C.M. Adams

VERSION 2.0

To my brother, my best friend. Until we meet again on the other side.

ONE

2013…

Officer Amber “Birdie” Farran was running steady in pace, but quite fast in pursuit of a young man suspected of bringing cocaine, among a long list of other things, into her quiet little hometown of Dagsboro. The fact that the kid was running spoke for itself. She’d simply approached him in Glata’s Diner, where she happened upon him drinking a cup of black coffee at the bar. As soon as he’d seen her uniform and the fact that she was obviously approaching his direction, he scurried off as if he was a garden rabbit who’d just been spotted by a house cat.

Artie Finkle. That was the kid’s name. Or at least that’s what the high school boys told Birdie when they approached her with the information. He went by “Ice King” now (though the boys referred to him as ‘Icing’, which apparently was more acceptable for the kid’s personality), and it was deftly obvious that he, himself, was using his product, to have come up with such a ridiculous nick name. Although his given wasn’t much better.

Finkle was born and raised in Dagsboro. He’d moved about a year ago to The Big Apple, and clearly had become influenced somewhere along the line. He was a good kid; used to be, anyway. He’d been gifted from a young age, in art. Beautiful sketches and paintings still decorated some of the halls in the local school. Artie had left Delaware to go to the big city and become famous. Certainly, that hadn’t worked out as well as he’d planned.

Birdie was saddened by his case in particular. It reminded her of everything she’d come to this town to escape from. Amber Farran had, at one time, been an officer with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. She was good at her job. Great, even; one of the best. Something happened, however, five years ago, that changed her life forever…

2008…

“Brian! You need to stop ignoring me, jerk,” Birdie spoke playfully, into her cell phone, wedged between her ear and shoulder as she balanced a paper cup of coffee and juggled with her keys to get into her car. “I know you work like crazy on the weekends, but seriously! It’s been two days. Call me!” She ended the call and stuck the phone into her jacket pocket, allowing her to get her car door open.

Brian was Amber’s younger brother. He’d been the one to give her the nickname, “Birdie”, at a very young age. Their mother always assumed it had been easier for him to say in his toddler years, and the name was sort of picked up by everyone around them. That aside, the two were the best of friends their entire lifetime together, which at this point was a mere twenty-seven years.

Though their career choices were vastly different, Birdie being a DEA Agent, and Brian being a freelance writer, almost every other aspect of their interests, likes and dislikes, were similar, or at least arguable and respected by both parties. In other words, even if one of them wasn’t much into something the other was, if they were doing said thing with the other, it was mutually enjoyable.

Brian loved his sister; looked up to her, yet stayed respectfully and stubbornly away from the aspects of being “wholesome” or “safe”, as he’d call it. In the same respect, Birdie loved her brother; sometimes more than anything else in the world. He drove her mad, at times; did things that made her want to scream in frustration. Things like taking drugs, prescription or not, in order to get his work done. Yet, even with the power of her job title, she let him do as he wanted. A firm “talking to” now and then, trying desperately not to sound like a parent. But trying to use his respect for her, however much there might be, to maybe get him to realize that it scared her for him to do things like that. Especially with the things she saw on a regular basis in her job.

At this point, Brian had been clean for a good while. It was nice to see him back to his normal, non-drug-induced self. They’d even taken the previous weekend off and driven up to visit their parents together. Leslie, their mother, and their father, Brian Sr., were separated. Senior was in a home; had been for years. Visiting him had not been on Brian’s list of things to ever do again. To him, his father was already dead. He’d done his mourning and he didn’t want to do it again.

Senior was essentially dead to the world. His mind was so far lost in the depths of the seas of dementia, that it’d been two years since he was even able to realize someone else was in the room with him. It had been hard enough knowing he didn’t really know who they were. But not even being able to have some sort of conversation, was a different story. So in a way, Brian was right. But Birdie wanted to go and see him for the simple fact that it had been two years, and she felt like a neglectful daughter. She wanted to go alone. But once Brian got wind of this, he insisted on going with her.

Why he seemed so adamant about that, she would never know. He’d said it would make her sad to see him, and he wanted to be there for her, which was understandable. But Birdie was a strong person; never showed when it really hurt. So it was a bit of a lost cause for someone to want to tag along in the event of something that she was always determined never to expose.

He went with her anyway. Senior was as they’d expected, though Birdie had hoped for a moment of recognition. Just one. There was nothing, however. They left that place and got into the car. Brian turned to his sister in all seriousness, “I want you to put me out of my misery if I ever get like that.” Birdie scoffed at the request. Brian had always been terrified to end up like his father. Mortified of the day that his brain would start to deteriorate and he’d no longer be able to write. “I’m serious,” he continued.

“You want me to assist you in killing yourself,” she replied, not so much as a question. “You realize I could lose my job; go to jail…”

“So do it without getting caught. Can’t be that hard. You’re a Federal Agent. You know what they look for.”

“I’m a drug enforcement agent, not a murder investigator!” she looked at him, incredulously.

“Yeah, but you’ve gotta know something about this stuff!” he retorted. She did, of course. But she’d wanted the subject to be dropped. “Either way, I’m sure you can figure out something before then.”

Birdie shook her head, rolling her eyes as she let out a frustrated breath. “You’re an idiot, you know.”

“Just promise you’ll do it,” he sternly voiced.

“Fine,” she replied, looking out the window.

“Say you promise!” he raised his voice.

“Fine! I promise!”

“Look at me and tell me you promise me that you’ll kill me if I get like that.”

Birdie took a couple of breaths, angered at the fact that her brother knew without a doubt that she’d never break a promise; especially not to him. She turned her head and met his eyes. “I promise, I’ll… kill you, if you ever get like that,” she recited.

“Thank you,” he replied in an impatient way as he turned the ignition to start the car.

“You know, you’d probably do a better job of avoiding destroying your brain if you stay off the drugs,” she chided, playfully.

“I know. Shut up,” he put the car into reverse.

Brian had dropped Birdie at her mediocre apartment in Georgetown, and headed back to Arlington where he had a nice town home, much bigger than he’d ever need. The point in having it, he’d said, was to entertain guests when the time would arise. In the three years he’d lived there, two such occasions had ever occurred.

The weekends were Brian’s chance to get a lot of projects finished; meet deadlines, and things of that sort. He wrote for several different magazines, articles that were due in the middle of each month. He hated deadlines and he hated not having the time he really wanted to work on his book. Alas, writing doesn’t pay until it’s written. Taking on these smaller projects paid for his over-sized apartment, kept gas in his car, and allowed him to be comfortable enough to buy pretty much whatever he wanted. But because of these habits, he really had nothing to show for himself. There was no savings; no plan. The plan was only going to be a plan after he finished his book and became the rich man he knew he’d be.

It had been two days since she’d heard from him, now. She’d had little time to focus on that fact as she’d been not only busy at work, but toughing through the pain of unexplainable illness that had suddenly and inexplicably washed over her a couple of nights ago. The symptoms were so strange and unrelated to anything she could think of, she passed it off as the stress she’d endured the previous weekend while visiting her parents.

Today, she’d left work after a dizzy spell, refusing a lift home from her partner, and grabbed a coffee at the little cafe down the street from Brian’s place. Her plan was to show up unannounced, bringing the coffee as a preemptive apology. Although, his not returning her calls should’ve given her the right to barge in, anyway.

It was a short drive from the cafe to Brian’s place. Birdie pulled into the steep driveway, rolling her eyes when she saw the back end of Brian’s damaged Z28 at the end of it; a fit of road rage never really could be topped from her little brother’s. She was just happy he had no desire to own a gun.

Birdie parked and got out of the car, making her way to the door as she dialed his number again. And again there was no answer. She knocked on the door and rang the bell a few times in attempt to wake him from what must have been a medicated slumber. She tried to peek through the windows, but the blinds were all drawn closed.

Rolling her eyes once more, Birdie set the coffee down on the porch, and pulled out her lock-pick kit. Crouched down at the doorknob, she had the lock picked in less than a minute. Being a Federal Agent had its perks now and then. She grabbed the coffee, tucked the set back in her jacket pocket, and let herself into the house.

“Brian?” she called out, then took a breath in and gagged. Letting out a disgusted cough, she made her way to his office. Moldy mugs of discarded coffee surrounded dozens of empty packs of cigarettes and general disarray. The smell was awful, and she wondered how Brian could tolerate it. But he wasn’t in there, and his computer wasn’t, either. Which could only mean that he was working downstairs again.

Birdie closed the door of the office hoping the smell hadn’t permeated the entire house, before heading downstairs. “Brian, come on,” she called out. “I brought you some coffee, but I’m highly considering not giving it to you, since you’ve been blatantly ignoring me all weekend.” Almost down the flight of stairs without a reply, she let out a small laugh. “You really need to lay off the sleep meds. Just because it’s a prescription, doesn’t mean it’s okay to take half the bottle at a time,” she stepped off of the staircase and turned the corner into the kitchen. “This place is a disaster, as usual,” she commented, setting the coffee on the counter before turning to get the milk from the fridge.

“Did you have a party last night?” she asked, bypassing a pile of empty pizza boxes to get to the milk, before turning to pour some into the coffee. “Seriously, wake the hell up, Bry,” she called out as she brought the coffee into the living room.

She stopped there where the tiled floor met the carpet of the living room area, frozen in place at the sight of the still form on the couch. Beside him, a dinner plate with lines of cocaine. Surrounding it, were eight-balls of even more of it, tipped over prescription bottles, candy wrappers and cigarette ash and empty cans.

His computer was beside him on the couch, as if he’d finished working for the night and simply turned over to go to sleep. Only, he was holding a pipe in one hand and a lighter in the other. And he was perfectly still. There was no rise and fall of his chest. There was no color to his face.

As an Agent, Birdie knew exactly what she was seeing. She’d seen it many times before. Yet nothing in the world, no crime scene or tragedy she’d ever witnessed, had ever made her chest hurt the way it did right then.

With shaking hands, she set the coffee cup down on the table, reached into her pocket for her phone, and called her partner. She wasn’t entirely sure what he said in response on the other line, but she was fairly certain it was something about coming right over. She hung up without acknowledging whatever it was.

Birdie’s gaze never left the form of her brother. She didn’t know what to do. Really, there was nothing; there was no answer. She felt the burning, insistent stinging in her eyes that was followed by tears that she couldn’t stop if she’d had the desire to try. “What have you done?” she asked him in barely a whisper. It wasn’t, perhaps, to his body, but wherever his spirit might be. She said again, louder, screaming in frustration, “What have you done!”

* * *

She was sitting on the porch when Agent Ashton Sinese, her partner, showed up with an ambulance and officers in tow. Her elbows were perched on her knees. Her gaze fixed on the gravel of the driveway, she only recognized their presence through her peripheral vision.

Ashton wasn’t sure what to expect when he’d show at the property. Birdie was always strong; emotionally and stomached. He’d never really seen her in pain. But he knew how close she was to her younger brother. This would be devastating, surely, for her.

He parked his car beside hers, and spotted her on the porch. What he could see of her face seemed to be forced stoicism, though he could tell that she’d been crying at some point before they’d arrived. Her expression now, however, was barely readable. He approached cautiously after directing the officers inside, and sat down beside Birdie.

“Farran… uh, Birdie,” he started.

She let out a small huff of what might’ve been laughter, “You calling me by my first name… sounds funny.”

“Shut up, Farran. I’m tryin’ to be supportive, here,” he playfully replied. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, and she nodded. “Hey,” he said, more seriously, and cupped her chin, making her look at him. “I’m so sorry,” he told her as she met his eyes; his own, moist with sudden tears that he must have acquired through some strange connection of touching her and feeling the pain she’d been hiding so well.

Birdie’s brows pinched at the sincerity in his voice, and she nodded in thanks and then found herself wrapped in an embrace. A little of her resolve broke and she found herself wondering, as a distraction, when the last time was that she’d gotten a hug from her partner.

Ashton’s heart broke a little when he felt Birdie’s body shake with a few silent sobs. But just as soon as it had started, it was over and she was pulling away; stoic face back in place. “There’s so much I need to do right now,” she told him, looking away toward her car. “I need to get everything in order; figure out if he had any kind of insurance. I… I need to tell my mother…”

“Farran, hey, listen,” he gripped her shoulder, and she looked over at him again. “I’ll take care of things here, okay?”

“Brian had this place month-to-month. The landlord is a real tool, and he’ll want everyth—”

“Hey, I said I’ll take care of it,” Ashton repeated. “I’m good for something other than DEA work, ya know. I’ll come back tomorrow; make sure everything is packed up real careful. I know you don’t have room at your place, but there’s a storage building maybe three blocks from here. We’ll get everything put in there and you can go through it when you’re ready. Alright?”

Birdie looked at him at a bit of a loss for words. Part of her wanted to do this herself. The other part never wanted to set foot in that place again. “Okay… you’re sure?”

“’Course, Farran. Least I can do,” he laid a gentle hand on the side of her head, brushing her hair back comfortingly, though he knew some part of her was cringing on the inside from it. “You need a lift home?” he asked.

She shook her head and pushed herself up to stand. He followed suit, a bit nervous about letting her drive, even though she seemed to be fairly okay. “Thanks, Ash,” she said.

He grinned, “You’re right. It does sound funny, us usin’ our first names.”

Birdie gave a small smile back, placing a hand on his arm. “Thanks for this, really. I mean it.”

“You call me if you need anything. Anything, Farran.”

“I will.” She turned and headed to her car.

Two weeks passed, before Birdie was up to going to that storage unit. By that time, her mother had hired people to bring it up to her house in Manchester, and Birdie regretted ever telling her about it in the first place. She was still taking time off from work, having a difficult time accepting her usefulness in the field after what happened. So, driving up to her hometown wasn’t interfering with anything but her ability to not leave her apartment. She remained, however, annoyed.

Four hours worth of driving time there and back, left her with about an hour of time to go through what was being stored in the basement. Or at least that’s where she’d assumed it would be. Upon letting herself into the house with her key copy (she’d intentionally showed up at a time she knew she’d have the house to herself), she found the basement bare of anything but a few pieces of furniture from the townhouse. Instead, she found Brian’s belongings stored in his old bedroom; some in Kaitlyn, their adopted sister’s, old room. That little detail probably angered Birdie the most out of all of this current situation.

Kaitlyn was brought into their home when Birdie was only three. Brian wasn’t even part of the picture at that point, but their parents thought that after the complications of bringing Birdie into the world, they wouldn’t be able to conceive again. Of course, as soon as Kate was taking her first steps, Leslie became pregnant. Well, this was the story the children were all told as they were growing up, anyway. Birdie had no real recollection of her mother ever being pregnant. Then again, she was four by the time Brian was born.

What she did remember, was holding baby Brian for the first time. Where she was, she couldn’t now recall. But she remembered that baby-smile, which was likely just gas. But a smile nonetheless. She loved him from that very moment; no contest.

Birdie dug through the boxes of Brian’s things, finding most of his clothes gone. Undoubtedly, Kate had taken them. Birdie simply rolled her eyes and continued. Most of this stuff didn’t need to be kept, but it wasn’t her problem. She just wanted to make sure that the important things, things that her mother knew nothing about how to take care of, would be secure. One of those things was Brian’s computer.

Thankfully, Agent Sinese put the laptop in its case before packing it away. The case could likely be dropped off of a three-story building and still be okay. Brian had spent a pretty penny on it. Birdie, now, was glad that he had.

Picking up a few trinkets and the case, Birdie headed back to her car. Proud of her success at avoiding family, she didn’t press her luck. She headed home. It was hard not to recall the last time she’d pulled away from this house and taken this route back to Georgetown, though she’d not been the one driving at the time. It’s funny how you can recall simple, seemingly insignificant conversations that didn’t seem very important at the time, weeks later… and likely never forget them ever again.

Thanks to traffic, it took a little over two hours to get home. Birdie immediately started a pot of coffee and headed into the living room where she’d set the laptop case on her coffee table. Flipping open the latches, she opened it and pulled out the computer, opening it as well, and pressed the power button before going back out into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee, as it booted up.

As she put her three spoonfuls of sugar and three spoonfuls of cream into the cup, broken music started playing from the living room. It sounded a bit like a scratched up CD playing some pop song she was sure she’d heard somewhere before; maybe close to a decade ago. She finished stirring her coffee, and made her way back out to the couch. As she sat, she noticed the laptop still hadn’t booted all the way; it was a black screen with a loading symbol. The song still played brokenly, and she wondered what Brian had been doing on this machine before he’d shut it down.

Birdie squinted, having a strange thought as she placed her cup down on the coffee table beside the computer. She lowered the top of the laptop a bit, noticing that this didn’t seem like the laptop Brian had been working on when they were up in Manchester for that weekend. Upon further inspection, she noticed some broken pieces on the sides. This was his older laptop…

Birdie had been through that entire lot of stuff at her parents’ house. There was no way she missed a computer. And there was no way Agent Sinese would have opted to put the old-looking computer in this case, as opposed to the nice new one that… well she’d assumed, anyway, was beside Brian’s body.

Still, she decided to call and confirm. She paced the living room, with her phone pressed impatiently to her ear, waiting for Ashton to pick up.

“Agent Sinese,” came the familiar voice on the other end.

“Hey. It’s me,” Birdie replied.

“Farran! Good to hear from you.”

“Yeah, you too. Hey, listen,” she got right to the point, “When you packed up Brian’s computer, do you remember finding any others lying around?”

“You mean laptops? Nah, just the one. The one that was… on the couch,” he hesitated. “I put it in that special case, like you said. Did it myself and made sure it was safe in that unit. Why? Was there more than one?”

“No… well, yes. There was. The one you packed is his old one. It… it won’t even boot up. It doesn’t make sense to think he was using this one. But that aside, where in the hell is his pride-and-joy laptop?”

“I swear to you, I didn’t see any other computer there, Farran. I wouldn’t lie to you; especially not about this.”

“I know that… God, I know that, Sinese. That’s not what I meant for it to sound like. It’s just… it’s really weird, you know? It’s creeping me out a bit. There were family photos and… his life’s work… everything, on that machine. Now it’s just disappeared? What if… what if he wasn’t alone?” she thought out loud. “What if all of those drugs… weren’t just for him? What if someone took his computer?”

“Now calm down, Farran. We don’t know that. He could’ve left it somewhere.”

“No way. Brian wouldn’t let that thing out of his sight. It was like his baby. He had a special spot in the back seat for it, and everything. You saw that case. He didn’t just leave that computer somewhere.”

“Okay, okay, I believe ya,” he said in a calming voice. “We don’t have a scene to process, though. We’ll have to do a search based solely on the computer possibly having been stolen.”

“Right.”

“Did he have Lo-Jack, or something like that?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to look into it. I’ll have to go through his records and see if he’s got the documentation stored. I’ll need the serial number… we can put it through the database; notify pawn shops. Actually, maybe we should be checking the pawn shops already?”

“I’ll make those calls, Birdie. Just text me the info; every detail you can remember about what it looked like, make and model, and the numbers you get from the company. I can take it from there.”

“What, you think I can’t handle calling shop owners?” she raised a brow.

“You know that’s not it, Farran,” he countered. “You’re emotionally involved; too close to this. I’m covering your ass, here. Both of ours, actually. Let me take care of the grunt work so you’re not risking getting kicked off the case that you’re not even officially on, anyway.”

Birdie wiped a hand down over her mouth and dropped her hand to her collarbone, where she absentmindedly scratched at it; something she did when she was stressed or nervous. “Okay,” she conceded. “But you let me know what’s going on, Sinese. Even if it’s nothing. Don’t leave me sitting here wondering.”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, ya do. Now go… drink some tea or do some yoga. Whatever it is you do when you need to relax.”

She let out a small laugh, “Neither of those things.”

“Oh right, I forgot. You don’t relax,” he said, lightheartedly.

“That’s not true,” she defended.

“I’ve never witnessed you relaxing. Pictures, or it didn’t happen.”

“I like how you assume you’d be so lucky as to witness me relaxing,” she retorted.

“Ha!” he laughed. “Touché, Farran. Touché.”

“Get back to work, Sin,” she playfully bantered.

Ashton’s heart lifted a bit at the use of her nickname for him, which he hadn’t heard since before Brian’s death. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m still the Senior Agent in this partnership. Don’t make me pull rank.”

“I think you just did. Fine, fine… Back to work. I’ll call you later.”

Birdie smiled and ended the call.

Weeks went by with no result on where the computer was. Even with Birdie’s relentless personal investigating, she found nothing. The frustration, renewing the intensity of the loss of her brother, threw her into a state of self-loathing. Even being back at work wasn’t helping.

“Hey, Farran,” Ashton approached Birdie’s desk, and sat on the edge of it beside her chair. She looked up at him from her empty stare at the computer screen perched on her desk. “You okay?”

She shrugged. “Guess so.”

“You don’t seem okay.”

“Oh really?” she replied, in an indignant tone. “I’ve been doing my best to be okay for months now. You telling me I failed at that, too?”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” he furrowed his brows.

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know,” she retorted, turning her gaze back to the screen.

Sinese glanced around the room, noticing other agents glancing at them eavesdropping on the conversation that had become louder than he’d meant for it to be. He glanced back down at Birdie and grabbed her arm as he pushed up from the desk.

“Hey!” she tried to pull out of his grasp.

“Come on,” he sternly replied. “We’re gonna talk. Preferably, someplace where it’s between us, and not the whole building.” She struggled the entire trip up the hallway, trying her hardest not to make a scene in front of the agents they passed by.

Once he got her into an empty office and closed the door behind him, Birdie ripped her arm out of his grasp. “What the hell is wrong with you, Sinese?” she growled.

“I could ask you that question,” he retorted, standing his ground in front of the door.

“There’s nothing wrong with me! You just dragged me down here, in front of everyone!”

“Listen to yourself!” he stepped close to her face, intimidating her with his glare. She couldn’t even explain the feeling that came over her that caused her to clam up. “There’s clearly somethin’ going on with you. I know you don’t like to talk about stuff, but now it’s affecting your job. You need to start talkin’, and I mean now.”

Her eyes darted back and forth between his as she absorbed the seriousness in his tone; a seriousness he usually reserved for the most intense of interrogations with criminals. “I can’t,” is the first thing that escaped her lips.

“You can’t what?” his lowered his tone a bit.

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do the job,” she confessed, her eyes shifting somewhere beside him before meeting his again.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” he shook his head, confused by her words, but his face softened.

“How can I?” she continued. “How can anyone expect me to enforce a law against something that I couldn’t even save my own baby brother from?”

“Farran—”

“I’m serious, Sin. It’s a joke for me to stay here.”

“No one thinks that,” he laid a hand on her arm, but she shook it off out of frustration.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” she countered. “It’s not about them. It’s about me, and I know I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to.” Birdie looked him in the eye as if awaiting some kind of approval or blessing.

Ashton’s brows furrowed, almost meeting in the middle. His face was a mix of emotions that perhaps even he couldn’t pinpoint. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, not really knowing how to respond for a while. “Maybe you could transfer to a different department if you really feel that way.”

Birdie’s lips curled up a bit at the corners of her mouth, and she looked at him with slightly sad eyes. “I need to get out of here,” she shook her head. “I need to leave this place; this city. Staying here… it’s done nothing but remind me.”

Ashton looked hurt. “Is this for real?”

After looking at him for a long moment, Birdie nodded…

2013…

“Artie, stop!” Birdie shouted as she rounded the corner of the warehouse, gaining ground on him. Her voice was commanding; feminine yet not high-pitched at all. And from the chase, it was slightly gruff. It was she who had to stop, as her eyes focused on Artie standing maybe a few yards away aiming a pistol at her. She put her hands up, showing him that he wasn’t in any danger, and also trying to give him some sense of calm. “Artie, listen to me,” she said, catching her breath. “You don’t have to do this.” Something wet hit her hand, and she realized it had started to rain. Sometime between the beginning of the chase, the sky had begun to gray with clouds.

“Shut up!” he shouted as his eye and jaw twitched. “I’m not gonna be locked up, you hear me? This ain’t even the city! No way I’m being taken in by you!”

“Just listen, okay?” her gaze shifted back and forth between his eyes and the barrel of the gun. “No one was after you, until you ran.”

“Liar!” his hands shook around the gun and he compensated by tightening his grip.

“I’m not lying. Just put down the gun so we can talk, Artie.”

“I don’t wanna talk. I want you to go away and let me live my life!” he spat as he shouted.

“The kind of life you’re living isn’t allowed. Not here. Please, just put down the g—” but Birdie’s sentence was cut off by the sudden sound of gunfire, and a burning, white-hot pain in her chest. Her eyes widened, keeping fixed on Artie’s, who looked shocked standing there with his mouth hanging open.

“Oh god…” Artie whimpered, eyes filling with tears at what he’d just done. “I… I’m sorry. I’m…” his eyes were fixed somewhere on her chest, and Birdie looked down at herself. There was blood now pouring from the small hole beside the name tag on her jacket.

Suddenly lightheaded, she dropped to her knees. Her head picked back up to look at Artie, who held that gaze for just a moment before he took off running again. She watched him for a few moments, knowing she couldn’t catch him and didn’t have time to pull out her own weapon. It was getting harder to breathe, and she laid back on the concrete sidewalk, placing a hand over the wound. The rain quickly picked up, spotting her uniform.

It occurred to her to fish her cell phone out of her pocket and call for back-up. Though in reality, the only thing she needed right now was an ambulance. All she told the dispatch, however, was that the suspect was running North on Pier Drive, and that he was armed. She didn’t end the call but let the phone, covered in her own blood, drop down beside her in what was now a pool of satiny red.

She looked up at the sky, but didn’t see it. She only felt, and thought to herself, “So this is what it feels like to be dying.” She thought of her brother; about how he was in this position on his back when he stopped breathing, as well. And as her eyes grew heavy and the world around her grew fuzzy, she thought, “This isn’t so bad…”

TWO

The sky was suddenly dark and blurry. But it was unnatural. It was more of a deep red-burgundy color. Birdie had never seen anything of the sort.

The ground beneath her seemed softer; the air, stiffer. Everything was out of focus, and there was a strange, yet not altogether unappealing smell attacking her senses. She blinked a few times before remembering, “Oh yeah. I’m dead.”

If she’d been saved, she thought, she’d have awoken to white walls and the smell of antiseptic. Of course, who knew that Heaven or Hell, wherever she had ended up, would smell a bit like jasmine and honey?

“Are you finally waking up?” a feminine voice sounded from somewhere beside her.

Birdie squinted and turned her head toward the voice, blinking a few more times until the face came into focus. The woman looked young; perhaps a few years younger than Birdie. She had the most golden-blonde hair she’d ever seen, which seemed surreal against her dark, glowing skin. Though it could be said that Birdie’s eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the atmosphere of… wherever she was.

“Are you… an angel?” Birdie asked, her voice a bit raspy and dry.

The woman began to laugh. The laugh itself was a bit absurd, and quite contradictory to the beautiful features of the woman who possessed it. “That never stops being funny!” she said.

“Please,” a male voice sounded before he walked into view, meeting Birdie’s eyes. “Don’t encourage that awful sound,” he raised his brows and gave a small smile. The man looked more like he was in his forties. He was tall and lanky with very light skin, as if he didn’t frequent the outdoors much. His eyes were an unreal shade of blue.

“You ain’t in Heaven, doll-face,” the woman told her.

“So I’m in Hell… Shouldn’t it be, I don’t know, hotter?”

“You’re not dead, sweetheart,” the man told her. “Well you were, technically, for a while. But now you’re not,” he stated, with a matter-of-fact tone. “My name is Emmett. The angel,” he made quotations with his fingers, “To my left, is Teresa.”

“Call me Reesy,” she elaborated.

“I’m Birdie,” she introduced hesitantly, as she propped up on her elbow to take the bottle of water Emmett was handing to her.

“We know, honey,” Emmett replied. “Amber ‘Birdie’ Farran. Born October 31, nineteen and seventy-nine. Died March 12, two-thousand and thirteen. Reborn March 14, of the same year,” he smiled and turned to walk toward the counter, his hands floating about in the air beside his shoulders as he did so. Birdie felt the corner of her mouth turn up fondly, as she looked after him.

“Oh, don’t waste your time,” Reesy shook her head playfully, as she wrapped what looked like a blood-pressure cuff of some sort around Birdie’s arm. “He bats for his own team,” she winked.

“As if it wasn’t obvious,” Emmett said over his shoulder, then turned his head to meet Birdie’s eyes, momentarily. “But thanks for the flattery.”

“I wasn’t…” Birdie let out a small laugh at the thought that they’d assumed she’d been checking him out. “This… this is insane,” she pushed herself up to sit, swinging her legs over the side of the table. “Where am I?” A sudden wave of dizziness washed over her, and she felt the world begin to tilt.

“Whoa there, princess,” Reesy stood and grabbed onto Birdie’s shoulders to steady her.

“Not a princess,” Birdie replied, a bit out of breath. “What’s wrong with me?” she tried to steady herself so that she could shake her off.

“You died, genius,” Reesy replied. “You think it’s easy to come back to life and start running a marathon?” Birdie looked at her, incredulously. “Well, it ain’t,” she answered for her.

“Not the first time, anyway,” Emmett added as he came back to the table with a syringe in his hand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Birdie inched away from him at the sight of the needle. “What is that? What is this?” she became anxious. “What are you people? Mad scientists or something? Am I some kind of freaky science project?”

“Sweety,” Emmett tilted his head to the side, “Do I look mad?”

“Madness comes in all shapes and sizes,” Birdie retorted nervously, but not without lack of wit.

“But does it ever look this fabulous?” he turned a bit to the side, waving a hand down the length of his ensemble. Birdie noted the tailor-fitted pants and shirt beneath the white lab coat.

“We can all see that you’re quite beautiful, Em,” Reesy rolled her eyes a bit. “Can we get back to explaining what’s going on, for the frightened little bunny rabbit?”

“I’m not frightened,” Birdie defended. “And I’m certainly not a little bunny.”

“Honestly, Reesy,” Emmett glanced over, “She’s already got an animal nickname.”

“Can we please just get to where the hell it is that I am?” Birdie sternly insisted.

Emmett and Reesy looked at her, brows raised and silent for a moment, before Emmett opened his mouth to reply, “First of all, this,” he indicated to the syringe, “Is a vitamin cocktail. You haven’t eaten, and you’re body went through a lot of trouble to repair itself. You need these until you’re completely up and running.” He injected her in the arm right below her shoulder, and she only flinched because of its suddenness. But part of her questioned herself for trusting their words. “As for where you are, honey, you may not be in Kansas, anymore—”

“Delaware,” Reesy corrected.

“I’m aware. It’s a figure of speech, Reesy. I swear to God, you have zero film-history knowledge.” Emmett turned his attention back to Birdie. “As I was saying, you may not be in Kansas. But you’re certainly not in the wonderful land of Oz, either.”

“What he’s trying to tell you,” Reesy took over, “Is that you’re not in some different dimension or something. You didn’t cross over. You’re still on Earth.”

“Well, technically under it,” Emmett elaborated. “This is Pritchard’s Island. But where you are specifically at the moment, is a very top secret underground debriefing facility.”

“Debriefing for what?” Birdie asked.

Emmett and Reesy shared a glance, and Reesy looked back at Birdie with a slightly raised brow, “So you’re not… completely freaked that you’re in an underground facility, a few states south of where you died?”

“You know so much about me,” Birdie countered. “You should know that I’m not really surprised by much of anything. And you should also know that I start to get aggravated when I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on,” the impatience was starting to show through.

“Okay,” Reesy sighed. “But we need to start from the beginning, or it won’t make much sense.”

“None of it does, so far,” Birdie interjected with a hint of aggravation. “So please, go on,” she narrowed her eyes.

“You’re part of a group of second-generation subjects, labeled The Proprietors.”

It was Birdie’s turn to raise an inquisitive brow, “Like, owners of property?”

“In a way,” Reesy replied.

“So… what, I die and inherit some real estate?”

Emmett and Reesy let out a small laugh. “You don’t really inherit anything. It’s already a part of you,” she explained.

“What’s already a part of me?”

“Your gift,” Reesy told her.

“What gift? I mean seriously, do I need to ask the right questions to get a straight answer around here?” she spat, incredulously.

“I wish the gift came equipped with some manners,” Emmett said slightly under his breath, as he turned back toward the counter.

Reesy let out a sigh as she shook her head and brushed off his comment, turning back to Birdie, “Well, it’s obvious you have the ability to come back to life.”

“So, what… I’m a vampire? I’m immortal?”

“Not immortal, honey,” Emmett chimed in. “Immortals can’t die. You died… and then you came back.”

“Then, I’m a zombie?”

“You don’t crave the taste of human flesh, do you?” Reesy asked, sarcastically. “If you do, let me know now, ’cause I’m outta here.” Emmett let out a giggle.

“This isn’t funny,” Birdie scoffed.

“It’s a little funny,” Reesy countered.

“No, you’re not a zombie,” Emmett told her, coming back to the table. “You’re not a werewolf and you don’t sparkle in the sunlight. You’re a Proprietor. It’s not something you’ve heard of in a book, or saw on the big screen, because it’s not fiction; it’s real. There’s not a whole lot of you, but you’re not alone.”

“Wait,” Birdie shook her head, as if to clear it. “You’re telling me there are more people like me?”

“Well, we did say ‘group’. Yes,” Emmett explained. “There are something like four-hundred of us reported in the United States.”

“Us? You mean, you…?”

“Yeah, honey,” he replied, “We’re Proprietors, too.”

“First generation,” Reesy supplied.

“Not many of us left, sadly enough,” Emmett added.

“I don’t understand,” Birdie squinted. “I thought we couldn’t die- I mean, I thought we came back to life.”

“We can, normally,” Reesy told her. “Come back, that is. But we’ll discuss that later. Right now, I just need for you to trust us.”

“Trust you for what?”

“To help you to recover, for now. Then we’ll show you your new home.”

“And then,” Emmett interjected, “We’ll introduce you to someone whose job it is to explain what’s going on. Okay?”

Birdie’s eyes shifted around in front of her before she gave a small nod. “Guess I really don’t have that much of a choice, do I?” she thought.

* * *

“This is the living-quarters area,” Reesy told Birdie as she slowly led her down the corridor. Birdie’s strength was still barely present, but she was able to walk at a fairly slow pace without too much trouble.

The hall was cramped, both in height and width for walking. Birdie surveyed the metal walls surrounding them as they walked. “This is like a submarine,” she let out a light laugh.

“Actually, that’s exactly what it is,” Reesy told her. “A recycled, out of commission military submarine.”

“How were you able to obtain this? Wouldn’t it be difficult, even impossible for you to get this without them noticing and trying to hunt you down?”

“They gave it to us,” Reesy glanced at her. Birdie looked at her with a raised brow. “Who do you think is responsible for this whole thing, in the first place?” she asked, looking back up the hall again. Birdie let that mull over in her mind, remaining silent. “Here’s your room,” Reesy said, grabbing onto the steel handle and pulling it. The door opened with a clinking sound, squeaking as it turned on its hinges.

Birdie looked inside, noting how tiny the space was. Only room for the cot on one wall, a small table with drawers, beside it, garnished with a simple lamp, and on the far wall (which consequently wasn’t very far from the cot), a small chest of drawers she assumed was for clothing.

“This is, um… cozy,” Birdie said, narrowing her eyes as she entered. “Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.” Reesy noted that the statement almost sounded sarcastic.

“Yeah,” Reesy let out a small laugh. “Luckily, we haven’t had that problem come up, so far.”

Birdie turned around to face her, “Am I meant to stay here, now?” she asked, a bit confused. “I mean, underground in this thing… forever? Is this what my life is going to be?”

“No, honey,” Reesy shook her head, with an apologetic look on her face. “This is your rehabilitation. This is where you get your strength back, and learn what you need to do in order to go and live your new life. Think of it like witness protection; a new identity and a new home. But this is the police station where you get your orders.”

“Yeah. I get it. I was a cop, remember?” he smiled a bit.

“Still are,” Reesy tilted her head. “Gotta have something to do when you’re back up top, right?”

“Right,” Birdie seemed a bit confused. But she was tired, and it had been a long day, and in all honesty she didn’t really want to get into another discussion. “Um,” she shook her head as if to clear it, “Do you… go up there when you’re done working down here for the day?”

“Yeah,” she replied, looking away for a moment before meeting her eyes again.

“How many of us are there? I mean, up there?”

“On Pritchard’s Island, there are two hundred and eighty-seven of us. Well, eighty-eight, once you’re top-side,” she gave a small smile.

“That many?” she raised her brows.

“It’ll make more sense once you get your briefing tomorrow.”

“Do you have a family?” she asked quickly, though it seemed Reesy was about to turn and leave. “I mean, I know how it works in witness protection. You don’t get to see your friends and family…”

“More than that,” Reesy sighed, resigning to having to explain, though she didn’t want to be the one to do it. She crossed the small space from threshold to dresser, and hopped up to sit on its top. Birdie instinctively took a seat on the cot across from her. “Your friends and family,” she started, “They think you’re dead. To them, you died on that street; shot by a punk kid named Artie Finkle, whom, by the way, was apprehended.” She stalled for a moment, gauging Birdie’s reaction. “They attended your funeral, Birdie,” she continued, “And they’re moving on. Not only can you not see them, but you can never see them again. You can never contact them; not even subtly. You can’t leave Pritchard’s Island. Not unless you have the highest authority’s permission and have someone to accompany you. It’s not safe for you. It’s not safe for any of us if someone were to find out about us; about this place. Do you understand?”

Though her eyes darted around somewhere in the air between them, Birdie nodded. “Yeah,” came out as almost a whisper. And then she straightened and looked Reesy in the eye. “Yes, I understand,” she said, with conviction.

Reesy looked skeptically at the woman in front of her who seemed to be putting on a brave front. “You okay?” Birdie nodded and gave a small smile. Reesy hopped down from the dresser, “Your journals are in the bed-side table drawer. It’s all we could find that you might have wanted to bring with you. Nothing else from your old life could come.”

“My journals?” Birdie cocked her head to the side. “How?”

“You’d be amazed how easy it is to get to someone’s personal belongings when a family is mourning.”

“There aren’t many left to get past,” Birdie interjected.

“There are some clothes in the dresser; stuff to sleep in and a few things for during the day,” Reesy was quick to change the subject. “They’re nothing near fancy, but there’s really no point down here. Once you’re top-side, that’s another story. Jodie and I will take you shopping,” she smiled and headed for the door.

“Jodie?”

Reesy turned as she stepped over the threshold into the hall, and looked back at her. “My wife,” she smiled. “You’ll like her.”

“Your wife?” Birdie considered, for a moment, the only two people she’d met since her waking. “Does rebirth turn you gay?”

Reesy laughed, “Oh god. If you weren’t so adorable, I’d punch you for that.”

“I’m sorry…” she shook her head, embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” she smiled, then raised her brows. “Do you wanna kiss me?”

“What? No!” Birdie looked at her, incredulously.

Reesy shrugged, “Guess you’re not gay, then.”

“I- I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“I was gay before I came here,” she told her. “So was Jodie and Emmett.”

“That was such a stupid thing for me to ask. Please… can you pretend I never said it?”

“Said what?” she smirked.

Birdie let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks, Reesy.”

“Goodnight, sweetie,” she said, pulling the door closed.

Birdie listened to Reesy’s footsteps as they led away from the door, until she couldn’t hear them anymore. She looked around the small space that was her room for however long she had to stay underground. Small spaces usually made her anxious. But she’d been holed up in smaller places on stake-outs when she worked with the DEA. There was a way out, and she wasn’t alone down there. She told herself that everything was fine. As fine as it could be, anyway. The craziness of the day helped to distract her, anyway. She stood and made her way to the dresser.

Reesy hadn’t been exaggerating when she said the clothes were nothing fancy. A robin’s egg shade of blue seemed to be the only color for everything in the drawer; even the day clothes. Ironically enough, she just then noticed that the gown she was already wearing was the very same color.

Birdie pulled out a set of night clothes. The inexpensive cotton didn’t give her much hope in them being comfortable. But the tank top and long pants fit as though they were made just for her. After laying her discarded gown on top of the dresser, she made her way back to the cot and opened the side-table drawer.

There sat her two journals. She hadn’t touched either of them in years. No one really knew about her journals. She’d had the first one since high school. She so rarely wrote in them. Only when something really big happened, whether good or bad, would she think to open it up and write. She was probably in her mid-twenties when she’d run out of room and had to buy another. Her last entry was when she’d made the decision to move to Dagsboro. Since then, they’d sat in a box in her closet, where keepsakes that didn’t need to be out could be kept.

She pulled out the most recent journal and got as comfortable as she could on the cot, adjusting the pillow against the wall so that she could lean back on it. Her silver pen was where she’d left it in the middle of the book on the page she’d made her last entry. She opened to the page and grabbed the pen, preparing to make a new entry.

March 14, 2013

Two days ago, I died. A boy was afraid and shot me in the chest. Today, I was reborn. Either that, or this is some strange dream and I’m in a hospital bed stuck in a comfortable coma. In which case, this entry won’t even be in my journal, so there’s no reason to apologize for it.

Shifting slightly on the cot, something fell out of the journal and into her lap. She picked up the white square of paper she knew was the back of a photo, and flipped it over. It didn’t take but a moment to realize where in the journal the picture had fallen from. It was of her and Brian, taken probably a decade ago at a family reunion. This was before drugs were even a part of his vocabulary. He looked good.

Birdie smiled sadly, absentmindedly running a finger beside the image of his face. She still missed him every day. Looking at that picture made it all come back to her in a rush; the memories of when he’d still been alive, and the ones from that day in his apartment… finding him.

Quickly, she stuck the photo back into the journal and closed it up, swiping a tear from her eye before it had a chance to fall. She shoved the book back into the drawer and sank down into the bed on her side, willing herself to give in to the exhaustion.

* * *

March 25, 2013

This marks the end of day ten in what I’ve come to call the dungeon of Pritchard’s Island. I’ve endured plenty of boot-camps in my time. But I suppose rehabilitating from death should probably qualify as the toughest.

The gaping wound that used to adorn my chest, is now just a scar. It’s only been less than two weeks since I was shot, but it’s true. Emmett says, soon I won’t be able to see it at all. It’s kind of amazing, actually. A touch frightening at the same time. Apparently death is also the fountain of youth for Proprietors.

I learned that Proprietors were, in my own words, a mistake. Some crack scientists hired by the government in the late 1700’s were instructed to create a serum to essentially turn a man into soldier material. Like, super-soldier material, really. There was a controlled group of something like thirty men who were part of the trials. At first, they thought this scientist was a fraud, because nothing happened to the men. The guy got all crazy on them. His lab burned down with all of his work and notes, and he ended up disappearing. But I’m thinking they actually might’ve killed him.

That aside, those men started to get killed on the battlefield. Then they’d wake up in a wooden box while being brought back to their homes for burial. That’s when the military officials decided it was necessary to hide them. There’d be no way to explain the men being brought back to life, aside from witchcraft, in which they’d end up burning them at the stake.

Long story short, not all of the men were able to be contained. The ones who hadn’t died on the battlefield were allowed to go home. I guess they figured that they could come and collect them if they died. They didn’t get so lucky with all of them. And over the centuries, the soldiers they labeled Proprietors were able to elude the military personnel that had been ordered to keep track of them. They obviously went on to have families, their children known now as second-generation. Of course, not all of them had families right away, which explains why I was born just over thirty years ago. The fact that these people are immortal, in a manner of speaking, means they could’ve waited as long as they wanted.

That led me to a question. Why aren’t my parents Proprietor’s? I mean it’s obvious, what with Mom having burned herself several years back and being out of work for months. And Dad being the way he is. Apparently when Proprietors living on the island decide to reproduce, the child is given to a set of foster parents so that they can live a normal life, until it’s time to come home. So I guess Kaitlyn wasn’t the only adopted kid in the family. And that’s where I stop thinking about this whole thing. My real parents are gone. No one knows where they are. I can’t pretend to be too heartbroken about being adopted. I find it strange that they never told me, though.

Anyway, Proprietors are brought to the island to keep them safe. Not just us as individuals, but as a whole. If we were exposed to the world, all of us would be in great danger. I think I understand.

Reesy says to expect a variety of ages of people, top-side. First-death, at whatever age it occurred, is the age in which you live out your life as a Proprietor. I hate to think of how many people died at my age or younger. But at the same time, I’m a bit glad I didn’t live to a ripe old age.

I’m not very fond of the woman that’s been “briefing me” about the island and its rules. But then again, it might just be the rules I’m not particularly fond of. It turns out, however, that the police force I’ll be working with is actually more like a secret agency, which is kind of exciting I suppose.

I’ll be doing essentially what was done in my case; keeping steady surveillance on assigned people on the East Coast who are second-generation Proprietors and don’t know it yet. I’ll be part of the task-force that retrieves their bodies, should they die, in a timely enough fashion that they don’t come back before we can get to them. We’re also used for more obvious things, like keeping the peace on Pritchard’s Island.

I’m chalking it up to excitement, but since I’ve woken up here, I’ve felt this odd sense of peace and dare I say happiness. I can’t really explain it, but I do hope it lasts a while. It’s been a long time since I felt even remotely like this.

Tomorrow, I get to go top-side. I’ve got butterflies for the first time since prom…

Birdie stuck the journal back into the drawer, and laid back down on the cot. She smiled looking up at the ceiling, which wasn’t too far up, as it figured. Just as she doubted she’d get a wink of sleep, her eyes were quickly drifting closed…

* * *

She awoke to the sound of whispering outside her quarters. She cracked open her eyes, to peek at the clock on the side-table. 0800. Birdie quietly got up and headed to the dresser.

“I’m taking her shopping, first!” Reesy frustratedly whispered to Emmett as they argued in front of Birdie’s door.

“You’re out of your mind, Reesy! Do you know how pissed she’ll be when she finds out? It’s bad enough we waited this long to tell her anything!” he whispered back.

“We didn’t have a choice! She would’ve given us a hard time during briefing.”

“Well, we’ve got a choice now—” his sentence was cut off when the door unexpectedly swung open. “Good morning!” he turned to her and smiled.

“Morning, Em,” she returned the smile and looked between the two of them. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no!” Reesy replied with a smile. “Are you ready?”

“All packed up,” she held up her journals and shrugged. Then she narrowed her eyes at Emmett. “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” she said as she considered the thin, black frames. “I didn’t think anyone would need them, here.”

“Oh, they’re just an accessory,” he replied. “See?” he stuck a finger behind the frame and wiggled it through the glassless eye frame. “I needed them back in the day. But since then, sometimes I feel like being nostalgic. Kind of brings me a little comfort, I guess.”

“Oh,” Birdie gave a small, sort of sad smile, trying to process the fact that Emmett was a First-gen, and all that that meant.

“I got you a little housewarming gift,” Emmett said, changing the subject and handing her a brown-paper package. “It’s not much, but I heard you used to have a collection of them. So, I thought I’d get the first in the series to get you started again.”

“Aw,” Birdie tucked her journals under her arm so she could take the package from him. “You didn’t have to do this, Em.” She tore the paper to reveal the book he’d gotten her. “Phantasmal,” she read the title out loud. “I even lost my own copy. It’s been years since I read this. I love this series. Thank you, Emmett,” she smiled and gave him a hug.

Reesy gave Emmett an annoyed glare, which he only returned with a quick sticking out of his tongue. “Are you ready?” Reesy asked her.

“I guess so,” she said, pulling away. “Can we go for coffee before anything else?”

“Wouldn’t you rather go shopping, first?” Reesy asked, as they started toward the stairs.

“Actually, I loathe shopping. I really need a coffee, and I don’t mean the swill they make here in the mess hall. Emmett told me there’s a great little coffee shop not far from here on the way to my apartment. I’d like to check it out, if that’s okay.”

Reesy did her best to continue the casual smile, instead of the grimace that was fighting its way out. “Sure thing, honey,” she said, looking back over at Emmett in anger as he gave her a smug grin.

“You’re coming with us?” Birdie asked Emmett.

“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t miss this for the greater half of Pritchard’s Isle!” he grinned, happily.

* * *

“I’m not usually into science fiction,” Birdie explained in the back seat where she sat beside Emmett as Reesy drove, “But there’s just something about S.W. Colt that makes it a really great read.” Emmett had questioned what fascinated her so much about the series, and she was more than happy to attempt to explain. “It’s a captivating story, really. You should try it.”

“I get my fill with medical books,” Emmett scoffed. “Who has time to read, these days?”

“I used to say the same thing,” Birdie retorted. “You’ve gotta make time. But I understand. I would never be talked into reading the stuff you read, my dear,” she smirked.

“And I wouldn’t waste my breath asking you to attempt to grasp the concepts,” he returned the smirk.

“Thanks!” she playfully smacked his shoulder, making him laugh. She looked back out the window as they drove through the dirt roads. There was something distinctly different about the buildings, though Birdie couldn’t quite place exactly why. They seemed as though they simply grew out of the earth, blending in to an extent, yet built in a way that seemed mechanical. A lot of the structures had what looked like copper gears adorning the foundation. It reminded Birdie of the steampunk jewelry Sinese’s wife liked so much…

Other than the atypical architecture, things seemed fairly normal. There were a couple of joggers out, and someone riding a bike. A woman was walking a huge German Shepard around in her lawn. It was a little strange not seeing any kids. “Can I ask you guys something?”

“Shoot,” Reesy replied, glancing in her rear view at her.

“Why would it be so bad to raise kids here?”

The car grew quiet for a little while. Then Emmett decided to answer. “It’s not that it would be bad. But you’ve gotta consider the fact that once you’re here, you can’t leave. It’s best that a person has the chance to live a full life out in the world. Free, and all of that. You get a lifetime out there, just like any other person. Then you come here. You get a second life, and it’s everything you need. Anything you want, really. Just as long as it’s here.”

“No one’s had kids here in over twenty years,” Reesy added.

“Why?”

“Who would want to have their child taken from them and raised somewhere where you don’t get to see them again, until they die?” Emmett asked, as an answer. Birdie thought about that for a long while, allowing her gaze to fall back out the window. Em and Reesy shared a long glance in the rear view mirror.

As they got further into the island, Birdie saw a larger number of people. There were a lot of walkers, and an almost equal amount of people on bicycles. Little shops adorned the area, alongside diners and cafes. She was quick to notice the lack of motor vehicles.

“I take it there aren’t many cars here,” she commented.

“Not many,” Emmett replied. “This is an electric car. There are maybe a couple dozen on our part of the island. Mostly emergency response vehicles.”

“Can you imagine getting a gas tanker in here?” Reesy smirked.

“No outsiders visit the island?”

“Rarely. Not this part of it, anyway,” Emmett told her. “We’re self-sustaining, here. Everything is solar, wind or water powered. We grow our own food.”

“On occasion, we can get a food-run brought back from outside the island,” Reesy told her. “Words of wisdom: ration your chocolate.”

“Hoard your chocolate,” Emmett added. “Maybe I should’ve also gotten you some chocolate…”

“We’re here,” Reesy said a bit shortly, as she parked. Emmett made a sound similar to a squeal, clapping his fingers together.

“What are you so excited about?” Birdie asked, smiling and giving him an odd look.

“Oh, uh,” he glanced at Reesy’s reflection in the rear-view mirror before meeting Birdie’s eyes again. “Just… really excited to uh… try the new cinnamon-caramel-chocolate latte, is all,” he grinned, nervously. “I hear it’s all the rage.”

“Your gay is showing,” Reesy said, as she exited the car.

“It’s supposed to be,” Emmett retorted, snappily.

“What is with you two, today?” Birdie asked, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen you argue so much.”

“It’s nothing,” Emmett replied.

“Creative differences,” Reesy added, looking only at Emmett, before turning to head into the coffee shop.

Emmett took a calming breath in through his nose, and glanced over at Birdie, giving her a reassuring smile before he, too, headed toward the cafe. Birdie followed, catching up to him so that they entered together.

There was nothing particularly exciting about the shop. It was a lot bigger than anything she’d gone to when she lived in DC, and the only coffee she ever got in Dagsboro was always in a diner. This was almost a cross between the two. The walls were cranberry and chocolate colored, and there were small tables lining the right side.

There was a bookshelf against another wall, and a bar lined with stools separated the workers from the customers. Birdie had only glanced over the entire place before fixing her eyes on the menu board behind the counter. The shop was fairly empty, aside from a few tables with people around her age talking to one another in between sips of their coffee. In the far corner, someone sat facing away from the others, engrossed in something on his computer. And a few younger people sat nearest the shelf, their noses planted in books.

Birdie made a face at all the odd choices on the menu.

The young man at his laptop grew slightly annoyed at the small-talk going in the order line. He expected there to be talking. Hell, he’d been coming to this cafe for years, now. Sitting at home to work sometimes grew tiresome. There was no one there to make him coffee. Walking to and from the cafe several times a day tended to waste a lot of time. Noise was the sacrifice for saving time. Though in hindsight, it maybe evened out. In the end, hot and fresh coffee settled the argument in his head.

He was stuck on a line, anyway, and absentmindedly started to listen in on the conversation. He recognized Reesy and Emmett’s voices when they ordered. A small, sad smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he remembered his time with them in debriefing. Emmett had made a fair share of harmless advances. As flattering as it might’ve been at the time, he didn’t quite share the older man’s gender preferences. Reesy, of course, had thought it was quite hilarious. As much time as it had taken him getting used to the woman’s voice, he had grown fond of her as well. They’d shared plenty of conversation with coffee evenings together over the years. Most of them revolving around him needing to find a girlfriend. Something he was seriously not interested in.

The woman with them was next to order. It was likely her first time top-side, if she was with them. If he was lucky, they hadn’t seen him. Reesy would undoubtedly try and introduce her to him, in hopes he’d be interested in getting together. He sunk further down in his chair, which was already uncomfortable as it was, with his height. “Can I just get a plain old coffee?” the woman asked the cashier. “Three sugars and three creams, please.”

Something happened to his body, at the sound of the familiar voice. Like one of those instant ice packs that you have to break apart the piece inside, and suddenly there’s a chemical reaction that freezes it all. Except it wasn’t cold he was feeling. It was prickly and numbing and almost burning with its intensity. He realized his heart was pounding so hard against his chest that he was sure he could hear it, too.

He found himself moving, his pile of books crashing to the floor in his effort to turn around as he stood. He had to see if it was really her. His focus was now on the woman who had ordered the coffee with the three creams and three sugars.

“Birdie?” his voice felt broken; almost too quiet for her to hear.

The three of them had turned to investigate when they heard the books crash to the floor. But when the man said her name, Birdie narrowed her eyes as she met his. Then the realization of whom she was seeing, hit her. Suddenly, her entire body felt frozen and sweltering, all at the same time. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his. It was like they had been frozen there. “Oh god,” she thought. “I really am dead. I really am… dead…”

“Birdie, honey?” Emmett grabbed her shoulder. “Breathe,” he soothed.

She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. “Brian?” her voice cracked, and she willed away the wetness that was gathering in her eyes as it blurred her vision.

He simply watched her in shock, close to tears, himself. “Birdie,” he said again, searching her eyes.

Something welled up so strongly within her, as if suddenly it was real. Birdie didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know how to process it. For years, she’d swallowed down and jarred up every single emotion that ever stood in her path, and set them on a huge shelf in her mind. Thousands of them, all sitting up there as if they’d never move. And Brian just pushed the shelf over completely. Fear.

She screamed. She screamed and then she ran right out of the cafe and kept going. She wasn’t sure where. But she was going…

Brian was still frozen. Suddenly, the day he’d woken up reborn, came rushing back to him like a punch…

“Where the hell am I!” Brian shouted, pushing up off of the table he’d woken up on.

“Calm down, pretty boy,” Reesy stood, trying to stop him from toppling off of the table.

“Who are you? What am I doing here? I… I don’t remember…”

“I’ll tell you, but you need to calm down.”

“Listen to her, sweet-cheeks,” Emmett said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “We’re here to help you. You’re okay.”

“N-no… No, I don’t think I am,” Brian replied. “I… I think I…”

“Yeah, you did,” Reesy told him. “You died. Like a dumbass, I might add.”

“But you’re alive now,” Emmett told him. “It’s kind of a long story, and it’ll all be explained to you. But you’ve gotta trust us right now.”

“I need… I need to call Birdie,” Brian said, eyes searching the air in front of him. “She’ll be worried.”

“You can’t, baby,” Reesy told him. “You can’t talk to her again.”

Brian’s brows pinched together as he looked at her in confused anger. “I don’t know who you are, but you can’t tell me what to do. I’m calling her right now,” he pushed up off of the table and nearly collapsed to the floor. But Emmett caught him. “Let go of me!” he flailed out of his grasp and stumbled toward the door.

“Brian, please don’t make me sedate you!” Reesy called out as she and Emmett attempted to hold him down.

“You people are insane! Let go of me! Let me call her and let her know!”

“She saw you dead, Brian,” Reesy told him. “You can’t. You cannot contact her, do you understand?”

“You don’t understand!” he shouted, pulling away again as he felt a needle dig into his skin. “She’ll be so pissed off! She’ll be so mad…” the room started to fade from his vision. “Please…”

“Birdie!” Brian was suddenly thrust into motion, tearing out of the cafe in the direction his sister had taken off in. “Birdie, wait!” He’d lost sight of her, and now his insides were churning with the sick feeling of loss. But there were some people standing at the corner of a nearby street with their dog, and they looked at him and pointed down one particular dirt road. He turned his head to look where they directed, just in time to see Birdie rounding the corner around another building. “Birdie!” he called out again, and pushed himself to run faster…

Birdie found herself hurdling over a short fence, and then trying not to punt-kick chickens as she continued to run through. She somehow ended up running into a barn-like structure. As she came to the dead end that was the other side of it, she panicked. She chided herself, internally. She should have known better, after all. But the logical part of her brain started to shout back at her. Birdie wasn’t a fugitive. She wasn’t in danger. What the hell was she running from? Why was she so terrified? Why did her chest hurt so badly that it was getting seriously difficult to breathe?

“Birdie, please stop!” Brian sounded behind her.

Oh right. That. “No no… no,” she shook her head, unwilling to turn around. Unwilling to allow herself to think that this was real. Not even for a second. Birdie couldn’t survive losing him again. She couldn’t handle it if she let herself believe, and it turned out not to be real.

“I’m so sorry, Birdie,” Brian’s voice cracked with emotion as he slowly, cautiously began to walk toward her from the entrance.

“No,” she shook her head again, still not turning around.

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, unable to stop a tear tracking down his face at the sight of his sister’s shaking form in front of him. He was sorry for everything. Sorry for not listening to her. For dying the way he did. For leaving her alone, suffering, taking the guilt upon herself… He was sorry for hurting her. “Please, Birdie,” he said more quietly as he came into arm’s reach.

“I can’t,” a tear-filled whisper broke from her voice, and his hands were suddenly turning her around at her shoulders.

“I’m sorry… I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t—” Brian’s sentence was cut short when Birdie launched herself at him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug as she sobbed. His arms enveloped around her, squeezing her just as tightly, and joined her in her happy tears.

Birdie was only marginally aware of them lowering to the ground. She was torn between wanting to look at him, and not wanting to let go of him. She was now in his lap, unable to tear herself away, in fear that this might not be real; that it might only be a dream, and she never wanted to wake up from it.

* * *

The entire ride home, or rather to Brian’s apartment which she was told was also hers now for the time being, she was still too stunned to speak. It wasn’t until they were at the front door, that Birdie turned to Emmett and Reesy.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” there was anger laced in her tone, and Emmett could tell that she was holding back from slapping one of them.

“We couldn’t,” he explained. “Not until you were briefed and ready to leave rehab.”

“You would’ve been too impatient to get out,” Reesy added. “You wouldn’t have gotten what you needed.”

“You could’ve brought him to me,” Birdie replied.

“We didn’t tell him, either,” Emmett told her, glancing past her to see Brian setting his computer down in the kitchen, out of earshot. “You’ve gotta understand why on some level, honey. The line of work you were in; you know we were in a difficult position.”

“What matters is that now you know,” Reesy said. “You’ve got him back, and that’s more than anyone could dream for.” Birdie swallowed, letting both of her friends’ words sink in. She knew they were right, but it was difficult to judge whether or not she was ready to let go of the anger she felt. “Please don’t hate us, Birdie,” Reesy pleaded.

Birdie looked up at her, then. Reesy had never really asked for forgiveness for anything; not from her, anyway. It somehow managed to make any hard feelings leave her. “I don’t hate you,” Birdie assured them both. “I’m still mad,” she said, unconvincingly. “Might take a few more housewarming presents for me to get over it completely.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Emmett stepped forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You will?”

“Well, I’m kinda tied down to this shopping trip, now,” he shrugged.

“I forgot about that,” Birdie looked to Reesy.

“It’s okay,” she assured her. “We’ll do it tomorrow. I wanted to do it before your reunion with Brian, so you’d have something besides those rehab clothes to greet him in. But Em insisted we not wait any longer.”

“Well, then,” Birdie turned back to Emmett and grabbed his hand, “Looks like I don’t really have anything to be mad at you for, after all.” She pulled him back to her and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“No love for Reesy?” Reesy made puppy-dog eyes.

“I can’t believe that’s why you two were fighting this morning. You go home and get your love from Jodie,” Birdie made a smug face, but then let it melt into a grin. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

She went into the apartment as her friends headed back to the car, and closed the door behind her. “I should take a swing at you,” she said to Brian as she made her way towards him where he was sitting on a stool at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “But I’m waiting for the surreal feeling to fade away, so I can use my entire upper-body strength when I do it.”

“As long as you still love me,” he glanced at her with a bit of a grin.

Glancing at the closed laptop on the counter in front of him, she shook her head and huffed a breath of laughter. “If you only knew how absolutely insane it made me when I found out that thing was missing,” she told him. “All of my law enforcement experience, and I had zero ability to figure out what happened to it.”

“In my defense, I wasn’t the one who took it,” Brian told her. “I was glad when they gave it to me. But I would have dealt with the loss, had it given you some peace of mind.”

“I… I’m not exactly sure it would have,” she admitted. “I didn’t have the closure I needed, that’s for sure. Hell, I thought someone had robbed your dead body. Or maybe had been in there with you and let you die. That’s what was so frustrating about it; the scene hadn’t been processed for anything. I found you, and Sinese processed the scene as though you just overdosed. It wasn’t until later, that I realized your laptop was missing…” her eyes wandered the air, in the memory. Her fingers played absentmindedly on the corner of the book she’d set down on the counter along with her journals.

“What’s that?” he asked, wanting to change the subject, for both their sakes.

“Uh,” she glanced down at the items to remind herself. “Just my old journals and a housewarming present Emmett got for me.” She handed the book to Brian and sat down on the stool next to his. “I had the entire series, back in Dagsboro. But they could only grab the journals.”

“You like Phantasmal?” he looked at her with curious and surprised eyes.

“I love it,” she confessed. “Colt is this amazing writer that just kinda popped up out of no where with this amazing story, a few years ago. There’s usually a new book out every few months. I really like the series because the main characters kind of remind me of us,” she looked down a bit, sheepishly, then up again, meeting Brian’s seemingly judging eyes. He let out a bit of a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t laugh at me!” she smacked his shoulder. “You should read it before you get all judgmental.”

“I have, actually,” he countered.

“And you don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” he cocked his head to the side. In that instance, something beside him on the wall caught her eye. It was a framed certificate of some kind. The bold writing stood out, before anything and she found herself reading it out loud.

“To S.W.Colt, acclaimed new sci-fi writer of the year…” her sentence tapered off and her gaze fell back on Brian. “No way,” she shook her head, disbelievingly. Brian couldn’t hold back a smile. “No way!” she said, louder.

“I can’t believe you’ve been reading them this whole time,” he said. “I mean, I’d hoped. But I never figured you for actually going out and buying books.”

“I didn’t… I wasn’t,” she explained. “The first one was just kinda sitting in a drawer in my new office when I took the job in Dagsboro. No one knew where it came from, so I kept it; took it home and decided to try it out…”

“That… seems almost too convenient,” he let out a nervous laugh.

“After this past week, I’m honestly not surprised.”

“Not that you were ever before,” he smirked. She felt the corners of her mouth tug up, maybe a bit involuntarily. Then she looked away a bit, thoughtfully; her eyes settling on the book that now laid on the bar between them.

Remembering something vaguely, she took the book and opened it, flipping past the copyright page and table of contents until she found what she was looking for. “This,” she pointed, handing the book back to him, “This is what made me start reading.” It was the dedication page, and she decided to read it aloud, “To my sister; my best friend. Until we meet again on the other side.”

Brian smiled sadly, avoiding her eyes for a moment. “That was my only way to communicate with you,” he told her. “That’s why I’d hoped you’d read the books.” Birdie watched him as his eyes darted around the counter top. Then they settled on hers. “Did you read all the dedications?” After a moment, Birdie nodded. “Do you remember the second one?”

“Off the top of my head?” she made a face something between incredulous and ashamed.

Brian smiled and stood, heading to the bookshelf in the living room. She followed after him, sitting down on the couch where he met her with the book in question. He handed it to her, the dedication page open. “I miss you every day, more than anyone,” it read. No name mentioned.

“This was for me?” she asked, not looking at him just yet, as she willed herself not to tear up.

“Yeah. Is it stupid?”

She looked at him, then. “You’re an idiot if you think this is stupid.”

“Guess I shouldn’t think that, then.”

“Damn straight,” she replied. Then she couldn’t hold back the grin that was fighting its way through, so she looked back down at the book to hide it. “I missed you, too, ya know,” she said, softly, looking back over at Brian once the grin faded. “Nothing was the same after you…”

“It killed me, not being able to let you know that I was okay, Birdie,” Brian told her, looking apologetic.

“I get why you couldn’t,” she replied. “I’m not angry. I’m… confused, mostly. About all of this. This place is… kind of insane,” she said, with a small, nervous laugh.

“That, it is. Definitely takes some getting used to. Especially the part where we can’t go anywhere outside of the island unattended.”

“Well, apparently I’ll be one of those people that does the attending, since my profession before all of this was law enforcement. But that’ll be after I’m here for a while, aka when I’ve been cleared for loyalty of not running off the grid.”

“There’s only ever been one reason I’ve wanted to leave here unaccompanied. Now, it’s no longer a factor.”

“There’s really no reason for me, either,” she gave him an amused but sincere grin.

The serene conversation was interrupted by a rumbling noise that was quickly joined by the room shaking around them. Vibrations rattled the glasses in the cupboards, and made the bookshelves teeter a bit.

“What is that?” Birdie looked to Brian, wondering if this was a regular occurrence on the Island.

“Incoming aircraft,” he stood and went to the window, just as it passed over the apartment and came into view. “This rarely happens,” he told her.

“Who is it? Do you know?” she stood and went to stand beside him.

“Military,” he told her. “CIA, I think. Bunch of old guys, usually. They don’t come around much, and no one knows why they come here. Only that they go to the Observers.”

“Observers?”

Brian looked to her, “Well, you, basically. Or your superiors, rather. Eventually, it’ll be you. They come to talk to them. About what, no one really knows. No one ever sees them, either. They’re in and out pretty quickly.”

“How do you know about them, then?”

“About six months after I got here, they showed up. I asked about them, just like you did me. Someone I’d considered a friend at the time. He didn’t know a whole lot, but it made me curious. They didn’t come again for a few years. By then, I’d had a plan set. Snuck over to where I discovered they landed the plane beforehand. I watched them through binoculars. They never knew I was there.”

“Oh my god, dude,” she cracked a smile. “Is that where you came up with that idea in book five?”

“Totally,” he smiled back.

“Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” she told him.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” he raised a brow.

“Someone knows what they come for. I intend to find out what that is. And you know I can get information out of people if I want to.”

“Oh yeah, I bet you did all kinds of interrogating in Dagsboro,” he laughed.

She punched his shoulder. “I’m talking about before I left the DEA, jerk.”

“Still packing a punch, I see,” he grimaced, rubbing his shoulder. Birdie smirked.

Then suddenly they felt the floor rumble beneath them, and outside the window where they’d not long ago seen the plane land, rose a giant rolling ball of flames and billowing smoke.

For a moment, they both stared unable to speak. It was Birdie that broke the short silence. “That’s… not supposed to happen, right?”

“No… No, it’s not…”

* * *

Chaos had become the only word to describe the upper east section of the island where the Proprietors resided. People had abandoned their posts and taken shelter underground. Brian had been explaining this to Birdie, as they made their way toward the runway. The air was thick with what smelled like plastic cooking in a cast iron pan.

“It’s probably the Defectors,” Brian shouted over the noise as he led her, holding tightly to her hand, toward the crash site. “They’re Proprietors like us, that deserted the island.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They don’t like rules, I guess,” he replied. “I don’t really know. But they’re always causing trouble and getting themselves caught because of it, too. They nearly get themselves and, in turn, the rest of us exposed.”

“Why don’t the Observers do anything about it?” she asked.

“They do. Well, they try to, anyway. Defectors are hard to find. Because they were given a new life, separated from their past, it’s hard to track them down very quickly. The ones the Observers have found and brought back are usually in need of debriefing again, and then rumor has it they’re locked up until they can be completely rehabilitated.”

“Does that even work? I mean… it sounds like trying to get someone off of drugs…” Brian inwardly flinched at that.

“Rarely,” he told her, not brushing off the comment, but accepting the right she had to use it. “Those people are brainwashed. There’s a leader amongst them all. That’s what I heard, anyway. They fill their heads with these ridiculous stories, and before you know it, someone you know is suddenly a whack job.”

“You’ve known one of them?” she surmised.

He glanced over at her for a moment, then back in front of him as they continued on. “That friend I mentioned earlier.”

“The one that told you about the planes?”

“Yep.”

“He became a Defector?”

“One day, we’re having coffee and conspiring about what I should put in my next book. The next day, he’s trying to convince me that the island is our enemy. Can you believe that? We’re all the same, here. This is a safe place for us, and he was trying to convince me that we were prisoners.”

“That must’ve been awkward.”

“It was. And it really sucked when they arrested him right out of the cafe. It was embarrassing as hell.”

“Is that why you kept to yourself, after that?” she asked. He looked back at her again, in question. “In the coffee shop, it was just like before you died; always keeping to yourself. I know that before, it was more because you were too busy for friends. But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it…”

“You saying I’m a recluse?”

“That’s not what I said!”

“Hold it right there!” a man in a white hazmat suit appeared before them.

“What’s going on?” Brian asked. “We saw the explosion.”

“There was some kind of bomb on the plane,” the man explained. “Some kind of toxic chemical was spilled over a hundred yard radius. No one should pass through here without the proper gear.”

“That would’ve hit the precinct,” Brian said.

“It did,” the man replied. “Everyone on duty is down.”

“The precinct?” Birdie asked. “As in the Observers?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man replied. “We’ve got less than a dozen off-duty officers coming in to take over. Who are you?”

“This is Amber Farran,” Brian told him. “She’s technically an officer now, too. Just came top-side today.”

“They’re probably gonna need you, then,” the man told her, then turned to Brian. “Do you know where the old Observer station is?”

“Yeah,” Brian replied, nodding.

“They’re gathering there for supplies. You should take her there.”

“Are people in danger?” Birdie asked.

“The threat’s been contained,” the man replied. “But we’re vulnerable until we can get everyone rehabilitated. That could take a while. We can use everyone we can get…”

THREE

“Welcome to the force, Agent Farran,” a blond-haired woman as tall as Birdie, and around the same age, shook her hand. “I’m Agent Kale. I was actually the one assigned to train you, though I wasn’t expecting to have to start for a couple of days.”

The old Observer station was underground, just like the debriefing area. Only it wasn’t a submarine. If anything, it seemed more like a subway station, sans the tracks and ticket booths. And despite its description, the old station didn’t look unused at all. It seemed like there were walls of never-ending storage that had regularly been organized and kept up. There were several empty desks, void of people but still occupied with items that portrayed they had a purpose.

“Nice to meet you. And sorry…”

“No need to apologize. Aside from the obvious setback, I like a little unexpected. Gets a bit redundant around here, sometimes. Some action is always welcome, as far as I see it,” she gave a half grin. Birdie returned it. “I read your file,” Kale continued. “I think you’ll fit in real well here,” she turned to lead her up the hall, and Birdie turned to Brian, making sure he followed. He was, of course. But he was very studiously observing Kale’s very fitted black uniform. Or rather the curves it accentuated.

“Um… thanks,” she replied, looking back to Kale. “What are we looking at, here? I mean, do we know who did this?”

“More than likely, Defectors,” she told her. “I’ll need to read you in.”

“No need,” Birdie replied. “I’ve heard a fair share. What’s the sitrep?”

“As you saw, there was a bomb on the visiting plane. Everyone within a hundred yard radius was killed. Proprietors were put in RR… uh, Reanimation Room,” she elaborated, “In case you haven’t heard about it. It’s basically where we go if something happens to us, until the reanimation begins.”

“How long does it usually take?” Birdie inquired.

“Depends on how we die, and how many times it’s happened before. Could be anywhere between a few hours and several days.”

“Apparently, the more you die,” Brian added, “The faster your body knows what to do to regenerate itself.”

“That seems… strange,” Birdie commented. “You’d think it’d be just the opposite.”

“Around here, you’ll find a lot of things don’t really follow the scientific laws you were raised to understand,” Kale glanced at her, just as they reached a set of navy blue lockers. She pulled up on the handle before pulling one of the locker doors open. “Lucky for you, I plan ahead,” she told her as she pulled out a neatly folded pile of clothing. “Your uniform. Go and get changed. Can’t have you running around enforcing laws in hospital scrubs. When you’re ready, meet me across the hall. I’ll get you your access card and weapon. You,” she looked to Brian, “Can come with me, if you want. We could use a hand around here, unless you wanna go underground until this all blows over.”

“Why is everyone going underground, by the way?” Birdie asked.

“Media,” Kale raised her brows. “As soon as they catch wind of the crash, they’ll be swarming the area with helicopters. People go under because this place needs to be kept a secret.”

“Won’t the obvious civilization give it away?” she furrowed her brows in confusion.

“Once the people are safely locked down,” she replied as she walked over to a computer panel, “Everything else goes under, too.” With a few clicks on the keypad, a hologram-like screen popped up showing the island at street view. “This green light here,” she pointed beside the screen, “Means lock-down is complete. That means clean-up should be starting right about…” Moments after she said it, Birdie watched as the coffee shop she’d been in the morning started to lower into the ground, then several of the buildings around it. “Now.”

“You’ve gotta be… kidding me,” she watched in awe. The gears in the foundation she thought were mere decoration, were actually functional. “How deep does all this underground stuff go?”

“We’ve got a support system that goes all the way to the Atlantic Ocean floor,” she replied. “But as far as the evac tunnels, a few hundred feet down, spanning a little over half our section of the island.”

“I didn’t know that,” Brian shook his head.

“It’s where First Gens started out,” she explained. “Before they realized the negative side-effects of forcing people to live underground. Proprietor scientists and architects decided there was a better way and devised the plans to build this place. But the Defectors actually get the credit for sealing the deal with the CIA. They figured the deserting issue would be resolved if they gave us a little leeway.”

“I take it that didn’t work out very well,” Birdie replied.

“I understand why people left, initially,” Kale shook her head. “But once we were treated more humanely, given more than just what we needed, the Defectors became less of a crusade for better treatment, and more of a group of runaways constantly looking to stir up trouble.”

“I’d say killing a plane filled with military personnel that can’t regenerate, is a little more than stirring up trouble,” Birdie stated.

* * *

“Why don’t I get a uniform?” Brian asked as the three of them started a patrol on the far east side of the island with one other agent. He’d never actually gotten to see his sister working, before. It was one thing he’d always wished he could do. But asking if he could do a ride-along with his big sister while she was on duty… well, it seemed like a silly thing to ask. Now, however, as he walked alongside another agent that was patrolling with them, he saw how Birdie carried herself when in uniform.

Most of their lives, before coming to the island, Birdie seemed to try and hide within herself. That showed in her stature. Being tall, she’d made a point even as a child to try and shrink. But in uniform, she stood tall and professionally, as if her height was part of the ensemble. She seemed graceful and secure and as if she’d left everything she normally carried on her shoulders, back in a precinct locker.

“Because you’re not an Observer,” Kale replied, smirking though he couldn’t see her face.

“Isn’t there an acting-agent uniform?” he asked.

“No.”

“There should be an acting-agent uniform.”

“I’ll bring it up the the boss,” Kale replied, glancing over at Birdie, who was now smiling out of his sight as well.

“You just want Agent Kale to see what a great ass you have,” Birdie said just loud enough for him to hear.

“Shut up!” he quietly shouted back, and Birdie laughed.

“Defectors at three o’clock,” the officer to the right of Brian told them. Birdie was suddenly alert, as well as Brian.

Kale looked in that direction, spotting the handful of people he was telling them about, walking through the thick area of trees. “Julian, back-track and cut them off. Brian, go with him. Stay behind and cover him. Farran, you’re with me. We’ll get behind them. Anyone who can get a shot off, take it. Watch your backs.”

Birdie shared a long glance with Brian, worried, even though she knew he’d be okay. They couldn’t be killed… right? She gave him a quick nod, then turned to follow Kale. This part of the island was like the woods back in Virginia, where Birdie and Brian had gone on their one single hiking trip together. The trees were enough to keep from seeing beyond the expanse, but sparse enough to run through without giving yourself a concussion by smacking into one.

The split-up team didn’t take long to surround the intruding Proprietors. “Hold it!” Birdie called out. Kale gave her a shocked face for a fraction of a second, before taking aim on the alerted Defectors and firing. Two went down. Two took off running toward where Brian and Julian were likely closing in. One stayed to fire back.

Birdie took aim and hit the taller man, and he fell back hitting the ground with a thud, and went still.

“What was that, Farran?” Kale shouted as they took off after the two runaways.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the mainland police! You don’t have to identify yourself. Not when it’s Defectors!”

“I didn’t know…”

“Well, now you do,” she took aim in front of her, firing and hitting one of the remaining Defectors who fell forward and stumbled mid-run. The last one started firing ahead of him, and the agents heard one last shot before they watched him fall. Kale spoke into the comm on her shoulder, “Julian. Location?” There was no answer. “Agent Julian,” she said again.

A shiver ran down Birdie’s spine, and she took off in the direction they were facing. “Brian?” she shouted as she ran.

“Agent Julian’s been shot!” Brian called out as he came into view. He was crouched down beside Julian’s body.

“I’m fine,” Julian insisted. “Just my leg.”

Kane reached them and crouched down to examine the wound herself. “Still bleeding,” she observed. “You should get to sickbay or you’ll bleed out before it regenerates. I can’t afford to be another man out, right now.”

“Right,” Julian breathed bravely through the pain.

Kale spoke into her shoulder comm again, “This is Agent Kale. We need a med unit in Grid A, sector…” she glanced around for a moment, “Sector eighteen.” She looked over at Birdie, “It’s been a while since I was on patrol on this side of the island.”

“Med unit three responding,” came a voice over the comm. “How many, Agent Kale?”

“Five intruders, down. They need to be taken to detention. One Observer wounded and in need of immediate medical response.”

“Roger that. Sending a bus and a med unit. Five minutes, Agent Kale.”

Brian quickly slipped off his leather belt and started to tie it around Julian’s thigh. “It’s bleeding a lot. Five minutes could be too late if regeneration doesn’t kick in any time soon.”

“What could slow it down like that?” Birdie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kale replied, shaking her head as she assessed her wounded agent. “I’ve never seen this before, except…” her sentence tapered off as her eyes grew momentarily distant. She blinked, shaking her head as if to clear it. “I’ve never seen this before,” she said, pushing up and moving to survey the area.

Birdie furrowed her brows in thought, then looked up at Brian. He was looking at the back of Kale’s head with some sort of suspicion, then met Birdie’s eyes and realized they were thinking along the same lines.

* * *

“Sitrep!” Kale shouted over the noise, as they approached the subterranean walkway leading to the medical center. Two officers fell into stride alongside her, Brian and Birdie following quickly, but staying out of the way. The walkway was kind of dark, and it smelled stale.

“Twenty-three Defectors in custody, Agent Kale,” one of the agents reported. “Nineteen in detention. Four in interrogation. Apprehended weapons are in O.S.”

“What about us?” she asked as they continued to walk.

“Three agents are in the sickbay regeneration unit. Four more are wounded and receiving treatment. Regeneration doesn’t seem to have started for any of them.”

“Anyone?” Kale slowed her steps and looked over at the reporting agent for the first time since they’d started talking.

“Not for anyone shot, Agent Kale.”

“Agent Kale!” an older man, salt and pepper hair, waved from sickbay’s hatch, urgently.

Kale glanced to the agents around her. “Keep me posted on interrogations,” she told them. “Dismissed.”

They turned and filed out, passing Brian and Birdie, and allowed them to catch up to her as Kale stopped in front of the older man. “Aaron, how’s Agent Julian?” she asked. The doctor was tall, Birdie observed. Taller than her, but not quite as tall as Brian. Brian was like a giant, and she’d periodically jokingly pick on him about it, only because she was insecure about her own height. Birdie had been six feet tall since the seventh grade. Brian had shot up and surpassed her by the time he was twenty. Then all of the, “Do you play basketball?” questions skipped over her, and landed on his six foot four self. Brian wasn’t very athletic, though. He was competitive as all hell, and would never back down from a challenge.

The doctor was cute, Birdie noted. He filled out his lab coat well, and it was obvious that he took good care of himself, unlike some of the doctors she’d known in her past life.

“There’s no change,” he told Agent Kale. “I’ve stabilized his leg for the meantime, but he requires surgery. There’s a bullet lodged in the muscle right at the femoral nerve.”

“Could that be stopping regeneration?” Kale tilted her head in confusion.

“I don’t see how,” the doctor replied. “Too tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on, here. I’ve got two other agents who aren’t regenerating, either.”

“Could the Defectors have released something into the air?”

“I don’t think so. One agent healed up just fine. He was impaled in the abdomen by metal piping, after a fall. They brought him in for the blood loss. He’s doing just fine.”

“So this has something to do with the bullets,” Birdie surmised. The doctor looked over at her.

Kale glanced back at Birdie and Brian as if just remembering they were there. “Aaron, this is our newest agent, Amber Farran.”

“Birdie,” she corrected, holding her hand out.

“And this is Dr. Aaron Foster,” Kale introduced.

“Nice to meet you,” Birdie shook his hand once he grabbed it, unable to hold back a little smile when his eyes met hers.

“Likewise,” he returned the smile. “And I suspect you may be right. About the bullets, I mean,” he gently pulled his hand away and grabbed hold of the chart under his arm. “I think it’d be a good idea to get a team together to give the intruders’ weapons a closer examination. In the meantime, I need someone to sign off on Agent Julian’s medical treatment.”

“Can’t he do that?” Kale asked.

“If he were conscious,” Foster replied. “Blood loss and all. He’s got you listed as a medical proxy.”

“Really?” she rose a surprised brow.

“They don’t ever think they’ll need that to be known,” Foster told her, “With this place not usually needing too much use. But clearly he respects you enough to know you’ll make a responsible decision should the event arise that he needed one to be made.”

Kale nodded, swallowing as she let that absorb. “Okay,” she said as she straightened. “What do I need to do?”

“Just sign here,” he told her. She took the pen and signed the line he’d pointed out. “Thank you.”

“You’ll keep me updated on his condition?” she asked. “And the others, as well,” she added as an afterthought.

“Of course, Jeri,” he gave a small smile. “Should I contact your home number, or get on the comm?”

Kale seemed caught off guard at the use of her first name. Not many people called her by that. Not anymore. “I’ll probably not be home any time soon. But you can comm in and ask if I’m available. Then feel free to call my home,” she told him. “Thank you, Aaron.” He nodded and turned to quickly make his way back inside.

Kale stood there and watched him walk away until the doors hissed closed. And when she still stood there watching nothing, Birdie stepped up beside her. “Kale?” Some strange twinge of jealousy tingled in Birdie’s stomach, just at the fact that Kale and the doctor were on a first name basis. She quickly shoved that aside, though. Something was bothering the agent.

Kale shook her head slightly, and looked to her. “We need to get over to O.S,” she turned and started back up the walkway.

“What’s O.S.?” Birdie asked as she and Brian followed her.

“Ordnance Storage,” she supplied. “It’s where we keep any recovered weapons, and replacements if we should ever need them. It’s not a large facility, but it’s all we normally need.”

“Pardon me for bringing this up,” Brian said, “But if my math is correct, there are like four agents not out of commission right now. Aren’t you kinda freaking out at all? Because I feel like someone should be freaking out right now…”

“Mr. Farran, I am aware of the current situation,” Kale replied without breaking stride or looking at him. “I can tell you that I am trying to process our options, and that I am finding it difficult to calculate how it would be possible with the meager amount of agents at my disposal. But ‘freaking out’, as you so eloquently put it, would be the opposite of help for our current situation.”

They took an access door off the side of sickbay, and stepped through into an even smaller walkway. Lights flickered on as they walked, and Birdie tried her best to not even allow herself to think about the confining space they were in. If she let herself think about it, she’d start to panic.

“So uh… Mind if I ask what you did before you came here?” she asked Kale as a distraction.

“Like a job?” Kale asked, glancing at her momentarily, before looking forward on their path. “Well, as soon as I graduated, I joined the Navy,” she told them. “I was a Navy brat. Both my parents served. Well, Dad was a Marine. I felt like I had to. Like a family right of passage thing. I served four years. Thought I’d end up at NCIS, but the Secret Service snagged me. Something about my service record and testing scores making me a perfect candidate.”

“Secret Service over Naval Criminal Investigation?” Birdie asked. “I’d have picked the one where I didn’t have to wear a suit,” she smirked.

“Secret Service sounded more dangerous,” Birdie replied. “Also, less incompetent.” She immediately shook her head at the choice of wording. “Not… not that NCIS is incompetent. I meant that Secret Service was more ‘all business’, and I needed that. I couldn’t tolerate people who weren’t there to work.”

“I understand,” Birdie nodded, though Kale wasn’t looking at her. “I spent a lot of days wondering how some guys made it into the DEA.”

“Oh yeah,” Kale glanced at her again, before stopping at another hatch door. “I almost forgot you were with them before you were a beat cop.” She pulled open the hatch and looked at them both again before heading inside. “Most of our agents were beat cops in their former lives. Not that they usually need any more experience to work on the island.” She let the others in and closed the hatch behind them. “But it’s difficult sometimes, being one of the few who takes things seriously.”

“Sounds like my last job,” Birdie smirked.

“Sounds like why I work alone,” Brian chimed in.

Kale made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Alright, this is it,” she said as they walked through a set of double doors. Birdie and Brian took a look around. It wasn’t exactly small, as it’d been described to them. But it definitely wasn’t very complex, either. It looked like a super-sized storage unit; rows and rows of metal shelving, filled with storage containers. In front of it all was a small table that was covered in papers and looking very much like a work area. The chair, however, was empty. Kale seemed to have been expecting someone there. “Of course,” she mumbled to herself.

“This looks like something out of a science fiction show I used to watch,” Brian commented as he looked around. “The place where they stored all the files of information and evidence on conspiracies they were covering up.”

“Oh, I know what show you mean! It does!” Birdie agreed, then looked to Agent Kale to see if she understood. But the agent’s face was expressionless and unamused, glaring a bit at her. The smile dropped from Birdie’s face. “Sorry.”

Kale turned toward her comm. “I need a weapon’s expert in O.S,” she spoke. “Anyone who can be spared. Preferably Maverick,” she added.

A moment passed in silence, and then a scratchy voice sounded over the speaker, “I hear you finally want a piece of ol’ Mav.” Laughter could be heard on the other end. Kale swiped a hand down her face. “What can I do you for, Agent Kale?”

“I need someone to take a look at the Defectors’ weapons that were confiscated today. There may be some sort of modifications that can slow regeneration.”

“Sounds like we’ll need forensics then, too. No weapon’s gonna slow down our re-gen time. Not unless it’s biological.”

“Then assemble a team, Maverick,” she replied. “I’ve got agents down and we don’t have time for it.”

“I’ll get it set up. Be there within the hour. Just make sure I have clearance this time, will ya?”

“You’ll be cleared. Kale out.” She seemed glad for the discussion to be over with. She looked to Birdie, “Do you need a break?”

“Um…” she hesitated.

“I need coffee,” Kale told her. “I should eat, but I need coffee. And it looks like we’ve got some time.”

“I know a place,” Brian raised his hand.

“There’s only one place,” Kale shook her head.

“Oh. Oh yeah.”

FOUR

“How long do we need to do this underground thing for?” Birdie asked as they sat down with their coffee in the cafe that she’d been in earlier that day. It was strange knowing it was underground. She was grateful though, at least, that the windows were covered in copper-colored blinds, hiding that there was nothing but more evidence that they weren’t top-side. Her claustrophobia was starting to kick in a little.

“I’ll be advised when the media is finished. Military is sent here on top-secret orders for clean-up.”

“How will they explain the plane being here?” Birdie asked.

“Emergency landing, most likely. They’ll tell the public that the plane was flying to Fort Myers, encountered technical problems, and crashed here. None of us can be top-side for it. It’s an exposure risk if there’s anyone out there that could recognize one of us.”

“Just think,” Brian chimed in, “If you were home watching the five o’clock news and you saw me walking around in the background,” he smirked.

“Yeah,” Birdie shook her head. “I’d fly out here in a heartbeat, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy.”

“Exactly,” Kale replied. “We’ll have to stay under until the wreckage and bodies are cleared. It could be days.”

“Oh,” Birdie looked down into her mug of coffee.

Brian appraised his sister from where he sat beside her. Her suddenly tense form was a clear warning of what could come. He put a hand on her back, even though he knew she didn’t like accepting this kind of comfort. Brian wasn’t the kind of guy that followed rules that didn’t make sense to him. “Hey, it’s totally okay,” he told her. “It’s like an ecosystem down here. There’s fresh air.” He looked over at Kale who had a brow raised in question. “She’s claustrophobic,” he explained quietly.

“I am not,” she retorted. “I’m just…”

“You start to panic in confined spaces. You’re claustrophobic, Birdie,” Brian repeated.

“I can handle it.”

“You can handle it in small doses. But not knowing how long you’ll be in one, you start to freak out.”

“Are you trying to get me to punch you in the face, right now?” she looked at him incredulously.

Brian smirked, “Better angry than scared.”

“I’m not scared,” she pushed him.

“You don’t let yourself show it, but you are so.”

“You can feel free to shut the hell up, any time now, Brian,” she glared at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. “Seriously,” she looked over at Kale, “It’s not that big a deal.” She looked back down at her coffee, trying to fight off the feeling of embarrassment. “I’m going to use the restroom,” she told them as she got up from the table.

Once Birdie disappeared behind the bathroom door, Kale noticed that Brian seemed to regret having given her a hard time. He folded his hands around the warmth of his mug and peered into it. “I was just trying to get her to focus her attention on something else,” he said. Kale wasn’t sure if he was thinking out loud, or explaining it to her. “To keep her from getting panicked,” he continued. “I mean, I’m not claustrophobic, but being down here makes me feel that way after a while.” He looked up at her with an awkward half-smile. “I imagine everyone does.”

“I don’t,” Kale replied, raising her brows. “I find it rather comforting, actually.”

“Comforting,” Brian looked at her from the side, skeptically.

“It’s safer under here,” she argued, neither of them seeing Birdie coming back from the restroom now. “The bomb on the plane, for instance, wouldn’t have been able to penetrate this level. Also, there’s no reason to fear being in this particular confined area. It’s larger than most cities, for one. Its construction is pure genius; not requiring electricity in order to function. In fact, there are several backup energy sources that keep it running. It’s highly unlikely that they would ever all fail.”

“Highly unlikely doesn’t mean impossible,” Birdie said as she sat back down at the table with them.

“One way to get over an irrational fear is to—”

“It’s not irrational,” Birdie interrupted Kale.

Kale raised a brow at this. “On the contrary, an irrational fear is a fear that an individual experiences that doesn’t necessarily have any basis behind it.”

“But it does,” she argued. “And it’s not really a fear. If I fear anything, it’s the possibility of suffocation.”

“That is also irrational,” Kale replied. “For us, anyway.”

“I don’t care that it couldn’t permanently kill me,” Birdie retorted. “And I especially don’t like the fact that I could die on multiple occasions from the same thing. Oh… oh god,” a slightly horrified look plastered her face. “What if there are… people out there; Proprietors that haven’t been kept track of, and they died and were buried, and they woke up in their grave, only to suffocate and die and wake up again and again…”

“Whoa there, sis,” Brian put his hand on her shoulder. “That imagination. Sometimes it surprises me that you’re not the writer in this family.”

“Regeneration can’t process without oxygen,” Kale told her. “We’ve had to exhume bodies in the past. Our bodies don’t begin regeneration until the oxygen levels in the surrounding environment are normal or higher.”

“So, the same would happen for drowning, or being burned to…” Birdie’s eyes grew wide and she looked over to Brian. “We… we had you cremated!” she nearly shouted, then looked back to Kale. “We can come back from that?”

“Actually, no,” Kale looked back and forth between the two of them. “You signed off for him to be cremated. But he never got that far.”

“I have his ashes… I mean I had…”

“Funny thing about a lot of those places,” Kale told her, “Is they don’t mind ‘donating a body to science’ for the right price. What you had was beach sand mixed with fireplace ash and some crushed animal bones. You are correct, however.”

“Uh… about what, now?” Birdie was slightly confused as she was still processing this information.

“Being burned to death. If it’s to the degree of cremation, there is no coming back from that. At least, not to our knowledge. There have been occasions where we were too late to retrieve the body. Early enough before regeneration would’ve started, mind you. Some people waste no time putting deceased family members to rest.”

Birdie and Brian sat in silence for a few moments as Kale took a long drink from her coffee cup. “I guess it’s a good thing we waited,” Birdie said a bit quietly…

* * *

Brian led Birdie back to their apartment, through the tunnels. These tunnels were a lot bigger, of course. Aside from the obvious fact that they were underground, it was the same set up as it had been up top. The tunnels were wide and endless. Each standing structure that had been lowered into the ground had its own second foundation in the tunnels, with the lowering structure doubling as a support system for the high ceilings. Birdie felt a little better that she wasn’t having to duck as she walked. The ceilings were at least thirty feet high.

In the blue-tinted lighting, the copper-colored metal and gears took on a more dazzling look. They seemed out of place in the real world. She’d never seen anything like it, outside of fantasy movies she’d seen in her childhood.

“This place is kind of insane,” Birdie commented as they walked.

“I thought we’d already established that.”

“I mean, other than the obvious. The way this place was built, is what I’m talking about. Did the military build it? I know the debriefing area is an old submarine. And I get why it’s separate from everything else. But it seems so out of place compared to all of this,” she waved her hand around at the buildings.

“The military built the tunnels,” Brian told her. “That much I know. It was a lot different before they started constructing for life up top. Apparently there’s this guy, a First-gen, that was this brilliant scientist and mechanical engineer. He came up with the design for everything, and helped build the place. He created the energy system, too. Rumor has it, he was a bit claustrophobic as well,” he smirked. “The military’s system wasn’t adequate enough for his taste, and so he decided to fix it.”

“How do you know so much about that?” Birdie queried.

“Research,” he replied. “Sometimes when I’m writing about my own fictitious world, I tend to forget about the fact that I live pretty much in one, myself. I like to learn about this place; what they let us, anyway. A lot of it is very hush hush, top secret.”

“Why?”

“I think it has to do with whatever those military guys came over for. For safety reasons, I guess. They don’t tell us everything, because they fear if any of us run away, we might be a danger to the rest of us.”

“Makes sense,” she nodded as they continued to walk. “What was his name? The engineer…”

“It’s listed as Rowland ‘Rollo’ Oswyn.”

“That doesn’t sound like an American name,” she commented.

“He wasn’t American,” he confirmed, glancing at her. “That’s the first thing I noticed, too. So I dug a little deeper and discovered he’d come to America with his family as a young man. He was a brilliant inventor and engineer and they recruited him for the military as a strategist, for his renowned genius. His interest in science had him crawling all over the experimental serum, insisting he be part of the trial.”

“There’s public information about all of this?” Birdie looked doubtful.

“Not… really,” he replied. “Remember that friend I told you about?”

“The one that was arrested?”

“That’s the one,” he half-grinned. “He discovered this after years of prying with drunken First-gens on many lonely Friday nights.”

“Something tells me you carried on that legacy after he left.”

“What ever would give you that idea?” he raised a brow, a smirk playing on his lips.

Birdie let out an amused laugh. “So… Oswyn. I take it he’s one of the First-gens that is no longer with us?”

“No one seems to know the answer to that,” Brian told her as they came into view of their apartment building. “Rumor has it he left with the Defectors. But his interests seemed so loyal to this place, it doesn’t seem like that would be the case. He might’ve been killed. Like permanently.”

“Assassinated?”

“Who knows,” he replied with a sigh as they reached their front door. “It doesn’t make much sense, though, to kill off someone who was so important to this place.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed, then was overpowered by a yawn.

“Oh don’t start that,” Brian chided, then was hit with a yawn of his own. “Damn you!”

“Sorry!” she laughed. “I’m kind of exhausted.”

“Your first day top-side on Pritchard’s Island has been an exceptional one. And you just got a huge promotion, as temporary as it might be. I think you should probably get a little sleep before it starts all over again in the morning.”

As they stepped into the apartment, a realization dawned on Birdie. “Oh hell,” she shook her head.

“What?” Brian turned in question.

“Reesy and Emmett. I’m supposed to shop with them tomorrow. God, what if they were hurt today? How can I find out? Are there phones?” she looked worriedly around the room for signs of such a device.

“Alright, first of all,” Brian said in a calming tone, “Civilians aren’t really allowed, nor do they have reason to be around the landing strip. They’re probably fine.” He watched as Birdie swallowed and nodded. “Secondly, no phones. Too easy to slip up and call the outside world. But we do have a communication device for anywhere on our part of the island.” He walked over to the couch and moved a few things off of the coffee table, revealing an embedded console that Birdie wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

The coffee table was a rectangular box made of the same type of material she’d seen on the buildings. The top’s surface was so smooth it almost looked like glass. But when Brian pressed a brass button, and a panel opened up, it was clear to her that it wasn’t.

“PICS, it’s Brian Farran,” he said. Birdie glanced around the room for a moment, in slight confusion.

“Good evening, Brian Farran. How can I connect you?” a child’s voice sounded from the console.

“Teresa Jane, please,” he said.

“Contacting. Please hold.” Brian motioned for Birdie to come sit beside him, as they waited.

“PICS?” she questioned.

“Pritchard’s Island Comm System,” he explained. “Anyone you wanna contact, you can ask for through voice command. It’ll call the recipient and ask them if they’re available to take a call. If they accept, it’ll patch us through. If they don’t wanna take it, or they’re not home, it’ll give us an option to leave a video message.”

“Ah,” she nodded in understanding. “So we’ve gotta be presentable in order to make a call.”

“Well, not necessarily. There’s an audio-only option, as well. Just have to specify it to PICS.”

“Connecting now,” the voice said, finally, and a hologram screen like the one Birdie had seen at the precinct popped up over the table.

Reesy’s face came into view and Birdie suddenly felt a flush of relief. “Oh good! You’re okay,” she told her.

“Hey there, Birdie,” she waved. “Hey, Brian. Glad to see you two are okay. Crazy first day top-side, huh?”

“Definitely not dull. Have you heard from Emmett?”

“He was called in to O.S as part of a research team.”

“With Maverick,” Birdie surmised, and Reesy nodded. “Have they made any progress?”

“I’m honestly not sure. You’d probably hear about it before I would. Speaking of, how’d your first day on the job go?”

Birdie grimaced for a split second. “Considering I’m training as I go? I guess it wasn’t too bad.”

“There’s like four Observers that aren’t in regeneration,” Brian chimed in. “Birdie totally got promoted.”

“Promotion on your first day? You go, girl,” she smiled.

“I’d hardly call for congratulations,” Birdie half-grinned. “But thanks. Anyway, sorry to bug you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Well I’m glad you bugged me, sweetie. And I’m glad you two are okay, too. I’m gonna have to go help out at R.R tomorrow, so I have to rain-check our shopping trip again. Sorry.” she grimaced, hating to cancel on her.

“That’s okay,” Birdie replied. “I have a feeling I’m gonna be wearing a uniform for a while, anyway.”

“And I can take her to get a few things, in the meantime,” Brian offered.

“He’s actually not half bad at picking out nice clothes,” she smiled, brows raised.

“Oh honey, I know,” she told her. “We dragged him shopping his first day up, and he barely needed any help once we got him to the store.” Birdie shared a small laugh. “Alright, sugar. I’ve gotta go. Get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye Reesy,” Birdie waved.

“Bye, Reese,” Brian waved as well. “Tell Jodie I said hey.”

“Will do,” she smiled, and Birdie saw as she reached for something in front of the screen, and the call ended.

Birdie let out a sigh, then turned to Brian. “Please tell me we get better beds than what they had in debriefing.”

“Oh of course,” he said, scrunching up his face for a moment as if that should’ve been obvious. “Come on,” he stood and made his way around the couch. “I have something you can sleep in for tonight, too.” He led Birdie down a narrow hallway to the bedroom on the far end. The light flickered on as they entered it. “I hate how the lighting looks when we’re underground,” he commented as he walked to his dresser.

Birdie looked around his bedroom and noted how much, even with the completely different style of furniture available to them on the island, it looked like Brian’s room, sans the trash. There were clothes strewn about on the floor, empty coffee cups from the shop on his end table, and general disarray. It didn’t smell bad. It smelled like him, though. Like Brian before the drugs. Something inside of her felt as though it burst. Something like the little glass tube filled with hydrogen peroxide that lays within the casing of a glow stick. Only, instead of glowing as it mixed with everything else, it ignited underlying emotion that she’d been able to re-shelve a little of, since finding him that morning.

Brian found a pair of drawstring pajama pants and a tee shirt amongst the disaster that was his second drawer. “These should do,” he said before turning to hand them to her. But he froze in the action when he saw that there were tears streaming down her face. “I-I’m sorry it’s a mess,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone, and usually don’t have people over…” Birdie’s breath picked up and her face skewed with something Brian rarely ever saw her outwardly express. There was panic and sadness in her eyes. “Birdie?” he dropped the clothes as his heart clenched in his chest, and he took the few steps to reach her. “Birdie, what’s wrong?” he put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet his eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied, her eyes darting everywhere but at his. “I… I think I’m… having trouble believing this is real. That this is really you…” she breathed in shakily, at the same time hating that she was crying in front of him.

Brian pulled her into a hug, squeezing her so tight that it had to hurt on some level. “Honestly, I’ve felt the same way all day,” he replied, softly. “Seeing you in the coffee shop, and every insane moment after, I kept having to pinch myself to see if I was really awake. I’m actually kinda scared I’ll wake up tomorrow and you won’t be here.” He blinked back his own sudden onset of tears.

Birdie’s arms snaked around Brian’s back and squeezed back, taking comfort in the solidity of it. “As long as we’re on the same page, here,” she let out a small laugh, and felt the slight shaking in Brian’s chest as he did the same. She pulled away after a few moments. “I feel like I need a shower, after today.”

“Oh,” he shook his head as if to clear it. Birdie was a pro at putting things back on the shelf, even after they’d just toppled off of it, and he’d never met another woman able to do the same. He watched as she quickly dried the wetness from her face and squared her shoulders. “I’ll show you your room. It’s been a guest room, up until now. Even has it’s own bathroom,” he explained as he led her back out to the hallway, stooping to grab the fallen pajamas before they left his room.

The lights flickered on in the same fashion once they entered Birdie’s room. This room was clearly different than Brian’s. It seemed cold; not in temperature, as that was perfectly controlled, but cold in personality. It was like a motel room; neutral and uncharacteristic. Clean, but unused. The bed was an adequate size and dressed in the same robin’s egg blue as her debriefing clothes. The window was hidden by copper-colored metallic blinds, and the dresser was the same as Brian’s; hand-crafted wood with brass pulls.

“You’ve got a big closet over there,” he pointed to a closed set of pocket doors on the wall beside the bed. “Anything you need before we can get to the store, just ask me. I refuse to share underwear, however.”

“I’m fine going commando, thank you very much,” she glared.

“Ew,” he scrunched his face for a moment.

“You expect me to wear the same ones I have, until then?”

“No. But I don’t wanna know when you’re going commando.”

“Easily obliged,” she replied.

“Here’s the bathroom,” he pointed out, quickly changing the subject. The lights flickered on as he entered. “There are towels in here in the cabinet, and stuff to wash with already in the shower. Everything here is hand-made by people on the island, so whatever you used before, get used to doing without. This stuff is good, though. And there are different scents and stuff at the store, so if you don’t like those, you can get something else.”

“Where’s the washer and dryer?”

“We don’t have them,” he told her. “There’s a launderer downtown. We take everything there. They hand-wash everything.” Birdie looked a bit uncomfortable with that thought. “I wash some of my own things here. Like underwear, because I’ll be damned if anyone is touching my underwear besides me.”

“And I’m sure they appreciate that,” she raised her brows, amused.

“Hey, those people wash everyone’s underwear,” he retorted. “I just like some of my business to be my own.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll go ahead and do my own, as well… Wait, everyone’s? No one has a washer or dryer?”

“It’s inefficient to have them,” he told her. “There’s one area where everything is contained and done. Everyone needs a job on the island. It’s how we pay for everything else. There are people that rotate in and out of that place day and night.”

“A twenty-four hour Laundromat? That sounds very convenient.”

“Considering there are over two hundred and fifty people’s clothes to wash, it’s kinda necessary.”

“How does money work here?” she asked, intrigued, as she walked to the shower and began inspecting the soaps.

“It’s not really money, so much as credits,” he explained, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. “Whatever job you work, and however many hours, goes into a credit system. So it’s kinda like bartering, in a way. Your I.D is also your credit card, so to speak. Whatever profits I make off my books goes onto my credit. The actual money goes to the government sector that funds the island. My credits are worth as much, though. Pretty much everything I need or want is covered, and then some.”

“Guess you’re books do well then,” she raised a brow.

“Not too bad,” he smirked, revealing the dimple on his left cheek. “Plus, anything I want that’s not on the island, I can bribe and transfer credits to a hunting Observer.”

“Hunting?” she questioned. “You mean when we go to fetch a Proprietor?”

“That, or when they’ve located a Defector,” he told her. “It’s rare, but sometimes they find them on the grid. They’ve gotta go pick them up and try not to cause a scene in the meantime.”

Birdie nodded in understanding. “So what kind of stuff do you usually ask them to get?”

“Eh,” he let out a breath as he thought. “Books, magazines, games, movies… or stuff they don’t quite make the way I like, here. Wish I could convince them to let me have a car.”

“Where would you drive it?” she looked at him incredulously. “There’s no where to drive and nothing to drive on. Not to mention gasoline.”

“I just miss driving, I guess,” he got a reminiscent look on his face.

“Maybe you can bribe one of us to take you on a hunt with us,” she smirked. “I’m guessing we have to drive when we’re out there.”

“I’d have to do some serious bribing. Even at the right price, they’ve gotta clear it with the big boss. Or risk losing their job by sneaking me along. Though, it would be easier for me, since I don’t report to an outside job, and I spend most of my time at home. I’d have to bribe to barista not to mention they haven’t seen me at the shop,” he laughed.

“I’m thinking this is totally doable,” she said, seriously.

“Yeah?” he got a bit of an excited look on his face. “Well, that’d be awesome. But I’d hold off a while, at least. You’re new on the job, and I can’t imagine you having to serve coffee for a living if you get canned.” They shared a laugh at that.

* * *

After they each had a shower, Birdie convinced Brian to let her stay in his room for the night. She told him it was because her bedroom creeped her out a bit. But in reality, she just wanted to be near him. She wanted to be able to just look over, if she woke up in the night, and be reassured that he was still there. He didn’t even fight her about it, since he felt the same way.

They laid there on their separate sides of the king-sized bed, Brian staring up at the ceiling, and Birdie on her side facing him. The lights were out, but the blue glowing numbers on the alarm clock beside the bed illuminated the room enough to see each other.

“Do you remember dying?” Birdie asked, quietly, after several minutes of silence.

Brian turned his head to glance at her for a moment, before looking up at the ceiling. “Do you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, thinking back. “I remember it was cold. It was raining and I was lying in the street.”

“How did you die?” he looked at her again.

“I was shot,” she told him. “Chasing a suspect,” she elaborated. “He was scared. I don’t think he’d ever shot anyone before. I remember his face just before he ran away again. I felt sorry for him.”

“He’d just shot you, and you felt sorry for him?”

“I knew I was gonna die, but I felt sorry that he’d just basically ended his whole life with a split-second decision,” she explained. “He was so young.” She watched as Brian looked back up at the ceiling.

“I remember talking to Mom,” he said.

“She called you to check in, she said.”

“Yeah,” he let out a small, breathy laugh. “She wanted to know if I was any closer to finishing my book. I told her I didn’t have time for it, with work. I’d already had a hit in my system and was too far gone to continue the conversation. I told her I’d call her the next day.”

“Then you ordered a pizza,” she added.

“I did,” he looked over at her for a moment, then back to the ceiling. “And as soon as I hung up with them, I took another hit. It made me so floaty and tired, I laid my head back on the arm of the couch and passed out. That’s the last thing I remember, before waking up in debriefing.”

There were a few moments of silence as they both thought. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Was it because we saw Dad?”

“Kind of,” he let out a breath. “I was so… pissed at myself for doing anything at all, that night. Seeing Dad hurt, and I didn’t wanna feel it. That, and what I made you promise me,” he looked over at her again. “I felt like I’d given you a burden you didn’t deserve to have to carry. Those things, coupled with the guilt of screwing up sobriety, made me do even more.” Birdie heard him swallow. “I am sorry, Birdie. I didn’t mean to die. I swear that much. And I’m sorry I screwed up. And I’m really sorry that you had to find me like that. If it’d been the other way around… Hell, Birdie, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going like you can.”

“Brian…”

“I’m serious. Hell, Dad isn’t even dead, and look how I handled that. I wasn’t even as close to him as I am to you. You’re… You’re stronger than me.”

There was a silent moment between them as she let that absorb. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she told him. “Everything’s different, now. Not just this place, or what we are. But you… You’re you, Brian. Not drugs. I can honestly say that I’m glad. I’m happy, even. I’m happy we’re here.” Even in the dim light, Brian could see her genuine smile. He returned it, in silent agreement.

FIVE

Birdie awoke to the false sunlight flowing around the edges of the blinds in Brian’s room. It lit up her brother’s silhouette, making him look angelic, and she laughed at the thought.

She pushed herself up, being careful not to shake the bed and wake him, and made her way out into the kitchen to start coffee. The kitchen was clean, most likely because he never used it. The stainless steel coffee pot had a thin layer of dust on it, reminding her that his morning routine likely consisted of going to the coffee shop instead of actually brewing it himself.

Brian awoke to the smell of coffee, maybe twenty minutes later. For a moment, he forgot where he was. But as soon as he came to his senses, he rushed out of bed and out into the hall, searching for proof that yesterday hadn’t just been a dream. There stood Birdie, stirring sugar into her cup of coffee. She glanced over at him.

“The milk in the fridge looked questionable,” she said. “I figured I’d just go without. Good morning, by the way.”

He smiled.

* * *

“You gonna bring your brother to work with you every day?” Agent Kale asked as they walked the tunnels toward R.R.

Birdie glanced to Brian, who walked slightly behind them, then back to Kale. “Brian is currently having writer’s block,” she told her. “And I figured we could use a hand still. But if you’re opposed—”

“It’s fine,” Kale cut her off. “I was merely asking out of curiosity. He’s a decent shot, or so he proved yesterday. Unless that was luck.”

“Birdie taught me,” Brian told her. “I’m also not opposed to manual labor, if it’s needed. But don’t give me busy work. If you need to give me busy work, just send me home. I’m here to help; not out of boredom.”

“Acceptable,” Kale replied after a moment of consideration. “So you’re good at training?” she glanced to Birdie.

“I’m good at training what I know how to do,” she replied, straightening her uniform top. “But I’ve not even completed training here. Why do you ask?”

Kale sighed as they approached the hatch to R.R. “We may have to start recruiting,” she told her. The three of them filed in through the hatch door, and Kale closed and secured it before walking across the small hallway to another one. This door had a console beside it, and Kale pulled her I.D card that hung on a retractable cord on her belt, and swiped it over the device. The red light above the door turned green, and there was a loud clicking sound behind the door. Kale then opened the hatch and made her way inside with the siblings.

“Agent Kale,” Dr. Foster approached from the hall they were walking through.

“Aaron,” she greeted. “Working a double shift?”

“Just got in an hour ago,” he told her. “I was informed you’d be coming in.” He glanced over at Birdie and Brian. “Nice to see you again,” he told them, trying to be friendly, though it was clear by his demeanor that he had urgent news. “Do they have clearance?” he asked Kale.

She arched an eyebrow. “Would they be with me, if they didn’t?”

“Right,” he nodded. “We’ve discovered something,” he told her. “And we have a big problem.”

“Other than the obvious?”

“On top of it,” he replied. “Same problem; bigger consequences.”

“Has something else happened?” she asked as they approached a set of sliding steel doors.

“Eh… not exactly. It’s just that we’re only now realizing the extent of it,” he explained. The doors opened and Birdie realized that it was an elevator. She hesitantly followed them as they filed into it. “Everyone is in the conference room,” he told them. “We’ve just been waiting on you, to start.”

“Everyone?”

“Maverick’s team, the R.R staff and myself. Well, I’m obviously not in there right now.”

“Obviously,” Kale rose a brow again. Aaron pushed a button and the shaft began moving downward.

Birdie looked at the button pad where Dr. Foster had punched level C1. She noted that there was a button for every letter in the alphabet, and decided that there must be other elevators if these were all followed by the number one. She recalled a building she’d visited during a case when she was with the DEA, that had a similar system.

“I came over here this morning when I was asked to come confirm their findings,” Aaron told them. “I wish I could tell you all I know, but I think it’d be best to hear it all in one place.” The elevator stopped, and mere moments later the doors swished open. “After you,” the doctor moved away from the exit and allowed the others to leave the shaft. He then headed out, himself, and led them toward the conference room.

This hallway was unlike anything else Birdie had seen on the island, and from the way Brian looked around, it was likely he’d never been here before, either. The entire walkway was black. The floor was an endless rubberized grate leading all the way to its end, and the walls on either side of them looked like marble. It was so smooth, Birdie could see her reflection as if it were a mirror. Overhead, were hundreds of small lights, no bigger than a dime around, each. Their placement made Birdie think of the night sky in Dagsboro. And though they were tiny, the hallway was lit very well.

When they reached the end of the walkway, the sliding door at the end swished open, and they entered a large room, similar to the walkway as far as the walls and lighting went. There was nothing lining the walls, as far as pictures or decor. A large, oblong table sat in the middle of the room, and several people were seated around it. One of them, Birdie recognized. Emmett smiled at her once their eyes met. She returned the smile, shortly, before her nerves reminded her that they were here for an important reason that was still unknown to her.

“Amber Farran,” a child’s voice came from the far end of the table. Birdie and Brian both looked over to see the young boy as he stood from his chair and walked toward her. He appeared no older than twelve, but the way he was dressed in a navy blue uniform similar to the black ones the Observers wore, the way his hair was styled, and the way he carried himself, it was more likely that he was much older.

“Do you know me?” Birdie asked.

“I do,” he replied as he approached. “We’ve never met in person, but I know who you are.” Instinctively, she dropped to one knee so that she wasn’t towering over him, and extended her hand to greet him. He took it. “My name is Simon.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Sir,” she told him.

There was a small moment where his brow twitched, not having expected the immediate level of respect the woman gave him without knowing exactly who he was. “We’ve been waiting for you,” he told her. She looked into Simon’s eyes, somehow able to sense that there was a wisdom within him that surpassed anyone she’d ever known.

Simon drew his hand away and turned toward the table. “Maverick,” he called, “Your report.”

“Sir,” he nodded as he stood. Maverick looked a bit older than anyone else in the room. Definitely more gruff, as well. He was a head shorter than Dr. Foster, who was still standing a bit to the side of him. He had a beard and mustache that wasn’t altogether inappropriate, however not exactly professional enough to be working in that room. His hair was brown and peppered with gray hairs, and he was wearing civilian clothing, topped of with a baseball cap.

“Agent Kale asked me to form a team to investigate into the Defectors’ confiscated weapons,” Maverick began. “What we found, was that there was a chemical compound in each round of ammunition,” he hit a button on the console in front of his chair on the table top, illuminating a large holographic screen in the center of the table for all to see. The image showed a picture of one of the unspent rounds dissected during the investigation. “Our resident chemists and medical experts haven’t been able to determine the compound,” he continued, “But did a series of trials that indicate its purpose.” He pressed another button on the console, and the screen showed a magnified simulation of Proprietor cells repairing themselves, then another simulation of the same cells exposed to the compound, which stopped the cells from repairing from their damaged state.

“To inhibit regeneration,” Kale surmised.

“Exactly,” Maverick told her. He pushed another button, showing the plane wreckage. “The compound was also found in the wreckage. Everything within the crash radius was effected.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that the people killed yesterday are…” Birdie’s questions drifted off before she could finish.

“Still dead, yes,” Dr. Foster told her.

“Permanently?” Kale asked, seeming slightly disturbed at the thought.

“We don’t know that yet,” Foster replied. “And we’re not sure when we’ll know. Not unless we can find whoever created the compound.”

“Which means you’re down to a handful of agents, Kale,” Maverick said. “Also means you’re the new boss.”

“Enough agents to take scouting,” Kale said, trying to remain as calm as possible.”And I’m capable of taking whatever position is appointed to me.” She looked over at Birdie for a moment, then back to Maverick, then to Simon. “In fact, as my first action I’d like to appoint Agent Farran as my second in command, until further notice.”

“She’s got no experience,” Maverick argued, raising a skeptical brow.

“She has more law enforcement experience than any of the agents currently in commission,” Kale retorted. “She just needs to be read in. Completely.”

“Come on,” Maverick gruffly objected. “You’ve gotta be a ten-year loyal in order to be read in. You know that.”

“I don’t see where we have much of a choice under the circumstances,” Kale’s head tilted in frustration with the man.

“Enough,” Simon interjected. Kale and Maverick looked to him. “Agent Kale is right. It is necessary.” Maverick clenched his jaw. “Everyone is dismissed. Agent and Mr. Farran may remain.”

“The book nerd gets read in, too?” Maverick asked, incredulously.

“Book nerd?” Brian looked offended.

“Mav, honey,” Emmett said as he stood and gathered his things, “I think you need to loosen the ball cap and go home and have a drink of that fifty year old whiskey you keep bragging so much about.”

“Why don’t you shut your cherry trap, Abner,” he scowled back.

“Oh cherry trap! I like that,” he smiled. Maverick growled, picked up his things and stormed out. Emmett glanced over to Birdie as he made his way to the door, himself. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Mav’s just jealous because he can’t go hunting with the big boys. Too much of a trouble maker.” He winked at her and filed out with the rest of the dismissed team.

Once the door closed and the three of them were alone, Simon turned to one of the walls. “I’m sure you’ve been told about the Regeneration Room and Detention?”

“Yes,” Birdie replied.

“Both are located here. Where we are right now, specifically, is sub-level C, sector one. It’s where Detention begins.”

“Where does it end?” Brian asked.

“Sub-level Z,” Simon glanced away from the wall as he told him.

“What exactly is Detention?” Birdie asked. “I know it’s sort of like a jail.”

“Yes. For the most part, it is. Let me show you.” Simon looked back at the wall and reached out to press a button. It was then that Birdie realized that what she thought was black marble, was actually more like a two-way mirror. The room’s light dimmed down dramatically, as lights began to flicker on the other side of it.

The depth of the room beyond the mirror seemed endless. Brian and Birdie stood there staring in awe as the blue-tinted globes continued to light up. They were at least a few yards away from the room. It took a few moments to realize that each blue-lit globe was actually a liquid-filled capsule, housing a single body.

There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands, it seemed, as the lights kept flickering on farther and farther down. The room was so deep, they couldn’t see to the bottom of it. The pod-like structures wrapped around off the sides, surely continuing past where they could see.

“When a Proprietor chooses to become a Defector, they essentially announce themselves enemies of their own people,” Simon told them. “We do our best to recover and rehabilitate them. But more often than not, they are beyond our help. Because they are so dangerous, there are only two options. Put them behind bars like a normal prison, or do the more humane thing and put them in stasis.”

“Stasis?” Brian questioned. “They’re…”

“They’re dead,” Birdie finished for him. “They’re being kept drowned.”

“They’re Proprietors,” Simon reminded them. “If we were to take them out, they would regenerate. Which is more than we can say for what they did to the Observers today. Or the military personnel that died on the plane they blew up.”

Birdie and Brian looked back out at the pods as they considered what Simon told them. Though it seemed a bit cruel, it made sense. The Defectors were murderers. This way might even have been better than they deserved.

Birdie looked thoughtful for a moment before turning back to Simon. “Earlier, you said you’d been waiting for me. What did you mean by that?”

“Just as I said,” he told her. “We’d been expecting this day. The day the Defectors would go to great lengths and strike against us like this. They were waiting for you, too.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. “Why would they be waiting for me?”

“Because their leaders have been preparing them for it. For the day that came to be that both of you were here.”

“Their leaders? What do they have to do with us?” Brian asked. “Why do we matter to them? Who are they?”

Simon turned away from the glass and faced the siblings. “Your parents,” he told them. “Your real parents…”

To be continued…

Teaser from Book Two

“Why do you think our parents deserted the island?” Birdie asked Brian as they sat on the couch in their apartment.

“Probably the same reason as anyone,” he replied.

“You said people were brainwashed by other Defectors. But they’re their leaders. They started everything!”

“That’s not necessarily true…”

* * *

“Time for your first hunting trip, Agent Farran,” Kale said as she threw her a set of keys.

“What are these for?”

“How do you think we get off of this island?” she raised a brow.

* * *

“You’re Farran’s daughter,” the Defector realized, twitching his arms against the cuffs that bound his wrists. Birdie didn’t respond, but simply watched him from where she sat across the bench in the back seat of the truck. “You don’t understand. Everything we’ve done, everything we came back out of the woodwork for was for you and your brother…”

Copyright

© 2013, C.M. Adams. Except as provided by the Copyright Act no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Content

C.M. Adams
VERSION 2.0

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

Teaser from Book Two

Copyright