March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

David

              He was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was freezing.

              As he stood hugging himself, wondering why he was so cold, David looked around the street on which he stood.  Something had changed.

              He peered around, taking stock of what was around him, then he realized all the people were gone.  There had been all sorts of people bustling around, before; now it was just him, alone, on the sidewalk.  The gargoyle who had given him that hot cup of liquid comfort was gone.  Everyone was gone.  Where had they all gone?

              He wished he could go someplace else, too.  This place had gotten so damn cold.

              As he watched, the world around him lost color.  The blue sky turned a pale, cloudy grey.  The building facades – red brick, various colors of vinyl siding, white cinder block – all faded to shades of grey.  Soon, everything around him was grey, and he stood shivering on the silent sidewalk, looking around wildly for some light, some comfort.  This place had felt so safe, before; now it just hurt.

              For some time, he felt only the cold, the loneliness, and the pain.  Then, gradually, he became aware of a glow in the distance.  It was as if there were a warm, golden light emanating from somewhere behind the now-grey buildings.  He could not quite see what it was or from whence it came, but it looked warm.  He shuffled off down the street, toward the golden glow.  It seemed to move further away as he walked toward it, but he followed it anyway, determined to find its source.

Steven

              Steven watched the interrogation on his Wand, in his quarters.  He was rather surprised; he had never seen this side of the General before.  Larsen’s cold and at times cruel behavior toward Deanna made Steven feel unsettled and deeply uncomfortable.  He knew, though, that his unsettled feelings must stem from a lack of understanding of his superior officer’s methods. He knew the General would never act irrationally or with bad intentions.

              When he saw Larsen head toward the door, he Broomed to meet him outside the little cell.  He glanced at Deanna through the glass and felt a pang of guilt at her apparent abject misery, but did his best not to let his feelings show as he greeted the General.

              “Sir,” he said with a nod.

              “Drisbane, you didn’t have to come.  Like I said, I won’t need you today, just want you to observe.”

              Steven shrugged, not knowing what to say.

              “It’s going well, I think,” Larsen continued.

              “Is it, sir?”

              “Haven’t you been observing?”

              “Yes, sir.  I have.  It’s odd, seeing you behave like that,” Steven admitted.

              “It’s a role, Ensign, just a role.  For her good just as much as ours.”

              “How so?”

              “Well,” Larsen began, then sighed thoughtfully.  “Do you remember boot camp?”

              “Yessir.  Not my favorite memories.”

              “Ha!” The general clapped Steven on the shoulder as he barked a laugh.  “For none of us, my boy.  But it was necessary to be broken down in that way before we could be built back up as better men.”

              Steven considered this for a moment.  He wasn’t completely sure that he was a better man than he had been before enlisting.  He was older, certainly, and wiser, but he attributed that more to the organization and the passage of time than he did to boot camp.  For the most part, he considered boot camp an unpleasant hurdle one had to overcome in order to prove one’s commitment to enlisting.  He certainly wasn’t sure it had helped him in any way.  It had just been a necessary evil to get to where he now was.

              “I’m not really sure I follow you, sir,” he said aloud.

              Larsen gave him a long, considering look that went on for a second longer than Steven was comfortable with.  His hand started twitching as he waited for the General to say something.  Finally, the older man said, “Miss Flanagan suffers from some pretty serious self-esteem issues, I’m sure you’ve noticed.  She has dealt with them in her own way, but it may be more effective to break her down to the nuts and bolts, and let her see she’s still there, still standing.”

              Nodding slowly, Steven said, “Like some kind of immersion therapy, almost.”  He wanted to believe this, but felt a bit as if he were trying to convince himself.

              “Precisely.  Also, I’m wondering if Carver could have done something to her brain, to compromise her.  To prevent her from sharing any pertinent information about him.  The only way to find that out is to really get inside her head and see what makes her tick.”

              Steven digested all of this.  When he looked at it in this light, he was able to see that Larsen’s seemingly abusive behavior toward Deanna was really for the greater good, as he had known it would be.  It would benefit not only the organization, but Deanna herself.  It was a necessary evil, just like boot camp had been.  He nodded once, firmly, and said, “I understand now, sir.”

              “Good man,” the general said, jovially.  “Now I must confer with the techs, then get back to it.  You continue observing, and enjoy some well-deserved down time.”

              “Thank you, sir,” Steven answered, feeling suddenly tired.  “I will.”

              Back in his quarters, Steven lay on his bed and stared at the screen of his Wand, where he saw Deanna’s now tear-stained face as she waited for General Larsen to return.  He found he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, but he struggled to do so.  Eventually, he must have lost the battle, because the next thing he knew, he was dreaming.

              In his dream, he stood in a long hall.  There were people standing throughout the hall, some of whom he recognized; General Larsen was there, and Carver … even John and Eric, the techs.  No one moved, though; they simply stood around in this giant hall, as still and silent as statues.  With perfect dream logic, Steven figured he should do the same, though he wasn’t sure why.

              After a moment, he noticed a light coming from somewhere behind him, growing brighter by the second.  Unable to resist his curiosity, he turned toward the light, and saw it was coming from Deanna.  She was standing on some sort of a platform in the center of the hall, a bit higher up than everyone else, and she was
glowing.
  Though she, too, stood perfectly still, a light seemed to radiate from within her.  Within seconds, she was glowing as brightly as the sun, and he had to shield his eyes.  As he did so, he experienced a sense of vertigo and peeked between his fingers.  He realized he was moving, being pulled toward Deanna as if by some magnetic force.  A quick glance around him showed him that everyone was being pulled toward her.

              Unable to resist, he allowed himself to be pulled by this unseen current, and then found he was enveloped into that bright, golden light.  It was like flying into the sun.  The shock of being completely engulfed into that bright glow caused him to breathe in sharply, which woke him up.

              He sat up and glanced at the clock.  Only five minutes had passed; he hadn’t missed anything important.  A quick glance at his Wand showed him that Larsen was only now returning to the cell to resume interrogating Deanna.  That was a relief. 

Steven sat up and shook his head, trying to shake the strange feeling the dream had left in him.  He focused on watching the interview on his wand and tried to put the dream out of his mind.

Eric

              Eric was at his computer, as he almost always was, scanning days’ worth of data from the Eyes.  There was currently no visible trace of Carver, in Woodford or anywhere else on Earth.

              “I’m bored,” John announced from across the room.  Eric ignored him.

              After a few minutes passed, John continued, “I don’t know why you keep looking at that garbage, anyway.  There’s no sign of him.”

              “It’s weird,” Eric mumbled back.  “I just feel like we’re missing something.”

              General Larsen suddenly materialized next to John, causing both techs to jump slightly.  John nearly fell off his chair.  Recovering himself, he frowned at the General and said, “There are doors, y’know.  You don’t strictly HAVE to use the Broom to enter a room.”

              “Gentlemen,” Larsen said in greeting, ignoring John’s comment.  “How goes it?”

              “Nothing new,” Eric answered, barely glancing away from the screen.

              “That’s okay,” the General assured him.  “I actually want you to turn your attention to Miss Flanagan, at the moment.  Run some scans on her today, and compare them to the test results from yesterday.  I’m particularly interested in her brain activity and energy signatures.  Just curious if there are any changes.  Actually, keep an eye on her molecular structure, too.  Keep an eye on everything about her.  Let me know if there are any changes from yesterday, or if you find any anomalies at all.”

              Eric shrugged and nodded, while John sighed and rolled his eyes.

              “Good men,” Larsen stated, then pushed the button on his Broom and vanished.

              “That’s all you, bro,” John said, drily. 

              Eric was already tapping away at his keyboard, running scans of Deanna in her cell.  He began analyzing the data, paying particular attention to the specific intangibles the General had mentioned.  He compared the new scans with those of the day before.  After a few moments, he pulled up a visual scan of the subject’s molecular energy output, and another from the day before.  He stared at the nearly-identical images for a few moments before murmuring, “Hey, do you see that?”

              John did not turn away from the video game he was currently playing.  “Nope.”

              Eric stared at the screen for a few moments, then rubbed his eyes and shook his head, deciding he was overtired. 

              For a second, he had thought he saw Carver’s energy signature flickering around Deanna’s molecular energy.  He knew that was impossible, though; energy signatures were created by the presence of a living being, and how could Carver have been inside the actual molecules that the woman was comprised of?

              Still, it was odd.  He thought he’d better inform the General, even if it was just fatigue causing him to imagine things.  He should get a second opinion from someone in charge.

He checked Larsen’s location and watched him interview Deanna for a moment, waiting for an opportune time to interrupt.  After watching for a few minutes, he decided he’d better not bother the General with such an improbable and weird observation until he was in a better mood.

              Across the desk from him, John leaned over with a curious expression, having overheard Larsen’s interview with Deanna coming from Eric’s Wand.  Quietly, he tuned his own device to the interview, too, and the two techs watched in silence.

Deanna

              Deanna was beginning to feel nauseous.

              She had felt alternately terrified, irritated, frustrated, aghast, horrified, and emotionally crippled since today’s interrogation had begun.  However, since her current experience and its duration depended on General Larsen’s mercy, at this point, she had no outlet for any of the above feelings.  So, they all settled in her stomach as a churning sea of nausea while she tried to navigate his seemingly never-ending stream of terrible, prying questions and comments about some of her darkest and most personal experiences.

              “Tell me about your parents, Miss Flanagan,” the General’s voice sounded much further away than it should.  He was sitting not two feet away from her, but the sea of thoughts, emotions, and now physical illness inside her separated her focus from him, making him seem further away.

              “Don’t you already know?” she responded numbly.  “I’m sure you’ve checked them out, too.”

              “Yes,” the General said bluntly, “but I’d like to know your feelings about them.”

              “I love them.  Obviously.  They’re my parents.”

              “So you love them because of shared DNA?”

              She closed her eyes for a second, willing the annoyance she felt not to come out in her voice.  “It’s more than that, I’m sure you know.  They are my parents.  They created me, they helped me become the person I am.”

              “Yes, for better or worse, I suppose that’s true.” Larsen looked at his notes again.  “I see they also loaned you a considerable amount of money just a few months ago?”

              She already knew they knew everything about her, and felt like the shock of that fact should have worn off by now.  However, Larsen’s words made her heart feel like it had been replaced by a balled up fist.  Her throat suddenly tightened around the lump that was forming inside of it, rendering her unable to speak, so she simply nodded.  She hated the fact that he knew about what felt like one of her biggest failures in recent history.

              “I imagine this was because of your unemployed state?  You are unable to support yourself?”

              She nodded again, swallowing hard and fighting the tears that threatened to spill out from behind her eyes.

              “Have you considered applying for some kind of assistance?  There is government aid, in this country, for people like you.”

              Blinking away her tears, Deanna croaked, “I don’t need that kind of help.  I just need to find a job.”

              “But, Miss Flanagan, perhaps it is time to consider that you are simply not equipped to be a functioning member of society.  Most people don’t have enforced trips to mental hospitals in their adolescent years.  Surely, if you were able, you would have found a suitable career by your advanced age.  You are moving rapidly toward forty, you know.  Do you really think waiting tables and pouring cocktails is adequate employment for an adult?”

              She realized there was no use fighting her own body as her tears burned her eyes.  “I’m able to work, I’m fine. And I’m going to get out of the restaurant industry, I think. I’m thinking lately I may be burned out.  I think there’s something else for me out there.  I just haven’t found my path yet.” These phrases that she had told herself time and time again tumbled out of her mouth, almost unbidden.  “Some people are just late bloomers.”  Her voice sounded hollow and empty to her own ears as she recited the words that usually comforted her.

              “Oh, dear.  Do you really believe that?”  Larsen sounded vaguely amused.

              “Julia Child didn’t even start cooking ‘til she was forty,” Deanna continued.  It was an encouraging tidbit of information that her father had recently told her, and to which she clung in her darkest moments of self-doubt.  “Colonel Sanders didn’t start selling chicken until he was over forty.  There’s no deadline to success.”

              Larsen’s response was a long, hearty laugh.  He actually laughed so hard that he had to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes before saying, “You really have done a number on yourself, with these self-delusions.” He paused for a moment to catch his breath and shake his head slowly.  “This is as good a time as any to take a break, I suppose.  I need to come up with a strategy to try and help you fix all of the mental damage you’ve done to yourself.”

              “It’s not mental damage,” she protested weakly.

              He heaved a sigh as he stood up.  “The fact that you don’t see it that way only proves that it is, Miss Flanagan.”  He removed his Wand from his pocket and tapped away at the screen.  His comfortable armchair disappeared, and a toilet and sink appeared in their place.  There were no walls or door around them, and they were immediately in front of the one way glass wall that provided no privacy.  “Clean yourself up and do whatever you need to do.  We will resume our talk in a bit.”

              The general left the little room.  Deanna stared at the toilet and sink for a moment, then at her reflection in the glass.  After a few minutes, she broke into sobs.