Chapter 14 #2
Having just finished a round of war games in the underground part of the facility, the crew had gathered around the large conference room table, still in full regalia of fatigues and face paint. Alexander laughed when they opted for waters and power bars instead of cigars and scotch.
The lights flickered a moment, which caused him to look up briefly, but he didn’t pay it much attention. They were talking of expansion now; Chris was explaining the particulars. Business was very different than—
The lights flickered again, then went off completely. Ten seconds later the generator kicked in. Trevor started hitting the keys harder on his computer.
“That won’t help,” Alexander laughed.
“I think we’ve lost the mainframe,” Trevor said, his brows drawn together in puzzlement.
“Why I don’t really care for computers,” Alexander told Trevor, thinking nothing of it. “Power’s down, computer’s down.
Trevor shook his head. “It’s not the power, boss.”
“Alexander.”
Amanda’s voice came through their earbuds and he froze, the smile falling from his face.
They all looked up from what they were doing—Alexander, Gregor, Stan, Trevor, Michael, Evan, Chris—and just stared at each other.
It was the first time she’d used his given name since they’d taken her from the hospital.
Since before. He’d only been Alex to her here in the twenty-first century.
Up to now. She remembers. Bloody hell, sweetheart. You remember.
“Amanda,” he said as everyone stared at him.
Her voice cracked. “Alexander.” She started crying. “It’s not good.”
He stood so fast the chair fell. “Tell me.” His chest tightened, his heart beating furiously. She didn’t answer. “Amanda!” He ripped out his earpiece, fidgeting with the controls.
Trevor gave him a you’re-an-idiot look and sighed. “Hers are only outgoing, remember? She can’t hear you,” he said, and Alexander cursed himself for not realizing that at some point she might need to hear him as well as speak to him.
“I don’t know if you can hear me.” Amanda’s voice came through faintly.
“I hope we’re close enough.” He paused and listened as she took a deep breath.
“I took Stephen’s earpiece, so it goes both ways, I think.
” Trevor shrugged, mouthed my bad, and for a moment, Alexander had a flicker of hope. “But, uh…part of it looks damaged.”
Hope gone. Alexander could barely control his emotions. Why? What had happened that there was damage to speak of? “Trevor, can you—”
“Oh, now you like this shit?” Trevor said, holding up his computer.
The boy was right.
“Alexander—God, I can’t stop saying your name.
I missed you so much. I’m sorry I let go.
I’m so sorry.” She started crying again.
“I was so scared. I thought they were going to kill us. Then when Callie slipped from the ledge, and I screamed… God, I was so relieved you’d found us…
I never imagined what would happen next.
And I wondered, too, like every frigging day, if I had just held on another five seconds maybe you could have saved us both.
” Her voice caught on a sob. “I missed you every second of every day we were apart.”
Don’t cry, sweetheart. He shook his head, stunned for moment. “Amanda?” he tried again. “Bloody hell, tell me what’s ha—”
“We were in an accident,” she said, and everyone else stood at once. “Stephen and I. God, I hope you can hear me.”
Eight pair of eyes on Trevor and Alexander willed the computer to start up, for the satellite tracker to respond, but Trevor shook his head.
“Satellite’s not responding.”
“We hit something, Alexander,” Amanda said through the earbud. “Something big and metal.”
That answered the satellite question. God, he wished he could speak to her. He just needed to know where she was and then he’d be there in an instant. Tell me where you are.
“We were coming to you, Alexander. I just wanted to surprise you. There must have been something in the road, I don’t know, and then Stephen yelled.” She started crying again. “We must have been awful people in a previous life to get stuck with karma like this.”
Alexander’s chest tightened. Jesus.
“Remember how you used to tell me you could figure out where you were simply by looking up at the stars?” Alexander nodded, though she couldn’t see him. Good girl. “Well, if I look up, I can see…”
“I need my tools,” Alexander said quietly, firmly. It was a command and his men responded in kind. “And a map—maps of the area—topographic and hemispheric.” Gregor and Michael ran in separate directions, both of them moving with militaristic precision.
Tell me what you see, sweetheart. Alexander willed his thoughts to reach Amanda.
“Ursa…um…Major, yes, Major, I’m sure of it.
Ursa Major is to our left. Bootes is, wait, I need to get oriented.
If Ursa Major is to my left…” She trailed off and Alexander cleared the table with a sweep of his hand, as Michael strode into the room just in time, spreading the topographical maps onto it.
Gregor was back seconds later, sliding into him as he handed off the wooden box that held his instruments.
“I found Arcturus, Alexander,” said Amanda, her voice breaking the tense silence among the men.
“Oh God, the red star! If twelve o’clock is right above us, Arcturus is at three o’clock.
I miss how we used to sit and look at the stars together.
Do you remember, I would always say, ‘Which one is that?’”
He remembered it all. Tell me what else, sweetheart.
She screamed.
They all braced themselves. “What! Bloody hell, what!” He looked at Michael and motioned above his head with his hand—universal sign for chopper.
While they had three at this location, he’d recently, finally, landed a stroke of luck with an SAR, a search-and-rescue ten-passenger helicopter, equipped with all the bells and whistles to use for training.
It couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
“I don’t know how far down we are. I got in the front with Stephen.” She cried again, and he could hear her whispering to his brother. “Be okay, please be okay, Stephen,” she said. “He’s been out since we…we—” She didn’t finish.
Alexander rolled up the maps and grabbed his tools. “Go, go, go.”
Emergency lighting cast the hall in an odd yellowish light.
As deep in the mountain as they were, it was a good mile to the stairwell that would take them aboveground.
At their pace, he estimated six minutes.
The men who ran the operations of the facility, a few there for training, and the rest of his detail must have sensed something was up because they fell in line as the group passed their bunkers.
Minutes later in the stairwell, the strange hue was amplified by the grayish tinge of the walls. Up four floors. Piece of cake. No sounds other than the footfall of their steps and Amanda’s beautiful voice.
She talked to him the entire time. Told him how she’d realized what had happened after she and Callie had fallen from the cliffs.
How she’d held Callie tight and rocked her back and forth, her heart broken.
Her hope that he would find them. Her joy when she realized they were having a baby.
A boy. And then when she’d read the ledger, how the ground beneath her had swallowed her whole.
They were all grown men and she had them all in tears. He didn’t know if he had another loss in him.
Then she started recounting their entire history together. Short that it was.
“Alexander, when we were still in Abersoch and you came home that night and said we had to go—now…oh my god.” She inhaled deeply. “I ne-need a sec.”
She was breathless, and he wasn’t sure if it was from talking so much or if she was injured.
“I just remember standing in the hall as everyone started running in different directions, thinking, Oh my god, we’re leaving.
And after I’d spoken with Janey…oh, I miss her…
and Goodly too. When I’d come back downstairs—you guys had moved so quickly, there had to be twenty huge chests already stacked by the front doors and more outside your study—I didn’t know Callie was hiding under your desk.
And when you pointed at that ship and said, ‘We’re on it,’ I remember thinking, Doesn’t he know that I’d go anywhere in this world or another with him?
That’s how much I loved you then, and how much I love you now, Alexander. ”
She was quiet another moment before chuckling again. “God, I hope you can hear me and I’m not just some crazy rambling woman in a busted SUV.”
Michael held the door when they reached the top.
The chopper sounded in the distance as they headed for the gear shack and helipad just beyond.
Then Amanda started singing their song to him.
She hadn’t done so since they were last together in Abersoch, before that night the world crumbled at their feet.
Halfway through, she screamed again, the sound accompanied by crumbling sounds and metal crashing, and his entire body tensed.
They kept moving, but he could see the effect it had on the men in front of him—same as him.
Tightening of the whole upper body. It was jarring, terrifying.
And this from grown men trained to know better.
The gear shack was opened ahead of their arrival and everyone filed in to grab rappelling gear, weapons, and explosives.
At this rate who really knew what they’d need?
It was an anything goes kind of mission.
Gregor jumped into the helicopter first, and then thrust his hand out to haul everyone in.
Hugh, their pilot, motioned through the noise to grab a headset and hold the hell on.
Trevor, their best navigator, grabbed the maps from Alexander as he climbed aboard and headed straight for Hugh.
They were locked, loaded, and ready for takeoff by the time Hugh nodded at the coordinates Trevor showed him on the map.
“Go. Go. Go.”
Lift off.