“Can you see me?” I exhaled the words, barely able to voice the question.
Another flicker of movement, but he didn’t answer. The frown wrinkling his forehead smoothed away, and he snorted, then spat out blood. Sitting forward abruptly, he cut another fast look at me, but the rattle of chains distracted me and I stared at where the shackles were locked on his wrists.
Shackles.
Sitting forward.
Bleeding.
I pushed up abruptly, and the world swayed as the sea beyond him transposed with his image and then snapped back out of focus.
This wasn’t a daydream.
I could see him.
“You can see me.” It wasn’t a question this time. His eyes cut to the right, then he focused on me. The faint dilation of his pupils betrayed his shock and his acknowledgement. “And you’re not alone… Wait…” He’d said something before. “You weren’t alone before. Blink once for yes and twice for no.”
He blinked once.
“You’re with Dirk.”
One blink.
“Someone else is there now.”
One blink.
“Someone you don’t trust.” I mean, that seemed like a given, but I had to know nonetheless.
One blink.
My heart squeezed. “I love you.”
One blink.
“I’m coming.”
Two blinks.
“I’m coming,” I repeated. “Andreas is with me, and Dirk’s men… I have no idea how this is possible, and I’m not telling you any more because…”
My stomach went sour. The memoriam had tried to trick me before. But this was different. This…this was real. I couldn’t feel the coding here as I could there at the end. Yet…I almost wanted to stretch out my fingers to touch Hatch, but I didn’t dare. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I ran a hand over my face, a little shocked at how wet I really was. Even my hair clung to me.
Ninety-eight percent.
Hatch had been at ninety-eight percent cerebral mapping while in the memoriam with me.
“The nanites,” I whispered. I swayed a little. Even my stomach was doing flip flops. The nanites had been connected. Theirs had to have linked with mine while they were injected.
He barely moved, not blinking, his attention focused elsewhere, and then…
One blink.
Like me, sweat coated him, and he paled beneath the layers of multi-colored bruising.
“Querida…” Andreas’ worried voice seemed to reach out to me from a distance, but I didn’t want to look away. I didn’t want to lose the connection with Hatch.
But I had to.
For both of our sakes.
“Together,” I whispered again. “We have to sever this together… I will reach out to you again in a few hours.” I’d been focusing so hard on him and Dirk, that had to have been what activated it. Or maybe it was our current passage across the seas as we headed for Great Britain. Maybe distance was a factor.
I didn’t know.
I just…
“I love you,” I whispered again. “I love you both so much. You hold on for me.”
One blink. Then…the image blurred and I closed my eyes, almost wanting to weep at the loss.
Hands gripped my upper arms, and then I was dragged back against Andreas. “You’re burning up.”
I resisted opening my eyes again for a minute. I allowed myself a minute to wallow in the loss, even as I was so profoundly thankful they were alive and I’d been able to connect with one of them, albeit only briefly. I had so much work to do.
But…one minute.
I leaned into Andreas as he hugged me, despite the sweat drenching me. “Valda, you’re scaring me.”
That galvanized me, and I opened my eyes. Even though I knew I wouldn’t see Hatch, the loss gouged out a piece of me like a knife twisting deep in my soul.
Twisting in his arms, I met Andreas’ tortured gaze. “You won’t believe me…” Prefacing any argument that way left room for doubt. But Andreas lived to poke holes in my arguments, and we made each other better with our debates. “But I saw Hatch.”
“I know you want to see him, querida. I do too…”
“No,” I whispered, putting a hand on his chest over his heart. “I saw him. As easily as I see you right now. The sweat…it’s a biological byproduct of the energy that I must have exerted in conjunction with the nanites. He’d been ninety-eight percent…nintey-eight…mapped cerebrally while in the memoriam. While in me. It’s the only explanation. He was talking to me, but someone was there. Someone he didn’t trust, so he stopped. But it surprised him too, and he was suffering the physical effects.”
Dammit.
I swore, and Andreas rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “Querida, perhaps we should take you inside…” He wore the kind of wary expression one did while worried someone was on the cusp of losing their mind.
Maybe I was.
“I know you don’t believe me. But they’re alive, and I could talk to him. I can make that connection again. I know I can…but I think I will pass out in a moment. Too many calories burned, too much energy taken. I’m nauseated and light-headed. The swaying of the boat is really getting to me, and I’m so hot, but now I’m also chilled.” The wind had seemed to grow much colder.
“It could be shock,” I continued. “You’ll have to keep me warm and bundled for now. Monitor my temperature. We have banana bags and IV nutrients on board. Do you remember how to insert one? Maybe I should do it and take care of it. The nutrients were a requirement in the memoriam, and I thought it was just part of the construct to ease my acceptance of bringing each of you into my mind. A way for my brain to accept your presence. But what if it wasn’t…”
My mind raced.
“Andreas, you have to remember these details in case there is some kind of disrupted short-term to long-term memory transfer.” I really wasn’t holding myself up anymore. My arms and legs had gone to spaghetti, the wobbling of the muscles shaking me like leaves in a windstorm. “But nutrients. Electrolytes. Treat for shock prevention. Heart monitor. I think it’s fine. It’s racing, but I’m excited, too.”
He swept me up while I was speaking, and I ran through some other facts as fast as I could. Observations. How I’d felt. When it happened. What I had been thinking in that exact moment.
Dammit, why hadn’t I taken better mental notes?
I might have said something more. I didn’t know.
The next time my eyes opened, I was lying in the bed we shared in the cabin Campbell had given us. It was the largest on the vessel. An IV was in my arm, and there was a heart monitor beeping. Andreas knelt next to the bed, his hands clasped together and his forehead pressed against them.
Something deep moved inside of me at the show of devotion. He’d lost so much faith in his god. He’d been fighting to find it again, but the struggle was real. The port hole that allowed light from outside was dark.
How long had I been asleep?
“Andreas?” I stretched out my fingers to brush his hair, and he jerked his head up. Relief swept over his face as he caught my hand and rose to sit on the bed and lean over me.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he ordered, sounding more like Dirk than himself. “You scared the hell out of me.”