Kyle West - Darkness

Samuel sat up in one of the corner beds, slurping down a bowl of soup. I didn’t blame him — it had been almost a week since he’d had a proper meal and not something fed to him intravenously. He looked thin and pale — a far cry from the warrior he had once been. It was amazing what one week in a hospital bed could do to a man. It was almost as bad as the original injury. A bandage still wrapped his forehead, and heavy bruising discolored a good portion of his head above his left eye.

Makara knelt beside the bed, looking at his face. For now, Samuel was just concentrated on trying to get the soup down. Lauren observed from beside him.

“Take it easy,” Makara said. “Not too fast.”

Samuel paused mid-slurp. “I remember how to eat, Makara. For a younger sister, you tend to act like an older.”

“Quiet,” she said, “and eat your soup.”

Makara turned to Lauren. “Is more being brought?”

She nodded. “I had Ruth go get a second bowl.”

Ashton entered the bay, striding over to Samuel’s bed. Samuel slowly turned his head to face him.

“How are you feeling?” Ashton asked.

Samuel drained the rest of his bowl, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Like hell. I’ve really been out for six days?”

“You have,” Ashton said.

“What did I miss?”

I laughed at that. At my laughter, Samuel turned his head ever so slightly to look at me. It hurt me a bit just to see how battered he was. A contusion such as he had taken on the head would take months to fully heal — that is, if it ever fully healed. Being in a coma for six days might have had lasting effects. But so far, Samuel seemed alright.

“I’m being serious,” Samuel said. “I want to know every single thing I missed.” He looked around the medical bay. “Because it seems like a lot.”

“Well, for one,” Anna said, stepping forward to the bed. “We have a new spaceship.”

I followed Anna’s steps to the bed.

“Perseus?” Samuel asked. “Orion?”

Anna shook her head. “No. This is Aeneas, which we found in Bunker 84.”

“Bunker 84?”

“Alright,” Makara said, cutting off my response. “We need to let Samuel recoup for a couple of days before we overload him with information.”

“Really,” Samuel said. “It’s fine.”

“That’s an order,” Makara said. “Let’s give him the space he needs and let Ashton run his diagnostic.”

Even if all I wanted to do was talk to Samuel, and even if that was all he wanted, I could see that Makara made sense.

Anna pulled on my shirtsleeve. “I think we’re getting kicked out.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

We left the medical bay behind. When I reached the corridor, Samuel called out.

“Alex.”

Samuel’s voice was loud, but raspy. He hadn’t used it for almost a week.

“Any word from your friend?”

It took me a moment to realize who he was talking about. I realized he was speaking of the Wanderer.

“Nothing,” I said.

Samuel nodded. He looked at me a moment longer before turning his attention back to Makara.

“Let’s go,” Anna said.

I followed her out of the medical bay and into the outside corridor. I wasn’t sure where she was leading me. We made our way to the bridge. In the past few days, the deck had been cleaned by Community members. Every vestige of Elias was gone from this place.

Anna sighed as she sat in the pilot’s seat. I took up a jump seat not too far away. She stared out the windshield that had once been covered with Elias’s slime. Now that it was clean, it revealed the dark hangar outside. Several New Angels walked past below, staring into the bridge.

“I just wanted us to be alone for a moment.”

Even though we’d had three days of down time, Anna and I had not seen much of each other. This was our first time to talk since we got everyone settled in here.

She reached for my hand, intertwining her fingers in mine. I drew the hand toward my chest. Anna followed my pull by standing and sharing her seat with me. Her head settled into my shoulder, her hair caressing my cheek.

“I just want to stay here for a while,” she said.

I held Anna close, as if to protect her from everything we had gone through. Her moments of vulnerability were rare, so all I could do was cherish them when they came.

“You doing better?”

She nodded into my chest. “Yeah. I don’t know why my nerves got to me up there. I think it was the flying more than anything else. I’m used to copiloting, but piloting is much different.”

“How so?”

“How to explain,” she said. “For one, you are in control. Anything that goes wrong is your fault. You control the steering, and in a tough situation, you have to make a snap decision. And it has to be right.”

“Sounds like a lot of pressure.

“It is. I’m not sure that kind of pressure is for me. I’m happy just to stab a Howler or two.”

I felt the same way. Though I had led the team in Bunker 84, it didn’t exactly go well. Everyone had come out in one piece at least.

I’d played the scenario over and over in my head and I didn’t see how I could have done anything better. If I had pulled everyone out of the Bunker, as Makara had wanted, then we wouldn’t have gained Bunker 84 in the first place and the Community would still be down there with their ship. Maybe Askala would have forced them to come out and they would have actually nuked Los Angeles.

There was no telling. No one died, which was the most I could hope for.

“What are we going to do, when the time comes?” Anna asked.

I didn’t have to ask what she meant: the coming fight with Askala and my part in it. It was something we had talked about before.

“The Wanderer told me,” Anna said. “That I would lose the one I loved.” She looked at me with a mixture of pain and longing. I was held by her gaze, those beautiful eyes that had captured me time and again. I hated to see them looking at me like that.

I touched her face, stroking her left cheek with my thumb. “You need to smile.”

She did, but the sadness still lingered. The sadness I could never take away, no matter what I tried. Because, like it or not, the Wanderer’s words held true. I would have to sacrifice myself. Whether he meant death, or something else, Anna was going to lose me. I was going to lose her. It was the price that had to be paid. If everyone else in the world could be saved, what was our love in comparison to that? Our love was our world, but it wasn’t theirs. Our sacrifice would be worth it if thousands or even millions would go on to love because we had sacrificed ours upon the altar.

Even if this thought made sense logically, every part of me screamed against it. I didn’t want to be with Anna merely now — I wanted to be with her forever. When all of this was over, I wanted to settle down with her. Marry her. Have kids…

Unbidden, tears came to my eyes. These thoughts were cruel and I didn’t dare mention them aloud. Anna only held me. She kissed me on the cheek, twice, her mouth trailing down my neck. I relaxed into the chair.

“Sorry,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t…”

I pulled her close, silencing her with kisses. She responded in kind — but we couldn’t go on. We couldn’t take this any further because it would only make it more painful, in the end.

At last, she desisted and rested her head on my shoulder. We sat there for a while, enjoying each other’s warmth in a cold world. It was as sweet as it was painful.

“I love you,” I said. “I needed to tell you that.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Anna didn’t answer.