Tymber Dalton - Bightmares

“I’ll be down in about ninety minutes.”

Emi still felt stunned. Could it be this easy? “Thank you.” She couldn’t help it, she started crying again. “I appreciate it, Rob. I really do.”

“Hey, Aaron and I have had our differences over the years, but I still respect him, and there’s no fucking way we’re going to let this asshole murder him and everyone else down there.”

He closed the com link. Emi sank to the floor and cried. Sascha must have called Aaron because he appeared a few minutes later. He scooped Emi into his arms, soothing her.

“We figured it out,” she whispered against his shoulder. “Brown eyes. You all have brown eyes.”

He looked at Sascha, who shrugged. “Long story. I was born with brown eyes.”

By the time Rob arrived with Donna, Emi had calmed herself. Donna gave her a long, strong hug.

“Hey, this is going to be okay,” Donna whispered in her friend’s ear. “If that son of a bitch thinks he’s fucking with our men, then he’s never dealt with two pissed off women who have access to weapons and pharmaceuticals.”

Emi laughed as she stepped away.

Taber helped Rob get comfortable on the scanner table before hooking the energy shackles to him. Ilse brought him more bread. As Rob ate, Sascha manned the scanner with Emi by his side.

Nearly a half hour later, after he finished his sixth piece, Emi saw the changes start. “Get ready.”

Rob tried to sit up, but the restraints securely held him on the table. Thrashing against them, he tried to bite Taber when he stepped in to administer the sedative after Emi got the results she needed. Donna stood close by, Emi feeling her nervous fear through her very core.

Twenty minutes later, Rob was sitting up and recovered. “How bad?”

“You don’t remember?” Donna asked.

He shook his head. “Not a thing.”

Emi felt another measure of relief. She called John and his men. “It’s brown eyes. That’s the common link. All the infected men have brown eyes. No men who are uninfected who’ve eaten the trigger foods have brown eyes.”

Parisi spoke. “Maybe a protein in the wheat is reacting with melanin?”

“Look at the OCA2 gene,” Donna suggested. “I’d bet it’s there somewhere. Maybe somehow reacting with testosterone or other hormones.”

Parisi sounded excited. “I’ll get right on it!”

Aaron stared at Rob. “You’ve put yourself on the death list now,” he said.

Rob smirked. “If you think we’re letting that fucker win, think again.” He pulled Donna to him and kissed her. “We’ve both got too damn much to live for.”

They couldn’t leave until after daybreak on the planet. That was over four hours away. Emi sent Aaron back to bed. Rob lay down and fell asleep on Ilse’s couch. Emi, wired on coffee and nervous energy, couldn’t sleep. Donna stayed up with her.

They sat at Ilse’s dining room table, sipping coffee and softly talking.

“I never would have pegged you for an action adventure kind of girl,” Donna teased. “You were the one always keeping me out of trouble.”

Emi wouldn’t deny she’d missed quiet times like this, talking over coffee with Donna. “It’s been an adventure, all right.” She smiled. “Graymard said you slugged him.”

“Apparently I didn’t clean his clock as hard as you did. So what’d he put you guys through?”

Emi told her the story of the final scenario and how at the end she thought she was watching Aaron walk to his death. “What’d he do to you?”

Donna’s face paled as her voice softened even more. “Rob didn’t know it was a sim. Graymard pulled him aside inside the sim, gave him his ‘come to Jesus’ talk about their attitude, and made him think he turned him loose again. Rob and the guys thought they were meeting me in real time because Graymard lied to Rob and told him they were done wasting valuable sim time and resources on them.”

She took a deep breath. “Went through a bunch of things, training, bullshit, the usual. A couple of smaller scenarios. Then they sent us on a mission, supposedly with a small ISNC battle cruiser as backup.” She closed her eyes. “I was captured on the planet surface by raiders and taken up to their ship.”

Chills washed over Emi, pimpling her skin with gooseflesh. She remained silent.

“The raiders disappeared across treaty lines into hostile space. Rob and the guys were given a direct order to leave me behind and immediately return to Mars or face court-martial. They were told the ISNC grunts would take care of rescuing me. I thought I was going to die.”

Donna studied her coffee, slowly turning the mug in her hands. “They didn’t hurt me in the sim, but only because the raider leader told me they had plans to sell me off as a sex slave. They also played the communications, let me listen to the orders sending Rob and the guys back to base. They told me I’d never see a friendly face again.

“I couldn’t believe it. I knew under pressure Rob was a by the book kind of guy. But I just couldn’t believe they’d leave me there after what they told me they felt for me.” She took a harsh, ragged breath. “The ISNC ship was destroyed by the raiders’ cohorts. Ambushed in an asteroid belt. The raiders thought that was a real good time to party, and I started thinking about ways to kill myself.

“Then late that night an alarm klaxon sounded. The K-2 was bigger than them and better armed. They destroyed the other raider ship. Then they locked on with a tractor beam and blasted at the raiders, took out their engines. What I didn’t know was that Sam and Gregor waited outside in a small lander. In all the confusion, they’d hooked onto the air lock and blasted through. They found me, literally shot their way through the ship to get to me.”

Tears rolled down her face. “Gregor was shot. I thought he died, but I didn’t have time to examine him. He wasn’t moving. Then, as we dragged him with us back to the lander, Sam got shot. We fell into the lander, closed the air lock, and I remember Rob screaming at us over the com link to break loose so he could tractor us back and jump. A bunch of other raider ships were on the way and closing fast.

“I was trying to do it. I wanted to take care of Sam, he was hurt so bad. But he pushed me toward the console and said do it or we’d all die. That they didn’t risk their asses to lose me like that.” She sadly smiled. “Our sim ended when Rob locked onto us and we were pulled into a short jump with the K-2 . I turned around to check Sam…” Her voice broke. “He’d died. While I was working the controls, he died. I didn’t even get to tell him I loved him one last time. Neither of them. Then they ended our sim.”

She studied the table. “I remember opening my eyes, and I was screaming and crying. Graymard made the mistake of leaning in to calm me down, telling me it’d just been a sim. That’s when I punched him. He fell down, and then I was on top of him choking him. Two of the lab techs had to pull me off him.”

She sniffled, but she smiled. “That’s when I saw the guys. I can’t tell you what we said or did next because we were all hugging and crying and you’ve never seen a bigger bunch of bawling babies than the four of us. Then Rob tried to go after Graymard too, but Sam and Gregor held him back.”

Donna took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Graymard talked to us once we’d all calmed down and quit trying to kill him. He told us why he’d run the sim the way he had, told Sam and Gregor about his talk with Rob. Remember, that happened to Rob in the sim, but Rob thought it was real life. Then he asked if we wanted to be paired permanently. I said, ‘Hell yes.’”

A slow grin crept across her face. “That was almost the last thing I could say for the better part of twenty-four hours. They started out a little modest because in the sim it was usually me with only one of them. That first night though…wow.” She laughed. “They’ve since gotten over their squeamishness over incidental contact. We still have separate cabins even though usually one or two of them sleeps in mine with me. I think I’ve just about gotten them convinced that one really big shared cabin would be a practical use of space.”