TWENTY-THREE
ALESIA
Last night changed everything.
Here in this hotel room, huddled under the covers, listening to the water running in the bathroom . . . it’s the safest I’ve felt in months. I peek out at the closed door. I’d be lying if I said I’m not thinking a little about what he looks like under that shower—not bad, if the muscles and magnificent rug of chest hair I caressed can be filed as topographical evidence. If we’ve never been all the way, have I ever seen him entirely naked? I did get a good look at his upper half last night, but we were in the dark, and, well, it was a different kind of intimacy, an aftermath. We were both exhausted, and neither of us were truly in the mood to explore beyond the comfortable boundaries of this newly reawakened tenderness between us.
I bite my lower lip, fighting a secret grin against my pillow. I have a boyfriend, and this morning, in the bleak light of dawn, my world feels different. Broader, brighter. There’s an us; it’s no longer just me groping my way in the dark. March walks at my side, carries my memories, a part of me. A treasure box he kept for me until I returned. I want to make the most of the life he promised to give back to me. I want to tell my father and Joy I’m alive; I want to see my old apartment, walk in New York streets, and rediscover all the people, the places I’ve forgotten.
But that can’t happen yet. Now that I’m fully awake, the weight of reality slowly settles on my shoulders again. March was right: if I go home now, all I’ll accomplish will be leading either the Lions or Erwin right to my family’s doorstep. Like a seed taking root in my heart, I feel the need to protect them grow stronger. I can’t go to them yet, but I’ll find my way back to them.
For now . . . my stomach is growling. There’s a bottle of water and a bowl of complimentary vanilla wafers sitting on a small wooden desk by the window. Still floating in my now thoroughly wrinkled Rompetrol sweatshirt, I sit up in bed and rub my hands. Breakfast is served.
I turn the TV on and plop myself back on the bed. Careful to eat above the bowl because I know March is going to freak out if he sees crumbs in his sheets, I flip through the channels, looking for any kind of English-speaking news. I’ve been deprived of actual reliable information for far too long to settle for teleshopping . . . I grunt in appreciation when I stumble on CNN between a soap opera and an ad for pizza-flavored chips.
I munch on my wafers and watch with interest as the anchors discuss President Steed’s recent decision to appoint Steed International Broadcasting’s CFO as Secretary of Commerce—it doesn’t help that the guy is Steed’s cousin . . .
Meanwhile, March seems to be done with his shower. The door opens to reveal a freshly shaven Prince Charming. I swear this man was born with a no-wrinkles setting. He dusts something on his sleeve—I don’t even know what; there’s nothing there. His gaze immediately sets on the bowl in my hands, like a laser pointer. I hastily place it on the nightstand, flushing with irrational guilt. “I don’t think there’re any crumbs . . .”
He clears his throat. “I didn’t see any.”
So he was checking . . . March walks to the bed and sits by my side while, in the background, the anchors keep droning about unemployment rates for December. I’m no longer really paying attention because March’s knuckles are slowly trailing down my cheek.
“How do you feel today?”
I lean into his touch. “Okay . . . No, pretty good actually.”
His hand skims up and down my arm. His lips graze my hair, my ear shell, trace my jaw, silently asking for permission. I inhale his scent, his aftershave, and something citrusy, soap maybe. His hesitation, mine . . . it’s so much like a first kiss. Feeling bold, I rest a hand on his shoulder and seek his mouth. I feel his smile when my lips brush his. I cup his cheeks in my palms, the skin there almost smooth from a close shave. With a trembling intake of air, I take the lead, capturing his lower lip and tasting the sweet, minty flavor of toothpaste.
It’s easier than I imagined it’d be—instinctual, really. I’m not even scared when he kisses me back in earnest, and the kiss gets a little wet, a little desperate. In fact, I never want to stop. March is slowly bringing us down into the pillows. I touch the tip of my tongue to his, and make a silent prayer that this moment will last.
He’s eventually the one who pulls away to stroke my cheeks with his thumbs. “I missed this so much . . .”
“Me too,” I whimper, and it’s true. I just didn’t consciously know it.
His mouth finds a wonderful spot on my neck, right under my ear, one that’s apparently deserving of a thorough hickey. His voice is deep and breathless against my skin. “I missed you so much . . . every day . . .”
I’m not entirely sure where this is going, and I vaguely remember I was supposed to get ready, but one of his palms is reaching up my thigh, working its way to my hip. I’m in for the ride. I wrap my legs around him, and my eyes roll back in delight.
Odysseus.
The word registers in my brain like a blade slicing through our little bubble of lust. I jerk against March and scramble to a sitting position on the bed.
For him too, the bubble has burst, and the usual lines of worry have reappeared, weighing on his features. “What’s going on?”
“I-I need to listen to this,” I stammer, grabbing the remote to raise the TV’s volume.
. . . A difficult hearing tomorrow for newly appointed NASA Administrator James Zwicky. All eyes will be turned to the House of Representatives as the committee on Science, Space and Astrology asks: Where is Odysseus?
It’s been 197 days since Odysseus’s disastrous launch attempt that claimed the lives of nine American astronauts. “The costliest calculation error of aeronautics history,” to quote Vice President McLean, is still purported to rest some 18,000 feet underwater at the bottom of the Litke Deep, an oceanic trench located to the northeast of Greenland.
The red planet was at hand’s reach, but Odysseus, a pharaonic seventeen-year-long project reported to have cost nearly a trillion dollars to the United States, will not be. The first of its kind, the spaceship was designed to dock a 130-feet-wide habitable artificial-gravity ring currently orbiting Earth and carry it all the way to Mars in four months to establish the first permanent settlement on the red planet.
But the dream has turned into a nightmare, as experts have been working nonstop over the past six months to recover the ship and its third-generation nuclear ion reactor. Today, after Greenpeace announced a plan to deploy two small submarines to look for signs of potential radioactive contamination in the area, NASA issued a statement to reaffirm that the main reactor was never started, as the ship crashed before reaching orbit, during the disassembly of its Falcon 13 rockets.
I stare blankly at the TV, as the off-screen voice comments on images of the wheel-shaped living quarters that awaited Odysseus’s crew in stationary orbit. Portraits flash one after another, listing the lives lost during the failed launch. Hillstone, Chopra, Beauchamp, Jamal . . .
I rub the heel of my palm against my forehead, trying to remember what’s so important about this. “Anies . . . he mentioned something about Odysseus.” I search my memory and see Stiles again, giving him the absinthe. “He toasted us. He raised his glass to Odysseus’s journey!”
March’s brow creases in doubt. “He could have been referring to something else. Are you certain he meant that ship?”
“I don’t know . . . Maybe Erwin would. Do you think we could try to sort of . . . trade intel with him? Or just drop the hint and see if he reacts?”
“Island, I’d rather work on severing all ties with him at the moment.” He gets up from the bed and walks to the window. “Starting with the two agents who spent the night outside.”
I watch in curiosity as he parts the threadbare beige curtains just an inch, enough to glance down the street. He doesn’t close them though. He scans the place, his eyes progressively narrowing.
“What is it? Is there something wrong?”
“I’m not certain, but we need to leave.”
I jump from the bed and slip on my yoga pants, an unpleasant prickling rushing down my spine. “Right now?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, I see the magic suitcase in his hands. One, two silenced guns get secured in a double holster around his torso while I put on my boots. He grabs a couple of magazines that go into an extra pouch on the side. A handful of mints from the precious tube that never leaves him before he takes his dark-plaid blazer . . . and throws it at me. “Wear it.”
“Why?”
“Island, we don’t have time.”
I’m about to demand an explanation when the bedroom’s phone rings, a shrill, old-fashioned metallic sound. March shakes his head silently, but the phone won’t stop ringing, each attempt whipping my heart rate up a little faster. I shrug on the blazer, registering its unusual weight on my shoulders and the stiff material underneath the lining—bulletproof?
March slams his magic suitcase shut and presses his thumb to a tiny fingerprint scan on the side. A small digital screen lights up, glowing blue against the case’s sleek black material. He types in some sort of code and holds out his hand for me. “Bathroom window,” he hisses.
He can’t be serious. “We’re on the second floor!” I protest, a rush of cold air hitting my face as he opens the window.
“There’s a garage below.”
It’s the only explanation I get before he grabs me by the waist and hauls me up onto the toilet lid and then through the window. Oh God . . . there is a row of snowy tin roofs right under the window, but they look so far, miles below . . . I scan the cracked concrete buildings surrounding us and grip the wooden frame, willing myself to take the leap. In the bedroom, the ringing has stopped.
“Island, jump!”
Does it count as domestic abuse if your boyfriend pushes you through a window? I’m not given any time to ponder this as March shoves me, and I land ass-first on the roof. The powdery snow cushions my fall somewhat, but a crack of pain announces a bruise. March follows right afterward, his weight making the structure shake dangerously.
I’m a heartbeat away from cardiac arrest, and I still have no idea what’s going on, or who we’re fleeing from, until I see a black Hummer parked down the street that looks nothing like the tired Dacias scattered on the nearby parking lot. Definitely not from the neighborhood. Like the four men who just jumped out and are now running toward us. They’re wearing ordinary civilian clothes, but the guns in their hands tell another story . . .
“You said Erwin’s men were watching us—” I yelp as March helps me roll down the roof and onto the ground. Barely protected by the yoga pants, my knees protest at all that scraping and bumping in icy weather.
“They’re dead.”
Cold fear prickles down my spine. That can mean only one thing: Anies’s “brothers” have found us.
We take cover between two garages when the first shots tear through the air, some slamming into the sturdy brick walls shielding us. Reddish brick chips explode mere feet above my head, and I shield it reflexively, huddled against March. He takes my hand and pulls me, forcing my legs into action. Gunshots crack above us, coming from the bathroom’s window, as we race along the line of brick and concrete sheds toward the safe haven of a garage that seems to be missing one of its doors.
We’re almost there when I register that above us, the shooting has stopped. There’s a beat of unnerving silence before a deafening boom rips through me, shattering glass and stone. I turn my head to see the gaping hole that was once our bathroom window vomiting clouds of black smoke. The magic suitcase—it was still on the bed—I’m figuring whoever touched it shouldn’t have . . .
While, behind us, the Lions are probably looking for their bearings after the explosion, we tumble inside the open garage. There, a dismembered car and rusty tools are slowly fading under layers of grime and dust. March drags me toward a corner and drops me unceremoniously behind a stack of old tires. “Stay here.”
I wish I were strong enough to hold him back, but I can barely control my own fear as he moves a few feet away to take cover behind the car’s brownish carcass, with a perfect vantage point to the street outside. Several rounds of shots clank into the garage’s remaining wooden door, and I press my hands over my ears to block the painful buzzing in my eardrums. I can hear footsteps crushing gravel outside, distant screams—panicked neighbors, no doubt. Near the doorway, a shadow briefly grazes the ground before vanishing just as fast. They’re circling the garage.
Guided by faint scraping sounds coming from the other side, March aims one of his guns at the worm-eaten door. Slowly. Calmly. I watch in morbid fascination as his arm follows the imperceptible movements of an invisible target outside the shed. His face is perfectly blank; there’s no life in the blue eyes I know, only cold calculation. A little chunk of me shatters at the thought that maybe the man I spent the night with isn’t here anymore . . . I clench my fists to stop the tremors shaking my body.
Under the black wool of his turtleneck, the muscles in his arm bunch, ready to absorb the recoil. He’s perfectly still as he presses the trigger, and on the other side of the door, a man collapses with a groan of surprise. The second after, March has rolled away from his hiding spot and the barrage of bullets that shreds the door. Curled behind the tires, I clasp my hands over my mouth in a desperate effort not to scream.
March retreats into a darkened corner of the garage. With the door now destroyed, he takes another shot, and I glimpse a blond guy falling to the ground in the street. Stiles? No . . . it’s not him. The remaining men momentarily retreat, right before one of them throws something our way that clanks onto the concrete floor and rolls under the car. I immediately picture a grenade, and panic explodes in my chest. But instead I register a low hissing sound, and a thick, acrid smoke starts filling the shed.
March roars, “Island, cover your face!”
I lift my sweatshirt’s neck to protect my nose and mouth . . . a second too late. The first inhalation makes me choke and cough through the fabric. My eyes are stinging so badly tears blur my vision; the men storming the garage are little more than terrifying shadows. Over the blood pounding in my ears, the hoarse shouts, and the gunshots, I manage to focus on a single goal: hinder their progression. One after another, I kick at the tires stacked in front of me and send them rolling toward the blurry shapes barreling inside the shed. A few feet away from me, a chilling scream echoes through the smoke, and a splash of blood arcs into the air, landing with a splatter on the car’s rust-covered side. I grit my teeth, panting fast. Please . . . not March. Please!
I crawl toward a pearly gray smudge that could be the sky outside, the heavy bulletproof blazer hindering my progress. In the midst of the confusion, I recognize the sound of March’s suppressed gun right before a body crashes to the ground inches from my right hand. Lifeless eyes see past me, and the blood runs and runs, dark, from a wound on the man’s forehead. I look away and drag myself toward the light, hoping I’ll be able to breathe, see something at last, and maybe March already got out, and we can escape . . .
I hold on to that tiny sliver of hope, and when gravel scrapes my palms, I barely feel it. All I know is I made it out. I try to scramble up and find my bearings, but the moment I start to rise on shaky legs, pain explodes in my ribs. I roll onto my back, blinking up at the ghost who kicked me back to the ground. It’s when he bends down to grab my hair that I see the eye patch, and an inhuman scream rips through my throat. Pirate Morgan hauls me to my knees while I desperately claw at his gloved hand to ease the agony blazing across my scalp. I struggle for oxygen, certain that he’s going to tear my hair off if he tugs any harder. Around us, more men have gathered. There’s no escape.
“Party’s over, Mr. November!” Morgan yells cheerfully. I see a blade snap open in his left hand; I go perfectly still, frozen at his feet. “Please get the fuck out, or I’ll be delivering daddy a one-eyed bitch.”
Seconds tick, one after another. In the garage, the chaos turns into quiet rustling. March tears through the smoke and walks toward us, unarmed and flanked by two men. He’s a mess, covered in dust and blood that I’m not sure is his—but he looks okay, and it’s all I care about.
“On your knees,” Morgan orders.
March’s eyes are set on him. He still wears that odd, impassible mask, like his features are paralyzed, but his gaze . . . it’s deadly, focused. If they give him the slightest opening, I know those rings of dark blue ice are the last thing Pirate Morgan will ever see. Yet he obeys. He looks at me and drops one knee to the ground. My heart breaks into a thousand razor-sharp shards.
“He wants you both . . . unharmed,” Morgan admits with a huff of disappointment.
“Then you might want to let go of her,” March warns, hate cracking through the thin veneer of civility in his voice.
A snarl bares Morgan’s teeth. “Believe me . . . the only thing keeping me from gutting you both right now is that I know he’ll hurt you more than I can.”
In his hand, the incurved knife remains, but his grasp on my hair eases a little. I let out a trembling exhale and I block everyone else to focus on March. I feel our bond, beating inside me like a second heart. I hold on to it. We’re alive; nothing else matters right now.
The sound of an engine snaps me out of the moment. Behind us, a long black Citroën sedan has stopped. The rear door opens, and the first thing I see is a gray suit. My stomach knots as I recognize Stiles’s eternal black tie before he’s even stepped out. Butterfly stitches cover the wound March inflicted to his forehead yesterday, yet his gaze is as compassionate as ever as he walks to us. Maybe there really is no anger in him after all, nor any kind of moral compass . . .
Morgan acknowledges his presence with a disdainful glance. “I told you it wouldn’t be hard. Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to fuck up twice in a row.”
Stiles all but ignores the jab and flashes March a cordial smile. “I’m glad to see you again, Mr. November, but you never do anything quietly, do you?”
Indeed. Glancing up, I notice terrified faces observing us through the surrounding buildings’ windows, most half-hidden behind their curtains. And that concert of howls growing louder in the distance: someone called the cops, and probably the fire station too . . .
March’s eyes narrow as he replies in an emotionless voice, “Dries was very surprised to see you alive at the Poseidon. He almost didn’t recognize you, in fact.”
With a chuckle, Stiles bends to free me from Morgan’s grasp, who lets go with a hateful glare—one that’s child’s play compared to the expression on March’s face when Stiles’s gloved hands touch me. The muscles in his neck and jaw bulge, as if he is ready to pounce.
Stiles strokes his chin. “It’s been over fifteen years, and some days even I still don’t recognize myself,” he muses, his tone deceptively soft, even as he adds, “but I’ve gotten used to my new face. It ain’t so bad, considering I didn’t even expect to survive after he was done with me.”
As he says this, I stare at him, trying to find evidence of some sort of surgery in his drab, regular features. He could be anyone; I can’t find the other man underneath, the one Dries left for dead . . . I avert my eyes as he helps me up. It’s already taking all I have to stand straight and not tremble. He tips his head to the sedan. “We’re gonna have to leave. Island will be riding with me.”
With this final push, March detonates. His elbow flies into the face of the man standing to his right with a nauseating crack. The man’s body is taken by spasms, and he collapses, his nose cleanly shoved all the way up into his brain. Past the millisecond of shock, a second goon pulls out his gun, but with a swift movement March breaks his arm and takes the weapon while the guy staggers back with a groan of pain. March leaps forward, almost fast enough to reach me. But not fast enough to dodge Morgan, who jumps in the way and . . . aims his gun at me.
March freezes, his finger on the trigger.
Stiles makes no attempt to help me this time, watching coolly as Morgan presses the barrel against my temple. “I’ve been told I got some serious anger-management issues,” he hisses. “And you’re wasting my fucking time.”
March’s hand is shaking as he lowers the gun. He’s fighting himself. I wish I could tell him he didn’t fail me, that it’s going to be okay, but Stiles steps in at last. He places his hand on Morgan’s gun, casually pushing it away. “Enough . . . Mr. November knows we can trust each other.”
With this, his arm wraps around my shoulders, and I register a flash of despair in March’s eyes when Stiles opens the door for me to climb into the sedan. I look at March; I try to keep our bond alive as long as possible, even after the door slams shut and I’m alone with Stiles in the back seat. The engine starts, and I still look, until Morgan kicks him hard, over and over, and they drag him away to the Hummer. I feel hot tears rolling down my cheeks, and my mouth falls open, but no sound comes out, only air whizzing from my throat in a silent sob.
There’s no sign on Stiles’s features that he understands the depth of my distress, but the compassionate smile never wavers as he hands me a tissue. “There, don’t cry. You’re gonna be fine.”