Reality Check
I had a couple of puzzle pieces from the last game and beyond that I wanted to connect, Kim indulged me with a bit of RPness, and this is the result. Thanks, Kim!--Maer
It was late when I dragged myself up the cottage stairs and opened Lem’s door to check on him. His lamp was off but the light from the moon showed me his bed was empty.
“Lem?”
I stepped inside and checked under the bed. On warm nights, he preferred the bare wood of the floor to the sheets and mattress and though it was still winter, we’d suffered a warm spell. I knelt on the boards and looked. No Lem. I checked the wardrobe, pulling the doors wide. Still no Lem. I thought back to my evening downstairs after he’d gone to bed—Joshua and I had remained in the kitchen over tea and a little serious necking before he’d turned in ahead of me. I’d lingered to clean up the after-dinner debris and had gotten sucked into a trade journal before noticing the time and going upstairs. No one had come down. No one had gone up. Lem hadn’t gotten past me that way. Leaning out his open windows, I verified the front and rear porch roofs were out of reach but it was possible to slide down the drainpipe … Or maybe someone else could have climbed up. The night’s breeze wafted off the desert and sent my nape hairs stirring. Alarmed now, I quit his room and checked Christian’s—empty, out on a call. I crossed the stair hall and checked the room I shared with Joshua. Empty, too.
“Joshua?”
Missing a son and now a fiancé, I grabbed my gun from the bedside drawer and took the stairs down running. A thin cry, a muffled grunt, a slam of metal had me throwing open my front door. An engine gunned to life as a limo pulled away fast from the cottage. My gun was up in a flash and I caught a glimpse of Lem pounding on the glass and calling my name with Joshua diving across the seat.
Dear God, this can’t be happening.
I snapped off three shots, aiming for the tires and scoring nothing but dirt. It was the last thing I saw was before something struck me from behind and everything went black …
---
Kiera looked at the tiny person on the hospital bed, watching as Rina's face twitched and contorted. Dreaming, but not happily. She blew a piece of hair from her forehead and put the chart back onto the bed frame. Already the little engineer had been trying to get up and demanding to be released.
Walking to her side, she reached down and gently touched Rina's shoulder. "Come on, wake up, you little fighter. Real life is bad enough without fighting in your dreams too." She pulled the breakfast tray closer and waved the fragrance of food at the sleeping woman. "C'mon. You need to eat to get your strength up. Wake up, sweetheart." She lay a cool palm on Rina's cheek, sliding a gentle thumb down the bone there. "C'mon."
---
I blinked, my head aching, and came to in the airlock of Mike’s courier … and saw Mackie and Peterson drag Lem and Joshua in. Joshua was quiet in Mackie’s grip, observing everything, wheels turning in his head. Lem was nothing but wide-eyed fear. Footsteps rang on the decking behind me and as sure as I knew my name, I knew what would happen next. Déjà vu swamped me as Mike walked up kitted out for war. The lights flickered overhead, making the shadows shift and slither. His face wouldn’t remain still, aging through the years from the moment I woke up at the Abbey to the night on Highgate when I said goodbye. His expression inscrutable, he put his gun in my hand and tipped his head toward Joshua and Lem.
“You know what you have to do.”
“No,” I said, stricken and unable to move. Dear God, this can’t be happening. And in that curious way of dreams, history poured into my head from nowhere and I understood. War was coming. I had to be ready ... the way Mike had been and had never stopped.
“We’re spies, Irina.” His fingers wrapped around mine before I could drop my weapon, holding me fast in an iron grip. “We do what no one else can do, handle what no one else wants to touch.” His expression softened and he caressed my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb. “It’s two lives for millions. Do the math.”
“No.”
I blinked, my head aching, and came to in a curtained cubicle, Kiera’s thumb stroking my cheek in eerie echo to Mike’s parting caress. I grit my teeth and screwed my eyes shut, waiting to plunge into another nightmare. One second … two … three … I opened my eyes and Kiera was still there, fanning the aroma of bacon across my face. The smell of it made me want to retch. I turned my face aside and got a grip on my nausea.
“Stop. Please.” I spoke to the present but the past whispered back: For now. But not forever. You’re running out of time.
---
Kiera's face scrunched with mild irritation. "Fine," she stated and flicked Rina's nose. "See if I ever have a tender moment with you." A frantic myriad of shouts went by down the hall; one the many emergencies that came and went in the crowded hospital and Kiera parted the curtains for a moment to see if she was needed. Satisfied that all was taken care of, she turned her attention again to the figure in the bed.
"Are you going to eat? I had to beg and bargain for some bacon, juice, and toast. The coffee is weak and horrid, but I already drank everything that I brought from the ship last night." She watched her friend's face, waiting for an answer.
---
I took in the surroundings: curtains, none too clean; a bed hollowed by untold numbers of previous occupants; flies droned with the murmur of conversation. I tried sitting up but my injuries made it difficult and painful to move. My left arm was bandaged from my wrist past my elbow. More bandages wrapped my ribs, as was my right leg. I wasn’t going anywhere far or fast. I struggled up from the swaybacked mattress and leaned against the wall at my back, the plaster rough through my thin cotton smock. I thunked my head back and slid a contrite look at her.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that extra effort, but my stomach’s just not up for bacon. Please help yourself to it. Did everyone make it? I wasn’t conscious for that part of the evening’s festivities.”
---
The redhead had already taken a piece of the thin meat, munching it thoughtfully. "So what were you dreaming?" She reached for another piece and settled it on the toast, pushing the glass of juice at the engineer. "It's not real juice. It's orange-flavored, vitamin C nutrient stuff. Guaranteed to sit on your stomach well. Drink it so that we don't have to put you on the IV again." She tilted her head, chewing. "Really. What were you dreaming?"
---
It took a few seconds for her words to sink in and when they did, I paused with the juice halfway up. What could I tell her? I wasn’t sure what to make of it myself. “Old stuff,” I said and took a sip. The juice was not as sweet as I’d feared and it treated my throat and stomach gently as promised. A blessing. I lowered my voice with the glass and added, “The war, mostly.”
---
Kiera made a face. "The old war? Or how it's gonna lead to the new one?" She had lowered her voice, moving closer to Rina's head. Smoothing the blanket absently, she patted the surface gently. "Arden's already been by to see you with a little merry band of students. I can't tell if he's miserable or secretly pleased to be teaching them. So your bandages are clean and your wounds are healing nicely. Probably let you out tomorrow."
The green eyes narrowed, searching Rina's face with intensity. "You lie terribly, by the way. Almost as bad as Arden. It was more than old memories." She leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest, the slightly stained medical coat bunching. It was a little large, but Kiera did enjoy the pockets. Shrugging, she smiled. "Just wanted to let you know in case Joshua comes in and you try to tell him the same thing."
---
“I don’t like doing it, you know. Lying.” I set the juice aside and told her the truth. “To answer your question, it was something that happened to me during the war, mixed up with something that never happened in the present, involving people from both. People I care about. You know how dreams are. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something, it’s hard to interpret what it’s saying, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to like what you’ll hear. That’s where the nightmare part comes in.”
---
The arms loosened as the grin erupted and spread. "Good thing you don't like doing it, silly. Again, you're no good at it." She patted her own midsection and arm. "Thanks for the save by the way. I ain't good with a knife unless it's a scalpel I'd rather have a gun." Her nose wrinkled. "Cursed little freaks woulda not been so cocky if I'da gotten a few rounds in them. But thanks for coming in to help." She watched as Rina drained the glass and took it from her hand, moving the rolling tray over to unveil a small dish of pudding. "Eat this. It's chocolate like."
---
“I’d rather have a gun too and had I been thinking straight, I’d have given you mine before I went in,” I said, glad there were no hard feelings and more importantly, no more questions about my dreams. I wasn’t sure what they’d meant and until I got a handle on them, I didn’t want to discuss them with anyone. Yeah, right. You just don’t want to admit you’re having second thoughts about leaving Mike, that traitorous part of me whispered. The sight of the pudding distracted it long enough to make me say, “I thought you didn’t go in for medical experiments, Kiera.” Appalled, I picked up the spoon and filled my mouth to forestall further rudeness.
---
"Experiment?" Kiera retorted. "No, you're getting that so that you'll be so miserable that you'll stop coming back to the med bay and random hospitals. There's no experiment. It's vile on purpose." She unlocked her position, moving to bustle around the bed, tucking Rina's feet in. Once she was on the other side, she checked the machines there, nodding with the numbers. "Yeah, you'll be out tomorrow." Her head went down and she was still for a moment before it rose again and she pinned Rina with her gaze, leaning close to hiss in her ear.
"What the hell is going on, Rina? Do you know something that you aren't telling us? Lately, you start to say something and then bite your tongue. I'm beginning to believe Father. All that uber-children sounded stupid before, but it doesn't sound so foolish now that I've seen Raven and listened to Joshua's mom. Piss to hell what I believe if I add in all the other crap I've seen with you guys. What do you know? Did your old boyfriend tell you something about this?"
She pulled back to take a breath, her brows meeting in a tight line. "I'd ask Joshua, but much like a gun, it don't do no good to ask it what it does or why it does it," she continued softly. "He's a feather in the wind, blowing wherever we go, lost in the moment and you. But he'll get us killed, no doubt about it. Bang! And he won't know why or how he did it. Or hell, he won't kill us himself, but to get to him, we'll be taken down one by one. What's out there Rina? Fess up."
---
When she got in my face, adrenaline spiked through me sharp and hard, and half a dozen vulnerable spots where I could sink my spoon into her flashed through my head. What the hell is wrong with me? I willed myself to go stock still until the urge passed and I could breathe again. I stuck the spoon in the pudding and put the bowl aside. I didn’t look too closely at the condition of its handle.
“Mike said something to me on Highgate. Before the trial. A warning, based on some intel he’d come across about Borrowers, about Joshua. He said ….” I paused, gathering my thoughts, and told her.
The Non-com escorted her back into the holding room and put her in front of Mike’s cell. He withdrew a few steps to give them a semblance of privacy and it was clear as day he was
letting the prisoner say his goodbyes to his sweetheart. Mike flicked a glance at the man before leaning closer to the plexiglass and Rina moved in to catch his words.
“Do you remember your focus exercises?”
Thrown, she could only sputter, “My what?”
“Your focus exercises. Can you blank your mind?” He paused, gauging her expression. “I know it’s an awkward time to think of this. But the man who came with you is not what
you think. He is an agent. You need to get the element of surprise and to do that you have to blank your mind.”
For the second time that day, she stood there, gutted like a fish.
“Rina,” he said, loud enough to make it through the plexi but not so loud as to carry far. “You asked me if there was something you could do for me. When you get out of here, you need
to take care of him. Or you will be in great danger.”
The Non-com looked a mite weirded out over the new development. It was clearly not the sort of thing he was expecting. It sure as hell wasn’t what Rina expected, either. Rina silently
mouthed: Take care of him? and mimed putting a pistol under her chin and pulling the trigger.
“Yes. Assume he’s armored. It’s … There’s no … It’s impossible that it’s a coincidence. You have to focus.”
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
“You have to focus.” Mike persisted. “You know the goal. You can’t let yourself be betrayed by emotion.”
All she could do was stare at the man she loved for over a decade … and wonder where he’d gone.
“I was able to do it,” Mike said as she stared. “You can do it. I know you can.”
She took a breath and then another and she could speak again.
“When?”
“As soon as you can.” Mike paused, flicking a glance upward. “Obviously, not here. But where it’s safe enough. He’ll be suspicious. So you have to convince him. You have to … have
to … “ He tapped his temple. “Two minds. Just like you did when you were Strachan.”
And she could only think: Dear God, what have I done? Aloud, she said, “I had a little more time to prepare for that. I had two whole days.”
“Only your life depends on it. And possibly the lives of your crew.
She stood trapped between two men—Mike, Joshua—and he was making her choose.
“And then, if we both survive this, then … we’ll try. We’ll just have to try to put this behind us. And do it again if we have to.”
“Who else is left to kill, Mike?” Inside she was screaming: No, this can’t be happening.
“Normally, you’re right.” Mike said, giving her a slight nod. “Normally we would leave fewer loose ends, but we’ve got a lot of people here.”
“Where did you … Where did you get this intel, Mike?” It was too big to take in. She needed time to digest it.
“I’m not without my resources.”
His response was cagey as ever and she wanted to scream. If he wanted her to trust him, then why wouldn’t he tell her? Dammit, giving her only half the story was worse than keeping
her in the dark. He knew her well enough by now to know that she would only dig deeper to find the answer.
“How do you know your resource is good? How do you know it’s not a trick?”
“Get me out. Or stick around, deal with him, and I’ll show you plenty of … evidence.”
“From your jail cell?
Mike snorted softly. “I can’t show you from my jail cell.”
“Of course not, but … I … it …” He can’t be asking her to do this. He can’t.
“You’ll have to trust me.”
And that was it, right there. Did she trust him? Right now, Rina couldn’t say for sure. The entire flight to Blue Sun she’d been dreading finding Mike dead, executed for his crime. This,
however, was worse and never in a million years could she have anticipated it. Mike looked at her narrowly.
“How long has he been flying with you?”
'“26 June, 2520.” She didn’t even have to think about the answer and she refused to consider why it came so easily. If she did, Mike would see it in her face.
“You can’t …,” Again, Mike nailed her with that narrow look. “You mean you didn’t know any of this? He never seemed … a little odd to you?”
That was a loaded question.
“Anybody looking at us on that ship would think we were all crazy as foxes.”
“But if it’s anything like his MO, he will try to seem sympathetic, perhaps helpless, earn your trust. Somehow try to gain your affections. But it’s … He’s just like us. There’s nothing inside
him that’s real. He’s on a mission.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know but I can’t—.”
That tore it. Her grip on her emotions slipping, she got right up against the plexi and snarled.
“What are we carrying that he would want us? And by us I mean the crew of Summer’s Gift. You weren’t even in the picture.”
“Oh? Here you are. You brought him right here.”
“If you’re saying you were the target, then why did you do the thing that would … call every—oh God, wheels and wheels and wheels and wheels—!”
“I swear Kiera, that day Mike asked me to do something I never thought he would ask. And up until that moment, I believed in him. As I’d had all those years before, from the moment when he tried to protect me from making that choice. But when he asked me to kill Joshua, to pretend nothing was wrong and pull the trigger, I …,” I faltered, my face crumpling, and when I spoke my voice was thin. “It was wrong. I had no proof that Joshua posed an imminent threat and under those circumstances it would be murder, plain and simple, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be that … that cold, that detached. I’m no angel. I’ve killed before. During the war and after, on the job and in combat. But that’s not the point.” I shook my head and spoke to the bedsheets. “Somehow, somewhen, Mike and I stopped being on the same page. I’m not sure how or why, but Mike was no longer the man I once knew and I could no longer trust him the way I had before. Maybe, just maybe, I’d loved and believed a lie for over a decade and was finally seeing the true man behind the mask. And if that were the case, I couldn’t trust anything he told me or do anything he asked. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have the one constant in your life, the one thing you trust, broken like that?”
I finally looked up.
“I never did find out exactly what Mike had discovered or why. He left for Miranda without telling me. He only told me that he knew that I wouldn’t go through with it. Like it was some kind of test. A test that ran the risk of killing an innocent man, to prove something I would never know or understand. I can’t do that, Kiera. I can’t. And now … ? There’s war coming and if what Joan told us is true, it’s going to be nastier and harder than anything we’ve ever fought before. The stakes will be higher, maybe too high. And despite everything I’ve learned about fighting, from Mike and all the rest of it, I don’t know if I can do it. Ten years ago, I had only myself to lose. Now I’ve got so much more. And more than that …”
I closed my eyes, tried to find the words.
“Mike tested me on Highgate. I refused to go along with it and he withdrew it. But I have this feeling, this dread, that it’s still out there … waiting for me. And when it finds me again, I’m going to fail and lose everything.” I couldn’t tell her that Mike and the deferred test were one and the same in my mind. It was something I could never say aloud, for fear of making it true, of bringing it to pass. I could only hope she could read between the lines and keep what she read there to herself.
---
Kiera had scowled through the whole story, a scowl that got deeper at the end. At length, she finally sighed, dragging her teeth roughly over her bottom lip before speaking.
"I might be wrong, but I think if you'd a killed Joshua, your Mr. Carter would have written you off. I don't think the test is you killing those you love Rina, but instead are you willing to sacrifice all to save them? Might be wrong, but it comes down to faith and your basic humanity." She smiled gently, patting Rina's leg. "You're too damn suspicious and too freakin' fatalistic."
Settling herself on a rolling chair, she leaned close. "Was he mad that you refused him?"
---
“I don’t know.” I sagged against the wall, limp with relief. What had I feared from Kiera? I didn’t know that either. I only knew I was pathetically glad that she didn’t reject me out of hand. Instead she’d listened and had given me a viewpoint that I’d completely missed. Did Mike test me to see how far I’d go to save someone, rather than kill him? All my decisions past that point hung in the balance and I didn’t have the strength to reassess them. Coward, my inner critic whispered. Never mind that now, I answered back. Kiera’s still waiting for an answer. I replayed my goodbye on the tarmac and did my best to recall every nuance of Mike’s reaction. I saw again the vulnerable look in his eyes at my approach, the change in his demeanor as he aborted his welcoming hug, that smug smirk when I confronted him with my drawn gun a moment later.
“Not mad, exactly. More like … he’d confirmed something he’d suspected but needed proof on. But I’d be a liar if I said he wasn’t hurt that I didn’t go with him.” I fidgeted with the bedsheets, picking at the weave the way my conscience needled my heart. “He was loading the rat trap two-seater they’d given him and he still had the bandage on his neck where they’d … He said that he knew it wasn’t like me to kill a good man in cold blood, but that he’d be wrong about ‘good’ and ‘cold’. He said he knew I could deal with Joshua when I needed to and that I would need to. And that when I was done with Joshua, I’d go to him.”
I forced my fingers to go still and looked up at Kiera.
“He went to Miranda. If the Reavers don’t get him, the Pax will. I saw the supplies he’d loaded. Sooner or later, they’d run out and he’d have nothing to defend himself against either. After all this time, I don’t have much hope he’s survived.” There was a slim chance. Something Winfield had said to me earlier stuck in my head: Miranda would serve as a last stand for Independent hardliners and men like Mike, to give them a purpose that served the common good—that of clearing Miranda of Reavers so it could be colonized safely again. Why would he tell me that unless there were measures already in place to see they survived? To do otherwise was a waste of assets and Winfield did not strike me as a wasteful man. I said nothing on it and continued, “In the end, Mike made his choices for what he believed in and I did the same for mine. I’d like to believe we parted understanding that. It’s the only comfort I can take away from sending a man who loved me off to die alone.”
I shook my head and forced myself to stay in the present, and more importantly, to answer the question my guilty conscience and memories had led me to dodge.
“As for what’s out there, based on whatever Mike had told me? Just that he’d learned that Blue Sun had taken young kids and brainwashed them, surgically and chemically altered them to be mind readers, all to make them better at anticipating your moves, to allow them to become what you want them to be. That when they had made themselves indispensible to you, that’s when you were theirs. Since it was pretty much what we’d learned ourselves by then already, I didn’t bother to correct him on it. Now I wonder …,” I trailed off as I considered it. “Maybe I should have asked him to explain it in more detail. It might have given us something important we could use.”
---
She was silent for a long moment and then Kiera began to laugh, brightly and merrily. At length, she wiped tears from her eyes, sniffing softly. "Maybe I should have asked him to explain it in more detail," she parroted and then sighed. "What good would that have done, Rina? We ain't believed half of the mess we've both been told so far. Nor do we care. If Joshua is as good as they got, then they totally failed one thing. They forgot the human need to be human. If he could fall in love with an obsessive compulsive, neurotic, suspicious thing like you and be friends with an outright lying, cold-hearted bitch like me, then what good did all that training, surgery, meanness and wonky mind reading abilities do. Nothing." Kiera shook her head slowly, a small bemused smile on her lips.
"If it had worked, every damn rich sombitch in the Core woulda had it done to their kids. Every military stiff woulda had it done to their kids. And yet, here we are with something so special that they have tracked him and watched him and your fiancé warned you about him and told you one day, you might haveta kill the man. And yet, he's Joshua. Too dumb," she paused and raised a finger at Rina's open mouth, "stubborn then to wear body armor, still too innocent to be let loose on his own, still too nice to be much good other than as a momma. He can be anything or anyone and what he chose was to be your lover and the XO of a pretty much beat the hell up crew and ship. If he's taking over the 'Verse from that platform, then we don't got nothing to worry about."
---
“Put that way, I haven’t a thing to whine about either,” I said, struck by her spot-on analysis of the situation. Laughter bubbled up inside me then, as the patent idiocy of my self-pity came clear. It wasn’t a comfortable mirth, realizing how stupid I’d been, but it was cathartic. As such it took a few minutes before I could get a grip and speak sensibly again. I sat up, my gut aching, and wiped my face on the sheets. “Thanks,” I breathed. “Promise me something?”
---
The emerald greens pinned her with mock solemnity. "Anything," she whispered huskily, licking her lips.
---
"C'mere, you." I rolled my eyes at her sultry flirting, reached out and pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Whenever I start believing the bullshit I'm spouting, smack me, okay? I need a reality check every once in a while and you just delivered a good one."
---
Kiera hugged her back, taking care not to pressure any of their mutual wounds. "If makes you feel better, I'll convince you that I'm wrong and he'll wake us up one night with a maniacal grin and shoot us," she whispered in Rina's hair. "Of course, if he doesn't get it in one shot, I'm taking his ass down."
She pulled back finally and nodded. "Won't kill him. He'll wish I had. But I won't 'cus if I do, I won't be able to make fun of him for not knowing that I'd shoot him. Then you can worry about what Mike told you." Patting Rina's hand, she shrugged. "And I'll be calling Daddy to come get his new toy. But I really don't think that will be something we're gonna need to worry about. It's all the nutters who came up with the idea who scare me. What are they willing to do to cover it up and what are they willing to do to keep control of all the info?" Her face changed, losing all expression, and she shrugged, "You know that is what we really need to be worrying about. We're finding out a lot about the nasty workings of some powerful people. They're bound to notice. If only because Joshua serves to keep their eyes on us. We are never gonna run under the radar with him."
---
I hugged her back and released her when she pulled away.
"True enough," I said when she finished speaking. "But maybe we're not supposed to fly under the radar but kick over all the rugs and find out what people have swept under them. The right people in the right place at the right time, Kiera. Maybe everything is unfolding as it should."
It had been a long time since I'd felt that certainty and watching Kiera watch me, I felt it again.
---
Kiera nodded, moving for the curtains. "Maybe it's our destiny to be the wrench in the works, Rina. I didn't believe in destiny, but I know someone who does. And he made me believe in it too. I've watched this crew risk it all to fight the good fight. I'm a reluctant warrior, but I know where my path is and right now, it's with you guys and to support what you're doing. Until destiny calls me elsewhere, I'm here. And we're gonna kick open some doors and take some names. No doubt. I'll be back this afternoon. I'll try to find something more closely related to food for you." She winked and went through the curtains.
---
I winked back and worn out from the highs and lows of the past half hour, I lay there letting the sounds of the hospital lull me to sleep. I was just going under when a stray bit of memory surfaced. Ezekiel. It was the name Joan had put to Joshua's brother and Kiera's repetition of the name upon hearing it had the ring of recognition. Was this the man she'd meant just now? And in the way of the mind on the edge of sleep, Ezekiel wandered through my head and found another bit of memory to connect to: Quest. Joan had mentioned her son was on a quest. And right then I thought of the man I'd run into years ago on Santo. A man named Ezekiel who'd offered me an hour's company, a hot meal, and some good advice. He'd been on a quest as well. Coincidence? I tried to stay awake to think it through, knowing I was on the verge of discovering something, but the bed swallowed me up and sleep took me down.
Go to Kiera's Crew Page or Rina's Crew Page
Go back to: Season Six, Aug 2522 to May 2523
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