Through Glass: Episode Four (6 page)

A shiver that bordered on pleasure and
fear wound its way up my spine, my joints tensing painfully as if
it was just another warning, another call to signal the arrival of
the beasts that would attempt to devour us.

I watched as Travis’s shoulders tensed
in time with mine, his body straightening from the relaxed position
as he sat up, pulling from his pocket a cell phone that was glowing
with a dull yellow light. His broad shoulders were tense as he
stared at the phone, watching it ring, his breathing slow as he
tried to control his fear. Whereas mine only seemed to
grow.

“
Is it Bridget?” I asked,
knowing full well what the other side to that question was, and
that there was only one other person it could be.

Travis knew, too. His eyes darted up
from the still ringing cell phone to meet mine, eyes wide in fear
before his thumb compressed the button, the light changing as the
call connected and Travis switched it to speakerphone.

“
Tee,” he said simply, the
stress in his voice making the vowels grumble.

My muscles shook as I tensed, waiting
for a response. The phone rattled with the static before a voice
came through, the broken connection making it hard to
understand.

“
Tee...? Hon…? Are you…?”
The static took over after she was only able to get just a few
words out, but it didn’t matter. My body relaxed, the fearful
stress that had taken over unwinding into the stiff tension that
had become so normal it was almost welcomed.

Travis’s reaction was much more
emotional, however. The phone stayed still in his lap as his head
lowered into his hands, his fingers digging into his hair as he
began to shake. At first I had thought he was angry, and I had
feared an outburst that I had never seen, but then his voice broke
as he tried to talk through the static, as he tried to respond to
Bridget’s desperate attempt at connection.

“
Bridge, baby. Oh, baby.”
His voice cracked as he broke down, the tension in his knuckles
loosening as relief that I hadn’t known he’d feared would never
come flowed out of him.

The tension in his shoulders slowly
left as the static continued, his body calmer as he clung to the
phone, holding it close to him as if it was a child, desperate to
hear anything from her.

I just sat and watched him cry in joy
as the static mingled with the crackling of the fire. I didn’t know
if I should leave or if I should hug him. I didn’t know what to do
because I had never seen him, or any man, react this way. In many
ways, I felt like an intruder, my social responses left handicapped
thanks to my years in seclusion.

I leaned forward as the static seemed
to equalize, the white noise fading into nothing and letting
Bridget’s voice flow free.

“
Travis?” she asked, her
voice as strained and stressed as I felt.

“
Bridget? Baby? I’m here.
I’m here. Please tell me you’re okay.”

“
I’m okay. It was a clean
shot, nothing a little rest can’t heal.” Her voice shook as she
spoke, the low tones making it clear it was probably worse than
what she was letting on, but I knew Travis wasn’t going to let the
thought cross his mind. Not now.

“
Thank God,” Travis moaned,
the joy that she was okay soothing the tense fear I was sure had
been poisoning him for the last few hours.

He pressed his head against the phone,
his body curling as he attempted to get closer to her, as if being
closer to the phone could help him accomplish that.

“
Abran is pissed,” Bridget
continued after a moment, the tones in her voice changing as she
moved to what she obviously called for in the first place. “He
doesn’t believe me and locked me out of the system.”

“
He locked you out?” Travis
asked, a deep surprise in his voice that I didn’t
understand.

“
Yeah.” She tried to laugh,
but the sound was weak before she began to gasp for air, the
attempt to laugh obviously making it hard to breath.

I listened to her gasp, the sound
making my heart pinch in a worry I couldn’t comprehend. Travis
glanced up to me at the noise, his eyes deep and wide before they
returned to the small box he held in his hands. The message in his
look only increased my worry, my knowledge that something more was
wrong with Bridget than what she was telling us.

“
But he’s an idiot,” she
said as she caught her breath. “You can’t lock out the person who
created the program.”

“
That’s my girl,” Travis
responded, his pride overtaking his worry for the
moment.

“
Listen, I don’t have a lot
of time, but I needed to warn you. From what I can tell, he’s
moving up the attack on the main Tar house.”

“
He’s moving it up?” Travis
asked, suddenly alarmed.

“
Yeah.”

“
When?” The soft quality of
his voice had left with that one word, his jaw now only tight and
strained as his back tensed and straightened.

“
I’m not sure. I’m still
trying to break that encryption. Either that or it’s not in the
computer…”

My back straightened as Travis’s had,
leaving us sitting still and stiff as we looked at each other,
Bridget’s voice fading to nothing between us.

“
Are we going to make it in
time?” I asked, my voice shaking as I asked the question I could
see repeated in Travis’s eyes.

Travis said nothing. He only flexed
his jaw, his teeth clenching together with a snap as he stared at
me, his eyes mulling over every answer, every game plan. I just sat
still as I watched his eyes, watched the thoughts move through
them.

“
Not only that,” Bridget
continued, her voice breaking through the strained stare my brother
had fixed me with, “but he’s sending the black team after
you.”

Travis stood at her statement. What I
had perceived as fear and anger in him before was nothing compared
to what I saw now. His hand shook as he held the phone in front of
him, his muscles rippling as he looked away, his eyes darting
through the dark as if waiting for an assassin to come through the
line of light. And judging by what Bridget had said, that was
exactly what was going to happen. The term—the black team—didn’t
sound promising at all.

All thought of the shortened time
table was forgotten as I watched Travis’s reaction to Bridget’s
words. A slither of fear worked its way through me, twisting my
stomach and tightening my joints.

“
What’s the black team?” I
asked, fearing the question as much as I feared the
answer.

“
It’s the elite team Abran
sends when he wants something dead,” Travis answered, his voice a
hard line.

“
Think of a kamikaze squad,
Lex,” Bridget piped in, the disembodied voice sounding odd as it
addressed me. “Except these guys work in the dark.”

I knew at once what she meant by that.
I had lived in the dark, in the shadows where the Tar lived, where
they came in silence and devoured you before you even knew they
were there. My eyes darted to the fire, subconsciously needing to
know that it still burned bright, even though I knew it wouldn’t
protect us from what Abran was now sending after us.

Travis’s voice echoed around the empty
room as he swore in frustration, the sound making me jump. His
muscles rippled as he began to pace the floor in front of me, his
irritations saturating the air and heightening my own
panic.

“
I think I found a way to
get out,” Bridget continued as if Travis’s outburst had never
occurred, “but I can’t leave for another day or two. Getting shot
sucks.”

Travis’s pacing slowed as her voice
echoed through the phone, her tone changing to one that echoed her
own fear as well as something else that I wasn’t able to
pinpoint.

“
As long as you are
healing, I can take care of everything else,” Travis said, his
voice still hard even though the muscles in his shoulders seemed to
have relaxed.

“
I know, honey. I’ll call
you every day on the four.”

“
I love you,” Travis choked
out as his tears began to fall again.

“
I love you,
too.”

“
Stay alive,” they said
together, their voices echoing against each other as Travis began
to shake with tears. His thumb then pressed against the illuminated
screen as he ended the call, the light dimming into nothing,
leaving Travis staring at a blank screen.

I didn’t dare say anything. I only sat
in silence as I watched my brother before me, his back curved as he
stared at the phone in his hands, his shoulders shaking as he
fought the sobs, fought the tears and sadness that I knew all to
well.

I knew that kind of pain. The pain
from when you were separated from someone you love. I knew the way
your heart would break when you had to walk away from something
like that. I could only assume that Travis was feeling something
akin to the heartbreak that lived deep inside of me.

The heart break that still tried to
break me.

I exhaled shakily as Travis did,
knowing I had to say something and wishing I could find the right
words. It was just like before, when I had watched my lanky, little
brother mope around the kitchen. I could see the pain on his face,
and I just couldn’t leave it there.

“
She really loves you. How
long have you been together?” I said, knowing I was stating the
obvious along with a question that sounded as if it was coming from
the curious teenager I had once been, and not the adult I was
supposed to be.

Travis looked up to me at my obvious
statement, his filthy face streaked with the tears that still
flowed freely. I watched the tears flow down his face, the lines in
his jaw hardening as he waged a battle with himself. A battle for
what, I did not know until one side won over the other.

“
She’s my wife.”

I could have sworn I had forgotten how
to breathe in that instant.

I knew at once he wasn’t lying. I
could tell by the way he said it, in the way his body seemed to
loosen at the admission, the way his heart seemed to break as what
wasn’t said meant almost as much as what did.

Bridget was not just his girl friend.
She was his wife. A woman he had married when the world was black,
after he had lost everything.

I had known when Travis had left her
behind that he wasn’t as alone as I was, but now I knew how deeply
that went.

“
What? Why didn’t you tell
me?” Even though I had already accepted the truth, I couldn’t stop
the words from spewing out of me, the questions meaning so much
more than just a plea for clarification.

Travis seemed to accept that as well
because he only smiled, the fear of my reaction evaporating from
him as his grin only seemed to grow.

“
I don’t know. It didn’t
really seem appropriate given the situation. I couldn’t exactly say
‘I’m sorry you have been sentenced to death, but the girl who just
saved you is my wife…’” He said it like it was a joke, but I
couldn’t bring myself to smile, or even to chuckle as he did. I
only sat, my body stiff and uncomfortable as ice seemed to run over
my skin, the same thought running laps through my mind.

Travis was married.

I could still remember my dad giving
his deep, stern talks around the kitchen table, the way he talked
to the boys and to me, pled with us to grow up to be good people,
go to college, find someone that makes you happy and marry
them.

We had all laughed about it at that
time. Travis and I especially since we knew what he was talking
about, knew how far away it was. Now it was here. Travis had done
it.

“
Are you okay?”

My head jerked up as he pulled me from
my reverie. “I’m just stunned, that’s all.” I could barely get the
words out.

“
Well, next time I will
make sure to send you an invitation,” Travis said with a smile, his
lips pulling in a way that I could see as being heart
stopping.

“
Gee, thanks.” I couldn’t
keep the shock out of my voice, the sarcasm running through it in a
deadpan.

“
Anytime sis.” Travis’s
smile only grew as he threw himself back on the bed, a small plume
of dust moving up from where he collapsed against it.

I watched the dust settle and lay
myself back against the bed, pulling the stiff cotton comforter
that I had hoped would be soft over me. Part of me wished I could
just curl up and sleep, but I still couldn’t stop my mind from
running rampant with the information Travis had just given
me.

“
Wife?” I suddenly spewed
into the darkness.

Travis’s deep chuckle was unsurprising
to me. “You are really stuck on this, aren’t you?”

“
Well, forgive me if I
can’t think of my fourteen-year-old brother being married.” My
voice was somewhat hysterical, but I didn’t stop it; I only propped
myself up on one elbow, turning to face Travis who was already
turned toward me, staring at me with a wide grin on his
face.

“
Well, first, I’m not
fourteen. And, it really isn’t that surprising given the whole end
of the world.”