories!” I rasped, but she would have none of it.
“You do. So you understand.” Was that actual hesitation? Couldn’t be. She remained silent for maybe five seconds, and although her voice stayed calm, there was sudden tension in the lines of her body that, like this, I hadn’t noticed before. “Just hear me out. You don’t need to say anything, and after I leave, we will never speak of this again.” Pia waited until I gave a small nod before she went on. “I had two children. I lost them. If anyone here understands what you are going through, it is probably me.”
That I hadn’t seen coming. I also didn’t know how it made me feel. Stupid. Angry. Yet before I could do more than open my mouth, she silenced me with a jerk of her chin.
“Let me talk first. I am not telling you this to make you feel bad. But you should know this.” Her mouth quivered, and I thought she tried to smile but didn’t manage it. “Kata I had early, when I was seventeen. She wasn’t planned, but she came at the right time. I never wanted to be a hairdresser but my mother made me learn the trade. Said it would be good for a woman to be independent. I was stupid, of course, and in love, so I had a child with a man who was barely more than a child himself. I thought I loved Mirko, but I loved my beautiful, intelligent little girl more. Three years later I had a boy, Luka. I was still living with my family because Mirko was all talk and never brought home money. He got himself killed when the war started. I grieved but he was never there, so the children didn’t miss him much.” She paused, and now she did manage a small, private smile, momentarily lost in memories. “I loved my children. And I loved being with them. The women in the village, they used to bring me their children when they had errands to run, or needed some time away from the craziness. I never minded. I always helped. I had my children, and their children, and I was happy not cutting hair.”
Her eyes focused on me again, a shadow passing behind them. “It was when the ethnic cleansing started. The war, it did things to people. Turned them against each other. The women and children, they bore the brunt of it. I tried to be there for them, but my brother…” She trailed off there before she resumed with a sigh. “He needed help. He h
ad information, and it was vital. But he got wounded and couldn’t deliver it. He asked me to do it. He knew I could run, and I knew the hills outside the village, I would find the rebel camp. And I did, only that the army found it first.”
It was hard to reconcile what she told me with the woman I’d come to know rather well over the past year. But there was no doubt that she was telling the truth. I just didn’t know what to make of this—although I had a sinking feeling I could tell where it was going.
Shaking herself out of the memories, the Ice Queen went on. “They were slaughtering the last remaining men in the camp when I got close. I turned back when I realized what was going on, but what I saw through the trees made me stop in my tracks, cower there in horror. I thought I hid well but they must have seen me because when I went back home, they followed me.” She paused, grimacing. “I was slow, and they were fast. They got there ahead of me, but just in time for me to see them pull my brother out of the house and shoot him in front of my parents. Then they locked everyone inside and burned the house to the ground.” She didn’t elaborate, but it was obvious that this meant her entire family. “I wanted to hurl myself after them into the flames, but one of my brother’s comrades had been hiding in the woods also. He held me back, clapped his hand over my mouth to stifle my screams, and told me that if I wanted to make their deaths count, I needed to survive.” Her eyes flitted away from mine, down to her hands. “If you look closely, Romanoff still bears the scars today from where I bit him.”
So that was where Andrej and she had met. It made a lot of sense now. She gave me a moment to ask something, but when I didn’t, she went on.
“I don’t remember much of what happened after that. We fled, or else we would have gotten slaughtered, too. There was nothing left there that held me, and he had no family, not even where he’d come from. He was a mercenary back then already, doing a favor for a friend. When that friend died, he stuck with my brother, and then with me. Years passed. I couldn’t forget. After cutting me down from the third tree I tried to hang myself on he decided I needed a distraction.” She said that with a humorless grin. “He still had contacts with people he had worked for, before coming to Kosovo. We met up with them, somewhere in the Middle East. They were all grand talks, with grand ideas. Andrej never believed them, but their contacts led us to a recruiter, for a program the US military was running. Very secretive, very low-profile.” I could fill in the blanks what program that had been all right.
“They wanted to reject me, because I wasn’t a trained fighter,” Pia explained. “But they didn’t have enough female volunteers, so in the end, they agreed to take me as well. I was their perfect candidate—no family, no purpose, no fear of death. They didn’t give me much chance of survival, but I proved them wrong. While the others still recovered, Andrej started to train me. It took some getting used to, learning to fight and manage the physical perks.” Her eyes dropped to the sand sack I’d eviscerated but didn’t comment on it. “Then they had a training mission for us. It went wrong, but I was one of those that survived. Then they sent us into a real fight. I… snapped.” Now there was real humor in her eyes, which was just plain creepy. “They wanted to put me down after that, like a dog. They said I wasn’t mentally fit for what they needed me to do. A young captain from the group that had pulled us out objected. He insisted that there was use for anyone who came out of such a fight alive. He had no illusions about my damage, but he didn’t care. You know that he can be very single-minded when he has a purpose that drives him.” Nate, of course—who else?
I remained mute, but she must have expected me to get that detail. “I know that you think I follow him like a stray dog—“ She paused there and thought better of it. “Puppy. But I do not. I am loyal to him because he saw through the bravado, the damage, the insanity, and found me worth trusting. That is why I owe him the same. I do not agree with all his choices, and I often tell him so, but out of earshot of the others. Nothing kills morale like dissent in command.” A grin appeared on her face, wry with amusement. “He has you for the public objecting. You are the voice of the group. I am the voice of his conscience. Not that either of us has much left, but I get the feeling that now you know yourself how that happens, over time.”
Silence fell, strained as it was, but I refused to say anything. What could I have said? I realized that she was honoring me with telling me what I was sure not many people alive knew, but it wasn’t the kind of story you thanked someone for sharing with you. And considering what she had been through my life still was a walk in the park—or maybe a hard obstacle course, but still on the mild side. It just sucked because it was my life, not someone else’s.
“Do not feel bad,” she offered, her voice softer than before. “I told you, I’m not here to belittle you. True, someone might say my loss was worse, because I got to hold my children, nurse them, see them laugh and play and cry. The way I see it, I was gifted years that I spent with them that you never had. You never held your child. Don’t even know if it was a boy or girl. I grieve for what I lost. You grieve for all the things that you never had. I hope that you will heal faster than I did. There is only one piece of advice I can offer you, if you want to hear it.”
It felt disingenuous to deny her offer, and after a few painful seconds of deliberation I nodded for her to go ahead.
“There is only one person on this earth who feels like you feel, and that is him,” she said. My mouth snapped open, ready to object, but she forestalled me with one of her typical glares. “I’m not finished yet. I did not say ignore what happened. Or that you should forgive him. Do whatever you need to do. Lash out, or withdraw—whatever feels right to you. But don’t forget that he is hurting, too. Not to have sympathy with him, but to have someone who sits in the same boat with you. Who understands that there will be days when it’s easier to go on, and days when it’s hard. There is no reason for you to go through this on your own.”
When she fell silent, it was obvious that now she was done. Pia waited for a moment, then turned around and left. I should have said something, to at least acknowledge the trust she had in me to share all this with me, but I simply couldn’t. It was all too much. Out there in the plains I’d thought that silence was my enemy, but I’d been wrong. Silence was comfort. Having to deal with everything else on top of what was going on inside of me, that was the problem.
Hugging myself, I glanced over to the mutilated sand sack. That was another can of worms I didn’t want to open. With the soldiers and the traders, that rage I’d felt had seemed justified. But this explosion? And I wasn’t even referring to the fact that I could suddenly mobilize strength enough to pull a stunt like that, let alone attempt it.
The door creaking open again made my thoughts grind to a halt—not per se a bad thing—but I really could have done without who entered. Nate looked appropriately apprehensive as he let the heavy door fall into the lock, then stepped just far enough into the room not to look like he was on the verge of bolting. I stared at him, feeling my stomach churn as bile made it up my esophagus. It made me feel physically sick, but rather than hunch over and give in to the impulse, I steeled my spine and straightened.
He waited for me to say something, and when I just kept it to baleful stares, he sighed and started talking first.
“I’m not here to apologize,” he clarified—and that was about as far as my restraint went.
“Of course you’re not,” I bit out. “Why would you? I’m sure that you can just reason this away like everything else. Because you are never wrong. You always do the right thing. The pertinent thing. The world would end if you’d have to say that you’re sorry.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek, but his voice remained even as he replied.
“That’s not it. I’m not going to apologize because I am well aware of the fact that you neither want to hear my apology, nor would accept it.” He paused, looking as if he were approaching a dangerous animal and didn’t want to provoke it. Well, fat chance. Consider me
provoked. “I had my reasons, but I know that you don’t want to hear that, either.”
“Oh, I want to hear. How exactly do you explain why you—“ I had to cut off there, my throat closing down, but more from anger than grief.
He looked away, unable to keep holding my gaze. “I didn’t think—“
“Well, what else is new?” I snarled, interrupting him.
Normally he would have gotten angry at that, but not this time. If anything, he looked downright uncomfortable. “I did what I did because at the time it seemed like the best thing to do—“
“You fucking lied to me!” I screamed, all that pent-up anger and pain breaking loose. “How the fuck can you explain away that you lied to me?!”
Nate looked borderline flabbergasted, needing a moment to catch up with me. “You’re angry because I lied to you,” he stated, as if that fact was absolutely astonishing to him. Maybe it was. If that was it, we were in way more trouble than I’d realized.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 46
