Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (21 page)

The stranger stood, looking down
to make certain of his handiwork. She no longer moved; she only
bled. The rush of adrenaline that he would normally enjoy at the
end of a kill…did not come. Perhaps it was asking too much. This
was a two for one night, after all. He’d only come here to start
the process, to find this one. To his surprise, one of the others
had already been here, waiting to talk to her.

He went into the bedroom, knowing
he only had another moment or two to linger. It was a job well
done. Of the evening’s first act, he ventured to think that there
was more than his usual poetry. A brush of fingers on the wall
turned the bedside lights on, revealing another woman. She was
beginning to be cool to the touch. The dark cascade of her hair
spilled across the bedspread, like black water. This one had not
needed to bleed, however. She had complied. Not a whimper, not a
prayer, just total submission. He smiled, turning to leave. The
lights stayed on.

۞

Dmitry walked down the wide
staircase leading from the commercial sector to the temporary
housing. He could smell something that reminded him of Maeve. Herbs
and…oranges. A smile came to his lips unwonted. It was such a
strange sensation, to have something other than work occupying his
thoughts. Well, work or his typical diversions, anyway.

The crowds had thinned out
completely by the time he had gone down two flights. It didn’t
prevent someone from walking into him. He stumbled to the side a
bit, and had to push back in order to avoid falling upstairs.
Angrily, he turned to deliver invective, but the other person had
vanished.

“Good lord, what am I, a magnet
for this now?” The flowers he’d gotten were now bent. “Damn.” What
was that on his free hand, though? His fingers felt wet. He turned
his hand over, and found himself staring at blood.

۞

The stranger followed his plan as
best he could. He couldn’t run; slipping into the throng was not an
option until he could get cleaned up. Worse yet, he had literally
run into someone, in an area that normally had no foot traffic.
Light-headedness told him he’d bled freely a bit too long. A pass
by several kiosks earned him a long dark-colored scarf. He wound it
around his head in a loose pagri, gritting his teeth as it came
into contact with his ear. The end of the fabric draped over his
shoulder, hiding the blood he could not wipe off.

His leg was more problematic. He
could hardly snatch up a pair of trousers and hope they fit. It
required a fast trip inside a shop, where he quickly located what
he needed, changed, paid, and went back on his way. The cut that
damned bitch had made was deep. Running was definitely out of the
question. He wondered whether Warden had sent him thinking it might
be a suicide mission. Wouldn’t be too surprising. Warden hated
him.

The blitz was
also out of the question. He’d have to get clever. Cleverer, he
corrected himself.
Now, now, pride goeth
before the fall.
Be quiet, he ordered the
voice that sounded a great deal like his
brother-in-law.

“If I get out of this alive,
Robert, I’m going to kill you next.” He ignored the pain from his
leg. He would fix that later.

۞

Still on the floor back in her
room, Maeve picked away at the cobwebs to come back to the surface.
She tried to stand. No good. Not yet. Maybe she could crawl.
Breathing past nausea, determined to make the call for help.
Whoever that guy had been, he couldn’t get too far with his leg in
the kind of shape it was in. Unfortunately, her resolve was worth
squat at that point, she soon found herself sitting only feet away
from her goal, sweating and swearing.

At least Dem would arrive soon. If
he didn’t get sidetracked along the way, that was. Her eyelids
sank, she shivered as the environmental cooling kicked on; the only
thing keeping her awake was the brutal throbbing of her leg and
collarbone as blood pooled beneath the skin. Where was Dem,
god…dammit, she needed him, or anyone with morphine. The urge to
pull the knife was strong, but she fought it down.

The light in her bedroom was on.
Strange, she had thought for sure that it had been off. Her vision
swam and blurred for a moment, but she thought she saw someone in
there. Was it him? Was he still there? She lurched back onto her
knees, looking for a weapon, looking back up to see if he’d moved.
But it wasn’t him, was it? She could only see long hair, spilling
over the edge of the bed. She jumped, hearing the door vibrate as
someone pounded outside.

۞

“Maeve?” Dmitry had run the entire
way from the staircase to Maeve’s room. It was a strange,
unaccountable feeling, and he prayed he was absurdly wrong. He
looked more carefully at the door. There was a note from her to
come in when he got there. She’d counted on being in the shower or
something, getting ready. He took a deep breath and went
inside.

“Shit.” He suddenly felt that he
had not been wrong.

The whole place was dark, except
the bedroom. He only made it a few steps when he felt something
crunch under his feet. Groping for a light in the darkness, he
turned one on with a tap of his finger. The place was a
wreck.

There was dirt, broken glass,
books, but where was she? A scuffling noise made him whip around.
Maeve was there, on the floor, looking into the bedroom. Her head
was cut, there were marks all over her throat, and worse. He bit
back the cry that welled up from deep within him.

“I don’t suppose you fell, did
you?” She shook her head wanly. “Hang on then, I’ll take you over
to the clinic.”

“No, wait.”

“Wait?” His voice was verging on
frantic. “You’ve got a knife in your side! There’s no
waiting.”

“Go look. Please. Go see who it
is.” She was still staring into the bedroom. Dmitry thought for a
moment that she was delirious, but he turned his head and saw what
she saw. He sprinted over to the intercom and called the emergency
number.

“He was already
inside, waiting for me.
Please
, go see who is in
there.”

“I think I saw him. Out in the
corridor.” The moment seemed more and more surreal as he gingerly
stepped over the debris toward the other room.

۞

“Have you seen Miss Madoc?” Tark
was down in the science labs, where Sa’andy typically worked. It
was an hour past when she had been due back. He wasn’t worried. She
was prone to disappearing into research papers or
protocols.

“Um, no, not for a while. She said
she had something to do, someone to talk to, I think. She left at
about fifteen-thirty, if I remember correctly.”

“Huh. Thanks. If she comes back,
just remind her that we’re supposed to do some, um, wedding
planning. Thanks.” The knowing smiles worn by Sa’andy’s colleagues
said that she must have told them how she’d proposed. It felt
awkward, even though he’d said it wasn’t a big deal. His comm
vibrated. He tapped his earpiece and answered.

“Tarkington.”

“Hey.” Dmitry sounded
odd.

“What’s up? You okay?”

“Not really. You need to get down
to Maeve’s room. Now.” His tone did not brook questioning or
argument.

۞

“Okay, what’s up?” Grace looked at
the three “boys”, as she called them.

“Um, no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“Aren’t we all supposed to be
headed to the theater?”

“Waiting for Jemi.”

“She knows where it is,
right?”

“Gracie, we don’t leave a
man…woman, whatever, behind. We said we’d wait, we’ll wait. She
probably had to use the potty.”

“Wow. Just…wow.”

“What?”

“Leif, you’re a
grown man. Women don’t use the
potty
, unless they have a small
child with them.”

“She could have had.”

“Josh? Did she say anything to
you?”

“No. But that’s because she hasn’t
actually been here yet today.”

“Someone could have mentioned
that!” They were all lazed out on the furniture, eating snack
foods, watching something on the video screen. Grace turned it
off.

“Hey! That was the 2020 Super
Bowl! My daggone team finally made it, and you turned it
off!”

“It’s
recorded
, you ass! We’re
late. I’ll leave her a note, or something.”

“Listen, I know you’re all excited
that you might get to blow crap up again, but we’re,” he gestured
to Antonio, Josh, and himself, “taking this news a little bit at a
time.”

“Get out the DOOR!” She put on her
DI voice and let them have the rest of the boom. Boom.

۞

Tark felt a leaden weight begin to
settle into his chest. It was difficult to imagine what might be
happening in Maeve’s room that required his immediate presence. It
was probably not good. His foreboding turned to dread as he made
his way down below decks. There were medical personnel and PMO’s
swarming. He stopped in his tracks as he saw a gurney go ahead of
him with a body bag on it.

What in the name of god was
happening on his station?

۞

Julieta was not at the theater
either. They went up to the private apartments, and into a library.
Wallace was pacing around, clearly distracted. Mrs. Han sat nearby,
swirling a cup of tea as she listened to something through an
earpiece. Leif pointedly ignored Wallace, and made his way over to
scan the shelves for anything of interest. Their host was evidently
a collector of actual print, including graphic novels.

“Something has happened.” The old
woman’s voice cut through the still air. They all exchanged looks.
“We may have underestimated Warden.”

“Something? Is Master Kun all
right?” Wallace stepped toward her anxiously.

“It seems likely that…I do not
speak of things back on Earth, however. I was listening to the
radio chatter here on the station. There is a manhunt. Something
happened in one of the lower levels.”

“We just came from down below.
Didn’t see anything….”

“Yeah, but we were on the near
end, in my apartment. And we took the lift up.”

“The near end? As opposed to what,
the rear end?”

“Leif, our rooms were deliberately
spaced out, right? And mine is all the way at the opposite end from
the commercial district.”

“And Maeve’s rooms. Has anyone
talked to her today?”

“No. She’s been keeping to herself
a bit since that whole thing with the station doc
happened.”

“I think that
she hasn’t necessarily been by
herself
.” Grace wore a knowing
smile.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wallace interjected at the same time as Antonio and Josh tried to
shush her.

“She’s been with
the base XO, Major Petrovich. He seems like an okay guy, for a
guy.” She kept her smile in place, carefully ignoring everyone
else. Antonio smacked his palm to his forehead. How could Grace of
all people be so oblivious to the need for discretion? Of
course,
she
didn’t have to be discreet anymore, so maybe she had stopped
thinking before she spoke. Or maybe she wanted to toss out the
apple of discord…for what, fun?

“I thought they had sort of gone
their own ways, or something.” Leif looked a bit grey around the
edges. Josh joined in frowning as loudly as he could at Grace, who
was still oblivious to any problem. Probably she thought she was
just twisting the knife for Wallace, Josh realized.

“I think Gracie means that they’ve
been hanging out, friendly like.”

“Um, no, somebody told me that
they saw her leaving his place early the other morning.” She sat
back and yawned. Wallace was miserable. He’d seen them together.
He’d hoped it was just a distraction, but not so. Maeve had moved
on. He failed to spot Leif’s reaction. The other man had turned to
look out a window. Josh went over.

“Hey. You ok?”

“It’s her life. She can live
it.”

“Yeah, but if you never tell her,
it’s going to kill you. And who knows, maybe she just fell into the
first pair of open arms she came across.”

“Now
that
is
comforting.”

“Sorry.”

“I did not see this
coming.”

“I think you may have said that
already.”

“Hmph.” Leif threw himself into a
chair to sulk.

Mrs. Han shook her head. Young
people. She was just as glad that hormones were a thing of her
past. She tucked her tiny earpiece back into place and continued to
listen. Whatever was going on, station personnel were being very
cryptic about it. It was as though they were worried about being
overheard. Ludicrous.