She lay in bed, listening to the slow, drip, drip, drip of water pattering against the windowsill. It had rained the day before and maybe it was still drizzling. As she lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, she watched as a beam of light, from the road below, chase a shadow across the ceiling. She felt uneasy, uncomfortable, wishing again for the distant thrumming of an engine as they passed through the nothingness that was space.
Maverick hadn't been back to earth in years now, and she found that she didn't enjoy the experience.
She continued to watch as the beam of light passed and the shadows returned to their position of supremacy.
Dim green light emanated from the digital cock on her nightstand casting the room into an eerie green glow, not good enough to illuminate the room, but just bright enough to turn a coat slung over the back of the chair into a hunched creature lurking at the foot of her bed. She squeezed her eyes shut hoping that maybe the feelings would go away, but the discomfort persisted
She hated it.
Ever since she could remember she had felt like this, a small animal continuously hunted by.... Soemthing.
Another beam of light passed over the ceiling, and another shadow danced by, chasing the light away and leaving her in blackness again. Maverick didn't want to move, afraid the shadows might notice her, move in towards her. She could feel them....
Searching for her.
Architect she hated this planet.
What was wrong with her.
It too all her will to push past the discomfort and stand from her bed. A childish part of her worried she would feel a cold hand wrap around her ankle from under the bed, but nothing happened. The shadows didn't creep in towards her, but still that uneasy feeling persisted, like she was being watched.
Maverick grabbed her boots and her coat, slipping into them as she headed out into the brightly lit hotel hallway. The light helped, but it didn't completely chase the feeling rising up inside her. She didn't know where she was going but she didn't want to sit in bed any longer waiting for soemthing to happen.
She thought about heading to the spaceport and taking a shuttle back to Luna, but even thinking about it felt silly.
She walked down the stairwell listening carefully to the quit echo of her own footsteps, before passing out the doors into the lobby. The night auditor was there in the back room, she could see him through the open door, watching soemthing on a holoprojection. Still, despite the presence of another human.... She felt oddly alone . She turned from the lobby and headed out the automatic doors into the warm night air.
The sensation was worse out here, and the long, empty streets seemed so dark.
She walked up the small sidewalk, listening to the roaring of sirens in the distance, and took a seat at the railway bench stop. She glanced over her shoulder sure that there was someone there, but she must have been wrong as she saw no one.... And nothing lurking in the shadows behind her.
"Bit late fore a walk."
Before she knew it Maverick had a knife in her hand and was on her feet ready to gut the thing that had intruded upon her, swirling to face....
"Ramirez."
Ramirez held up his hands eyes wide slightly, "Woah uh..... as much as I find the idea of you holding me at knifepoint kind of sexy, maybe you should put that thing down." Maverick lowered her knife, and glanced around, peering behind Ramirez, who looked like he had gotten dressed in a hurry.
"Did you follow me?" She said, eyes narrowing slightly
"Yes and no. I couldn't sleep, and I heard your door opening" He glanced around seeming unperturbed. Clearly he didn't feel what she was feeling, and that just made her feel crazy., "What are you doing out here anyway." In the near darkness, she watched as he scrutinized her face, his amber eyes glittering in the light from the hotel lobby, "Are you ok?" Oddly enough, now she was feeling a little better. The space around Ramirez was,
Warm?
Hard to describe, but it seemed as if there was a radius around him where the darkness pulled away. She hated to think of it like that as it made her feel even more insane. Maverick had never talked to anyone about these.... Feelings she had, certainly not Riss or Dr. Adric. She was sure if they heard her talk about it they would send her straight to a sanitarium.
"I'm fine."
He glanced over at the rail bench, "Going somewhere."
She shrugged, "I don't know, maybe."
"Need some company?"
It took her a minute to think about it, though her decision was made within the first few seconds. It would be nice to have someone around for once, and after all she had been through with Ramirez, she would prefer him over anyone else. She wasn't sure what the two of them had, a very close friendship, or soemthing more than that, but either way she would gladly have him in preference to nothing.
"Sure."
He fell into step beside her just as the rail showed up. It was one of the smaller cars at this time of night, and there was no one to bother them as they stepped inside the small vehicle sitting down just as the small railcar whizzed away into the brightly lit streets of downtown.
Maverick watched out the window as the shadowed night passed by. Going fast helped, but it didn't completely alleviate the feeling.
"You sure you're ok? You've been acting strange since.... Well since we got to earth if I'm being honest."
Maverick turned to look back at him, eyes moving slightly to his hand which twitched on his lap. Ramirez was a physical sort of guy. She was sure he would have liked to comfort her with an arm or a hand, but based on her preference he chose not to. Maverick didn't like physical contact, not unless she was the one to initiate it , and she certainly didn't like comforting physical contact. When she was upset she didn't want anyone close to her.
She had often wondered what was wrong with her to make her like that So many other people preferred hugs, or to have their hands held when upset. When maverick was upset, she grew even more averse to touch. She didn't know where this preference came from, as far as she knew or could remember there was no trauma in her past to have made her this way, at least not any trauma that involved people.
And neither was it a sensory thing like it was for Simon.
She had gone too long without answering, and ramirez was looking even more concerned.
She didn't know she had decided to tell him until she felt the words spilling out of her mouth.
"I'm not crazy."
He blinked once, "I mean both of us know that's a lie. Have you met yourself recently?"
She snorted softly "Ok, you know what I mean."
He shrugged, "Actually, I have no idea what you are talking about, but I AM willing to listen."
She paused again and there was silence between then for a long moment. Of course, she had already made her decision, but she still had to make sure, "Promise you won't drop me off in a padded room somewhere."
He looked like he was about to make another joke, but when he saw the look on her face, he stopped and nodded, "promise."
Maverick sighed and leaned back in her seat, "I think something is wrong with me."
He looked at her and kept his face serious but when he spoke his voice was light, "You are making it very difficult not to be sarcastic."
She sighed, "Suppose that's my fault. I have fostered your smartass.'
"Naturally."
"how much have I told you about where I'm from?"
A passing streetlight caused his eyes to glitter golden briefly, "Uh, not much. You told me you're an orphan, which my mother finds horrifically sad by the way. You said you grew up on the street..... probably don't tell my mother that as she has already threatened to adopt you several times and that would probably push her over the edge. You may have briefly mentioned you joined the marines to get away from Earth, but it seemed like a touchy subject, so I didn't want to pry."
She sighed, and took a long slow breath.
Best to get this out of the way first, "I think, something is following me."
Immediately Ramirez glanced over his shoulder hand drifting to the conspicuous holster on his right hip
"The fact you said soemthing and not someone is not making me feel better."
Maverick rubbed her temples.
Ramirez shifted uncomfortably and folded his hands tightly in his lap. The poor guy was trying as hard as he could.
"My parents died when I was really little, I don't remember them much , don't even really remember how they died, jumped around from home to home for a while. Some of the places were pretty horrible, some of them were ok. But there was this one foster home that just..... well it felt wrong, and It's hard to describe....." She paused and trailed off for a minute before starting again, "The father of the family was.... Odd, he was into some really strange stuff, not really occult things but soemthing similar. He had this little room at the back of the house that we weren't allowed to go into, spent all his time in their talking to himself or soemthing, but things in the house just always felt wrong. He never did anything to us." She said quickly, watching as the concern grew on his face.
"By all rights they were decent people, kind of distant and a little strict. They weren't my favorite." She shivered, "I always felt strange things while I was there, things that the other kids didn't seem to have a problem with. But one day, soemthing weird happened. I came home from school and the house had burned down. When the father got back from work he completely lost his mind, screaming and rambling about.... I don't even know what, but he seemed terrified that "it" was out." She shook her head, "I don't know what that means, but we were removed from their care shortly after. After that things sort of.... Went downhill for me. It started out fine at first, I would go to a new home and meet new people, but then weird stuff would start up."
He was staring at her intently and she tried to gage, his reactions, read his face to see how he was taking her revelations. If he thought, she was nuts.
"Id start to feel like I was being watched, then it was like I was being followed, and then it was like soemthing was in the room with me. I swore as a kid there were times I was convinced things were standing in my room at night, and then when it got bad It was as if soemthing was standing right behind me."
She watched Ramirez shiver visibly.
"That sort of turned into me running away on multiple occasions. Moving around helps you see. So, when things started getting bad, I would run away and become difficult just so they would place me in a new home. They did psychological evaluations and everything, but I was a pretty well put together child despite all these issues . I even told them about the strange feelings, but there was no other evidence of illness, so they chalked it up to an overactive imagination. And I am not talking about an overworked, underfunded agency with bad child psychologists. These people were good and they did everything they were supposed to do. They found no evidence of delusions or psychosis or mood disorders or depression. For all intents and purposes, I was completely fine. A few doctors thought I might have conduct disorder because I ran away so much, but they quickly ruled that out during the testing."
"How old were you."
"Six or so when it started, but it got worse the older I got. Eventually, when I was old enough I decided the foster system just wasn't working for me and up and left, I was on the streets for a while, put myself through school, avoided child services as best I could. It was dangerous on the streets. A lot of bad people out there looking to take advantage of you. You have to be smart, but one day these kids told me about a place in the city where they didn't go because it was creepy. Obviously creepy never bothered me so much since that was every night of my life."
She glanced forward at the front of the tram, which was now speeding down an underground tunnel at incredible speeds. They would be to their destination in no time.
"Church row?'" He asked. She had told him about it before but not in great detail.
She nodded, "You know how the city I am from was built over the bones of the old city."
"That makes it all the more creepy when you say it like that." He muttered.
She gave a grim smile.
"Well that's the truth. Thee is the upper city, and the mid-city from the third world war era. Then you have the lower city which is.... I think it is prewar, and somehow survived the nuclear fallout. All the old buildings are still there, especially in one part of town called church row. Its called that because there are like seven churches on one block . The other kids thought it was creepy, but I found it..... safer than other places I had been." She shivered and rubbed her arms, "It was both simultaneously worse and better than anywhere I had been before. You see, old churches.... Attract it."
Ramirez shook his head slowly, "Than why would you-"
"Its hard to describe.... Its like if the church is abandoned it will attract the.... Thing. But its less of a physical abandonment and more for a spiritual abandonment. Churches that still have existing denominations are safe, but churches that have been spiritually vacated are dangerous." She could tell he was trying very hard to follow her, and he was doing a great job, but she sounded crazy and she knew it.
"perhaps it is best if I show you."