Machinations (24 page)

“That always seems to be a problem for us, doesn't it?” I remark, and while it's meant to be an offhand joke, the truth weighs it down, giving it edges like roughly hewn stone. Camus only nods. “Okay. Talk quickly then,” I add.

“Where would you have me begin?”

“What do you mean? You can start by explaining the whole I-will-take-the-ring-to-Mordor crap you pulled back at the meeting!”

“For someone suffering from severe memory loss, it's incredible to me how many old pop-culture references you pull out of a hat.” Camus smiles, but it's strained.

“Not that strange. Samuel made me watch all three of those movies just the other day, and I think he'd take offense to it being called an
old
pop-culture reference. He makes a good case for their relevancy.”

Camus shrugs and gives me the classic line. “The books were better.”

“You're a snob. And you're trying to distract me by changing the subject. I thought we were in a hurry.”

“We are.” The smile disappears from his lips. He sighs and spreads his hands wide. “But I don't know what answer to give you.”

“Funny. You had all day to come up with one.”

“There's no need to get nasty,” he says, but he doesn't sound injured by my snark. He almost sounds amused.

Now it's my turn to sigh. “Can't we just be honest with each other for two minutes? Here. I'll even go first. I'm tired of getting the runaround from you, Camus. I want to know where we stand. I thought we were making things work, and then you go and do
that.
” I motion in an arbitrary direction. “It's like you're trying to sabotage us.” I can't prevent the hurt from creeping into my tone, however much I strive to sound cavalier about all this.

“No. No, that's not it at all,” he assures me.

“Hello, words? Sorry, you're going to have to speak up. I can't hear you over actions.”

“Cute.”

“Just be honest with me. Why did you volunteer for this mission when it's clear you think it's going to fail? Why bite the bullet?”

“Because I'm falling in love with you,” he says quickly, as if he needs to get it out before the words stick in his throat. And just like that, his careful, neutral expression breaks apart. He rolls his eyes at himself, trying for another smile. “Again.” But the smile doesn't last on his lips, and his eyes betray anxiety. “I thought that was obvious by now.”

“What?” I scarcely breathe because it feels like he's put us both under a spell with his words and I'm afraid—no,
terrified
—that saying anything else will break it.

Camus's expression is raw. He looks in complete agony as he tries valiantly to explain himself further, but can't find the right words. This man is the most eloquent person I know, and he can't speak. I watch the struggle on his face, the war inside him exposed.

“So, hold on,” I finally manage to say, and he exhales, like he's relieved I'm the one speaking now. “This whole evacuation was your way of throwing yourself on the sword for me? Is that what you're trying to tell me?”

“Such a cliché, isn't it?”

I smile, though my sight is blurred with happiness and my pulse is slamming, making it hard to think. “You know what, Camus? I'm starting to think we have a serious communication issue.”

He laughs, because it's true.

“But as far as clichés go, I prefer it to the dark-and-brooding, tortured-soul thing you've had going on. Not that that isn't sexy in its own way.”

He chuckles, then groans and stares at the ceiling. “God. How do you do that? How do you always manage to do that?”

“What?” I move toward him.

Camus looks back at me. “Make the world seem less…hopeless? I don't know. That sounds grossly sentimental, doesn't it?”

“I'll allow it,” I tease him.

For the first time in forever, I feel like I'm speaking with the real Camus. The one the machines buried alive beneath ice and fire and death. Camus Forsyth, the man Rhona Long fell in love with once upon a time. The one who smiles and laughs and isn't afraid of a little sass, giving or receiving it. The English major, the Shakespearean who wrote me sonnets in college—good ones, not just crummy poetry—as an expression of love because “doing anything else would have been too pedestrian.”

Camus. The man I've never stopped loving, even though it was painful. Even though it felt pointless and unreasonable at times.

The comm buzzes and he goes to answer it. The teams are ready to deploy. It's time. He tells them he'll be right there.

“Camus, wait.”

He swings back around to me expectantly, brow furrowed with doubt. I take in his appearance for a second time, comparing this image of him to other memories I have of soldiers going away to war. I think about my father. I think about Ulrich. A dark, slithering fear slides through me, making my limbs heavy. I don't want him to go—and especially not on my behalf. But I also know I can't stop him from going, either. My tongue feels thick in my mouth, loaded with so much I want to say. Stupid, useless words.

I give up and launch myself at the inviting space between his arms. I wrap my own arms around his middle, moving my hands up the curve of his back, ultimately gripping his shoulders to hold him to me. After a moment, his arms come around me certainly, and it's as if I can suddenly breathe. Like I've been holding my breath for the past year. We cling to each other, stranded in this world that doesn't make sense, this world of orphans and monsters; we find each other again. I make a small gasping sound, not from surprise, but from shuddering relief. Beneath the strength of his embrace, he trembles, too, and I wonder whether he shares my relief, or if he's afraid.

We start to come apart, and that's when he kisses me. His mouth is full of desperate communication. My heart fills with feeling, shutting off the poisonous part of my brain that fears and worries, and I'm sliding my hands up the nape of his neck until his hair tickles my fingertips and I feel the substance of him. His lips are a warm luxury against mine—insisting, demanding, and restless. I kiss him back, receiving it like a long-awaited testimony. His hands settle on my sides, definitively. I feel captured and released. I feel
safe.
I try to comfort him in the same way, breathing his name into his mouth.

It's a short reprieve. The comm sounds again, and while Camus doesn't bother to answer it, he does pull away from me. Reluctantly, our arms fall away from each other. I turn slightly from him, touching my lips, which still tingle with the expression of his surrender. No
.
Not surrender. That wasn't him giving up or giving in.

That was him fighting—
finally
—for us.

In his eyes, I glimpse more than responding desire; there is realization, too. The somnolence of his grief has fled, and he looks awake. For better or worse. The sad twist of his lips says he knows it, too.

“Hey,” I say with a pout, sensing a goodbye I don't want to hear. “Don't get dead.” My eyes feel like they're on fire. I'm holding back tears.

“Good advice,” he answers, his voice scratchy. He attempts to correct the issue by clearing his throat. “But you know I can't make you that promise.”

“Then lie to me.”

He laughs and gives me an affectionate look. “I can't seem to do that either, as of late.”

I want to kiss him again, but I know if I clutch him to me, even for one more heavenly second, it'll make it impossible to let him go. I cross my arms, half-hugging myself and frowning. “Just come back, all right?”

He looks at the floor. “If I come back…” he starts to say.

“When,” I correct sharply.

“When,” he agrees and his eyes spring back to me. Green and clear as a dream. “Things will be different.”
Between us,
his eyes add.

I smile shyly. “Sounds good. I guess you better—” My voice breaks. The tears come. He steps toward me and wipes them from my cheek, holding my neck, peering down at me like the man I used to know. The man I've loved all this time. And for a moment, I'm afraid I won't be able to do it. I won't be able to let him go, will instead cling to him like a child. But the comm buzzes again, and reality sinks into me like nails, and I remember the world does not revolve around me and Camus. There are more important things.

I can't say anything more, however, so instead I give him a little shooing motion. Go on. Get.

He doesn't prolong our parting further, except with another brief kiss. And he doesn't say goodbye, which is just as well. The permanency of goodbyes, especially now, frightens me.

Churchill's eleventh-hour crisis stretches first into twelve hours—the time it takes to assemble our teams, get them there, and begin evacuating—and then doubles to twenty-four hours after they're besieged by an enemy force. Everything is slowed to an almost glacial pace, both there and in the war room where I and a handful of other council members watch and wait. Officially, we're waiting for good news, but unofficially…

For whatever reason, the machines seem content for the moment with harrying the evac teams on their way to and from the base, biding their time with the main assault. As of twenty-five suspenseful hours and counting, they've only managed to destroy a few of Churchill's tactical vehicles on the ground, causing some casualties, but none of those McKinlians.

Camus and his team stay out of the fighting as best they can, playing the role of smuggler as they focus on their primary mission of getting people out safely. Juneau is the nearest safe zone, but Alaska is unimaginably large, a beast of a state even when there were borders to cage her in, and even by air the trips are few and time-consuming.

In all that time, I haven't left the war room except to relieve myself. Samuel's taken to bringing me snacks, and staying to make sure I eat some. I pick and nibble at the bread and crackers to appease him, when in truth I don't find either very appetizing. My stomach's full of hornets; my blood buzzing. It's annoying because I do want to eat; I'm starved, but more than that, I know I should. Samuel raises the point that the brain can't work without fuel, and I'm no good to anyone if I can't think. So each time he shows up with something edible, I make the effort and pray I don't throw up.

Apart from Clarence, I'm the only one left of the original council keeping vigil. There are also a few technicians, but they're only on watch for a few hours at a time, keeping conscious ones in circulation. Speaking of circulation, I think I've lost all feeling in my legs all the way up to my rear. I stand up, trying to get the blood flowing, and immediately feel the powerful effects of exhaustion. My vision becomes dark and fuzzy, like a decommissioned television channel.

“Commander?” Clarence says, reappearing next to me once my sight returns. His hand is at my elbow. “Maybe you should sit back down…”

I don't argue.

Sleep sneaks up on me, the traitor, knocking me out for a few minutes. I doze off and on until I'm jostled awake by someone bumping my chair.

“Rhona?” Samuel's voice: quiet, concerned.

“Hey,” I mumble with a sleepy smile, reaching for my senses and finding them loose and slippery as falling sand. For a few blurry seconds, while I come out of the depths of slumber, I'm confused, having forgotten where I am and what's going on.

Then I remember. I sit up sharply. “What is it? Has something happened? Is it Camus's team?”

“No, everything's fine,” he assures me. “But you need to get some sleep.”

“What do you think I was just doing?”

“You mean, besides drooling on the table?” I wipe the corner of my mouth and he smiles gently, making it impossible for me to be irritated with him. “Clarence called me. He said he was worried about you. I can see why.”

I make a dismissive sound. “I'm fine. Just a little tired is all. It'll pass.”

He slips into a chair next to mine. “You've been awake for over twenty-four hours. You've hardly eaten anything…You're running on fumes, Rhon.” His fingers brush against my cheek as he moves one of my bangs from my face. I have to look at him then, as I'm guessing he wanted. Meeting his eyes, so earnest and imploring, is the final blow to my resistance. “Will you let me get you to a bed? Please?”

I groan. “How much time do you spend practicing that face? All right. All right. I'll go quietly. Happy?”

He helps me up. Getting my legs beneath me is half the battle. The other half will be making it to my room. Lethargy drags at my limbs, making movement slow and awkward.

“I'm just glad it worked,” Samuel says. “Plan B involved drugging you with a heavy sedative.”

I think he's joking, but I'm too tired to know for sure.

Before I go, however, I extract a promise from Clarence I'll be woken if anything happens. He gives me his word, on the condition that he won't bother me unless it's something significant. I can live with that. Once I'm asleep, I'm certainly not going to want to be roused over something as little as a nosebleed. “Just keep me apprised,” I clarify, nervous to be leaving my post. It's not like my watching and listening was making any kind of a difference, but still.

“We'll hold down the fort, Commander,” Clarence tells me. “Get some rest.”

Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. I find this out as we're walking toward my room. As spent as I am, you'd think I'd be uninterested in my surroundings, but the opposite is true; I notice everything, fixating on details I'd overlooked a hundred times before. The concrete floor, for instance, which is worn darker in places by the soles of countless feet. It bears the history of our survival in one of the simplest ways, scuffed and dirty where we've treaded. And there are the walls, bare and bland until you look closer. My tired mind arranges the texture of the plaster into pictures, like a Rorschach inkblot test. I wonder what seeing frolicking deer and a frowning machine interface says about me.

“Camus told me you tried to volunteer to head up the evacuation,” Samuel says as we amble along, him steady, and me with a drunk's grace. He keeps an arm around me for support and I hug his side.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Can I ask why?”

“You can ask.” I smile briefly. It falters. My face feels funny, almost numb. Honestly, I'm surprised my nose isn't bleeding. Ever since the end of winter, my nosebleed trouble seems to have cleared up. Samuel thinks it's my body finally adjusting, beginning to heal, but it could be a seasonal thing. Naturally, he wants to run more tests to be sure. “I don't know what you want me to tell you, Samuel. You know me. I don't always think. Sometimes I just act. Churchill was in trouble, and no one else was stepping up to the plate.”

There's open curiosity on his face, not judgment. “So you decided to play pinch hitter in the ninth?”

“Sure,” I say. “I forgot you're a baseball guy.”

I expect him to lighten up, but he's lost in thought.

We reach my quarters. The sound of the door sliding on its track is a whispered lullaby as it opens and we pass the threshold. My bed is unmade from two nights ago, its coverlets open like waiting arms. Part of me wouldn't mind a hot shower, but I'm pretty sure I'd drown in this state.

Heedless of my sweat and clothes, I collapse onto the mattress. It comfortably supports my body, and I burrow into the pillows. Before I've turned back around, I feel the gentle weight of the sheets and comforter over my shoulders.
Samuel.

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” I ask sleepily, rolling over to look at him.

He just smiles in that way of his—that way that makes the world a little more bright, like a candle lit in the darkness. “That's funny,” he says. “I often wonder the same thing about you.”

I close my eyes. “Come up with any good answers?”

There's a thoughtful pause. Then he whispers close to my ear, “Go to sleep, Rhona,” and his weight disappears from the bed.

Don't you leave me, too…

But I'm asleep a few minutes later, slipping away from the world to my grayscale dreams. For a time, I float in a lake of black with no discernible up or down, only a constellation of stars around me. It's relaxing until I try to move. The dark sticks to my skin like paste. Stardust collects on my arms and legs and face, clogging my throat when I try to speak out. I'm alone, glittering in isolation.

Then I'm nowhere. Pale hills stretch on as far as the eye can see. At first I think they're covered in snow. It's only as I bend down and grab a handful that I discover it's white-hot sand. It burns as it passes between my fingers.
The sands of an hourglass.
Time is running out.

I wander for a long time, until I reach a city made of glass. It keeps changing, altering before my eyes like a desert mirage, never remaining the same for very long. It looks like my childhood home. It looks like a London university. It looks like Anchorage. A single touch and it shatters entirely. On my knees, I frantically try to put the pieces back together, cutting my hands on the sharper fragments. But I can't. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I bleed, I can't re-create the places as they were. I'm stubborn, though, and persist. Rivulets of moisture, sweat or tears or maybe both, drop onto the earth with a
hiss
, baked almost instantly into steam.

Someone eventually stops me, but I can't make out their face against the outline of the sun.

“It's okay,” the shadow says. “Rhona. It's enough. Look.”

I look, and what I've made is something beautiful. It's unorthodox and a little deformed, this abstract sculpture of mine, but it welcomes the light and transforms it into a kaleidoscope of wild colors, all dancing on the sand.

I lay down beside the light display, entranced. The dunes no longer burn me, but instead feel warm and protective, the sand as soft as silk. I fall into a deeper, more impenetrable sleep—a wonderful void where I can finally, finally rest.

Not long after, I'm woken by a persistent buzzing sound.

I mistake it for an alarm clock until I remember I don't own one.
And for good reason,
I think, wanting to stuff my head beneath my pillows and ignore it. But then I realize it's the communications console near the door and I'm up an instant later.

I press all the wrong buttons before finding the right one. “Commander, you're needed in the war room,” Clarence says with a face full of deadly calm.

Samuel stirs on the sofa, having fallen asleep with his nose in an electronic reader.

“What is it? What's happened?”

“We've lost contact with Churchill and all surrounding units.”

“What?” I ask, fighting the very real urge to be sick. “How?
When?
”

He shakes his head. “Five minutes ago. Please, Commander. We can have this conversation once you're here.”

“It could be a communications glitch,” Samuel says, offering me hope as we rush down the corridors. “The upper atmosphere is notorious for interfering with transmissions. And this close to the pole? The solar wind could be modifying the electromagnetic waves, affecting any signals…” Somewhere deep down, intuition tells me none of those explanations are right. Still, I appreciate Samuel trying to lift my spirits.

“Did you know I dream in black and white?” I say, interrupting him. We continue to keep up a brisk pace beside one another, but McKinley is large, command level a labyrinth of interconnecting corridors, and it'll be a few more minutes before we reach the war room. I can't stand the quiet or the endless supposition, so this conversation is the next best thing.

“Really?” he says, scientific intrigue getting the best of him, as I expected.

I nod. “But just now, last night, I dreamt color for the first time since dying.” I recall the full vibrancy of a dozen shades of red, brilliant blues, the miracle of green and gold.

“What changed?” he asks me.

“Someone else was there with me. They showed me how to see it.”

“Who?”

“I don't know. I can't remember.”

“Huh,” he says, carefully mulling over the significance.

We reach our destination before any awkward silences ensue, slipping out of that noose in time to hang ourselves by a different one. My throat feels tighter just entering the war room. I notice the wall displays first. They're black and mute, when they shouldn't be. Nothing speaks more volume than a deafening silence where there should be the noise of living.

“Well?” I ask, a little more harshly than I intend. “Have we had any luck raising Camus on comms?”

I don't bother sitting down. I have too much nervous energy, replenished rather than exorcised by rest. While I pace in the small amount of space available, Samuel methodically reviews the evidence on the table—what looks like a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo to me.

Clarence shakes his head, and for the first time ever I see his composure break and frustration pour through the cracks. “Our technicians keep trying to establish contact, but there's just nothing. It's like we're shouting into a vacuum. Either they can't hear us, or…” He takes a breath. “Or no one's left to respond.”

“Cheery thought,” I mutter, then stop myself. No. No way. I'm not going there; I can't afford to indulge that particular what-if
,
not if I want to stay calm. Or calm-ish. “What was the last transmission received?”

“Churchill reported having some difficulty with the machines a few miles out from the base, but there was no other indication anything was amiss.”

I brace myself against the table, looking at the holographic display. Amidst the geographical landmarks such as mountains and lakes, and the occasional abandoned settlement or city, there are white and red blips to mark our forces and those belonging to the machines. Crimson dominates the landscape between Churchill and Copper Center, overwhelming our pale pixels ten to one, making me think of blood spilled on snow. “Is this map up-to-date?”

“As of last transmission, yes.”

With a wave of my hand, I soar hundreds of miles to the south. The red blips decrease in number until only white ones are left to navigate the ice-blue geography. Our evacuation teams are en route to Juneau. I tap on a few of the blips, which brings up information on them. Team name, vehicle make and model, and occupancy.
Good
, I think, until I scan through them and find that none register a Commander Forsyth aboard.