Evolution - The Oasis Project Book 3

Nine - Ira

An icy shower only made my hangover worse. I rolled my eyes every time I passed a door that wasn't mine. The late morning sun put hundreds of needles in my brain, and I had a fleeting thought about the new recruits who Four had drugged last night so she could sleep early, but that was quickly overshadowed by hunger when I remembered the feast we had last night. There wasn't much else I remembered except for constantly telling Stuart to drink water and there were strange words floating around in my head like anechoic and anisotropic.

I found Stuart in his room with the blanket pulled over his head. He didn't even stir when I barged in without knocking. "Morning, sunshine," I said, laughing at a volume that didn't hurt my head as he resisted my pulling of the blanket off him. "Don't let the newbies see their doctor like this."

"I hate peer pressure," Stuart grumbled into his flattened pillow, still sprawled across the small bed like he was last night. I had tried to stay, but there was no space for me at all and Stuart was impossible to wake towards the end. I knew he wasn't a drinker, but I didn't know how terrible he was.

"Don't blame Yulian. You had fun." I handed him his glasses and tried to pull him up, but Stuart pulled me into bed with him. I wasn't complaining when he snuggled close.

"It was fun until..." He propped himself up a little to look at me. "Do you even remember anything?"

"Anechoic!" I exclaimed, watching Stuart smile. "What the fuck does it mean?" I added in a whisper.

He grimaced and sat upright. "I knew I should've just gone to bed. I wasted two hours telling you about an ultrasound machine."

"Ult..." Now that he mentioned it, I did remember vaguely. "Did we have fun, at least?" The blush that Stuart tried to hide by putting on his sweater told me that we did. I opened the door a little and peeked outside, checking that no one was around before shutting it. "I need something to eat. Are you sober enough to act like a mean doctor yet?"

Stuart rolled his eyes. "Why do I even like you again, Ira?"

"Very good question." Sometimes I asked the same thing myself, but this time I ignored that train of thought and kissed him softly, knowing that we couldn't be like this with our Oasis Project act going on across the team. "I'll see you later."

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I was glad that I'd finished my sandwich in the kitchen because when I walked out into the mess hall I caught Yulian speaking to Four in Russian to Alessia. "So make sure you melt the cheese evenly, keep stirring..." he was saying. I almost choked. Alessia was listening intently like Yulian was lecturing her about the wonders of the universe. "Remember to preheat your oven..."

"You have been doing well, responding in the right way to attempts at unprogramming," Four said to Alessia, her face expressionless even as she caught sight of me. She pretended to listen carefully to Yulian before she delivered a convincing translation, "You are still a valuable asset, one that will be back to helping the world as soon as we work this out." She continued to tell the short girl things that she wanted to hear as Yulian continued his nonsensical recipe. He raised an eyebrow at me but didn't stop his "doctor" analysis to greet me.

They were getting too deep into their roles to pay me any attention, thanking Alessia for her cooperation and apologizing for delaying a mission in Iran. I bet that Four's team of techies were already upstairs trying to figure out if Oasis was sending another team for the same mission. Turning my head, I saw that Mato and Anaba were sitting by the wall, staring uncomfortably at their hands. They both looked up at the same time when I approached them.

"You two adjusting alright?" I asked quietly, so as to not let Alessia hear any of this.

Anaba apprehended me with her wary brown eyes, but they were calmer than what I saw yesterday. There was pain in Mato's expression even when he offered me a smile. He stole a glance at Yulian, Four, and Alessia before saying, "Thanks for breaking us out."

"It was Four's idea," I said, assuming that the former One in China had given the twins a lot of grief after they woke up. Anaba glared at me, of past me, as usual. I raised my eyebrows at her. "Something wrong?"

"How much longer do we have to pretend that we're still trapped?" she asked, not holding back.

It was a good question, one I didn't know the answer to. "Hopefully, not long," I admitted. "Would either of you know how they were reprogrammed?"

Anaba shook her head in silence and her brother picked up the conversation. "The more important you were to them, the more they messed with your head." I tried not to think about the state that Linkin and I were in when we reunited in Spain as Mato continued to speak. "After... After they lost their best, they cracked down on all of us. Brought back fear conditioning and tortured us like they did to the Russian recruits. What they did to Alessia and Trevor may be hard to break. It might have been very complex, not like what they did to us low-rankers."

I opened my mouth to reply, but I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Four and Yulian let Alessia leave, and they continued to chat as they made their way over to us. It was when they came closer that I realized that they could converse so casually around Alessia because they were speaking Chinese.

"Trevor is already cracking a little," Yulian told me in Russian. "Alessia is a dangerous and annoying bitch. Calls herself Four." The number in English made a look of disgust creep onto Four's face.

"You speak Chinese?" was all I could think about despite the news.

Yulian shrugged. "It was the country over. We had doctors visit from China all the time, and we had some good books. Evgeny and I knew how to make the Oasis people happy, so we had a lot of free time." His face fell a little as he talked about his teammate, but didn't look at Four, who threw a grenade in Evgeny's direction the last time we saw him.

The twins looked extremely confused by our multilingual conversation, so I quickly explained the situation after checking with Yulian that Alessia was out of earshot. Anaba glared down the hallway. "If you need help reversing her brainwashing..." she offered with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

Four ignored that and checked her watch, which was too big for her slender wrist. "Where's Linkin? She said she wanted to call a meeting, didn't she? Doesn't she schedule?"

"She didn't say today," Yulian came to Linkin's defence.

"I'll see if she's slept in," I offered. Maybe she'd run off to surrender herself for Asmar. I saw Mato clench his jaw and turn away. "What?"

Anaba leaned in to answer me. "He was waiting for Emma to come back. She died because of Linkin."

I signed and gave the twins a look of pity before excusing myself from the table, not wanting to start an argument that might not stop. I couldn't bring myself to offer my condolences; Emma was responsible for fucking Celestia up in the head, the same way she'd tried with me. I knew that it was wrong to put the blame on one person, but Emma was a One, a One who was supposed to look after everyone else, and Celestia was once my friend.