“First and foremost,” he said, “to my daughter.” Gaia felt her heart jump into her throat. “Gaia, I am never leaving your side again,” he said, staring comfortably into her eyes. “Ever. If it takes us ten years, I will make up for all the time that my brother ripped away from us.” Gaia believed him. She felt herself blushing, though, and lowered her head slightly just to recover. Ed grabbed her hand under the table and squeezed it tightly. This, of course, only served to double the amount of blood rushing to her face. Her dad smiled a knowing smile and moved on.
“To Heather Gannis. She’s safe and sound back at the hospital now, and the doctors have already seen some marked improvement in her health. She’s shown clear signs that the sickness is reversing itself. Her doctor told me that with some hard work and research put into her eyesight, the prognosis looks good for an eventual full recovery.” He then raised his glass to the table. “And most of all,” he said as he took a moment to take in his audience, “to this family.”
He stopped for a moment. It looked like emotion was getting the better of him. He quickly collected himself and went on. “Because that is what we are now…. We are a family. Loki is gone. And for that…I feel nothing. Because my brother died twenty years ago. And I grieved for him with all my heart. But Loki…Loki’s death is a blessing for everyone in this room. And I believe that he’s taken with him all the pain and all the sorrow that he’s caused us. I believe…no, I know that Loki’s absence is the one thing that can mark a new beginning for all of us here at this table. Not just all of us as individuals, but all of us as a family. So…to my family…and you too, Ed.”
The entire table laughed as they clinked their glasses. Tom drank down his small glass of wine, and the rest of them threw back their water.
“And now we eat!” Natasha announced, bouncing up from her chair as some real inklings of normalcy began to kick in.
Listening to the toast had helped. Gaia was finally starting to believe it now. She was finally finding the ability to breathe freely and actually be in this insanely storybook moment. This time as she looked around the table, she wasn’t just seeing some lonely child’s naive fantasy of togetherness projected like a hologram into the room. This time she could see a truly admirable father, a kind and caring woman who loved him, the beginnings of a real sister, and…an unbelievably cute boy. A rather stunning boy, actually, who was still gripping her hand under the table.
Once Gaia turned to him, she found that the rest of the table seemed to float away like an unmanned sailboat, leaving only her and Ed swimming alone in the water. And while the new beginning for this family was something of a miracle, one look at Ed and Gaia knew that there was a much more essential new beginning to tend to. A new beginning that needed to begin immediately.
Gaia shot up from the table, grabbed onto Ed’s wrist, and tugged him down the hallway.
Creaky Drawbridge
GAIA PULLED ED INTO THE BATHROOM and slammed the door behind him, leaning her hands against the door on either side of his face. She was bubbling with determination at this point. She was overflowing with it. Because the clouds of Gaia’s life had finally parted for two seconds, and the heavens had opened wide, and the sun shone down, casting a golden haze over all that was usually decrepit and gray and hopeless…so she had to move fast. Because it could only be a matter of time (Hours? Maybe even minutes?) before the next train wreck hit. It was a clear-cut pattern. A curse that seemed to work like clockwork. So the goal was simple.
Extend that time in the sun for as long as possible. Ignore the repression, depression, regression, and digression—also known as big, fat, lard-assed intimacy issues—that always got in the way. Hold them at bay while the sun was still out. Before the timer started its countdown again.
“Whoa, there, Tiger—,” Ed laughed, pressing his back against the bathroom door.
“Shhh.” Gaia placed her finger to her lips. “You talk too much, Ed,” she whispered.
“Gaia, your dad’s right in the—”
“Shhh. Don’t talk. Listen, okay? Have you seen a lot of time travel movies?”
“What?” Ed looked positively dumbfounded.
“Time-travel movies, Ed,” she pressed. “Am I speaking Spanish? You know, the movies where there’s this one particular point in time when some kind of cosmic temporal screw up happens and then the whole universe just veers off in the wrong direction into some horrible alternate universe where everything sucks, until our trusty hero goes back to that point in time when everything got completely screwy and sets the universe back on course?”
“Um…” Ed was searching Gaia’s eyes for possible signs of insanity. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I’ve seen some of those—”
“Okay,” Gaia rushed, “and would you say you have a good imagination?”
Ed was still having a little trouble keeping up. “I…uh…”
“Pretend,” Gaia pushed him. “Are you good at pretending?”
“Yeah, I guess I—”
“Good. Perfect. Great,” Gaia said. “Okay, here’s the deal, Ed. New beginning, okay? New beginning. We had a cosmic temporal screw up that morning. We skipped over to this horrible alternate universe the morning after our night together. The morning you got shot at.”
“Okay…?”
“Okay, so let’s fix it. Let’s go back to that morning right now and set things back on the right course, okay?”
“I—I, uh…,”Ed stammered.
“Ed,” she snapped. “Work with me here. You’ve got to work with me. You know how my life goes. You know we’ve got to make the most of our time here in the bathroom.”
“Okay, yes,” Ed agreed. “Okay, it’s that morning again. We’re back in that morning. I’m coming back home with Bisquick and Aunt Jemima.”
“Good,” Gaia encouraged him. “I’m watching you from out your bedroom window, waiting for you to get back here.”
“Okay. I don’t get shot at.”
“Correct. You do not get shot at,” Gaia agreed. “And I just watch you walk into the building, and then I wait for you to walk back through your bedroom door.”
Ed reached down to the knob of the bathroom door, opened it slightly, and slammed it shut. “Honey, I’m home,” he called quietly to Gaia’s face. “I brought everything we need for the panc—”
Gaia grabbed onto Ed’s shoulders and kissed him, pouring all the combined passion of that morning and this evening, and all the mornings and evenings in between, into one kiss. That’s where she would have been. That’s where she should have been. Waiting at the door to pull him back into that bed.
She probed every part of his mouth with her own, pressing him back against the door as he reached his arms around her waist and lifted her off the floor.
“What took you so long?” she whispered.
“I had to get the breakfast rose ,” he whispered back, tickling the inside of her ear with his lips. “You can’t have breakfast in bed without the breakfast rose.”
And just like that, Gaia knew they weren’t pretending anymore. They were there. They were in Ed’s bedroom all those days ago, living out what should have been the rest of that morning. It was so easy to go back. Because in so many ways, she had never really left. The real Gaia had stayed in that room, while ignorant monkey Gaia raised in captivity just babbled and screamed a bunch of destructive nonsense in the miserable alternate universe. But they were back now. Back where they were supposed to be. And this time Gaia was going to talk. Repression was off-limits. Lying was off-limits. Just truth. As much of it as she could stuff into this one moment.
“I want to go back to bed,” she told him.
“Yes,”Ed agreed. “Pancakes later. Let’s go back to bed.”
“And then I want to go to the street fair down the street.”
“Yes.” Ed laughed, pulling Gaia tighter to his body. “So do I. I want to go through boxes of two-dollar tube socks with you.”
“I want to look at sushi refrigerator magnet
s with you, and bad mix tapes.”
“I want a sausage sandwich and a chocolate crepe,” Ed said. “And I want to stay there till they shut the damn thing down.”
“Once I’ve eaten ten pounds of fried dough, we can leave,” Gaia said. “And then back—”
“To bed, absolutely,” Ed agreed.
Gaia brought her head back slowly, brushing her cheek against the stubble on Ed’s chin, gently kissing the corner of his mouth and the area just above his lips. And then finally his lips, breathing him in and out and in again, feeling his fingertips running long trails along the skin of her stomach and her back.
“Ed,” she whispered. “I want to look at tiny, crappy apartments with you, and get a giant dog with you, and read the paper with you, and any other boring bourgeois nonsense you can think of…with you.”
“Is that a proposal?” Ed grinned. “Should I go ask your father for your hand?”
“What, do you think I’m a lunatic?” Gaia squawked. “I’m seventeen years old.”
“Kidding,” Ed said as he smacked his back up against the wall and grabbed Gaia by the shoulders. “Are you fully awake?” he asked, examining her eyes carefully.
Gaia stepped closer and leaned against him. And for the first time in her life, being fearless finally served a truly useful purpose. “I’m fully awake, Ed,” she said, looking straight into his dark brown eyes. “And I’m in love with you.”
And with those words, Gaia swore she could actually hear life falling back into alignment like a loud, creaky drawbridge.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing she heard. Ed and Gaia both snapped their heads toward the door as a loud scream rang out from back down the hall.
Tell me it’s a joke, Gaia said to herself as she whipped open the bathroom door and ran for the living room, Ed following close behind. Tell me it was a laugh or thesound of someone being tickled. Just don’t tell me the clouds are closing already….
Gaia leapt out into the living room. It was definitely not a joke. It was just a sight that she couldn’t begin to understand.
Her father’s face was turning a horrid shade of purple. His hands were clutching at his neck as his entire torso fell forward on the table, writhing in some kind of inexplicable pain.
“Somebody call an ambulance!” Natasha screamed.
“I just did!” Tatiana replied. “They’re coming! They’re coming now.”
Gaia leapt to her father’s side and tried to prop him up. “Are you choking?” she asked urgently.
He shook his head no and looked over at Natasha.
“Don’t worry, Tom,” Natasha cried. “The ambulance is on its way.”
“I don’t understand,” Gaia shouted, looking into her father’s desperate eyes. “I don’t understand what happened!”
“Try to stay calm, Gaia,” Natasha pleaded. “I’m sure the ambulance will—”
There was a loud pounding at the door. “EMS!” they barked through the door. “EMS. We got an emergency call—open up!”
The ambulance had already arrived. It was the fastest Gaia had ever seen an ambulance arrive on the scene.
Daily Injection
SOMETHING’S GOING ON OUT THERE.Something big has happened.
At first he could tell just by the sounds. Suddenly all these chaotic sounds were pouring through the walls of his room. They’d always seemed to keep complete order out there before, but now men and soldiers were barking at each other like dogs. Engines were starting up one after the other as horns honked endlessly and tires dug into the dirt. But that was just the beginning.
He hoisted himself from his hospital bed, ignoring the awful pain in his chest, and stepped up next to the one small circular window by the sink. He’d thanked God every day for that window. At least they let him look at something other than his bed and those ugly cement walls and that one stupid little travel chess-board they’d let him have.
He crouched down and peered through the crud-covered one-foot window. And what he saw was the first glimmer of hope he’d had in weeks.
There was major movement. Major. These weren’t the usual little practice ops he’d seen them working on before with the armored cars and the RVs. Cars and jeeps were lining up in droves as the men hollered out indecipherable orders to each other.
Jesus, they’re moving out! This is some kind ofabandon-ship. He was sure of it. What else could it possibly be?
And then all the little pieces of the day started to make more sense. He hadn’t had his usual visit from the doctor. They hadn’t come in to give him his daily injection.
Wait a minute. Maybe that’s why I’m so alert? Maybe that’s why things are coming through so loud and clear today? No sedation. God, maybe this is it? Maybe this is my chance to break out of this place?
He tried to run to the door, but running was still a little tough on the chest wounds. He got to the door and tugged with as much strength as he could muster. But it was useless. The door was still locked shut. It didn’t matter how much it looked like a cheap, shoddy hospital room; it was still just a prison cell in disguise.
All right, think, he ordered himself for the thousandth time while pacing around gingerly in the tiny cell. Think this through. Play it like a game. Play it like a chess game.
Of course, it looked like a stalemate, but some new move had just presented itself, he was sure of it. If they were really starting to ship out of the compound, then there had to be some new escape route opening up. Some area that was less guarded now or perhaps not even guarded at all?
Come on. Think of your maps.
He’d mapped whole quadrants of the compound in his head the few times they’d let him out of his cell for any reason. Even when he was still stuck on the gurney, he’d managed a few drowsy observations. Now he just had to turn his observations into a game of chess.
Come on. Picture the stalemate and find the way out.
He flashed back to an ugly stalemate he’d fallen into with Gaia one day at the park, and that left a horrible pain in his chest again. But this pain wasn’t coming from his wounds. This was just that same horrid twinge he felt in his heart every time he thought of her. Which was about thirty to fifty times a day. Combined with his wounds, that equaled a whole lot of pain.
But if he could find his way back to her…If there really was a chance developing here, then for God’s sake he had to take it, no matter what the risk. He certainly wasn’t about to rot to death in this cell just dreaming about Gaia and the day that he’d finally be sitting across from her again in Washington Square Park in the rain. He’d had enough of that for one lifetime. So think, you idiot. What’s your next move? How the hell are you going to get home?
He didn’t have his exact answer yet, but he sure as hell had his motivation.
Just picture Gaia at the other end of the board and you’ll get there. You will get there.
Here is a Sneak Peek of Fearless™ #25: Lost
Lab Rat
A fast-food wrapper skittered across the pathway in front of him, its bright red color one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
White Room
HE WAS ABLE TO HEAR EVERYTHING. After months of being trapped in this cold, white cell, he had trained himself to hear it all. Every turn of a key in a lock. Every click of a door. Every footstep. Every word. Every sneeze. Sometimes he even heard a breath. With nothing to see, nothing to smell, nothing to feel, his hearing became honed. Like that of a bat. Like a mouse. Like the lab rat he was.
There was something going on. New sounds. New words. New tones. Things were starting to fall apart, that much was clear. He could tell from the high pitch of his captors’ voices. He could tell from the running. The quick clip-clop of their compulsively shined shoes.
He pressed his fingertips and palms up against the glass that closed him off from the sparkling white hall beyond. From the gleaming tile. From the one tiny crack in the plaster on the far wall that he’d studied so hard and for so long that it started to appea
r in his dreams. It was the only thing of discord in this sterile, regimented place. Until now.
Footsteps came. Rapidly. His heart hit his throat and he pressed his cheek against the glass, waiting. Suddenly a guard ran down the hall, zipping right past him in a blur of color. So close, yet so untouchable.
More voices.
“What are you going to do with them? You can’t move them! We have strict orders to—”
“The orders don’t matter anymore! We have to contain this!”
A third voice. A scared voice. Possibly the voice of Five Oh Three, the guard with the twitchy eye. “Let’s just let them go! If the cops come here and find this place—”
Let them go! the prisoner thought, pressing his face so hard into the glass it hurt. Yes! Let them go!
“NO! We have our orders!”
“Aren’t you listening to me! Loki’s not coming back! He is as good as dead! Our orders don’t matter anymore!
There was a loud clatter. A punch landed. A jaw cracked. A body hit the floor. The prisoner had a sinking feeling that Five Oh Three would have been his only ally. He swallowed hard. If Loki was as good as dead, wasn’t he as well? Would the morons out there even bother to continue to feed him? Would he rot away in this white room for the rest of his numbered days?
The moment the prisoner stepped back from the glass, Four Five Seven appeared at the side of his cell. Four Five Seven was the round-jawed, pudgy, yet strong Hispanic guard who brought the prisoner his injections. Who held him down while Four Nine Two and Five Oh Three administered the serums. He’d never known his captors by their real names, only by the numbers embroidered in gold thread along their collars.
Betrayed Page 16
