Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (27 page)

It was true that he wished to
avoid, or at least forestall, violence and war. Tark had joined the
military believing that it was possible to function as a
peacekeeper. He was fully invested in the philosophy of offering
protection, aid, and comfort to those who could not defend
themselves. This had been his guidepost along the length of his
career; to which he suspected his posting to the Nimitz had been
due in part.

Now, he looked into the distance
between the Nimitz and Earth. He did see war looming. What bothered
him was that he could not put his finger onto it precisely. It was
difficult to determine from what quarter it might arise, and to
where it might spread.

He’d never been skilled at ground
tactics; a failing he was more than willing to admit. That was
Dmitry’s area of expertise, and he was more than happy to let his
friend run that end of things. Tark was actually a bit surprised
that Dmitry hadn’t come looking for him to dissect the latest
developments. Perhaps things were moving a bit too swiftly, even
for Dmitry’s quick mind.

“Jorge?” A quiet voice broke into
his ruminating. He turned around to find Sa’andy. She was standing
with her hands clasped behind her back, a sheepish look carefully
arranged on her pretty features.

“You don’t need to apologize
anymore. I think we pretty well covered apologies last night….” He
smiled tiredly and put his arms around her.

“If I had told you everything,
this might not have happened, though.”

“We can’t undo
what’s been done.”
Only to
Maeve
, he thought. Jemila Solomon was lost
to time; snatched up by the desolate jaws of
death.

“I know this. It’s just that it
seems for every bit of information we do not see how to interpret,
something goes terribly wrong. Perhaps I ought to ignore my
directives from now on…that’s all I meant.”

“How did you know?”

“The general’s aide de camp is one
of the resistance. We…um, they, try to have someone with every
senior official, if possible. We have to imagine that the other
side is doing the same.”

“This sounds like the lead-in to a
complicated joke: ‘We know that they know, that I
know’.”

“It does get a bit tangled at
times. Don’t even get me started on how hard it is to make sure we
don’t have someone working both sides.”

“Sa’andy.” His voice was calm, but
she recognized the edge to it and winced.

“Yes?”

“Just how involved are you? Miss
I’m-not-read-into-everything?”

“I might be in a little tiny bit
deeper than I said I was.”

“Are you my shadow? Is that why
you came here?”

“No! I was sent here, it’s true,
but you have someone else. Not me. It never had anything to do with
our relationship.”

“Who is my shadow?” He pressed a
little harder, knowing it was pointless.

“I can’t tell you right now. It
would compromise everything.”

“Do you suppose that Hawke was
theirs, then?”

“We never determined that to a
certainty. She didn’t seem to be what I would call…bright…enough?
If they do have someone aboard already, they’re heavily invested,
and that’s why an outside operative was sent in to clean things
up.”

“A sleeper? You think there might
be a sleeper agent here?”

“At a minimum. I’m sorry, Jorge,
any timeline or idea of what we thought might come to pass has
pretty well blown up in our faces.”

“Merde. And here, Dmitry and I
were just commenting on how the Nimitz is a safe haven.”

“My love, if a move is made to
begin hostilities, I think we can expect the Alliance to attempt to
acquire this base as rote.”

۞

Maeve looked down at her hand and
wrist, which was a mirror of the one holding her. She pulled to no
avail. The tremors all around them rose and swelled in a concerto
of destruction. The bunker continued its collapse. Suddenly, Maeve
realized her hand was freed; she covered her ears to the deafening
roar that swirled all around, only to cry out in pain a moment
later. Falling, helpless, she found herself pinned under the rubble
that had been a building. She knew it was something in and of her
mind, but she could not shift any of it.

A scrabbling
noise caught her attention. The other woman…the other her…was
standing up out of the dust, pulling off the mask and headphones.
It
was
her, but
not her. Like a sketch of her, a Maeve replica, smudged around the
edges and incomplete. This other Maeve was a two-dimensional
manikin, a golem created from mud and terror. She came close to
Maeve, staring into her with brackish eyes that would not focus,
burning between them like wet wood instead.

“Mission initiation commenced.
Activation complete.” Maeve was afraid to respond. She didn’t
understand what was happening. She was trapped still under the
debris, paralyzed by uncertainty. The golem scowled at her,
pressing a strange, too-long finger into her shoulder.

“Owner: confirmed. Incapacity:
confirmed. Mission initiation complete.” The false Maeve stood back
up, and turned to the direction from which the true Maeve had come.
She was going to go back, and leave Maeve behind. Panic crept
in.

“Wait! Stop,
deactivate!”

The false her turned her head
back, slightly.

“Command not recognized. Password
not given.” She moved away from Maeve as if she had taken flight.
An instant later, she was a speck in the distance. Maeve was alone
in a dark wasteland; the stars had all blinked out and the crickets
had deserted her. She could feel a scream rising, powerless against
it; she let it out until she felt it exhaust itself.

۞

Dmitry yawned and stood. Maeve was
still swaddled in her drugged cocoon, so he decided to go off to
find Tark. A great many thoughts had been pushing their way past
any sleep he might have otherwise got, anyway. He leaned over
Maeve, and gently kissed her forehead.

“Happy healing. I’ll be back
soon,” he whispered in her ear, wondering whether he was actually
telling the truth. He turned to walk out, leaving her lying still.
The door clicked softly shut, so softly it was barely noticeable,
but her eyes flew open.

۞

It seemed that sleep was not going
to cooperate with any of them. Mrs. Han had opened her doors to
Leif, Grace, Antonio, and Josh, hoping to offer some comfort.
Instead, they had all sat in utter silence for approximately three
hours before trickling down to the street outside. Unspoken
consensus led them to a rowdy Irish pub, fish and chips, and plenty
of beer in which to cry.

“This has pretty well gone to
shit.” Leif was staring at a plate of haddock. Josh leaned
over.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Not that, you idiot.”

“Oh, right. Well…she’s going to be
okay. The rest…I don’t know. Of us all, I never expected Jemi to be
the one….”

“She was a civilian.” Leif
shrugged under the weight of responsibility, misplaced as it
was.

“She was not a civilian. She
wasn’t like us, but…well, she wasn’t just your average college
recruit either. The CIA had found her, brought her in, and trained
her up. I guess it didn’t go too well. She wasn’t really happy with
the spook lifestyle, you know?” They all stared at Grace, who was
mashing her chips with a fork.

“When the hell did you find that
out?”

“Um, like the second day I knew
her. What? Y’all were a little preoccupied.” She pointed her fork
back and forth from Leif to Josh to Wallace.

“I second that. Sorry, I know I
came in late to things, but some of us were doing things that
didn’t involve babysitting a catatonic chick.” The steely look in
Julieta’s eye didn’t invite argument.

“We had our reasons.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not going to sit around
trying to rationalize what I did or didn’t do. We were all trying
to survive, if you recall.” They did recall. At least from the time
they’d come into the project, they’d all been trying to get by.
Leif jabbed his finger into the tabletop between them all. “That’s
what we ought to think about. How many times have we been targeted?
We didn’t even really know what was going on.” He heaved a huge
sigh and rubbed his forehead vigorously.

“He’s right. Imagine where we’d be
if they’d managed to carry out the rest of the conditioning
process?”

“Aside from dead?”

“Yeah, but we got pulled out, told
we were ‘safe’ from the bad guys, and given a new mission. Here’s
what I have to wonder…do we think that the quote-unquote bad guys
never went back to try again?”

“You think this alliance group is
them? The baddies?”

“I don’t think so. It wasn’t
really clear who was trying to carry out that original programming.
Nobody would tell us anything. They just told me that they’d
‘found’ Maeve in a tiny facility in the middle of nowhere, and
rescued her. They basically dumped her through the door, and left.
No medical treatment, no nothing. All I had was their word to go
by.”

“You never told us
that.”

“Gracie, we were in the middle of
nowhere ourselves…the Arctic to our right, our own devices to the
left. Just like an experiment.” Leif paused to let that sink in. “I
had a strong feeling that if I shared my suspicions around, things
might get worse. I…didn’t want them to take her again.”

“What made you think it was an
experiment?” Antonio tried to laugh it off, but he felt a cold
stone of doubt slither through his gut.

“Aside from being trapped in an
icy hellhole?” This theory was nothing new to Josh. He and Leif had
sorted out their thoughts on it some time ago.

“We were handpicked. Sent to an
isolated location. There were cameras everywhere.” As Leif spoke,
Grace sat back in shock. Apparently she had never noticed. “But it
was what went on at night that really convinced me. I never dreamt,
not once, while we were there. I’d put my head down and come to
after what seemed like five minutes, every night, like clockwork.
Tell me any of you had a different experience.” No one said
anything.

“We couldn’t figure it at first,
and we didn’t want to say anything. It was too chancy. The best we
can figure is that we were being drugged or put into a hypnotic
state. Maeve was the only one who never was affected. She’d already
been through the whole process, which of course, we didn’t know
then either.”

“You’re implying that we’ve all
been fully programmed. How would that work, especially now? Any
trigger has surely got to be long lost by now.” Antonio felt both
relieved and unsettled by the thought.

“Maybe. Unless someone has that
information. It’s probably not that Alliance bunch they were
telling us about, though. Otherwise they would have just flipped
the switch and used us.” A million thoughts were running rampant
through Leif’s mind. He was worried about their end of things,
obviously. No denying that they might be in danger, even if the
reason for it seemed a little loopy.

The real concern was the unknown.
He’d never managed to figure out what had actually been done to
Maeve. That had been part of the reason why he’d never wanted to
talk about it to everyone else. Insofar as most of their group had
disliked Wallace, they’d been uncomfortable with Maeve. She’d been
like a worrisome thorn in their collective paw.

Even he had been worried, afraid
of what she might do, but only because he had seen first-hand every
stage of her unraveling. He’d been the one to pick her up out of
the dirt and carry her back. It had been into his ear that she had
spoken all her secrets. When she’d disappeared, he had gone looking
for her. Likewise, when she had been brought to him at his remote
new “posting”, he hadn’t questioned anything. Not until so many
other people had arrived had he thought twice about his supposed
duty at a listening station.

By the time Maeve had resurfaced,
he’d almost convinced himself that she was dead. It wouldn’t have
been the first time someone killed in action had been swept under
the rug. But no. Two men in fatigues had brought her to him. They’d
had no insignia, no names…just a report, and they were gone again.
She’d been in tough shape, if not physically, then in every other
way.

Maeve wouldn’t speak to him,
wouldn’t respond to his questions…not even when he’d tried force.
That had been the worst moment, realizing that she was so gone that
she wouldn’t or couldn’t react to a slap in the face. He’d put her
to bed then, and pretty well left her alone, until Josh had
magically appeared. Just like that, in the middle of the night,
someone new to keep company.

“You can’t let her stay like
this.”

“I feed her, do the other stuff…I
don’t know what else to do. I’m not a nurse.”

“Yeah…I was a corpsman. Wanna let
me have a look?” That had been the first hint. Leif had stifled the
urge to look for cameras right then, thinking how perfect it was
that Josh had happened to arrive.