“We’re forever. Believe that.” Despite the flickering image overlaying the rigid man, I couldn’t quite reconcile the two. The memory was so…hot and protective and fierce. The one standing there now? He was just fierce.
Stiffness marked every man facing me. Guarded expressions. Squared shoulders. Frozen expressions. “What work would that be, gorgeous?” Hatch leaned forward. Of all of them, he seemed the most animated. A hint of glee filled his blue eyes, and I would have sworn he was up to something. In fact, my gut said he’d done something he shouldn’t have.
But how could I know that?
“The Rescue One mission.” Absolute silence greeted my statement. “You know, the one where we escape this place—all of us? It’s the only mission that matters. If we don’t escape, we don’t get our lives back.”
“Yes.” Hatch exhaled the word delightfully, fists clenched. “Damn right, that’s our mission.”
“You son of a bitch.” Andreas spun away from the island and stared at Hatch. “What the hell did you do?”
The priest didn’t give the Brit a chance to answer before he struck him. The two men went down in a grapple of fists and cursing. Oz stood and glared at Dirk. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
To my shock, Dirk merely gave him a tight-lipped smile and filled his own mug with coffee. “No, I’m not.” Stunned, I started around the island, but Dirk waved one finger at me. “Neither are you.”
The men were up again, and then Hatch sent the priest tumbling over a chair in the sitting area beyond the community kitchen. The man nearly crashed into one of the exercise machines, and I winced.
“We can’t just let them…” Oz protested, and he made it two steps before Dirk caught his arm.
“We can, and we will. Hatch did something…and Andreas needs to let off some steam.” The advice seemed ground out from behind clenched teeth, but he pulled the doctor back to the island and then shot me a look. “They’ll be fine, Valda. Hatch won’t hurt him.”
“What about Andreas hurting Hatch?”
A crash sounded, followed by the shattering of a lamp—or maybe it was a monitor. I couldn’t see. Each time I made a move to get a better look, Dirk blocked me.
“He’ll live.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing in his opinion, and decided against asking. However, I did flatten my hands on the island. If I was in charge of our mission, I needed to be in charge. “Be that as it may…if we’re actually supposed to be forever, why would you let them hurt each other?” It was a gamble—a test. Maybe it was just a hope. After all, it was so irrational to think my lifepod-induced hallucinations were real.
Dirk had frozen again—actually, so had Oz. I blinked, but it seemed to take eons for my eyelashes to descend and then rise again. In the space of that time, neither man moved. Leaning to my left, I stared beyond them to where Andreas seemed frozen in mid-air. He’d come over the sofa to tackle Hatch. The latter had twisted to meet the mad—priest? The man was a priest?—with the most unrepentant and damn near joyful grin on his face.
Maybe Dirk was right. Blinking, I jerked as sound and motion crashed in around me. The weight of Andreas’ fist colliding with Hatch’s jaw was audible all the way over here.
“What did you say?” Dirk asked.
“Nothing,” I lied. This was more than a hallucination. Far more. The two men across the room were intent on thrashing each other, and at least one of them seemed to be enjoying himself.
Time had stopped.
I hadn’t imagined that last part.
The mission was quite correct.
We needed to get out of this place.
It took another ten minutes, but bruised and bloody, the battle ended between the pirate and the priest. Pirate. Priest. Protector. Physician.
They lined up across from me once more, and everything seemed fine.
But it wasn’t—the fineness was an illusion.
What else was?
Chapter 3
“Love is giving someone the ability to destroy you, but trusting them not to.” - Unknown
Day Two
Awkward hadn’t begun to describe the rest of our meal. Finally, when the guys continued to demonstrate a lack of interest in talking—I left. Yes, a less than bold choice. A part of me wanted to demand answers, particularly with their evasive gazes avoiding any contact with mine. Another part of me wanted to head to my lab, but our escape didn’t really seem to be science-linked. Or at least, not the research I’d been doing. The walk back to my room seemed the safer bet, but that too had been rife with phantom images juxtaposed over the empty hallways.
Once back in my suite, new images replayed. In some, I was alone, in others—in others, one or more of the men put in an appearance. To call them unsettling would be an understatement. The images not only moved and spoke of their own accord—but in some of them, the men were dressed, and in others, they most certainly were not.
And there wasn’t an unattractive one in the bunch. The sensations of being touched—a hand on my cheek, or the weight of arms around me—left my pulse racing and my skin tingling. At one point, I’d gone to bed, only to feel a weight settle in next to me. When I summoned the lights on, I was alone.
Maybe I needed to read up on the side effects of lifepod use. Not that there had ever been much in the way of published studies. Science and research had taken blow after blow in the wake of the outbreak, which decimated the worldwide population. People would rather light a candle or put a name in a prayer bowl, than be inoculated or reach out to the feckless, amoral, and atheistic scientists and their bastard children—doctors.
Aggravation swam through my blood when I jerked awake for the last time. The room around me was quiet, save for a breeze rustling the sheer drapes over the open door facing the ocean. Dirk argued with me about sleeping with the door open on so many occasions, but I hated being caged inside. I loved the ocean, the sound of the waves soothed me, and the smell of salt air and fresh breezes was far preferable to the recycled air in the lab.
I spent enough time locked away, and I craved freedom whenever I wasn’t in the lab. Rising, I stretched my arms over my head and padded towards the open curtain. The breeze pushed it toward me, and the fabric caressed my skin as I brushed it aside.
Light trickled over the scene below, pinks and purples giving the world shade and depth. The white crest of the foam on the water relentlessly teasing the shore called to me. Below, I spotted Dirk waiting on the sand.
Of course he was. He knew my first stop would be the beach, where I’d practice my yoga. If the rains came, I’d use the indoor porch. Thankfully, the skies above were clear, except for a few clouds to mar the pristine violet.
Laughter floated on a breeze, a wild bark of masculine amusement. Hatch strolled into view, his jeans hugging his hips, and he wore a short-sleeved shirt that fluttered with the breeze. I’d know his swagger anywhere. Though the shadow cast by the facility hid him, I also didn’t doubt the shirt was loud, floral, and obnoxious. He liked to pretend he was devil-may-care and why bother, but I knew better.
I saw him.