Evolution - The Oasis Project Book 3

Twenty-Three - Ira

I winced as Nita screamed through the napkin in her mouth, tears trailing down her left cheek while drool escaped the right side of her mouth. The tattoos on Linkin's arms showed a frame-by-frame recount of how Nita got here, painstakingly slow as Linkin searched through her memories of leaving Oasis.

Celestia had been looking at me the entire time, her dark brown eyes wide with fear, silently begging me to put this to a stop. Her skin looked as dry as paper and she looked like she was going to pass out as she watched Nita squirm, her handcuffs rattling against the strong table leg. I sighed deeply, hoping that Trevor and Alessia were keeping Fang entertained, and kept my eyes on Linkin's tattoos just like Thierry did. Celestia's face appeared on Linkin, making me jump. She was moving her chapped lips, saying something that only Linkin could hear in her head. The real Celestia screwed her eyes shut and looked away.

Doctor Nita's screaming became background noise and Celestia turned into part of the furniture as I watched the real events unfold. Nita had simplified a few details in speech, but to my surprise, none of the things she had said had been made up to get our sympathy. A few times between her whimpers, Nita glanced at Celestia with tear-filled blue eyes, just like the ocean that they both held so close to their hearts. Every time she looked at Celestia, the face of a Slavic man appeared on Linkin's skin, interrupting the images of Nita smuggling Celestia out into the tropical woods of Hainan as soon as Code Orange was launched in the USA.

"Who is that?" Linkin interrupted, staring at the Slavic man.

Instead of getting back to their story of escape, the man stayed on Linkin's arm. His forehead creased deeply in a frown as he looked down at a semi-conscious Celestia. He smirked as he grabbed a fistful of Celestia's hair and exposed her vulnerable gills. I took a deep breath as I remembered the abuse I had endured in Russia.

Nita stopped screaming and began to sob.

"So, Egypt." I thought everybody had seen enough.

Nita closed her eyes, looking like she was focusing hard to get the Slavic man out of her head. The visual story of how she met the Nasi went smoother than before, and I assumed that it was because there was enough evidence that Nita was telling the truth and Linkin went easy on the pain factor. When she reached the memories of darkness as Asmar out of the car to take on the farm by himself, Linkin removed her hands from Nita's bare shoulders with a sigh.

"It's late," Linkin said, her lids heavy as she glanced upstairs. "We can have a vote on what to do with them later or tomorrow, but right now I need to check on Fang and the China siege." She didn't look at Nita and Celestia once as she spoke. "Thierry, I'm assuming nothing bad is happening over there?"

Thierry shook his head, sighed, and stood up to stretch. He grimaced as Doctor Nita spat out the napkin she was biting on. "Eagle, I'll go and see if Fang is alright, maybe finally put him to bed. Yell if you need anything."

"I can watch them for a while," I told Thierry and Linkin. With the chance to grill Nita and Celestia on my own, I wasn't going to sleep any time soon. As soon as Linkin and Thierry were gone, I turned to Nita and breathed, "What the fuck?"

"I am so sorry, Ira. I-" Nita was still shaking from Linkin's touch.

I propped a foot up on my chair and rested my elbow against my knee. "That means nothing, Nita, and you know that. Right now, you're helping me make sense of this." I saw Celestia's head loll to the side and fetched her a jug of water and a paper cup. "You said you wanted to help Celestia, but you took her to the worst place to be Celestia and left her life in the hands of a madman who didn't bring enough water. Not to mention that you would've known that we wouldn't exactly throw a welcome party for you."

Nita watched me cautiously as I helped Celestia drink two cups of water while shaking my head before sitting down again. "We were expecting the worst," she said, her jaw set, "but the Deviations were our only hope."

"That's funny." I pretended not to notice the new scars around Celestia's neck, which I'd never seen before. "Very funny, Nita. You want to join the flip side? That's cool, you've only destroyed so many lives." I made a point to look at Celestia too.

"Ira."

"Just stating the facts," I said calmly.

"You're right. I was an idiot." Nita spoke up a bit louder. "The Oasis Project did convince me that it would take a lot more than humans to get rid of the worst things in this world. I thought everything we had to do was for a greater purpose that we couldn't see yet, and I thought the projects would eventually come to realize that they are doing the greatest of the greatest good for the world." She sighed. "It was only when the Deviations came into the picture and Oasis got rattled that I started seeing through the cracks, or I just started seeing everything that should have mattered from the beginning."

I had to tear my eyes from Nita's to shake my head. I remembered how back in China she used to talk about saving the world, how even though we had no control over anything, we were contributing to the greater good. How she brought One over from the USA to alter Celestia's memories of Jaysen to protect her fragile mind. She'd sincerely believed in her cause, just like how raw her emotions were right now when she began to tear up again.

"The reprogramming they did to prepare for the Deviations, they really woke me up, you know?" NIta said, her chin quivering. Beside her, Celestia gasped and tensed at the mention of torture. "It was the Russian way, everywhere, to keep the projects loyal to the program. That man you saw..." Nita stopped when Celestia's breathing began to quicken and she began to curl up as best she could.

"Say what you will." I stood up to reach for the leftover Valentine's Day cookies on a plate. The shortbread tasted sweet in my mouth, but I didn't sugarcoat my words. "I'm going to need names, places, every detail you know about the Russian fort. And if Linkin even finds one of a million facts to be a lie, neither of you are going to be alive to see the sunrise. The pigs might be hungry."