by Clare Murray
“Maybe you could stick to pulling our thingies in the future,” Finn teased.
Her giggle was cut off by another howl and a deep vibration.
“Shit!” She wrapped her legs around Finn, desperately seeking safety. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder.
“Hey, everything’s okay. They’ve closed their ship up again. You probably gave them the fright of their lives letting all that unfiltered sunlight in.” Finn easily supported her full weight.
“Good.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
“Even so, we’d better get down in case something else unexpected happens,” Gareth said.
Mari remained locked around Finn, who had no problem navigating the steps with her clinging like a limpet. Which was a good thing, since her legs were trembling too hard to allow her to safely descend on her own.
When they reached solid ground, she nearly kissed it. Instead, she kissed Finn. She wasn’t prepared for the almost violent way he deepened it, pressing his mouth against hers in a hungry, possessive move that would have left her gasping had she the breath for that.
It was a strange mixture of feelings—relief paired with fear, combining to make her surroundings sharper, clearer. Everything stood out, Finn’s aftershave mingling with the smell of motorcycle exhaust and the sun glinting too brightly off the spaceship. It had to be a UV-resistant ship, she suddenly realized, to keep the aliens safe in this solar system.
Wherever they were from was probably on the cold and dark side. Shame they couldn’t pack up and go back, but she supposed Earth provided for them, in a way. It was strange knowing there were dozens—perhaps hundreds, given the size of that spaceship—a matter of feet away from her. And she’d been climbing on top of them.
That didn’t change the fact that she was standing in the middle of nowhere with—how had Finn put it?—a shitload of Barks nearby.
Finn ran his finger down the side of her cheek. “You really okay, Mari?”
“Give me a few minutes.” She clung to him, unwilling to let go. It was nice to feel wanted. She hadn’t felt so secure since months before her father died, back when Tim wasn’t pursuing her.
“Of course.” His embrace stayed strong, steady, calming her galloping heart until she was able to pull away and rake windblown hair from her eyes.
“All right,” she managed.
“Did you want to look around some more?” he asked.
Mari frowned, trying to hide the surge of fear that shook her as she looked at the spaceship. Funny that the ship hadn’t been locked. Then again, the aliens probably didn’t expect their prey to be intelligent enough to be able to open doors. Or maybe they hadn’t yet invented locks.
Locks… She blinked. How could she have been so stupid? Her father had started a diary shortly after the Invasion. He’d kept it hidden in his trunk’s false bottom. The same trunk that held Mari’s belongings, back at Patrice’s house. She’d been trying to puzzle through the writing on the scrap paper when she should have been reading through his diary.
She’d had more complete information with her all along. She only needed to read the sections on Scar City and find out where he might have hidden that alien device—and what he was trying to buy from the scavenger near Patrice’s house. Hell, even if she couldn’t sell the device after all, she’d be helping the Twins with their mission. They deserved her assistance after the kind way they’d treated her.
“Actually,” she said slowly, “we can go back now.”
* * * * *
Gareth listened as Mari animatedly described the small trunk she’d brought from Flagstaff. He tried his best to focus on her words and not his relief that she hadn’t fucking died up there when they’d taken their attention off her for a minute.
“He must have tried to tell me about his diary, but the meds and the pain made him pretty out of it,” Mari was explaining. When excited, she talked with her hands, her long fingers fluttering until he wanted to seize them and press kisses into her palms.
“Diary?” Finn asked.
“Yes, it’s what I should have looked for in the first place, but…well, he’s still my dad, and reading his private diary never really occurred to me.”
“Did he write a lot?” Gareth asked.
“I remember waking up sometimes and seeing him at his desk, but ever since my mother died, he’s mostly scribbled stuff down on scratch paper. I don’t think he’s written in an actual diary for years.”
“It really was a stroke of luck that we found her,” Finn sent. “Both for us and for the mission.”
“I fully agree.” Gareth regarded her, marveling at how fast she’d become special to them both. There seemed to have been a Mari-shaped hole in their hearts, waiting to be filled. The mission was wholly secondary.
“Try telling Dr. Felton that,” Finn warned. “He seems driven to obtain every piece of technology he can. Says he wants to prove a major theory.”
“Scientists and their goddamn theories.” Gareth didn’t want to think about it anymore.
“Mari, is there anything else out here you’d like to examine? Besides a horde of Barks, that is,” Finn added dryly.
Mari’s blush was pure cute. “Sorry. And no. I—I’d like to start back. The sooner, the better.”
She looked anxiously at the sky, waves of almost palpable concern rolling off her. Gareth wished he could erase her fear, leaving her able to enjoy the freedom of being outside City walls. He couldn’t, of course—but an idea struck, one he immediately shared with Finn.
“You actually brought one of those with you?”
“Never hurts to be prepared,” Gareth replied.
“I’ve never seen you so willing to joke around.”
“Well, if you have to know, bringing it was an accident. It was near the other stuff, and I wound up throwing it into the bag. Only noticed when I was halfway out the door.”
“It might be a good idea to see if we can distract her with it. Look how nervous she is. She’s doing a decent job of hiding it, but let’s get out of here, all right?”
It was a measure of Mari’s nervousness that she hadn’t noticed their silent conversation. She stared in the direction of the City, rubbing the toe of her boot in the dust. Gareth looped an arm around her waist and guided her to the motorcycle. When she would have climbed into the sidecar, he prevented her with one gentle hand.
“You’re really nervous, aren’t you?”
She gave a sharp nod, dark hair falling across her face before she impatiently brushed it back. “Yes, I am. Trying to hide it. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Finn came up behind them. “You’re not the only one who’s afraid of being outside the walls. There’s a lot of humans who won’t venture outside. You shouldn’t be ashamed—you ought to be proud of coming all this way. That was brave, Mari.”
“I’m not brave, though.” She cast them a confused look. “The moment we left the gates, I felt like hyperventilating.”
“Yet you continued all the same,” Gareth said, reaching into his backpack for what he required. He palmed the small vibrator before turning back to Mari.
“I did, but I’ll be on the edge of panic until we get back. Something might happen to the bike… We might get stranded out here, and it’s already nearly noon.”
“I have something that’ll help distract you.” Gareth held up the vibe. It had been state-of-the-art in pre-Invasion time, top of the line, with an external part that stimulated the clitoris. He’d always wanted to use it but had been saving it for someone special.
Mari’s eyes widened. “Is that…?”
“Not a threat. A promise.” Gareth grinned wickedly, tucking it back into his pocket. “So if you start panicking, you think about me pulling over and sliding that into you.”
“You’d do that?” She eyed him sidelong, but he saw the flare of excitement
she couldn’t hide.
“It vibrates,” he said, leaning forward to speak into her ear, “and I have the remote control in my pocket. So if I see you getting all nervous again, I’m going to bring you to orgasm. Right there in my sidecar.”
Her expression—a mixture of anticipation and shock—was priceless. Gareth gave her no chance to argue or back out, bundling her into the sidecar and handing her a helmet. As he and Finn mounted the bike, Gareth made sure Mari was looking, and patted his pocket.
In response, her hand curled around the metal handlebar, but it wasn’t the white-knuckled grip she’d employed on the way out here. Good. She was calmer, much calmer than she had been. It was so much damn fun, playing with Mari.
“It sure is.” Finn paused a few beats. “You know, I haven’t seen you so happy since Hailey died.”
“If I wanted a counselor, I’m sure the scientists would provide one.” Gareth revved the bike a little too hard in his annoyance.
“I’m not trying to counsel you. I’m just saying that it hasn’t been a barrel of laughs sharing your thoughts sometimes. Some of us go over the edge—you know that. Theo did, and I saw how his Twin suffered.”
“Yeah well, maybe they should have coded a failsafe into our DNA,” Gareth snarled. “They would have, you know, if our brains could have been programmed like computers.”
“But they didn’t. Couldn’t. Like it or not, we’re as flawed as a human in many ways. Flawed in our own unique ways too.”
“Just don’t rehash the past at me,” Gareth warned. He quashed any further thoughts along that vein, ruthlessly refusing to think about Theo and his Twin. Instead, he eased the motorcycle onto what remained of an old highway, doing his best to avoid the worst of the potholes and other debris. The bike, along with its tires, was pretty resilient, but he wasn’t going to risk having to spend an hour repairing the machine for the sake of going five or ten miles an hour faster.
“The past is the past,” Finn sent after a minute. “All I wanted was to say I’m glad we’re on an even keel again. Also, Mari’s looking around again, seems kind of scared. Distract her again.”
“All right.” Gareth meant that as both acquiescence and closure. Reaching into his pocket, he dangled the remote control briefly in front of her helmet. He was rewarded by Mari flipping up the visor and grinning at him. Yep, she was coping.
Because he knew the road now, he felt comfortable pushing their speed a little harder than he had on the outgoing trip. As a result, the trip took less than two hours, during which he kept a close eye on Mari.
Mari’s body language stayed relaxed, although Gareth was ready to pull over if necessary. He kept a close eye on her reactions, noticing that once they were within sight of the gates, she was leaning back and seeming to enjoy the ride. They rolled through the gates, coming to a halt as someone herded a flock of chickens across the road.
“Back to ours?” Gareth sent.
“Absolutely. Can you deal with the bike paperwork? Better yet, intimidate someone else into doing it for us. You’re scarier.”
“And you’re lazy.”
“When it comes to dealing with box-ticking, I most definitely am.” Finn gave him an unrepentant grin as he shucked off his helmet. Gareth snorted as his Twin took off with Mari tucked under his arm, and wheeled the motorcycle toward what passed as government headquarters in this City.
It took longer than he liked to get through the paperwork—even post-Invasion government regulations were still a hell of a nuisance. Fortunately, the representative wanted to hurry things along as much as Gareth did, signing off on the fuel report sheet and the safety checks without any real fuss.
He subdued a small group of junkies in the road with one searing glare. Although a larger and more ambitious group might have tried to tackle him, nobody hassled him as he walked down the street. Even so, he wasn’t stupid enough to linger. He unlocked the door of the small, government-maintained dwelling, then meticulously relocked it behind him.
Finn was cuddled up on the couch with Mari, lazily rubbing her shoulder as he fiddled with the remote for the TV on the wall. “She’s still shaky, so I convinced her to stay with us for a while,” he sent. “Don’t want her reading the diary on her own and having a nervous breakdown or something.”
Gareth took the spot on her other side, and she leaned companionably against him. “We all deserve a break,” he sent, wrapping his arm around Mari.
“Are we going to watch a movie?” she asked.
“Not if you let him choose,” Gareth said, pointing at his brother.
“Hey, if you want to watch your usual chick flick, I won’t stand in your way.” Finn laughed, easily warding off Gareth’s mock punch.
“I think we’re limited by what’s available,” Mari said diplomatically, gesturing to the TV. The former owner had movies in several different formats, with a predilection toward action movies. After some deliberation, they chose something that erred toward the fun-and-cheesy side.
Halfway through it, Mari fell asleep, missing the part where the heroine catapulted out of a crashing car and singlehandedly saved the day. Finn looked over at Gareth and smirked, looking more satisfied than Gareth had seen him in years.
An emotion which, Gareth realized, he shared.
When had he last felt so fulfilled? Not in his adult life, certainly not post-Invasion. Life at the Complex was comfortable at best, but he’d never known true happiness. Even before the aliens had come, much of their time had been spent training or being forced to perform for a government official.
“Yeah, you haven’t been truly happy for years now,” Finn sent.
“Neither have you.” Gareth tugged a blanket over their feet as the early evening air started to become chilly.
“I’m better at hiding it.”
Gareth tilted his head in mute acknowledgment. His Twin had almost always been able to put a positive spin on things. Even when he found it really annoying, he had to admit it was better than both of them being completely negative.
For Gareth, finding out that the telepathic link between Twins could never be turned off had been difficult to digest. They could tune it down, mostly blocking each other—which came in handy during certain private moments—but strong emotion always leached through.
Sex, for example, was awkward as hell when it was happening with only one of them. Inevitably, their mental bond interfered, and it was a whole lot safer to hide in the bedroom when one of them was on a date. That way they didn’t risk popping a boner at an inopportune time. Or worse.
Fortunately, the Complex was populated with people—mainly other Twins—who fully understood those issues. Yet even so, their attraction to Mari went beyond the initial pheromones or whatever that they’d instinctively noticed. Now that they’d gotten to know her, Gareth wasn’t going to give her up for anything.
Chapter Six
Mari stretched, bumping pleasantly against the men she was sandwiched between. She opened her eyes, taking in the sight of washboard abs—dual washboard abs. Two pairs of green eyes fixed upon her as she tried to figure out what time it was and why she was in bed instead of on the couch.
“Um. How long did I sleep?”
“All night.” At her horrified look, Finn quickly reassured her that one of them had gone to tell Patrice she was safe with them.
“I should—” Sudden memory of the diary assailed her. She swallowed, abruptly uncertain. When she had fled Flagstaff, her uppermost thought had been to get away from Tim, clinging to the hope that her father had left something valuable here. Sure, she’d successfully navigated to Winter Street, but she hadn’t connected all the dots until now. She’d have to talk to Patrice about this and sort through the items on the cluttered cherrywood table.
In retrospect, assuming the alien device was valuable had been a foolish hope. Still, she sensed there was something important in
her father’s diary—something he’d been preoccupied with for years. Every time news came in about Scar City, he’d perked up and listened carefully, asking pertinent questions. He did that about no other City—even San Francisco, where he’d been born and raised.
Aware that the Twins were still watching her, Mari rubbed her eyes. “I have to get back to the other house. I need time to think.”
The men exchanged quick glances. “Is opening this diary something you’d like to do privately?” Finn asked.
Mari nodded immediately. Getting all emotional over her father’s words wasn’t anything she wanted to do in front of the Twins. And she couldn’t be sure how much the diary covered—had he written about her mother’s death? Or was it simply a factual account of their journey from their cabin in the woods to Scar City itself?
Distracted as she was, she was grateful when the Twins insisted upon accompanying her back to Patrice’s. It wasn’t a long walk as the crow flew, but rubble and other debris in the street made it a haphazard journey. A fire engine, red paint peeling with age, blocked off a narrow alleyway and jutted partially into the main road. In its dubious shelter, a junkie hunched, eyes glassy and vacant, the early morning sun playing across his partially clothed body.
The Twins had taken up position on either side of her, subtly herding her to the other side of the street. She was grateful for their protectiveness, although she couldn’t help but wish life were different for the addict in the fire engine. He wasn’t that young, so he’d probably had some sort of adult life pre-Invasion, maybe a family.
Things could be worse for me, she reminded herself. Much worse.
When they reached Patrice’s front door, she squeezed the men’s hands. “Thank you. Did you want to come in?”
“We have to check in with headquarters, give them a status update.” Finn gave her hand a return squeeze before letting go.
Mari blinked. Status update? Was something wrong? She fought down a surge of panic at the thought of the Twins being recalled to this mysterious Complex, possibly without her…
“They’ll want to pull us from the City when we tell them how bad it is here,” Gareth said in his typical blunt style, accurately reading the distress in her expression. “We can tone down our report a little, but not by much. I’m going to recommend this city be voluntarily evacuated beginning today—and that a forcible evacuation begins at the end of the week.”
