“I’ll just be an astronaut instead,” Kaito declared as he punched in the numbers on the keypad.
Aazuria was surprised to see that the numbers corresponded to the date that she had been abducted. Before entering the panic room, she left a few of her stolen weapons on a piece of furniture in the ballroom. Stepping inside behind Kaito, she found that it was less of a “room” and more of an advanced, complex shelter. The walls were lined with shelves of food, and there was a great amount of computer equipment and monitors displaying information that Aazuria did not understand.
“You know the cool thing about being an astronaut?” Kaito said as he grabbed Aazuria’s hand and pulled her deeper into the metal chamber.
A network of doors and hallways extended outward, demonstrating that the shelter was spacious enough to contain many people. Aazuria was impressed and glad that Adlivun’s technology had been updated in her absence. She was well aware that it had been a great weakness of her country in recent years—a weakness of all undersea nations in general. They liked to continue living in the same, habituated patterns instead of constantly innovating and improving their surroundings like land-dwellers seemed to do. She noticed that Kaito had finished his spiel about astronauts.
“Kolo’s room is up ahead!” the little boy chirped. “She’s going to think this is so cool. Can you scare her for me? Maybe say you wanna eat her brains?”
“Just wait here for a moment, Kai,” Aazuria said, hearing the noises of arguing. She crept forward to the room he had indicated, peering through the tiny crack in the door. She recognized glimpses of Callder and Brynne through the door.
“I’m just saying we should take Kolora to live in Alaska for a little while—just until this all settles down!” Brynne was shouting at her husband.
“It is settled,” Callder insisted. “Come on, stop stressing about it! Besides, we can’t leave Trevain…”
“Does anyone care what I think?” Kolora asked angrily. “Of course not! I’m just a kid and no one listens to me! Well, I’m not going anywhere. I wanna stay and play with Kai!” The young girl was sitting off to the side with a grumpy look on her face. She looked to be about Varia’s age, which made sense since Trevain and Aazuria had originally planned to have a double-wedding with Callder and Brynne. She was Varia’s cousin; dressed in a pretty, frilly garment, her light brown hair was styled in doll-like curls. Her feminine dress contrasted sharply with the scowl on her face that was more suggestive of her tomboyish mother.
Aazuria realized in an instant that she liked these kids. When Vachlan had come to Melusina’s crystalline house at Gypsum Cavern, Glais had accepted the invitation to go along with the man. At first, Bain’s son had been apprehensive, preferring to stay with Aazuria and Varia, but the three had agreed that it was best, at least for the time being. Glais had promised not to reveal their identities, and hugged them both before leaving the chamber to confront Vachlan. Now, Aazuria could see that Glais would definitely benefit from being around these cheerful children—Kaito and Kolora would be excellent playmates who could lift his spirits. The palace was a good environment to raise children; a better environment than she could provide at the moment.
It would be better if she parted with Varia. As she had this decisive thought, she saw young Kolora’s eyes shift in her direction and display recognition. Aazuria quickly backed away and rushed from the corridor, leaving Kaito without saying goodbye. She disappeared more like a ghost than a zombie as she twisted her way silently and swiftly through the halls of the corridor. She peered around a corner, and seeing that it was empty began to walk briskly to the other end.
She was startled when a man in a white lab coat stepped into her path.
“Thank heavens!” he breathed, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose. “You must be the chemist from Canada. Thank you for coming all this way. Just follow me down this hallway and I’ll show you where you’re needed…”
Aazuria hesitated, wondering why she was so often mistaken for a Canadian. “I—sure,” she stuttered, following after the doctor. “I’m just glad I’m in the right place.”
“I know it’s a bit of a maze finding your way down here. But we can’t be careful enough in times like these, you know?” The doctor guided Aazuria forward quickly, as a nurse dressed in Adlivun’s medical attire exited the room up ahead.
“The Canadian chemist is finally here,” the doctor announced.
“Thank Sedna!” the Adluvian nurse responded, rushing forward to fill Aazuria’s arms with data on clipboards and medical utensils. Finally, she pulled a vial out of her pocket. “Here’s a fresh sample of his blood that we collected. We have a few others that Dr. Ramaris was running tests on, and she might like to discuss her findings with you. She’ll be back in about ten minutes.”
Aazuria nodded, glancing down at the equipment in her arms. She reached out and took the labeled tube of blood to peer at the letters on the side. When her eyes followed the curve of the permanent-marker-strokes that spelled ‘Murphy, Trevain,’ a small spasm shook her fingers and she nearly dropped the vial. “This is—is he…”
“He’s doing slightly better,” the nurse said with a smile. “Still a bit feverish, but it looks like his vitals are improving.”
“His vitals?” Aazuria asked, as her own vitals went haywire. Her arms began to tremble, as she hungrily tried to read the data on the clipboard. Bits and pieces of messy doctor-scrawl entered her brain and ripped through her nervous system like electricity.
“…higher dosage of atropine, but we may need to switch to dopamine,” the doctor was saying. He and the nurse both turned to Aazuria, who was frozen and panicking. “What do you recommend?”
“I—I’ll need to do some tests,” Aazuria said, trying to act like she knew what was going on. “Where is he now?”
“He’s not conscious at the moment, but would you like to see the patient?” the nurse asked. “He’s just through those doors.”
“Please take these,” Aazuria said, gulping as she dumped the tools and charts back into the nurse’s arms. “I’ll just—I’ll just be a minute.” She headed towards the door, trying to use a confident stride and not display how emotional she was. Trevain was ill? She had not known this. By the looks of what she had seen on the documents, it was serious. If Sionna was calling in a specialist, it must be serious.
Pushing the door open to create a tiny crack to judge if he really was unconscious, Aazuria’s insides began to simmer and melt at the sight of him. Losing composure, she quickly shoved the metal door open wider and slipped into the opening before shutting it behind her. She took a deep breath. Placing both hands flat against the metal door, she glanced over her shoulder at the unconscious man. She could not allow the doctor and Adluvian nurse to see the pain which was displayed across her face so nakedly. Leaning against the door frame, Aazuria felt her heart pumping wildly, so painfully that it sent sharp pain shooting through her chest.
She was standing in the same room as her husband. She was alone in the same room as her husband. Only a few feet away, he was lying in the hospital bed; he was close enough for her to touch.
Once the thought entered her mind, she could not cast it away. Her legs conveyed her unwillingly toward the man, and she reached down to grab her thighs and force them into submission. Stop, she told herself. Don’t move any closer. Just turn around and leave. But her body was not listening as it allowed itself to be sucked forward in a near-hypnotic trance. Her brain wanted to burst as it strained to absorb every detail of his appearance, guzzling down the precious proximity with the thirst of a lost decade.
His grey hair was limp and moist against his forehead while his face was much paler than she remembered. Even when she had seen him from afar at his birthday party a few months ago, he had seemed so full of health and vigor. Now, his cheeks were gaunt and his complexion was positively pallid. How could he have deteriorated so much so quickly? What was he suffering from? Aazuria was pained by her lack of knowledge of the
situation; she should have been the first to know! She should have been beside him, helping him… it was what she had promised. His deep voice boomed inside her mind with a clarity that transported her back to the privacy of a shared moment; it was bittersweet against her tongue, tender and poignant as it echoed against the insides of her skull.
“If you believe you can love me regardless of any job or responsibility you have, regardless of how much of your time is tied up doing other things, regardless of where in the world your life takes you and how far away from me you might be—regardless of how many attractive young men throw themselves at your feet and beg for you to disown me, regardless of how miserable I get when I am so old I can no longer walk…”
His no-nonsense tone was both intense and sincere. She wanted to reach out and touch his cheek as she remembered who he was; who they both had been in that moment. But that was gone! She swallowed her saliva, trying to return the memories that were bubbling to the surface where they belonged; submerged deep in her gut. She did not want to remember so clearly! She did not want to grasp the handle of this shovel and uncover an ancient grave. Let the dead rest in peace! Let all the dead parts of her remain buried comfortably with the maggots. But no; her lips were already moving to respond in a whisper along with the memory.
“That’s easy. I do love you like that,” she had responded with a playful smile. “Is that really all you require?”
“Everything else can be figured out with a bit of work.”
“Then you have my word,” she said to him earnestly. “I will be your wife.”
It was too much. It was too much to bear to remember what they had been, overwhelming in its unbearable sweetness. How could she stand here in secret, concealed by mask of hair and eye, when she had promised to be standing beside him proudly and rightfully? The pain shot through her head at the injustice which made her every possible action unethical. To abandon him when he needed her was close to criminal; to deprive him of contact with Varia when his days were possibly numbered was sinful! Varia deserved to know the incredible man that her father had been. That her father still was!
Leaning forward, she ached to reach out and touch his shoulder, jostling him awake. She wanted to rip her wig off and reveal herself, and say his name over and over, crying until the last ten years had been cried out of her system. It was eating her up inside like a cancer. She burned with the need to move forward, pressing her face down to his in a kiss, hugging his body desperately until she loved him back into strength. She somehow felt she could—her emotions were so powerful that she knew she could revive him to perfect health with the sheer power of her pent-up love and longing. She wanted to throw her arms around him and cling to his chest until the sea-cows were actually extinct. She wanted to grip his hand and squeeze it until he knew she was still with him. She looked down at his hand, lying limply against the white sheets, and lifted her fingers to touch his skin.
A clanging sound outside the room caused her to gasp and step back, moving abruptly away from him. Her hands flew to her chest, comforting her pounding heart and chastising it for what she had nearly done. Even the slightest, miniscule touch would be the first snowflakes in an avalanche. The first words exchanged between them would be the first droplets in a tsunami that would surely capsize the ship of her sister’s marriage. Elandria was the kindest, wisest person Aazuria knew and she deserved for her vessel to continue cruising on peaceful waters. She did not want to toss up a storm with the temptation of her fingertips. She nodded, trying to quell her racing blood and coax the passionate fluid to calm itself in her veins.
She needed to leave the room. Gathering her resolve, Aazuria stepped away from him, heading towards the metal doors. When she was at the exit, something collapsed in her. She could not leave him like this; she needed to be close to him for a few seconds longer. She rushed back to his side desperately, fighting back an onslaught of tears.
“Trevain,” she whispered weakly. “Please be well. Please...” Aazuria found herself losing strength and putting both hands on the side of the hospital bed to support herself. She lowered her head in misery and confusion. It had been so long that she did not know if it was still proper to be this close to him. Did he even feel the same way about her? It was not likely.
No! Of course he did—it was certain. For the feeling in her breast was so staggering, so violently overpowering that it would be impossible for it not to be true. Their connection was a mutual, two-way bond that had been established and consummated, and it had not been their choice to be cleaved apart. What was then still existed now, just as fiercely as if not a single day had passed. That was why it was dangerous, and that was why she needed to go. Now. But she could not force herself to move.
Aazuria reached out with her fingertips, barely breathing as she touched his forearm, tracing the raised blue veins from the inside of his elbow to his wrist. As her skin connected with his, she was overwhelmed with the awareness that she had created a child with this man. She had given birth to his baby twenty thousand miles away—a baby he had never even seen. None of this was fair. It was the first time she had touched him in a decade, and the warmth of his feverish skin brought all of her love for him racing back with the force of a loose missile.
Green eyes were open and staring at her. She pulled her hand from his wrist when she noticed this, and stared into the familiar irises with guilt and shock. Would he recognize her? She was concealed under paint and plastic, a foreigner to him. She was frozen as she watched his eyes slowly blinking.
“Where is my wife?” he asked hoarsely.
A breath finally escaped her chest, and it was as colorless as any breath. She did not know why she expected it to betray her emotion with garish, vibrant color and loud fanfare. It was almost as soundless as any breath, but there was a hint of a sob beginning to leak into its aftertaste in her throat. And then, on the heels of the sob, was the trace of a laugh.
“Which one?” she responded so softly that her voice was almost inaudible.
“What?” he asked, before he began coughing violently. “I—I need oxygen.”
She nodded, turning to leave the room.
“Hey. Hey, w—wait!” Trevain called out, suddenly noticing something familiar in her profile as she turned. It was there in the shape of her nose and the curve of her chin, although he was not sure if his illness was making his perception unreliable. He gasped out desperately. “Zuri?”
She turned back only part of the way before her skin began to crawl. Inhaling sharply, she moved to the exit as rapidly as her legs would take her. Pushing the door open, she nodded to the doctor.
“He needs oxygen,” she said, trying to restrain her tears. “Excuse me.”
Stumbling down the hallway, Aazuria could not seem to find her balance as her shoulder banged against the metal walls, bouncing off them clumsily. She used her palm to push herself off the walls awkwardly as she sobbed, feeling the saline moisten her new black contact lenses. Her breaths came in short, quick spurts. She was already panting from emotion long before she broke into a run and began to backtrack out of the panic room. She was suffocating. She needed to exit the enclosure as quickly as possible. As she turned a corner, she found herself crashing into someone, and they both went tumbling to the ground.
Wincing as she pulled herself off the metal floor, Aazuria rubbed her head where it had been impacted by the collision. She blinked away the blurriness of her tears and pushed aside the long black strands of her wig to identify her victim. Seeing the familiar red hair pulled back perfectly into a stylish bun, she began to scramble off the floor.
“Ouch,” muttered Sionna. “Maybe you should pay attention to where you’re—”
Noticing her attacker’s frantic look as the woman clambered clumsily to her feet, and the tears streaking down her face, laced heavily with mascara, Sionna processed the situation in an instant. She dove after the woman, tackling her to the floor to prevent her escape.
A rough struggle ensued, but
Aazuria had the element of surprise, a heightened emotional state, and a decade of intense physical training on her side. She slammed her fist into the side of Sionna’s head, connecting firmly with the woman’s temple. Sionna crumpled to the ground dizzily, but not before she managed to rake her fingernails across Aazuria’s cheek. Touching her cheek and cringing, Aazuria tripped over her own feet as she dragged herself gracelessly out of the panic room. She waited until she had retrieved her stolen weapons before she allowed her tears to begin again.
Meanwhile, Sionna had been lying on the ground with an aching head, her vision spinning and exploding in color. Even so, as she stared at the woman slipping out of the other end of the hallway, she smirked, feeling rather optimistic about the sample she had collected beneath her fingernails.
Chapter 11: Sofa of Surrender
“So that is the situation,” Elandria announced as they sat around the round table carved from ice. “Adlivun is currently vulnerable to attack. We are completely defenseless.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Visola said with a groan as she kicked her leather boots up onto the table. She grabbed a glass filled with vodka and took a considerable gulp. “You act like we never survived without the Americans and their widdle submarines. Well boo-hoo! Queen Amabie has her illegal army, and I’ve got my forces.”
“The Ducklings,” Vachlan said. “Enemies beware.”
“They better be!” Visola said, smearing her lipstick on the glass as she chugged down more vodka. “We have trained thousands of new soldiers in these past years, in addition to the ones that used to be part of Adlivun’s full-time military. Then we have the few thousand men Vachlan imported from the Clan back when he left the dark side—thanks for that, teddy bear.”
“Don’t mention it,” Vachlan said dryly. “It still won’t be enough.”
Elandria sighed. “Many of those imported soldiers are happily settled into Adlivun, married with young children. We’ve experienced a little bit of a post-war baby-boom, as often seems to be the case.”
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