Chapters beginning to get longer as I hit my stride!
Chapter Five
There was something she was supposed to be doing, besides just sitting. Something that may or may not be important but she couldn't seem to focus long enough to grasp onto what it might be. She gazed into nothing for an indeterminable amount of time, occasionally wondering what she might do next, when her attention drew to a figure that sat down beside her.
"Hello? Young lady?"
A voice dragged through the air, eventually registering in Myka's brain. Her head turned sluggishly in its direction; her immediate thought – I can see you.
"Well, that's a good start," the figure chuckled quietly and seemed to smile.
"Did I say that out loud?" Myka frowned, trying to remember. She made a bigger effort to concentrate on her companion and soon found her mind and vision clearing. Before long, she recognised that she was talking to an elderly man with salt and pepper hair and kind eyes. "Oh," her surprise at the sudden clarity slipped out.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to startle you." He reached out a hand in greeting. "My name's Stan. Welcome to Limbo."
Agent Bering held her hand out automatically to shake Stan's while her brain tried to catch up with his words. "Limbo?"
He smiled sadly. "We don't actually know what this place is but it's as good a name as any."
Myka blinked slowly, attempting to force her thoughts to work faster. "We?" She asked, becoming increasingly frustrated with her ability to form sentences, or the lack thereof. She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. The sound seemed overly loud and alien in this place and she immediately held a hand over her mouth and looked around for any sign of a foreboding authority figure.
"Don't you worry now Miss. Far as we can tell, there's not much here that'll do you harm. As for the 'we' part, I'd be more than happy to introduce you to the family." He stood slowly and offered her a hand to help her to stand. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Agent Bering," she answered automatically; some of her senses beginning to return to her. "Sorry... I mean, Myka... I'm Myka."
The temporarily reinstated Agent Wells sighed heavily as she leant her head back in her seat and prayed that she could fall asleep or that time would move faster. "Tempus fugit indeed," she scoffed.
She had refused to step foot in the Warehouse so Artie had been forced to meet her at Leena's where he gave her a brief run down before shoving her tickets at her and sending her on her way.
In her formative years as an agent, she had treasured this time before a mission to really get into the case, to go over all the evidence and getting lost in reports. She'd been anxious to get into the thick of the action too, but the anticipation had been half of the fun.
She knew exactly when that had changed and now found the wait almost unbearable. But this time it was especially difficult. There was no evidence to study or reports to pour over and the victim (if indeed she was as such), was someone about whom she cared very much.
She didn't want to think about Myka. She's spent too long trying not to think about Myka. Yet, it was all she could focus on. The fluffy clouds reminded her of unruly hair in the morning, which led her to the nights she'd spent running her fingers through it and days resisting the temptation to do that very thing.
For a while she drifted through every pleasure shared with the agile agent but invariably there came the moment of her downfall. Unresolved grief for her child had amalgamated with her hatred of the world and all its evils, until she had been certain that not even love could save her.
Except it had, in a way. Refusing to end Myka's life had forced her to see an alternative to ending the world. Had provided her with a mirror; through Myka's eyes she'd seen herself clearly. Though by then it had been too late and no matter how much the other woman might have later protested, Helena could no longer see herself with someone as pure and untainted as Myka Bering. She had accepted her lonely fate.
Nate had provided her with a suitable excuse to stay away from Myka and the Warehouse, and Adelaide had been a pleasant distraction, helping Helena to stick to her convictions. Myka's astute observations had never left her though and after the agents had returned to South Dakota, she'd been unable to continue the charade she'd created. In good conscious, she'd made her apologies to Nathaniel, promised to keep in touch with his daughter and finally dipped into her own long forgotten funds to rent a small abode in Rapid City.
Three months later and she still hadn't told her old friends that they were once again residing in the same state.
Helena was exhausted and edgy by the time she arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport and needed a great deal of effort not to curse at every person who pushed and jostled her as she collected her reserved tickets and boarded the RER to the Gare de Nord. From there, she exited onto the main thoroughfare and took off towards La Fayette.
She worked diligently on following the directions she'd been given and ignored the gnawing in her stomach every time her gaze fell on a familiar street name. This was not the Paris she had once known; was not the city she'd gleefully explored in her youth. If she repeated it often enough she might eventually believe that this was not the hellish place that had robbed her of her most prized treasure and that it wasn't somehow fated to rob her of another.
Helena went straight to her room the moment she arrived at the hotel and slumped on her bed; spending a few minutes catching her breath and mentally preparing herself. Knowing that time was of the essence though, she forced her body to move, first visiting the washroom to douse her face with cold water then seeking out the other two agents.
Pete was overly tactile, even for his standards and dragged HG into a crushing hug the moment she stepped through the door. She patted his back awkwardly before forcing him off and holding him at arms' length.
"I hear you're the one I have to thank for my presence here," she informed him sternly, quickly regretting her choice of words when his maniacal jubilance was replaced by a look of abject desolation. "I'm sorry Peter; I meant your 'vibe'. I was not accusing you of having been negligent. None of this is your fault," she added kindly, holding his gaze until his stiffness abated and he nodded in agreement.
"Thanks HG." He stepped away with a sad smile, giving her back her space. "I needed to hear that. It means a lot, especially coming from you."
Agent Wells frowned at this last comment. "What exactly do you mean 'especially coming from me'?"
Pete's eyebrows shot up and he suddenly became evasive. He looked to Agent Jinks for assistance but Steve simply shook his head. "Well, I mean because you were close... with Myka," Pete tried to find some way of clarifying his intention without being clear.
"Ahh." HG suddenly understood that her connection to their missing friend was being given a greater significance because they had once been lovers. Since that was a topic that she didn't want to revisit, she decided to change it. "Very well then. Thank you for your consideration but I assure you, it is not necessary. Shall we perhaps return to the investigation? I brought a few gadgets with me that I think might help."
While Agent Lattimer was breathing a sigh of relief, Helena began unzipping pockets and examining the objects she pulled out before placing them on the table in front of them. Pete crept over like a curious puppy and reached out a hand to play with one of the gizmos, and then immediately pulled it back with a yelp when the inventor slapped it away.
"It's like having Myka back already," he grumbled.
Helena smirked. "I will remember to tell her you said so." She turned back to the array of objects and began to explain what they did.
The first one they tried was much like the durational spectrometer though was able to detect residual pheromone traces up to two weeks old. There proved to be masses of evidence of Myka's inhabitancy inside her room but anything outside of the room predated her disappearance.
They meticulously tried each invention with HG becoming increasingly animated as they collected more data, until at last she fell into an armchair and began reading over their findings.
"Have you found anything?" Steve asked before long. When he didn't receive an answer right away he shared a look with Pete before trying again. "HG?"
"Hmm?" Helena responded even as she continued to frown at her paper. "This can't be right..." she mumbled, her expression turning to concern and then dread.
Pete placed a hand on her shoulder to get her full attention. "Would you like to share with the class?"
"Oh, I do apologise," she exclaimed as she got quickly to her feet and placed her papers on the table. "I think I'm beginning to understand why your vibe indicated that I should be here."
She took a pen and began drawing a series of arrows and circles on their map of Paris. Claudia had sent along her findings regarding unexplained disappearances of the last decade, many of which covered a small radius near the agents' current location. Steve and Pete had diligently added them to their map. With HG's added data, a pattern soon began to emerge.
"The figures are astounding and I don't quite know how to explain the behaviour of this... curiosity." She leaned in closer to examine the street names, willing the churning unease in the pit of her stomach to abate. No matter how much she tried though, she couldn't shake the conclusion she'd come to. "Somehow, whatever unfortunate event has befallen Myka, I do believe that my time machine is involved."
"What!? How is that possible? It's locked away in the Warehouse," Pete insisted, though he was very tempted to call Artie so he could check.
"And how can you know just by looking at this?" Agent Jinks gestured to the map and the writer's inventions, his gaze lingering on the gadgets as if he expected them to suddenly come alive.
Helena leant back against the desk and stared at their findings again. There was a very clear ring forming where they had placed their colour-coded dots, the effect made it seem as if they were rippling out from a particular point. She didn't have to look again to know where exactly that spot was; her gut was telling her everything she needed to know.
"Gentlemen," HG began in a slightly more serious manner. "I am quite sure that my time machine is indeed still locked safely in the Warehouse but I did once use it to travel to Paris..." She pointed to the centre of their circled area. "To this street here. Every invention of mine carries a particular signature. What's more, each invention of mine can 'recognise' another. They are clearly telling me that they've 'seen' the time machine's signature."
"Your gizmos talk to each other?" Pete shook off his incredulity. "No, don't bother answering that. I doubt I'd understand anyway," he finished with a grumble.
Steve studied the desperate expression in HG's eyes and almost felt her pain. He knew there was something she hadn't told them yet. "You know more than you're letting on."
Helena shot him an angry, panicked look but she was saved from answering when Pete uncharacteristically put everything together first. "You used the time-machine to come back here to save your daughter."
The writer stared silently at the ground, her breathing forcefully slow and deep as she resisted the memory of her failure. She retold the story she had once recited to Claudia when she'd sent Myka and Pete back to 1961, the morbid tale slipping in a detached manner off her tongue. She smiled sadly and then cleared her throat to rid her tone of the distant melancholy it held. "... I watched it all, was in the house, and could not changed a blasted thing." Her voice broke on the last word and the pen in her hand cracked with the force of her grip. "Now, because of me, someone else I... Myka is trapped lord knows where."
Attempting to recover from the retelling of the worst days of her life and her almost slip regarding her true feelings for agent Bering, Helena began repacking her inventions and then pulled on her jacket. "I would appreciate having this mystery solved sooner rather than later, so come along gentlemen, chop-chop!"
Pete and Steve swiftly grabbed what they needed, carefully tucking teslas into holsters and neutralisation bags into pockets as they hastened to follow the Victorian inventor out the door.