Chapter eleven
THEY STAYED on back roads when they could as they continued north. Alex said he didn’t want to take a chance on main highways, though it might have been quicker. Before they’d left the diner, he’d switched out the license plate on the C/K with another truck in the parking lot. Art kept watch, whistling a jaunty tune. Nate sat in the truck, trying to keep his breakfast from making a reappearance.
He needed to ask more questions. Where they were going. What the plan was. Why they needed to go east. What planet Artemis Darth Vader had come from, and how she’d been captured thirty years before yet still managed to look as she did now. The easy questions.
He wondered if the cabin still stood or if it’d been razed to the ground by the water guy who wasn’t a water guy.
He didn’t know what it meant that he could think such a sentence.
Alex had switched on the radio an hour after they’d left the diner. He’d turned the dial until he found a station playing news. They talked about baseball. About the weather. About Markham-Tripp, the comet that was getting closer and closer, and man, those folks in the mountains were going to have such a sight, away from the light pollution of the big cities. Another three weeks and it’ll be the brightest it’ll ever be, how about that? And now, a song that’s already five years old, can you believe that, it’s Garth Brooks with that thunder rolls and lightning strikes.
There was nothing about soldiers outside of Roseland. About the downing of Black Hawk helicopters. About two men and a little girl on the run. Not a single word.
It was like none of it had happened at all.
Like they didn’t even exist.
Nate looked out the window, watching the trees go by.
Art sometimes sang along with the radio while she read a book Alex had gotten from her bag. Silver Canyon this time. A gunslinger named Matt Brennan falls in love with a rancher’s daughter. It wasn’t Nate’s favorite. Art wore her sunglasses, pushing them back up on her face every few pages. One of the lenses looked scratched. It’d probably happened during their escape.
It was early evening by the time they crossed into the Willamette National Forest. There were more clouds in the sky. If they kept going, they’d hit rain sooner rather than later.
Nate was brought out of his stupor when he felt the truck starting to slow. He blinked, looking over at Alex. He was scowling, which wasn’t anything unusual. But it was deeper than Nate had seen before.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, the first time he’d spoken since they’d left the diner.
Alex shook his head.
Art hummed as she folded the corner of the page and closed the book.
“He’s mentally preparing himself.”
Nate didn’t like the sound of that. “For?”
She looked up at him. He could barely make out her eyes behind the dark lenses.
“The conversation we’re about to have. He’s worried you’re not going to believe us. Or that you’re going to do something to hurt me. Or leave us.”
“Art,” Alex warned through gritted teeth.
“What? You are.”
“Maybe we should just keep driving,” Nate said, fidgeting in his seat.
“We don’t need to talk about anything. We can just pretend that nothing happened.”
Alex grunted. Nate didn’t think that was any answer at all.
There was a pull-off up ahead on the right. Three wooden picnic tables sat in the grass next to a black metal trash can. Pine trees swayed in the breeze. The grass was a brighter green than Nate had ever seen before. There was no one else there.
Alex stopped the truck next to the tables. An empty paper cup sat on one of them. Red and white, the word COKE on the side. “Get out.”
Nate shook his head furiously.
“No. I’m fine right here, thank you.”
“Nate. Get out of the truck. Now.”
“Or what? You gonna shoot me and—oh dear god, please don’t shoot me.”
Alex rolled his eyes.
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“He won’t shoot you,” Art said, patting Nate on the knee.
“We like you too much to make you bleed. And besides, that would just slow us down if you were shot.”
“And I could have shot you many times already,” Alex said.
“I don’t need to start now.”
“That isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” Nate muttered.
“Okay. If I get out of the truck, do you promise not to leave me here?”
“Only if you want to be left here,” Alex said. He didn’t sound happy.
“Okay. Um. That’s… fine. I’ll just get out now.” He opened the door. The air felt heavy. He sucked in a deep breath.
“Wow,” Art said.
“Could you possibly move any slower?”
Jesus Christ.
He stepped out of the truck. The ground was solid beneath his feet. He could see squirrels running up tree trunks. Birds were singing. He could almost convince himself that everything was normal. That everything was fine.
Art took his hand.
He looked down at her.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him.
“You’ll see. You just need to listen, and I promise it’ll be okay. I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. And I know you don’t want to hurt me. You’re different. You’re like Alex. He’s special.”
Nate didn’t know what to do with that.
He allowed Art to pull him over to one of the picnic tables. She made him sit down before she went to the other side of the table. She crawled up on top of it and sat in front of Nate, legs crossed, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands.
“Hi,” she said as she stared at him.
“Hi,” Nate managed to say in return. He tried to look away, but it was damn near impossible.
“So. Pretty crazy, right? The past couple of weeks.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Art smiled at him.
“I know. I’m just trying to make light conversation to make you feel better.”
“It’s not working.”
“Yeah, I’m not very good at it. There are… nuances I haven’t yet mastered. You’re very complex.”
Nate chuckled weakly.
“I’m really not.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about you specifically. I meant humans in general.”
Nate felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.
“That’s… I…”
She lifted her sunglasses and set them on top of her head.
“But you are too, Nate. More than you give yourself credit for.” Her eyes were like the grass, so brightly green.
“Can you read my mind?” Nate blurted.
“No,” Alex said gruffly, coming to stand at the edge of the table while still scanning the tree line.
“She can’t.”
“But I am telekinetic,” Art said cheerfully.
Nate wheezed.
Alex sighed. “She’s…”
“Seventh Sea,” Art said.
“Do you remember saying that at the cabin?”
Nate could do nothing but nod.
“Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It’s code,” Alex said.
“Sea. S-E-A. Also means the letter C. As in contact. There was a man in the seventies. His name was Hynek. He published a book where he described a scale of contact between us and… others. Initially, he posited three kinds of contact.” His shoulders were stiff. He looked as if he’d rather be doing anything else other than talking. It was a familiar sight, but it didn’t make Nate feel any better.
“The first is a visual sighting of an unidentified object less than five hundred feet away, enough to make out detail.”
“This is fun,” Art said.
“I’m having fun.”
Alex ignored her.
“The second is where physical effects are felt. Animals reacting. Cars malfunctioning. Radios going on the fritz. Evidence left behind. Scorch marks. Traces of chemicals.” He glanced at Nate.
“Sometimes in the second level, it affects people. Paralysis. Discomfort.”
Art wiggled her fingers at Nate.
“Are you feeling any discomfort right now?”
“Yes,” Nate said.
Art frowned at her fingers.
“Huh. I didn’t know I could do that. Should we see if I could paralyze you?”
Alex wasn’t having any of it.
“Contact of the third kind is when there are… beings present. Those that seem to be piloting the objects seen in the first kind. It’s also called first contact.”
Art sighed.
“Contact of the first kind is objects seen, but contact of the third kind is seeing something alive, and that’s also first contact. So unnecessary.”
“Jesus,” Nate said, voice breaking.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes,” Alex said bluntly.
“I am. Extensions came after Hynek. Clarifications. Pushing it further. The fourth kind is abduction. The fifth kind is communication. The sixth kind is death of a human or animal in relation to contact.”
Nate closed his eyes.
“And the seventh?” Because what could be worse than abduction and death?
“The seventh is me,” Art said quietly.
“Though it doesn’t quite fit.”
“Contact of the seventh kind is a hybrid,” Alex said.
“Either produced sexually or by artificial methods. It’s… she’s not a hybrid. It’s not like that with her. It’s more… symbiotic.”
“Nate,” Art said.
He opened his eyes. In front of him sat a little girl. A man stood near her. They spoke of things that should be impossible. Things that shouldn’t exist. Nate… he’d never really given much thought to such things. Oh, he knew of Roswell and the stories behind it. He knew of lights in the sky. He’d even seen a couple of episodes of that new show X-Files. For fuck’s sake, he’d spent years in DC, and he knew about secrets. But this wasn’t something he thought about. How could it be? Because it was bullshit. If pressed, Nate would have said that humans were alone. That if such things existed, if there were life beyond Earth, they would be single-celled organisms on planets far, far away, in acidic oceans or buried in igneous rock. Nothing intelligent. And if, on the extreme off chance, there was intelligent life somewhere out there, he didn’t think they’d come here. What would be the point?
He didn’t believe in shadow sects of the government. In men in black. In Area 51. The world was dark enough already without those things. And there was no proof. There had never been any solid proof. Just stories. That’s all they were. Stories. Yes, some mysteries needed to be solved, questions that needed to be asked, but they were earthbound with logical explanations.
Until now.
If they were to be believed.
Art cocked her head.
“You’re thinking too hard.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“No. But it’s not that hard to tell. Your forehead is wrinkled. You do that when you’re thinking.”
“It’s not—you really expect me to accept this. To take this at your word. To just… believe you. In you. In this.”
“Do you know Cisco Grove?” Art asked, and Alex bowed his head.
“No,” Nate said.
“It’s in Northern California.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s a campground. There was a man.”
“Oren Schraeder,” Alex said.
“Yes,” Art said.
“Oren Schraeder. What a lovely name. It just… rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Oren Schraeder. Anyway. He was a hunter. On a camping trip. He came upon something he didn’t expect to see.” She pointed at her chest. “Me.”
“You,” Nate said stupidly.
“Like… this. Like how you are. Now.”
She laughed.
“No. Of course not. That would just be ridiculous. How could I look like I do now if I’d never been here before? Honestly, Nate. That’s just crazy.”
Nate didn’t know how to answer that, so he said nothing.
“He was scared, of course. It was dark, and he’d wandered away from his campsite. He’d thought he’d do a little night hunting. He had a bow and arrow and a light attached to his head, and then he found me. I wasn’t going to hurt him. I wasn’t even going to try and communicate with him. But I was curious. I’d never seen one up close before.” She was barely blinking. “A human.”
“Oh my god,” Nate said, fingernails digging into the wood of the table.
“Oh my god.”
She laughed.
“He said the same thing. We… aren’t shaped like you. Like anything, really. We’re… fluid. The closest description you can understand is gaseous. Almost like liquid smoke.”
“She didn’t mean it,” Alex said quietly.
“It was recon only. Nothing more. There were others, but she’d found herself alone.”
“They left me,” Art said simply.
“It’s my fault, but I can’t blame them. I was lost. I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. I am young, younger than you might think. I shouldn’t have been out there alone. But I—I needed to see for myself. Who you were. What you were made of. What you could be.”
“This isn’t real.” Nate rubbed a hand over his face.
“None of this is real.”
“He tried to run,” Art said as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
“And even though I knew it was wrong, I chased after him. He was very fast. But I was faster. It was… instinct, I think. Or a word close to it that doesn’t exist in your language. I felt the need to chase.”
“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Alex said from the other side of the table.
“Like a parasite. She…” He glanced at Art.
“It’s okay,” she said, reaching over and touching the back of his hand.
“I know how it sounds. Some scary stuff.”
He nodded slowly.
“She infected him. Took him over. Have you ever heard of cordyceps?”
“No.” Nate felt like he was floating.
“It’s a fungus in nature. There’s a type called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It’s an entomopathogen. It infects insects, altering their behavior.”
“Makes bugs go a little nutso,” Art agreed, twirling a finger at the side of her head and crossing her eyes. It was so strangely endearing that Nate felt like screaming.
“It’s similar to what Art is. Was. Except she doesn’t have damaging effects on the host like the fungus does. She’s not here to harm. She’s not here to hurt.”
“I don’t like hurting things,” she said.
“It doesn’t make me feel good. I was curious, that’s all. Like you are.”
“Oh,” Nate said, eyes wide.
“That’s… that’s great. That’s just… great.”
“Lights had been seen that night,” Alex continued.
“Above Cisco Grove. It’s only a couple of hours away from the Mountain.”
Art grimaced.
“Talk about picking the worst spot to come to.”
“The Mountain was already in play before her. It’d been set up in the late forties after the end of World War II. The original intent was to study and perfect biological warfare. There’d been a plan in place by the Japanese to use the plague as a biological weapon against civilians in San Diego in September of 1945. But the Japanese surrendered before that, and it was never enacted. The powers that be wanted to be at the forefront of such a movement so they could never be caught unaware. There was hope that by perfecting such weapons, they could also create cures. There was a front put in place, a base in Maryland started in 1943 called the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.” Alex looked down at his hands.
“The Mountain was secret. It was meant to do all the things the base in Maryland could, but without the oversight. They weaponized anthrax. Tularemia. Brucellosis. Q-fever. But that changed on September 5, 1964.”
“Because of Art,” Nate said, head spinning.
“Weird, right?” Art said, picking at the splintering wood of the table.
“All it took was me coming here and everything changed. It’s almost flattering. I mean, if you think about it that way.”
“Oren Schraeder was assigned to the Mountain,” Alex said flatly.
“Of all the people for her to infect, she chose the one person she shouldn’t.”
Art rolled her eyes.
“How the heck was I supposed to know? It wasn’t like he was in uniform or anything. He was wearing a hat with floppy ears. That didn’t necessarily scream please don’t possess me.”
Nate gaped at her.
She winked at him.
“The Mountain sent a convoy,” Alex said.
“They found Oren. He wasn’t acting… normal.”
“I didn’t know how to make his legs work,” Art said with a wince.
“Or his arms. Or mouth. Or anything, if I’m being honest. Well. Except his bowels, which was extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t even know how to get out. Not then. When they found us, we were lying on the ground. Oren was drooling and making weird noises, and I couldn’t figure out how to make him stop. They thought he’d been attacked somehow. Or infected back at the base. They quarantined him. And brought us both back to the Mountain.”
“It wasn’t until they used a positron imaging scan that they saw her,” Alex said.
“She looked like a ghost trapped within him. Embedded into his brain. Tendrils in the gray matter. They didn’t know what to make of it. Of him. Of what they were seeing. They said it was cancer. Or an infection. But nothing on the Mountain could cause what they were seeing.”
“It took two years for me to be able to figure out how to make him work,” Art said.
“And then I started talking and—”
“They believed you?” Nate asked incredulously.
“What? No. Of course not. That would just be ridiculous. They thought something had happened to his brain. It wasn’t until I fried their machines in the next room that they started taking me seriously.” She laughed.
“You should have seen the looks on their faces. It was pretty funny, looking back on it. Especially when I started to talk.”
“What did you say?” Nate whispered.
She turned her face toward the sky.
“I told them I’d come from a faraway place. That they weren’t alone. That the universe was far bigger than any of them could have possibly imagined.” She sighed.
“And that I was ready to go home. If they’d just see fit to let me out, I’d be on my way and that would be that.”
“They didn’t,” Alex said, hands in fists at his sides.
“They believed her. After a time. But they didn’t let her go.”
“Questions,” Art said.
“So many questions. How and why and where and what does it all mean? They asked how many of us were there. Where had I come from. What our plans were. If we were hostile. If we were going to take over your planet and enslave the human race.” She puffed out her cheeks.
“Take me to your leader.”
Nate thought the sound he made was a laugh, but it felt like a sob.
“And the tests.” Art threw up her hands.
“All the tests. They poked and prodded and inserted. They showed me images of water and fire and earth. Of people helping others. Of women in pretty dresses and men in top hats, walking arm in arm down the street, smiles on their faces. Of atoms splitting, causing death and destruction. Of guns and sickness and men marching, arms raised. Of people dancing. That… I think that was my favorite. I liked it when I saw people dancing. It made me feel happy.” She looked away.
“I don’t think I’d ever felt what it means to be happy before that.”
“They don’t have… emotions,” Alex said.
“Not like we do. Not that she could define in any way that they could understand. It was because of Oren that she began to feel it. He was a host, and she was the parasite, but instead of turning him into her, she began to turn into him.”
“What happened to him?” Nate asked, dazed.
“The man. Oren. Was he… in there? With you?”
She winced.
“I wasn’t… very good. It took me a long time to learn. For a while, I could hear him. But he wasn’t hurting. He wasn’t even really awake. It was more like… Do you dream, Nate?”
He nodded slowly.
“Everyone does.”
“Dreams are tied to how you form memories,” she said.
“They’re… the things you learn. Stuff that’s happened to you. The people you’ve met. Experiences you’ve had. They get lodged in your head, and you dream about them. Sometimes you dream of the fantastic. Sometimes you have nightmares. But then you wake up and you breathe, and everything is okay again. It was like that for Oren. He was… dreaming. I could feel them sometimes. He dreamed of fishing. He dreamed of a beautiful woman whispering in his ear. He dreamed of a monster chasing him through the woods.” She cleared her throat.
“That one was my fault. But… we talked. He was aware. He knew, after a while, what was happening. It was strange, really. He… accepted it. He began to become curious. About me.”
“What happened to him?” Nate asked again, a cold chill running down his spine.
“He stayed as he was for years,” Alex said.
“He didn’t… age. He stayed twenty-four years old for twenty years.”
It was as if all the synapses in Nate’s head fired at once. His mind felt whited out. Blank. He couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
“It was another test,” she said, and for the first time, he thought she sounded angry. Of all the things that had been said, of all the things he’d seen and heard, the anger in her voice scared him the most. It was laced with bitterness, her words more clipped and hard.
“I didn’t know that. I thought I could trust them. I shouldn’t have, but I thought I could. Time passed differently in the Mountain. Time passes differently everywhere here. We don’t… mark the passage of time. Not like you do. Not with anniversaries or parties or balloons or cake. It has a different meaning. It’s… fluid. It can bend. It’s not the straight, rigid line you think it is. Time and space never are. I—” She shook her head and looked away.
Nate watched as Alex reached up and put a hand on the back of her head. She leaned into it and closed her eyes. He was comforting her. Like he’d done it before. Like he knew what she needed.
Nate’s eyes burned.
The air smelled of rain.
“It was before me,” Alex said.
“A year before. She… They called it a transfer. There was a girl. Her name was Emily. When she was nine years old, she developed encephalitis. There was nothing that could be done. She was in a coma and had been for three months. Her parents, they… were told she wouldn’t wake up. But they persisted. They always persisted. They kept going. They kept her going. Until one day, they were killed when their car was T-boned by a truck at an intersection four blocks away from the hospital.”
“They died instantly,” Art said in a dull voice.
“They felt no pain.”
Alex nodded.
“There was no one else. Emily had no other family. No one to worry about her. To care about what she—” Alex coughed.
“They found her. I think they were looking for someone like her. Someone who wouldn’t be missed. It was… very official, I’m told. They took Emily from the hospital in Pasadena and brought her to the Mountain.”
“They told me that they wanted to see if I could help her,” Art whispered. A drop of rain splashed on the left lens of her sunglasses.
“Because I could… heal. Sometimes I could trick the body into thinking it was healing faster than it was.” She shrugged.
“It’s the time thing again. It moves differently.”
He was shot. By a jerk who wouldn’t get out of the way.
“Jesus Christ,” Nate said hoarsely. He looked at Alex.
“You did get shot. You fucking bastard. Rubber bullet my goddamn ass.”
Alex scowled at him.
“I didn’t know you. Would you have really believed that a little girl had healed me if I’d told you at the time?”
“I don’t know if I believe you now.”
“You do,” Art said, watching him.
“It’s hard overcoming what you know to be true, I know. You’re hardwired that way. Some more than others. But you do, Nate. You know everything we’ve said is the truth.”
Nate shook his head furiously.
“No. No, I don’t—”
“I tried to heal her,” Art said, voice flat.
“I tried to do what they asked of me, but they lied to me. They didn’t care about the girl. About Emily. They didn’t give a damn about her. They didn’t care that she had no one. That they had stolen her. They just wanted to see what they could do. If they could make me… if I could…” Her chest heaved.
“Electrical impulses,” Alex said.
“In the neurons. Across the synapses. They found if they overloaded them, if they essentially fried the brain, it would force her out. And so they did. It was a test. An experiment. A way to fight back in case the others returned for her. If others became… possessed.”
“That’s all they thought about,” Art said, brow furrowed.
“About fighting back. Like we are something to be feared. They didn’t know it was already too late for me here. Too many things had changed.”
“She latched on to Emily,” Alex said, and Nate thought that if he could have gotten his legs to work, he’d be running away as fast as he could.
“It was the only place for her to go. She wouldn’t have survived for long. Too much of her had been twisted up in our genetic makeup. She wasn’t… who she’d been before. So she did the only thing she could.”
“It wasn’t like Oren,” Art said quietly.
“Emily wasn’t dreaming. It was cold and dark and empty for a long time. I almost couldn’t find a way to… do it. But there were enough electrical impulses left, just a hint of a spark, to let me take her. Oren dreamed. Emily was already gone. It took me almost a year to open my eyes on my own. But I did it. I did it. They didn’t think I could. They didn’t think I would. But I did. I proved them all wrong. And I scared them because of it, even more than I already had. And I liked it. I liked that more than I should have, and it made me happy. I wanted to see it more. I wanted them to all be scared of me. And then he came.”
“Alex,” Nate said.
“Alex came.”
She nodded.
“And things were… different. After that. It was a test, of course. It was always a test, but I knew that. And when you know, you have power over it. You can change the outcome. Make it how you want it. But Alex, he was… different than everyone else.”
“You didn’t like me at first,” Alex said, and Nate swore he was almost smiling.
“You didn’t like me,” Art retorted.
“You were mad and mean, and you said that you wanted nothing to do with me. But you still came back.”
“I did.”
“Why?” Nate asked.
Alex blinked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you keep coming back?”
Alex shook his head, and even before he spoke again, Nate could see the walls shoring back up.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said gruffly.
“It’s not about me. It’s about her. It’s about getting her home.”
“How?” Nate asked, suddenly feeling the smallest he’d ever felt. If this were real, if this were all true, nothing would ever be the same. He wanted to think they were crazy. That they were liars. But he’d already seen things he couldn’t explain when it came to Artemis Darth Vader. And no matter how he tried to force it away, it still washed over him, pulling him under.
“Don’t quite know yet,” Art admitted.
“But they’re coming back for me. I can feel it.” Her voice took on a dreamy note.
“It’s like… a song in my head. I can hear them singing, and I know they’ll return. I just have to wait.”
And then she fell silent. Nate felt drops of rain on his head and shoulders. The storm would be on them soon. They were waiting on him. He just didn’t know what to say.
Finally he said the only thing he could. “Why?”
She arched an eyebrow at him.
“That’s vague. Why what?”
He felt hollowed out and empty.
“Why here? Why us? Why did you come here?” He brushed away a tear that spilled down his cheek.
And when she leaned forward, when she put her small hands on his face, he didn’t flinch.
“You think yourself alone. You think yourself lost. We wanted to show you that there was so much more than this place. We didn’t come to hurt you. We didn’t come to save you. Only you can do that. We came to be your friend. To make you understand that, in the end, you are never alone.”
After that, Nate drifted.
ANOTHER NAMELESS motel in the middle of nowhere. They had crossed into Washington late in the evening. Nate didn’t think they knew exactly where they were going, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t know how.
They left him alone in the motel room while they went to get food. Nate sat on the edge of one of the beds, staring down at his hands. Underneath the pale flesh of his palms, he could see the twisted shape of veins. He turned his hands over and saw the bones beneath his skin as he moved his fingers up and down.
They were giving him time. Giving him space to see what he would do. If he would even be here when they returned. It’d be easy, wouldn’t it? To get up and grab his bag. To walk to the motel office and ask to use the phone. He could call the police. They wouldn’t believe him at first. Who would? Maybe he wouldn’t even have to tell them. Not everything. He could say they’d taken him from his home. Surely people were looking for them. Maybe they’d have Alex as a kidnapper. A man who had stolen a child from her home, and won’t someone please help them find this little girl? He could do that. He could do that so easily. And then, if he was lucky and if it still stood, he could return to the cabin, close the door behind him, and never think about Artemis Darth Vader or Alex Weir ever again.
There was a moment when he felt his legs tense, like he was preparing to stand.
He didn’t.
They brought back fried chicken. Mashed potatoes. Corn. Biscuits. Colonel Sanders smiled sagely from the side of the red-and-white bucket. Art looked relieved when Nate was in the spot they’d left him. Alex looked… like Alex, though his eyes did widen briefly. Art told him that she brought him food because she was providing for him. She had gone out and shot it herself, partner, and she cleaned and gutted and cooked it over an open fire under a cascade of stars in the night sky. She’d heard a lonesome coyote howl as she played her harmonica, hoss, and she hoped he was mighty hungry.
He blinked slowly at her.
She groaned loudly when she ate her first bite of fried chicken, eyes rolling back in her head. She raved that it was on par with bacon. By the time she finished, she had mashed potatoes on her cheek, and her lips were shiny with grease. Her eyes were drooping, and she leaned back on the bed, patting her stomach happily.
“That’s the ticket,” she said.
“Whatever else you guys got going on here, you did well with all the food.”
Nate didn’t eat much. He picked at it, but he had a hard time swallowing it down.
Alex ate perfunctorily and quickly. He kept glancing at Nate, but he didn’t say a word.
Nate thought about curling up on the bed away from them and trying to sleep. He didn’t know how successful he’d be.
It was Art who slept first. She’d brushed her teeth and made Alex undo her braids. Her hair was crimped and kinked as she shook it out. She’d changed into her pajamas, the same ones she’d worn every night since Nate had met her for the first time. She was asleep even as her head hit the pillow.
Nate had never felt more awake in his life.
Alex moved quietly around the room, picking up the remains of their dinner.
Nate had nothing to say to him. He didn’t think he wanted to hear either of them speak again for the rest of the night.
Which is why he was surprised when he spoke.
“You took her.”
Alex tensed, hands freezing over the empty Styrofoam container that had held mashed potatoes before Artemis descended upon it. His fingers twitched.
“You took her from the Mountain.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Alex glanced over at him, looking as if he were gearing up for a fight. He was defiant when he said.
“I would do it again.”
“I’m not—”
“If I had to do it all over, I would do it again.”
And Nate believed him.
“They were hurting her,” Alex said, shoving empty containers into paper bags.
“They weren’t—it wasn’t—they didn’t care about her. Not who she was.”
“But you did,” Nate said quietly.
Alex didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped the bags into the plastic trash bin in the corner. The room smelled like stale fried food and harsh cleaning products. Nate was getting a headache.
“I get it, okay? I—”
“No,” Alex said coolly.
“You don’t. You don’t understand the first thing about her. About me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Why are you still here?” Alex asked, turning around and glaring at him.
“You could have left while we were gone. You could have put us behind you and left.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I know that,” Alex snapped at him, glancing at Art. She was snoring quietly. When he spoke again, his voice was lower but still charged.
“I know you didn’t. I don’t get why.”
“Why did you tell me about her?” Nate countered.
Alex looked frustrated. He reached up and ran a hand over his short hair. The mask he wore—the man, the soldier—was slipping again, farther than Nate had ever seen it. He wondered if Alex even knew it was happening.
“Because, you—you just—you would have asked questions. And you wouldn’t have stopped.”
“So you could have made something else up,” Nate said.
“Like you did the first time.”
Alex shook his head.
“You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“And what makes you think I believe you now?”
“You do.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of that look on your face. That pale, wide-eyed look. I know that. I’ve seen it before. In the mirror after they showed me who she was for the first time. After they explained to me what I was seeing. I looked the same. You believe.”
Nate swallowed thickly.
“I don’t know what to believe.”
Alex sat on the edge of the bed, careful to keep it from shifting and disturbing Art. He reached down and began to unlace his boots.
“I thought about it.”
Alex hesitated, but then lifted his foot and slid the right boot off.
“I know you did.”
“I thought about walking right out that door.”
“I know.”
“Finding a phone and calling the cops.”
Alex pulled off the left boot.
“But I didn’t,” Nate said.
“Because I couldn’t make myself move. No matter how hard I tried.”
“We,” Alex said.
Nate turned slowly to look at him. The room was dark. Through the window, the red neon from the VACANCY sign filtered in, outlining Alex. “What?”
“Back at the cabin,” Alex said, head sagging.
“When he showed up the first time. The Enforcer.”
“The water guy.”
Alex snorted.
“Yeah. Him. I should have seen that one coming. I—” He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“When I saw his truck. You asked me a question. You said, what should we do?”
Nate waited.
“You didn’t say you. You didn’t say what should I do. You said we. Us. You didn’t know who we were. We’d broken into your cabin. I had a gun. For all you knew, I could have been some… some kind of creep. Taking a little girl to the middle of nowhere.”
“The thought did cross my mind.” Nate winced.
“Uh. I mean—”
Alex sighed.
“I know. I don’t blame you. Not for that. I—it doesn’t matter. But you said we.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know. It’s—you stayed.”
“I did.”
“Even after everything. Even with how crazy it sounds.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Alex didn’t seem too happy with that answer.
“How did you know? When you came back to the cabin, you said Seventh Sea. How did you know about it?”
That startled Nate. “Ruth.”
Alex looked sharply at him. “Who?”
“Ruth. She’s—an old friend.” Nate felt his face growing hot.
“I might have asked her to look you up.”
Alex just stared at him.
“To be fair, your story about being a bodyguard sounded like bullshit, so.”
“That was Art’s idea,” Alex muttered.
“Her second one. She first wanted to tell you that she’d been kidnapped by bandits and that I’d rode in on a white horse and rescued her.”
Nate choked out a laugh. “She’s…”
“Yeah,” Alex said tiredly.
“She is. What did Ruth tell you?”
“Something about Seventh Sea. About… you. That you’d disappeared ten years ago. Become a ghost. There were men there. They claimed to be NSA.”
“They weren’t NSA.”
“I know. She knew that too. She covered her tracks. She’ll be okay. She’s faced far worse than government drones.”
“They already knew about us. About you.”
“That’s what the water guy said. He was watching us, wasn’t he? The whole time.”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Another test,” Alex growled.
“That’s all it ever was. To see what she would do. To you. Out in the real world.”
“You took her,” Nate said again.
“From that place. From the Mountain.”
“I had to.”
“You gave up everything. Your life. Your job. To get her out.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. We need to sleep.”
That didn’t sit well with Nate.
“That’s not fair.”
“I don’t care,” Alex said, pushing himself up the bed.
“You don’t get to keep shit from me. Not anymore.”
“I get to do whatever the fuck I want.”
“Obviously,” Nate said bitterly.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“What happens after?”
“After what?”
“After this. After you get her to wherever she needs to go. What happens then? I just… go back to my life the way it was before? Go back to—” Nothing, really. Nate had absolutely nothing. The cabin had been the last thing. The truck, but that was in the bottom of a ravine.
“And what about my brother?”
“What about him?”
“He has a family. If they know who I am, then they know who he is.”
Alex didn’t respond.
“You think about her,” Nate said, voice low.
“I get that. I do. I really do. But do you ever stop to think what you’ve done to me?”
Nothing.
“You don’t, do you? Because you do whatever the fuck you want. It doesn’t matter who gets in your way. You brought me into this. You made me a part of this. Everything that happens from this point on is because of you. And maybe the same thing happened to you. Maybe you didn’t ask for any of this. For her. But you need to remember—”
And there it was, wasn’t it? That little thing he’d forgotten in the face of everything. Randy. The water guy who wasn’t a water guy. He’d known more about Alex. What had he said? His file. Alex’s file. It’d been detailed and—
Did you ever wonder why they picked you? Out of everyone? Why they chose you. They picked you because you were broken.
They picked you because they wanted to see if it would latch on to you. Like a host. Symbiotic.
They wanted to see what it was capable of in the face of human grief. I think even they were surprised just how far it went. You thought you were a glorified babysitter. You didn’t know that you were part of the test.
“Who was it?” Nate whispered.
“Who was it that you were grieving over—”
“Don’t.” It was one word. A single syllable. But Nate heard everything Alex didn’t say. It was a warning. A threat. Nate could push, he really could, but it wouldn’t end well. For any of them.
He lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling, feet hanging off the edge to the floor.
Shadows stretched along the walls.
He knew Alex wasn’t asleep, even as the minutes ticked by.
Nate was exhausted, but he couldn’t close his eyes.
Then.
“I did what I had to.” It was said quietly. Barely above a whisper.
Nate said nothing.
“She… No one deserves to be in a cage. No one.”
Alex was sleeping a moment later.
Nate stayed awake long into the night.
TOWARD DAWN, he slipped from the room, leaving Art and Alex asleep in the bed.
The mountain air was cold. He could see his breath rising around his face. He pulled the collar of his jacket up and rubbed his arms.
A logging truck went by without slowing.
The motel office was dark.
There were no other cars in the parking lot. Their truck sat quietly in front of the room. Out in front of the office near the street was a large wooden electric pole.
And next to the pole was a phone booth.
Nate looked back at the motel room door he’d shut behind him.
He thought about going back inside. About taking off his coat and climbing into bed, pulling the thin, scratchy comforter over his head. Of waiting until Alex rose and muttered they needed to get back on the road.
I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
Nate went to the phone booth.
The metal door screeched on its hinges as he slid it open.
He fished in the pocket of his jeans for the couple of quarters he’d found at the bottom of his duffel bag.
He dropped them into the coin slot.
He picked up the phone.
He pressed the receiver against his forehead and took a breath.
And then he dialed the number from memory.
He wasn’t even sure what day it was as the call connected and began to ring over a crackling line.
In his head, he could see it. The house that he was calling. He’d been there just once. It’d been… before. Before his parents had found him in the cabin. Before everything had gone to shit.
It rang seven times before there was an answer, a single word thick with sleep. “Hello.”
Nate couldn’t find his voice.
“Hello,” the voice said, sounding a little more awake. A little angrier.
“Who is this? Do you know what time—”
“Ricky.”
A beat of silence. Then.
“Nate? Is this—what the hell?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you calling so early?” Why are you calling at all?
He let it go. He said.
“I need you to listen. Don’t talk. Just listen.”
“Why are you—”
“Rick.”
“What?”
“People are going to ask you questions. About me. I’m sorry for that. I know—I know you don’t… just. Whatever they tell you is a lie. I need you to remember that. Whatever they say… Do you remember when you showed me how to skip rocks at the lake?”
“Nate?” He sounded alarmed now.
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just—I don’t know when we’re going to talk again. Okay? And I want you to know that—I’m not mad. About everything. I want you to know that. I’m not mad. There are things, Ricky. Things that are bigger than you and me. Things that I never thought I’d see. Things you wouldn’t believe.”
“Have you been drinking? Nate, what the fuck are you—”
“I love you.”
Rick didn’t respond. For a moment Nate thought he’d hung up. Then.
“Nate. Are you okay?”
Nate laughed hoarsely.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. But something big is happening. Something I can’t explain. And I just needed to—to hear your voice again. Skipping rocks. Remember?”
“I remember.” Rick sighed.
“You weren’t very good at it.”
“Yeah. I learned, though. You taught me how. There’s—do you believe there are things greater than us?”
“I don’t—Nate, what are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I’ve gotta go. Just—thank you. For showing me how to skip rocks.”
“Nate, wait—”
He hung up the phone.
His hands shook.
Eventually, he left the phone booth and went back to the motel room.
Alex and Art hadn’t moved.
She was snoring against his shoulder.
Alex’s chest rose and fell.
Nate climbed back into bed and waited for the sun to rise.