Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (12 page)

Deviate from
our
plans, and we will end you.

Somewhere in
Its
shell, Desmond laughed.

* * * *

CHAPTER 1 — Boricio Wolfe

The girl fell to the ground.

Boricio yelled, “What the fuck did you do?” and dropped to her side, staring into the girl’s helpless eyes. Blood gushed from her throat. Boricio could do nothing to stop it.
 

She murmured something he couldn’t make out.

Boricio leaned closer.
 

“Why?” she asked.

He stared into her eyes and felt the world tip on its end. If he didn’t hang on, he, along with the rest of them, would plummet into a chaotic abyss.

Boricio hadn’t a single word of comfort. Only, “Sorry,” as the girl faded, eyes rolling into the back of her head.
 

He glared up at Mary, staring down at the girl without expression.

His voice cracked. “How could you?”
 

A loud whine over an even louder rumbling roar tore the air above them. Startled, Boricio looked up to see an alien shuttle racing toward them from the clouds, then rippling as it stopped on a dime.

While the kids’ shuttle looked like a boxy subway car with a trio of wings, this thing was sleek, circular, and with no visible cabin to house a pilot. Boricio registered two mounted cannons on the ship’s bottom a heartbeat before it opened fire.

There was nowhere to run.

No way to fight back.

They were about to be shredded by alien gunfire.

Mary might have been right. Maybe it was a trap.

Gunfire grazed Boricio’s left shoulder. Another several rounds spit asphalt behind him.

He grabbed his gun and turned, ready to unleash hell on the motherfuckers trying to kill him, determined to do whatever damage he could before it tore him asunder.

But a flash changed the world in a second.
 

Boricio blinked to find himself inside what looked like a dark warehouse. Luca was kneeling on the ground, hands over the girl’s bleeding neck.

Lisa, Keenan, and Jevonne stood in a semicircle, staring at Luca and the bleeding girl as if they weren’t sure what to say, or do. Lisa and Keenan traded a nod, indicating that they would sweep the warehouse and ensure their safety.
 

“What the hell are you doing?” Mary yelled at Luca, despite the potential danger of raising her voice in an unknown area where enemies could be lurking.

Eyes closed, Luca said nothing.
 

“Indoor voices,” Boricio said. “And can’t you see he’s trying to save her? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“It
was
a trap!” Mary said, still too loud.

“We don’t kill Happy Meals,” Boricio whisper-shouted back.

“Why the fuck not?
They
do.”

And there it was.
 

No one spoke.
 

Mary stared at Luca and the girl. Boricio wondered two things at once. One: How could Mary look at the girl after what she’d done? She should feel a Vatican’s worth of guilt for that shit. Two: Would she try something again? And if so, how far would he go to intervene?

Boricio liked Mary. A lot. Loved her, even. Not just as someone he’d grown close to over the years, and shared a bed with for a while, but before then — as a sister-in-arms. A bond forged in the hellish fires of loss. She’d lost her daughter, and he’d lost Rose, the only other woman he ever loved.

But no amount of affection could let Boricio sit by while she killed an innocent child.

Yeah, but how far will ya go, pal?

Boricio hoped he wouldn’t have to answer.

He reached up to where his elbow had been shot to find his shirt still ripped but his wound healed. As was his finger from the earlier apple slice. Luca hadn’t just teleported them away from certain death — he’d managed to heal Boricio’s wounds. He looked at the others, not sure if any of them had sustained gunfire from the ship. Tough to tell if they were bleeding since they were all wearing dark clothes. If so, they seemed fine now.
 

He looked back at Mary.

Her eyes were still wild, angry. He had to get her away from the group, sort things out, calm her down. If not for Mary’s sake, then for the group’s. If Boricio was starting to think she might’ve become a liability, the others were certainly wondering the same thing.

“Come here.” He grabbed her gently by the elbow.

Mary flinched, pulling back, jaw set, eyes burning through him.

“Please. We need to talk.”

Mary sighed and followed Boricio away from Luca, the girl, and Jevonne. Boricio nodded as they passed Keenan, Lisa, and Barrow, all huddled together, no doubt talking about Mary losing her shit.
 

Keenan looked up at Boricio. “We’re in Sector 40. Not too far from Beta Team.”

Beta was one of the other rebel groups, the only other group whose headquarters they knew the location of. The other two rebel camps were cells isolated from each other and the Alpha (Boricio’s team) and Beta teams. Being close to Beta was a blessing in case they had invited unwanted attention by slicing the girl’s throat then taking her. A search would surely be coming.

Boricio nodded back. “Thanks.”

Boricio led Mary as far from everyone as possible, passing several empty rows of ransacked shelves. Out of earshot, he said, “I know it hurts, Mary. I do. But we’re not them. We don’t kill kids.”

Mary met his eyes, hers still wild. “Don’t tell me about hurt. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child.”

Boricio wanted to push back. No, he didn’t know what it felt like to lose a child, but he did know what it felt like to lose someone he loved. But doing that might push Mary too far. If she snapped any more than she already had, she’d become too big a liability to the group, and there was no way in hell they’d put up with that, no matter who that liability was.

Boricio said nothing.

“And don’t even get up on your high horse, saying we don’t kill kids. Really, Boricio? You’re gonna play
that
card?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not stupid. I know what you were before Luca fixed you. And not just the shit you told me. I know the
really
sick shit you did. I’m pretty sure we
all
do, if we’re all sharing dreams.”

Boricio suspected that Mary knew more than she let on. He’d had dreams of the others’ memories, too. Snippets of unguarded, highly personal moments: Brent fighting with his wife, Mary giving birth to Paola, Keenan killing enemies of the state even as his marriage was falling apart and his daughter was growing to hate him. If he’d seen
their
demons, they’d surely seen his. And if they’d seen the worst, how could any of them ever truly trust or accept him?

It hurt like hell to think of them peeking in on such unguarded memories. Hurt more to think that Mary and Paola had seen him at his worst. He’d done horrible things — murdered, raped, and God only knew how many things he’d forgotten in some drunken or drugged stupor. Boricio had spent a lifetime not giving a fiddler’s fuck about dick, including his victims or their families. But since Luca went in his head and fixed him, guilt was a stone on his shoulders, growing heavier with every connection — each new man, woman, or child he grew to care about.

“That’s not me anymore.”
 

“
You
still don’t get to judge me. And besides, it
was
a trap. That alien ship would’ve killed us all if not for Luca. As far as I’m concerned, you’re all trying to save our enemy. Maybe you should care about us instead.”

“Care about us? Everything I do is for all of us. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Nothing.” Mary shook her head and stared at the ground.

“Don’t play Silent Bob with me. Say what you mean, or don’t say shit.”

“Nothing! Just forget it.” Mary turned and walked away.

“Don’t you fucking walk away from me!” Boricio grabbed Mary by the shoulders and spun her around, more violently than he’d intended.

Mary’s eyes widened. For a moment, it felt as if they’d both gone too far, pushed harder than either of them wanted.
 

“What? Are you gonna hit me now?”

There was a part of Boricio — a part that terrified him — that wanted to do exactly that.
 

“Fuck you,” he said instead.
 

Mary turned and walked away.

* * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Luca Harding

Luca was halfway finished healing the unconscious girl’s neck wound when he realized she wasn’t an ordinary girl.
 

There was something different about her.

He saw it inside her head while trying to calm her panic with reassuring words.
You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. I’m going to help you.
Luca realized that only part of her was responding to him. Another part of her had gone inside
his head
. She was rooting around in his memories, manifesting them for her own viewing within his mind.

His first instinct was to shut her out as he’d done to the alien who had hijacked Desmond’s body when he’d tried to worm inside Luca’s head. Throw up psychic defenses and maybe hurt the girl to keep her from prying again. But as her memories unwound and he watched the girl lose her mother, nearly die herself, and get brought to The Island by her father, Luca knew he could trust her. He didn’t want to kick her out.

He met her inside his mind, his body showing its true biological age of fourteen.
 

“Who are you?” she asked, looking around.

They were in his old Las Orillas home, probably because he’d been thinking so much about it lately. But that was only for a moment. Then they were in the Other Luca’s home, on Black Island.

The girl looked at him, confused. Then her eyes widened, and her head tilted a bit. “Oh, my God.”

“What?”
 

The Luca saw it, too. His own self, doubled. Other Luca standing beside him.

“What
are
you?” she asked.

Luca multiplied. He saw his older forms — at twenty-eight, at forty, and his current physical self, now somewhere in his early sixties.

He wasn’t sure how to explain everything to her. How there were two versions of him, how he’d died then come back inside the other Luca’s body. How they weren’t alone, that there was the alien species inside him, calling itself The Light.
 

Luca couldn’t find the words.
 

He’d have to show her.

“Are you sure you want to know?”
 

She stepped toward him, head still turned to the side like she was studying a rare artifact. “Yes,” she whispered.
 

He put his hands to her head, in both the physical world and in the shared space inside his head.

Then Luca showed her everything.

* * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Teagan McLachlan

Teagan and the others said their final farewell to The Farm just before dawn.
 

It wasn’t easy to leave. Morning light poured onto the Alto Verde hilltops where Teagan’s new family had sheltered themselves for the last couple of years. Like always, it reminded her of Sunday church, now like a blessing rather than the feeling’s occasional haunting knowing she’d never see it again.
 

Teagan wrapped her left arm tighter around Becca’s and ran her right hand through Whinny’s mane before turning to steal a last look behind her. Her eyes drifted from the front porch where she often let the sun kiss her skin while staring at the sea to her small plot in the garden where she was allowed to grow flowers instead of vegetables. Her mind’s eye then went to the back door leading to the kitchen where
it
had finally happened.
 

Teagan let the memory come: throwing herself at Brent, claiming his mouth, and spilling from the kitchen into the living room where she let him finally have what she knew he’d been craving a while. She hoped they could eventually pick up where they left off, when they reached their new location. Teagan refused to call it a safe house, though Ed was so glued to the name that it had infected everyone at The Farm, including Brent.
 

“Second Refuge,” as Teagan preferred to call it, was at the base of the hills, in what seemed to be a forgotten neighborhood about halfway between Alto Verde and Las Orillas, about a mile from the Pacific Coast Highway.
 

Moving down through the hills made Teagan nervous, though she couldn’t argue that it was better than the alternative. They needed to reach the refuge so they’d be close enough to radio the others in The City and warn them about the shapeshifters.
 

Teagan still couldn’t believe what had happened. She didn’t want to. Her skin crawled thinking about losing so many lives when there were none to spare, including Catherine, the sweet girl who’d had her hair braided by Teagan early that afternoon.