Chapter Seventy-Six: Gino Has a Meltdown
As Gino's yelling continued, Gwen Twymann found herself zoning out. Cast adrift, once again, into meandering currents of thought.
Presently, Gwen's thoughts carried her away - far, far away from the Wrathful Veteran's upstairs quarters. Away to the emerald-green oceans of the Land of Shores and Prisms, where Gwen had grown quite used to closing her eyes and losing herself to the Viridian Wind's perpetual up-and-down bobbing.
The Wrathful Veteran attempted to say something, but Gino merely drowned him out with a deluge of profanity.
The door to the Veteran's quarters opened a fraction. An armed guard poked his head inside, an expression of concern etched onto his face. He made eye contact with the Veteran, gave him a questioning look. The Veteran discreetly motioned for the guard to leave. The guard quietly closed the door, all without Gino noticing.
The snick of the closing door, ironically, did what the summation of Gino's swearing and shouting could not - bring Gwen back to full awareness.
Upon snapping back into focus, Gwen studied the Wrathful Veteran's wearied expression. There was some degree of resignation in the Dersite revolutionary's face. He was going to let Gino run at full throttle until he ran out of juice. However, the Veteran did not know Gino as well as Gwen did. He did not know just how long Gino was capable of carrying on.
Gwen had no intention of standing in this room for a full two hours.
Time to move things along.
"Gino, will you please shut up?" Gwen interrupted Gino, achieving the impossible and shutting him up.
The words flowing freely from Gino's mouth caught, suddenly, in his throat. Stunned into a momentary silence, Gino gaped at his friend, still opening and closing his mouth, searching for an appropriate reply. "...did you just-?"
"Yeah, I did," Gwen interrupted once again. She turned to the Veteran. "Now, I believe you were gonna explain why the fuck you let Cass hang without telling us."
"Simple," the Wrathful Veteran replied. "At the time, I did not trust you."
That warranted another blowup from the Caiazzo end of the conversation.
"Don't fuckin' what now? You wanna talk about trust, you sack of rancid maggoty dog shit, I'll tell you a thing or two about-"
Gwen accessed her sylladex and retrieved a heavy roll of duct tape. "If you don't shut up right now, so help me God this goes on your mouth." To drive her point home, she pulled a strip of tape out from the roll, ready to tear it off, daring Gino to speak again.
Gino dared. "C'mon, Gwen, we both know you're not gonna-"
"No more sex, then."
That shut Gino right up.
"As for you…" Gwen turned back to the Veteran, returning the duct tape to her sylladex. "Start talking, and choose your words carefully. You're on thin fucking ice, and you won't like what's underneath it when it breaks."
"Duly noted." The Wrathful Veteran acknowledged the threat, chose to let it pass without further scrutiny. The Heroes were angry - he understood this. Anger caused people to speak boldly. The Veteran leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers. "I learned of the Queen's intention to execute the Sylph-"
"She has a fuckin' name, you know," Gino broke his silence yet again. This time, however, Gwen shot him no glare.
The Wrathful Veteran did not skip a beat. "I learned of the Queen's intention to execute Miss Galavis mere hours before the event took place. And yes, I chose to withhold this information from the both of you. Tell me...had I shared this information with you, what might you have done? Would you have tried to save your friend's life?"
Gwen was silent for a moment. Then she answered, honestly, "Yeah, I imagine so."
"I thought as much." The Veteran nodded. "A terrible, terrible thing, losing a friend in such a way. I have lost my fair share. Were our positions reversed, I would have given the same answer. And that is why I could not inform you of Miss Galavis's impending execution. The square was locked down with snipers, a full battalion of commandos, as well as naval support. You would have ignored this. You would have flown in to the rescue, and you both would have died glorious deaths. Then Miss Galavis would have hanged anyway."
"You don't know that for sure…" Gino said, though his tone was rather halfhearted.
"Need I remind you, Prince, of what happened the last time you acted against my will and attempted to rescue Miss Galavis?"
Gino had no reply, nor did he require one.
"If we are to emerge in one piece from this entanglement with the Crown, we are going to need the help of Heroes," the Wrathful Veteran declared. "We need the symbolism you embody. We need your support. Dead Heroes can offer neither."
"Well, you can make a nice speech when you need to, I'll give you that," Gwen remarked. "Still… You played the trust card, just now, and I'm wondering why we shouldn't play it too."
"I'll never tell you why you should do something, Miss Twymann," the Veteran stated. "The 'should' of any given situation is a matter of personal motivation, which I am quite incapable of controlling. No, all I will do is ask for your help."
"Help?" Gwen asked. "Help with what?"
"Our next move," the Wrathful Veteran replied. "The Queen took Miss Galavis's life. In return, we shall take half her kingdom."
"How?"
"Television," the Veteran answered. "We are going to fight with television."
There was a Prospitian marine sergeant standing watch outside the door to Anna's room.
The Prospitian performed her duty without complaint, though she soon grew weary of listening to the sounds of sobbing and vomiting that frequently drifted under the crack between the door and the metal floor. She knew little of humans, but she had not thought it possible for someone's body to hold so much bile.
Standing watch made for a dull experience, but the Prospitian was a member of the Navy. She was used to dull experiences. She preferred dull experiences.
Dull was safe.
"You're still here?"
The Prospitian was surprised by the familiar voice approaching from down the corridor, which made her realize that she had been zoning out. Shaking her head once, the Prospitian looked down the corridor, identifying the source of the voice. It was the Muse, bearing a tray of bread, fried eggs, and water.
"Yes, Muse, I'm still here," the Prospitian replied. "Orders from the skipper."
"Must get dull, standing in front of a door all day long," Tami remarked.
"Very dull," the Prospitian marine agreed. "That's what I like most about it."
"Really?" That had not been the answer Tami was expecting. She hesitated before entering the room beyond the door, experiencing some inexplicable impulse to continue the conversation. "How can you like being bored without losing your mind?"
The Prospitian fixed Tami with an impassive gaze. "When I'm bored, it means nothing is happening. And when nothing is happening, my life expectancy doesn't suffer."
"You afraid?"
"Of what, Muse?"
"Dying."
"No, I am not afraid of dying," the Prospitian replied. "Doesn't mean I don't want to live."
On impulse, Tami asked the marine sergeant, "What's your name?"
"Unit-G0040000."
"Can you get the door for me, G? My hands are full."
"Of course, Muse."
"Tami," the teenaged girl blurted out.
The Prospitian paused, her hand on the door's lever. She threw Tami a questioning glance.
"My name," Tami clarified. "Tami Abramov. That's my name. Please, can you use it? Not many people know it, anymore."
"Of course, Tami Abramov." The Prospitian pushed the lever, allowing the door to swing open. "Careful in there. Don't let the Seer vomit on you."
Tami walked into the room. The door was closed behind her.
The room itself was spacious due to there being only one bed, as opposed to the bunks usually found in the crew quarters. The floor was metal, the walls were metal, and the ceiling was - you guessed it - metal. This did not make the room lively by any means, though interior decorating has rarely been a priority on military vessels.
Anna Carrero sat on the floor, leaning back against one of the walls, her knees drawn almost all the way up to her chin. Her eyes were sunken, her skin pallid, her shoulder-length black hair hanging in limp strands. She had a sheen of sweat glistening on her skin, and yet she seemed to be lightly shivering. A plastic bucket rested to her left, about a third of the way full with puke.
"You look like shit," Tami observed.
"Feel like shit," Anna confirmed, glancing up at Tami with dark, bloodshot eyes. "And a 'hello' would've sufficed."
Tami shrugged, setting the tray of food down. "Could say the same to you," she said. "A 'hello' would've been better than showing up half-dead from alcohol poisoning. Is this all you've been doing? Drinking and time-hopping?"
Anna shook her head, reaching for the tray of food, picking up a piece of bread. "More like drinking while time-hopping. Sorta fun, you know, if you have the head for that kind of thing. Lots of time threads to keep track of, and not to mention the perspective of causality-"
"Well, while you've been off having your 'fun', we've been getting pummeled," Tami interrupted, frustration finally bubbling to the surface. "Some of us have been shot. Some of us have been stabbed. According to Gwen, Cass's dream self died in a public hanging earlier today. You know about that?"
"No." Anna shook her head, which caused her to wince and clasp a clenched fist to one of her temples. "I've steered clear of Derse." She nibbled on the bread. "I've been shot, too, you know. Twice. I didn't like the experience."
There was a silence on Tami's end. After considering Anna's words for a moment, Tami chose to sit across from the other girl. "How'd you get shot?"
Anna nibbled off a little more of the bread. "I was crossing items off my temporal things-to-do list." She paused for a sip of water before returning to the slice of bread. "So many kinks to straighten out… Keeping the Alpha Timeline intact hasn't been easy. I took Adam three hundred years into the past - we needed to get one of his consort tribes to spark an uprising. Otherwise, they would've died out, which then would've led to the destruction of the other two tribes...like I said, causality is huge for Heroes of Time. So I take Adam back through the timestream, and, almost immediately...POW!" Anna tapped her left eye. "Energy bolt right through the head. I revived afterwards, of course - god tier, and all that - but that doesn't mean I forgot."
"Since when did you reach the god tiers?"
"That was the very first thing I did here, before I started time-hopping," Anna replied, finishing the first slice of bread. She picked up the second and took a small bite. "Went straight to my quest bed and...well, that was the second time I was shot."
Anna gave Tami a challenging look, as if to say, 'Do you really want the details?'.
Tami did not ask for the details. She watched Anna continue to peck away at the bread. "The Dersites tried to kill me, not long after Entry," she shared. "They sent an assassin who was very good with knives. Gino was with me. He saved my life. Got a knife jammed up through the back of his head for his trouble…" Tami's voice started to trail off into a murmur. "You know, I never knew a person could bleed so much…"
"Has your vagina taught you nothing?"
The question was so unexpected; Tami felt as if she'd been zapped by an electric socket. She threw her head back and burst out laughing. Since her 'fake laughing' exercises with Jurgen von Kessler, laughter seemed to come much easier to Tami, much more naturally.
"Straight-up laughter?" Anna sounded surprised. "No witty comebacks? No biting retorts? You've changed, Tam."
"And you? Putting yourself through withdrawal when you could just time-hop your way out of this cushy little hilton of a ship to find more booze?" Tami pointed out. "The Anna Carrero I knew would've done no such thing."
"The idea has occurred…more than once..." Anna murmured, her gaze growing unfocused and vacant for the briefest of moments. Then she snapped back, dropping her piece of bread and reaching over to her puke bucket. "Thanks for bringing me dinner. Now you might wanna get the fuck out before I tag your shoes."
Tami took the hint and stood up. "Get better soon, Anna. We need you out there." She turned away and headed for the door.
"Tam, wait."
Tami stopped in front of the door at Anna's behest, turning back around.
Anna reached down her shirt and pulled a small, flat rectangular object from her bra. It was a captchalogue card. She held it out to Tami. "Do me a favor and burn this, okay?"
"Okay." Tami took the card and, without another word, opened the door and stepped back into the corridor. She traded a quick nod with G before walking away. As she reached the end of the corridor and entered one of the stairwells, Tami glanced down at the captchalogue card.
It contained Anna's Captain Morgan flask.