Chapter 7

Des took another can of soup down from the kitchen cabinet and set it on the counter.  Michael had already gone through four cans of soup and didn’t show any signs of slowing down.  Of course, if she had been dead for nearly twenty years, she’d likely be hungry too.

He hadn’t taken her pronouncement of his death very well and any hope of them continuing their fact finding conversation had ended right there.  Of course, that might have had more to do with the fact that Michael had started laughing at her suggestion that he had died twenty years early, and hadn’t really been able to stop.  It had taken the enticement of food to bring him back around.

He had a nice laugh.  Des slammed a second can of soup down on the counter next to the first one she had found.  Where had that thought come from?  She should be thinking of ways to convince Michael that she was right, at least on some level, and that they needed to figure out what happened to him.  Not thinking about his laugh, or his smile, or how his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners.

“Jeez, Des.  Get a grip!”

She attacked the cans with the hand opener and dumped the contents into the pot on the stove.  She had been hiding out in the kitchen for the past five minutes under the premise that she was going to make more soup for them.  But the truth was, she needed to regroup and figure out what her next move was.

They had been at the safe house for almost two hours now, and there had been no word from Esme.  They had plenty of time until she was due to meet up with Arguletti and deliver the weapon, or evidence of its destruction.  But she didn’t like not knowing where her sister was when she knew that Esme had driven right into a trap.  She also needed her sister’s brain to help her figure out what they were going to do with Michael.

He might be the weapon that Arguletti and the Government were expecting, but he was also a man who should have some say about his own fate.

She turned towards the dining room where Michael was powering through his second turkey sandwich.  At the rate he was going, there wasn’t going to be a speck of food left in the safe house if they had to stay too much longer.

She turned back to the stove to stir the soup, but her mind was still on the conundrum that was Michael.  Yes, saying he had died sounded crazy considering he was definitely alive now.  But Des had a shadowy theory that she was working with and a lot of it was based on what she had seen and felt in the container, and the story that Michael had told her.

What she really needed to do was some research, but the safe house wasn’t equipped with the technology she would need.  She also knew that the odds of finding any records about Michael were going to be pretty low.

She stirred the soup one last time before turning off the burner and carrying the entire pot into the dining room.

“Ready for thirds?”

Michael looked up from the last bite of the sandwich he had in his hand and nodded, his mouth too full to say anything.

Des ladled the soup, plain chicken noodle, into his bowl and put the rest into hers.  She wasn’t hungry, but it had been a while since she had eaten and she needed to keep her own energy level up.

She settled into her seat and they ate in companionable silence for long minutes, the rhythmic clinking of their spoons against the sides of their bowls and the occasional slurping sound the only noises in the room.

Des was fighting to not focus on Michael and on her food but she must have been attuned to him on some level because she realized immediately when he stopped eating.

She looked up to find him watching her with a look of confusion on his face.

Des raised her eyebrows in silent question and knew when he set his spoon down that he was going to ask her something interesting.

“Before, when you were talking about Four Crossings, you said something about “Joined Cities.”  And I remember from before when you said there were no more states.  What’s happened to the United States since 2012?”

Des set her own spoon down and pushed her soup away.  Her soup would likely be cold by the time she finished this history lesson.  She knew the answer to his question, but wasn’t sure just how much detail she needed to go into, or even where to start.

She finally decided to start with the biggest event and work around that.

“World War III happened in 2016, though that wasn’t the end of the United States.  We struggled on for another two years until the Resistance of 2020.” She looked at him closely to gauge his reaction to her words.

He looked startled but also saddened.

“So World War III finally happened?”

Des nodded once.  His next question surprised her.

“Who started it?”

Des canted her head to the side.  “Does it matter?  It destroyed the world as we knew it at that time and no one won.”

He sat back in his chair, clearly confused by her response.

“What do you mean, ‘no one won.’ Someone had to have gained some sort of advantage, even if it wasn’t the advantage they expected.”

Des thought on his words and saw that he had a point.  She conceded, “You’re likely right.  You’d probably have to look at it worldwide to see if there was an outright winner.  In the US, I guess the winners were the new governments that rose to power after the Resistance.”

“You said the US held on for two years before the Resistance.  Did other countries not fare as well?”

Des shook her head.  “Most countries destabilized immediately following the end of the war.  New boundaries were drawn, new countries were born, and new rulers came to power.”

“Are there no countries from before that still remain?”

Des’ response was immediate.  “No.  It wasn’t possible for the smaller countries to survive on their own, so they often joined forces with neighboring countries in an effort to gain strength.  In most countries the military rose to power and toppled the government that was in place.”

“Is that what happened in the US when the Resistance happened?”

Des shook her head.  “No, the Resistance was mostly led by non-military.  Most of the US’s military was destroyed in the war.”

She saw the look of horror on his face and inwardly flinched at how callously she had said that.

“How is that possible?  The US has one of the strongest militaries in the world!”

Des was starting to regret telling him any of this.  As a military man he would obviously be affected by everything she said.  She leaned towards him, wanting to offer him comfort but not sure how.  She could also see that right now he only wanted an answer to his question.

“We were the target of the war, Michael.  It was because of our supposed military might, our involvement in so many other countries, our impact on the economy.  The war initially started over a downward spiraling economy and just blew up from there.

We were blamed for the failure of the markets, for the starving children in other countries, for…everything.  And so we were targeted.”

He shook his head at her words.  “Was it a nuclear war?”

Des shook her head.  “No, thank God.  If it had been, I’m pretty sure there would have been nothing left.  But Michael, you have to know that humans can do massive amounts of damage without nuclear weapons.”

He nodded.  “Yes, I know that.  I just always thought that if World War III ever happened, it would be a nuclear war.”  He looked down at his now cold soup and seemed to be mulling over everything she had said.  There was more but she wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear it or not.

He finally looked up and caught her eyes.  “So what are these Joined Cities?”

Des sat back in her chair again.  The cities were a safer discussion than the war, though they had grown out of the war and the Resistance.

“After the war and before the resistance, there wasn’t much left that worked correctly in the US.  Our mass transportation systems had been virtually destroyed.  Our communications systems had been reduced to mostly only local range.  And there were enclaves of resistance gaining strength on a nearly daily basis.

The government couldn’t handle any of it, despite their efforts to bring everything back to the way it was.  But most people saw that as the problem.  The way it had been was what led to the war in the first place.  Most people wanted something different, so they set out to create it.”

Des tapped her fingers on the table as she tried to figure out the right words to truly explain the cities themselves.

“Since most communications were only working on a local level, it was easy for small groups from cities in a close proximity to come together.”

She looked around the room as if searching for something and then spotted the old atlas sitting on the book shelf in the hallway.  “It may be easier to show you this one.”  She pushed from the table and went to the shelf, knowing his eyes followed her the entire way.

The atlas was from 2010 but it would still work to illustrate her point.  She blew the dust off of it and brought it over to the table, setting it down in front of him and leaning around his shoulder to open it to the map of the full United States.

“Most of the coastal cities were devastated by the war, so people moved further inland and centered in the major cities.  This put a strain on resources but also stimulated the local trade.”

She placed her finger on Atlanta and then traced it up to Raleigh.  “Atlanta became the southern-most point of a trade area that ran up to Raleigh, and then over to Nashville and back.  The system worked so well that the cities began to work in closer and closer consort on other things, like banking, rebuilding the transportation systems, education, and government.

When whispers of the Resistance reached them, they decided to join, but to do it as one entity, and thus Atleighville was born.”

He turned his head to look at her.  “Atleighville?”

Des had to smile, “Yeah, I know it’s not the best name in the world, but that’s what they decided on.” 

He turned back to the map and pointed to the space that would be centered between the three cities.  “Is this where we are?”

Des shook her head.  “No, we’re farther west.  Four Crossings is here.” She put her finger right where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico met.

“Most people thought they should call it Four Corners, but they settled on Four Crossings instead.  We’re actually in the part that would have been considered Colorado in 2012.”

She could see him frowning as he tried to take everything in.  He was looking at the map, his eyes darting from the left to the right.

“How many Joined Cities” are there?”

“In what used to be the US?”

He nodded.

Des looked at the map and did a mental count.  “Eight. Ten if you count Alaska and Texas.”

He turned to look at her.  “You said there were no more states.”

Des shrugged.  “There aren’t.  Texas and Alaska both declared themselves to be independent countries and function in that way.”

“Four Corners looks like its big enough to be a country as well.  Why do people call them Joined Cities.”

Des had to think on this one.  It wasn’t like she had a history book she could refer to and most of what she was telling him was coming straight from her own memories.

“I’m actually not sure. I think this has something to do with money though.  The Joined Cities might all be governed separately, but they all decided to keep the US dollar as the standard currency.  It makes trade between them much easier.”

She gestured at the map.  “I’m sure there’s more to it than that though.  And Texas and Alaska both still use the dollar as well.”  She could see that he was frustrated with her answer.

He turned back to the map and blew out a deep breath.  Des let him look in silence, her eyes drawn to the area on the back of his neck, close to the base of his skull.

She frowned as she tried to figure out what she was seeing. She thought back to the cold metal plate she had touched when she was trying to see if he was attached to the tubing in the box.  There was no metal plate but there did appear to be something metallic there.

She leaned closer, the lighting in the room not strong enough for her to see the area clearly.  She moved her hand up, intent on running her fingers over the spot when he suddenly turned his head towards her.

She stepped back quickly, barely avoiding smacking their heads together.

He looked at her with narrowed eyes.  “What?”

Des gestured towards his head, “There’s something on the back of your neck.”

He reached his hands up to touch his neck below where Des had been looking.  She gestured for him to move his hand up higher.

“It’s higher up, about an inch.  Closer to the base of your skull.”

He followed her directions and then froze as his hands made contact with the spot.  She could see his breathing change and his eyes start to dart back and forth.  He pulled his hand away and Des noted that there was a slight tremor in his fingers.

 Des took a step towards him.  “You didn’t know it was there?”

He shook his head and put his hands in his lap, clasping them together.  It was a move that Des knew well – a tactic to hide tell-tale trembling.

“I’m guessing that means you don’t know what it is, either?”

He turned his head to look at her fully and Des was struck again by how much he reminded her of the lost children she and Esme helped.  He was afraid and trying to hide it.

“What does it look like to you?”  His voice was thin as he asked the question.

“I’m not sure.  The lighting isn’t good enough in here for me to get a good look.” She leaned a hip against the table and looked at him earnestly.

“I can use a flashlight and try to take a better look if you want me to.”

He hesitated, and she got the sense that he was torn between knowing and not knowing.  He must have made up his mind because he turned back to her with a nod.

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Des rested her hand on his shoulder briefly before she pushed away from the table and pulled her small flashlight out of the pocket of her cargo pants.

She switched the light on and moved it slowly across his neck. The light glinted off of what looked like three separate pieces.  Two of them were definitely metal, and one was a dark material that Des was not sure about.

“May I touch it?”

Again he hesitated, before he finally nodded his head.

Des moved slowly, not wanting to startle him.  She touched a round piece on the left, her finger noting a slight indentation.  She moved her light over it and then moved her finger to the right to slide across the second piece.

She felt him shiver slightly as she touched what she immediately knew was skin.  Her light went across a black, rectangular shape nearly two inches wide and a half inch tall.  As she moved the light back and forth she picked up hints of numbers and letters seemingly hidden in the blackness.

She leaned closer and held her light at an angle, illuminating what appeared to be a tattoo, the numbers done in a shade of gray that was nearly black and allowed them to blend into the black background.

She wondered what the numbers meant.  Could they be similar to a dog tag but tattooed rather than carried?  She wanted to ask Michael but knew that it was unlikely he knew that there was a tattoo there.

She finally moved over to the right to check the last piece, another rectangular piece but this one much smaller than the tattoo and definitely made of metal and embedded into his skin.

As she leaned closer she realized that the shape reminded her of a USB port on a computer.

She clicked her light off and stepped back.  Michael turned his chair to face her, an expectant look on his face.

“I’m not sure what to tell you, Michael, because I honestly have no clue what they are.”

She could tell that it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear but he nodded anyway.

“Could you hazard a guess?”

Des took a few moments to think about what she wanted to say.  She returned her flashlight to its pocket and then crossed her arms over her chest.

Michael watched each movement warily but didn’t try to rush her to answer.

She finally sighed and uncrossed her arms.

“There are actually three things back there.  The only one I truly recognize is the one in the middle which is some type of tattoo.”

Michael frowned, his hand going back to his neck as he tried to feel the area she was referring to.

“You may not be able to feel it, but the skin might be a little smoother than the rest of your neck.”

He nodded before removing his head.  “Yes, I can tell the skin is different, but I wouldn’t have known it was because I have a tattoo there.  What is it a tattoo of?”

“It looks like some type of code or serial number.”

Michael looked startled.  “I have a serial number tattooed on my neck?”

Des shrugged slightly.  “I’m not sure if it’s actually a serial number, but it is a series of letters and numbers.  The odd thing is, it’s tattooed in a way that makes it very difficult to see.  I had to shine my light on it at an angle just to pick up the numbers.  Without the light it just looks like a black rectangle.”

Michael swallowed hard at her words.  “And the rest of it?  The pieces I can feel as if they are raised?”

Des gestured with her hands, “The one on the left hand side is a small circular hole.  It looks like something you would jack something into, almost like a headphone jack.  The other piece looks like a USB port.”

“That just doesn’t make sense.”

Des shrugged, “It does if you were dead and then somehow brought back to life and sustained by machines.”

He rolled his eyes at her.

“Hey, I know it sounds crazy, but how else do you explain the fact that you’ve seemingly lost twenty years of your life?  Not to mention the fact that you know nothing about the world today and you were naked in a box!”

Des hadn’t meant to shout and surprised herself by her loss of control. She was known for her ability to hold her temper, especially in front of others.  But here she was yelling at someone who could very well kill her with one blow.

As if to reiterate that fact to her, Michael stood up to his full six feet, nine and a half inches, and loomed over her.

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth about any of these things?  Do you know how crazy you sound to me right now?  Yes, I have some gaps in my memory, and yes, I was naked in a box.  And no, I don’t know why any of this is happening, but there is no way that I died back in 2012!  For all I know, it’s still 2012!”

If he thought his show of anger was going to frighten her, then he had a lot to learn about Desdemona Quinn.  She took a step towards him until they were nearly nose to nose, or nose to chin considering she barely reached his chin.

"I am not the one who is crazy here buddy.  It is 2032 and the world that you knew in 2012 is long gone.  I’m trying to help you figure this whole thing out.  The least you could do is give me the benefit of the doubt that I wouldn’t lie to you!”

Des stood there fuming, waiting to see what his response would be.

“I don’t know you, Des.  Why would I automatically know whether you would lie to me or not?”

Des blinked her eyes rapidly, before she replied, rather lamely, “Because I don’t lie.”

Michael gave her a disbelieving look.  “Ever?”

Des had to sigh at that.  “Hardly ever.”

“And when do you lie?  When it suits you or gives you an advantage?”

Des scowled.  “No, I only lie when it will spare someone pain.”  She looked him squarely in the eye.  “So you see, if I were going to lie to you, I’d tell you that it was still 2012 because that would be less painful than telling you it was 2032.”

Michael had to admit that there was an odd logic to what she was saying, but that still didn’t mean he was willing to believe that he had someone come back from the dead.

“Okay, so let’s say that it is 2032 and I’ve misplaced twenty years.  There has to be another explanation, other than death, to explain my memory loss.”

“And the odd things embedded in your neck.” She helpfully added.

His hand went up to his neck reflexively, but he stopped short of actually touching the spot.

“Yeah, that too.”

They both got quiet and Des noticed then just how close together they were standing.  Des stepped back first, eyeing him warily.  Esme was usually the only person who could reduce her to yelling so quickly.  Even Arguletti had never made her raise her voice.  But she had known Michael for less than five hours and she was already at screaming level with him.

Thinking about her sister made Des remember that she had not heard from her yet.  “Esme, where in the hell are you?”

As if on cue, Des felt her phone vibrate in her pocket causing her to jump slightly.

She could sense Michael watching her as she pulled her phone out and read the text message on the screen.  She tapped out a response and then put the phone away before looking at the man who could be either her savior or the very bane of her existence.

“That was Esme.  We can head back into the city now.”

She could tell that Michael was considering her words and she started to wonder if he would refuse.  She hadn’t considered the idea that he would not want to go with her, but considering their most recent conversation, it was starting to look like a very real possibility.

            She decided to try to reason with him. “What other choice do you have, Michael?  Whether you think I’m lying or telling you the truth, right now you don’t know where you are.  At least admit that so far I’ve done nothing but help you.”

            Her words seemed to get through to him and he nodded.  “Alright.  I’ll go with you.”

            He didn’t say it, but they both heard the unvoiced “for now.”  Des wondered how long she had before he decided to strike out on his own.