The Midnight Stand (The Elysia Saga Book 1) (5 page)

He could tell she knew what he was implying, but
he didn’t want to come right out and say it. “I mean there are many reasons why
this could just turn out to be a scare”.

“A scare?”

“Erica, you know many births are miscarried in
the first month or two. It’s just the way it is. It’s nobody’s fault.”

It was true. There was an abnormally high miscarriage
rate among first trimester babies. No one quite knew why. One theory had to do
with the radiation that was emitted from the AutoHomes electronics. Another had
to do with the geothermal core digging contaminating the water processing
plant. Whatever it was, no doctors or scientists knew what caused it or they
weren’t saying what caused it.

“You’re hoping for that to happen?” Erica asked,
stunned.

“No, of course not. It’s just...it’s a lot to
process right now and I have to worry about this wreck tonight. Can we talk
about this tomorrow?”

“Fine, do whatever you want,” she said. “Don’t
wake me when you get home.” The signal went out before Maxon had a chance to respond,
or even apologize.

He stood in the hall, still looking at his watch
which now showed the time. It was 10:25. He had to brief the crew in twenty-five
minutes and in that moment he didn’t know what to say to them. It was as if his
mind just went off and drifted somewhere else. The last place he wanted to be
was where he was. Maxon’s evening just got a whole lot more complicated.

An explosion erupted from the living room as tea
was served in the kitchen. The vibration shook the cups on the table, causing
some tea to spill on the stainless steel veneer.

“Does it sound like that all the time?” Sara
asked her sister as she took a sip of tea. Another bomb rocked the living room
and was followed by high pitched laughter.

“Only when he’s blowing up the globe,” Dana
said. She looked much like her younger sister, but she was taller with long
dark hair that came down to her lower back while Sara wore her blonde hair
short.  “Lucas, lower that, will you!” she yelled into the living room.

“What?” Lucas yelled back. His voice was barely
audible over the war going on.

“I said lower that game, we can’t hear ourselves
talk in here.”

“Okay.” The blasting died down. Lucas and Jasper
both stood in the middle of the living room with Real View glasses on and
remote rifles in their hands. They were hunched over as if they were moving
through enemy territory trying not to be noticed.

“A little too realistic, isn’t it?” Sara asked.
She was still in awe of all the things the AutoHome could do. Dana’s home was
once again upgraded recently and it came with the new Real View gaming system.
The system could simulate any environment in any situation from sports to
battlefield combat and even space exploration.

“Lucas just loves it. He’s on it most of the
day,” Dana said as she sat down at the table. “It would be great for Jasper. He
could be anywhere in the world with it. Of course that means you would have to
upgrade yourselves.” She said this as she peered over the top of her cup at
Sara. The look said everything it needed to. “It does appear a bit odd that you
haven’t yet.”

Sara bit her lower lip. “Harley’s still
resisting it. He says he won’t give up the home his grandfather built.”

Dana sniffed at that. “I think that husband of
yours is backwoods. I don’t know how you could have married him when you could
have chosen Edward Stantz. You would have been the wife of a Council
representative by now and be in the lap of luxury.”

“Harley’s very resourceful”, Sara said, “he can
fix almost anything by himself and can even cook his own food.”

“See that’s what I mean,” Dana replied, “no one
needs to do any of that. Everything fits in perfectly with everything else. If
something doesn’t work, you just get a replacement part and fit it in. The
house we’re sitting in right now can be pulled apart and put back together in
under forty minutes. Can Harley do that?”

Sara had a sudden urge to dump her tea over her
sister’s head. She hated when Dana talked down about Harley in that
condescending tone of hers, but at the same time Sara felt she was right. Why
couldn’t she have what her sister had? Why did she have to still wash clothes
and prepare meals when these things had already been conquered?

“He was always a strange one,” Dana continued. “Always
shifting around and distrustful of everyone. You know I hear people talk about
him. They think he’s off”. She waved her hand back and forth while saying it.

“He’s not crazy. You don’t know anything about
him,” Sara said.

“And isn’t that weird?” Dana asked. “You’ve been
married, what, nearly ten years and I hardly ever talk to him, let alone see
him. He never invites us over or accepts any of our invites. He acts like he’s
hiding something.”

Sara shook her head. “He just prefers privacy.
He doesn’t like to be around too many people.”

Dana narrowed her eyes at Sara. “Why? What does
he have to be so private about?”

“Nothing and stop trying to imply things.”

“I’m not implying anything,” Dana said
innocently, “you’re the one who said it. Of course, there was that incident a
couple of years back.” She took a sip of tea and dabbed her mouth delicately
with a napkin.

“That was a misunderstanding. You know that,”
Sara said. Her anger was starting to rise. She regretted coming here tonight
and wondered why Harley even suggested it in the first place.

“I know the Council ruled that it was a
non-offense, but that was only because of Richard’s doing,” Dana said. The
smugness in her tone was biting. “And if I remember, Richard didn’t even get a
thank you from him.”

Richard was Dana’s husband and he worked as an
advisor to the Council. He was away tonight at the City Centre, also known as The
Nucleus, on official business. According to Dana he was being courted as one of
the next members of the Council once the new cycle approached.

The incident that Dana referred to happened a couple
years ago. The Council sent two engineers to survey the land Harley’s house
stood on. The sector they lived in was on the edge of the limits and was next
in line to be fully upgraded. They were essentially the final stage before full
implementation or completion of Phase One as the Council called it. When the
surveyors came to the house Harley ran at them with a knife screaming, scaring
them away.

The next day the Council Guard brought Harley in
under sanction and placed him in the Cube, the judicial center and criminal
housing building. Ninety-five percent of the Cube was built underground with
the most violent criminals in the lowest parts of the facility. No one knew how
far it really went down. Some reports mentioned a thousand feet, others more
than a mile. However deep it was everyone was in agreement that you didn’t want
to end up in the lower levels.

Stories of pitch black cells and psychological
torture pervaded the general view of the Cube. Harley’s offense didn’t quite
warrant the lower levels, but he was charged with aggravated action against a
fellow citizen, or in this case citizens, which would double the charge. Harley
was potentially facing up to four years in the Cube where he wouldn’t even get
to see Sara or Jasper.

Harley had refused any kind of defense or help,
saying he would rather spend time in jail than prostrate himself before the
Council. Sara couldn’t understand why he was acting the way he was. She pleaded
with him to reconsider and present his case to the Council. She felt because it
was a first time offense and he never was sanctioned before they might reduce
the charges. Harley would not give in. To Sara it was almost like he wanted to
go in the Cube.

She didn’t know what else to do so she went to
Richard and begged him to do something. He was hesitant to do anything at
first, afraid to compromise his standing with the Council, but Dana persuaded
him to intervene on Harley’s part, mostly as a favor to her. No matter how much
she disliked Harley, the social stigma of having a sister with a husband put
away would have been even worse.

Sara never knew how he did it, but Richard was
able to appeal to certain members of the Council, members that Dana insured he
had a personal relationship with, and get Harley’s charged wiped from the
central database. As far as the computer was concerned, it never happened. As
Dana so often pointed out to Sara, it was a huge favor to ask and Richard put
his personal relationships on the line to help Harley. It would be his only get
out of jail free card.

When Harley found out what Richard did, he was
furious and refused to see him or even thank him. Sara couldn’t understand why
Harley acted the way he did or why he seemed so willing to accept his
punishment. Something changed in their relationship after that. They didn’t
talk to each other as much and Harley went off more and more on his own, coming
home late and never bothering to say where he’d been. When she asked him he
would just say he was at the yard again, collecting scrap metal.

“And why after all this time would he suddenly
suggest for you to visit me?” Dana said, interrupting Sara’s train of thought. “Doesn’t
that seem odd to you?”

It was odd to Sara. Everything about that
evening was odd. Everything from the way he rushed her out the door with Jasper
to his nervous behavior. It was as if he was hiding something or he was going
to do something and he didn’t want her there to see it.

“I’m telling you,” Dana continued. “He’s up to
something.” Her eyes suddenly got wide as she dropped her cup down. A devious
smirk spread across her face. “Do you think he’s fooling around?”

“No, Harley wouldn’t do that. It’s something
else,” Sara said as she absently stirred her tea. Her eyes looked like they
were a hundred miles away.

Harley was never an open person. It felt like
she had to pull teeth just to get him to talk about his day. She was able to
put up with it when they were just married, but lately it’s been becoming more
of an issue and has only gotten worse since Jasper was born. Even Jasper’s
birth didn’t help change Harley. If anything it made him more guarded and
secretive. He believed his whole life was on a platter for the Council and it
could be taken away by them in a moment’s notice if they felt like it.

He always talked about preserving their way of
life and how, if worse came to worse, they would have to fight to protect it.
It scared Sara when he spoke like that to the point where she told him to never
talk like that around Jasper, who was getting older and picking up on things.
She didn’t want him putting a lot of nonsense in Jasper’s head.

There was something that gnawed at her about the
whole situation and it had to do with the new AutoHomes going up in their
sector in the recent months. The tract of land they were on was starting to see
more upgrading. To Sara it was about time the trucks finally made it out to
their sector, which was the most isolated and old world out of all of them. The
sight of the trucks made Harley even more paranoid. He made it seem like they couldn’t
get within fifty feet of their property without his say so. According to
Harley, the house or they weren’t going anywhere.

“Well, what do you think it is then?” Dana
asked. “He had to have wanted you out of the house tonight for a reason.”

“I don’t know, maybe I should call him.”

“You mean he actually uses a phone?” Dana
sarcastically quipped.

Sara ignored her sister as she got up and went
over to the wall touchscreen. She swiped through the contacts until she found her
name and pressed it. The phone began ringing as Dana got up and put her cup
into the washer. It rang and rang with no answer. On its eighth ring Sara hung
up. “If he’s not home where could he be?” she asked.

Dana stood against the counter and looked at
Sara. For the first time the expression on her face resembled something close
to concern for her sister. “Listen, I don’t think you have anything to worry
about. I mean it’s not like he has any friends. What could he be doing?”         

“Maybe I should go home and see what’s going on”

“You’re over reacting. Look, I take back what I
said before. He’s not two-timing and he’s not secretly planning to blow up the
City Center. He’s probably just taking a shower or he’s in the yard working on
one of his hobbies you said he’s always doing. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

Sara let out a sigh. “Yeah, you’re probably
right.”

“And besides,” Dana continued. “Why would you
want to go back home when you can spend the night here? Where else are you
going to experience sleeping in temperature controlled beds while wearing a
rejuvenation mask? I swear, the thing takes five years off your face.”

Sara smiled at that, but in her gut she didn’t
want to be there. She wanted to be home, close to Harley.

Another planet exploded from the other room and
Jasper laughed over the crumbling debris. Jasper’s laugh always cheered her up
and he seemed genuinely happy to be with his cousin. He rarely was able to get
out and play with other kids close to his age and it warmed her to hear him
excited.

She decided if she was going to go back tonight,
she would leave Jasper with Dana. No reason he should stop having fun tonight
because of her.