been brought to him at his remote new “posting”, he hadn’t questioned anything. Not until so many other people had arrived had he thought twice about his supposed duty at a listening station.
By the time Maeve had resurfaced, he’d almost convinced himself that she was dead. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone killed in action had been swept under the rug. But no. Two men in fatigues had brought her to him. They’d had no insignia, no names…just a report, and they were gone again. She’d been in tough shape, if not physically, then in every other way.
Maeve wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t respond to his questions…not even when he’d tried force. That had been the worst moment, realizing that she was so gone that she wouldn’t or couldn’t react to a slap in the face. He’d put her to bed then, and pretty well left her alone, until Josh had magically appeared. Just like that, in the middle of the night, someone new to keep company.
“You can’t let her stay like this.”
“I feed her, do the other stuff…I don’t know what else to do. I’m not a nurse.”
“Yeah…I was a corpsman. Wanna let me have a look?” That had been the first hint. Leif had stifled the urge to look for cameras right then, thinking how perfect it was that Josh had happened to arrive.
“What’s your MOS now?”
“Oh, you caught that, ha! Finished my degree and moved up in the world. Sorta. I do counseling.” He’d missed Leif’s sharp intake of breath. “They sent me here, said this would be a therapeutic facility.”
It had taken several weeks for Leif to be sure that Josh was being honest. In that time, Josh had developed his own suspicions. They only ever shared their thoughts when they could slip past what they hoped was the outside edge of surveillance.
By then, everyone else had arrived, and seemed oblivious to anything strange or ominous. As Leif had observed slowly, he’d seen that none of them had families. No outside attachments. Each had a particular skill set within which no one else overlapped.
By his reckoning, the only person who seemed not to fit the mold completely…had been Jemila. It had never made sense to him why such a cheerful person had been in the midst of a group of introverted, anti-social misfits. And now Maeve was back in a mess. Things seemed to be going back to where they had been.
۞
Maeve sat up in her bed, slowly, carefully. She was testing her limitations after fighting through the ether to get back to consciousness. It had been difficult to get free. She felt fragile and weak. Some of that must be the medications she’d been given. Gradually, she started moving her toes, fingers, feet, legs, hands, arms…everything worked. Bruises were fading from all over her body. She peered down to where there had recently been a knife wound; new skin stretched shiny and pink over it. How long had she been asleep for?
Her fingers sought out the small probes stuck to her skin, pulling them off to drop onto the floor, one by one. A light began to flash on the monitors, after which a nurse soon arrived. She frowned at the sight of her patient sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You’re supposed to sleep for another few hours. Let’s get you back relaxed and I’ll give you another dose of your meds.” Maeve cocked her head; acknowledging, but not looking.
“I must decline treatment. I wish to be released.” The nurse laughed in surprise.
“Um, I don’t know if I can authorize that. If you leave against orders, I have to get one of the docs to sign off. Wouldn’t you rather lie down and finish up?”
“No. I have to…get back to my friends.” The word came off her tongue ponderously. It was a foreign object in her mouth, and she wanted to pull it out, as if it was a stray hair. The nurse shrugged and went off to look for the on-call. She wondered whether this one had gotten a knock on the head. She had the oddest way of talking.
۞
Dmitry had not found Tark. To be fair, he hadn’t looked terribly hard or long. He was tired. Bed was seeming more and more to be the much smarter option. By the time he’d stopped walking, he was in the aquarium with no memory of how he’d gotten there. And there was a cup of coffee in his hand that he didn’t really remember buying.
It was times like these that he missed an actual day to night progression. Even with the lights programmed to follow normal seasonal patterns, it wasn’t the same. He missed sunset, the phases of the moon, and even thunderstorms. He had to work hard at not letting the days become one massive blur. When he thought it through, he realized that he’d always tried to do that in the most backwards manner possible. Partying, women, fights…it had been trying to feel alive through anesthesia.
He wasn’t certain where his future lay yet. It had been difficult to reinvent himself after almost ruining his career. Tark had held his hand through most of that. Their friendship had survived all the storms and sabotage that Dmitry could summon up. Where would it go if Dmitry left? He was thinking about it, had been for a while. The difficulty up until now had been that never-ending sense of obligation to Tark. It was like trying to please yet another parent in some ways. He did know that his friend would be happy and wish him well if he got his own command. The same might not hold true if Dmitry left to go fight some shadow war.
Where had that thought come from? It felt strange but not unwelcome. After all, hadn’t he just been thinking that he was homesick, in a way? He didn’t necessarily want to go back as a tag along to Maeve and her motley crew, though. That would be awkward in at least two ways.
Wallace and Leif. The former wasn’t much of a problem, except that he wasn’t going away. The latter, a problem. The guy was an easy six foot seven. Dmitry remembered thinking initially that Leif wasn’t too much bigger than he was, but that must have been wishful egotism. Plus, he was built like a rock wall, on top of being completely overprotective of Maeve. Dmitry was beginning to suspect the guy was in love with her.
It wasn’t a completely crazy thought. The question was how far it might have gone in days past. She’d told him a little about Wallace, very little. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to bring Leif up, since he had been the one still around. He suddenly realized that Maeve didn’t know that Wallace was on the station. She thought he was dead.
His head was swimming. Again, these thoughts seemed like they were coming from some unknown place. Hell, he’d even been thinking that it was time for him to tell Maeve about Rebecca. Now there was a conversation he thought he’d never have with anyone. His first wife…he’d thought she would be the last, given how it ended. What was he saying? She was the last. He wasn’t interested in going down that road again.
He blinked. He was in front of his own door. Still in uniform, he wondered how many salutes he might have missed while walking around in a stupor. Time to get some sleep, for god’s sake. This was getting ridiculous.
۞
Maeve. She reminded herself that this was who she was.
Somewhere deep inside, she put her hands over her ears. “You’re not me!” She screamed it as loud as she could. The debris pinning her down shifted a tiny bit. This was a good sign, so she set to work, putting all her strength behind freeing her legs.
She felt something stir within. It was time to move. She had to get to where she was meant to go. First, however, she had to find the rest of her team. They would certainly be up to date on any alterations to the mission. She had not been able to watch them as closely as she would have liked. The other, the weak one, had blocked her, somehow. It was unanticipated. Even so, she had been able to sort out where she was. Another unexpected event. She was not entirely sure how to get back to Earth.
The on-call had signed her out, grudgingly. She was no longer in any particular danger, health-wise. He had tried, to no avail, to get hold of the station commander to let him know. The nurse touched his elbow and whispered in his ear as Maeve walked carefully out the door.
“Station XO was in here with her. Maybe try him?”
“Good idea.” He walked back into the nursing station and made the call.
Maeve wal
ked the corridors. She had no idea where to go.
“Get out of my head.” Maeve was beginning to feel pissed. Beyond pissed. Who the hell did this bitch think she was? And where the hell had she come from? She wasn’t an idiot, she knew it wasn’t a real person. It too was a construct. A something placed in her mind to do some sort of job. A mission. That’s what it was. It was a sleeper, in the manner of which the old school spooks had always searched. They’d found a way, evidently. What had they done to her?
She could sense the other fighting in the distance. No need for concern there. She knew how to handle her if she got free. It was in the programming.
“Maeve?” There was someone standing in front of her.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing out here? It’s dangerous. We haven’t caught the guy who hurt you.” The voice questioned her with some odd edge to his voice that she did not know how to classify. She had forgotten…not known? Which was it? “Are you okay? You don’t look quite right.”
“I am well. Please direct me to…my friends.” She had to search for that word. My team had almost come out of her mouth, but she had known that this was not correct.
“What? Okay, alright, whatever. They’re staying at the theater. I’ll take you.” The someone, whose voice was familiar, began to walk. Clearly he expected her to follow, so she did. “I have to warn you, though, there are a couple new people with them.”
“People? Such as?”
“Some people you may know. Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of anything. I just wanted to help.”
“This information is not helpful.”
“Now look, I know something isn’t right with you. You shouldn’t have left the clinic.” He kept walking, though she could sense that he was ready to do something else.
“I am well.”
“You said that already. What’s going on with you?”
“Please direct me….”
“To your friends. Yeah, you already said that too. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It’s not me. That’s what’s wrong. She doesn’t even know who you are.”Maeve wanted to weep with frustration.
“Nothing is wrong. I need to speak with them.” She finally categorized his voice. He was the station’s executive officer, with whom the other had spent not insignificant time. He would need to be disengaged. She was in the process of calculating how best to rid herself of him when he stopped suddenly. He remained motionless for a few moments, his back to her.
“Look, I don’t know where we’ll be in a week, let alone a year from now. I’m willing to take it day by day.”
“I do not follow your meaning.” He turned around heatedly. She did not flinch.
“I care about you, dammit! In spite of myself, and how outlandishly weird this whole situation is at moments…you’re all I can think about.” She narrowed her eyes. She assessed and compared his words to her programmed responses.
“You are attempting to distract or detain me.” The man became angry. She could see in his eyes that she had been incorrect, but it was immaterial. He was detaining her, even if unintentionally.
“I’m taking you back to the clinic. Something is not right with you.” He moved to put his hands on her, intending to heave her over his shoulder if necessary. To his shock and dismay, she immediately blocked him. In another second he was on his back, ears ringing. He saw stars, he fancied. She leaned over him, taking hold of his uniform collar tightly.
“Harming you is not necessary…yet. Stand down.”
“Maeve, what the hell?”
“She is no longer…I no longer care for you.” She turned on her heel quickly, and ran. Dmitry was left sitting on the ground. In spite of himself, his cool exterior crumbled away,