"Damn, Damn, Damn!" Kate slammed the door and leaned against it as if her body weight would keep any one from bursting through. She had scurried from the courtyard as if the devil himself was behind her, and who knew, maybe he was, in the form of Commander Nathaniel Taylor.
"How stupid!" She continued to berate herself. "How could I have been so stupid!"
The room seemed emptier than usual, lonelier than usual. She had never felt so bereft of support, family, friendship. There was no one to help her. She was totally alone, 85 million years away from anyone who knew her or cared for her. She dropped onto the couch and held her head in her hands. She had to think, there had to be some way out of this.
Her mind skipped back to the encounter with Taylor and a strange warmth ran through her body. It was not a truly comfortable feeling. In fact the more she thought about it, it was truly terrifying. She had been attracted to him and as she searched her mind she wondered if his reaction had been the same or if he had been playing with her. Was it some obscure punishment for all the things she'd called him.
"But how the Hell was I to know who he was! God, Kate you're an idiot." She cringed. "Oh, and to tell him my real name!"
A distant rumble of thunder echoed a warning like a metaphor of things to come but the fury Kate feared was not of natures making. The problem was she just could not remember the exact details that had led her to this.
She had awoken in the infirmary three weeks earlier with a stinking headache and a strangers ID pinned to her jacket. The uncanny thing was that the photo on the ID, although a little grainy, looked very much like her. But despite the amnesia, Kate knew she was not this Linda Grey portrayed on the document. She had tried to deny any knowledge of Linda Grey but the doctors had assured her she would remember after a little while.
"Don't worry honey," the nurse had said. "It will all come back."
It had, in dribs and drabs, but not all of it. She remembered her own life, almost to the day she entered Hope Plaza, but why she was there and what had happened between then and waking in Terra Nova was a terrifying collage of scattered images. One image had recently lodged itself into her psyche, the image of Lynda Greys broken body sprawled in one corner of a sterile looking room, sterile except for the splattering of blood across the floor and the walls.
Kate stood and walked into the kitchen, pouring a glass of water. Holding the glass with shaky hands she considered her predicament. For now, she reasoned, she was reasonably safe. Taylor had not followed her home and only knew her as Kate. She was registered in the database as Lynda Grey. That would give her time, but time for what she didn't know. She wondered if Taylor had even given her a second thought. He had the storm to deal with, but it was with a sense of dread that she envisioned him looking for a Kate in the database and coming up empty. Would he be curious enough to pursue it? She shook the thought away. She could stay in the apartment and hope her memory would return and with it a plausible explanation as to why she was impersonating a dead woman, or she could leave. But as Taylor had pointed out, she wouldn't last five minutes on her own out there. But she knew she couldn't stay hidden forever.
A staccato of large raindrops peppered the roof and Kate moved to look outside. Strangely the sky was still a bright sapphire blue with no clouds in sight and the sun still cut through the air like a laser. She stepped outside at the rear of the building, careful to remain behind the drooping leaves of an early philodendron, its shadows casting a mosaic on the bright walls of the house. She looked to the west and was shocked to see a black arc of cloud inching its way over the treetops. It looked like a giant tidal wave growing in intensity and threatening to engulf them. A scattering of people were moving along the road and she noticed soldiers going door to door. For a heart stopping moment she feared they were searching for her, but then she heard , "Everyone to the shelters!" and realized they were evacuating the homes.
This would not bode well with her plan to remain out of sight. She weighed her options. Just how safe would she be if she stayed? How safe would she be if she left? Would the structure hold up to the oncoming storm? She remembered seeing some documents in Lynda Greys possessions pertaining to climate and weather. Perhaps there would be...
Kate dropped the glass. It seemed to hang in the air and then as quickly as the colour drained from her face it plummeted to the ground and exploded into a million shards. She stood absorbing the reality of what had hit her. Lynda Grey was a meteorologist. At this moment they were probably trying to find Lynda Grey to help with the storm predictions. Perhaps they had been here already while she'd been OTG with Commander Taylor but she knew with heart stopping certainty, they would be back.
As she stepped back into the house a terrifying series of thuds hammered through the house. Someone was at the door!