SAR ASCENDANT / Book 1: Incursion of the INDEN

Chapters 27 to 29

Chapter 27

Spooned on the floor, we doze after making love. I wake first, shake him a little. "There's a locked door beyond Hazel's lab, in the living quarters. It gives me the creeps."

"Yes, Sar?" Jona is endearing, half full of sleep.

"It's like this lighthouse. Flashes a warning. I sense danger beyond that door."

"Where is it?

"At the end of the corridor. When I went through to use the toilet, I did some exploring. There are bedrooms, and a kitchen. The door I am talking about is protected by security, and Allgo is linked. Hazel doesn't want anyone to go through the door."

"Why danger? Why do you feel like that?"

"It made me feel trapped. I had trouble breathing."

"Do you feel fearful?"

I sit up, wrap arms around knees. Through one of the small round windows above I see the sky. The orange is unyielding. "When I woke and saw the sky for the first time, I wasn't afraid. I was angry. I called Hazel. She hadn't seen it yet. When she did see it, she insisted on coming over to my house. I told her not to come, but she did, and then I tried to help a poor boy on my street whose parents had killed themselves. It didn't end well, and that made me angrier. Hazel insisted that we leave, that we come here, though she didn't exactly tell me at the time where here was. So, fearful? Not until now."

"She seems kind, intelligent and capable, though she does keep things close."

"Close, yes. But never separate. Not like that door."

Jona stands, stretches, reaches out for me. "We'll find out what's behind the door. We'll find a way."

He pulls me to my feet. In the center of the drum-like room the base of a ladder extends from above. Jona yanks on the bottom rung and the ladder slides to the floor. I climb up after him to a narrow walkway between the lighthouse lens and diamond cross-hatched windows that encircle us. The lens is multi-faceted glass, stepping up to a point. It reminds me of a beehive I once found on Jax's tree in the yard. Everything in sync, like there's a master blueprint based on immutable geometry. A rusty latch releases a door to the outside. Beyond a waist-high railing, the island stretches out below us. We walk around the perimeter.

We are above everything in sight. Except for some cleared space around the lighthouse and a very old house not far away, the island is covered by trees. It is not large, shaped roughly like the sole of a right-fitted shoe with the lighthouse at the second toe. I hear the crash of waves and the calls of seabirds.

We lean on the railing. There are other islands visible beyond Anny's heel. Funny I should think that. Anny's Island. Of course, Hazel would name her island after my mother. Suddenly I come to a point of realization, like I am a lighthouse prism, a beehive of interconnected pathways leading to the queen.

Yeah, right. I'm no queen.

"Listen," I say. I reach for Jona's hand and squeeze it. "I think I know why I feel the way I do about that door."

He tightens the connection, leans into me. He doesn't have to say anything. It's enough. He is still looking outward, and I cannot tear my eyes away from the trees. I fall into his side and his arm surrounds me, like the shoreline.

"Everything leads to my mother."

He looks at me as if I've just said something important. "You can tell me," he says. "It's safe."