Chapter 34
Conspiratorial Emotions
The group changed back into their normal clothes in an uncomfortable silence. Ezra cleared his throat and began, “Look, guys–”
“Oh, good,” Sarah interrupted him, sarcasm thick in her voice. “Ezra has something to say. I wonder what amazing things will pour from his mouth this time.” She angrily kicked the bench.
Ezra felt his face flush, but he did his best to stay calm. “I probably deserve that, and I just wanted–”
“Yes, you do deserve that!” Sarah shouted him down. “You deserve it because you wanted to go play the hero, to show that you're better and more clever than everyone else! I hope you're happy.”
“Well it's not like you were doing much better!”
Mat placed a firm hand on Ezra's shoulder. “Just drop it man.”
“No,” Sarah's voice came out a little hoarse, her eyes wide with fury. “No, I want to hear what the great and powerful Ezra Hawkins has to say. Go on, tell me how I wasn't helping! Tell me how you knew better after one whole mission!”
“Maybe I did!” Ezra yelled back, brushing Mat's hand aside. “What were you going to do, huh? Sit there and wait for the water-seer to catch us? Fight the strucking earth-crowned? Let her drag that little girl off like an animal?”
Sarah's fist caught Ezra's jaw, shutting him up and sending him sprawling to the floor.
“Whoa, hey!” Mat jumped between them, holding Sarah back. “Cool it, cool it. Bad things happen, okay?”
“This was my life!” Sarah screamed at Ezra. “This was all I had left! After my family, and Rob, and... and everything! And you just came in here and ruined it! Do you understand, Hawkins? Are you happy now?”
“I-I'm sorry.” Ezra blinked away tears and stars, holding his jaw as he looked up at Sarah, regretting his words, and not just because she'd hit him. “I'm sorry, alright? I didn't know... I-I didn't think–”
“Yeah, you didn't think You never think, do you? You already have it all. But that just wasn't enough, was it? You had to take what was mine too!”
“Sarah, listen, calm down.” Mat's voice was cautious, soothing. “It's gonna be alright. I mean, bad things–”
“Shut up, Mat,” she snarled at him. “You're just as mad as I am and you know it. Bad things like this don't just 'happen'. This has never happened! Don't you get it? It's over. We're going to be stuck in this stupid bubble with people like him for the rest of our lives and there's nothing we can do about it.”
“What else can I say?” Ezra asked quietly. “What more do you want?”
“Want?” Sarah's voice cracked. “What do I want? I want to get away from you damned Legacy tyrants. I want to have never gone on that stupid mission. I want to have seen that thunder-struck bastard five seconds earlier. I want–” Her voice broke with sobs. “I want Rob back.” She stood there, shaking with fury and grief, a tragic, broken thing. “And I want to never see you again.” She whirled and staggered away, wiping at her eyes.
Mat watched her leave, his eyes hooded, fists clenched. He let out a long, shaky breath, then offered Ezra a hand. “Give her time, man. Just... just give her some time.” Mat shook his head as he pulled Ezra to his feet, picking up Sarah's things along with his own and heading out of the room. “Give us all some time.” The door whispered shut behind him.
Ezra stood there, glaring down at the bench he and his teammates had shared. He wondered if his day could possibly get any worse.
==
As it turned out, it could.
Ezra arrived home to find a very agitated Kirsten O'Donnell pacing the front hall. “Ezra! Good, I'm glad I caught you.” She spoke in an urgent, hushed tone. “You didn't...” She squinted at his face, a spectacular bruise already blooming on his jaw. “Did you get into a fight? Of course you did. Who did you talk to? Tell me what you said immediately.”
“I... what? Talk to? No, no, I just got back, and I haven't seen anyone since I left Mat and,” he paused, remorse catching him off guard, “and Sarah.”
Kirsten paid his morose tone no mind. “Well, that's something anyway,” she muttered to herself. “Now look, I know you've been busy with,” she glanced around surreptitiously, “with you-know-what, but I'm a little distressed with your apparent lack of concern, considering the situation. I've been trying to contact you for days. Were you in a shielded facility? Why didn't you return my messages? I've managed to hold them off for as long as I can, but they're here right now, and I–”
“Wait, what?” Ezra pulled up his net transmissions and saw his in-box was full of urgent messages from Kirsten starting the day after he'd left. “Kirsten, I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You don't... how...” She clenched her jaw, grabbed Ezra's hand, and pulled him toward the kitchen. “Come on, quickly!” Ezra was dragged along after her, through the kitchen, down the stairs, into the pantry, then out a secret door behind what Ezra always assumed were some decorative barrels. How had he lived here all his life without knowing that they had a secret door? A small spiral staircase led down to another hidden door, which opened for them.
No sooner had he stepped through than the false wall behind him clicked closed, and he suddenly found himself squeezed into a closet-sized room with Kirsten. Her body pressed against his as she turned to place one serious finger over her lips, then cracked open a door opposite to where they entered and peaked out. Ezra's heart was racing as he tried to beat down his libido. He kept telling himself that he was not attracted to Kirsten O'Donnell, but all he could think about was her trying out that stretch that Mat had shown her. She put a hand to her chest, took a deep breath, and let it out in obvious relief. He only noticed because, as a scientist, he took a keen interest in his surroundings and, to be fair, Kirsten's heaving bosom was the most interesting thing surrounding him. In his surroundings! He needed to get out more. Or less. He wasn't sure.
Kirsten opened the door and stepped out into a hallway on one of the lower levels. Ezra looked around and recognized it as a storage section where they kept family heirlooms and keepsakes. “It should be safe to talk here,” Kirsten said, all business. “We'll hear anyone coming down from the main hall when the far door engages.”
“I...” Ezra shook his head, wrangling his thoughts back into something resembling coherence. “I... wow, um... so we have a secret passage?”
Kirsten folded her arms and began drumming her fingers in irritation. “Ezra, I can see that you've clearly had a rough day, but I honestly don't know how you can be so clueless about the past three days. The warrant is all anyone has been able to talk about.”
“Warrant?” Ezra blurted out. “Like, for my...” He looked around cautiously, then dropped his voice lower. “For my arrest?”
Kirsten froze, staring at him in disbelief. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Oh what did I do to deserve this?” Her head snapped back up as her intense eyes locked on his. “Ezra, listen to me very carefully. The Department of Ordinances and Lawful Temerity is holding their elections for chief commissioner in just over two months. One of the officers running for the position has decided to be a sort of 'people's hero' and has targeted the Legacy houses, trying to rally support from the grunts. I was aware of his position but didn't see much of a threat until the space station wormhole misfire the morning after you left for your project.”
“Wormhole misfire?!” Ezra felt his face go pale. “Oh no. No no no... what did it do? Did it dump out into space? The structural damage to the Sanctuary Center must have been enormous! I walked right by there today and didn't see anything wrong, but I-I wasn't looking. Oh this can't be happening... how many people died? Kirsten, I can't–”
She clamped her hand over his mouth and gave him a warning look. Without removing her hand, she continued. “The misfire prevented a scheduled jump to the space station when one of the power couplings shorted out.” Ezra sagged in relief. “The generators poured power into the Center's converters, but it had nowh
ere to go and fed back into the rest of the gateway system. Two thirds of the network went down, severely disrupting commerce for nearly six hours before the automated system restore found the problem and got everything rebooted. Before I could even begin to do damage control, there was a warrant out for a general search of the premises for anything of a suspicious nature in relation to the accident. I've been able to keep them out by pretending to sympathize and because no-one could get hold of you to open your lab. They haven't been able to force their way in, but I'm at my wit's end dealing with this–”
“Miss O'Donnell? You down there?” A man's voice echoed from far end of the hall as the door began to slide open.