28. Olly
TWENTY-EIGHT
OLLY
I just sat there, shaking my head. “You betrayed me, Robert. You’re Organization through and through. All that faith I put in you. It was all for...nothing. Less than nothing. Why should I trust you now?” I asked with a healthy dose of skepticism.
“Because he does.” Robert pointed back to the helicopter and someone scooted over and leaned out the door.
My hand flew over my mouth, and I shook my head like I didn’t understand, or maybe understood something that wasn’t true, because against my own will I had begun crying.
“It is with the pair of you where my loyalty now lies. We can discuss this all when we aren’t in the middle of doing something illegal, hmm?
Get in, and let’s leave this place behind.
We have access to a proper helipad not too far from the South End apartments, and a car will meet us there.
You can both settle in with a hot shower if you like, some fresh clothes.
It won’t take us long to get there, in this.
” He advanced on the stretcher, and I slid as far away from him as I could, which was really only a few inches, but the protest had been lodged.
“Fine, you want to let yourself rot on that stretcher when freedom is right in front of you, I can’t stop you,” Robert said rather haughtily.
Clark lowered himself out of the helicopter, and called, “Olly!”, running toward me.
As soon as I saw him, really focussed in on his face, I was crying, and taking in big gulps of air to supress my sobs from the last four months.
Clark unceremoniously shoved Robert out of the way, and stood beside my stretcher.
He reached his arms out, as though asking for permission to touch me, and I nodded as tears fell from my eyes and my vision blurred.
He grasped me around the shoulders, as if worried to touch my bump, and ran one hand through my hair while whispering words of love and affection, almost so softly that I couldn’t hear him.
He kissed my temple, and I turned my head so our mouth aligned, and I couldn’t help but feel his joy seep through as he sweetly kissed me, our mouths practically fusing together, and his other hand coming off my shoulder and resting on my back, joining us tightly, my bump resting safely against him.
“Clark,” I murmured, breaking our kiss and moving my hands from where they had been resting on his chest to his face, wiping his tears and giving him my brightest smile. He shook his head slightly, and said the last words I expected.
“I know what you’re scared and you probably don’t trust any of us.
But I have nothing but good intentions for you and your baby, despite how bad this looks, me here with Robert and in their helicopter.
I’m asking you for a leap of faith, Olly.
Faith in me, that I’m not lying to you. Get in the helicopter before someone reports us to the cops.
As soon as you’ve got your headgear and seat belt on, I give you permission to read my thoughts, my memories, anything.
Everything. I will be an open book to you.
I will let you see with your own mind what has happened these four months.
I just have to say, I tried to find you, Olly, I swear I did.
I found out what The Organization is, what it wanted from you, who its leader was, so much information. Except where they were hiding you.
“Everything will make sense, and if you don’t feel like tossing me out of the chopper on our way to Halifax, I can help you get settled in back home.
Actually, I’ll take the lead from you. Whatever you want, we’ll do.
We just need to get you away from here. I was on my way to bust you out when I was informed you were doing that very thing, and it was recommended to me that we leave you handle that on your own.
That there was already a team on its way to extract you.
” He reached out with my hand to take mine in his, and I quickly pulled my hands back as a looming sense of dread crept in to our reunion.
“‘We’? Who is ‘we,’ Clark? And did ‘we’ know that I was going to get fucking tased on my way out? I fell and my side hurts now from where it smacked the pavement, and my god, I’m pregnant and where in the fucking hell were you?
” My voice cracked at the end, despite my efforts to just stay calm.
There was something in my mind that just kept saying over and again, red alert... red alert...
Clark stilled, then turned to Robert as if he were a lioness in the Serengeti eyeing up prey.
“Someone used a taser on her? I was told that someone with foresight said that it would all go off without a hitch if we let her handle herself. That actually, we had to let her handle it, or one of a hundred things could go wrong and we’d miss this window of opportunity.
Jesus, Robert! What if she’d lost the baby because of the ineptitude of your people?
” He closed his eyes, as if he was centering himself.
“Olly, I’m here, now. If you want, I will never leave your side again, I swear.
Please come with me. Ignore Robert and The Organization and just get in.
You can deep dive in my mind the second we get strapped in. ”
Deep dive? Did he remember his visit to East River Beach?
Meeting Thomas, meeting Bea? And my inner ocean, that he so bravely found his way into?
I didn’t think the brain of a non-psychic could do any of those things to begin with, but to remember them would be simply unbelievable.
“Are you...Clark, do you remember anything about a gigantic squid-like creature?”
“The only time I’ve heard anything about squid in the last six months was at your place, when we watched Squid Game,” he answered honestly, but I swear, for a moment there I touched his mind lightly and he felt a bit constricted, like he couldn’t breathe.
He nervously opened the top three buttons of his shirt, and was almost knocked on his ass when I surprised him with,
“Okay, let’s get this thing in the air,” I said shakily, and with a little nervous laugh.
I reached for Clark, and he helped me off the stretcher, flannel sheets and all, and helped me walk barefoot over the packed down dirt.
He hopped into the helicopter first, then turned and took my outstretched hands, helping me climb up.
I wrapped the sheets more tightly around myself, and he secured my headgear and buckled me in.
“She looks so strong, so beautiful, and so damn stubborn. What will she say when I tell her about my grandfather?”
“Your grandfather?” I started to ask. “Edward Evans. What has he got to do with all this?” Clark looked like a deer in headlights and suddenly, I was completely shut out.
I saw it, the space in his mind, stars, galaxies, black spheres roaming around.
A gigantic bottle of hot sauce orbiting a large asteroid far in the distance.
And then, like in something from The Neverending Story, a castle floating in the great empty, with thick, stone walls.
I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near it, so I didn’t try.
“I see you’ve learned to shield.” I said, with some pride, and he nodded.
“We’ve got to get airborne. Then I lower this shield and I’m all yours.”
“Technically, you said from the time I was buckled in.” I said, only half-teasing.
The way he spoke to Robert who was higher up at Rose than he was, the shadowy figure of a grandfather and the way he felt when I caught those leaky thoughts.
Clark was hiding things, big things, and I wanted to know now what they were.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said. “Okay, I don’t have a lot of practice with lowering these things. Maybe we should hold hands so I can use you to ground myself? Plus, I’m slightly terrified of helicopters, particularly during take-off.”
“Well, I drew a lot of pictures of you around them or in them,” I answered, figuring that the time for secrets was long gone. Either I trusted him, or I didn’t. And I needed so badly to have someone I could trust, other than literal ghosts.
“What’s she going to say when she finds out that he had been the architect of her lifetime of suffering and torment? Of mine, too? Fuck, are these shields down?”
“Yes, they are. And look at you...it’s like you weren’t psychic a few months ago, and your mind has been blasted open. If we can talk, mind to mind, that’s telepathy: you’re psychic. What else can you do? Telekinesis? Pyrokinesis? Foresight?”
“Hell no, I can’t do those things, not...
well, let’s say not yet? I feel like I’m in an impossible to drive bumper car most of the time when my telepathic abilities are active.
But Olly, I do come from a long line of very ‘gifted’ or ‘cursed’ people, however you want to view it.
I’m not sure I understand it myself, other than my parents were good people, Rosie was the best person, and then when we look back from there, it’s a disaster.
How about I just like, hold your hand and close my eyes and you can go as far and as wide as you need to inside my mind.
Maybe try to understand where I’ve been and why I didn’t properly save you.
” He took some deep breaths. “God, it feels so good to hold her hand. I hope she lets me after all this. I hope she can forgive me. I hope she can understand.”
“You know, I am a pretty understanding person,” I said, as his grip had tightened on my hand to the point where my circulation was getting cut off.
We were in the air, and I sensed real fear coming from him.
Whether that fear was strictly because of the helicopter ride or the truth lurking in his mind, I couldn’t say right now, but I decided to wait to raid his memories until he was at least not terrified of the helicopter crashing into the forest below.
It seemed a bit cruel and unusual to let him suffer doubly.
It wasn’t a great experience having your mind invaded.
“Clark, do me a favour?” I asked, unintentionally injecting some levity into the situation.
“I need to have some blood flowing into my hand. I still want to hold you, I just want to be able to feel my fingers. And I’m not going into your mind for a while yet.
It wouldn’t be fair, when I can smell the fear wafting off you. ”
“What does it smell like? My fear?” he wondered aloud, so I gave him a straight answer.
“Sauerkraut.”