I wasn’t over her at all.
Maybe the wrestling match in my mind was nothing more than my desperate attempt to give her the benefit of the doubt—which she didn’t deserve. Still, even if she didn’t, wasn’t keeping her a prisoner in these luxurious quarters the more humane way to go, after all? Surely it was a better answer than killing her.
“And don’t call me Shirley,” I heard her remembered voice in my head, along with a vision of her dazzling smile that could light the world. Just the memory of it melted my heart into putty.
Once again, I fought off pulling the trigger. But it was even harder than the last time. One of the hardest things I’d ever done, requiring all of my will. Killing her had become an absolute compulsion. A necessity.
I didn’t just want to kill her. I had to kill her. In the worst way. Like my body had a mind of its own.
I felt like a drug addict going through cold turkey, and only the drug—in this case watching her die—would stop it.
But my love for her was a drug of its own, and it countered this impulse just enough to stay her execution.
But something was wrong. Very wrong. And I needed to trust my instincts to figure out what.
I wrenched the gun away again and thought back to the bunker, to the encounter in question. I began playing it back, turning it into the perfect 3D movie that only nanites with perfect memory could provide, reliving it word for word.
I saw Tessa standing next to me in the bunker as if we had been transported back through time, her eyes filled with hatred. “God dammit!” she screamed, as the reel played out once again. “And just when I was sure I could win you over again. Get you back in love with me. Although maybe it’s just as well. If I had to profess my love for you one more time, there’s a good chance I’d have choked on my own vomit.”
“Tessa, what’s going on?” I saw myself saying, but I was more timid than outraged. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“No shit! You said yourself you’ve never seen the real me. Well now you have. You’re a dead man walking, Jason, so I can finally—finally!—drop the act. You’re so pathetic. So easily fooled. I’ve been dying to tell you the real situation, not the carefully scripted lies that I’ve been delivering.”
The venom she spewed seemed a bit over the top, even for a Mr. Hyde. I hadn’t focused on the details of her facial expression while she had delivered these barbs, but now I could. I could freeze frame and turn the entire memory into a vivid portrait, and then explore minute details of the scene my conscious mind hadn’t even been aware of at the time. Which is what had happened when I replayed my interaction with Nick in the woods.
But this time I couldn’t. This time, inexplicably, the playback was the playback. It was hollow. Like a presentation of bullet points with nothing else behind them. If I were asked a question on a given bullet point, I had no answer. I could only refer back to the bullet itself.
How could that be?
I suddenly knew I had to revive her. Talk to her. Hear her voice once again to be sure I was sane.
I reached into the small bag I had brought and pulled out the syringe meant for Brad Schoenfeld. Without wasting a moment, I removed the cap and stabbed the needle into Tessa’s right arm, depressing the plunger in the same motion, as quickly as I could, without even thinking. Even so, I met so much resistance to my movements that it seemed I had to drive the syringe through the grips of multiple bodybuilders to reach her arm.
“Stand back, Jason,” said the base’s AI. “You’ve given Major Tessa Barrett an antidote that will revive her in less than thirty seconds. I’m producing a wall of force between you and her for your protection. I’ll see to it that bullets from your side are able to pass through.”
Seconds later Tessa’s eyes shot open. She immediately surveyed the room, and when she saw me standing six feet away from her, she gasped. “Jason?” she said. “Where are we?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked with great urgency.
She looked confused. “UAVs breached the force dome protecting the island,” she said slowly, “and we were attacked. A wall of gas was coming toward us. And that’s it. Then I woke up here. Yesterday. I think for about an hour. But I don’t remember what happened. I was drugged with something that seems to have muddled my mind—and my nanites. They’ve just told me they’re working to reconstruct my missing memory now, but that it will take a few minutes—even for them.”
I wanted to reply, but my mouth seemed frozen. Instead, my arm shot up for a third time and I pointed the gun at her head. The wall of force between us prevented me from shoving the gun between her eyes, but I was at point-blank range and couldn’t miss.
I fought my own finger, which was determined to pull the trigger yet again. I felt powerless to control my own body. I used all of my mental might to stop myself from pressing down, but I wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer. The force I was battling was growing stronger and stronger by the instant.
Tears began to well in Tessa’s eyes, and she stared into mine. Her eyes were the same loving eyes I had come to know, and she nodded slightly, as if forgiving me for what I was about to do. “I love you, Jason,” she said softly.
And she did. She was seconds away from death, and absolutely sincere. I knew she hadn’t said this to get me to change my mind—if only I could.
A huge well of hope rose within my chest and I screamed at the top of my lungs, at least in my mind, and used every last bit of energy I had to yank the gun away from her and slam it into my own skull, knocking myself unconscious.
My last thought before I dropped to the floor was how much I’d give to know the truth about her feelings, and what the episode at the bunker had really been about.
42