The Dying of the Light (Book 1): End (34 page)

Morena gulped. “Well, in that case…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She kept them closed for a few moments, considering the offer. When she opened them again, she was decision and dedication incarnate, and even Anderson was impressed. “Yes, sir, I would be honored to join. I just have one condition.”

Kim stood a little straighter, surprised. Anderson quirked an eyebrow at the forceful nurse. “And what would that be?”

“I want to bring Michael with us, sir.”

“Who’s Michael?”

In answer, Morena turned and yelled over her shoulder. “Michael, come here, please.” The little boy that Kim had seen on the medical table came running towards them with a grin, then stopped and hid behind the nurse as he caught sight of the others nearby. Morena looked down at him. “This is Michael, commander. His mother was one of the ones in the critical care unit, and his father was the one your men found near surgery. They had been in a car accident. He has no one, sir, no family at all.”

Anderson squatted down to put himself at eye level with the child, and smiled. “It’s okay, son. I won’t hurt you.” The little boy peeked out from behind the nurse’s scrubs. “That’s alright, kiddo. You and I will have plenty of time to get to know each other.” He stood back up and laid his hand on Morena’s shoulder.

“We’ll see if we can’t get someone to look after him when you can’t; there’s plenty of on-base personnel, so it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Your skills — and more importantly, your psychological strength — are certainly worth the effort.” Anderson glanced at Kimberly, and smiled. “And AEGIS has some experience with orphaned children, Ms. Forrest.”

Kim smiled back at Anderson. “Sir, I’d be willing to bet that Mary would help out with that.”

Anderson nodded. “You’re probably right, Barnes. I’ll check with her when we get back. As for you,” he said, looking at Morena. “I can’t bring you in off the field as an officer, but we’ll fix that soon enough. We’ll take care of all the paperwork when we get back, but I’m guessing you’ll be an e-4, Hospital Corpsman Third Class, until we get everything straightened out. Assuming you like the Marines, that is. How’s that sound?”

“Just fine, sir,” she said, and snapped into a reasonably respectable salute, which Anderson grinned and returned.

“Very well. Major, see that she and the boy get what they need stowed aboard the Globemasters. We’ll be wheels up twenty minutes after the cleaning crew gets here.”

“Yes, sir.” Anderson walked away, and Kim hugged Morena. “Congratulations!”

Morena smiled back and held on tight to Michael, who started to squirm as Eaton walked up.

“What’d I miss?” asked the sergeant.

“Morena’s going to be one of us, Rachel.”

“Great! Lord knows we could use someone who actually knows something about medicine,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been doing some of the heavy lifting with medical needs, but I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to true field work. Santos is going to be
so
glad to have you with us.”

Morena nodded towards the car where Blake now lay against the backseat. “What about him?”

Eaton chuckled, a mischievous grin plastered on her face. “He never saw the Mickey I slipped him, major.”

“Well done, sergeant.” Kim could hear his snores from where she was standing, and forced herself to smile. “I’m sure he’ll be fine; he probably just needed some rest.”

At least I hope that was all he needed,
she thought, looking at Morena and the child.
Please, let that be all he needs.

Chapter Seventeen

Fort Carson, Colorado

“I think I know what it is, Kim,” said Dr. Adamsdóttir. Kim turned away from her sleeping lover. David had been sedated for about thirty hours now. He’d been in the infirmary since they’d returned from Laramie, and she still had no idea why he’d snapped.

I can’t have him on the team like this, though.
I need everyone at 100%, if not 110%.

Kim looked at the doctor and found, to her surprise, not even a hint of the irrational jealousy she’d felt towards her before.
Maybe it’s that she’s married now
, she thought.
And happily, from what I hear
.

“Oh?” she said. “What’ve you got?”

“We did the normal psychological profile when he came on board with AEGIS, and he was given a pretty thorough going-over after Fall Creek, too,” Mary said.

Kim nodded. “We all got that; at least the first part. I assumed he was cleared, or he wouldn’t have made the team. Are you saying there was a problem?”

“Not initially. At least, I don’t see any red flags.” Mary paused and looked at Kim. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, Kim. It’s all confidential stuff.”

Kim sighed. “I see. Just do what you think is best, then.”

“I will. That’s why I’m going to tell you what I found. Come look at this.”

Kim walked over and looked at the computer as Mary pointed to a graph. “These are his psych profile scores,” she said. “See that spike there? That indicates some sort of repressed or blocked memory, something he doesn’t want to talk about. The shrinks he talked to didn’t get much out of him about Fall Creek other than what we all know. I thought there might be more to the story, so I did some digging through his records, and what I found…”

“Let me guess,” Kim said. “It’s about Rebecca.”

Mary was startled. “You know about her?”

“He told me about her a few days ago; he said he killed her after she’d turned.”

“Then you know most of the story, but you still need to see this. I found a picture of her in the city records; apparently she worked for the mayor’s office.” Mary turned back to the computer, and brought up a photo on the monitor. A young woman with blonde hair and a bright smile appeared, and Kim’s breath caught in her chest. She sat down hard on a lab stool, frozen by what she saw.

“That’s insane,” she whispered after a few minutes, as Mary looked at her in sympathy. “It can’t be her,” she whispered.

“I thought so, too. So I had a friend at an outside lab compare this with Morena’s AEGIS processing photo. He sent me the results of the comparison.” She punched a command into her computer, and the two photos appeared side-by-side as a comparison was shown. The results were obvious, and Kim hardly needed to see them.

“They’re a 93% match, according to facial structure, height, estimated weight, and a whole host of other factors,” said Mary. “Other than their hair color, the women are nearly identical. We’re looking at positive proof that everyone has a twin
somewhere
in the world.”

“Oh my God. No wonder…”

“It gets worse,” Mary said, and entered another command. “It’s the same for the kid. You know that National Child Registry thing that the FBI was trying to get going a few years back? Well, as it turns out, they still do things like it in various places, and Fall Creek was one of those. Eric had his picture, blood type and fingerprints entered into their system, which was then uploaded to the FBI. I looked through their data, found his picture, and I had that compared to the kid we found in Laramie, Michael.”

This time there were shots of Eric and Michael being compared. Once again, they were almost identical.

“This one was only an 89% match, but you can take it from there.”

“No wonder. No
fucking
wonder,” Kim said. “His fiancée and son — both dead — might as well have come back to life. That would be enough to send anyone over the edge.”

“Normally, I would agree with you. But given his psych eval and his interviews, I believe David has a much stronger psyche than the average person. I don’t think that was all it took. I believe he is, or at least
was
, practical and level-headed enough to deal with even that.”

“If that’s the case, then why…”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. Something must’ve happened to add to his existing trauma, something we don’t know about. Judging from the overall strength of his psyche, I’d have to say it happened fairly recently and was pretty major. Otherwise he would’ve had time to fully assimilate whatever it was.”

Kim sighed. “We need him, Mary.
I
need him.”

Mary laid her hand on Kim’s arm. “I know you do. I think he can come back from this, but until we know he’s okay — or going to be — I think we should keep him sedated and resting here.”

Kim wiped a nascent tear from her eye and smiled at Mary. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said, looking over at him. She sighed and closed her eyes. “I have to brief the colonel.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t think…”

“No, I have to, Mary. Maybe not everything, but he needs to know what’s going on, at least generally. He may even know what it was that sent David over the edge like this.”

Mary nodded slowly. “Alright. I’ll let you know of any changes in his condition, and I would suggest that you keep visiting him. It seems to help a great deal in these kinds of cases.” She paused as Kim stood to leave. “And Kim… you know I’m always here to talk if you need me, right?”

Kim smiled again and gave the doctor a hug. “I know. Thanks, Mary.”

Mary looked over at David as Kim walked out the door.
What’s going on in there?
she wondered.
Come back to us, my friend.
He remained silent and still, and Mary sighed, tending to her other duties.

“So that’s it, sir. Neither of us knows what the proverbial final straw was, but it must’ve been big.” Kim sat in Maxwell’s office, a large cup of coffee in her hand as she looked across the desk at the man who was, for all intents and purposes, her father.

“Holy shit,” said Anderson, perched on the edge of the colonel’s desk. “No wonder he reacted like that. Hell George, even you or I would’ve had a similar reaction.”

Maxwell grunted and continued looking out his office window. Barnes and Anderson glanced at each other when no other comment seemed to be forthcoming. Just as Anderson was about to break the awkward silence, the colonel spoke.

“How long?”

“Sir?” asked Kim, setting down her coffee.

The colonel turned away from his view of the Rockies out the window and fixed the major with a questioning look. “How long has he been acting out-of-character, major?”

Kim thought. “It was before Laramie, sir. Not long, though… maybe a few days. Whatever it was it happened before the briefing, sir.”

Maxwell grunted, remembering Blake’s antics during the uproar. “Frank, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Kim looked to the commander, who grimaced.

“I hope not, sir. I hope not,” he said. “We’re not really ready to deal with all that, yet.”

“Ready or not… we may not have much choice. Start making the calls, Frank. Get them prepared.”

Anderson stood to attention next to the colonel’s desk and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

As he left, Kim looked back at Maxwell in confusion. “Calls, sir?”

Maxwell sighed as he rubbed a hand across the stubble on his scalp. “Too many years, major. Too many memories.” His expression hardened, and Kim forced herself not to sit back in her chair and straighten out of sheer reflex. “Too many friends and comrades left on the field. It has to end.” Kim sat still, not wanting to draw out the anger she saw on her adopted father’s face. “Dismissed, major.”

Kim stood, saluted and turned to leave. As the door opened, Maxwell spoke, and she turned to see him looking at her in a way she would call kindly if it were any other man.

“We’ll figure it out, Kim. I’ll get him back to you. I promise.”

She nodded and strode out the door.
I believe him; God help the poor fool who gets in his way.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Jason swore and threw the wireless keyboard down on his desk, spinning out of his chair to pace the well-worn carpet. Given his basement apartment’s dimensions, he was barely able to get in three strides before having to turn again, but it served to calm his nerves… usually.

Nothing! I can’t believe there’s nothing about these assholes anywhere! It’s like they don’t exist. Though that shouldn’t really surprise me.

He sighed and flopped down in the chair once more. More than thirty-six hours he’d spent sitting there, searching for some sign of this mystery military unit that had showed up out of nowhere in Wyoming.
Twice
. Thirty-six hours, and he had nothing to show for it, except some vague pictures of guys in camouflage taking bodies out of a hospital, and no more idea who they were than before. He’d used every bit of his illicit skill in computers to try and track down even the smallest shred of information, and ended up with nothing.

He cursed and opened a desk drawer, taking a cell phone out of its pristine packaging and turning it on. Keying in a number from memory, he waited a few seconds until he heard a click from the other end, and then silence.

“It’s Jason. I need to see you. I’ll be there in an hour.” He waited for some response, but when the silence continued, he closed the phone and stood, grabbing his car keys on the way out of the apartment. He locked the front door and flipped the phone into the garbage truck that was collecting out front as he walked past. He heard the satisfying crunch of the phone’s destruction as he climbed into his beat-up Jeep Wrangler.