VIII
When I wake, it is to gull cries and the gentle surge of the ocean. I open my eyes and above me a vault of blue shines brightly. Clutches of puffy clouds scatter about on the wind. I sit up and see the cat lying quiet next to me. Sensing my movement, it picks up its head, slits its eyes at me, then lays its head back on its paws.
I lay on the deck of a large oil rig. Off in the distance, other rigs – dozens of them – sit atop the sea like floating metal pyramids. Small boats run between them under the open sky.
Directly behind me is a wrecked control room, the glass front long since shattered. There are two men sitting inside with large rifles leaning against the wall between them. One of them speaks into a small radio. Several minutes later, a man comes walking towards me.
It is Bennett, and he is smiling.
Bennett is a friend of Aisling’s I never figured out if they used to date, but then again, I never gave a shit once Aisling and I got married. He came around once in a while, hung out with us. All I can remember is that he is some kind of activist, or something. From where I am standing, it occurs to me that he must have found himself some very generous backers.
I start to ask the first of at least a dozen questions, but he tells me to follow him inside. I pick up the cat and follow. We walk down a short hallway and into a large room that once must have been the rec room for the derrick crew. There is a new looking plasma screen propped up on several crates, wires running up and out through a hole torn in the ceiling. Bennett takes a cracked plastic seat and I take another, then he flips on a news channel and turns up the volume.
The video showing is a live shot from a hovering helicopter. The images are of the exterior of a squat, multi level building with a tall fence and a guard house. There are multiple ambulances in the foreground, and in the background, stretchers being wheeled in and out of the front door. An armed squad of soldiers stands at the gates, preventing any of the press from getting onto the grounds. Bennett flips through several channels all of which are showing the same images from slightly different angles. I put the cat down on the floor. It squats at my feet and begins to purr.
“We’ve had men looking for you for weeks now. Ais finally got us some intel on where you were located. The place is a fortress, and I really didn’t know how the fuck to get you out, but as soon as you started doing…,“ he gestures to the screen, “whatever it was that you did in there, my man inside made a call and well…I called in a few favors.”
“A few favors?”
Bennett smiles. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Dai. But that’s for some other time.”
He moves his chair in a little closer and looks at me with concern.
“Listen Dai, I don’t know how you did what you did in there, and I’m damn curious, to be sure, but I don’t really have the luxury of time right now. Things have happened since you walked away from that. Aisling, for one. She’s been taken.”
“By whom?”
“The Forces. They’re putting word out that they’ll exchange her for you.”
I laughed. “It’s her fucking father. It’s a goddamn trap. He’d never let anything happen to her.”
“Dai, we want to be there at the exchange. It’s Ais’ father that we want, and we’re pretty sure he’s going to be there.” He turns down the sound on the Plasma as a commercial comes on. “At this point, we think you can take care of yourself Maybe even help us.”
“Not you, too. For fuck’s sake, Bennett.”
“Help us, Dai.”
“Help you do what, exactly? The Forces are at war, what do you want to do?”
“We want to bring the government to its knees. Stop the war, pull everyone out. Disband the foreign presence of the Forces and start taking care of the country.”
The outburst has somehow strengthened his resolve because his eyes harden and he says, “you want to help us with that, or do you want to slink off and feel sorry for yourself because you’ve been cursed with something? Your call, Dai.”
He leans back in his chair somehow pleased with himself. It squeals in protest. I realize I don’t like him at all.
“It’s a nasty world out there, ” he finishes.
“I can’t control it, Bennett. I get pushed past a certain place and it just…comes out of me. I’m not a fucking super hero. I’m like a leaky firehose for chrissakes.”
What choice do I really have? All I really want is Aisling. I realize that I will do anything anyone asks of me even though it sounds ill conceived. I wanted her with me. For all time. Away from him. From them.
Bennett leaves me alone. Events seem out of my hands, controlled now by forces I can’t begin to understand and rushing towards some terrible future. But the cat is content, and purrs against my legs.