by Claire Davon
She looked at the Commander’s wrist device and saw the Florida Everglades vividly. She could almost picture the swamp, although she had never been there. She could picture the green vegetation, the alligators, the mosquitoes, and the myriad creatures that lived in the boggy area.
Her head felt light, and she heard a buzzing like the drone of a thousand bees inside her eardrums. It was similar to the sound she felt in Brookline, before her life had gone sideways. Her body seemed weightless, like she was in zero gravity even though she could see her feet were still on the ground.
“Three…two…one.”
Blackness, hideous cold and nothingness, and then out into a space where there was nothing and nothing existed. She couldn’t feel the skin on her face, and her eyes couldn’t penetrate the all-enveloping darkness.
Again.
She had never been to Florida, despite growing up in Massachusetts, but it was pretty much like she expected. The swamp was lush and overgrown, smelling of organic decay. Animal noises--birds, crickets, frogs, and more she didn’t recognize--sounded all around them in a cacophony of nature gone wild.
The five of them were ankle deep in swampy marsh, the goo oozing over their shoes. With a look of distaste, the Commander pulled his leg up, the action met with a sucking sound as his now mud-covered foot pulled free. Illiria and Gire had been luckier, landing on exposed tree roots, only their heels in the muck.
Sonder chuckled, but it was a grim sound.
“Your coordinates were a little off,” he said, pointing. In the distance, they could see a structure, no more than a dilapidated shack.
He was still holding onto Fiona, his hand firm in hers. He pulled free of the swamp and joined Gire and Illiria, pulling Fiona with him.
She looked down at her low heels. They were ruined, which was no surprise. Dirt and thick mud coated them, with a few leaves stuck to the heels for good measure.
Her head was light. The buzzing had retreated, but she still felt like everything was off, slightly distant.
The Commander frowned at his wrist. “My coordinates were perfect. We should be over there.” He did a double take and pressed some buttons, then shook his wrist.
“Come, let’s get to the house and then discuss things.” He shared a look with Illiria, a look Fiona could not interpret.
House? Fiona doubted privately anyone called that thing a house unless they were desperate. Which, as she thought about it, they were.
They walked in silence the short distance to the weather-beaten building, the muck slurping up their feet with every step. Mosquitoes were already dive bombing them, and the chirps of birds and a strange sound she tentatively thought might be alligators were as thick as the overgrown vegetation. The sun, streaming through the leaves of the trees, beat on them, adding to the oppressive humidity that beaded their skin with sweat.
The house was cooler than the outside, with thick plank wood walls and a dirt floor. It wasn’t much, but it did provide some protection from the elements.
Illiria and the Commander immediately went to a corner and began talking in low tones, with darted glances at Fiona. She couldn’t help but notice. Their glances were so pointed, they may as well have sharp edges on them.
“Commander?”
Sonder’s voice was mild, but his grip on her hand was tight. He was tense, wary, his demeanor watchful.
“Stand down, Captain,” the Commander said with a sharp reprimand in his voice. “This does not concern you.”
They punched buttons and compared wrist devices. After a moment, they both frowned, and Illiria turned away from Fiona and Sonder, very deliberately. Fiona looked at Sonder, who was frowning. The buzz increased in her head and she felt boneless, like she was floating.
“How much time before Rogald finds us? Will we have enough time to power up for a Base jump?”
Gire was either oblivious to the tension in the room, or being deliberately obtuse. Fiona wasn’t honestly sure which.
She turned her head, and the motion made her dizzy. To steady herself, Fiona gripped Sonder’s hand harder and felt him stiffen.
“He shouldn’t be tracking us, but he is. Five minutes again, give or take a minute or so.”
“He’s tracking her, isn’t he?” Gire gave Fiona a glance that she found impossible to decipher. Whatever it meant, it had shades of meaning to it that she didn’t understand.
“Commander, we need to go back to Base. I think our passenger is timesick.” He pulled Fiona next to him so their arms met, subtly steadying her without being obvious about it. “We are at borderline capacity for the jump.
“Not yet, soldier.” The warning was clear. Back off. Now.
“Commander.”
“You’re out of line.”
Fiona flinched at the words, so harshly spoken. Sonder’s face was like granite, giving away nothing. She felt the tension in him grow, like a coiled snake ready to spring.
Even though she had no way of knowing what Sonder, or any of them, were thinking, it comforted her to feel his rigid body against hers. Through the weird buzzing sound in her ears, she could hear him draw a harsh breath. He seemed ready to spring at a moment’s notice, but she wasn’t sure of the target. Not her, she hoped.
Snippets of the conversation between the Commander and Illiria were audible.
“…The one? Not possible. Full power, should be baseline. Leave here?” Another glance at her. “...Just a story…dangerous.”
Simultaneously, all of their wrist devices made a shrieking racket, a sound unlike the ones they’d heard before.
Sonder only nodded as if he had been expecting it. None of them seemed phased by what was a loud claxon noise, demanding attention. It cut through the chatter of the swamp and the buzzing in her ears.
“We need to return to Base. We’ve jumped too many times.”
“Not yet, soldier.”
Another beep sounded, this one the same as before, and she realized it was an alert to let them know Rogald was coming.
The Commander and Illiria conferred again, ignoring the dual harsh beeping sounds.
Her world narrowed down to a pinprick, and Fiona was finding it difficult to focus. What had Sonder called it? Timesick? No wonder, with all the travelling they’d been doing. Fighting to hold onto her consciousness, she put a hand on Sonder’s arm to brace herself. If she blacked out, she wanted someone to catch her, and she didn’t trust anyone else.
“We can’t take the chance that we’re missing something,” the Commander said with a grim look on his face.
A shimmer in the room indicated Rogald was coming. Fiona saw two shimmers and decided that meant that he had one companion.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Illiria said.
Rogald started to be visible.
“You are overruled for now, Major. We have to take stock of this situation.” He turned to Sonder. “Sonder, you will be responsible for this…” he paused for far too long for anything he said to be polite “…woman.”
“Thing” would have worked. “Creature” or “alien” also. Fiona’s head started spinning, the confusing and weird events catching up to her.
“I…” she said, unsure of what she wanted to say.
“Commander!” The voice was unfamiliar, and Fiona saw that Rogald had materialized, along with a woman. “We need to talk. Check your readings. Things are changing. She could be the one.”
“Let’s go.” The Commander pushed some buttons and nodded.
The dark began, horrible and black. The empty nothingness gripped her.
Yet another descent into black was too much. With a cry she couldn’t hear, Fiona lost her fight to stay conscious. As she felt herself recede into her mind, she only hoped that when they materialized wherever they were going, Sonder would be there to catch her.
Chapter 8
Fiona blinked when she woke up on a curved twin-sized bed in an antiseptic room in shades of beige that could only be some sort of hospital facility. Disoriented, she moved
and then stopped, the muzzy feeling telling her that hadn’t been such a good idea after all. It took her a moment, and then the events of the day or days before came rushing back, and she moaned softly.
There were no straps holding her down, but the room was empty of anything but the bed and a large, complex beeping monitor behind her bed. The bed was covered in a thin blanket, its size hiding a deceptive warmth.
Fiona moved gingerly, testing her body parts under the blanket. Nothing seemed out of joint or place, but she felt as if she’d run a marathon.
The beeping increased on the monitor and, as if summoned, a hitherto unnoticed door, almost invisible, slid open in that Star Trek style. As was to be expected, Fiona thought wryly. Everything else had been very twenty second century, why not this, too.
Sonder. There he was, looking slightly weary as he leaned against the frameless opening, just staring at her. She slid from the bed, quickly cataloging her wardrobe, which was different than what she had been wearing when she passed out. Now she had on a suit similar to theirs, one piece with no visible seams, in an off-white color as opposed to the dark purple with piping the others wore.
Unlike Sonder, her feet were bare. She looked at her feet and then up at him. He smiled a little, looking at her from his resting point, his gaze strong but veiled.
“How are you?” he asked without moving.
Fiona swallowed, the intensity of his gaze making her heart first skip a beat, and then speed up. She had a flash memory/déjà vu dream of him taking her in his arms and kissing her, lightly at first and then with growing intensity.
Without taking his eyes from hers, Sonder crossed the room to her, and the feeling of déjà vu intensified. She’d experienced this moment before, in her dreams, which had seemed almost more real than what was happening in front of her right now.
He was five inches taller than she was, and she had to tilt her neck up to continue to meet his eyes. Heat poured off him, masculine and kinetic, the hard, basic heat of a male warrior.
Grey. His eyes were grey, a clear grey so pure she could almost see behind the iris. For a moment they stood there, just looking at each other, and then he put his arms around her waist and pulled him to her.
She had zero thought of resisting. The heat seemed to arc between them, a powerful force she felt all the way to her inner core.
“Fiona,” was the only thing he said before he touched his lips to hers.
Electricity exploded between them, and Fiona heard herself moan involuntarily, a sigh that let him into her mouth. Snaking her arms around his neck, she pressed against him and felt a rumble deep in his body. His body was as firm and unresisting as she had expected, and she sank into him, molding the contours of her body to his. A shivery sensation coursed over her.
The kiss was deep and long. He plunged into her mouth, his hands pressed against the small of her back, drawing her hard to him. It felt like a claiming, like possession, like he was branding her with his heat and masculinity. Desire flooded her, making her weak.
He raised his head, and she almost staggered forward, but his sure grip on her steadied her. She noted with satisfaction that his breathing was coming hard, his chest rising and falling quickly.
“Ah, Fiona,” he said, cupping her face and looking at her again. “I see you in the night.”
She allowed herself the indulgence of running her hands over the planes of his chest, the tactile sensation under her palms electrifying on its own. To her surprise, he shuddered, briefly closing his eyes as if in pain.
“I see you, too,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I…what’s happening?”
He stepped back and released her, immediately depriving Fiona of his solid warmth. She wanted to move back in, put her arms around him and press her body into his like a cat.
“We aren’t sure,” he admitted, an odd look of pain crossing his face. “Potentially, something big. Very big. Come, you need shoes. I’ve been given the task of taking you around.”
Task, eh?
“But I would have found a way to make it my job if they hadn’t assigned me,” he added, touching her face with his index finger. “You have created quite a stir. Come.” From an unseen drawer under the bed, he pulled booties similar to his own and handed them to her.
After she put on her shoes, which molded themselves to her feet and sealed with something akin to a vacuum, he grasped her hand, twining his fingers through hers. He felt comfortable, solid, and familiar.
Shouldn’t she need a shower? It had been…lord only knows how long since that fateful morning trolley crash, and she had been through two major events and several time jumps. The unpleasantness of the blackness lingered.
She should smell like a barn. She didn’t, though. Nothing did. Under the faint medicinal smell of the austere operating room was a plain odor, like everything was sanitized. Including herself. Even Sonder, who reeked of masculinity and should have a slight male odor, didn’t smell of anything.
She tightened her grip on Sonder’s hand, the sense of buzzing weirdness getting stronger.
The door snicked open, and they stepped out into a hallway that could have been any generic hallway–a hotel hallway, perhaps, if there had been bad landscape pictures screwed into the wall. The walls were smooth and featureless, cut by barely visible doorways and branching off into various directions in the distance.
People were walking with purpose in the hallways, but many took a second glance at the pair, then quickly looked away.
Fiona glanced at Sonder, who was grim-faced, not meeting the eyes of any of the curious. She tightened her grip on his hand and felt a reassuring squeeze in return.
A memory of a dream came to her, one she’d had almost as often as the ones with Sonder. They were in a room that had a Baltar Battlestar Galactica style chair high up on a pedestal. She was facing the person in the chair, who she now realized was the Commander, and they were having a debate. She couldn’t hear the words through the buzzing in her ears, but it was clear by the rigid, hostile postures of the Commander and the four people flanking her that it wasn’t going well.
Sonder stood beside her, her hand in his as it was now, his face red as if he’d been shouting. His body was rigid, matching the leaders’ stance. In her vision, he was talking, the words seeming to be a plea of some sort, gesturing towards her and out past her line of vision.
“Fiona?”
His voice snapped her back to this reality, although it took her a moment to regain her bearings.
“Wow, went somewhere else there for a second,” she said, trying to inject a humorous tone into her voice, although she felt far from funny. “Sorry.”
He looked thoughtful, glancing at her with an odd look as they continued to walk.
“I thought you might be hungry.”
Was she? She had no clear idea how long had passed between her morning in Washington Square and the present. It could have been six hours or six days. It felt like six months.
A blue clad duo passed them, their sideways glances furtive, and as they receded, she heard, “Is that her? The one everyone is talking about?”
Sonder turned and glared at the pair in the distance, who were still glancing back. They turned straight ahead and walked briskly away.
So there were colors other than purple. She’d assumed her attire was the mark of someone that wasn’t the same rank that the others were, whatever that was, and the aqua blue of the duo gave credence to that half-formed theory.
“I am hungry,” she said, looking up at his troubled face. “For food, and answers.”
Chapter 9
Sonder took her to another door and with a wave of his hand it opened, leading to what would have been called on Earth a cafe. The room was large, and like so much of this place, sterile to the point of being antiseptic, with off-white walls and no decoration. Tables were long and unadorned, and the room was sparsely populated.
“Off hour,” she thought. “Not too many curious people.”
The
re were symbols carved into the space over all three doorways, symbols unlike any she’d ever seen.
The idea that she might be dead came to her again. It would fit. It was just that she felt so alive, so real that she couldn’t believe she could be dead and not know it.
The ones who were there looked up as if bobbing on a collective string and then, as one, looked away again. There was no visible sign of kitchen or cooks, but Fiona was sure that, somehow, there would be food.
He guided her to a table as far removed from other people as possible, it seemed. The table, just like the rest of the place, was smooth, appearing to be some sort of hard plastic.
It was strange, that was certain. And yet it was familiar on a gut deep level she didn’t understand. All of it felt like an echo, dim memories that weren’t quite surfacing making the unfamiliar seem familiar, real.
Or perhaps she had jumped the shark. Gone off the deep end. Was a few clowns short of a circus. Perhaps, right now, she was lying in a hospital, monitors beeping as she ebbed away, this being some sort of weird last hallucination before she passed.
“What would you like?” Sonder’s deep baritone cut into her melancholy musings, and Fiona shook her head to get rid of the gloomy thoughts.
“Answers. And some fried chicken. Some mashed potatoes would be nice, too. And…some corn.” Starch. She needed starch. And protein.
Sonder nodded and left the table, going to the wall nearest them and waving his hand again in that way that got doors open. She couldn’t see what happened next, but in a moment, he was turning back to her.
She was expecting off-white gruel, or a pill or something. These people and this place was so futuristic that surely they didn’t need to eat. Not like normal humans.
When he set the plate down, she was pleased to see that her order was as specified, down to butter she hadn’t asked for on the corn.
A curious glance at his plate told her he’d gotten the same thing she had. An effort to make her feel more secure? Or no idea what to get when he was out of his comfort zone?
