Data…

The sunlight coming through the treetops dappled the field but I was fixated on her… She was my best friend and I loved her from the very bottom of my seventeen-year-old heart. She laughed and I was struck by how it lit her whole being up from the inside out. The high, crystal sound drifted over the wavering green grass we were hiding from our responsibilities in.

I smiled; I couldn’t help it when she laughed like that. She rolled her head to look at me and her dark eyes sparkled where they were rimmed in kohl. The heavy eyeliner made them seem larger than life the way she did it, the smoky shadow and her black clothing out of sorts with the surrounding bright scenery.

“I can’t believe you sometimes,” she said, smiling. A wisp of her dark hair was stirred by the breeze and lashed her cheek. She reached up and chased it away with her fingertips, and I fought every screaming fiber of my being not to lean in and kiss her.

I was afraid.

Afraid things would change.

Afraid that if I gave in to my desire to make Amalia mine, that we would go on for a bit and then come crashing down. That our friendship would be ruined. That life would never be the same…

So I hadn’t in real life. I’d just committed every curve, every highlight given by the sun, every dappled shadow across her smooth, café au lait skin, to memory.

Except this wasn’t real life, this was a dream… and my dream-self gave into the urge, leaning forward, the moment drawn out, second by second, inch by excruciatingly-slow inch, like every movie you’d ever seen. The anticipation, holding your breath, wanting it to happen, the sweet, sweet ache of it as we each drew closer, eyes closing…

Just before our lips touched, the dream shattered as an alarm blared, but not the alarm I had set up to warn of danger to the club – no, this was a different alarm: the alarm. This alarm, I had been waiting to hear for seventeen years.

I sat bolt upright out of bed, the grating sound of a nuclear reactor in emergency meltdown painting the air with urgency even as the door to my room slammed open, crashing back against the wall as Trigger stood in the doorway yelling, “Data, what is it!? What’s going on?”

“Something!” I yelled back over the noise, and then I lied to my brother and it left a metallic tang of bitterness across my tongue. “I don’t know what, yet!”

That lie, that tiny white lie, was to protect my secret, a secret I’d held since before joining the club. I felt a hot rush of shame as I ducked past the big man and strode past Dragon, standing bleary-eyed outside his clubroom door. It was two in the morning by the digital display in my command room. I slid through the sliding glass door and flipped a switch and the noise cut out.

I dropped into my desk’s chair, swiped the mouse’s trackball and punched in the complicated sixteen letter, number, and symbol password to wake the banks of monitors up. There it was, larger than life on a subreddit forum. Buried in the deep web, where only my programs and proxies would find it…

Layd33_B0ner:

Does anyone remember Amalia Rose?

I read it over and over just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. I could feel Trigger and Dragon both at my back and anxiety seized my heart, which was slamming itself against the inside of my ribs.

“I do, baby… now, where are you? I’m coming to get you…” I whispered to myself as I let my fingers do the walking. I slammed my way through virtual back doors, tracked electronic signatures like a fucking bloodhound and felt a grim determination take over when I realized I wasn’t back here looking for her alone.

“And who might you be?” I asked no one in particular.

It became a race, I couldn’t shut the other seeker down and neither could he shut me out. It was a question of tracking the IP of that lone message faster than the other and shutting it the fuck down before the next guy got it. It was ugly, but I got it – the problem was I couldn’t tell if the other guy had gotten it, too.

Still, there it was:

“I have to go,” I said and turned around to look Dragon in the eye. “It’s important.”

“Slow down, now. What’s going on?” he asked.

“Can I tell you while I pack?”

“Sure.”

I nodded and got up, and started explaining while on the move. The guys didn’t interrupt. They just listened, and I needed that. I really did.

My mouth moved, telling them what they needed to hear, filling them in about the situation all the while my brain kept repeating the solemn vow, “I’m coming to get you, Mali. I’ve finally found you, and I’m coming to get you.”