“How long has this place been down here?” Guy wondered aloud, opening a nearby metal door.
The inside was empty of anything significant, save for a small naked mattress on the floor and a dark dresser. Pale red lights illuminated the room and the floor was still see-through. It looked no larger than a standard motel room, complete with a bare minimum sink and toilet bathroom off to the side.
“Long enough.” Wyatt answered cleanly, never once leaving my side. He nodded towards the end of the hall.
“Our bedroom was built that way, the very last room.” He mentioned watching me open up room doors. Each one was mainly the same as the first room.
“Did you mean for people to decorate their space when they arrived here?” I left the door open, moving to the next. My frustration grew with each speck of dust tickling my nose. That, and the fact that Silla hadn’t stopped crying since we got down here—not that I couldn’t understand.
The first time Wyatt was kidnapped, I nearly lost my shit. We found him but I quickly learned what my limits were in the time it took to get to him. I won’t take lives…but I will make someone wish they were dead when it comes to those I love.
“Yes.” One word answers weren’t usually his style, he must be concentrating on something.
“Something on your mind?” Wyatt always said there were no dumb questions yet it felt like I asked one every hour.
He stopped, placing his hands in front of his abdomen. “There are no people here.”
I scratched my horns. They weren’t itchy—it was more of a reflex whenever he said something I couldn’t quite grasp.
Wyatt softly sighed, “by that I mean why are there no people here? This facility was built with a capacity of over 50,000 people in mind. Someone should have made it here.”
The part he wasn’t saying out loud; someone should have survived.
“Are you sure enough people knew about it? Then again, I’m not sure how the ‘descendants’ survived. Maybe they used this place?” A thought dawned on me. “Wait. You said you built a room for us?”
“Of course I did.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, pursing my lips. “If you built a doomsday bunker then why did you knock me out and leave me in Sanctuary?”
Wyatt blinked and stared off into space like he was rebooting. He clenched his fists, twice before punching the wall. I tried not to laugh at the sound of a tiny slap echoing off the walls—now was not the time to laugh at his etherealness.
“Wyatt it’s—”
“Don’t you dare say it’s okay Sapph. It’s not. It will never be okay until I can put the pieces back together. Look at you, look at me—at us! Look at what I’ve done, and for what? All my plans and my secrets have done us no good.” His voice was strained, I could hear it in each word.
“Hey, look at me!” I can’t lie, his stubborn pout was kind of sexy. Grasping his chin between my fingers felt good, it felt like control had slipped into my corner for a moment. I hated it though, Wyatt can’t fall apart on me, I won’t let it. He wouldn’t let me fall apart on him either.
“I love you.”
“I know you do.”
“No. Wyatt Jones, I love you and all that entails. And I know in my heart and in your head that no matter how convoluted or extreme your plans tend to look like on the surface—they absolutely kick ass underneath and they do not fail. Am I right or am I wrong?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“No, not suppose—I am right. Do you remember how we ended our wedding vows?”
He absolutely did, if those darkening cheeks were any indication.
“You really wanna do this now?”
“Fuck yes, I do. Say it, just the ending.”
He groaned as I let his chin go.
“You are…my shield in the light.”
“And you, Wyatt, are my fire in the darkness.”
A snicker and shake of the head later, we were finally back on track. Wyatt slammed his fist into his palm, not out of anger but as if he’d finally remembered something worth mentioning.
“The room with all my memorabilia in it. There was a map of the facility—a series of tunnels beneath the city with all the access points highlighted.”
He always did think of everything.
“You think that’s gonna be enough to narrow down which way they took Corre?”
That crinkle in his eye told me yes. “Good thing I'm only half a brain right now, that means I’ve got plenty of storage space.” With a flourish of his hand, a green glowing holographic map in two layers appeared over his palm.
“The bottom is the bunker and the top is the city? These dots here…they’re the access points.” His nod of approval made my heart soar. I pointed at the one closest to the wall but stopped. Squinting just right—I nearly missed it—one of the access points went past the wall.
“Holy shit.”
It went underneath town hall.
Guy
Door after door, no results. Why can’t I be more effective or intelligent like him? I want her to see me that way but it has to be more than that, I just can’t put a name to what I want yet.
Silla trails behind me as I open door number 120. How many more of these are there? What did he say, something about 50,000 people? I wish my people would have known about this place, more people might have survived safely instead of resorting to the detestable things we used to do for survival.
“You…you are not like the other human man, are you? You see the great one for how she wishes to be seen.”
“Sapphyra? Of course I see her like a person. Everyone wants this and that from her but what she needs is room to fucking breathe.”
She’ll never be able to get that if she keeps carrying around a dead man. We almost…I don’t want to be a homewrecker but Ernie's showed me I wasn’t crazy. There is something between us, more than just lust. How can we know each other across dreams and time? How come she doesn’t have her wings? What is a superhero class and why does it keep popping up in the corner of my eye when I’m around Sapphyra?
Too many questions…but I have to get the answers.
That sounds like fate to me, some cosmic bullshit. I’d tried to avoid stuff like that with the egg festival every year—supposedly if you crack open your egg at midnight it will show you your soulmate as determined by the goddess of dragons, Phereda. But I call bullshit.
Or at least I used to.
I stopped walking, noticing that the other two weren’t behind us. Shit.
“Hey, we need to turn around—” a noise stopped me in my tracks. It was a cross between a squeak and a whisper and it was coming from Silla.
“Silla? What’s wrong?” She wasn’t looking at me. With trembling arms she pointed to the darkness and whimpered at the figure moving towards us rapidly. Its green eyes and glowing green drool made my stomach churn. A halo of spores surrounded it.
“Corre!”
“Silla…I don’t think that’s Corre anymore!”
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