Sight

"I'm pregnant."


I hadn't meant to just blurt the words out as we lay nude next to each other on the perfectly white sheets of the hotel. The air in the room suddenly became still. My chest rose as I inhaled, my eyes glued to the seam on the bed sheet, my finger near by with one red nail dark against the pale blanket.

Henri's eyes were on me, but he didn't say a word at first. I could see his own chest rising like mine as if the air had suddenly become too heavy for him too. He sat up slowly, the sheet dropping down to his waist. "What?"

"Oh this can't be the first time this has happened. I'm not your only partner, I'm sure."


He expelled air from his lungs harshly. I didn't dare glance up at him. He was nothing more than a tanned torso out of the corner of my eye. His large forearms moved and I could just imagine him running his hand through his hair as he did so often.

"Get rid of it."

The thought had occurred to me. It would be the smartest move. And it wasn't as if it was something I hadn't done before.

I sat up on one elbow and looked up at him. The blanket fell into the crevice between my torso and my hip exposing my breasts. "No."

Henri's lips were parted, his brow furrowed. The lines around his eyes seemed to pile up suddenly making him seem his age. He reached out with one hand, placing it on my hip before sliding me over to him. My completely non-existent belly pressed between us. "No." His voice, soft and scratchy, filled my stomach with a large ball of unidentifiable emotions.

I swallowed them, fighting it back. Against his neck, I whispered, "Henri, you've never seemed like the type of man to care."

He pulled away from me then. Whatever magic he had been working had dissipated. "It's a stupid risk. What if it has powers? Are you going to send it to live with me? To raise it into what we have to become?"


I sat up. My bare back pressed against the cold wood of the head board sent goosebumps up and down my skin. I ran a hand along one forearm, my cold fingers not helping to smooth out the bumps. "No. I'm not." But my plan was still just as bad if she did have powers that I couldn't hide. Wiley would take her if I asked.

My vision focused on the blanket again. It was not strategic. It was not smart. But it was the right thing. It felt right. "Do you have other children then?"

He leaned forward, an elbow on one half raised knee. "Two. One of them isn't mine though he might as well be."

That meant he had another one that was his. Did he have a family in the Wildlands that I didn't know about? Was I the other woman? I looked at him and caught his tired eyes again, but I was unable to ask. At that moment, I had to look very young. He never spoke of his life in the Wildlands, and I never asked because I knew he wouldn't speak if he didn't want to.

Henri rubbed at his chin with the hand attached to the elbow on his knee. "You can't know what they'll be like or how it might affect them." The words that left his mouth were directed softly at the blanket. At first I wasn't sure I had heard him, but I was aware that he was speaking from experience.

The silence stiffled the both of us. It filled the room uncomfortably after his quietly spoken words. There were questions I had that I hoped would help, but the words stayed inside my chest, not even tickling my throat. Answers were what I needed. His help was what I wanted. But I couldn't ask for either.

We left the hotel room together that night, the silence following us down to the street. Outside, he stopped me with one large hand on my cheek, his eyes burrowing into me as if he could plant his thoughts into my mind. Perhaps he could in some way; I still didn't know what powers he had. He brushed his lips against mine before he stepped away from me and down the street. The cheek that hand been warmed by his large hand was suddenly very cold.


She was born a very normal looking little girl. Wiley had her tested for me, and we found nothing out of the ordinary. She was a regular human as far as everyone else was concerned. But I knew better. She was never ordinary to me.

I always wanted him to see her as she grew. We continued to work together except for that short period of time I thought I could be a normal healthy mother for her as I was in the process of loosing my own. Their lives brushed against each other by proximity, through a common connector.


She was nothing like either of us. Where Henri and I pushed at the world, attempting to bend it in the direction we thought best suited for it, she was content. It wasn't unusual for me to find her sitting on the grass watching the bugs and the butterflies. She observed everything with a calm clarity and a steady eye. Her job has never been to ask why, but to see.

That was what I wanted Henri to know and to see for himself. It was possible to smile at the everyday things in life, to find contentment just from sitting on the grass.

When I wrote those letters, my last words to the both of them, I wanted him to know that she isn’t like either of us. She is completely different. An alien gifted to me with lessons to teach about the world we both thought we knew too well.

And now I lay here in the dark one this cold stone floor, aware that when that door opens, it will be the last time. I have nothing left, not even tears to shed for her, but I hope. For the first time, I find myself praying that she is all right.




Chapter 30 Wake up -->

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The Previously Perfectly Wrapped Presents

"Paula, don't you dare."

"I wasn't. I was just gonna take 'em out to gran'ma."


"So Mom, why're you wearing that outfit?"


"Paula, when you say it that way it sounds rude."

"Sorry. It's just you look silly."

"Keep it up and I'm going to make you wear that dress. I just wanted us to look good for Grandma."

"Oh. Is that why you baked the cookies?"

"Yes. So she doesn't worry. Now here, take that plate out there. I'll grab the tea."





"Be proud Mom. She carried the plate all the way from the kitchen and didn't lick one."

"Paula wouldn't do that, would you dear? She's a good girl, and she understands the meaning of patience."


"You're nothing like your mother was at your age, you know. She probably would have already eaten a cookie or two by now."

"What? Hey, this isn't about me."


"Did I ever tell you the story about the morning after I worked hard to perfectly wrap all our presents?"

"Oh god, Mom. Not that story. Can we just let it go now?"

"What story? I wanna know."


"No. Here- have a cookie."

"She's right. I probably shouldn't tell you about the morning one week before the holiday when I came downstairs to find all my perfectly wrapped presents unwrapped and your mother sitting in the middle."

"Oooo! She opened her presents early? Ooooo!"


"Mom, I hope you know you're just giving her ideas."

"You know what she said when I asked her why she opened all my carefully wrapped presents so early? She said, 'Why wait?' Can you believe that? Why wait? Haha!"

"Funny Mom."

"Patience is a virtue dear. And it seems like it skips a generation."

"Ha, Mom's impatient."


"Why do I always feel like you two are ganging up on me?"

"It's probably 'cause you're impatient."


"Out of the mouths of babes, my dear."





I just realized this morning that Christmas is this Saturday. Well I couldn't post one of my normally dark and semi-depressing chapters. So I give you one of Paula's happy memories. It isn't complete fluff. You get to meet Cheryl's mom and learn a very important fact about Cheryl, lol. Read more!

Intruder- Conclusion

Henri leaned against the wall near Wiley's bed as I stepped into the small room with a glass of liqueur in each hand. The liquid swished as I walked to him, releasing fumes that tickled my nose.

We didn't say a word to each other as I handed him a glass, each of us taking a sip as if we were breathing fresh air after being trapped under water. It was partially ritual and partially a stalling tactic for both of us, though probably mostly for me. I looked up at him, catching his eyes and trying to give him the faintest of smiles despite everything on my mind piling up and blocking my words.

He was the one to speak first, in a soft grunt. "So she made it back safely then?"

He didn't have to elaborate. I knew who he meant. "Yes." I bit my tongue, saliva washing the flavor of the liqueur remaining on my tongue down my throat.

Henri didn’t ask any further. I watched him as his eyes fell down to his glass with lips pressed together as if they wouldn’t allow even a drop of liquid in. There was always something more to him, but it was so easy to never look further with him because it was exactly what he didn't want.

I perched my own glass against my bottom lip, letting the cool feeling sink in against the delicate skin, before I flat out just asked. "So the intruders."


He moved very little, only lifting his eyes from the glass in his hand to look at me with that old weary expression that seemed to add years to his face. Anna had asked after that look of his. She'd seen it on him in that little amount of time she'd spent with him and she was frightened for him. She had called it a look of "lost hope."

"They didn't have much information to give."

The use of past tense didn't completely escape me, but I pushed the thought away quickly refusing to look at it any closer even as my stomach tightened around nothing but liquid and air. Anna hadn't been wrong about the lost hope nor was she wrong to worry for him. A man without hope who still had the urge to live could only be a dangerous man, one willing to do whatever he could to survive.


Except I had seen it flash across his face when he'd seen his little sister. It had been gone in an instant, but I had witnessed the smallest vulnerability in the armor he wore. In that instant, I saw the true man, the one he hid behind that frighteningly gruff exterior.

So there was hope. He hid it well.

I had been quiet too long. Henri looked up at me again from his glass. "What is it?"

Anna had asked about us. "So are you and him like a couple or something?" A small knowing smile had crept over her face to replace the earlier look of concern she'd had when she asked me about the intruders. "Do you think he'll kill them?"

I hadn't known what to say to her. Anna was a smart woman, but her siblings worked to shield her. Still it hadn't been enough. Some things couldn't be hidden. She'd managed to find us and Henri. She had managed to read him accurately enough in the short time she'd had with him.


I stepped towards Henri, putting the glass down on the small table next to him. We stood inches apart, his hands down at his side, the tips of his fingers holding onto the edge of his glass. His lips parted ever so slightly as I pressed my body to his. There was the soft sound of glass against wood as he put his glass down next to mine before lifting his hands and letting them fall comfortably on my waist. My own arms fell on his shoulders and slid around his neck as we pressed closer together.

We stayed that way for minutes. Who knew exactly how many lives were on Henri's conscious. There were the lives lost in the Revolution. Lives lost most likely at his own hands or the hands of those with him. There were the lives twisted as the ripples of the Revolution spread out across the Wildlands and our territory. And there were the lives that would be lost in the future, the ones snuffed out just from living in the Wildlands.


There was no way a man like him could survive if he allowed himself to drown in the guilt. His want to live was stronger than that.

"You guys're being very quiet over there," Wiley said from the other room. I could imagine him standing in the doorway leading from his main room to the small kitchen as he called out to us. "You aren't on my bed, right?"


Henri and I pulled apart, and I let a laugh go even as I brought a hand up to stop myself. "No. We'll be there in a minute." I glanced up at Henri, my features naturally relaxed in a smile, and was surprised to see him with a similarly relaxed smile spread almost cautiously on his face.


Before Anna and I parted, she had grabbed my hands and look at me with her wide eyes. "Sis--" when I protested, she'd waved her hand, "whatever. Fine, possibly-closest-thing-I'll-get-to-a-real-sister-in-law-that-I-know-I'd-like, just do me a favor. Keep an eye out for him, okay? I know he comes across as a tough guy; he's always been that way even when we were all younger. But..." Her lips had parted as her words faded away, but her eyes had seared their way into my memory. She had looked confused and concerned, certain that she wanted to ask this of me but unable to vocalize why.

That one night between Henri and me was nothing but a memory we never discussed. It existed as possible potential between us. One good thing for the both of us that could come from all this misery.


Sight -->
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Intruder Pt. 2

Wiley adeptly moved his fingers over the keyboard pressing particular buttons together to pull up different boxes each with different numbers changing quickly as a small light on his computer continued to flash.

"Someone's in the inner tunnel system. They tripped one of my sensors."

I stood behind him as I watched, unsure of what exactly he was seeing. He had tried to explain the sensors to me before, but I had a hard time understanding them and the readings they put out. "Could it be an accident?"

Wiley looked dubious as he tapped at his computer. "They're moving with intent-- going forward quickly, but from the looks of it not recklessly. They're exploring." He turned his chair to look back at me. "Were you followed?"


"No, I made sure. We took all the safety precautions-- did everything you told us to do."

Wiley bit his lip as he turned back to his computer, checking that tunnels were sealed off while keeping an eye on the sensors. I had no idea what his plans were for intruders. He seemed to bank on the idea that the tunnels made most people uncomfortable and afraid. Most of the tunnel openings were hidden or blocked off, a few had off the grid people almost living out of them. But those people were harmless and wouldn't dream of going deeper into the tunnels for the fear of the unknown. These intruders were further than just the entrance, they were far enough in to trip Wiley's warning sensors, yet still far enough away that I could see Wiley wasn't worried.

"So we don't know if it's anything yet, right? You can seal off the tunnel and they'll probably just go away when they think it's closed."

Nervously we waited, Wiley with his eyes on the sensors and me with my eyes on Wiley. When he quickly muttered what almost sounded like a proper curse under his breath, and the flashing continued I could guess it wasn't good though I had no idea what it meant. "Wiley?"

"They got through somehow. They're still coming."

Henri's deep voice sternly broke into the space between us. "Who is?"


Wiley and I turned to face Henri standing in the door way, his younger sister standing behind him with sharp eyes ready as if she were taking in the details and trying to come up with plans of her own.

Clearing his throat, Wiley turned back to his computer as he forced his voice out calmly. "I don't know yet. Intruders in the inner tunnels."

Henri stepped fully into the room and crossed his arms in disapproval. "And what the hell are you doing about it?"

Both Wiley and I looked up at him. From the corner of my eye, I could see Anna also looking up at him, her brows pulled down and her mouth partially open as if she were barely holding back her own thoughts.

"Nothing, they're exploring. It's not the first time this has happened. They'll give up. There's no way they'll figure out a way to us through the tunnels."

Henri rolled his eyes with a gruff sigh. "Cheryl, give me one of the coms. Wiley, direct me to them."

Wiley spun his chair around as I stood staring at Henri. Anna had closed her mouth, but she didn't move either. "What're you going to do?" Her voice was soft and careful, almost weary at the prospect of his confronting anyone.

Henri looked at her briefly before looking at me and holding out one large hand expectantly.

"You're going to face them?" Wiley almost sputtered. "That's not the best move in this case. Then they'll know we're here."

"They already know we're here." Henri's look was stern. He'd never made either one of us feel like children, but faced with that reproachful look from him, I could see the both of us shrinking back. "We need to find out why they're here."


I hesitated to hand over the communication device clipped to my belt. Neither Wiley's look of disapproval nor Anna's look of shocked concern were enough to hold him back, but I was. He couldn't go into the tunnel without directions, and he wouldn't forcibly take the device from me.

"You shouldn't go." Anna's look hardened into determination. "They could be armed."

Henri didn't look away from me. "I'm not concerned with that."

Anna fell silent. I could see it in her face when she realized that he wasn't just a regular human anymore. Her light brown eyes fell on me as if she were silently asking me not to give in though I had no idea if she was afraid for Henri or for the people Henri would find. Through the two years I had known him, I had never seen Henri in action and I had no idea what he would or could do.

Henri didn't move. His hand was absolutely steady, his mouth tightly pressed into a line as if he knew there was only one option and knew I would see it too. My hand slid down to the device on my belt and pressed in the release. It slid off easily and in one smooth motion I had handed it over to Henri, ignoring what I could see of Wiley's look from the corner of my eyes. Once Henri had the device, he commanded Wiley to direct him before turning for the tunnel entrance.


Anna gave an angry glance to me and Wiley before hopping in front of her brother and forcing him to stop. It seemed to surprise her when he did pause as much as it surprised him that she had stepped in front of him. She looked up at him as her glare softened and whatever words she had thought she would say completely left her. If she was going to scold him or forbid him from going, she didn't bother to try. "Just-- be careful, all right?" Her words came out haltingly as if they were not the words she had originally intended to say at all.

Henri put a hand on the top of her head as she moved out of the way and he continued past her into the tunnels.



Intruder- Conclusion -->

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Most likely to be concluded next week. I think.
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Intruder Pt. 1

"Henri?"

At the sight of him, her eyes became wide, catching the glimmer of light, the corners of her mouth spreading in complete disbelief. She eyed Henri carefully before she slid into his arms in a move that was both awkward and yet the most natural thing in the world.


Henri stayed quiet except for her whispered name on his breath. "Anna..." For once at a total loss for words, he could only respond by tightly holding her to him, nearly crushing her.

"Oh god, Henri!" Henri's little sister seemed to shake in his arms despite how tightly he held her, and then I realized she was crying quietly against him.

Henri's brows, forever drawn down, were still in their usual position, but a subtle change had occurred. He held his younger sister tightly with his eyes shut as if they were the only two people in the room.

Suddenly I was the stranger in the room even though I had known him as an adult for longer than she had. The last time she'd seen him, she had been nothing more than a child, most likely unable to understand what was going on at the time.

Meanwhile, for me, it had been two years since my daring and reckless escapade that had lead to everything that came after. We were a fully formed group by then, working closely with Henri's people when we could or when we needed. But I was the one who worked most often with Henri. Something of a cautious trust had grown between us. I had come to expect him to behave a certain way, and he never seemed to fail to live up to my expectations.

Until that moment, when I caught a glimpse of the true man hidden behind the one he most often put forth.

I found myself staring at a crack in the plaster on the wall in an attempt to give him this moment without the reminder that there was a stranger intruding on this private scene. The small room filled with the soft muffled sound of her sniffing in an effort not to cry.

"Oh god, Henri." Her voice was as soft as her sniffling had been so that I hardly heard her breathe the words out. "They didn't know. I swear they didn't."


Henri tried to shush her gently, but she cut him off, her voice spilling out softly as she pushed back against him to look his directly in the face. "No, Henri, they didn't know. Mom said she never would have if she'd known. But then, after, after-- you know-- they wanted us to keep silent about it. They didn't want her to talk."

I glanced back to see her furiously wipe her eyes with her sleeve in one long yet harsh motion. "They took her. Because she would tell. She wasn't going to keep silent. She thought you were dead and she thought it was her fault."


Henri's eyes caught mine and I could see in them the tired and exasperated Henri that I was familiar with. He didn't ask me to leave, and I didn't move from my spot by the door, held there by her story.

"Dad too. They took him when he refused to let her go. The rest of us were put in one of their schools. If we asked..." She was looking up at him, so I couldn't see her face, but I could almost see the reflection on Henri's. If there was pain on her face, on Henri's it showed as anger and determination. "We had to stop asking. Mostly me. I had to stop asking."

Henri looked at me then, his gaze hardened with anger and frustration, and I simply made a small nod before I stepped out of the room and headed over to Wiley.


Wiley sat in front of his computer working on layouts and plans with a can of fruits near by his computer within easy reach. He turned to me as I stepped into the room with a smile on his face. "How're things going? He starting to act human yet?"

The smile disappeared from his face quickly after a good look at mine. I took a seat near his computer desk as I expelled the air from my lungs in one frustrated sigh, my hand coming up to my eyes to rub away the bad thoughts.

"Wiley, do you ever just hate the world?"


"I live underground and eat out of cans. Would I go through that much trouble if I loved it?"

I wiped at the tear forming in the corner of my eye to head off any other tears with the same thought and smiled at him. "Right. True."

"So things are going well enough to hear her story then." A shadow crossed over Wiley's face as he looked down into his can of fruit. "It can't be pretty all things considered."

I shook my head without feeling it necessary to go into detail.

"Pretty awesome of you to set this up though. I'm sure he'll appreciate it."


"I told you; she basically blackmailed me. And him. Our hands were forced."

"She offered to help."

"She threatened to get involved. That wouldn't have helped us, least of all her considering who her brothers are."


Wiley shrugged before taking another spoonful of his canned fruits, his eyes glancing over to his screen one second before he completely froze in mid chew. Light from his computer screen hit his cheeks and lit up his eyes as he put the can down and began to tap at the computer.

I hopped up from my seat to stand behind him. "What is it? Something's wrong."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Someone's in the inner tunnel system."



Intruder Part 2 -->


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Unfortunately, I didn't get to show her very much here, and I didn't make her a profile because she was a surprise that showed up yesterday when I was writing. I mean, I've always known about her, but I wasn't really expecting to see her and need a sim for her.

I made her by turning Henri into a girl and going from there. He is a really unpretty girl.

Then I edited him, softening features and making them a little more unique until I got her. Front Side

And then tada! Henri has his little sis. Who came in and saved the day. I went from having nothing a day ago to having two updates. :D

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The Meeting

The tunnel was completely silent except for the soft sound of my sneakers against the concrete. In one hand I held onto a small flashlight as my other hand rested on the small communication device clipped to my hip.

Wiley hadn’t wanted me to come, but as I saw it I had no choice. The core of our little organization was Wiley and me, and of the two of us, Wiley was the one who was most important. He knew things that couldn't easily be taught even though he had tried his best to start teaching me. There were still plenty of things I didn't know.

I caught sight of the room from far away. An old light bulb shined dimly, but in the darkness of the tunnels it was a welcome sight. Wiley had said he’d throw some power to the tunnels we were on in case there were any lights working still, so having the light and the device clipped to my hip was almost like having Wiley directly there to support me despite his objections to the entire plan.

I didn’t have to wait long before I heard him. His shoes made loud thuds that echoed loudly in the silence until it was almost unbearable. My heart beat hard in my chest for what I was about to do.

“Sorry Wiley,” I said one moment before I flipped the switch that would turn off the device. I was on my own except for the small light bulb burning dimly beside me.


It had to be because I was meeting him on my own in the lifeless, abandoned tunnel, but as Henri stepped into the small room he appeared larger than I remembered him. There was no surprise on his face at seeing me.

“Cheryl, right?”

He didn’t smile. His gaze seemed to take in new details about me as we stood there in front of each other. Momentarily I wondered if he was thinking that I looked smaller than he remembered me, but a more pressing concern was his knowledge of my name. We hadn’t bothered sharing our names that night. “Yes.”

I saw his gaze fall down to the device on my hip. I’d had my hand resting on it without thinking even though it was still off. His eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of it, possibly weary of it as I had worried he might be. “Communication devices usually work better when they’re on.”

My hand slid down to my side. “I thought I’d give us some time alone first.” The situation was not ideal. I was alone with him, and though I had read his file, it had lacked one key piece of information. “I asked you here because we need your help. And you need ours.”


A dubious look crossed Henri’s face, but he pushed it away as if he were intent to hear me out. “Why would I need your help?”

“You don’t trust any of them, and you can’t always watch them. But we can. With regular people placed in ordinary positions, we could have them report back to us and create a network of people gathering information. They wouldn’t expect it and they wouldn’t know how to combat that.”

Henri scoffed at the idea. “And who would even think of doing anything like that? People don’t care about anyone other than themselves.”

I bit my tongue at his cynical remark while reminding myself that he would know. After all, according to his file, his parents had been the ones to give him away so they wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. “There are people who aren’t happy with the things they know are going on. They would help. Things aren’t perfect here the way they try to make it seem. There is something very wrong, and if we don’t start standing up for ourselves now we will end up losing in the long run.”

Something in Henri shifted. I knew my words weren’t going to be enough to convince him. He did not come across as a man who was easy to impress. Folding his arms in front of him, he looked down at me as the corners of his mouth drew down. “Cheryl, this isn’t the sort of game you should be playing.”


In his eyes I could see the hardened will that had probably helped him start the Revolution that released him over ten years prior. “This isn’t a game for any of us.”

His expression didn’t change. “And your mother?”

I paused at the mention of my mother. It was a simple question, but it was clear what he meant. My mother was my only close relative and my weakness if I went down this path. Not only was I at risk, but she was being put at risk as well from my own actions, and if Henri knew about her, it would be easy for others to learn of her as well. I swallowed carefully, the lump of spit working its way down my throat. “That’s my concern, not yours.”

Henri rolled his eyes with a hefty sigh that shot out from his chest before he leveled his gaze on me, his eyes stern and hard. He was clearly not convinced. “I want to meet the others in your group then.”

My lips parted as my stomach churned. Although incomplete, it was something of a victory. A compromise suggested by the man himself, proof that he was considering it and he was listening to me. I bit my lip as I thought of how to approach the next part. “No.”

That surprised him. Whereas before, it’d almost felt as if he were trying not to look directly at me in order to avoid intimidating me in my small form, now he seemed to lean in with surprise, all of his attention focused on me. “I’m trying to give you a chance and you’re refusing?”


“Yes.” I looked him squarely in the eye refusing to back down as the details of his file sat in the foreground of my thoughts. Henri was no innocent when he was sent away. He’d been considered dangerous even when he was a teen living here on this side of the fence though he was nothing more than a trouble maker when compared to what he was by the time I met him. He stood before me with a power I didn’t know as the leader of a large group of angry and unfriendly criminals that had been used in experiments. “I can risk my own life, but I won’t risk anyone else’s.”

Henri didn’t move his arms from their position crossed in front of his chest. “So then what the hell do you want?”

I let my eyes drift away as I let the words out, the ones I hadn’t wanted to say or even ask, but standing in front of him, even thinking about the night I had spent with him, I feared it was possible. And if it was possible, I wasn’t sure that I did want to work with him. “Supposedly you were convicted of raping a girl. That’s why they sent you away. And I want to know if it’s true.”


“What does that have to do with anything?”

Henri still stood in front of me with arms folded, but when I looked up, his eyes were looking elsewhere. I stared at him, searching his face for the answer that I was afraid to find, but he wasn't giving much away. His eyes met mine and he sighed. "No."

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, and I wasn't sure what I was needing then either. Henri wasn't going to offer any more information unless I asked-- that seemed clear to me. He stood watching me, waiting for me to make the decision on whether I would trust him or not.

I bit at the inside of my cheek. He knew my name and he knew about my mother. No doubt he knew how to find me. In a way it was already too late for the both of us to back out by then. Perhaps that was why he'd been so patient with me.

Unclipping the radio on my waist, I turned it on catching the tail end of Wiley calmly calling my name even as his voice shook. “—eryl? You there? You better turn this thing on soon or I’m going out there.”

“Sorry, I’m here, and I’m fine though meeting us out here is not a bad idea.”


The Intruder Part 1 -->



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The Center of the Room

"You did what?"

Wiley looked at me as if he were choking on one of his chess pieces. "You were only supposed to visually confirm that he was there at the party. That's it."

I hadn't wanted to tell him, but I did for the sake of being completely honest. Wiley was the one person I could trust completely, and I was the one person he was trusting completely. If I lied to him, or even kept silent about Henri, he would not be able to trust me, and that I could not have.



"I hadn't planned it." None of it had been planned. But presented with the opportunity, I took it. My toes curled inside my shoes, pressing against the soft leather under my feet as I thought about the night we spent in the hotel room. A large bed entirely to ourselves, the tangle of sheets we eventually had to kick off, the way we hadn't even bothered speaking. It was not something I did frequently. Usually I or the other party would have obligations or commitments, excuses to get away from one another. But this time, if there were other things he should have done, he didn't say a word. And I kept quiet as well.

And so I stood before Wiley in spare clothes I kept at his hideout-- a large old sweater and a pair of faded knit pants.


"That's all you've got to say for yourself?" Wiley has always been much too polite to curse in front of anyone, but right then I swear that I could hear the mental swears he had to be thinking at me. "Cher, he's dangerous. Just like the rest of them."

My lips pressed together. It was true. The entire party had been filled with people with serious political power. They were mixed in the room with the figureheads the people had elected. My part had only been to play the young and interested political writer. Another figurehead working for a paper that tells the people what they want to hear rather than what they really need to hear.

"I'm not going to send you out again if you do something that reckless again."

I crossed my arms for lack of something better to do with them than sitting as dead weights at my sides. He was a year or two younger than me, but just as protective as if he were the older brother I'd never had. I tried to remember that with what we did and were trying to do, feelings ran high and emotions and thoughts were often conflicted.


I took a deep breath and looked at him. "Wiley, I need you to trust me."

He looked away from me before rubbing his face with one soft meaty hand. "Then you have to trust me. We shouldn't get involved with him."


I could see Wiley’s concern, but he hadn’t seen the man standing at the party next to our leader. Henri’s contempt for them had been clear even as he seemed to try and mask it. Most of the others seemed to subconsciously stay away from him except for the head of our government who stood near him proudly. The two of them standing side by side created the center of the room, but it seemed as if Henri only barely tolerated the man. There was certainly much going on, and I spent most of the night watching them closely.

“I think we should.” Though I had been thinking about it, I hadn’t thought the words I would use to encourage Wiley to side with me. Wiley required care and honesty; I could feel him pulling away with my blurted words. I worked quickly to try to regain ground as I could see the disbelief written across his face. “He doesn’t trust them anymore than you or I do. I get the feeling that he’s trying to do what he needs to for survival. If he doesn’t side with them, you know they will try to destroy him and his people.”


Wiley looked dubious still, but I could see his shoulders slumping as he sighed, releasing the air from his lungs and making him look a bit smaller. He sat down at his desk and began to sift through the paperwork until he found a manila file which he slid out from under a pile of papers. He stood and handed the file to me, his eyes shining with what I could only guess was a stubborn light.

I looked down at the file in my hands, opening it up to look at the printed papers inside it. These weren’t real official documents with seals and heavy paper. They came from Wiley’s printer most likely, so the only assurance I had that they were real was simply my trust in Wiley.


Henri’s name jumped out at once. Henri Smith. This was his file. I glanced back up at Wiley who stared blankly towards his computer. “You’ll want to read it,” he said. “At least look it over. Use the other room. It’s old though. A last transmission sent from the main lab server to here right before the Revolution.”

I nodded and took it with me to Wiley’s spare room. The file was thick. A last transmission meaning they never knew they wouldn’t get the chance to take more notes or send another transmission.

I sat down in one of the old chairs in the extra room with the file balanced on my legs as I folded them under me. It felt wrong then to pry through the file of a man who I had been with so intimately but hadn’t even shared a word. We hadn’t even bothered to tell each other our names. I only knew his name because Wiley had told it to me before sending me out to verify his presence.

Still, I opened the file and set to work.




The Meeting -->

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Not the person you want to hear about after that, but I give you Wiley's profile.
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