Lost (5 page)

“What was that all about?” Ed asked finally.

“I had to shut you up somehow,” Gaia replied.

Ed laughed and rested his arm across his forehead. Yep. He could get used to waking up like that. As long as it wasn't in a hospital.

“I should go check on my dad,” Gaia said, sitting up suddenly and throwing her legs over the side of the bed.

“Want me to come?” Ed asked, propping himself up on his elbows.

“No, it's okay,” Gaia said. She shoved her feet into her boots and snatched up her sweater. “You go to school. Hopefully I'll see you later.”

“Hey, I was going to go see Heather after school today. You want to come?” Ed asked.

“I don't know. . . . I'll probably be here,” Gaia said, looking up at him as she crouched on the floor to tie her boot.

“Well, we could come by here and then go there,” Ed said as he hopped down from the bed. “She's starting at her new school tomorrow, remember? I know she could use some moral support.”

“Right,” Gaia said. She stood up and smoothed her hair back behind her ears, a few wrinkles forming at the top of her nose. “I'd forgotten about that. Okay, I'm there.” She grabbed his arm and twisted it to see his watch. “Damn. I gotta go,” she said again. She started toward the door, but Ed quickly grasped her wrist, stopping her.

“Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Everything is going to be fine.”

A shadow of doubt crossed her face, and she glanced away. Ed swallowed hard when she looked back at him with uncertainty.

“Everything's going to be fine . . . and I love you,” he said, feeling like he was jumping off a cliff without a bungee. It wasn't that it hadn't been said before; it was that it hadn't been said back all that many times. He knew she felt it; she just had a hard time saying it. So telling her always seemed like a bit of a risk.

Gaia kissed him quickly, then hugged him tight. “I
love you, too,” she said over his shoulder. He smiled, and then she was gone.

Karmic Twin Thing

GAIA KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG
the moment she stepped into the ICU. One of the nurses from the night before was still on duty, and after glancing at Gaia, she cast a nervous look toward the side of the room. Gaia followed her eyes and saw Natasha sitting in a metal chair, bent over at the waist, sobbing quietly.

“What?” Gaia said, not moving. “What happened?”

Natasha's head popped up. There were fresh streams of wet tears down both cheeks and light smudges of makeup beneath her eyes. Her hair had been pulled back in a ponytail, but frazzled wisps stuck out in all directions. She was wearing the same clothes she'd had on the night before.

“What is it?” Gaia said. The sound of her own voice irritated her. There was no fear there, no uncertainty. She sounded dead. And in a way, in that moment, she supposed she was dead inside. Because she knew what she was about to hear.

“It's your father,” Natasha said, sniffling and standing up.

Kind of figured that one out,
Gaia thought, the sarcasm her last private defense.

Natasha pushed her hands across her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “He fell into a . . . a . . . a coma a couple of hours ago.”

With that, Natasha collapsed into her chair once again, crying like a child lost on the street. Gaia's hands curled into fists at her sides, her jagged, bitten nails cutting into her palms. This couldn't be happening. It was all wrong. How could he be in a coma? What had gone wrong in his brain last night and
why?
How could choking . . .
briefly . . .
cause a coma?

But Gaia wasn't surprised. Not really. Not on any sane level. After all, she'd known something like this would happen. Bad to worse. What else was new? She should have stopped the EMTs before they ever put him in the ambulance. Could have, really, if she'd tried. This was all her fault. Hospitals were no place for sick people. Not in her world, anyway.

Why did this have to happen? Why now?

Swallowing back a sizable lump that had sprouted up in her throat, Gaia crossed the ICU and walked right into room 419. Her father looked like a wax statue. He lay flat on his back, his face turned toward the ceiling, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell at a regular pace. His hands lay flat at his sides. There were wires
connected by tape to his temples, and one of his fingers was clamped in a sensor attached to a machine that beeped away near the wall. His skin was pale and pasty. She walked over to him, reached out her hand, and touched his cheek. It was like ice.

If it weren't for his chest moving, she would have been sure he was dead.

Hot, angry tears sprang to Gaia's eyes as she stared at him. She knew she should have stayed in this room. Should have killed anyone who tried to make her move. They had done something to him, and now it was too late. There was nothing she could do to snap him out of it.

Gaia picked up her father's lifeless hand and squeezed it, then leaned down to his ear. “I'm so sorry, Dad,” she whispered. “I'm so . . . so . . . sorry.”

What she would have done for one of those TV moments. For him to suddenly squeeze her hand, brought back to life by the simple sound of her voice. But the machines continued to beep, and her father continued to lie still.

Gaia dropped her father's hand, kissed his cold, shiny forehead, and turned and walked slowly from the room. She crossed over to Natasha and plopped into the chair next to hers, slumping down until her butt was almost hanging off the edge of the seat. It was unreal, actually. Loki was in a coma, and now Tom was in a coma. Had his men come to even the score—keep
them on a level playing field? Or was something else tying these two men together? Some kind of karmic twin thing?

“What did the doctors say?” Gaia asked blankly.

“Nothing,” Natasha replied, her voice cracking. “No one will tell me anything.”

Typical
, Gaia thought. What was it with doctors, anyway? Did they want to keep families in the dark about their loved ones' conditions, or was it that they never really knew as much as they wanted people to think they knew? At that moment Gaia felt that it had to be the latter. Everyone around her was clueless. No one would be able to help her dad.

“What am I going to do?” Natasha said suddenly—quietly.

“Huh?” Gaia blurted, the whole not-thinking-before-she-spoke thing coming into play.

“Tom and I were finally free,” Natasha continued, sniffling. She crumpled up a battered tissue, the veins on the backs of her hands seeming to pop out, blue and ugly. “We were finally going to have a normal life. And now . . . now . . . ”

I know the feeling,
Gaia thought.

“I just don't understand,” Natasha said. “How could this have happened? There was no warning. . . . ”

She trailed off again. Gaia reached up awkwardly and patted Natasha's hand. Then she felt the inappropriateness of the gesture and pulled away. Mothering
was not in Gaia's nature, and the last thing she'd ever thought she'd have to do at a time like this was comfort someone else. Besides, sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves wasn't going to help anyone. It certainly wouldn't help her father. She was sure he would tell her exactly that, if he could.

I have to get out of here.

Gaia stood up quickly, and Natasha sat up straight, pulling in a shaky breath. “Where are you going?” she asked, holding a wrinkled tissue to her face.

“I don't know, somewhere . . . school, maybe,” Gaia said. She was itching to move. Itching to put her mind on something else, in any way possible.

Natasha smiled wanly. “That is what your father would want,” she said. “They are going to take him for a CAT scan in a little while. I will call the school if anything changes.”

“Thanks,” Gaia said, shoving her hands in her back pockets. She looked at her father's room and tried to hope. She tried to form some sort of coherent wish to send out there to the Fates, but her mind was a blank. There was no longer any will to hope within her. She turned and bolted for the stairs.

To:
Y

From:
X22

Subject is down and prepped for removal. Agents from C team are in place. Await further instructions for extraction.

From:
Y

To:
X22

D team will contact you with the particulars for your journey. Proceed with caution. The girl is smarter than she looks.

None
of this makes sense. I need to know what is going on with Tom. I cannot stand being in the dark like this. I cannot tolerate the ignorance I am forced to bear. I always know. I always know what is happening. That is my job. That is who I am.

But no one is able to tell me. Or perhaps they are able, but they are simply choosing to keep me uninformed. I don't even know that. I don't even know if I am being lied to, if facts are being withheld.

Why have I been shut out? What went wrong? What did I do wrong?

The feet of a dead body lying next to a black sedan, its door still yawning open.

Grand Theft Auto

HE DIDN'T KNOW HE'D DOZED OFF
until he was jolted awake by the sound of squealing tires. Less than a second later he was thrown against the bags to his left as the truck was hit and careened off the road. The noise was deafening, the crushing, the scraping. The fugitive braced himself for whatever was to come. Would the truck roll? Would it hit something else? Would it explode? And how the hell had he picked the one getaway vehicle that was destined to get into an accident?

There were shouts. The wheels bumped over the rough crease on the blacktop that separated the highway from the shoulder before the driver jerked the wheel and found the lane again.

The fugitive's muscles relaxed a bit. Okay. It was over. He was fine. But he barely had time to breathe before the truck was slammed once more.

His eyes searched the haziness wildly, helplessly. This was no accident. Someone was purposely hitting the truck. Someone was trying to kill them. Or at least drive them off the road. He couldn't move. Couldn't even sit up. Couldn't do anything to help the poor, innocent driver he'd sucked into his nightmare. For one fleeting instant he envisioned himself popping down the tailgate and tumbling out the back of the
truck onto the road, but survival instinct prevented him from doing that. That would mean certain death.

Suddenly the truck jerked left and hit the car that had started this monster truck rally. He was flung across the bed, into the wall on the other side. His head hit hard, and he bit his lip against the pain. The driver guy was fighting back, that much was clear. He knew he'd liked that guy for a reason.

There were more shouts, unintelligible. He brought his hand to the back of his head, and it came back with a trace of blood, but not too much. He would live. For now.

The engine roared angrily as the truck sped up, lurching forward and flying down the highway. The rancid stench of exhaust filled his nostrils. For a moment he thought the truck driver had lost their pursuers, but soon they were bumped again, this time from behind. Finally, it seemed, the truck driver had reached his limit. With a grand screeching of tires that sent the smell of burning rubber into the air and sent the fugitive flying forward this time, the truck came to a stop.

This is it. This is where I die,
he thought, hating himself for the way he was just cowering there. Just hiding. Waiting for it to happen. But he didn't know what else to do except hope for a miracle.

The door to the truck creaked open and slammed, shaking the walls around him.

“What the hell are you—”

Instantly a shot was fired. Very nearby. He waited to hear the sound of the truck driver's body hit the ground. He didn't.

“That was a warning, friend,” a gruff voice called out. It sounded comfortable. Not alarmed.

Another shot, from the other direction. Less loud.

Instantly a third. From the same gun as the first, that was certain.

He couldn't take it anymore. He had to see what was going on. And if that meant facing the consequences, so be it. But he wasn't going to let the truck driver die if he could help it. The death would be on his own head, and that was something he was sure he couldn't live with.

He popped open the tailgate ot the truck bed, and the early morning sunlight surprised him. He crawled out awkwardly, his back and knees protesting in pain as he straightened up for the first time in hours. The first thing he saw was the truck driver, standing with his back to the fugitive, a shotgun poised to fire, smoke rising from its barrel. Then he saw feet. The feet of a dead body lying next to a black sedan, its door still yawning open. A handgun lay a few feet away. Then he saw 457, good arm raised in surrender, at the exact same moment 457 saw him.

The truck driver turned around at 457's surprised
eyes, and when he saw the fugitive standing behind him in all his white-jumpsuited glory, he nearly dropped his gun.

“Now where the hell did you come from?” he said.

At that moment 457 ran toward them.

“Look out!” the fugitive called. But it was too late. Guard 457 bent at the waist and barreled right into the truck driver, bringing him down with the sheer force of the speed he'd built up. He tackled him to the ground, sending the shotgun skittering off across the deserted highway, where it came to rest right next to the concrete divider.

The fugitive acted before thinking. He jumped right over the scuffling men, hurdled the prone body of 422, and sat down behind the wheel of the sedan. His foot was to the floor on top of the gas pedal before he'd even closed the door. At the sound of the car peeling out, both 457 and the truck driver stopped midpummel and looked up in shock. The guard made a feeble attempt to run after him but stopped before he got very far. In the rearview mirror the fugitive saw him turn back to the truck driver just before he crested a hill and could see no more.