Chapter Six

 

Jonah dropped the final match to the bathroom counter just as he heard the front door close on the floor below. He hurried out of the bathroom and rushed down the stairs to greet Aubrey. As she had every other day that she had returned home from work that week she looked exhausted and completely depleted of every bit of energy and spirit that had been within her. The large bag that she usually carried across her chest and hanging by her hip fell from her hand and slumped to the floor. She lifted her eyes to him as she shrugged out of her jacket and Jonah saw a slight smile come to her lips. That was a moment that he looked forward to every day. Though he hated that she was so exhausted and everything that she had to go through each day, it always made his heart soar when she returned home in the evening and looked so happy that he was there waiting for her.

“Another hard day?” he asked, coming down the steps and reaching for her jacket.

Aubrey nodded.

“I honestly think this project is going to be the death of me. They wanted me to stay even later, but I couldn’t do it. I told them that I was going to grab a bite to eat and I escaped.”

“Aren’t they going to notice that you’re gone?” Jonah asked with a laugh.

“I don’t know,” Aubrey said. “At some point they’ll probably realize that they’ve been talking to my empty chair for a while. I don’t care, though. I just couldn’t be in that lab for another minute. My brain seriously might have just liquefied. They might be mad when I get back there tomorrow, but I’ll come up with some sort of excuse as to what happened to me.”

“Like what?” Jonah asked, carrying the jacket down the short hallway leading off of the entryway so that he could hang it in the closet.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I was horribly allergic to whatever I ate for supper and I ended up in the hospital.”

“They wouldn’t ask for a doctor’s note or anything?”

Aubrey let out a long sigh.

“They probably would. Alright. Well then maybe I had a car accident.”

“Again. Doctor’s note.”

“I just can’t catch a break.”

Jonah laughed again and held his arms open to her. Aubrey stepped into them and sighed as she nuzzled her face into his chest. This wasn’t the same sigh as she had just released. That was exasperation and exhaustion, frustration and resignation. This was happiness and contentment, a sense of safety and comfort that came from being cradled in his arms. He loved that sound and the feeling that it gave him each time that he heard it.

“Well,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and gently guiding her down the hallway back toward the stairs, “what if I keep brainstorming that excuse note for you while you relax. I have a surprise for you.”

“You do?” Aubrey asked as they made their way up the stairs toward their bedroom. “I could really use something wonderful right now.”

“I can’t promise wonderful,” Jonah said, guiding her into the bathroom, “but I hope that you like it.”

Aubrey gasped as she saw the candles strewn across the counter and along the edge of the bathtub. Plush white bubbles floated invitingly on the surface of the water, the dancing light from the candles causing them to shimmer.

“This is incredible,” she said, turning toward Jonah with a look of pure joy on her face. “Thank you so much.”

“Of course,” Jonah said. “I know how hard you’ve been working and I wanted to do something to help you relax. I am so proud of everything that you do and I wanted you to know that I’m here to support and encourage you in any way that I can. Even if that is just drawing a bubble bath for you so that you can relax at the end of the day.”

Aubrey rose up on her toes to touch a kiss to his lips then stepped back to kick off her shoes then start undressing. Jonah watched as she peeled away each layer of clothing, revealing the luscious body that he craved every moment. When she was completely naked, she reached back and swept her hair up off of her neck. Jonah’s mouth began to water as she wound her thick mane around, causing her breasts to rise and press toward him. She secured her hair with a clip and then stepped down into the water.

The bubbles rose up around her as Aubrey settled down into the water, coming over her breasts and concealing her body. Even as the bubbles covered her, Jonah felt himself desiring her more. It was as though the idea of removing the bubbles, revealing her to him again, was sending his arousal spiraling up. Aubrey rested her head on the wall and reclined back with her eyes closed for a few seconds before turning toward him. Her eyes opened slowly and she gave a small smile.

“There sure is a lot of room in this tub,” she said. “I could use some company.”

Jonah grinned and undressed, adding his clothes to the pile of hers on the floor. She sat up so that he could take his place behind her, settling down into the water with his legs on either side of her. Aubrey sat back so that she rested on his chest and stomach and her head tucked against his neck. Jonah brought his hands down over her shoulders and ran them down so that they traced the swell of her breasts. He could feel the taut peaks of her nipples against his palms were already tight and hardening in response to his touch. His body was doing the same and he lifted his hips to press into her back, hoping to silently express his desire to her. She responded by running her hands down his thighs and stroking her body back against him. Jonah ducked his head and kissed along the side of her neck.

When he had first decided to draw the bath for her, he had intended it as a way for her to spend some time to herself away from all of the pressures of her day at work, but now that he was in the water with her, he knew that this was so much better. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her and show her that she was the most precious thing in his life. The work that they were doing was still incredibly important to him, but there were times when he felt as though it were getting in between the two of them. Though their connection was still as strong as it had always been, he felt like they didn’t have as much time as he would want to just enjoy being together. There were always reminders of the strange way that they came together, and the efforts that filled nearly every moment that they had. From the moment that Aubrey got home until they both fell asleep, they researched and brainstormed. He spent the time that she was at work coming up with further ideas to research and going back over everything that they had already figured out. Locking themselves away in the bathtub together felt like they were stealing these moments for themselves, closing themselves off, if only for a short time, from everything else so that they could concentrate just on each other.

Jonah let his hands run across her breasts again and then down onto her belly. It shivered beneath his touch and he tightened his thighs around her. Aubrey’s back arched slightly as his fingers ran along the plane of her belly and into the dip between her hipbones. He traced the valley, letting his fingers move onto each bone as he tenderly teased her skin. Aubrey whimpered and lifted her body up so that it rose subtly on his. She pressed her thighs apart, inviting him to touch her, and Jonah didn’t resist.

His wife’s body was warm and wet waiting for his fingers and she moaned with pleasure as he glided them down into her delicate folds. He continued to kiss along her neck as he touched her, exploring her indulgently and reverently. Her mouth opened and she gasped, furthering his need for her and encouraging Jonah to enter her. His fingers slid easily within her and he felt the luscious warmth of her walls embracing them. Jonah turned his hand just enough to press the pad of his thumb to her peak. He applied gentle pressure and swirled his touch in a small circle. Aubrey’s fingers dug into the muscles of his thighs and out of the corner of his eye he could see her biting down onto her bottom lip.

Jonah wrapped his other hand around her ribcage and cupped it over her breast so that he could knead into her soft, pliant flesh as he continued to let his fingers press into her. His fingers glided in and out of her, giving him new perspective of the ridges and dips of the inside of her body. He imagined the feeling on his cock and felt himself harden even further.

Suddenly Aubrey gasped and sat up straighter. He hadn’t felt her climax, but she was pulling away from him, folding her legs under her body to stand up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Aubrey said as she climbed out of the tub and grabbed one of the towels that were sitting on the shelf on the wall. “I think I might have just figured something out.”

She swept the towel around her body, tucking the end in between the breasts that he had been stroking and wished were still in his hands. Jonah watched her as she rushed out of the bathroom, a feeling of disappointment sinking into his belly. Finally he climbed up out of the tub and followed her out of the bathroom, taking a towel as he went. Aubrey was sitting on the window seat when he stepped into the bedroom. Still in her towel, she looked just as desirable as she had in the tub, but the look on her face no longer seemed interested in him. Instead, she was focused intently on the book in her lap and the notebook that she had spread open on a small table beside her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Aubrey looked up at him.

“When I was in the lab today I heard one of my colleagues talking about a bet that she took when she was in college.”

“A bet?” Jonah asked.

He took clothes out of the wardrobe and dressed as she continued to flip through the pages of the book, her eyes now scanning the text frantically as if she were desperately looking for something specific in the words. Aubrey nodded.

“Yeah. Apparently she and some of the people in one of her classes were having a study group. They had been learning about innovations and specific applications, and one of them started talking about an old factory that he had heard of when he was younger. They had been studying for hours and getting a little delirious and one of them bet that the others wouldn’t go into the factory.”

“Why?” Jonah asked.

He knew that his voice was holding more tension than he wanted it to, but the emotion that was inside him was tightening in his chest and aching in his belly, making him feel pulled and pressured like what was happening around him was becoming too much.

“There were all these stories about what used to happen inside that factory.”

“Like things being manufactured?”

Aubrey looked up at him and he could see mild surprise in her eyes.

“Are you upset about something?” she asked.

Jonah shook his head.

“No. Just keep going. What were they saying about the factory?”

“It seemed that no one actually knew what was going on in that factory. They knew what was made in it, but even that was still just from records. They didn’t know what the stuff was for or why it was made. The company made it for a while and then one day everything and everyone was just gone. The factory went from busy to abandoned seemingly overnight. Can you make a guess what they were making?”

She looked at him with a glint of mischief in her eyes.

“Izalux,” Jonah said, realization trickling into the back of his mind.

Aubrey nodded.

“They didn’t have any idea what it was for, but they knew that the Orion Corporation owned that factory and then suddenly they were gone. There all kinds of myths and stories about what used to happen in the factory even before it was abandoned, but especially after.”

“Like what?”

He walked up to the window seat and sat on the edge.”

“They said that there would be strange sounds and flickers of light coming through the windows. Dark shadows. Voices. It was like it was haunted. So they bet that the girls wouldn’t go into the factory and spend a night there.”

“What happened to them?”

“I didn’t catch the whole story because they moved to another section of the lab, but from what I got, they broke into the factory and found rooms that looked like they hadn’t been touched in decades and then others that looked like they were still in use. There were bottles of Izalux everywhere, most of them empty. What was most interesting to me, though, was that she said they found a room that was painted completely black. Floor, ceiling, walls. Everything. It was just a huge black room. In the middle of the room were a bunch of cushions on the floor.”

“What could that be?” Jonah asked.

Aubrey shook her head.

“I don’t know. That was all that I heard.”

“So that’s what got you out of the bath that I made for you?” he asked. “Some woman in that lab of yours went into an old factory and was scared by a room that she didn’t understand?”

Aubrey blinked a few times, her lips parted.

“I thought that you would understand,” she said. “It’s not just any factory. It’s the Orion Corporation factory. The one that made the Izalux. The stories about strange things happening there confirm that there’s more to this stuff than we know.”

“Didn’t we already know that?” Jonah asked. “I thought that was the whole point of all of this. We have no idea what it is, what it’s used for, or why there are bottles of it in the medical ward. Did you really need some campfire ghost story to tell you that?”

Aubrey put the book down beside her and stood up to face him.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked. “Is this all because of the bath? I appreciate it that you did that for me. It was really sweet, but…”

“It’s not the bath,” Jonah said. “It was just that that was one of a string of things. All you think about is this project that you are doing at work.”

“That’s not true, Jonah.” She looked down at herself and shook her head with a sigh of exasperation. “Wait a minute. I’m not going to have this conversation with you while I’m wearing a towel.”

She pushed past him and went to the wardrobe to pull out clothes. Turning her back to him, she dressed quickly and then came back to the window where he stood.

“I’ve been watching you every day and it seems like you are getting more and more stressed. Every day you come home more tired and more frustrated.”

“It’s my work,” Aubrey said, as if that excused what he saw on her face every time that she came home. “This is what I’ve aspired to the entire time that I was in school and throughout my entire career. It’s an honor that I was chosen for this project, and I would have hoped that you would be proud of me for what I’ve accomplished.”

“I am proud of you,” he said, stepping up to her and taking her hands in his. “I am so proud of you. What you are doing is amazing, but that doesn’t mean that I like what it’s doing to you. You used to be so excited talking about your work and now there’s no life in your eyes. I’m worried about you. This project has completely taken over your life.”

“Are you only saying that because it means that I don’t have as much energy and attention to spend on your project?” she asked angrily. “Because right this moment I am researching to help you. I do everything to help you.”

“I know that,” Jonah said. “I know that you have done so much for me and I can’t imagine trying to do this without you. The thought of doing anything without you is awful for me. That’s why I’m so upset. You’re my wife, Aubrey. I love you with everything that’s in me and I don’t want to see you going through so much stress and anxiety because of this one project, a project that only matters to you because it is being done in the laboratory you always wanted to work in. I want to see you doing something that you really care about.”

“I love you, too, Jonah,” she said, her eyes softening. “I know that you’re worried about me, but you don’t need to be. This isn’t like what we are researching for you. Just because Ryan is insane doesn’t mean that all of the scientists that are at the laboratory are doing horrible thing with their work.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked.

Aubrey looked at him with a slight smile on her lips.

“Because you are a scientist,” she said. “Things are different now. We have a newer facility and have a different focus for our work, but you are still a scientist who worked at the University. You didn’t do anything terrible. You never had plans for taking over the Universe or breeding new combinations of species, did you?”

“That was a long time ago,” Jonah said. “I was working in that University more than 115 years ago. The focus of the research and the facilities have changed, just like you said. How can I know that that’s not all that changed? What if you are the only scientist who hasn’t been corrupted like Ryan?”

“Don’t you think that there would be more awareness of the horrible things that he’s been doing if all of the people in the lab knew about them, or was in on them? Why would he need such a secretive facility and to make up stories about most of his work if he was just going along with what the rest of the lab was doing? Besides, there’s a scientist who went to Uoria recently. Do you know George?”

“You know George?” Jonah asked, surprised by the revelation.

“Of course,” Aubrey said. “He’s one of the premier scientists in the University. His plans to go to Uoria to study the Denynso were hugely publicized. Do you think that he would have been that public and open about his plans to go there if he had some sort of nefarious plan attached to it?”

“Ryan sent Eden,” Jonah pointed out.

“But even you admitted that no one knew about that. He wasn’t a part of the exchange program and he never gave anyone full information about what she was meant to do there, because most people didn’t even know that she was. George was very open about his plans. He even gave lectures before he went about what he was planning on doing there and the hopes that he had for the continued cooperation and alliance between the Denynso and Earth.” She hesitated and then tilted her head at him. “How do you know George?”

Jonah sat down on the foot of the bed. The time had come for her to know more about him and what had really happened to him in the time that he spent on Uoria.

“You know that I was locked in place in the settlement on Uoria,” he started.

“Yes,” Aubrey said, coming to the bed and sitting beside him. “The Covra attacked and used a toxin to suspend all of you so that they could use you to incubate their young.”

Jonah nodded.

“Right. Well, when the Denynso found us there, they didn’t know what had happened to us, or what they could do to help us. They were essentially guarding us while they tried to figure out what happened and if there was anything that they could do. Once they realized that it had to do with the Covra, they reached out to those who were still at the compound and were working on a solution. George was there. So was his assistant.”

“Ivy?” Aubrey asked.

“Yes. She apparently wasn’t supposed to be there, but had shown up. George wasn’t very happy about it, but we all ended up being glad that she was there. They finally realized that it took a human voice to break through the lock that the Covra put on us. The Covra hate human voices and are vulnerable to them. The Denynso voices were close and that was what helped them to fend the Covra off enough that they could get to us, but it took a real human voice to free us.”

“Are there still people there on Uoria?” Aubrey asked.

“Absolutely,” Jonah said. “Very few of us left the settlement to be with the Denynso and Mikana. When we created the settlement, it wasn’t long before a lot of the crew just resigned themselves to the reality that we were going to be on Uoria for the rest of our lives. Our communication systems were destroyed, our ship was crashed beyond repair. Our pilot was dead. We knew that no one on Earth knew where we had ended up because it wasn’t even a planet that we knew of at the time. They completely lost hope. But that also meant that they settled in and started creating a life there. Some of them were already in relationships or married, and others followed and got married. They started having children. There are some children there now who are getting into their teenage years. They don’t know anything but Uoria and would probably never want to leave. They have their home there. Their families. Everything that we need, we make or do within the settlement. We have school for the children. The adults use their own skills to handle other needs of the people, like gardening, foraging, baking, making clothes, building homes. Back before the Covra we had a close alliance with the Mikana and utilized some of their skills to help us establish orchards and patches of both native crops and Earth plants that we grew with seeds we brought with us when we left.”

“Why did you bring Earth seeds with you?” Aubrey asked. “You thought that you were just seeking out an illegal prison colony and working to free the prisoners if they were there.”

Jonah opened his mouth and then closed it again. It wasn’t a question that he had ever really pondered.

“There were certain supplies that we always had with us. I suppose that seeds might have been a part of them.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“I know that the teams that were going out into Far Space and had the potential of colonizing new planets or moons would carry seeds with them along with their food supplies to make sure that even if they got stuck for longer than they expected, they would have access to additional food supplies. They also sometimes offered seeds to other species so that they could grow the crops on their own planets.”

“But you don’t know if you usually had seeds for your kind of mission?” Aubrey asked.

Jonah narrowed his eyes at her.

“Why does this matter to you so much?” he asked. “Is there something suspicious about us having seeds to plant when we were on Uoria?”

“Well, yes,” Aubrey said. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you weren’t planning on being on Penthos for any length of time, yet someone packed so much food as well as seeds for food crops?”

Buzzing started in his ears and Jonah felt like his vision was closing in slightly.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she told him. “I don’t know if I’m saying anything at all. It could be something completely normal. I’ll be the first to admit that I have never gone on a mission like you have. I’ve never left Earth, so I don’t know what would be normal to bring with you on a quest like you were going on when you first left for Penthos. There’s just something about it that seems strange to me. It almost seems…” her voice faded and she shook her head. “Never mind.”

“It almost seems like what?” Jonah asked.

Aubrey hesitated, seeming to search his face for indication of what he was thinking and feeling, as though it would influence what she was going to say to him.

“It almost seems like someone put them there on purpose. Like someone might have known that you weren’t going to be gone for as short a time as you thought that you were going to be, or that you may end up somewhere where you were going to need the seeds.”

“Who would do that?” he asked.

Aubrey shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said again. He looked down at his lap, feeling the angry tension building up in him again. “Do you ever get homesick?”

The question startled Jonah and he looked up at her sharply.

“Homesick?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“Do you ever miss the settlement on Uoria? You were there for a long time. Do you ever wish that you were there?”

Jonah wasn’t sure how to respond. He thought about it for a few moments.

“I haven’t really had much chance to think about that,” he said. “I’m guessing that there will be a time when I do miss it. Like you said, I was there for a long time. It was my home. Even though I was never one of the ones who was convinced that we were always going to be there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even from the beginning, I didn’t want to just give up. I wasn’t resigned to the fact that we didn’t have anything left. I wanted to get off of Uoria so much. I wanted to be back here where we could figure out exactly what happened and ensure that those responsible got what they deserved. I always felt like there was so much more that we could do. That I could do. That’s why Rain and I spent so much time designing the vehicle that we brought here. It took years and there were plenty of times that I didn’t think that it was actually going to work. But I couldn’t give up. It was like as long as I was working on it, there was a chance. Even if that vehicle wasn’t going to work out, as long as I was doing something, anything, I wasn’t giving up and I was ensuring that one day I was going to be back on Earth.”

“Is that how Rain felt about it, too?”

Jonah could hear the slant in Aubrey’s voice, like she was trying to sound casual but the faint touches of jealousy and nervousness in her voice were breaking through the façade.

“I think so,” he said. “She and I had been friends for a long time, but it wasn’t like we spent huge amounts of time talking about our feelings or anything.”

“You didn’t?” she asked.

Jonah shook his head.

“No. We talked a couple of times about how it seemed like everyone else had given up and that we still wanted to find a way to go back to Earth. We were angry while the rest chose to be sad. They were longing for the memories of Earth and what they felt like they had already lost. We still believed that there was a chance that we could get back and keep working on the mission that we had started with. We didn’t want to lose anything. We wanted the careers that we had spent so much of our lives studying, training, and preparing for.”

“When you were thinking about everything that you had left behind on Earth and everything that you might not be able to have if you didn’t get back, was a family ever something that you thought about?”

“My family?” Jonah asked.

“A family that you didn’t have yet,” Aubrey clarified. “Did you ever think that being on Uoria for the rest of your life would mean that you wouldn’t get married or have children?” She glanced down uncomfortably and then back at him. “Or was there someone on the settlement that you might have been interested in having a life with if you didn’t ever get a chance to leave?”

Jonah held her hands tightly and stared into her eyes, trying without saying anything directly to reassure her that she was everything to him and that there was nothing for her to be jealous about.

“I had plenty of time to choose someone else. If I had wanted to, I would have. But there was never a time when I was on that settlement that I even thought for a second about getting married or having a family.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Well,” Jonah said with a grin as he lifted her hand and kissed her ring, “I think that I’ve already answered the question about getting married.”

“And having a family?” Aubrey asked. “Is that something that you’ve ever thought about?”

She looked suddenly smaller, more fragile and vulnerable. Jonah didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he also didn’t have the right words to answer her properly.

“I don’t know what to say to you that would be an honest answer. I don’t know where life is going to take me. Us. Right now all I know is that I have you and that is more than I ever could have hoped to have had. The rest is something that I will have to figure out as the time comes. One step at a time.”