Hi, folks. It's just under 3 weeks since this story went missing on AO3, and I haven't heard back from support yet. So, I've decided to go ahead and post a new chapter here and on my tumblr now. I hope people find it and you enjoy it.
How many times had I been through this, trying to act normal when everything was exploded, scattered, when I had to deceive myself that everything was fine in order to deceive others? Or had it really been fine, and staying calm and determined helped me get through it? Is this real? Is this happening? I thought, What do I do? And then each time, an old familiar voice came up into my head as if from a deep well: I don't know, I don't know.
"One step at a time," I said aloud, and Michael looked at me from across the table. My eyes moved from the sight of my child sleepily gnawing a tomato-and-cheese sandwich to meet my co-parent's. I cleared my throat and looked back at Sevvy.
"Finish what you can of lunch and then Daddy will help you get ready for your nap. Just wash up, you don't need a whole bath."
Sevvy half nodded and swallowed. He took a sip of his soy milk. He didn't even seem to want to resist, to insist on his story or a cookie, first. He was bone-tired, and, under the adrenaline, so were we all.
When Sevvy said he was full, Michael told him to head to the bathroom. As I rose from my seat, the man who'd always seemed so wise, so gentle, turned and pinned me to my place with his eyes.
"Don't go anywhere," he commanded, and I felt another wave of despair.
"I'm just going to my bedroom, I swear," I told him, raising my hands as if in surrender. He kept staring at me. "I'll wait 'til you get back and you can go with me," I acquiesced, and he turned to settle Sevvy into bed.
It was so hard to stay still, not to pace, to cry, to scream or do anything, really, to remain suspended in this moment indefinitely, as if it would never end. It will, it will, be patient, I reassured myself, and tried to shield myself against the rising tide of my feelings by chanting a repeating series of perfectly-tuned Oms in my head, as if I was back in one of the monastic meditation groups I'd attended. It was my voice, but it was also every living thing's. Yet, even as I felt it relax a piece of me, another part of me was yelling at me to wake up and do something, because "grounding" or "centering" wasn't gonna help. I was crawling out of my skin.
I rose and put one foot in front of the other, relying on habit and ritual. I walked to the cabinet and got out a glass. I filled it with the pitcher of water from the refrigerator. I drank. I listened to myself swallow, and I felt my tears prickle and press from the corners of my eyes slowly, as if being measured drop by drop.
I repeated this several times, looking into the middle distance, and finally sitting again at the table. Michael came back into the room. We stared at each other.
"As much as I want to, to interrogate you," he said lowly, with effort, "I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I want you to explain what's going on, tell us everything as soon as my husband gets back."
His husband. As if I had no connection to his family. I thought he didn't mean it, he couldn't have said it on purpose, I knew Michael. And yet…
"I, uh, I do have to get something from my room," I suddenly said, almost surprising myself. "You can go with me and we can come back here or wherever you want. It's just I have something that can help keep us safe."
He observed me closely, head slightly back, probably not sure whether to trust my pleading. Finally,
"Alright. You lead," he said.
I nearly tripped over the table leg and then tried to keep my pace controlled. I made it to the bedroom as he followed, and immediately grabbed my suitcase from the bottom of the closet, upending it over the bed. "C'mon, c'mon," I chanted to myself, until I found the small rivet in the lower lining and worked it out with my fingernail. Inside, my hand grasped the plastic box. Drawing it out, I opened it. What I needed was nestled in the center of the cushioning foam.
"I—" I started, and then stopped in confusion. Michael wasn't there. Where had be gone?
I glanced back down at the box and began to pry the small device from its mooring. The creak of a floorboard came from the doorway, and Michael was there again. His arm was bent in an odd position; I realized it was leaning on something that hung from his shoulder by a strap.
It was a rifle.
I swallowed and he watched me as I did it. Visions of Mrs. S rushed into my head. But did he have it to protect me or protect against me?
He glanced down at it with a look of resolved distaste. It was obviously old, with a dark-wood and dented stocks, but it looked clean.
"This was my father's hunting rifle, and my grandfather's and great-grandfather's before that," he said quietly, as if to the long, metal barrel itself. "I was taught how to use it as a child, but when I inherited it, I put it away, hoping to never use it again. I just kept it because it was theirs, my family's. It felt like… like their ghosts would be disappointed if I didn't." He looked up at me again, and his fingers fell a little, his pointer resting on the side of the trigger guard.
"I hope I won't need to use it," he finished, looking up to meet my eyes. Before I could get my mouth moving her nodded his head toward the item in my hand. "Whatchya got?"
"Oh, um," I held the black, plastic box up for him to see, as well as the small, static-resistant pouch in my other hand. "It's a scrambler. It scrambles cell and radio signals, so they can't be tapped. Well, probably can't be tapped," I admitted, and he walked over to take a look at it, his gun pointing, to my relief, at the floor.
"So, that thing about surveillance, you believe it? It could be true?" he asked, and I cleared my throat.
"Yeah, and I'll tell you all about it—" I began, but he waved me quiet.
"Yeah, when Teo gets home," he finished for me. He nodded at my other hand. "And that?"
"It's a thumb drive and some SIM cards," I explained. "These are for use, in case of an emergency, to contact a friend."
His expression flitted between pissed, tired, sad. He pushed his hair back from his forehead with his free hand.
"A 'friend.' Jesus Christ, Cosima, what have you gotten us all into?"
My mouth worked, but nothing came out. I wanted to apologize again and again, but I didn't know if he wanted that, if it would make a difference. I wasn't sure if he wanted to know or it was rhetorical, and he really just wanted me to not be there.
"I'm sorry," I finally said, after I worked up the spit to answer. "But I should get this working right away to protect us all."
He raised his eyebrows and stepped back, letting me slide past him, and followed me back down the hall. I found my laptop on the coffee table, still on, just in sleep mode. I took a steadying breath and pushed the drive into the slot, touching the pad to wake it up.
The light by the drive turned on immediately. You couldn't hear the clicks or whirrs of the drives of the latest computers turning over anymore, but there was the faintest buzz, more felt than heard, that told me it was working, transferring data.
I finally sat down on the couch in front of it and pressed the test button on the scrambler. The led blinked on. It was ready. I flipped its switch.
Michael seemed to be getting more nervous.
"Who's your friend, and what did you mean by probably?" he asked.
"There's uh, there's always a chance of parabolic mics, or other long-distance listening devices," I revealed. "But it's highly unlikely with the build of this house and the surrounding area that we wouldn't notice someone close enough... um, I hope."
"You hope," he repeated. I felt like somehow all my social and communication skills had vanished. Could I make this any worse?
"Well, it's kind of moot, now…" I mumbled, but before I could dig my hole deeper there was a rattle at the door. We both spooked and then realized it was the kind of sound made when an actual key turns in the lock. Teo came bustling in, sweating and carrying several shopping bags.
Michael visibly relaxed a little.
"Okay, I'm here," my friend panted, then caught me looking at the bags. "I got it," he told us, "I just didn't want to have the one bag, just in case. I got decoy bags!" It could almost have been humourous if the situation had been a little different. Michael laid a calming hand on Teo's forearm, and Teo noticed the gun as he did, growing tensely still.
"Honey?" he asked.
"It's okay," Michael told him, "It's not loaded. The cartridges are in my pocket." Teo let out a breath of relief. Suddenly I felt like I could breathe much clearer, too.
There was a flash on my computer screen and it abruptly went dark. A few seconds passed and a plain, white text ellipsis appeared. Then, testing, it said.
We all stared at it, seconds feeling like minutes. Then rows of the unintelligible gibberish of coding began scrolling up the screen. Michael looked worried, and Teo scrunched up his brow in confusion. There was a brief "blip" of a system noise, and then it stopped.
Password: It said. I typed it in quickly, the keystrokes sounding loud in the quiet room. Scan, it said, and I brought my eye within a few inches of the built-in camera, only remembering after a moment to pull my glasses off.
The screen lit up, but it wasn't my usual desktop background. It was a chair and a white wall on a video feed. Then someone slid into the chair. Dark, slightly frizzy hair hung in front of their face for a moment, and then they leaned back, and their face came into focus. It was my face, too, save some small differences.
"Cosima," the accented voice came through the speaker, "I've cleaned everything. Do you have the scrambler and the SIM chip?" I nodded. "Put it in the phone," she said.
I waved my hand at Teo and he finally took his eyes away from the screen to look at me. He rustled in one of the bags and pulled out the cell phone. I took it and unboxed it quickly, the slid it open and put in the SIM. I closed the phone's back securely and plugged its cord into another slot on my computer. Tiny arrow icons pointing up and down flickered on the little grey display.
After a moment of tapping at keys, my friend on the screen looked up at me and nodded.
"Are you alright?" she quickly asked, and I let out a breath I'd been holding.
"I'm not injured, but there's some stuff going on," I told her, and then I turned, leaning back so my son's fathers' eyes could see the screen and meet the camera.
"Guys, this is Mika. She's my sister," I sighed and corrected myself as they looked between our nearly identical faces. "Well, one of them," I amended, and we began.