Ouroboros 3: Repeat (18 page)

He closed his eyes once more, and when he opened them again, he finally turned off the water and got out of the shower.

He felt refreshed, but more than that—he felt focused.

All of the energy that had once been caught up in feeling guilty or confused or fearful, now narrowed into a point.

He was going to make it back to his time period.

And once he was there, he was going to stop this.

For good.

As he dried, he heard his intercom buzz.

Thinking it was Travis wanting yet more information on the Vex, Carson didn’t hurry to open it. Instead he mumbled,
‘just wait a sec.’ Grabbing his towel, he tucked it around his waist and finally strode into the main section of his quarters and told the computer to open the door.

He didn’t even bother to check who it was.

He just assumed it was Travis.

With a little swallow, and a strange hiccup noise, he realised it wasn’t.

It was Nida.

She stood there with her hands locked behind her back, a distracted look on her face. Well, she started off with a distracted look, but it quickly morphed into blushing surprise.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were in the shower,’ she stuttered, ‘I’ll come back later.’

‘
No,’ he said way too quickly, ‘no,’ he repeated in a far more controlled voice, ‘come in.’

She hesitated, then walked in.
‘I . . . ,’ she began, her head directed to the ground as she chose to stare at her feet rather than at him.

Goddamn she was polite.

It made him smile.

 
. . . .

Way too late he realised he had to say something. He could not just stand there
grinning at her as he dripped on the carpet with nothing but a damp towel tied around his middle.

‘
Ah . . . they let you out of the med bay already?’ he tried through what he’d intended to be a gruff cough, but quickly sounded like a croaky squeak.

By his estimate, it had been only three hours since he’d left her. Not long enough to bounce back for most people, yet he had to admit the colour was back to her cheeks
 . . . or at least the blush was.

The point was though, she seemed fine.

She also still had her hands tucked neatly behind her back, something he realised as she shifted forward slightly.

‘
Yeah, I . . . wanted to come and show you this,’ she mumbled as she took another tiny step his way.

The doors to his rooms had closed some time ago—as soon as she’d stepped far enough away from them. And it was a fact he was more than thankful for now, as he knew he was flushed. Heck, he was probably incandescent.

If that wasn’t bad enough, his stomach did the strangest thing as she stepped tentatively towards him; it gave an almighty kick of nerves. It wasn’t terror, and it wasn’t left-over adrenaline from all the battles he’d waged recently. It was expectation, plain and simple.

Finally she brought her arm around from behind her. Locked over the left wrist was a large silver-white band of metal. Though at first glance it looked like nothing more than a chunky bangle of some description, a second later something incredible happened: an ordered pattern of blue light flashed across the surface, then disappeared in a blink.

It looked like square blue veins suddenly pulsing with light.

‘
Whoa . . . what is that?’ he walked forward, completely forgetting he was in his towel and that he ought to feel embarrassed. He just strode right up to her, gently picked up her left hand, and surveyed the strange device as best he could.

They were close, but she didn’t shift back. And neither did she shove him off and complain that his hand and arm was still damp. She just waited there patiently as he inspected that pulsing white metal.

‘It’s modified TI technology. It’s just a prototype for now; they wanted to fit me with something immediately to take the edge of the fight with the entity. They’re working on something better right now,’ she explained as she nodded down at the device.

‘
Wow,’ he said plainly.

 
. . . Really? Just wow? Was that the best he could manage? Nida now had something to help her defend against the entity, and he sounded like she’d simply showed him a cool shell she’d found at the beach.

‘
Ah, so it works?’ he stammered, realising that was the first thing he should have asked. Suddenly he was all too aware of the fact he was still in his towel, and quickly took a respectful step back.

Nida hooked her hair behind her ears and shrugged.
‘Yeah, it does. I mean, the entity was still pretty weak from our last fight. But this . . . ,’ she shrugged again as she brought down her left hand and stared at it, ‘this helps,’ she concluded with a note of reassuring finality.

‘
I’m so glad,’ he spoke through a rattling breath.

Then
 . . . silence.

Really awkward silence spread between them, giving him all the time he needed to remember he was still standing around in a towel.

‘I . . . I just wanted to show you that,’ she said once more as she took a delicate step back towards the door.

‘
You don’t have to leave,’ he said so quickly his breath sounded like a shot of steam.

‘
I don’t want to interrupt you. I’m sure you want to rest,’ she took another step backwards.

Why was it that every time she stepped back it felt like she was taking something with her?

Carson could try to fool himself that he didn’t know what it was, but he did.

An opportunity.

Maybe it was just him, but he felt a spark between them. A spark that kept crackling brighter with every second.

 
. . . .

All too soon they would head back to Remus 12. Travis had promised Carson that the Orion would take them there, that they would do anything to help Nida open that time gate to the past.

So very soon Carson and Nida’s lives would get complicated again. Very soon they’d be thrust back into the chaotic depths of adventure.

Right now they had silence though. Peace. And, yeah, an opportunity.

An opportunity for what though? He had no idea whether she felt the same way he did. And heck, she probably didn’t. Nida was likely focused 100 percent on their perilous task.

She reached the door.

Though it hurt like hell to see her leave, what was there to say?

He wasn’t going to risk altering their relationship by confessing his feelings so close to
such a critical mission.

So he
 . . . just stood there and watched her turn around.

His stomach was no longer kicking with expectant nerves; it, like the rest of him, had been doused in disappointment.

‘See you around,’ he mumbled.

She paused. With her hand outstretched to touch the button that would open the door, she half turned over her shoulder.

He couldn’t see her face properly; her hair had bunched up over her shoulder, leaving only a slice of her cheek and eyelash in view.

If he’d had the power to twist the universe around just to see her expression in that moment, he would have done it.

Instead, he just stood there.

Waiting.

‘Carson,’ she eventually said, ‘I . . . ,’ again she trailed off.

‘
Yes?’ he encouraged.

‘
I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she rested her hand on the door, her fingers pulling away from the button that would open it.

‘
We’re going back to Remus 12. We’re going to fix this,’ he supplied automatically as if she’d been a simple cadet asking for an update on the battle plan.

That clearly wasn’t what she was looking for though, as she replied with a heavy sigh.

‘ . . . Nida, it will all be fine,’ he tried instead.

She sighed again, this time balling up a fist and striking the door with it. The door was made of a special reinforced metal, similar to the hull plating that encased the Orion, and Nida didn’t even manage to shake it. She hit it again though, and once more. Then, finally, she leaned forward and rested her head against it.

He was still standing there in the middle of the room in nothing but a towel as his wet hair dripped down his neck and back.

He shivered, but it wasn’t the damp that did it.

He didn’t know what to do to fix this. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know how to make her feel better.

As a lieutenant, he had countless possible responses ranging from a reprimand to a swift verbal kick up the butt. He didn’t use any of those though. Of course he didn’t. Their relationship went way beyond that of a cadet and a lieutenant now.

 . . . And there he went again, thinking of their so-called relationship.

She was obviously hurting, and all he could do was stand there and worry about lost opportunities.

‘Now you’ve got that modified TI implant, it’ll help you control the entity, Nida,’ he tried again, realising she was looking for something she could hold onto; advice that would actually give her reason to hope, rather than merely empty promises.

‘
Yeah,’ she responded quietly.

‘
Who knows, you might even learn to control its powers like you did back on Vex those few times. We know it has the ability to move any kind of object. With practice, you might be able to do that too,’ he wasn’t going to give up. He was going to keep trying until he found the one thing she wanted to hear.

‘
I guess,’ she mumbled.

‘
. . . Nida, is there something you want?’ he suddenly asked. He wasn’t being rude—far from it. He was just so desperate to find out what she needed, so he could scour this whole ship to bring it to her.

She straightened up, her back shifting forward in a visible twitch that saw her uniform pull tight over her arms.
‘I’m sorry for interrupting you,’ she pushed her hand out and let her fingers close over the door button.

He actually reached a hand out, his fingers spreading wide as if he were trying to grab hold of something.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said so quickly his words were a slur.

She went to open the door.

But she stopped.

Instead she turned on her foot and walked right up to him.

Right up to him
.

She was standing so close, his breath visibly pushed at the ends of her fringe.

He could have stepped back.

He could have asked her what the heck she was doing.

He didn’t.

Carson Blake waited to see what would happen next.

She hadn’t lifted her chin to look at him. Instead she stared solidly at his left shoulder.

Seconds ticked by.

He would have called what they were experiencing uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.

It was, rather, like a moment of frozen time.

‘Would you have wanted it to be someone else?’ she broke that powerful silence with the tiniest of whispers.

The quality of her voice sent shivers escaping over his back and chest. Then he stopped to process what she’d actually said.
‘What?’

‘
Would you have wanted it to be someone else?’ she repeated as she gently raised her left hand in the little space between them.

‘
Nida, what do you mean?’

‘
This is a TI implant,’ she motioned to the device.

He knew that, of course he did, but he wasn’t dumb enough to interrupt.

‘It’s the same technology that lets us move TI objects . . . .’

He nodded his head.
‘Yeah, but . . . what are you getting at?’

‘
I was the worst recruit at the Academy, Carson. The absolute worst. It wasn’t for want of trying, but I just wasn’t suited to it. I could barely operate a scanner, my combat skills were non-existent, and above all, I couldn’t manipulate a TI object to save my life.’ She withdrew into a protracted silence, before opening her mouth and adding in a breath, ‘if the entity had infected you, you would have been able to control it in an instant. Or Alicia, or J’Etem. But me . . . ,’ she trailed off again.

He finally understood what she was getting at, and he couldn’t help but laugh. It was not in any way a cruel move; it was relieved and gentle and careful all at once.

It also finally made her look up at him. ‘If I had been someone else, none of this would have happened,’ she said in a firm but detached voice as she took a step back.

He shook his head.
‘No. I wouldn’t want somebody else,’ he said as he dipped his head low and looked right into her eyes. In fact, he had never tried to stare at someone with so much concentrated focus before. ‘Nida, I wouldn’t want anybody but you,’ he added.