Alone

by E. J. Noyes

  “And did I pass?” I ask sardonically.

  “There’s no pass or fail, Celeste. But you behaved exactly as I’d anticipated.” Liv sighs quietly. “Exactly as I’d hoped. The environment and seclusion didn’t change your integrity or your compassion. You chose me—” She closes her eyes, inhaling sharply. “You chose the companion over compensation.”

  Why do I suddenly feel like I chose wrongly? “Maybe I just felt obligated because I shot you. Maybe it was just the fact that you were a body to fuck. Maybe it had nothing to do with you specifically.” It’s not true, but I want to hurt her. To tear away her armor and pierce her somehow. To make her feel as awful as I do right now.

  But none of my attacks seem to penetrate.

  Olivia ignores the barb and rubs a hand over her wounded thigh. “Perhaps you’re right. Please be sure to note that in your log.” She’s so calm and in control, playing some role I can’t begin to imagine.

  “You’ve been working this whole time, haven’t you?” I spit at her as I wrap my arms around my torso. What I desperately want is a hug, but I can’t stand the thought of her touching me.

  “Please believe me when I tell you it wasn’t work for me, Celeste. After I read your list a few days before your birthday, I knew.” A flush appears on the tips of her ears, the only indication of discomfort she’s had during this showdown or whatever it is that’s happening between us. She clears her throat. “I was always a candidate for insertion, and of all of the Controllers you’d developed the best rapport with me. I have quite a large amount of sway within the department, so…” Her eyes flick up to meet mine. “It’s partly why I kept myself apart at the interview, your first one.”

  I search frantically through memories from close to four years ago. “I don’t remember.”

  Olivia allows herself a faint smile. “That’s because you never saw me. I was behind the glass, but I was there. I sensed something in you. Something that made me curious, among other things.”

  I wave away her feeble excuses for betrayal. Is betrayal even the right word for what she’s done? What has she done? Desperate to understand, I drop my guard, just a fraction. “Do you even care about what you’ve done to me?”

  “Yes, of course I care,” she snaps, her hands clenching to fists by her sides. It’s the first time I’ve seen her lose any part of her incredible self-control, and I’m equal parts fascinated and frightened. Then as quickly as it happened, the anger is gone again, and her mask is back.

  I lean closer, searching for something but I don’t know what that something is. “Tell me everything. I deserve it.”

  I half expect her to tell me I don’t deserve to know anything, that it’s not a contractual obligation but she raises her chin and explains, “I’m the lead scientist on this study. I’ve read all your logs and check-in transcripts. Watched every video report.” A blush on her cheeks joins the one on her ears. “And as time passed I found myself even more drawn to you.” Olivia stares at her hands and it’s like she’s seeing them for the first time. Like they don’t belong to her.

  I can’t hear this. Not now. I need to believe she’s not invested because her doing this if she feels something for me is even more heartbreaking. I need facts, not emotions. My voice is barely above a whisper when I ask, “Is this really about colonizing other planets, or is it just some sick joke to mess with someone’s head?” Though it’s probably completely irrelevant, I have a sudden urge to know if my suffering is actually going to help anyone in the future.

  She pauses, stares right into my eyes then says evenly, “There are many factors to this experiment, and yes that is one portion of it. In a colonization situation, a hostile environment, it’s important to ensure people will help those in trouble even if they’re strangers. Our species won’t survive if people won’t build communities with unknown persons and eventually procreate.”

  “Procreate.” I snort. “That’s a little difficult for you and I, locked up here don’t you think?”

  “Yes, and your sexuality is why you were chosen. The agency that contracted us to conduct the experiment didn’t want the liability or complication of unwanted pregnancy. The basic human ideology is the same regardless of sexual preference, so…”

  I’m not sure how I should feel about that. “Is your name really Olivia Soldano?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not a chemical engineer are you.” Statement, not a question.

  “No.” Olivia slings her arm over the back of the couch, as though she’s trying to appear relaxed and non-threatening. Crossing her legs completes the charade. “Technically I’m a psychiatrist, but I also have a neuroscience degree and a PhD.” Doctor-Doctor Soldano. Clever.

  “Is there a girlfriend waiting for you when you’re done with me?”

  She raises her eyebrows ever so slightly. “As I’ve told you, I’m single.”

  I laugh even though there’s no humor in this. “Well I guess that’s something. You’re a liar but not a cheater.”

  “That’s unfair, Celeste,” Olivia counters.

  “Is it?” I narrow my eyes, searching for something in her expression. There’s nothing. She’s a blank slate. “I hardly think you’re in a position to comment on what’s fair.”

  “You’re entitled to think that.”

  I have no idea how she’s so calm. Like none of this is relevant or even matters to her. “What about those stories you told me? About your relationship issues, your ex-girlfriends cheating and leaving you and…you know. Lies? Something to make me feel sorry for you?”

  The look on her face tells me they were anything but. It’s the same expression of horror and guilt she had when she told me about her girlfriend’s suicide and I know nobody could fake that. Olivia shakes her head. “No, not lies. I wish they were but it’s the truth.” She stares at me, drawing in a few slow breaths until her face changes back to calm, composed Olivia.

  My molars come together hard, the words forced. “What if I hadn’t gone for it? For you?”

  Olivia shrugs but the nonchalance seemed so affected. I can read her as plainly as a book, but what I’m reading now makes no sense. She’s bothered, thinking that I might not have wanted her. For some reason she’s not schooling her expression to neutrality. Why?

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “There’s no right or wrong result. But all your psych tests indicated you would act the way you did. Take in someone who was lost. It’s quite exciting actually. The ideal candidate profile I constructed, the one you matched, turned out to be spot-on.”

  “Well, aren’t I the perfect person, a regular Good Samaritan,” I grind out. “Except for shooting you, I’m a regular Mary-fucking-Poppins.”

  “Well, you weren’t supposed to shoot me,” she says dryly. “My story was to be that I’d just become lost while hiking.”

  I clamp my lips together. “It was an accident. You know that and you know how sorry I am.”

  Both her hands come up, palms out. “I know and I apologize. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  My heart refuses to slow down, still beating in response to my rage. “Fuck! All those bullshit lines and questions about what I was doing and my past, pretending you didn’t know what was going on when you knew damned well. I’ll give you this, you’re a good actress. In every way,” I add bitterly.

  Even as I say it, I feel like I have no right to my feelings. I’ve got what I deserved because my whole life has been one great betrayal. Mother. Riley dying. Joanne dying. Myself. “Even your cover story about hiking with all your fake gear, everything so carefully constructed, you guys had it all figured out.” I think about all the shit she carried in, pretending she’d been out in the wilderness for a few weeks, how pointless it all was. “Why did you need the gun?”

  “I told you,” she says evenly. “For protection.”

  What could she need protection from? They probably dropped her just over the ridge, where I couldn’t see or hear the delivery, so she’d only have to walk
a few hundred yards to reach me. Me. Me. Me. The answer snaps into focus. “Protection from…me, right?”

  “Yes. Even monitoring you as closely as we had been, we couldn’t be one hundred percent certain about your mental status.”

  “So you’d shoot me.” Like a rabid animal.

  “If necessary, yes. As an absolutely last resort.” She looks nauseated.

  I feel nauseated. “What a wonderful payback that would have been for you.”

  Her response is surprisingly forceful. “You don’t get it, do you? Do you actually think I would have wanted to do that? I’ve been watching you for over three years, Celeste. I’ve been talking to you, worrying about you, loving you for over three goddamned years! This, us, isn’t new. Not for me.”

  I move swiftly past her admission. I can’t take it, can’t listen to her lies anymore, can’t listen to her manipulate me with words like love. “What about leaving? How was that supposed to go down?” I’m surprised at how easily I can discuss this now. Some part of me has shut down or been pushed aside so I can get the facts and the logic I so desperately need.

  “That would have been dependent on circumstances and your state of mind. Either with your knowledge or by slipping away for extraction in the middle of the night like I’d just hiked out and left a goodbye note.”

  Like building blocks, things begin to click into place. I’d noticed Controller A was gone but thought nothing more of it than the line fed to me about staff restructuring. The way that sometimes Olivia would say things that made me think she knew me, and why I’ve always felt I knew her somehow but dismissed it as wishful thinking. I pushed it all aside as nothing more than distorted thoughts because I was so desperate for a connection.

  What she did to me worked because despite everything that’s happened in my life to make me more cautious than most, I’m still naïve. Because even with all the shitty things that have been done to me, I can’t imagine someone doing that and I needed to know someone wanted me. Wanted to believe that for once, something amazing like this would happen to someone like me. I could cry. “I’m so fucking stupid. God, this worked because I’m dumb, because I wanted to believe it even when it was obvious from the start that it was too good to be true.”

  “No, Celeste, it worked because that’s how we designed it to work. Because all but the most suspicious, cynical people would react the way you did. You’re anything but dumb. You’re extraordinary,” she adds softly. “Despite everything that’s happened in your life, you’re still a good person. Sweet, compassionate, and kind.”

  She’s trying to push down my defenses with flattery. I can’t yield. “Please don’t,” I insist.

  “It’s true,” she says, as though my request hasn’t even registered. “It’s part of why I feel the way I do about you.”

  The way she feels about me…is how exactly? Suddenly and inappropriately amused, I snort. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I said I missed sex so they dropped some off for me, right? I mean, when I said I missed riding a bike, the next supply package had one.” A mountain bike for me to ride around the compound. I’m pretty good at it, jumping over logs and stones and splashing through the shallow parts of the creek.

  “I remember,” Liv murmurs. “I chose that bike myself. Went to the store and picked one in your favorite color. I argued with my—with one of the Directors for a week about whether you should be allowed it. Some things I was able to get for you, other things they wouldn’t budge.”

  I push aside her cute, manipulative story to keep rushing through events of our time together, trying to find a place where it should have clicked. I’m surprised and ashamed to find all the little markers that I should have picked up on are so clear now that I know. I’m such an idiot. “God, my cold. Was that real or did you like…spray some virus up my nose while I was asleep to make me sick so I’d share a bed with you?”

  “No, Celeste. You caught that from me organically. They moved my insertion timeline up because I had the cold and the medical department wanted to test your immune response.”

  “Which was pretty shitty. As was the cold you gave me.”

  “Mhmm,” she agrees. “I’m sorry you were uncomfortable. It was never our intention.”

  I’ve heard enough. Enough apologies—real or not. Enough explanations. Enough lies. I’m done. “Get out,” I hiss.

  Olivia recoils as though she’s been struck. “I can’t, I have to stay here until I can arrange transport, and I’ve already delayed it once.”

  “That was you? You deliberately stopped the supply drop?” Of course it was her. I fucked her, she wanted to keep gathering data, up close and personal. Whatever remains in my stomach threatens to rise and I swallow hard to push it down again.

  “Yes.”

  “Change it. Fix it. Make them come.”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t. My hands are tied.”

  “Walk out of here then.” Just do something, anything to get away from me.

  Her face softens, voice incredulous. “You really have no idea where we are, do you?”

  For a moment, my resolve wavers before I remember that I can’t be soft. I tighten my jaw. “Obviously not. It wasn’t part of the orientation brochure.”

  “We’re in a remote area, an eighty-mile drive from the nearest township. The Organization owns this entire area, almost five hundred acres of secluded heavily wooded land. I can’t just walk out of here.” Everything she says is excuses on top of lies on top of betrayal. “There are protocols that must be followed. I’m as bound by the rules as you are.”

  Rules. Like those even matter anymore. All I can think of is the way she manipulated me into sleeping with her even after everything I shared with her. After everything I told her about what Mother did. I feel used and so dirty.

  “Ugh.” Mother’s disgusted scoff is loud. “You call it manipulation but I taught you how to survive. And you wanted it just as much as she did, kid.”

  I crane my neck, moving my head away from the voice. “Please, why can’t they just collect you right now?”

  Olivia sighs. “I just told you it’s not as simple as having someone collect me, darling.”

  “Don’t call me that. You’ve got no right.”

  “I’m sorry.” She sounds it. “As I said, we can’t just come in whenever we want to. It’s costly and time-consuming, no frivolity allowed. Every transport has multiple checks and approvals, paperwork to be filed. Your cargo requests are discussed and approved or denied then packed and checked again. Personnel has to be arranged. It takes time, at least two days.”

  There’s only one request that I care about this time. Her gone. I bring my hands to my face, so confused and so defeated by everything that’s happened. Eventually I let them drop and admit, “This feels surreal.”

  She looks incredibly sad and for a moment I forget myself and want to gather her into my arms. “I can imagine,” she says. After a long pause, during which she’s holding my gaze, she continues, “Do you know what one of the hardest things was for me?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to know. I want to stand up and move away from her but my butt is stuck to the couch and my feet are encased in concrete on the floor.

  “When you told me you loved me last night, and I couldn’t say it back. I wasn’t allowed because it would have swayed your thought processes, but I wanted to, badly. So I’m saying it now. I love you, Celeste. I’m in love with you. I have been for quite some time.” Olivia manages to capture my hand, and she pulls it to her breast. I feel the fast, strong beat of her heart. “Feel that? Feel how much my heart is racing because I’m so scared I’ll lose you.”

  Her words snap me out of my stillness. “You never had me so you can’t lose me.” A lie but it’s mine this time. I snatch my hand away. “I’m going back to bed. You can sleep on the couch. I want you gone as soon as possible. Make it happen. I don’t care how.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I smell her beside me and know it’s not a false thing. He
r scent clings to the linens and permeates my soul, and I want to bury my face in her pillow and do nothing but breathe the scent in. Instead, I roll onto my back, stare up at the ceiling and listen to people talking at me.

  “People lie, Celeste,” Heather says. “I mean, yeah it’s still a fucking shitty thing to do but you should know by now that people are assholes.”

  “This is more than lying, Heather! This is…” Alli sighs and smacks her lips together. “I don’t even think there’s a way to describe what this is.”

  Riley laughs like a hyena. “Being a cu—”

  “Riley!” Joanne admonishes my sister. “Do not use that word! It’s disgusting.”

  On the other side of my closed door, Olivia walks around the habitat. I know the sound of her footsteps like I know my own face. The measured cadence broken by that tiny, even pause in her gait. I did that, I gave her that limp. She’s pacing. Can’t sleep either. I have to stop thinking. If I could just put a label on how I feel, then I might be able to make sense of it. But there’s no combination of words that will ever describe this maelstrom inside me.

  “I know you’re sad, my little moonbeam,” Joanne soothes. “But there will be other girls, sweetie. Come on, close your eyes. If you don’t sleep, you’re not going to be able to concentrate at school, and you have that important exam today.”

  “Cel?” Tentative, tiny Riley steps make their way across threadbare carpet. “Are you awake? Can I sleep with you? I’m so cold and I can’t find any socks.”

  A door slams. Mother snarls, “Shut the hell up, you two, or he’s gonna kick us out. Ungrateful little bitches, I told you he hates kids, so keep your mouths shut or you can get the fuck out and sleep in the yard.”

  “I’m sorry, Cel,” Riley whimpers. “I didn’t mean to wet the bed again. Please don’t tell her. We can just change the sheets, right?”

  I can’t stand this any longer. It takes only a few minutes to strip my bed of sheets, pillowcases, and the duvet cover, taking Olivia’s scent with them. I carry the bundle down the stairs and stuff it into the washer. Then I remake the bed with fresh linens, ignoring Olivia’s call from the couch to ask what I’m doing. Burying my face in my pillow to smell clean laundry detergent doesn’t help. She’s still here.