Reset

by Kirk Dougal

  Rick looked at the other three, taking in Strick’s hope, Jim’s challenge, and Gwen’s concern.

  “Yes, I’ll go back inside.”

  *****

  Rick lay his cigarette on top of the mound of filters and ash overflowing the holder and rolled off the couch. On his way to the door he glanced at his watch, wondering who would be knocking on his door at, well, at any time. He looked through the peep hole and felt a breath catch in his throat.

  “Hi,” he said once he pulled the door open. “Do we have a fresh body?” He reached for his jacket.

  Gwen smiled and patted the carrying case in her hand. “No, I brought you some homework. Are you going to study out here in the hallway or can I come in?”

  Rick felt heat rising in his cheeks as he stepped back to let her walk by. The heat rose to a flame of embarrassment a second later.

  Gwen sniffed the air and then stopped in the living room, her gaze hopping from the piles of dirty clothes, empty food containers, and stopping on the liquor bottles and ashtray still decorating the coffee table

  “Oh my God!” Gwen exclaimed. “I expected a bachelor pad, maybe even a college dorm room but … holy shit.” She turned away from staring at the apartment to look at Rick. “Really?”

  He opened his mouth but no sounds came out.

  “Don’t even try to explain,” she said after a few seconds. “I assumed you wouldn’t have a computer so I brought you this.” She handed over the case which Rick saw was a holder for a tablet. “It has all of the instructions and specs for Beta Prime loaded onto it and some videos of game play. Go get started while I do something with this hole you call an apartment.” She shook her head at him.

  Rick sat down on the couch and turned on the tablet. A couple of seconds later he located the download Gwen had described but for a while he was unable to concentrate on reading. Instead, he found himself glancing at the FBI agent every few seconds, watching her cleaning his apartment. She paused twice, once to stare at him when she gathered all the empty whiskey bottles into a trash bag and a second time when she stood by the coffee table, staring at the amount of ash and cigarettes littering its top. The rest of the time she kept methodically stuffing trash into bags, muttering under her breath about men, slobs, and someone named Brian.

  But eventually Rick lost himself in his studying. He knew his ability to survive inside Beta Prime would rely upon his knowledge of the game and his years of experience. Those tens of thousands of hours were why Strick had ridden him so hard to join the team, the gaming hours lingering in his memories, coupled with his time as a homicide detective. Despite the agent’s apparent confidence in him—and Gwen and Jim’s encouragement—nervousness began to overtake the feeling of elation at returning to the games. People’s lives were depending upon him, real lives, not the bits of code where so many had found entertainment and addiction.

  “Where’s your wallet, Rick?” Gwen asked.

  He looked up from the screen in his lap. The smell of Chinese food drifted through the apartment from the doorway where a delivery boy stood with bags, the mouth-watering odors already covering up some of the stale stench that had dominated the area earlier.

  “Fork it over, Detective,” Gwen continued. “The least you can do is buy me dinner.” Despite the snap in her voice, she smiled when she spoke.

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course,” Rick said as he jumped up from the couch and paid the boy. He then followed Gwen into the kitchen. “I’ll grab some plates and silverware…” He stopped. The sink overflowed with dishes soaking in water but the table—which had been out of sight under fast food bags and plates for as long as he could remember—was completely cleared and scrubbed down.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Gwen said and this time she followed up her smile with a laugh. “I told the restaurant to put in some plastic for us. Looks like we’ll just need to eat family style and pass the containers back and forth.”

  They plowed into the food, laughing as they both reached for the Moo Shu first. Rick had not realized how hungry he was until his stomach grumbled loudly enough for Gwen to hear after the first few bites. They said little for a while but he thought the silence felt natural, a comfortable quiet between two people getting to know each other. Even so, once the initial rush on the food had passed, he discovered his thoughts turning toward Gwen.

  “Thank you for coming over,” he said. “The tablet, all this,” he waved his hand at the dish mountain, “you really didn’t need to do it.”

  “Yeah, well you needed to get ready for tomorrow and I wasn’t about to re-up my tetanus shots by staying in the apartment the way it was. When we’re done eating, you can take the garbage bags down to the disposal chute. And I couldn’t figure out what your system was with your clothes in the living room so I just assumed they were all dirty and put as many as I could in the hamper in the bedroom. You do know you had an empty clothes hamper?”

  Rick looked down at the box in front of him. “I don’t go into the bedroom much.”

  “I wondered. It was really pretty clean, almost untouched.” She left the comment hanging between them, conversation bait waiting for him to take the hook.

  Rick hated this part. When sex had been his way of forgetting the games and living through DIOD withdrawal, he had never gone past the superficial one or two nights with his partners. Staying longer required give and take, telling something about himself while he was forced to listen to whatever they wanted to say about themselves. Frankly, as awful as the admission sounded, he had not cared enough about them as women to want to know. But now, sitting across the table from an FBI agent who was most likely only in the apartment because Strick told her to make certain he did not run out before tomorrow’s assignment, he found himself wanting to know more about her.

  “So, was Brian your boyfriend or husband?”

  “What?”

  Rick looked up. “I heard you talking to yourself while you were cleaning in the living room. You mentioned a Brian several times but you don’t wear a ring and it was always in the past tense. So I thought maybe…”

  Gwen leaned back in her chair. “You really do look at every situation as a problem to be solved, something to break down by analysis and without a lot of emotion. Jim told me that trait was what made you the best homicide detective he’d ever worked with.” She smiled. “It’s also what makes you such a pain in the ass. Like this morning.”

  “I didn’t think there was much Jim liked about me.”

  She smiled. “He respects your abilities a great deal. That’s why he always wants you to take the lead on a crime scene. He knows you are much better at picking up the little details that can crack a case.” She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. “And he likes you more than you realize. Did you know that ‘Slugger’ was his dad’s nickname for him when he was a kid?”

  Rick coughed on a piece of chicken. “I thought he called me that because he knew I hated it.”

  They were both quiet for a few minutes as they ate. Finally, Gwen twirled her fork in her fingers. “There’s a locked door in the hall.”

  Rick moved the rice around in the box in his hands but he did not eat. “When my ex had finally had enough of me, she left some things behind. I kept the boxes in case she ever wanted them again.” It was not Emma’s clothes he wanted to keep locked up in the closet but all the other memories stored in there as well—right down to the photo of the two of them on the beach when he rented a whole island in the Caribbean for their honeymoon. “I called her a couple of times and left messages but she never came back for them. I guess she wanted a clean break.”

  Gwen stared at him and he looked back, taking in the deep brown of her eyes, the line of her lips, and the way her hair curled around her ears. His unabashed gaze did not feel awkward because she was doing the same, taking in parts of his face and putting them away in her mind.

  “Brian was my younger brother.” She used the fork to take a piece of the sesame chicken from Rick�
��s box and popped it into her mouth. “Mom and dad divorced when we were pretty young and we moved out west with her. Mom was an ICU nurse and worked second shift a lot when we were growing up so I practically raised him. His cleaning habits were very similar to yours. Nonexistent.” She smiled, removing any sting from her words. “He was the one who got me interested in technology which helped me to get into the FBI. For me it was a hobby, but for him, tech was an obsession.” The smile faded.

  “Does he work in the computer industry?”

  “No, he died a few years ago after a long illness.”

  Rick felt his stomach sink. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s okay. You find a way to live with it, find a purpose to focus on, but I think about him a lot because I want the memory of him to continue.” Her smile returned. “And speaking of memory, it’s about time you started putting more of Beta Prime into yours.”

  “Okay, let me clean up the rest of this food.”

  “That would be a first,” Gwen said with a laugh. “You’d better let me do it. I was afraid to tackle the refrigerator until after I’d eaten. I’ll take care of it and then come out to the living room.”

  Rick nodded and left the room. He was sitting down on the couch when Gwen’s “Oh my God!” echoed out of the kitchen and the refrigerator door slammed shut.

  *****

  Rick had no idea the time but he figured midnight had come and gone. He turned off the tablet and closed the case before placing it on the arm of the couch. Not long after Gwen finished cleaning out the fridge—stating some items had started their own ecosystems—he hauled all the garbage bags down to the disposal chute at the end of the hall, removing the evidence of his filth and the source of most of the odors in the apartment. She had stood out on his little balcony for a while and stared at the streets below before curling up on the other end of the couch with an e-reader. At some point she abandoned her book and stretched out until her feet rested against his leg and now one foot rested on his thigh. He followed the bend of her legs up to where her T-shirt had ridden up, revealing a couple of inches of skin stretched tight across her stomach. Her head rested on one arm and he thought he saw the hint of a tattoo on the back of her neck, high enough to be hidden by her hair if she wore it down but also low enough to hide behind the collar of a shirt when at work. Rick wondered what else about her lie just out of sight, hidden for the right person to find, and how much he might have a chance to discover.

  He slowly slid out from under her foot and stood up. She rolled onto her back at the movement, pulling the shirt across her chest and outlining her breasts. He remembered everything she had been willing to do for the meeting with REM, remembered everything he had seen, and he closed his eyes at the thoughts. When he opened them again, he grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and gently pulled it over her body.

  Gwen grabbed Rick’s wrist as he started to turn away and he glanced down. Her eyes were open and she stared back. She did not say anything but she still held him, pulling gently on his arm.

  Rick stared at her, his thoughts whirling. Reasons for walking away lined up to create a barrier, slowing his racing heart until he began to turn away. Then Gwen smiled and the wall melted. He scooped her up in his arms, blanket and all, and carried her into the bedroom.

  Chapter 12

  Rick and Gwen walked through the foyer and continued toward the nurses’ station at the far end of the hallway. His nose wrinkled at the smell of antiseptics and fading air freshener. He turned his head at the sound of tinny laughter and noticed several elderly people sitting in wheel chairs or on couches in a side room. The residents did not move as the sounds of the canned studio audience washed over them, the old game show maybe, or maybe not, fighting its way through to their minds.

  “I guess I won’t need to worry about any wild parties waking me up while I’m inside,” Rick said.

  “It’s quiet, the facility can be put on lock down in a minute’s notice, and you will have 24-hour nursing care.” Gwen looked him in the eyes and smiled. “If you didn’t want to end up in a nursing home, you should have bought a girl breakfast.”

  Her grin removed any hurt from the words but Rick’s world still reeled from the past eighteen hours. He and Gwen had stayed awake until late in the night, exploring each other like two people who had all the time in the world to be together. He had finally seen the two small angel wings tattooed high on her back, the rose on the inside of her thigh and the small “B” above her ankle, a tribute to her brother. He had even remained still long enough for her to trace the massive tattoo across his back, her fingers sliding over his skin, peeling back a layer between himself and the world. When they finally fell asleep, Rick had been wrapped around her, their legs intertwined with rumpled sheets.

  Without his normal whiskey intake, he had dreamed. Though some had been the techno, full-on flashbacks of the games he had come to expect over the years, most were the normal muted passages of his mind working through the day’s events. Better yet, the memories had not left him longing for more.

  Gwen slid out of bed without waking him but the sound of the shower dragged him from the land of slumber. His old ways kicked in, however, too settled to break in one night, and he kept his eyes shut, pretending to sleep while he listened to her slipping on her clothes. There had been a long pause when she hesitated at the end of the bed, the weight of her gaze pushing down on him, accusing him of being a morning-after coward, but his previous life was too deeply ingrained. His eyes stayed shut and he avoided a conversation that could have led to anything serious.

  Now he felt like a jerk for not letting her know he had been awake when she left.

  “I’m glad you came over last night,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Thank you for…thanks for everything.”

  Gwen leaned in close. “I liked the everything, too,” she said. Her eyes twinkled like they had early on the evening when they went to talk to REM. “But you owe me for what I did to your apartment. And you will pay.”

  Rick’s head was still swimming when they stopped at the nurses’ station. Five long hallways branched out behind the protective wood and Formica monstrosity like the spokes in half a wheel, stretching off into the distance, speckled by the lights of open residents’ doors. Nurses in brightly colored uniforms gave life to the long areas while small pockets of residents sitting in groups provided static backdrop to their movements. Gwen finished her conversation with the nurse behind the counter and tugged on his elbow, moving him toward the second hallway on the right.

  “The doctor is already here,” she said. “They should be ready for us in your room.”

  He nodded in reply. Now that his re-entry was so close, his fingertips tingled and the skin wriggled beneath his long-sleeved shirt. Rick wanted to run, wanted to sprint down the hall and slip on the gloves that stimulated the nerves in his fingers, the booties that did the same to his feet. He needed to slam on the skull cap and feed the game directly into his mind. But he forced himself to take deep breaths, picking his feet up slowly to stay in step with Gwen.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. Her hand briefly swung out to squeeze his but just as quickly left.

  “Yeah.” His voice cracked, somewhere between a croak and a squeak.

  Agent Strick stepped into the hallway, staring at his watch before looking up and seeing the pair approach. He nodded at Gwen before turning to Rick. “Are you all set, Dowland?”

  “Let’s just do this.”

  A hospital bed sat along one wall, an overstuffed chair and couch facing it from under a window across the room. A small dinette set and media screen completed the inventory of furniture along with a dresser. Two doors on the side wall were open: one leading into a bathroom and the other into a shallow closet.

  “Be it ever so humble…” Rick’s voice trailed off.

  “We’ve used this facility before,” Strick said, “in other cases where a hospital would have been too public. The staff
is accustomed to what the FBI needs to do to keep you safe while you are on the job.” He gestured to the man and nurse standing alongside the bed. “This is Dr. Jensen. He will be in charge of your care.”

  “Don’t worry, Detective. We’ll make sure you come out of this in top shape.” He stood taller than Rick but not nearly as thick, thin arms matched by slender fingers when he shook Rick’s hand. The grip was firm, however, and the man’s smile appeared genuine and reassuring. “I specialize in DIOD cases so I know how to help you out if there are any complications.” He gestured toward the restroom. “Now, if you could change into your gown so we can finish your prep.”

  Rick closed the door behind him and stripped down. As he slipped on the standard issue hospital gown, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror above the sink. Dark eyes stared back. He stared into their depths, wondering if he would see them the next time or if they would be hollow shells, glazed flesh in the recesses of a living skull. If so, he would recognize the image.

  Rick walked out, trying to preserve some dignity by holding the backside of his gown shut. But he did not need to worry. Only the doctor and nurse were waiting for him by the bed.

  “Don’t worry about your clothes, Detective. We will see to them while you are under.” The doctor waved him forward. “Now, let’s get you set up so the agents can come back into the room.” The smile still sat on his face.

  The grin lasted for only a few more seconds.

  Rick was spreading out the gown over his body when he heard a gasp. The nurse had turned from the table holding a PICC line but now she stared at his arm. “Doctor! You need to see this.”

  Jensen glanced at her face and then joined her in examining Rick’s forearm. He reached out slowly, running his fingertips down the trail of scars. His smile evaporated as he stomped to the door and flung it open. “Agent Strick!”

  Strick stepped back into the room, Gwen following close behind. “What’s wrong?” he asked.