2.7.1

Twice is No Accident

“Is it Terrell?” He gently pried. “What he said?”

Astrid’s expression colored with regret, and she contemplated denial. But her companion warranted better.

She straightened. And after a deep breath, confessed, “He was right about some things.”

“And what’s that?” Anders bristled, defensive in her stead.

“That it was Endra for a reason. It had to be,” she answered. “This was personal.”

“Astrid, even if it is the Static Opposition, the people in the S.O., they’re out to get your kind. They’ve already decided they hate Channelers. Your personal influence wouldn’t have changed that. It would have been somewhere, regardless.”

“Exactly.” Astrid wrestled with the warble in her voice. She loathed how it sounded. “They would have been happy with any target. But it was Endra because of me. It was my fault it was Harlowe. Boone, Jackie, Cecil, Maureen, Martin, Paolo…”

She listed off the dead, but she ran out of strength too soon. Her voice cracked and she choked it back. She crossed her arms as if she could gather composure within them, but they provided little. There remained a roll call of ghosts now in her path, and her only way through was to face it, over and over.

Anders moved to reach for her. But he paused. Uncertain, he searched her face for a reason to withdraw.

But she couldn’t bring herself to give him one. For a moment, his care disrupted her gloom and guilt. And she craved the respite. She folded herself into him before he retreated completely.

He hugged her close and enveloped her in white noise, that, with relief, fizzled away at the sharpness of her other thoughts and senses. His warmth seeped into her.

She began to suspect why the Sanctuary denied such affection. The sense of security and longing could easily become addictive. Already, she wanted to believe it wouldn’t be the last time she’d feel it.

When she looked up, his eyes waited to meet hers. But a softness pooled behind the cool color. Something deep she couldn’t identify, no matter how openly he bore it.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered. “For stopping me from… whatever it was I was going to do to him.”

“I didn’t do it for him.”

Something unspoken buzzed just under his energy, like a lie without the deceit. It didn’t feel volatile or dark, but still, her senses pricked that he obscured something.

The feeling sat in direct contradiction to the honesty of his evocative stare.

A second set of feet on the staircase forced them apart. By the time the captain’s form ascended into the room, across from Astrid, Anders regathered his neglected supplies and marched on to his own task.

Captain London didn’t stop to talk. He, too, only passed through. Though he offered his specialist a nod on his way.

Her eyes followed his retreating back, and her brows pinched together. Surely, she reasoned, kindness alone was not something Anders would shield from the captain.

~~~

With the toll of the day heavy on her spirit, Astrid relied on her gifted music player for some semblance of peace.

The team handily broke her playlists down by theme. “Uppers”, “Dance Mix”, “Adrenaline”, and “Calming”. She flipped with her fingertip through to the last category, and found a pack of sub-folders for lullabies, lyrical, and instrumental.

She played each a few seconds at the time, until one caught her and carried her away. A sweet piano, in dreamy arpeggios and cradling riffs soothed her heart.

She closed her eyes and let the tune tame her turmoiled soul. And somehow, she found sleep.

But the morning brought bustle. And with Romo and Anders both preoccupied in their own tasks, that left Tenya, Dell, and Astrid, to go over their possible clues as to where to look for the kidnapped Channelers.

“This is brutal,” Dell complained over his scrambled eggs. He flipped between files on his own device. “School functions, field trips, exchanges. Students travel in packs all the time. So far there’s aways been a paper trail and everyone is accounted for, but the sheer mass of data is endless.”

“Are you following the food?” Tenya suggested while she eyed Astrid’s extra breakfast.

“There’s at least two new settlements a year, and only half of them make it past the first couple years. Food supplies are being shipped through the mail like greeting cards!”

“There must be some kind of metric we’ve missed,” Tenya insisted.

Astrid rested her head on one of her hands, propped up on her elbow. “They can’t be taking them to high-traffic areas or high-tech settlements. Too conspicuous and unpredictable. Anywhere they’d hold Channeler children has got to be isolated.”

“And Intel hasn’t picked up on anything?” Tenya pressed.

Dell shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard. No random factory plants starting up, no unexplainable power surges, nothing.”

“Where is Romo, anyway?” Tenya peered at his empty seat. Anders, too, remained absent, but that grew increasingly common with his rise in command, as he often met with the captain over breakfast.

“Shaely’s gone, too.” Astrid looked over at the other table.

“We got a long-range call this morning from one of the buoys. Maybe they’re still in it,” Dell suggested. “If so, it means a lot of info is being exchanged. That’s good.”

“Ground team, report to the War Room.” The lieutenant-commander’s voice cracked over the ship’s intercom, and the remaining crew looked to one another.

With a sigh, Tenya piled up their food. “Well, I guess we’re going to find out. Let’s go.”

Astrid nodded and popped the last bite of her toast in her mouth.

~~~

Tenya, Dell, and Astrid hurried to the center for briefing, where Anders, Romo, and the captain already waited.

Astrid dusted herself off and drew near the table. Dell, too, brought his tablet and looked expectantly to the others.

“We’ve heard from another Sanctuary,” London started without preamble. “Lorelei. They were attacked yesterday.”

The room scrabbled to react. But with nothing to do, blinks and parted mouths abounded.

“What?” Astrid asked him to repeat it.

“I’ve been on the wire with them all morning. Thankfully they had the good sense to reach out to the Service, until they were led to us. The brass has agreed to forward all future messages to us directly.”

“F-future?”

“It’s the same method of operations, Hale,” the captain warned her. “They detailed the same tactics, the same deployment, and the same goal. The kids were taken. Anyone who resisted were put down, mostly adults and Guardians.”

Tenya stepped closer to Astrid, though she kept her eyes on London. “So, they’re going to do this again?”

“Likely, yes.”

All the color drained from Astrid’s face. She discreetly steadied herself against the table. “How many?”

“Eleven dead. Twenty-three injured. Fourteen missing.”

She tried everything she could to stabilize the shaking in her limbs while London spoke on.

“They’re forwarding the roster now. However, this is still more information. We can work with this.”

“Lorelei is out along the edge of controlled space. Like Endra. Harder to defend,” Romo noted. “So, if this is a long-term campaign, they’re probably starting out in what they consider the easiest marks.”

“And they had to hit Endra first. They knew we’d be tipped off eventually, and that we’d be watching Endra the closest,” Anders contributed. “Smart.”

“We have to expect they’ll do it again,” the captain pressed on. “They either plan on hitting them all, or just enough to carry out the next step of their plan, whatever it may be. We need to start getting ahead of this. If we can figure out the pattern, we can estimate where they might hit next and be ready. It’s our only hope of getting there quick enough to do anything about it.”

“Astrid, you alright?” Romo asked when she didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

She pushed down all her emotion to focus. She needed to do something about it now.

“So, are we going on site? To check in on Lorelei?”

London tucked his arms behind him. Not often did he look uncomfortable, but he did now, when he answered, “No. They asked that we keep our distance. They’d rather the Aldebaran not be seen anywhere near them.”

“What?” Tenya scowled. “Why?”

But the older man’s dark eyes settled on his own resident Channeler.

She inferred his meaning. As did the others, it seemed.