The Second Wave (13 page)

“Yes. Not helping, Emily.”

“It’s okay,” Paige amended. “She’s right. I
should’ve listened to her all along.”

“Look. I have to hold the orientation meeting
in a few minutes,” Rochester announced with a glance at his watch.
“But let me know as soon as you find her. Or as soon as you learn
anything new, anyway.”

When he left, Eleven geared up to join her
team in their search. Before she could leave, nurse Vasquez burst
into the room. Her eyes were wide. “Doctor Paige! She’s back!”

Paige raised a confused eyebrow. “Who?”

“Miss Gust.”

Eleven stopped dead in her tracks.

“I just walked by the observation panel to
her room,” the nurse told them. “She’s…just sitting there.”

“Are you sure?” Paige was already up and
hurrying out into the corridor, followed by Eleven. Vasquez had to
scramble to keep up with them; her physique didn’t allow for high
speed movements. She looked mildly offended by that last statement,
“Dr. Paige, I have brought her lunch every day since I came here.
Sure I am sure.”

To everyone’s surprise, Eugenia was indeed
back in her room. She sat cross-legged on the bed, hair and clothes
still wet from the rain, dripping all over herself and the sheets.
There were tiny puddles on the floor where she had walked, tracing
back the way she came in: through the back door, apparently.

Eleven radioed her team to stop the search,
then went to tell Mayor Rochester. Summer Paige fetched towels. She
dried Eugenia thoroughly and helped her into a fresh nightgown.

“Where have you been?” she asked, not really
expecting an answer. But she’d grown accustomed to talking to her,
like she had done when she was unconscious. In a way, it was still
like treating a coma patient.

“You had us all worried, Eugenia. You had
me
worried! Don’t run off like that again, especially not in
a storm like that! The Gods know what might have happened!”

She quickly bit her tongue. Eugenia was her
patient, not a child. Emily was right, she was beginning to treat
her like her sister. Still Eugenia all but looked through her. When
she was dry and dressed in a fresh gown, Eugenia wordlessly walked
to the window, which overlooked the entrance to the hospital and
the agora. Paige joined her in another attempt to strike up a
conversation about what they saw, but it was just the settlers,
going to the canteen for the orientation meeting. Some workmen were
among them. They had been asked to help with the repairs from last
night’s storm and did what they could. The protectors were there,
too.

Eugenia had no eyes for whom Paige pointed
out to her, though. She was scanning the crowd, as if searching for
something. Suddenly she hammered against the glass. Fixing on
someone down below, she rapped against the window in a frenzy,
prompting Paige to take hold of her arm before she smashed the
glass. The people on the ground couldn’t possibly hear it, but when
Paige looked she saw a tall, blond man staring at them. He waved
once, a gesture Eugenia mirrored. Then he turned around and resumed
his walking. The moment lasted mere seconds. But however often
Paige asked Eugenia who the man was, her patient remained as silent
as ever.

* * * *

The canteen was a kidney-shaped bungalow on
the other side of the agora, opposite the hospital. It was more or
less in the centre of the colony and although it was not quite
finished yet, it looked welcoming and comfortable on the inside. A
hand painted banner gave its name as
Fortress of Latitude
,
something Tyson, the wunderkind chef, had made up in honor of his
favorite comic book hero.

To hold the orientation meeting and
accommodate all settlers, the chairs and tables in the main hall
had been pushed aside to make room to stand. The counter took up
one full side of the hall, ready to serve breakfast after the
welcome speech: sandwiches and scrambled eggs.

John followed Peter, who was supposed to meet
Luke. Peter, John noted, was friendly and open to everyone they
encountered. He said please and sorry when they had to push through
the crowd, he smiled and exchanged pleasantries with strangers.
John mimicked his behavior to a certain degree, but got fed up with
it soon. Other people weren’t of much interest to him unless he had
to gain something from their acquaintance.

Peter presented him to his assistant Dr. Luke
Reyes, a handsome man in his thirties with honest eyes and a
nervous smile. But John never got to hear the mayor’s welcome
speech, let alone get his hands on a much needed sandwich, because
a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Paige asked to speak to him
and he had no choice but to follow her outside again.

“I’m sorry to hijack you from the meeting
like that,” she apologized when they were in the empty foyer. “But
I saw you waving to my patient, and I was curious to know what that
was about.”

It took a moment for John to realize what and
whom she meant. “She’s your patient, then?” It explained the
hospital gown and the mental state the girl had seemed in last
night.

“Do you know her?” the doctor inquired. She
seemed more anxious to him than accusing; a round, healthy looking
woman of maybe forty-two.

He decided to go with the truth. “I only met
her last night.”

“Where?”

“Outside. She was looking for shelter.”

“How do you know what she was looking
for?”

“She told me.”

The woman’s face fell. “Eugenia spoke to
you?”

John shrugged. “Yeah.”

“What exactly did she say?” she asked,
excited now.

But John cocked his head. “If she hasn’t told
you herself, then I guess that is between her and me.”

Paige held up her hands by way of an apology
for her questions. “Of course. I understand. Come with me,
please.”

He only followed her, because he was curious
to see the girl from last night again. Even in his line of
business, he rarely met people who threatened to drown a whole
village.

And so John met the auburn-haired girl in the
hospital gown a second time. Of all the buildings he had seen so
far in the colony, the hospital actually looked like it was
finished. A friendly, three-storey structure with light, airy
rooms, and clean stairways. There were no patients around.

While she led him upstairs, Dr. Paige told
him almost nothing about Eugenia. Just that she didn’t speak to
anyone else.

The room was on the second floor, a chamber
rather, barely big enough for a bed and a small table. There were
two windows: one looking outside, one that allowed people on the
corridor to look inside the room. John knew how it felt to be
exposed like this; he reckoned even a crazy person must be
uncomfortable in there. It was more like a fish tank than a
hospital room. Eugenia stood by the window, staring outside.

The doctor opened the door and beckoned him
inside. Being someone who had talked to the patient, she probably
wanted to make sure he spoke the truth, John assumed.

As soon as he was inside, the doctor withdrew
and closed the door, so the two of them were alone. The sunlight
that fell in through the glass made the woman’s skin look
exceptionally pale; translucent even. The nightgown was crisp and
white, a harsh contrast to the dark curls cascading down her back,
framing a set of big eyes that suddenly rested on him intensely. A
gaze that made him uncomfortable.

He looked everywhere but into her eyes. “When
I saw you at the window, I thought they had found you out. But the
doctor told me you came back by yourself.”

Eugenia looked desperate. “You stayed.” She
said it as if it was an explanation, or possibly an accusation.

“Well, in any case, a barn is not a
particularly good place to hide out during a thunderstorm.”

“I didn’t go to the barn to hide out,” she
stated, almost too softly for him to understand clearly. “I went
there to meet you. I wanted to run away with you. But then you
decided to stay.”

“I have decided no such thing, yet.”

“Yes, you have.”

She sat on the bed and drew up her knees to
her chin. A position too familiar to John; it reminded him of a
child locked in a cupboard. It made him listen to what she told him
next. “I wanted to run away with you. You know how to run away. But
now I have nowhere to go anymore. I don’t know what to do. My head
hurts so much that I can’t listen anymore. Please help me.”

“People usually pay me to help them.”

She didn’t grace that with a response and he
felt foolish for having said it out loud. If she knew about him,
and the fact that she’d known where to find him last night
suggested it, then she probably also knew about his terms and
conditions. Perhaps she had sources of information.

There was a chair on the other side of the
room; he grabbed it and dragged it next to the bed. He sat down
cautiously. And because he had learned only a few months ago that
those who have no money sometimes have the best payment, he asked,
“What is it that you want me to do for you?”

She looked at him and then through him. “I
don’t know. Everything is happening at once and I can’t make it
stop.”

“And you think I can make it stop?”

“I think you were brought here for a
reason.”

“It is funny that you should be the second
person today who speaks of that.”

Her eyes focused again. A small smile
appeared in the corner of her mouth. As smiles went, hers was a bit
off, as if she were mimicking something she had seen but hadn’t
done in a while. It was still beautiful, he thought, but couldn’t
even chastise himself for thinking it, because the door swung open
the next instant and a protector stood in it; a captain by the rank
insignias on the sleeve. Arms crossed, face like stone. Average
height, keen eyes, wiry physique—he could take her out with a bit
of a struggle, if it came to that.

She ignored Eugenia completely and focussed
her attention strictly on John. “You. Out.”

The next thing John knew, his simple plan of
staying with Peter until the coast on Earth was clear for him to
return got a lot more complicated than he could have imagined.

* * * *

In the meantime Peter was able to enjoy both
the orientation speech as well as breakfast, where he learned the
valuable lesson that if one commented on chef Tyler’s princess
outfit, one got an extra spoon of scrambled eggs. He sat down on a
table with Luke and four people he didn’t know but quickly got
acquainted with; mostly because Luke was good at small talk and
striking up friendships. Peter sometimes got lost in conversations;
he forgot that other people didn’t know what he thought and so
couldn’t follow his theories oftentimes. Well, Luke could, but then
again, he was his assistant and spent quite some time inside
Peter’s head, to speak metaphorically.

After breakfast, he was approached by Sally,
his sister, who tried to gently break to him the news that an
impostor had used Duncan’s ticket to gain access to the colony;
they were looking for him now, but as much as it pained her to say
it, it all could have been avoided had Peter simply returned the
electronic pass instead of giving it to someone he hardly knew and
who had probably sold it. Luke was shocked. So was Sally, when
Peter told them about John.

After this illuminating conversation, Sally
saw no choice but to report what she’d found out to both her
captain and Mayor Rochester. Eleven, of course, was all for tossing
the fraud into prison, a plan that would have miserably failed
anyway, seeing that a prison was not in the original blueprints for
the colony and had therefore not been built. It was at this point
in the crisis meeting in Rochester’s house, when Dr. Paige joined
the team with her own news—news of a stranger whom Eugenia talked
to.

It was quickly gathered that the impostor and
the stranger Dr. Paige talked about were identical, which was
exactly the time when Mayor Rochester decided, against Captain
Eleven’s advice, that he wanted this man to stay. Finding out what
had happened to the first wave settlers was still the highest
priority to him; they needed every lead in this case they could
get, even if the only lead they actually did have was a man who had
arrived under the protection of a legal gray area.

“Gray area?” Eleven exclaimed. “Identity
theft is illegal! We should throw them both in the brig and send
them straight home as soon as the wormhole opens again.”

“No, not Peter!” Sally begged. “He would
never do anything illegal, not knowingly! It’s not his fault that
he has an exceptionally bad taste in men!”

“He was a party to it, Sally.”

“Not wittingly, I’m sure. Please, Emily. You
don’t know my brother, but you’ve known me long enough. I vouch for
him. Whatever happened, it’s not his fault! I promise.”

“Silence, both of you,” Mayor Rochester
interrupted them. “As mayor of this village it is my decision, and
I have made it. They both stay for now. I don’t care who did or
didn’t do what. And be it as it may, nobody can go anywhere for now
anyway, so we might as well see where this leads us. Captain,
please bring me this John character here. Protector Sheldon, I’d
like to speak to your brother as well. The rest of you may go,
except Summer. You, my dear doctor, I want around for this.”

* * * *

Eugenia was wrong. John had not decided to
stay, at least not permanently. But she didn’t know the difference
between forever and for now. He didn’t know where else to go: there
was no way back to Earth until the wormhole was set up again, and
even then he’d inevitably arrive in a government building,
surrounded by protectors and probably police as well. His cover
would blow and he’d most likely end up in prison. And if he did
manage to escape, there was still the relentless Dragon Clan,
wanting retribution because roughly ten years ago he had stolen a
lot of bling from them and killed the daughter of their head of
tribe.