I've never worked with the turner Vladimir before, but I've heard of him.
It's rumored that he's a hybrid, an incredibly rare form of Extra that has access to more than one power. Some have said he's a psychic, but he doesn't look like any of the psychics I've seen. Each Extra has a set of traits passed down from the very first of their kind, and Vladimir doesn't share any of the psychic traits I've seen in the others, like Gregori and Laticia.
"You must be Evaline." he says, his voice deep and surprisingly rich. I blink, staring dumbly.
"Oh. Yeah, I'm Evaline. Are you-?"
"Vladimir Thames." he holds out his hand. I reach for it, and suddenly, my breath is ripped from my lungs.
"Drop to the ground as soon as you see the Pulse coming at you. Do not go near him. Look for the scrap of orange fabric." I stare into Vladimir's dark, dark eyes, as his voice echoes through my mind. He pulls his hand away, and everything is normal again. I have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I might throw up. A necromancer comes over to give me a quick check-up and clear me for the turn. It takes a whole three minutes of convincing before she agrees that my slower response time was because of lack of sleep, and I could catch up on it after I reviewed the file. She finally signs my release paper and leaves, and I stand in the center of the turning pad. I open my mission file for the first time, having completely ignored Ai's direction to brief myself on the way to get my things from Net's. Who I still haven't heard from.
Year: xxxx
Month: xx
Date: xx
Assignment code: xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx
I frown deeply.
"Why is everything encrypted?" I look up at Vladimir, as if he might have the answers. He simply shakes his head.
"Seriously. Where the hell are they sending me?" my voice breaks. Vladimir doesn't answer.
Drop to the ground as soon as you see the Pulse coming at you.
The scene around me is shifting constantly. Normally, I am thrust out of the front doors of the Society, through the streets of Ward One, and into wherever my assignment took place. Then, I watch as the years are peeled away, and time is turned backwards. This time, things are much different. I watch Vladimir straighten out my body on the ground of the turning pad. I watch more and more agents fill the room, and for the first time, I see every single turning pad in use. I see security agents secure turners in hand cuffs and lead them away.
And then I am thrust out of the Society and slowly dragged through the streets of Freight. Only, it doesn't look like Freight. The buildings are tall and white, with Plexiglas windows, like in the Dominion. The streets are paved and clean. The dirt that used to be Freight's sky tears itself away.
But I am not dragged out of Ward One. Instead, the world around me moves at an incredible pace, not back to before the Dominion's take over, but through it. The buildings grow taller and more plentiful, the people age and the Vilitain-Mayberry is demolished. Things become blurry, and before I even know what's happening, I can see the Pulse coming towards me.
Drop to the ground as soon as you see the Pulse coming at you.
I drop to my stomach and fold my arms over my head. Not an instant after that, the Pulse hits me, and the silence is interrupted by loud bangs.
Gun shots.
I dare a peek at the world around me, just barley lifting my head.
Soldiers. Some dressed in the high-tech white suits of the Dominion, others dressed in the camouflaged cloth of the illegal societies, all coming at me from all different directions. A massive boom causes me to scream, and rumbles the earth more than any Pulse could.
Look for the scrap of orange fabric.
I scan the dusty earth, the ruins of the Dominion, looking for a way out of the battlefield. Bullets hit the ground just to the right of my head and I scream, holding my arms over my head again. I'm shaking.
Where, the hell, has the Society sent me?
"Agent, agent!" someone in the distance calls. More gun fire, more booms that shake the earth.
"Who is it!?"
"I think it's Evaline!"
"Evaline!" I dare another peek up at the war zone. Two female agents, Dawn and Henrietta, run towards me.
Each of them have a small scrap of orange fabric pinned to their fitted soldiers' uniforms. They help me up and we all stay low to the ground as we rush towards a particular set of ruins.
"What is this place!?" I yell over the noise. "What's going on!?" neither Dawn or Henrietta answer me.
They take me over a ruined library, shifting a rather large piece of Dominion-issued white plastic out of the way and motioning me down the hole. I look at each of them, weary of just about everything. Just as I finally decide to drop down the hole in the library rubble, I see him.
His hair is cropped short, his eyes are dim with exhaustion, but it is still him.
Do not go near him.
"Evaline, go!"
"Blayke," I rise slowly to my feet.
"Evaline!"
"Blayke!" I run. Don't think, just run. I slide down the base of rubble and run across the dirt, towards Blayke.
He's here. He's alive.
Just as I near him, another massive boom shakes the ground, and a tower of something that used to be a building topples to the ground.
~ ~ ~ ~
I wake up to the hushed clicking and whirring of machinery.
"Why was she even out there? Why didn't you pick her up at the drop zone?"
"We did," Dawn snaps, sounding like she's poised to kill.
"Oh, so you let her get away then!" I recognize the second voice, the male voice, as Net. I almost can't be sure, he sounds so damn hysterical.
"She's fine, guys; look." I open my eyes, and almost immediately scamper back against the wall. Dead, wounded, bloody soldiers lay on stretchers, on the ground, everywhere. I clutch the necklace charm at my chest, noticing how cold it is, how cold I am. I shudder. Net sits in front of me, his curly, dirty blonde hair longer than I remember it being the other day. He wears a camouflage soldiers' uniform now. I meet his eyes, and a rush of memories floods back to me.
"Blayke," I say softly. Net frowns.
"Evaline-"
"Net, I saw him!" I practically yell. He holds a finger to his lips.
"Evaline, Blayke went missing a month and a half ago. We're assuming he's dead," Nethanyel's voice is quiet.
"Well he's not! I saw him, Net. It was him, I know it was!" I insist. Net sighs, motioning for Dawn and Henrietta to leave. Once they're gone, he turns toward me again.
"We have about thirty-five minutes before they bring in the next load of soldiers and we have to leave. You have about thirty-five minutes to get your answers,"
~ ~ ~ ~
Henrietta takes me to get fitted for my soldiers' clothes. Women don't wear the same uniforms as the men; we have black cargo pants, white wife-beater tank-tops and heavy, layered camouflage jackets. Like everyone else in the unit, I have a small scrap of orange fabric with my name embroidered on it pinned to the right lapel of my jacket. Corelina, the half-blind woman who fits us into our clothes, slips something into my jacket pocket when she thinks no one can see. And no one does; no one but me.
I think about the hospital wing earlier that day.
The first question that had tumbled out of me was one I'm sure Net had been expecting; "Where's Blayke?" He'd shaken his head and stared at the wall behind me.
"I really don't know, Evaline. Maybe you did see him. I hope you saw him; that would mean he isn't dead."
"Where are we?"
"Where, or when?"
Either way, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know the answer. He told me anyways, of course, though it hadn't shocked me as much as I thought it would.
The year is 3030, and our location is Ward One.
I enter the cafeteria, where they're dishing out steaming hot bowls of something called oatmeal. I've never had it, but I'm starving and freezing and that makes it look delicious. The women standing behind the blue, non-Dominion-issued plastic counter aren't wearing soldiers' uniforms; instead they have on plain gray pants and tight white jackets with the scrap of orange on their right lapel. One of them offers me bananas for my oatmeal.
I find a large piece of rubble nestled into a corner, partially hidden behind a pillar. I test to make sure it's stable enough to hold me, and then I climb up with my tray of banana oatmeal.
Once I burn my lip on the oatmeal and am sure nobody is around to see, I reach into my pocket and pull out the paper Corelina had given me. I stare at it for a moment, at those two simple letters that make my heart pound.
Ev.
I look out over the cafeteria. Everyone is sitting, eating. Few are talking. None are laughing.
Net had answered a lot of questions for me at the hospital, before the people he called runners came and brought in more carnage. They had terrible timing, those runners. I had just breached probably the biggest and most important question I had:
"Whose war are we fighting here?" when they had burst through the doors and Net's attention was called elsewhere. I was stuck without an answer.
I know we're fighting for the illegal societies. The question is, which ones? And who had originally called the war, the Dominion, or the illegals? Is this the turning point of a rebellion? Or was Blayke right, and the Dominion's inability to control their citizens so bad that they are forced to destroy them?
I really have no clue. And, chances are, I won't ever get to know.
I unfold the paper against my lap and read. Again, just one, simple word.
Trust.
It was crossed out.
But trust who? Or did crossing out the word mean not to trust? Even so, I still don't know who not to trust. Why is Blayke doing this? Why is he giving me these riddles? If he had time to write and disperse these clues before he left, why couldn't he have just written me a whole explanation, shove it in a safebox, and tell me not to open it until September fourteenth? There must be more clues, somewhere. But not knowing is killing me.
I think about it more as I begin to eat my mushy banana oatmeal, cooler now that I had let it sit. And the more I think about it, the more Blayke's second clue, trust, begins to make sense. I still don't know who or what to trust or not trust, but maybe that's the point. Maybe Blayke wants me to be weary, to be on my toes about the people around me.
And about the Society?
I'm not sure yet. Not completely.
But I do know that I have to find him again. It brings a fresh ache to my chest, thinking of how close I was to him, and how fast he was taken away. If that building hadn't crumbled, I wouldn't have been knocked unconscious. I would have made it to Blayke.
Why didn't he hear me? The battle was far enough away that I could hear individual persons' shouts. I could hear word for word Dawn and Henrietta yelling behind me. So why couldn't Blayke hear me when I yelled his name?
Trust.
I crumple the note up in my fist and drop it in the trash with my tray.