Trapped (Here Trilogy) (8 page)

“Nothing.”

“Ok, seriously, did you not—I mean, was—”

“I like it, Milo, I promise,” he said. “It’s—It’s too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re more than I can handle, Milo.”

“But—”

“Milo, please,” he asked, sounding like he just couldn’t handle another word. Another touch.

So I stayed quiet.

MORE THAN I can handle
.

I had a lot of time to wonder what that meant. A lot of time during which Nick sat stoically beside me, waiting, I assumed, for me to fall asleep.

There was the obvious meaning—that what we’d been doing was too much—but I worried maybe he meant the whole experience, or the effort to save the planet, or something else bad.

The ‘something else bad’ part opened up another can of worms entirely, and I spent what felt like hours ticking away the seconds in my head. If he couldn’t change Vera’s mind… If he changed her mind, and then they disappeared… When they disappeared…

I think I passed out eventually out of sheer exhaustion, and when I woke up the next morning to sunlight shining through our tent, Nick was holding me. I felt like nothing could go wrong ever again, and I wanted to stay that way with him forever.

Finally, I put my hand over his and squeezed his fingers, and our eyes met. His were warm. “How did you sleep?”

“Not bad.”

“So…bad?”

“At least I slept a little. Unlike someone.” I looked pointedly at him.

He smiled “I
did
sleep a bit.”

“Yeah right.” I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around me. I asked, again, about what had happened when he got to Earth, and I lay on my side with his arm around me as he explained it all again in detail: how he was set to go to Silicon Valley, but he'd had his 'eyes' trained on me.

I looked back at him, and he grinned sheepishly. “I'd become...a little obsessive in the time I spent evaluating your planet.” He looked almost bashful when he smiled, and I found myself smiling, too. “I was already transitioning when I scanned Gabe DeWitt’s body. I thought I could re-write all of the data I wanted when I made the switch. I was wrong, obviously. Certain things came through—like the tuxedo, which was coded to appear no matter what vessel I used—and the whistle, another non-organic item created and ‘pinned’ to me. But when I tried to write myself over his brain, I hit a snag when I got to the memories. You need precision to translate our data into a human memory, and I, uh… well, I’m embarrassed to admit this,” and he really was, because he leaned in and whispered, “but the short story is, I just ran out of time.”

That didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but I guess a dude who used to be part of a giant computer program would care a lot about that. “I wonder what it would have been like if you’d remembered from the beginning.”

He shook his head. “I imagine not like this.”

“No.” Would he have just checked me out, satisfied his curiosity, and split? We certainly would have avoided the DoD. Speaking of… “Did you break the wind turbines?” I asked, stroking his fingertips. “I won't be mad. I promise.”

He hung his head, and I turned around to punch him in the shoulder.

When he looked up, his eyes were solemn. “I can pay you, if you want. I'm good with...you know...the ATM.”

“With fraud?” I laughed. “No, we don't need your money. How did you break them, though? That, I want to know.”

“My...arrival tweaked the atmosphere within a certain radius. Another result of my change of plans. Originally I planned to arrive on Earth in an organic vessel. Instead I transitioned in a state that scrambled the electromagnetic field. A sort of spiral followed me to your property, and, well...”

“Are you like, some supercharged bolt of electricity or something?”

Nick gave me a small smile, part mysterious, part sad. “Something like that.”

“State secrets?”

He shook his head. “You know a lot of those. But there’s no word or name in your language, or any human language, that can explain it. I’ve been using words associated with energy, electricity, and computing because I thought it would help you understand better. What I really am is a form of matter humans haven’t encountered.”

“Hmmmmm…” I was trying not to feel dumb, but he must have misunderstood because his face got stormy. I hastened to add, “It doesn’t matter, though, promise.”

“You keep saying that,” he said. “It makes me think it must matter.”

“I only keep saying that because you keep acting all Alien Edward.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, whatever. Consider this: since you know everything about earth—hey, that means you must get my Edward joke!” He shrugged, and I rolled my eyes. “Well, your encyclopedic knowledge also means you must know about the PSAs they run during children’s shows. You know, Dun Dun dun Dun dun, 'The more you KNOOOOOW!'” I think he knew, but was puzzled by my tunelessness. For a girl who can almost play by ear, I can’t sing for crap. “What I’m trying to say is, you must know all people are just the same, no matter how they look or whether they're old or young, or gay or a different color or a difference species. You know, that kind of thing. Love and acceptance. We’re all people.”

Nick's voice was grave. “I'm not a person, Milo.”

“Neither am I. I mean, I'm not
just
a person. I'm energy, like you. That’s really what I believe. I’m just stuck in this body. But we’re the same.”

“Are we?”

“It's what I think.” I squeezed his hand.

“I don't know what we are.” And when he noticed me noticing his heavy moment, he stroked my cheek again. “I’m glad you’re who you are. And that I’m here with you.” He smiled slightly. “Vera hates your experience of time, but I like it. It makes me more aware of every moment.”

“You’ve got a better attitude than almost every human I know.”

He shrugged, and I sat up, disentangling from him but still holding his hand. I stroked the top of it, feeling content and full and ready to face anything. “So what's the plan now?”

“I was hoping to send Vera into Gardiner. We don’t have much food.”

“Why Vera?”

“She can manipulate her appearance.”

My heart raced. “Is the DoD nearby?”

He shook his head, opened his mouth, then shut it quickly, and I pounced. “What? Tell me, what is it?”

He sighed. “Three hours ago the state of Colorado issued an Amber Alert. For you,” he said. “Someone manipulated surveillance footage to make it seem like Vera and I kidnapped you.”

“They didn’t!”

He nodded solemnly.

“Wait—how do you know this?”

He pointed his finger up. “I can access all the data that travels by radio or satellite—and that’s a lot.”

“Wait, so you can get on the Internet right now?”

“It’s more—”

“—Complicated than that,” I said.

He smiled. “But close enough.” His face went serious. “I’m not just keeping up with the news. I’m erasing all traces for you from all government databases. I might even be able to erase memories, if Vera agrees to help.”

“You could do that?” I gaped at him.

“I think so.”

It's not like I'd forgotten the men in black were after us, but it had slipped a little on the priorities list, what with the impending alien invasion. I admit I was a little relieved that I was being portrayed as the victim in all this—until I realized that they could just kill me and call it an accident, and there would be no one to dispute their story later.

It occurred to me suddenly that if Mom thought I was kidnapped, she was probably freaking out. I had to pinch my arm to keep from crying. “So…will Vera go? Does she care if I starve?”

“I haven't asked. If you want a more filling breakfast,” he said, handing me a water bottle and a granola bar, “I'll find out.”

“When you get back, I want to hear about your plan for swaying her to the human side of things.”

About that time, we heard a loud curse, and Nick smiled. “I think she's becoming more human already.”

Nick ducked into the tent a few minutes later, shaking his head. “No go.”

I wasn’t surprised.

“She’s still being difficult,” he grumbled, and I felt not at all reassured. He pulled a Rockies cap out of his back pocket and fitted it onto his head, like he'd been wearing a baseball cap his whole life.

“Looks good.” I grinned.

“I think I like it. I’ll be back soon.”

I stood. “Let's go together.”

Nick shook his head, but I gave him a gentle shove toward the mouth of the tent. “Stay there for a second, okay? Don't leave. Promise me?”

“I promise,” he said.

I ripped through the duffel bags for props. I used four pairs of socks to stuff a giant bra, tucked my hair into a suede fedora, and attached a blond weave, letting it hang down my back like a ponytail.

When I came out, Nick's eyebrows jutted up comically. “I guess you'll be going inside.”

I smiled, giddy despite everything because, like him, I was trying to experience every moment. And every moment near him made me giddy. “Guess so.” I turned toward Vera's tent, beside the springs. “Is she in there?” He nodded. “So she's saying here?”

“Yeah.”

Can we trust her not to get up to shenanigans?

“She’ll be fine,” he assured me.

Mind reader!

I took a moment to appreciate our campsite in the early morning light. The springs, which completely surrounded us, were swathed in steam that rose up to the beautiful, pearly gray sky. For as far as I could see, there were firs and pines and rocks and patches of yellow grass. And beyond them, the mountains.

I was surprised to find myself following Nick not toward the big, white truck, but toward a beige SUV.

“Holy crap.”

He grinned. “Surprised?”

“Just a little bit.”

“It’s the same truck, I just made it look different.”

“That’s amazing.”

Nick smiled at me. “Your disguise is better.”

I laughed and flipped the extensions as he opened the door, and yes, on the inside it was the same truck.

Considering who we were and what we were doing and what we had done the day before, it felt shockingly normal being together in the car. I glanced at him as he turned us back toward the entrance to the park, guiding the wheel with deft hands. Hands that had touched me. They were nice hands: strong and capable.

I realized suddenly that I didn’t have any pictures of Nick. Nothing to help my mind hold his face once he was gone. No videos to help me remember the way he moved, or the subtle expressiveness of his eyes. I had a cellphone, but I suddenly realized it was gone.

“I don’t have my cell phone,” I said. I didn’t necessarily think about it before I said it, and I definitely didn’t mean to sound so miserable. Nick’s eyebrows jumped to the top of his forehead, and I said, “It’s just…I don’t have any pictures…of us.”

“Ah.” His face instantly matched my mood, but he tried to keep his tone easy. “Maybe I can get some surveillance stills from our former captors,” he said. “So you can remember the good times.”

“I don’t want to not have anything to remember you by.” I was dangerously close to crying.

Don’t think about that!

“We’ll get something,” he promised. “In fact, isn’t a camera something our destination might have?”

“Good point.”

“We can take selfies.”

I smiled. “That would be funny.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what you’d look like.”

“I think like this.” And then he made his lips into the duck face that Halah loves to make, and I laughed.

“How do you even know about that?”

He tapped his head. “It’s all up here.”

“Yet you claimed to not understand my Edward reference.”

“Twi-what now?” He failed to keep from grinning, and I thought
, This would be the perfect picture
.

I felt desperate then. Almost overwrought. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t go. To beg him not to. To declare that I would spend the rest of my life waiting for him to come back. Instead, I said, “Fool me twice, shame on me.”

He smiled slightly, but he could tell. He could always tell.

“Vera will come around,” he offered.

Okay, so maybe he can’t read my actual thoughts.

I nodded, pretending that was all that haunted me.