When Hatch reached Dirk, they clasped hands in a friendly greeting. Exhaling a long breath, I closed my eyes. This was what perfect peace felt like…here, with my guys, and…when I opened my eyes, I stared at the painting on the wall in front of me. All muted colors, lacking definition, and yet, it was the brightest thing in the rooms of endless white.
Gone was the sliding glass door and the sheers floating in the breeze. Gone was my beautiful ocean view.
A tear splashed down my cheek. My guys weren’t there either. None of us were there. No, we were trapped in this hellish place. It was as though all the memories were there, just beyond my grasp, and like the view, the window, and the breeze…those too were gone, leaving me to the sterile place that looked more and more like a prison.
Swiping at the tears, I pivoted and strode to the hall hatchway.
“Good morning, Dr. Bashan,” the computer offered in mechanical tones.
“Oh, put a sock in it,” I told the machine as I left. Once in the hallway, I looked to the right, then the left. The same barren, white hall with its nondescript hatchways leading to all of their various quarters. I’d been inside each one to wake them.
Hadn’t I? Yes…Hatch had been ill, and I’d worried about him. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. No. He hadn’t been ill. He’d been relieved. It was the sickest sense of déjà vu where my memory and reality didn’t seem to agree.
A hiss of air warned me a door opened, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself face to face with Andreas. When had I moved?
“Valda?” Concern echoed in his voice, and reflected in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
The image of him shimmered, and I blinked back the tears. I was not given to overt displays of emotion, but I couldn’t stop the splash dampening my cheeks or landing on my hand as I lifted it. “I …”
“Hey,” he said, catching my arms and tugging me forward. “What’s wrong?”
“I…I don’t know.” Then he had me in a hug, and I was holding on for dear life. The man was a priest, but he was also rock solid and steady. The shifting ground beneath my feet seemed to settle. I didn’t know how long we stood there like that, but I did slowly recognize I was digging my nails into his back and tried to ease the pressure. The tears finally abated, and when I would have pulled away, he eased me forward.
“Come on, come sit. I’ll make some coffee.” Coffee. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet.
Sniffing and a little horrified by the loss of control, I nodded, and he kept an arm around me as he guided me inside. The interior of his suite remained as plain as mine had been with the painfully bright white walls. The furniture was all done in neutral tones, but they didn’t add a lick of warmth to the coldness of it all.
“Here,” he said, leading me over to the sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll get the coffee. Okay?” A hesitancy marked his every word and gesture, as though he feared I would react badly to—well, to anything, I supposed. Perching on the edge of the sofa, I pressed a hand to my chest and concentrated on my breathing. Everything was taut and tight inside, as if a band kept my lungs from expanding fully. Even the low-grade headache I’d been experienced returned.
Was I getting sick?
What a horrific thought. Illness had a tendency to isolate most people, particularly after the outbreak. I’d had—three colds I could remember since childhood. Each one a little worse than the last, but I’d spent most of the time after developing symptoms in controlled environments.
Blink.
“Valda, you must stay in this room, do you understand?” Mother knelt in front of me and clasped my hands. Normally, the gesture would calm me, but not this time. While my fingers were bare, hers were encased in blue surgical gloves. A mask hid her face from me. Papa was behind the glass, not even in the room. I looked from her dark brown eyes to his rich blue ones, then back again. “Valda, you must answer when I speak to you. Do you understand?”
Blink.
“Valda?” Andreas sat next to me on the sofa, a cup of coffee in his hand and a worried look in his eyes.
“Maybe I need the coffee more than I thought.” Attempting to regather my composure, I accepted the mug. The heat penetrated the ice in my fingers. I wasn’t in the isolation ward, despite the sterile walls…I was in the Rescue One biosphere. The mental refrain didn’t ease the thud of my heart against my ribs. Every slam so loud, surely it reverberated in the room.
“Maybe.” He scratched at the scruff on his cheek, but kept his worried gaze pinned on me.
“Aren’t you having any?” I took a sip of the coffee, and swallowed the scalding mouthful. It burned a path down my back on its way to my stomach. Kind of like some fairy fire, illuminating me from the inside out. Maybe I wasn’t inside a glass bubble—maybe I was the glass figure in the wrong world.
“In a minute. Something has upset you…what can I do?” His normally reserved nature seemed absent. He was more likely to bait me into a better mood with a heated argument than with TLC. If I needed the sweetness, I went to Oz.
Blink.
“What are you doing down here?” Papa stood at the bottom of the wooden steps leading down the gentle hill from our home. I was supposed to be studying, but I wanted to play in the sand and feel the sun. I was so tired of being inside after four days of terrible storms.
“Come look for treasures with me, Papa!” I jumped up and carried over the one I’d just dug up. It was a bottle, perfectly shaped, and it even had the logo still in place. The green glass caught the sun just right and shimmered.
“Treasure, little one?” He squatted down and took the bottle into his hands with absolute care. “Your mother will be upset with us if we don’t finish your studies.”
“No she won’t, she’s in the lab.” Mama was always in the lab. I hated it in there, it was so—forbidding. I was never allowed to touch anything, and Mama could disappear there for hours.
“True.” Papa appeared to consider it. “Well then, let us go see what treasures the storm brought us…”
Blink.
Andreas touched my knee, and I stared at him. Right. Andreas. Coffee. His quarters. Another hot sip, and then I sucked in a desperate gulp of air. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you some questions?”
“Not at all.” Though his eyes grew more guarded. At least he didn’t withdraw his hand, the weight of it on my leg offered something tangible to keep me in the moment. “What did you want to ask?”
“Do you…believe in past lives?” Perhaps not the best question to frame to a priest. “I’m sorry, you obviously don’t believe in far eastern concepts.”
“I don’t? Is it tattooed on me somewhere?” The bite edging his tone relaxed me. That was better.
“Well, you are a priest, aren’t you?” Or was that from one of the disappearing visions?
“I was.” He nodded once, then squeezed my knee before rising. “I left the collar a while ago.”
Blink.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him as he carried the garment toward the bonfire. “You may yet change your mind.”
“I left the church a long time ago, mi alma.” He tossed it into the flames, then turned to face me. The breeze from the beach tousled his hair. He looked healthier, better than he had in months. The decision had weighed upon him, weighed on us all, if I were honest. “I have walked this world, I have given succor to the weak, and aid to those in need of a hand. I have walked until my feet were blistered and my skin broken. I have given alms to the indigent, prayers to the dying, and accepted the confessions of all kinds.”