Continuance (36 page)

He grabbed a
container of milk and a bag of Oreos from the kitchen and headed to the bathroom.
Tearing the bag open, he shoved three in his mouth, using the milk to wash them
down after a few chews so he could repeat the process. By the time he disrobed
and stepped in the shower, half the bag was gone. The sugar rushing through his
system while the heat of the water rushed over his skin felt heavenly. He let
it run down his face, feeling better than he’d imagined possible when the night
began.

He’d dodged the
spiders, and even his own death at the track. And now, payback for the DIA was
within his grasp. Even Stuart’s move out couldn’t dampen his spirits for the
moment. But more than anything, there was Chaela.

Knowing she was
waiting, he resisted the urge to linger in the shower. As he dressed, he
managed to down a few more Oreos between garments, one at a time now. When he
grabbed his AP, lying beside his keys on the counter, the notification
indicator was flashing.

Scan Complete

Annoyed, he
slipped on his smartglasses. He’d meant to deactivate Michelle’s search script,
but hadn’t made time yet. It still processed SLIDe data from the handful of Alex’s
feeds the DIA hadn’t shut him out of. Alex had even had one of his contacts
hack the available camera feeds, including the ones paired with the SLIDes
still transmitting. No need to stake out parking lot entrances any more. Not
that it mattered now.

He shook his
head. For so long, he’d lived for these results. Since the day he’d gotten
access to the Arkive and SLIDe data, hardly an hour had gone by he didn’t spend
checking his AP for the next time he’d see that message.
Scan Complete.
The promise and hope of Michelle Baxter.

Now the message just
felt like spam.

The SLIDe data
was all but gone, the odds of getting a new hit next to nothing now. But the
feeling was more than that. Or less. Maybe a simple matter of finding someone
else, moving on. If Michelle was out there somewhere, she almost certainly had.
He shook his head, sighing as he eyeclicked into the results. He hadn’t left
Chaela waiting too long. It would only take a moment to deactivate the
notifications.

Matching Records
Found: 1

Target Match
Probability: 99%

Source SLIDe ID:
3420-238502

Had he made a
mistake? Maybe brought up old data from the earlier hit?

But then he saw
it.
99%.
The best possible match. And the hit was brand new, dated today.
Heart racing, he eyeclicked the video file from the camera feed. Muffled voices
from the living room drifted to his ears, probably Stuart coming in, but he
didn’t care.

As the video feed
played back, his mouth went dry as sand. This was a different SLIDe than the
last, but still at a parking lot gate, sometime around sunset. Feeling numb, he
stared at the time-stamped footage. A glossy black car with flawless muscular
lines pulled up, waiting for the gate to open. Jason knew even before he saw
the driver that the car wasn’t flawless any more. It was sitting in his garage,
slightly mangled and missing a hood. The 3D image froze, and he stared at the
slightly blurred image of his own face behind the wheel. A feminine silhouette
with up-done hair sat in the passenger seat next to him.

Chaela
.

The world seemed
to tilt under his feet, fading into the background as a flood of memories came
crashing in.

…Stuart lay
unconscious under the sedation field as Jason tapped a few controls. Chaela
cocked her head to one side. “Jason, somehow I doubt you’d suddenly start
acting grumpy and white-haired if Stuart weren’t around. I think that’s my
department…”

…Jason gave
Chaela a tight smile. “Fine, then. If everyone’s got regrets, you must, too.
You first.” She seemed on the verge of saying something, but the tension seemed
to drain away, her eyes falling to the table as she suddenly seemed intent on
studying the ice cubes in her soda…

…Jason looked
out the dark window of the bus as it took them back to campus, watching the
blur of city lights pass by. “I do have regrets.”

“I know,” Chaela
said. “But it still wasn’t my place to call you on it like that.”

“What’s that
supposed to mean?”

She shook her
head as if to berate herself. “I just meant I’m not surprised.
Sorry, I
don’t really talk to people much. I’m sort of out of practice…”

Still more memories
followed.
Michelle sitting beside the fountain in the plaza. Her ruined car
draped across a median, blood painting the deflated airbag in dull smears. Seeing
her by the statue that morning they’d first met. The smooth heat of her skin as
they made love.

 On and on they
came in waves that threatened to sweep him away. As his vision cleared, he
found himself leaning against the wall for support, his breath coming fast. His
heart beat a maddened, violent thrumming, determined to break free of its
moorings and pound its way out of his chest.

How? How had he
missed it? He’d checked her biorecord in the classroom. It hadn’t been a match.
But there was no other explanation.

When he heard
the muffled voices drifting in again, he realized he was standing there like an
idiot while the woman he’d been trying to find for two years sat in his living
room. Euphoria flooded through him as he walked down the hall, fighting the
urge to run.

The voices grew
louder, and he recognized Stuart’s. “…gave him a chance to come clean. It’s
something you deserve to know.”

Jason found
Stuart with Chaela in the living room. Stuart stood near the front door as if
he’d just walked in, and he shot Jason an accusing look. “I warned you,” Stuart
said. “You should have told her.”

So he’d delivered
on his promise to tell Chaela the truth about him. Not the best timing, but it
didn’t matter now. She wouldn’t care, and she never would have. Jason looked at
her now, standing there not five feet away. Her downcast eyes couldn’t hide the
running mascara or the tremble of her lip. She was overcome by emotion.

“It’s oka…” he
started, but she cut him off.

“Don’t talk to
me! Stay away!” She screamed the words, her shrieks hitting Jason like slugs to
the chest. He’d assumed her tears meant she was overwhelmed with the news he
was someone like her. Continued. A fellow fugitive and kindred spirit. Or that maybe
she’d even realized who he was – the Patrick she’d known so long ago. But the
emotions contorting her face spoke of something else entirely. Fear? Hatred?

She was moving
to the door. He didn’t understand.

“Wait!” he
called. “Just…”

The door
slammed. Jason glared at Stuart, and would have punched his I-told-you-so face
if he’d been any closer. He ran out the door after her.

Déjà vu settled
over him as he ran down the walk toward the street. All of it seemed so
familiar. Chaela upset. Him chasing her down, trying to smooth it over. By the
time he caught sight of her stalking down the sidewalk, she was already one
house over, a fleeting shadow between pools of streetlight.

“Michelle!” he
called out. The shadow froze.

Jason did the
same, part of him still not believing it was really her. She stood there
waiting, an ephemeral outline in the dark. How could he have not seen it
before? Her face was different, yes. But standing there in the half-light, he
saw the same posture, the same stance, the way she held herself like a doe, gracious
and beautiful. Uncertainty fled, and his feet carried him forward, drawn by a force
as immutable as magnetism or gravity. Then he was holding her, pulling her
against him as she buried her face in his chest.

“Patrick.” Chaela’s
voice. Michelle’s voice.

Part of him marveled
that he’d held her almost the same way only hours before, unknowing. He cradled
her face in his hands like a jewel. Her eyes were closed as if she wanted to
remember his face the way it had been – Patrick’s face. The gravity intensified,
irresistible. Their lips met.

She responded,
breath quickening as he drank her in. Time peeled away from all reality – past,
present, even the future – all one. Her presence, the very knowledge of it,
opened him up, like a key sliding into some lock deep within himself. So long waiting,
so long unused, that lock burst open in a silent explosion of turbulent
contentment, enveloping him completely. He reveled in it, familiar memory made
flesh and blood.

“Michelle” He
spoke her name again, and she hugged him close, murmuring imperceptibly against
his lips.

Another kiss,
more present this time, and he savored the feel of her. Eventually, he breathed
a laugh, speaking low in her ear. “All this time trying so hard to find you,
when you were right here in front of me. I should have known.”

“I think I did,”
she said. “I didn’t let myself admit it, telling myself you’d have forgotten
about me a long time ago. But when Stuart told me you were continued, I
couldn’t deny it anymore. I knew.”

“Then why’d you
run away? I don’t understand.” A solitary car whispered past on silent wheels,
headlamps painting her face with blue-tinged light. A strand of hair fell across
her eyes as she shook her head, raising her face to the sky with a sigh. Her
eyes were still closed.

“Why did you
have to find me?” she asked.

He squinted at
her in the darkness, not sure he’d heard her right. “What do you mean? I’ve
been looking for you since I woke up. Almost two years. And I was working to
make sure it happened since before then. I’d have found you sooner, but your
genome from class showed negative for a match.”

She shook her
head as if it were of no consequence. “It’s not mine. I switched it out in
case…anyone checked it.”

“In case who
checked it?” He took her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

She took his
face in her hands, leaning her forehead against his chin. “You always wanted
this. A way to cheat death. You always believed it could happen for you. And I
guess you always believed you could find me.” Her laugh was so bitter it
chilled him to the marrow. Why wouldn’t she open her eyes? “I’m glad you did, God
help me for it. But things might have lasted longer for you if you hadn’t.”

Finally, she did
open her eyes. But her gaze slid past him, into the darkness.

2087

Light. Intense
and unexpected, it ate away the enveloping blackness like acid. It had been
dark for a long time. Michelle tried to close her eyes, shield them from the
encroaching radiance, but realized they were already shut tight.

Slowly, her eyes
adjusted, and she squinted as the whiteness resolved into shapes, blurry and
indistinct. A rounded curve here, a flat plane there. Symmetrical circles
hovering above. Her mind groped at them like hieroglyphics, individually
familiar, but taken together, incomprehensible.

“Try to relax,
Ms. Baxter.” A male voice, a soothing baritone. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
The sounds, the touch, were so much easier to process than sight. “The
disorientation should pass shortly.”

The fog thinned,
her vision clearing. The rounded curve became a welcoming smile, the twin circles,
a pair of blue eyes, penetrating and kind.

“Welcome back.” The
man smiled. “I’m Gray.”

He stood to one
side, and she realized she was looking up at him. She lay reclined at an angle
in something like a high-tech dentist’s chair, tan leather infused with
electronics. On the other side, the air held undulating 3D graphs and readouts
in sharp greens and blues – photoscreens like the ones they’d just installed at
The Collegiate, only much better. Her vitals or something similar. She was no
doctor, but the lack of alarms or red lights felt like a good sign – not like
before, in the room with Mandy. The last thing she remembered was holding her
daughter’s hand after the accident, talking while they waited for the
inevitable.

Then cold.
Unimaginable cold.

Looking around
the room, she had the sensation time had passed since then. How long, she
didn’t know. Turning back to Gray, she saw him clearly now – a young man in his
late twenties with wavy jet hair. His had a face fit for a priest – understanding
and kind, ready to receive confession. Even his suit seemed clerical with its
dark wool and oddly cut half collar.

Confession.
The idea tasted
like bile. Confession had been her goal before the wreck. Confession was what
had landed her here. Wherever here was.

“Gray. Where’s
my daughter?” she asked. That was the most important question, but others
spilled out behind it. “How did you save me? What kind of hospital is this?” Aside
from the chair and the readouts, the rest of the room could have been an
executive office. Cherry wood and bronze metal accents stood out under warm
lighting.