by Jay Shaw
“It’s where all this started, I think.” She kissed his nose. “Although, you did miss the part where I put these on you.”
Julia untied the knot on the head bandage and removed it with a gentle practiced hand; unwilling to have the wound start bleeding again. A dark red line, surrounded by minor bruising, followed the shape of his eyebrow. “No need to redress this one. How does it feel?”
He raised a hand and prodded. “Itchy.”
She took the bandage off his bicep. It was messier than the head wound, but clean except for the sand marking where the bandage had been. Julia dusted it away and wrapped a new field dressing in place. The moment she had the knot tied, Mark folded her in his arms for a kiss.
“What would I do without you?”
A heavy silence echoed the words – said in jest – but struck too close to home for both of them.
“Let’s not find out.” She suggested softly and brushed at the wisps of hair over his brow, smiling when they fell back into place.
He tightened his arms and laid kisses on each of her eyelids and the tip of her nose.
In a desperate attempt to revive their earlier camaraderie, Julia placed her hand on Mark’s holster and felt his thigh tense. “Are you going to teach me how to use this?”
He looked into her eyes to gauge how serious she was. “Do you want to?”
“Since I’ll be spending a fair amount of my time with a certain space pilot, a little fore-knowledge would be useful.” Julia fluttered her eyelashes in her best impression of a southern belle. “You wouldn’t want me to be helpless, do you?”
Mark laughed and lifted Julia off his lap so he could stand. He came back with their shirts, helping her on with hers before putting on his own and shrugging into his vest. They climbed back down to the beach and Julia took his hand, following him to a spot where their backs were to the rocks, and they were looking out to sea. Mark released the strap on his holster and held the pistol out, butt first.
“Beretta APX, holds seventeen plus one rounds. When the clip’s empty, the slide will lock back.” Mark explained, the playful lover hidden behind the gruff exterior of a career colonel. “To reload, flick this. The empty clip falls out and you shove the new one in until it locks, then release the slide.”
He demonstrated with movements too fast for Julia to follow, before handing the weapon over. She took it, a nervous twitch betraying her uncertainty as Mark moved in behind her.
“When you have to, use your other hand for support.” He said into her ear as he lifted her arms. “Identify your enemy. Point and shoot, before they close in.”
“Couldn’t be simpler.” She quipped, jaw a hard line where she ground her molars.
No matter how sexy Mark looked with the APX strapped to his thigh Julia felt jittery just holding it. The weight of a life held heavy in the palm of her hand. She doubted she would be able to take that life, and she said as much.
“You would if you had to.” He said, devoid of doubt, and stroked the back of his hand down her cheek. He was more confident of her abilities, than she was. “If it comes down to kill or be killed, protect or die, would you let your assailant take you? Or would you go down fighting?”
When he put it like that, they both knew what her answer would be.
~*~
It happened as they stood together in each other’s arms. A blinding flash of white light surrounded them, the air crackling with a blue energy that made Julia’s teeth ache as it arced across the dome of the sky. Mark’s grip on her tightened and he pulled them both back into the base of the island; the hairs on his arms standing on end.
“Was this…?” His words were lost in the frisson surging around them.
She nodded, unable to think let alone speak. Her mind stuck in the feedback loop of a single thought. This was it. He’d be leaving soon. She turned in Mark’s arms and looked into his eyes. Now the time had come he was unable to hide his anxiety, plush lower lip caught between sharp teeth.
“This sucks.”
Julia crushed him to her, yanked his head down so she could kiss him soundly.
A growl reverberated off the surrounding rocks, echoed in the electrified air; setting her nerves jangling, adrenalin coursing through her body as she clung to the man in her arms.
In the moment between one breath and the next, Mark became the military stranger she had glimpsed in the cave entrance that morning; all strategic defense and survival.
“Climb!” He ordered in a voice Julia never considered disobeying.
They reached the plateau of the island and Mark checked the ammunition in the APX before handing it to her.
“Stay behind me.” He growled, body tense and eyes calculating. “Shoot only when I tell you to shoot.”
She nodded, too terrified to speak. If it had been his team coming through the portal, Mark would not be acting like he was. No, the only logical option was the Arcadians, or Darvac, or both, had arrived. Had traced Mark’s disappearance in the middle of their altercation, and followed him here. Julia swallowed hard against the bile threatening to choke her, and gripped the pistol tighter; its weight a small comfort in the face of such a rude shift in reality.
Mark crouched behind the rocky edge of the island’s rim, T60 at his shoulder, tension radiating off him in waves. Julia paused on one knee beside him and ran over his instructions in her head.
Eighteen rounds…flick to reload…empty clip falls out…shove new one in…release slide…identify enemy…point and shoot…don’t let them get too close.
It couldn’t be simpler. She assured herself even as her hands shook and her heart pounded in her dry throat. Then she remembered the rest of Mark’s advice.
Kill or be killed.
Protect or die.
He was right. She would never go down without a fight, and she would do her best to protect and help Mark to her last breath. No matter how spectacularly frightened she was. With an outward calm, she had begun to feel inside as well, Julia focused on the colonel at her side. She needed to be strong, watch his back, and not give him more to worry about, by freaking out and making mistakes.
Mark tensed next to her, and following his line of sight, she saw them. A group of nine malformed bodybuilders with orange skin and brown-green leather shields protecting their backs and chests. Armed with laser staffs, they staggered out across the width of the otherwise deserted beach, moving straight for the island. The fictional Arcadians had nothing on these ones. She choked off a hysterical laugh. No one would ever believe what was happening; even she was finding it difficult and she was right in the middle of it.
Mark reached out his arm to Julia and she slipped her hand into his. He squeezed tight once and let go. She understood. He loved her and knew she was scared, but she had to stay quiet and still.
The silence was shattered by T60 fire erupting from the rocks near the cave. The pulse of a laser blaster offered a thunderous accompaniment to the hailstorm.
“Fire!”
Mark concentrated his aim on the Arcadians nearest their position. The first fell quickly, but now their position had been made. Stunner blasts flashed all around them, leaving scorch marks on the rocks. Julia fired the APX. With the need to stay focused and no time to think, it was easy than she’d thought. One Arcadian fell at her hand. More fire from behind the rocks mimicked Mark’s and three more went down. Mark kept firing; adding to the tally Julia had started keeping. The remaining three were on the rocks directly below their position, making firing on them difficult without risking being stunned.
A man, followed closely by a woman and another man, was sprinting down the beach; pausing to fire as he neared the island. His next shot hit an Arcadian square in the back of the head, and it tumbled backward, taking the one below down too. The man leaped over the bodies, long white hair and blue leather coat billowing out behind him. He fired secondary shots to secure his kills and disappeared from sight as he started up the rocks.
Julia couldn’t help it. She scre
amed as the last Arcadian, huge and bald with bulbous orange muscles painted in blood-red tribal symbols, loomed up over the rim. His staff aimed right at her chest. The last thing she saw while her body convulsed in shock was Mark crouched over her, protecting her with his body as he fired a torrent of gold sparks into the Arcadian’s chest armor.
~*~
Julia felt groggy, like the beginnings of a head cold. Every inch of her body ached, pain radiating from the center of her chest where the stunner blast had struck. She was lying in someone’s arms. Mark’s. The scent of his skin was unmistakable.
“Hey.” His voice was a tender rasp, overflowing with relief. “You okay?”
“Ummm…” It took a moment for her to remember which button to push to speak. “Yeah, think so. Those things pack a hell of a punch.”
“Are you okay?” Julia asked, breathless, urgent; her eyes assessing him for new injuries. “That last one didn’t get you too, did it?”
She groaned and tried to sit up, her muscles as useless as pulled taffy. When he realized what she wanted Mark helped with a warm reassuring hand at the small of her back.
“No, Coop helped with the final takedown.” Mark nodded to where a tall man in tight blue leather pants with laced seams perched on the edge of the plateau, athletic body coiled to pounce at a moment’s notice. The sea breeze flirted with the blue and scarlet feathers braided into his shoulder-length platinum hair as he kept watch over the now empty landscape; giving no outward sign of having heard Mark’s explanation.
“I am called Anora.” A woman wearing delicate gold chainmail over a short brown leather shift, gold gauntlets and military-issue combat boots smiled, and offered Julia a canteen to drink from. “Colonel Holden has told us much of you.”
All trace of tension had gone from Mark’s face as he grinned, bright splotches of red on his cheeks.
“Really? How long was I out?” Julia couldn’t help staring at the tri-colored corn rows patterning Anora’s scalp, or the gem-studded gold circlet pierced through her brow, as she sipped the cool sweet water.
“No more than thirty minutes.” Stephen was all official bluster as he offered Julia his hand. “Doctor Stephen Garrett, Head of Meta-Astrophysics, Phoenix City.”
“Pleased to meet you, Stephen.”
Julia couldn’t hide her smile. It was just all so surreal. Though they introduced themselves with familiar names and titles, not one of the people in front of her resembled the characters she’d grown to love over the past three seasons Phoenix Rising had been on air. She’d gotten used to Mark, but the wow factor was most definitely still in play with his team. They were larger than life, and as different from their onscreen doppelgangers as night and day. Stephen especially, had caught the short end of the casting stick. His ex-military, hot nerd with blue eyes and glasses look, had been written into a pimply teenage genius who suffered from a peanut allergy. Julia had never understood how the character had made it onto a military base in the first place, even a fictional one.
“And this.” Mark gestured again to where Hayden still watched over the way they’d come. “Is Hayden Cooper, or Coop, if he should deem you worthy of such familiarity, has made his home with us on Phoenix.”
“Pleasure.”
Hayden’s solitary word of greeting rumbled warm and thrilling down Julia’s spine, even if he hadn’t turn from his surveillance to deliver it. His manner wasn’t so much rude as uninterested, but Julia didn’t mind. If this Hayden held even the slightest similarity to his one dimensional doppelganger, it would take time to get past his heavily fortified defenses.
Hayden did, however, look at Mark. A look Mark answered with a raised brow and a cheeky grin. He pulled Julia into his side and she rested her head against his shoulder with a sigh of relief. They were both unharmed, and together.
Mark held Julia to him with an arm that was rigid, every muscle tensed. Julia laid her hand on his chest and felt his heart race with the apprehension he was careful to keep from his face. She froze like that, and felt more like an outsider every minute, as the team continued a conversation obviously begun while she was out cold.
“The science is spectacularly complicated, but the short of it is, this is an alternate reality Earth. That laser blast propelled you here, through the pre-programmed portal I was investigating. Took me a day and a half to work out where you’d gone.”
“Found your radio.” Hayden grumbled, an undefinable emotion deepening his voice further.
Mark spared Hayden a sympathetic look before turning his attention back to Stephen. “So time’s running at the same rate here as back home?”
Julia flinched at the mention of home and looked up to see Anora watching her with understanding in her kaleidoscope eyes.
“So…ah…” Stephen glanced at Julia, his eyes skittering away just as quickly. “I can get us back. Phoenix’s coordinates are stored in the glider’s console matrix.”
A tense and heavy silence descended around the island, too solid to be easily broken. It seemed as if eons had passed before Hayden spoke. “We should go. Light is fading.”
“Give us a minute.” Mark barked, each word a razor blade slashing his throat on its way out.
He got to his feet, helped Julia up and led her by the hand across the few meters to the other edge of the island. They stood together, away from the others who were talking amongst themselves in an attempt to give the new lovers privacy.
“It’s my place, my time, I belong there.” He murmured; agony a bitter undertone that cut deep. “I have to go back.”
“I know.” Julia ducked her head into the crook of his neck to hide her eyes and whispered. “But you belong with me, too.”
Mark tangled his fingers through her hair, lifting it off the back of her neck and nuzzling his face behind her ear; inhaling the scent of her skin. “Sure do.”
Julia ran her own hands up his back and crushed her body against his.
“Mmmm.” Mark’s lips crashed down like he was starving and blocked any further thought; only to beg breathlessly when they came up for air. “Come with me?”
How stupid. His leaving was not the only outcome for the situation. If he couldn’t stay, then the obvious solution was for her to go with him.
“Yes!”
She clung to his biceps while her heart thudded with the same joy she saw flaring in her colonel’s eyes. There was no hint of hesitation, no desire to change her mind. She would be with him, and he would be with her. It didn’t matter where they were, as long as they were together.
With ridiculous grins on their faces, Mark and Julia walked hand in hand back to the others. When he told them she was coming with them, Hayden gripped Mark by the shoulders and shook him like a rag doll, before thumping him on the back. Anora stepped in front of Julia, grasped the underside of both her forearms and squeezed tight, before placing a kiss on each of her cheeks. “I am exultant for your union.”
“Well…” Stephen pocketed his reading glasses and tugged his shades from his nape.
“Garrett, she’s coming.” Mark growled in a not up for discussion tone. “I can’t stay, and I’m not leaving her behind.”
Then looking back at Julia, he asked. “Where’s home?”
She wanted to say wherever you are, but she knew what he meant. “Five minutes that way.”
Mark blinked. “Head back to the glider, meet you there in twenty.”
Hayden acknowledged the order with a nod and Mark took the earpiece Anora held out to him before stooping for the backpack.
Anora, Stephen, and Hayden headed for the cave when they reached the sand. And Julia ran for the footpath with Mark hot on her heels. Ten minutes to pack. What would she take to start her new life?
Unlocking the house, Julia ran to the hall closet and dragged down her duffel, throwing it on her bed. She packed a sketchpad and charcoal pencils, her black leather boots, sneakers and a pair of fancy heels. Four pairs of jeans, her only evening dress, a short black flirty skirt, six tops, a s
wimsuit, her sweats, and the entire contents of her underwear drawer, all followed in quick succession.
“Sexy and practical, gotta love that.” Mark chuckled, watching her from the doorway. “What can I get?”
“Camera bag, please. Oh, and the battery charger.” She gestured to the second bedroom as she ducked across the hall and into the bathroom for her toiletries and hairbrush.
When he returned with her camera bag slung over his shoulder, she had sent a text to Andy at work and was tapping out a second one to Jase. There were enough funds in her account to cover maintenance. It wasn’t ideal, but there wasn’t time for more. Her phone bleeped Message Sent and she tossed it into her duffel; zipping it closed before shrugging into her leather jacket and shouldering her backpack.
“All done.” The smile Julia offered was a touch wobbly around the edges and Mark stepped forward, cupping her face in his hands as he read the sheen in her wide eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” She tiptoed to peck him on the lips. “It’s just a little disconcerting. We spend our lives collecting stuff, but when it comes down to it, all I really need is one duffel, a camera, and you.”
He kissed her hard and fast before reaching for her duffel and heading out the door. She locked up after him and slipped the key in her hip pocket.
“Let’s go.” He grinned and offered his hand.
Julia placed her hand, and her heart, in his care, and never looked back as she ran with Mark to meet their future.
“Holden, come in.”
Mark let go of Julia’s hand to tap his earpiece. “Garrett?”
“We’ll pick you up, we’ve got you on screen.”
A moment later the air shimmered and a glider, with metallic corrugated wings rippling out from either side of its sleek body, materialized before them. Julia couldn’t believe her eyes. The desire to caress her palm over every silvery contour, and feel the little ship thrum to life at her touch, was something she wanted more than her next breath.
Mark grinned at her. The same light in his eyes as Julia suspected was flaring in her own. He squeezed her hand and tugged Julia up the ramp; Stephen closing the hatch behind them. Mark put Julia’s bags on the bench seat in the rear cabin, and strode into the cockpit to take over the flight controls.
