Nightmare
Bering and Wells - What'd I tell ya? This is Part Deux of Failure. Read away, fellow crew members! And may the winds be ever in your favor.
Day 25 - Rescue
"What do we know?" Pete is serious.
"At least five men. Three indoors. Two scanning the perimeter."
"No excess surveillance equipment," Claudia jumps in. "These guys are basically amateurs."
"With assault rifles," Pete argues.
"Outside funding," Claudia fires back.
"And the kids?" Steve brings everyone back on point.
"Upper left corner room. Here," you tap the display with a slim finger.
Steve nods over Peter's shoulder, looking grim.
"If you and Claudia can disable the one on the right, Pete, you and I can enter through this back door and take them by surprise. And then you two can come in through the front."
"And me?"
"You'll wait here. I'll not risk letting you in there with a broken wrist and cracked ribs." She avoids your glance, as she has been doing for the past eleven hours. You want her to look at you; you need her to. So that you can tell her that it's alright. You forgive her because there is nothing to forgive. You understand. You love her. She doesn't look at you.
No one argues, but everyone nods in silent agreement.
"But how are we even supposed to find them? They've got a four hour head start." Pete's voice is grating on your already shredded nerves.
"Claud?"
"On it!" Several seconds later, "Looks like they're heading north on 83. Through North Dakota."
"They're going to Canada," Steve murmurs.
"What? How do you know that?" Peter asks, sounding a bit dumbfounded.
"They've got trackers on them," you explain simply. "Cora's is in the bracelet we gave her for Christmas. Ethan's, in the shark tooth necklace."
"I'm only getting Cora," Claudia sounds apologetic.
You want to crumple into a ball, but instead you straighten your spine. "Well let's go then."
"On my count," Steve's voice comes soft over the headpiece. "Three. Two. One. And go."
You break from beneath the trees and give thanks that it is a moonless night. Pete is moving silently on your right side. You wish, for half a heartbeat that he was Myka. The two of you work so well together, fluidly, in perfect concert sans communication. With Pete, you have to try, to think, to react, instead of merely flowing as one mind in two bodies.
But he takes down the guard quickly and efficiently, without making a sound. And you begin to reevaluate his worth. He has not wavered once since he and Steve rushed home, leaving the artifact they'd been chasing for another day.
"Ours is down," Steve announces.
"Ours, too," Pete agrees, leading the way towards the back door.
You stand, barely breathing, listening intently in the night. The only sounds are leaves rustling in the late summer breeze, the tap of a branch against a windowpane. Nothing from behind the door. Slowly, slowly, you reach up and try the handle. Locked. That's fine. You pull out the necessary equipment and proceed to pick the lock. Your hands do not shake.
"We need someone to stay behind," you announce. "Watch the monitors."
"I will," Artie speaks up quickly. "I'd be no use to you in the field."
You spare him an appreciative glance. He's right.
"Sure you can handle these, old man?" Claudia tries indicating the monitors she's so quickly set up at the B&B, but the nickname falls flat in the tense atmosphere. He shoos her from her seat.
"Cars loaded, guys! Let's go!" Pete bounds into the room.
"I'm coming, too," she hasn't spoken, not once, since this all began. You know she's reliving every moment, every breath, every action. She looks small on the couch, dwarfed by her sadness. She shouldn't come; she won't be able to help, but you understand that need. It's the same as yours. The need to do something. To save them.
"Doctor?" you ask Vanessa.
She looks worriedly from the patient to you and back. She cannot disagree. Myka is a mother after all. Both an unstoppable force and an immovable object. A conundrum. An impossibility. "Alright."
"Very well then. Let's go," and you turn for the door.
You open the door quickly and then press back against the wall as Pete makes first entry, gun held aloft before him. Teslas would not quite cut it for this trip. Too loud. Nor would artifacts. You've stuck with guns, and the metal feels heavy in your palm.
"All clear," a shouted whisper.
You follow him inside. You can hear voices - male, multiple - coming from a room down the hall. Light is spilling out an open doorway. There is the clink of ice on glass. They're drinking. You would like nothing better than to kill them. But first, you would like to hear them scream. Your brain feels clear, clearer than it's ever been. You suddenly understand the difference between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional in a way that you didn't before. Space has taken on a new meaning, depth, shadow, the interplay of light around edges.
You tread carefully down the hall, cautious on the wooden floor. It's an old house, nothing more than a dilapidated cabin really, set about three miles off the main road in the woods. Nothing but trees and streams and wildlife for miles. If it weren't for the tracking devices you'd insisted on last year, you're not sure you would have been able to find your children. You push the thought out of your head. You would. No matter what.
Steve is driving far above the speed limit, but luckily, you are not spotted by any errant law enforcement officials on your way. You pass through the border quickly, your fellow agents' credentials doing the trick.
Artie calls when you're about a hundred kilometers out to say that they've apparently stopped driving. Mrs. Frederick is peering over his shoulder. You wonder if he called her. You wonder if he needed to or if she'd simply shown up.
"It's a rogue group," she explains. "Several regents have been watching them for the past several months."
"Fat lot of good that did," Pete mutters under his breath, but he glances apologetically back at Myka when she turns even paler at his words.
"There should be no more than five of them in total."
"What do they want?" you manage to inquire.
"Access to the Warehouse," she looks particularly affronted. "I am not certain how they learned of its existence, but they obviously thought to use the children as leverage."
"They certainly picked the wrong family to mess with," Claudia snarls.
Mrs. Frederick nods heavily and ends the call.
The car drifts back into strained silence. You reach a hand for Myka's, lying still on the seat beside you. She jerks away at your lightest touch. You frown and go back to staring out the window at the quickly passing scenery, a green blur of forest.
Claudia and Steve have managed to sneak in the front, and you are now positioned on opposite sides of the doorway. These men certainly didn't expect to be discovered quite so quickly. They have been lax on their security. They've underestimated you. It will be one of the last things they ever do.
"Ready?" Steve mouths, making sure to position himself in front of Claudia. He will protect her, no matter the cost.
You nod.
Three. Two. One. And you enter the room, guns drawn. You dispatch one with a clean shot when he foolishly attempts to draw his own weapon in a bumbling, nearly drunk manner. Idiot man. You feel no remorse as his lifeless body tumbles to the ground. Except that you wish it would not have happened so quickly. There is the echo of another gun shot, and Pete bites back a snarl as the bullet grazes his shoulder. He tackles the man to the carpet, rolling around and around on top of one another, fighting for control. A third shot and the captor goes still. You turn your gaze to Steve and the remaining man, his hands held up in the air in surrender. The Warehouse Agent approaches slowly, cautiously, but the man has seen what has become of his buddies, and accepts the handcuffs almost gratefully.
You look to Pete again. "Go," he urges, holding his shoulder tightly. "Go on."
You turn, heading for the stairs, and just as you reach them, the front door bursts open. Instinctively, you whip around, gun held level, unblinkingly. But it's Myka, staring back at you, green eyes wide and terrified, injured wrist held tightly to her chest. You lower the weapon quickly, knowing the feeling of meeting your lover at gun point too well.
"I heard shots," she breaths.
"They're upstairs," you wave away her concern, turning and bounding up the steps. She follows as quickly as her ribs will allow. "Far left room. Far left," you mumble, jogging past three closed doors before you reach the one at the far end.
There is a deadbolt on the outside. You flip it open, rushing through the door without checking to insure that it is safe to do so. You don't care. At this point, there could be an entire army waiting beyond the door and you would have eyes only for the two children huddled on the ratty mattress.
"Mumma!"
"Mommy!"
There they are. Looking a bit worse for the wear. Dirty, tired, hair mussed, a scratch across Cora's delicate cheek that makes you want to go back downstairs and bring those men back to life just so you can shoot them again. But alive and relatively unharmed.
Their hands are tied. You cross the room in three long strides, whipping out the knife from your belt and snapping the zip ties quickly. They launch themselves into your arms, and you stumble back a step before managing to stabilize yourself.
"You're alright. It's alright. I've got you. You're okay." You murmur again and again into their brown curls. Their arms are wrapped tightly around your neck. You spin slightly, looking at Myka who is standing in the doorway, frozen, her mouth opening and closing as though she cannot make the words come. Gently, so gently, you sink to your knees, soothing tears and whispered cries. You detach Cora from your side and point her towards her mother.
She does not hesitate, leaping into Myka's arms immediately with cries of delight. Your wife's arms come down around her automatically and you see a brief flicker of pain cross Myka's face as her daughter crushes already crushed ribs, before she shoves the hurt away to replace it with relief. Myka pulls Cora's smaller body against her, burying her face in the child's neck and breathing deeply. "I love you," you hear her murmuring. "I'm so sorry. Mommy's here. It's alright."
Ethan has wrapped himself about you like a spider monkey, and so you lift him. "Let's get out of here," you tell the room at large, and a round of nods accompanies your announcement. The room stinks of fear, your children's fear, and you want nothing more than to leave it behind, to take them home.
Cora is ten: too big to be held, but Myka stands anyway, lifting her into her arms. She does not even wince at the strain on her wrist. As you pass, Cora reaches out, pulling you and her brother closer, so you are all four wrapped in a tight embrace. Myka's body is stiff against yours, but she kisses Ethan's cheeks again and again.
You are not sure how long you stand that way, but eventually you break apart, leading the way back down the stairs. Steve has contacted Artie and Mrs. Frederick. They're sending someone to deal with the bodies, and they've tied the remaining man up tightly. Whomever the Caretaker has sent will deal with him in due order. You consider teaching him a lesson of your own, questioning him, making him feel your wrath, but you'd much rather continue holding onto your child.
The other three agents welcome the children with calls of delight, and everyone bundles back into the car for the return trip home. The less time spent under the cover of these trees the better. There is only darkness here.
You slide into the middle backseat, Ethan on your lap. And Cora and Myka shimmy in beside you, while Claudia takes the far back, Pete drives, and Steve navigates. You have not stopped the constant stream of reassurance issuing forth from your lips like a river released by floodgates since Ethan and Cora launched themselves into your arms. And you do not stop, not even when you feel the tiny humans grow heavy against you, exhaustion and fatigue taking over now that they are safe.
It is not over. Not yet. This will not be a nightmare easily wiped away by the coming of the dawn. They have only been out of your care for a total of twelve hours, but it is enough to feel like more than three centuries in the bronzer. But the fact that your children are still whole and healthy, that you do not feel the same overwhelming grief and emptiness that you felt one hundred years ago gives you cause for relief. For joy.
You sink back into your seat, tuck Ethan's head beneath your chin, and chance a glance to your left. The sun is rising off to the east; it's golden rays just poking above the horizon, enough to send a halo of light about Myka's head. She is not sleeping. She is staring out at the glowing star, bringing a new day. There are tear tracks streaked across her cheeks, her green eyes are dark and hazy, and her grip about Cora is tight enough to cause the sleeping child to squirm in discomfort. Her spine is straight, but the weight of gravity lays heavy about her shoulders, a cloak of regret, of fear, of pain. She is still being tortured, you see, even now, with your children safe in your laps. Her agony has not ceased.
No. This will not be an easy night to forget.