Chapter 13 #2
“Don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to get the reference.” My grandmother used to say it all the time… all I know is that it was from some really old TV show about a dog.
I pet his head and when I finally start to walk, he doesn’t let me go until we’re in the living room where Arc sits, scowling at the screen.
Kimba scowls back at him.
“She’s here, do you want to tell me what was so important that you couldn’t wait until the next meeting?”
“Not everything is about you,” she tells him before turning her attention to me. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into with them.”
“I do.” I sit on his lap, and even though he’s already heard my thoughts, I whisper. “Everything is about you.”
Kimba groans when I kiss his cheek and then a sharp pinging sound comes from her lap.
“So, this thing you’re doing has hit D-Day.” Kimba glares at the noisy thing. “You’ve got to talk to your sisters.”
“What does that mean?” I don’t think Hazard would have told when Hannah said he wouldn’t.
“It means, your mother filed a missing persons report and apparently the first thing they do when a woman goes missing now is check with the Agency in case said woman decided to come over without telling her family. The Agency has you marked ‘present and accounted for’ on Isia, and they let the Earth authorities know you’re not missing at all. ”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Kimba laughs before quickly glancing at Arc. “Now, your mom has been calling your sisters. Laurel has blocked her messages because she doesn’t want to deal with the stress, but after the fourth time, Jessica picked up.”
“She knows I’m here…” I guess. “But she doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Right, but she has asked me, in my ‘official capacities,’ to find you.”
I grimace. I can’t help it. Because I know she won’t lie to Jess. And I know I shouldn’t ask her to, either.
“Okay. So… How long do I have?”
“Until the next meeting.”
“Three days.” Arc whispers as he nuzzles my hair.
Something pings again on Kimba’s end and she also grimaces. “Maybe less.”
Then it clicks.
“Is Jess in the group chat?” I ask. If she says yes, things are bad.
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
She holds her tablet up to the screen, but I can only see the last three text bubbles.
Jessica
What do you know?
Kimba
…
Laurel
Kimba, What aren’t you telling us?”
I could leave it alone, let Kimba field the questions for a few more days, but if Jess is in the group chat… they’re frantic.
“Add me?”
She hesitates. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’m not, but I think letting them spiral is a worse one.”
“Okay. Just remember you asked for this.” Kimba ends the call and my phone pings.
Chrys has joined the chat.
Chrys
So, funny story…
Sliding off Arc’s lap, I type as fast as I can before anyone else can get a message out.
The chat blows up and I blink as the messages fly through, a dozen questions all at once.
Chrys
I am going to need you to be so much calmer about this right now. I am on Isia. I am safe here.
Jess
Where. EXACTLY. Is. HERE?
Chrys
Did you not read the part where I’m safe? That should have gotten more traction than it did
Jess
Where?
Chrys
That’s classified for the moment
Jess
Classified? What are you talking about? What is going on?
Laurel
Did you sign up for a bondmate?
Chrys
If I had, you would be the last person who could say anything about it
Jess
But you didn’t.
There’s a pause. Bubbles come up and then disappear and then pop up again.
Jess
Someone brought you here.
Chrys
The universe wanted me here, so… here I am
Jess
You were KIDNAPPED?
Chrys
I mean… they generally call it something else. And I might not have planned to come here in that specific way or at that specific time, but sometimes the universe gives us the things we ask for in strange ways
Laurel
OMG. You did not manifest an alien abduction!
I honestly hadn’t thought of it that way, but I kind of love it now that she’s said it.
Chrys
Everything is going to work out
It always does
We’ll talk in a few days
Just promise me you’re not going to run off searching for me
Two new bubbles pop up from names I recognize but who don’t actually know, and Arc goes to the window. I doubt my jumbled thoughts are fun right now.
Andrea
Welcome to Isia and the group chat. I am very interested to see how this all unfolds.
Cindy
Same
Faith
NGL, this whole exchange makes me so happy I am an only child.
Cindy
Same
Laurel
I can’t believe you guys don’t think this is unreasonable.
Margot
You will discover that Cindy says “Same ” to anything and everything she can.
Unreasonable or irrational. That’s all I’m seeing up there.
The group chat continues on and I watch as Cindy tries to defend herself for a minute, Laurel gives up trying to convince them to be on my sisters’ side, and Jess sends me a private message demanding, again, to be told exactly where I am.
I close out completely and set the phone on something that won’t amplify the vibrations.
“Kissu has offered to eat it if it annoys you.”
“Pretty sure it would give you a tummy ache.” I kiss the top of his head and rub his ears the way I found out he likes it. “And I would rather be mildly inconvenienced than have to clean up zurgle vomit.”
I swear he laughs.
“He is laughing.” Arc looks back at me from where he stands at the window. “He has an interesting sense of humor.”
Kissu follows me when I go to stand next to Arc and look out at the snow… “How long is that thing going to be on fire?”
“According to the manufacturer it could be another month.”
“That’s shitty.”
“They’re working on a plan to get some staff out of here so they can put the remnants in a carbon recycling facility, but that could take weeks all on its own.”
I think of the ship on the Oregon coast they tried to burn a bunch of oil out of and then the whale they blew up in the seventies and then the hagfish spill.
Arc’s brow twists, looking down at me, “What is Napalm?”
“It’s a type of incendiary goo. Which is a term I know only because a history teacher at my high school was obsessed with the term.”
“I know what a whale is because of the nature documentaries Kimba likes to get us together to watch—”
“And you go?”
“Kimba doesn’t take no for an answer, and she has even more weight to throw around lately. I sit in the back so no one thinks about me… it’s kind of amusing when they get confused or grossed out.” His brow is still furrowed. “What is a hagfish?”
“It’s a fish that basically secretes a super slippery oozy mucus? It might only be when they’re out of the water or maybe just when they’re dead. I’m not sure.”
And a truck load of them had crashed, covering the whole highway and a few cars.
“Why were they transporting them?”
“I honestly have no clue.”
Beside me, leaning against my leg, Kissu makes little chomping noises.
“He wants to know what they taste like.”
“That is also something I don’t know.”
With a little huff, Kissu stretches and hops up onto his back legs, one paw on the window, gaze intent.
“Where?” Arc starts to scan the snow in the area Kissu is looking, and then a sharp sound goes off overhead.
The wall screen flares on. I watch him, frozen in place as he hops over the back of their couch and goes to it.
Drift pops up in the corner of the screen and they say some things back and forth in Sianese before Arc turns back to me. “Stay here.”
That’s what makes me move. “Absolutely not,” I mutter under my breath and follow him down the hall to the room I’ve thought of as my own. But he pulls a line of suits out of a wall I didn’t even realize had a hidden closet, reminding me it’s his room.
“There’s a monster out there?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going out alone to go kill it?”
“Yes.”
I don’t tell him not to go. Even though I know he can hear me think it.
He gets the suit on and then kisses me. “I’ll be back.”
“In one piece.”
Nodding, he assures me, “I promise.”
He leaves me, and the outpost feels bigger, or maybe I feel smaller. I need a distraction.
Wandering back to the living room, I sit on the couch. Shock had mentioned where I could find all of Jessica’s experiments and their results, and I pull them up while Kissu sits beside me, watching the screen intently. I don’t know if he can read it, but he acts like he can.
It’s all about the fluid transfer. Cum, precum. Doesn’t matter, as long as the right components are present…
So as long as they all come inside me at the same time… but that’s not a guarantee. Mary called it bondmate roulette, and what if one of them comes late, or early… There are too many variables, too many potential problems.
Feeling defeated, I close out of the files and turn the screen off.
I want something sweet. A little treat to help keep me from following the dozen little rabbits that have scattered toward dark places in my mind.
Opening the fridge, I scan the copious options Arc ordered for me. Some new things have arrived since I last looked through them.
There’s a novelty yogurt Laurel told me about a few months ago and I snatch it out, setting the little bundle on the counter and finding a bowl.
Unwrapping it, I let the three parts of the snack roll away from me before I catch them and set them in a tidy little line.
Something in the jar releases the whole blob of yogurt when I snap open the top and turn the little glass upside down. No residue left behind…
Handy, but oh so weird. I put it in the slot for their form of a dishwasher and move to the next part.
It’s an eye dropper… basically? Jess would probably call it by the correct scientific name, but I don’t know it. I just crush the bubble-like end at the top and then squeeze the instant-liquid filling out on top of the creamy yogurt.
It’s a strange delivery device, but who am I to—
Staring at the eyedropper, it feels like all of my focus narrows down to a single point.
“Oh…”
SHOCK
I was downstairs when the notice came through.
“Special meeting.”
No doubt at Jessica’s insistence.