So after telling them all I wanted to tell, I wished them goodnight and took my leave from the call. I wanted to get an early night so I could pack in some extra sleep for tomorrow and make sure I had my wits about me.
Because it was going to be tense. On a number of different levels.
21
I was the first to reach Bridgeton Main Station the next evening, my gun stowed in my belt beneath my coat, my mask stuffed into my jeans pocket. I would put the latter on once we got closer to our destination.
I had arrived about fifteen minutes early, so I went and sat on a bench opposite the barriers and watched as people spilled through, trying to ignore the waves of nostalgia that were already beginning to course through me. I remembered meeting Henry here a number of times, the first of which had been the evening of our second date. I’d been sitting on this very bench when he’d stalked over to me from the barriers, trailed his fingers through my hair, and caught my lips in his. He’d stood me up, pressed me against the wall, and kissed me like we were the only people in the station.
I closed my eyes, the flashback making my heart race even now, my lips tingle from the ghost of his touch. I couldn’t deny that I still missed him sometimes… missed that. The fire. The longing. The need. The way he’d whisper “baby” in my ear and rest his hands on the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. The way he’d drop slow kisses down my neck and caress my earlobe with his lips, his warm breath tickling my bare skin and lighting me up from the inside.
The way he’d make me feel like I was both flying and falling at the same time.
The falling had been hard. So hard. But God, I couldn’t lie to myself. I missed the flying. It felt like a long time since I’d had someone close in my life.
My traitorous mind instantly took me back to those few fleeting moments I’d spent in Jace’s arms recently, and although I knew I ought to push it aside, somehow I just couldn’t. My mind lingered there, settling into that close space between his heartbeat and mine, and reminding me of how much I’d wanted him.
I snapped my eyes open, needing to regain a grip on reality. I’d known coming here would take its toll on me, in one way or another, but I hadn’t expected it to be like this. I’d already been over the situation regarding Jace in my head and decided where I stood. Right now, I owed it to Hope to avoid distractions, at least until I fulfilled my promise to her and got her back.
And I knew just how distracting new relationships could be.
Going off with some other guy right now (assuming Jace was even interested in me in that way) just felt wrong. Like I was being irresponsible as a mother, showing Hope she wasn’t my first priority. And God knew she was my first priority. She wasn’t just the love of my life, she was my life, and I would feel incomplete until I got her back.
I also didn’t know if I was emotionally ready to open myself up to another person, even leaving aside the big gaping hole Hope’s adoption had drilled through me. Henry leaving me might not have hit me as hard as Hope’s absence, but it had still hurt. We had been close, albeit not as close as I’d once imagined. We’d brought life into this world together, after all. And his decision to leave had left a scar on me. I didn’t blame him, or even really hold a grudge. I understood our relationship hadn’t been mature enough to endure the ups and downs that life can sometimes throw at you, and pain is just the risk you take when you make yourself vulnerable to a person.
But, still, I wasn’t ready to board another rollercoaster ride, just yet. Even if it did end up in a brighter place. The journey was too daunting right now. It made me exhausted to even think about it. My emotions had been hung up to dry during the past two years, and they needed more time to straighten themselves out.
And yet… even while I told myself all of this, that dull ache in my chest remained, the emotions this station had once held for me still infusing my consciousness. I decided I needed to go outside—get away from this bench, in particular—because I wasn’t feeling like myself. And it was the nostalgia’s fault. But just as I was standing, I spotted Jackie striding through the barriers. She wore a long black coat and had a large hood pulled up over her head, casting shadows over her face, and I latched on to her as a distraction.
Catching her attention with a wave, I watched her stride over. “You okay?” I asked, my eyes automatically falling to the scar on her cheek as she sat down on the bench. It looked much fainter than it had the last time I had seen it up close.
She nodded tensely, her eyes darting around the station. “Yup,” she said, then dug a hand into her coat pocket and pulled out a black head mask. She tossed it to me, and I caught it, frowning.
“Got me a new mask,” she said, a tad smugly. “Feel that material. It’s way tougher. Can’t be nicked by a blade, so no bastard is ever gonna go pulling a fast one like that on me again.”
“Oh,” I said, gazing down at the mask as I unfolded it in my hands. My fingers squeezed at the material, and it definitely felt tough, like some kind of rubberized fabric. “Where did you get it?” I asked.
“That’s a bit of a secret,” she replied, giving me a conspiratorial glance. “But I’m going to try to get some more of it, so the rest of you can get new masks, too. With all the extra danger we’re about to involve ourselves in, I figure it’s about time we had upgrades.”
“Thanks,” I said, handing the mask back to her. “That would be great.”
“What would be great?” We heard the voice of one of the twins from above us, and we both looked up to see the duo standing over us. We had gotten distracted and missed them coming through the barriers, and my brow furrowed as I realized Ant already had his mustache back.
“What?” he asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Oh, my God,” Jackie said, realization dawning in her eyes as she slapped a palm to her forehead. “Don’t tell me that thing was fake all along.”
Ant reached for the mustache and tugged at it, peeling it off in one swipe, and I burst out laughing. “No wonder it looks so stupid!”
“So does this mean you can’t grow a mustache either?” Jackie asked.
“No,” Ant replied curtly. “It just means we like to keep you on your toes.”
He then handed the mustache to his brother, who pasted it over his lip. “I’m Ant, actually,” Abe… Ant said.
Jackie and I stared at them.
“Okay,” she muttered. “Just one of you keep the damn mustache, or you’re gonna put us in a freaking psych ward.”
Just then, my eyes caught Jace’s head bobbing above the crowd of people who had just arrived on a train and were surging through the barriers. And the feelings I’d been trying to distract myself from returned, forcing me to work doubly hard to beat them back. I decided the best way to do that was to act as if nothing was bothering me, because nothing should be bothering me, and I stood up to wave, catching his attention and beckoning him over.
As he strode toward us, he gave me a warm smile… which did more than I cared to admit to my insides. And then his eyes fell on my comrades. He looked them over curiously. After all, it was the first time he was seeing Jackie without a mask, and the first time he was seeing the twins at all.
“Mr. X?” Ant asked, his eyes bugging slightly as he took in Jace’s imposing form. The twins were tall, but they were like wiry reeds compared to him.
Jace nodded, a good-natured smile quirking his lips. “That would be me, at your service, though feel free to call me Hux,” he added, his voice low. And for some reason, he looked at me as he spoke his name, which caused another round of light fluttering in my stomach. I glanced away quickly, cursing my flushing cheeks.
I was making today way harder than it needed to be by not getting a damn grip on myself.
The twins both reached out a hand, and Jace shook them one at a time.
“Well, you’re a bit different than what I expected,” Abe admitted.
Jace chuckled. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“You a person
al trainer or something?” Ant murmured, frowning at Jace as he looked him up and down.
“Um, no,” Jace replied, his expression amused. “Can’t say I am.”
“Look at you two, man-crushing already.” Jackie scoffed as she held out her own hand to Jace. “Please ignore the children. They don’t get out very often.”
“We just admire a good beard when we see one,” Abe clarified, his eyes lighting on the thick, dark stubble around Jace’s jaw.
“Well, thanks, I appreciate that,” Jace replied, fortunately seeming to catch on to the twins’ sense of humor quickly. He then looked out past the station doors toward the street. “Shall we get going then?” he asked, clearing his throat.
I managed a smile. “Yeah, let’s.”
As eager as I was to leave the station, due to the particularly intense memories it held, once we were out on the streets, my nostalgia just increased. This whole area had been my old stomping ground, and I found myself hanging back a bit from the group as we walked, feeling the need for some space.
Jace seemed to somehow pick up on my change in mood, and he shot a look back at me, though thankfully, the twins kept him distracted with their chattering as we walked across town, and I wasn’t forced to deal with his proximity.
Luckily, our destination wasn’t far away, either, and that finally presented me with the meaty distraction I needed: today’s task. Because after fifteen minutes, we had found our destination road, a wide street close to the edge of the vast lake, which was, to my additional relief, pretty far away from my old summer camp. I couldn’t even make out the camp from the side of the bank.
The road we were on now was lined with large, wood-paneled vacation homes, and it was clear that whoever we were visiting was wealthy, if he or she owned one of them. Though I doubted they would invite us directly to their real home. More likely, they had a short-term lease on it. Still, it would cost a decent chunk of change even to rent one of these things.
About halfway down, Jace stopped and pointed to one of the houses at the end of the road. “That’s the one,” he said softly, his eyes focused on the building. “I’m gonna suggest that two of you stay back here, to serve as backup, while the other two and I go up to the door.”
When Jackie volunteered to go with him, I did too, since the two of us were usually a team, and the twins agreed to hang back. Jace then dipped into his bag and gave the twins a comm device each. He handed Jackie and me small clip-on comms, which we attached to the insides of our coat collars. If there was some kind of emergency, it would allow us to immediately call for help, and our comms were also equipped with sensitive microphones, so the twins could listen in on the conversation to gauge how things were going and decide whether they needed to step in.
Once the comms were figured out, we all put on our masks, and the twins slunk into the shadows of a copse of trees that lined the road to watch, while Jackie, Hux, and I approached the house. When we reached the front gate, we eyed our surroundings cautiously. All the blinds were drawn on the windows of the three-story building. A soft light glowing around the corners of a window downstairs was the only sign that somebody might be in.
We walked up to the front door, and my hands reflexively balled into fists as the three of us exchanged a glance. None of us knew what was going to be waiting on the other side. After another long moment, Jace drew in a breath and rang the doorbell.
Loud barking instantly erupted on the other side, making me jump, and we all stepped backward, creating some distance between us and the front door as heavy footsteps sounded behind it. Then came the noise of heavy bolts being drawn, and the door swung open. A tall, thickset man appeared on the other side, wearing a full-head balaclava mask and restraining a large German Shepherd.
“Mr. X?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.
Hux nodded.
“Give me a minute,” the man muttered.
He retreated with the dog, and we heard another door opening, and then closing, the dog’s barking instantly getting quieter, before the man made his way back to us. He pulled the door open wide, gesturing for us to come inside.
We accepted the invitation tentatively, stepping over the threshold while continuing to look around. My hand hovered discreetly near where I had my gun tucked, ready to reach for it at a second’s notice.
We moved through an entrance hall lined with pine flooring, and into a large living room, the decor of which confirmed that this place was most likely rented. It was pretty bare and way too neat, and held very few personal touches, the walls adorned only by the odd generic painting of the lake.
The only thing that caught my eye as being out of place was a tall object at the far end of the room, covered in a white sheet.
But our eyes were quickly drawn away from it by the man, as he walked into the room behind us and looked each of us over from behind his mask. He had dark brown eyes, I realized, beneath the ceiling spotlights, and judging from the lines surrounding them, he was in his early fifties.
“Mr. Montague,” Jace said, holding out a hand. I was guessing the name was fake, given the rental arrangement he had made here. If he wasn’t going to let us into his real home, he definitely wasn’t going to tell us his real name.
The man took Jace’s hand and shook it.
“I want to thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” Jace went on politely. “I know it requires a level of trust.”
“That’s quite all right,” the man replied, though he looked at us with an air of suspicion. Which was somewhat comforting, just like Jace’s suspicion had been when I’d first met him. If this guy was genuinely feeling as cautious as us about this meeting, it was a decent indicator that he was worried about us being government moles, which at least made it likely that he wasn’t one. “I want to be involved in this initiative, however I can be,” he continued. “And I understand that it requires some physical verification… and for me to prove to you what I can offer.” He gestured to the sofas. “Feel free to take a seat.”
I realized then that Jace must have already given him a briefing about the initiative because, since he’d had so little activity on the platform, Jace needed him to show us what he had to offer upfront, during the first meeting, so we could figure out whether he was the real deal or just a timewaster. It had to be part of the more thorough probing for the less trusted members that Jace had mentioned earlier.
“Is that it?” Jace asked, his eyes on the sheet-covered object.
The man nodded, then walked over to it. He gripped the sheet and tore it off in one swift motion.
And what stood beneath the fabric made my jaw drop.
It was some kind of metallic suit. Its body was designed to mirror a human body, cover it from head to toe, including the hands and fingers, and it was made of some kind of dark gray metal, while its head contained a black, tinted visor for the eyes. My mind was already beginning to buzz with ideas about what it could be, and how it could be useful, when the man cleared his throat and announced, “This here is an exo-suit.”
He pressed a button on the shoulder of the suit, and the front of it opened up, revealing a hollow space within. He turned back to face us. “Would any of you like to volunteer for a demonstration?”
The three of us looked at each other, and I shrugged. “I don’t mind, I guess,” I said. Jace definitely wasn’t the best person to try out new, and potentially complex, technology, as he was still getting used to things like tablets and websites (plus, unless the suit was adjustable, he wouldn’t fit), and Jackie wasn’t exactly jumping to volunteer.
Jace frowned. “You sure?”
“Yup,” I murmured. I didn’t really feel comfortable about the idea of stepping into a piece of foreign metal equipment, offered by a guy we didn’t even know we could trust, but someone had to volunteer to move this meeting forward if we were to get this potentially useful toy on our side.
I walked tentatively up to the machine suit, and Mr. Montague gestured for me to turn around. I did so a
fter a brief moment of hesitation, and then, casting a fleeting look at Jackie and Jace, stepped backward into the suit, placing my feet in the hollows of the machine’s feet. I pressed myself back, slotting the rest of myself into the vacant space of the suit, and felt soft padding behind me. The hands and fingers of the suit were also hollow, allowing me to slide my own through them, as if they were gloves. The man then pulled two straps around my torso, fastening their clips in place, and stepped back.
I blew out. So far, so good, it seemed.
“Now, the inside of the suit is fitted with sensors that track your body’s movements,” the man explained. “Soon enough, it actually begins to feel like it’s just an extension of your own body. Once inside, you simply start moving as usual, and the suit will respond. May I close this?”
“Um, okay,” I murmured, my nerves returning to me as he pressed the button on the shoulder. The front of the suit swung closed, sealing me inside, and I held my breath, afraid that claustrophobia might set in in such a small, confined space. Not to mention, I had no idea yet how to get back out.
Trying to force myself to relax, I stared straight ahead through the visor, at the two familiar sets of eyes watching me from the sofa, and reminding me that even though I was alone in this suit, I wasn’t alone in the room.
“Good,” the man said.
I could still hear him clearly through the suit; his voice was just a touch muffled. There was also definitely some kind of ventilation system, as, thankfully, it didn’t feel stuffy.
“You will feel a button near your right index finger,” he went on. “Press that, and it will unlock the suit.”
I did so quickly, and the front of the suit popped open. Thank you.
“To close it again, simply press the same button again,” he instructed.
I pressed it again, with more confidence now that I knew how to open it back up, and the machine obeyed.
“Now, take a step forward.”