by Tisha Wilson
“As long as I am not directly responsible…”
“So you are willing to let him die in pursuit of your immortality?”
“Live another sixty years before you start trying to lecture me little girl,” he snapped before he put on his mirrored sunglasses on. “Follow orders or I will be forced to report you.”
*
Karen watched him go out of the sliding glass doors and felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. Did he have no regard whatsoever left for her? She found it hard to believe he was the same man she had first met some three years ago. That man had wanted her. That man had needed her. If only they had never discovered what she was. If only they could have stayed nested away on that little Italian island for all eternity, but it just hadn’t been meant to be.
Why had she ever slipped and revealed to him her true age? Why couldn’t the beacon have kept her stupid visions to herself? Why couldn’t Collin just get over it already! She had thought for a while that perhaps she had broken through to him, that they had gotten past the whole I’m an old man and you’re a young girl thing. She sighed and shook her head. It wasn’t like she was a spring chicken. She was fifty years old. At first she thought that she was just aging really well until the beacon had revealed her to be a mentor and changed her entire life.
She didn’t just appear to be twenty two, she was twenty two. She would be twenty two for the rest of her life which was another hundred years or so. Living a hundred and fifty years should be plenty of time but… there was something frightening about having a specific date that you were going to die, no matter how long you lived.
Collin Bateman loaded up in the chopper and it lifted off. He had forty years left but he also had a specific execution date. Even though she could hate him at the moment for his stubbornness, her heart still went out to him. She wasn’t sure how she would be sixty years from now, if she would try to go to the lengths he did to try and prolong her days. She supposed everyone feared death, but what he was doing to Alicia and Jerry… He hadn’t even given them a choice.
She was torn. For now she would stick to her assignment and more than that she would make sure that Jerry made it through this war and well into old age. Maybe Collin would eventually come around. Maybe there was a way for all of them to fight this war and still have their fairytale happy ending. It wasn’t likely, but she considered herself to be an optimistic person. It might take a little more than optimism to see them through this, but she had plenty of time to wait and see what would happen… she hoped.
*
“Hey ma,” Jerry said as he sat his camouflage helmet to the side of the teleconference machine set up in a trailer underneath the baking sun.
“Hey Jerry. How is it over there?” his mother asked looking off to the side. She was watching his face in the screen so it looked as if she were looking off to the side instead of directly at him.
“Hot. I miss the mountains,” he complained.
“Well they told you when you signed up for that program that at the end of your ten months you could come back if you wanted to. Your uncle Victor is willing to give you a job up in Taming and I think the papers have finally let go of your story now that the Senator has been caught in a scandal of his own. Maybe you could even get your old job back in Durham.”
Jerry smiled at the thought of what had happened to his ex-wife. Apparently it was discovered that the Senator was running drugs illegally into the country. His mother said that his ex-wife had gone into hiding in Pakistan with her original husband after she lost her father’s financial support. The trial was very public and suddenly he was so glad that Cherish had shown her true colors and forced his hand with the divorce. Had he still been married to her, his career would have been well and truly destroyed when a scandal like this hit.
“I don’t think so. The last ten months have been good for me. I feel like I’m doing some good here. I still haven’t been able to get to the bottom of what happened to my unit.”
He saw the pained look on his mother’s face. They had talked for hours on the phone and she had done her best to fill him in on what she knew about Alicia. He didn’t know why he got the feeling that she knew more than she was letting on, but he couldn’t come right out and call his own mother a liar.
“At some point you have to let her go son. She’s gone,” his mother said softly. He shook his head knowing in his soul that he would never let her go.
“How’s Uncle Victor?” he asked instead. His mother brightened visibly.
“I think he may be making some headway with Lana after all this time.”
Jerry scoffed at the idea. His uncle had been dancing around the Doc since he was a boy. He didn’t know what the hang up was but he didn’t know if his uncle would ever get it together.
“Are you at least going to come and visit before you start another contract?” his mother asked pleadingly.
“Listen. I know that this is hard for you. I’ve always been so close to home but… I’m just not ready to give up yet. Someone here knows what happened to her… to us that day and I need to be sure I did everything I could to get to the bottom of it. Can you understand that?” he asked.
He saw several emotions run across her face, worry chief among them. She finally relented and gave him one of her dazzling smiles.
“Okay then. I’ll see you when you get back. Please… you are more important than you will ever know. Take care of yourself.”
“You do the same. Love you.”
“I love you son,” she said before she reached out and turned off her computer.
He sat staring at the blank screen for a moment. His mother had been nearly begging for him to come home but he just couldn’t. He rubbed at the wolf shaped birthmark on his left arm for a moment. There was still a secret he needed to dig out of his brain before he left here and he knew it. He put on his helmet and picked up his rifle before he headed out into the bright noonday sun. He made his way to the hum-v and got in the backseat. After a few minutes three men joined him and they made their way back to the streets of Baghdad.
The streets were busy with life and there was a potential threat around every corner but he didn’t mind. His blood was thrumming with anticipation. Someone out there had answers and he was going to find them. He didn’t see the traditionally garbed woman with bright blue eyes watching him from an upstairs window, but she saw him.
