“You don’t look younger than me,” Farrow’s voice dropped to a wistful whisper. She locked eyes with him and added, “And you certainly don’t act younger than me,” she nodded toward the baby drooling happily on his shoulder.
Roses blossomed in Farrow’s cheeks, but this time she refused to run from them. The bangs of her dark hair, cut pixie short, draped beautifully across the pale skin of her forehead. Her slender neck and strong shoulders looked as shapely as any dancer’s, but this nimble doll wasn’t the least bit worried about having an audience watch her move with grace on a stage. Her eyes were beautifully shaped, rounded with a slight upturn at the outside corners. Women use gobs of makeup to try to create the illusion that Farrow’s eyes did naturally.
“You’re beautiful,” Alik blurted.
“So are you,” Farrow countered without missing a beat. She grinned mischievously at Alik’s surprised expression.
“Guys aren’t ‘beautiful’!”
“You are.”
“So…” Alik started, blushing deeply at her compliment, “I think we would make a pretty amazing team.” Nervously, he started gnawing his bottom lip.
Farrow waited patiently until his eyes met hers again.
Alik waited impatiently for her to respond to his offer.
“Don’t you think?” he prodded anxiously.
Farrow loved how blue his eyes looked when he was embarrassed. She almost wanted to kiss his lids.
“I think,” Farrow whispered, starting to rise on tiptoe, her back still against the wall, Alik mere inches away, “we would make a pretty amazing couple.”
With that, she leaned up to place a light kiss on the side of Alik’s mouth. Had he not been holding his little brother, he would have grabbed her by the shoulders and demanded even more of her attention, but as it was, he had a three-year-old drooling heavily on his chest.
Farrow grinned beautifully up at Alik, knowing full well how tied his hands were with the baby in his arms.
But what made her full-out laugh was the look of over-the-moon excitement on Alik’s face as she held her hand out to him. He looked as proud as a peacock when he took her hand in his and started walking down the corridor to the hospital’s cafeteria.
“So does this mean I can call you my girlfriend?”
“Only if I can call you my boyfriend.”
Alik let out a joyful whoop loud enough to echo down the hall, and wake his little brother.
Chapter 29 Miro “Slider” Reznikov
Slider watched the glistening red of his cigarette in the moonlight wondering what the hell he was doing. The moon was a crescent shape glinting in the velvet black night sky. He took another drag on his smoke, sitting on the hard cement his body didn’t even feel under his jeans. The stars shimmered like crystal diamonds in the sky as he stared at his red smoke. Another drag on the smoke caused part of him to spit the vile taste from his mouth. He grimaced as he washed the taste of the smoke he loathed with another sip of the wine so readily available. His head fell into his arms outstretched to his knees, held close to his face.
Who the hell am I?
His mind spun.
He took another drag and watched the white plume echo from his lips.
Head leaning against his thick right forearm, he tried to force a memory, only to be confronted with a sharp pain behind his eyes.
Shit.
It wasn’t letting him remember, but maybe that was for the best.
The walls around him were near crumbling, but at least he felt.
For the first time he could remember, he felt and damn if it didn’t hurt to remember.
Images flashed in his mind’s eye and he couldn’t stand the pain he had caused. He remembered just enough to know he had done some horrible things, but not enough to understand why.
He snuffed his first smoke against the cement beneath him and grabbed his lighter to start another cigarette.
The first inhale left him buzzing.
Where had he gone during his blackout and why was he back at the Facility?
Nothing made sense. Time was disconnected and warped in his mind. He only had a few strobe-like images of what may have happened and they were scary as hell. Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe taken out of context, his snippets of memories seemed more horrible than what really happened.
I couldn’t have killed Gavil Young, right? And shooting Dr. Winter in the back, that had to have been…no, I couldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have hurt that nice lady who offered me a home. Right?
The last thing Slider remembered for sure was heading into battle against Williams.
What the hell happened?
Where were his friends, Farrow, Creed, Meg, Alik and Evan?
Why was he outside, wearing only a T-shirt and cammo pants smoking cigarettes? Where was everyone? What happened?
In the light of the moon he sat, half-leaning against a cold, brick building. The lighter illuminated his hands. They were shaking. He couldn’t help but notice the dark red splatters on them…sticky and smelling strongly of copper. So instead of trying to figure out what they were, he used one cigarette to light the next and inhaled the poison deeply.
His world was spinning.