The Love I Lost (Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery #2)

by Morris Fenris

  But the point is that TV has made me learn that I should be having lots of sex with gorgeous women, and it all just seemed so damned unfair that lots of other guys were getting this just because of some genetic principles that most of them probably didn’t even understand. And it seemed all the more unfair that – just as the TV told them to – these great-looking guys were getting all this sex from a succession of different gorgeous women who they generally cared nothing about, whereas all I wanted was just one good one.

  * * * *

  So the week rolled on and I spent half the time fantasising about how I would ask Nat out, and the other half over-analysing every contact between us for signs of her undying love – something that was looking more and more elusive all the time. Friday came and went and, my brief bout of semi-confidence bowing apologetically as it backed out of the proverbial door, I started to accept that what had always been fact since Cave Girl Nat had overlooked Cave Boy Tim for the much sexier Ug and his more protruding temples was still very much true: Movies are way better than real life. Or cave paintings, if you insist.

  Saturday came and was just about gone too, when events took an unexpected turn.

  I was alone at home with a four-pack and my CyMedia Centre – oh yeah baby, heady times – and there was an advert for the new CyberV that we (well… other people, not me) were developing across the other side of the same complex. This new CyberV was different because it was designed for long-term interaction, anything from a week to three years in one stretch, rather than the twenty-four hour ceiling that was in place at the time.

  They were offering CyberV as a holiday, or even a kind of temporary emigration, the plan being to build a system that could be played while the player was in a state of semi-hibernation, kept alive by a feeding tube and careful climate control. They were going to build huge hibernation centres that could house hundreds of thousands in less than a city block.

  Of course, what they didn’t say in the advert was that this was a government-sponsored attempt to deal with overcrowding, and tha-

  …Yeah, I know you know all this, but it does actually have relevance to the story later on. Can I continue?

  So… I was home alone on a Saturday night. This advert was on and it must have been close to midnight. There was a sudden noise just outside that sounded like it was in my front garden. Well, when I say ‘garden’, I’m actually talking about a two metre square patch of wood chip-covered earth with a couple of indestructible ferns – or some such – growing out of it.

  I got up out of my chair and approached the window. Despite the fact that I had the lights off, the reflected glare from the CyMedia Centre was enough to make it impossible to see outside properly.

  As I squinted out of the lounge window, there was a loud bang from the direction of the kitchen window that startled me enough to cause some beer spillage. The kitchen and the lounge were all one big room, so I could see the window from where I was, but only wet, windy blackness seemed to lie beyond it. I put the beer down and wondered whether to call the complex security, weighing the unlikely possibility of an intruder on a Cyberlife complex against the humiliation of a security guard looking at me as if I still believed in closet monsters.

  Maybe I’d just go and take a quick look myself.

  I scanned around for something heavy and weapon-like. Moments later and armed with my left shoe, I moved towards the front door only to hear a loud crash come from the direction of my bedroom.

  Jesus, were there three of them? Why me, what had I done? Fear started to consume me and I moved to the com to call security as more unfriendly noises came from my bedroom.

  “Hello, security.”

  And the sound of the door opening.

  “Hello, is that security?”

  And a sound like someone’s face hitting the wall in the corridor – just the other side of the door that stood slightly ajar less than a metre from me.

  “Yes, that’s why I said, ‘Hello, security’.”

  Silently, the door started to slide open…

  “Thank God, I forgot to order breakfast.”

  …and before me, her face painted by the multi-coloured glow from the Cymedia Centre, stood Nat.

  “As I’m sure you already know, this isn’t a hotel,” replied the security guard somewhat drily

  “Oh, my mistake.”

  “Okay, goodnight then.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “And Mr. McNamee.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re going to make prank calls, you might want to try making them from a com that isn’t yours.”

  “Okay”, I called, full of false cheer, “th-a-n-k-s!”

  Nat was drunk, it was obvious. “So, you’re in then,” she stated.

  “Yep,” I replied, still trying to re-swallow my heart, “just as in as I would have been if you’d knocked on the door.”

  “I did.”

  “No, that was the kitchen window.”

  “Oh...”

  What seemed like an awkward moment's silence followed, until I realised that it wasn't awkward after all and that Nat had just zoned out and was staring off into space. Then, squinting her eyes, she appeared to be having trouble focusing at said point in space.

  “Got any drink?” she asked, still squinting.

  “Nat, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Of course, I knew what I hoped she was doing, but this wasn’t why I was asking in such an ill-tempered way.

  “Get me a drink and I’ll tell you.”

  “Do you know how much shit you can get into wondering around here drunk at this time of night? They’d have your job for one thing.”

  And there it was: I’d had a thought about Nat that didn’t involve mentally undressing her or wondering how I could tell if she liked me. I had actually worried about her. Of course, she would be harder to fantasise about if she got fired...

  “Ish a free country, init?”

  I moved to get her a drink of water. “I’m not sure it is, but that’s beside the point. This is Cyberlife.” And a thought occurred. “And there’s reinforced gates and four metre walls… Wait there, how the hell did you get in the complex?”

  Nat didn’t reply, but instead stared at me with half-closed eyes and a dumb grin. Boy, she looked rough. I decided she hadn’t heard me, because the look and the grin remained, so I returned with the water and guided her to the sofa. My attempts to get the glass into her hand failed and seemed only destined to result in wet furniture, so I gave up and put it on the table.

  Nat lounged back in the seat, somewhere between upright and prone, her hair a damp and straggly mess, her tight top skewed so as to expose or gather up every little ounce of fat and loose skin. She looked at me and the stupid grin returned, at that angle exposing a small double chin that I didn’t realise she had.

  “You’re nife, you are,” she said. I presumed she meant ‘nice’. It was a compliment, but it could also be the kiss of death in dating terms. I waited for her to tell me that I was like a brother. “Nifer than you fink.”

  She closed her eyes; the grin remained, now looking like perfect contentment.

  “So Nat,” I tried, “where you been tonight?”

  She ignored the question and brought her legs up, starting to curl towards a foetal position. Both legs of her black tights were laddered, probably either on my ferns or my bedroom window. “Safe here,” she said absently, as if sleep was beginning to take her. “Safe with you.”

  And with that she was gone, fast asleep on my couch. I stared down at my uninvited – but certainly, not unwelcome – visitor. The idea of me and Nat alone in my house late on Saturday night was somewhat absurd, but here she was. I looked down at her in the glow of the media centre, looked at her wet hair starting to fuzz as it dried, the red patch on her forehead that was probably from a collision with one of my walls, that double chin, half a dozen spots below her mouth, a definite hint of cellulite on her exposed lower back and legs beneath her slightl
y-hitched skirt that were… sturdier than I had thought, and realised that, despite having sat next to her every day for nearly two months, and despite my supposed love for her having filled my head with a dizzying sickness for the last week, I really didn’t know the young woman before me at all.

  And somehow – God knows how – I liked her even more. And she had come drunk to mine on a Saturday night. I didn’t know what that meant and suddenly felt too tired to figure out why. So instead, (and with embarrassing difficulty) I removed her boots and fetched a spare blanket, which I placed gently over her, pulling it close against the chill December weather that would find its way into the house once the heating stopped. I remained a few moments, finding real peace in watching this newly discovered Nat sleep while the last remnants of the old one deconstructed herself in my head.

  Then I went and picked up broken things in my bedroom before going to sleep.

  * * * *

  Next morning Nat was gone. I paced my lounge wondering whether to call her until I couldn’t take it anymore, deciding instead to take my mind off Nat with a spot of X-mas shopping.

  Of course, this didn’t work at all. As soon as I got into the High Street Complex I started to wonder about what I should buy Nat for X-mas. Antony, Wendy and myself had all bought each other presents the previous X-mas, so it was safe to assume that we’d keep up the... er, tradition(?) this year. Or, at least, that’d be my get out excuse if the whole thing turned out to be weird and awkward.

  Three hours of crowded, stressful and temper-raising browsing later, I found the perfect gift. Well, 'perfect' meaning 'the best option considering that if I had to go on for even another five minutes I would have started taking out my festive spirit on random passers-by'.

  My gift, though a great compromise for a guy who would get panic attacks if he shopped for too long, wasn’t exactly original. But for me, what was important was that the silver necklace that I sneaked another peek at as I left the jewellers was the most breathtakingly beautiful thing in the entire shop - and I somehow knew that Nat would see this too.

  I crossed the main foyer of the southwest district’s top level, heading towards the Uncle Sam’s restaurant there and considering celebrating my successful buy with an Uncle Sam’s ‘Fat American’ burger for lunch. American food was so expensive with the addition of the cholesterol tax that the EU Council had levied on the fattier foods. What the cholesterol tax really was, was just one of many obscure pieces of legislation intended to reduce and control the EU public’s exposure to anything American. Uncle Sam’s had sprung up with Council funding, pricing the American corporation McDonald’s out of the whole of Europe and replacing the McMenu with a selection of unsubtly anti-American sounding meals, like the ‘Racist Hillbilly Fried Chicken Sandwich’ and ‘Radioactive New Yorker Spicy Wings – so hot your hair will fall out.’

  No, this isn’t massively relevant to the story, but excuse me for trying to inject a little social and political learning into our tale...

  You know, you have a mean tongue sometimes, m’lady. Sexy, but mean...

  Yes, tongues can be sexy...

  No, I’ve told you, this is a public place... You little hussy...

  Slut...

  Jezebel...

  Okay, okay, you win. I hope you realise that you’ve completely broken the mood at a really emotional point in the story...

  So, I’m standing at the window and navigating the menu, wavering on the ‘Fat American’ and considering a ‘Native Genocide’ with extra cheese, when I see a familiar face nestled in the window’s reflection between side dips and deserts. Her eyes have grown a little wide and she looks nervous to have seen me. I study her face for a moment, softened and hazy because of the dimness of the reflected world, and I make a decision about the road ahead.

  “Hey Nat,” I said as I turned to face her. She seemed self-conscious, vulnerable and looked away momentarily before speaking.

  “Look," she said hastily, "I really wanted to apologise about last night.”

  “You don’t have to,” I leapt in. “N-ne-ver.” Oh great, stuttering. “You never have to apologise to me. It was nothing.”

  She looked a little taken back by my words. Was that confusion? Or maybe relief that she might not have blown any chance to be with me. Or possibly the hangover that she must surely be nursing? Let’s go with number 2.

  “Actually,” I carried on, buoyed by the way her wide eyes seemed to hang on my every word, every movement and change of expression, “I think it must be fate or something that we ran into each other again.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah... yeah, I just bought you an X-mas present.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, smiling an exquisitely sweet and awkward smile that shot straight up to her ocean blue eyes and made them sparkle.

  I brought up the box containing the necklace that I had been hiding behind my back. She took the box and looked at it.

  “Don’t people usually wait until X-mas?” she asked.

  “Not when they’re in love with someone as wonderful as you,” I said. I hadn’t thought it, I’d just said it. If I’d thought it, I’d have wrapped it in chains and dumped it in the ocean of cheesy lines you don’t want to say when asking a woman to go out with you...

  Yes my love, it’s true, my psyche really does have an ocean for every occasion, like I said.

  And, just as had happened with Rowena Wots-Her-Name all those years ago, the colour drained from Nat’s face. She stuffed the box back into my hands and backed up a step, shaking her head sharply, nervously... convulsively, one way and then the other. Then she seemed to catch herself, willing the colour back into her cheeks with pure concentration and pulling free from that store of masks (that store of masks that I guess we all have) her most conciliatory face.

  But I had already seen all that I needed to see emerging from the public toilets across the way.

  “I was lost last night, Tim, and too drunk and embarrassed to say anything. It wasn’t your place I was looking for.”

  “But what about our hands in the club?” I muttered almost distractedly as I continued to watch the figure cross the foyer.

  After a silent moment, I looked back at her to find she had looked away a little, her expression guilty. “I- I’m sorry. I used you to make him jealous, to get the big, lazy ass to ask me out like I knew he wanted to. I didn’t know you wou-”

  “-Hey Tim,” said Antony as he reached us. “Been buying jewellery?”

  I looked at the box in my hand and back up to see Nat stood a pace behind Antony with her eyes wider than ever; they were speaking to me in their width: Please don’t say, please make up any lie you like.

  And, with an inner sigh, I knew straight away that it would not be in my nature to be anything but obliging, even here with my heart cracked open and my humiliation so complete.

  “Oh, for my aunt.”

  The big man snatched it from me and opened the box before I could protest. “Wow,” he said, peering inside, “you must really like your aunt. She hot or something?”

  Nat chuckled and playfully slapped his arm, evidently relieved to take comfort in some little ritual joke that their brief relationship had already developed. I hated that moment, so wanted to be anywhere else right then.

  “Right mate,” said Antony, “we’d better get on. See you Monday.”

  And soon I would be about as far away from there as any human being could be.

  “Yeah, Monday guys.”

  Chapter 3

  The moon hung low in the sky, so big that the tower on the ridge above us was completely silhouetted against it, making it even more forbidding than it would already have been. There were only three of us – there should have been six at least – and there were two ways up to the ridge and the watch tower we had to take and silence before they could light their beacon, and raise the alarm. There could be as many as six up there; weren’t likely to be less than four.

  I briefly wondered whose bright i
dea it would have been to launch a series of night attacks against the Naulaeg stronghold’s outer defences on a nearly full moon. We were just clearing the way for the main force, a several-hundred-strong raiding party that would fall upon the stronghold itself near dawn, hopefully with the defenders having no warning of their arrival. The aim wasn’t to capture and hold the place, but merely to cause damage and catch the inhabitants unprepared, thinning their numbers enough that the lands of the North Fold might be bought a month or two’s peace from the incessant raiding over the border by the various goblinoid races spawning there. The Fold could then spend that precious time shoring up its own defences and diverting a few resources to the actual heart of the war for a while.

  “Frinn,” said the barbarian Teini beside me. He was speaking to me; that was my name. I chose it because it sounded a little like Tim. By the way, have you picked up on the fact that I’m doing that thing where you jump ahead and straight into the action before explaining how you ended up there? You got that, yeah? Good. “I think you should go round to the other approach.”

  “Why me?” I complained. “What about Bubeh,” I suggested, indicating the nearly two-point-five metre tall ogre beside me, “he’ll last longer when they spot him and shoot the crap out of him with arrows.”

  “No way,” the big, bumpy-headed ogre whined, “I’m a bigger target.”

  “Then you should’ve played a halfling,” I grumbled. “What’s the use of being a giant if you don’t want anyone to see you?

  “I suggested you because you’ve got your companion,” Teini said wearily, “and also you’ll get to the ridge quicker, so you can lay us some covering fire if need be.”

  “Oh.”

  I was an elven ranger, deadly with a bow in my hand and master to a giant spider called Fes that I had raised since it had hatched and eaten its mother. Giant spiders grew quickly (with a name like that, you’d never have guessed), so that had only actually been three weeks ago and we were still bonding. In this instance, 'still bonding' meaning that I could not be sure that he wouldn’t do the sensible thing and run the other way when – as was at least ninety-five percent probable – our stealthy plan failed and all hell broke loose.