Egan, p.13
Egan, page 13
“Are you not expecting it to be?”
“I’m expecting it to be fine, but, so far, just enough things have gone wrong that I won’t count on it.”
A little later, after Egan had put away all his winter gear, Egan walked into the main part of the kitchen. He immediately found Magnus staring at him. He shook his head. “All is well?”
Magnus’s shoulders slumped slightly, and Egan realized that Magnus was really hoping that this time Amelia and whoever was left of her team would show up—but nothing yet. And it put pressure on all of them in a way. Egan poured himself a hot chocolate, as the coffee was mostly gone, then walked over to where Magnus sat. As Egan sat down, two other men got up and walked over.
One of them got up in Egan’s face, and he was not friendly, his voice harsh. “What the hell are you doing going out every day?”
“I keep looking for signs of the missing crew from the scientists’ camp,” Egan stated, his voice neutral, even as he realized Magnus had stiffened, preparing for a confrontation.
The other guy snorted. “They’re dead and gone. Absolutely no point in even discussing that anymore,” he snapped. “It’s been way too long.”
“That’s not true,” Egan stated. “Amelia is a survival expert, and she’s only been gone what, ten days?”
“Ten days is a long time out here,” the other man stated, looking at his friend uneasily. “Come on, Budge. Let’s go do a workout before dinner.”
“Why, Salmo? The food sucks now. It’s not as if we’ve even got enough grub. I want to get the hell out of here.”
“Have you asked your boss to be released?” Egan asked Budge.
Budge nodded and turned. “Sure have, and I keep getting the same bullshit answer. Nobody’s leaving.”
“We don’t have all that many more weeks to go in this training session,” Egan noted. “You’ve done fine here so far. Let’s just see if we can complete the assignment—you know, finish strong.”
“Why?” Budge asked. “I don’t even give a shit anymore.”
“Maybe, but a lot of people went to a lot of effort to make this happen, so I imagine they do.”
“Do they care?” He sneered. “They sure don’t care for us. We’ve got what, two, three dead? Two missing and another found dead again. Whatever the count is now, I’m losing track,” he said in a controlled fury. “Somebody stealing supplies from the storehouse too.” He turned and stared at Magnus, full in the face. “You didn’t think we knew about that, did you?”
Magnus was ready to pounce, but that was not the solution. “Nobody’s hiding it,” Magnus told Budge. “As far as I’m concerned, the better informed everybody is, the better we all are.”
Salmo nudged his buddy. “Come on, Budge. Let’s go.”
“Why?” he asked, turning on his friend. “I don’t want to fucking do another workout,” he snarled at Salmo.
“No, what you’re looking for is a fight,” Salmo stated, “and this isn’t the place. Come on, man.”
“Why not? You think they’re not up to it?” Budge asked.
“Look. This will just get your ass in hot water.”
“So what? What will they do? Throw me in the storeroom? It’s not as if they have any other place to put us.”
“Is that what you want?” Magnus asked, looking at him pointedly, “because that can be arranged.”
Budge sneered. “I don’t even know who you are or what the hell you’re doing here, but the whole thing’s damn fishy, if you ask me.”
“Good thing nobody asked you,” Magnus said, his voice hard. “But you keep pushing, and we’ll be happy to oblige. I could stand to kick some ass.”
“Jesus Christ, come on, Budge,” Salmo said. “Let’s get out of here. Go take out that temper of yours on something else.” With that, he pulled his buddy away.
Only Budge was still not very interested in being calmed down. But, when both Magnus and Egan stood up and faced him, he sneered. “Yeah, there are two of you now,” he snapped, “but there won’t always be two of you.”
“Is that a threat?” Magnus asked.
Budge shook his head. “I don’t need to threaten anybody. Consider it a promise.” Even as he walked out, followed by his frantic buddy, Budge sent a warning glance back at them.
As Egan sat back down again, he let out his breath. “Wow, I see tempers aren’t getting any better in here.”
“Yeah, definitely some people are past the boiling point,” Magnus agreed.
“The good news is, the weather’s set to change tomorrow, and everybody can get back outside again. Maybe they’ll wear out some of this feistiness,” Egan muttered.
Magnus shook his head and looked over at him. “You still want to get out there and check the scientists’ camp first thing?”
“I do,” Egan confirmed. “I still feel that somebody is in trouble out there but is just unsure about where to go and how to make things right.”
“That really sucks,” Magnus said, “because, if you’re right, it’s got to be Amelia. And, if it is her, where the hell is she getting the information that things here are bad enough that she needs to stay away?”
“The only thing I can think of is the dead man, Yegorahn,” Egan suggested, turning to look at Magnus. “I presume that he wasn’t dead when she found him, and she tried to save him. However, in the meantime, he told her what the hell was going on here.”
“But just not enough to come in and to make accusations.”
“It’s possible, or else she doesn’t think the accusations will be believed.”
“Great,” Magnus muttered. “That’s always the worst, isn’t it? When you know something, or at least you think you know something, but you don’t think anybody’ll listen to a word you say.”
“Yeah,” Egan agreed, “and, if that were me, I’d probably feel the same way she does. I’m not sure I’d come in either.”
Just then Sydney walked over and, giving Magnus a hug, sat down beside Egan. She tilted her head and spoke to him in a low voice. “You may want to go spend some time with Berry.”
He looked at her, and she just shook her head. “Problems?” he asked.
“Yeah, you could say so. Her sister is coming off the drugs and is winding down nicely, but with a case of needing to clear her conscience. Unfortunately the conscience that she’s clearing at the moment seems to be a list of things she’s done wrong to her sister, including affairs with Berry’s old boyfriends, breaking up relationships, that sort of thing,” the doc explained. “So Berry has disappeared into her own private space right now to process all that, but I’m not sure it’s a good thing for her to spend too much time with it.”
Egan stared at her in shock. “Jesus, but they’re twins.”
“Yeah, and apparently the one twin decided somewhere along the line that the other one was better, prettier, smarter, nicer, and who knows what all, even though they look nearly identical,” Sydney recapped. “So Cherry decided to set herself apart by being the fun one.”
“And being fun meant putting out?” Magnus asked, with a headshake. “Jesus, how is Cherry doing physically?”
“She’s coming down and is annoying as hell, but she’ll be okay. It’s not a condition conducive to being here though, and I very much want to see her get out of here,” Sydney admitted. “We do have supplies coming in, and I believe a couple extra investigators are coming up as well,” she added. “Ted mentioned that he wouldn’t be handling the investigation going forward.”
At that, Magnus stared at her in shock.
She nodded. “I don’t know anything more than that, so you’ll have to pry it out of Ted. He didn’t sound very happy about the whole thing.”
“Yeah, I wonder why though. That’s his department. How can he leave it just like that?”
“Jerry’s been sick since he got up here, so I don’t think Ted has had a whole lot of help from Jerry. I’m not sure that either one of them has been terribly cooperative for whatever you’ve needed either.”
“No, and we’re trying to do everything on the sly,” Egan shared.
At that, Magnus stood and noted in a resolute tone, “I’ll go have a talk with him.”
Sydney got up too, then looked down at Egan and whispered, “I didn’t say anything, right?”
He smiled and nodded. “Got it. I’ll go see how she’s doing.” Then he rose and headed to the back, as he refilled his tea to take with him.
He heard conversations at the table nearby.
“We should just take them out,” somebody said. “Nobody would know.” There was a round of shushing before he shut up.
Feeling eyes glued to his back, Egan carefully ensured nobody thought he was listening in. Although, in a place like this, any conversation remotely like that was suspicious.
As he walked to Berry’s bedroom door, he still felt eyes on his back. Frowning, he turned and casually looked around, his gaze sweeping the corner where the malcontents were seated, only to find one of the men staring at him. The man immediately dropped his gaze and turned away. Egan noted who it was though. It was one of the guys from the Swiss team, which generally they hadn’t had any problems with. However, everybody was trying to get out now, and, if one more dead body showed up, it would be an all-out war to make sure these guys got out of here before anybody else was killed. And that wouldn’t be fun. It never was, but in a place like this, it could be fatal.
Frustrated in the moment with the circumstances surrounding it all, and knowing that he was definitely part of the problem now, even though he’d come to be part of the solution, he headed to Berry’s new room. When he knocked on the door, there was a hesitant “Come in.” When he pushed open the door, he saw the relief on her face. He smiled, stepped in, and asked casually, “Hey, are you okay?”
She winced. “Did Sydney tell you?”
“Just that your sister woke up, with a need to bare her soul, and some of it was pretty rough on you.”
“Yeah, you could say so,” she admitted. “It’s mostly ancient history in a way, so you’d think it would be fine, but you know? … It’s not fine at all.” He immediately sat down beside her and gave her a hug. She curled into his arms, as if it were the most natural thing of all.
“Betrayal isn’t ever easy to take, and it doesn’t matter how old it is,” he shared. “She’s your sister, and, if there ever was anybody who should have had your back, it should have been her.”
“Instead apparently she went out of her way to damage me and my reputation and to take as much from me as she could,” Berry shared. “I’m still sitting here, thinking back on all the times when I didn’t understand what was going on around me and blamed myself, only to find out now that Cherry was the problem. … I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything, and I don’t need specifics,” he told her. “I’m just sorry it happened.”
She looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah, me too. … I guess that’s the bottom line. In a way, I wish I didn’t know. Yet I think I needed to know because I’d always thought that my sister was there for me, and now? … As you said, betrayal is the worst.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“But that’s okay, I’ll get through it,” she stated. “Now, what about you? How was your trip out today? They seem to be getting longer.”
“I keep going out, leaving messages at the scientists’ center. Honestly I really think Amelia’s still alive.”
“But, if that’s the case, she’s deliberately avoiding us.”
“Oh, absolutely, and, if she’s avoiding us, she must have a damn-good reason. I just wish I knew what that reason was.”
Berry shook her head. “It’s kind of scary to consider that anybody would think that way.”
“But when we review everything that’s gone wrong here,” he noted pointedly, “you can understand the sentiment, and her reluctance doesn’t seem to be so bad.”
“But the only way that could have happened is if …” And then she stopped, winced, and added in frustration, “Yegorahn said something to Amelia before he died?”
Egan nodded. “That would be my take.”
“Damn,” Berry said. “That’s not what I was hoping for.”
“Nope, me neither,” he agreed, with a wry look. “But it doesn’t look as if we’ll be getting any easy answers, so what do you want to do between now and dinnertime?”
She laughed. “Dinnertime? Is it that late? Don’t tell me that I’ve been in here all day?”
“You’ve been in here for hours, if this is where you came after you left Cherry.”
She sighed, then nodded. “I came down and wallowed in misery for a while. I slept too, really hard it seemed. Then, when I woke up, I started doing some work I had, though there isn’t a whole lot of it to be done right now.”
“No, but keeping our minds occupied right now is really important,” Egan shared. “So, if there’s anything I can do to help out, just let me know.”
“No, it’s fine,” Berry said. “I need to find a way to make peace with my sister, though I don’t know how to do that. In the meantime, that whole mess will just jiggle around in my mind, and, as new things pop up that I remember, I’ll see them from this ugly new viewpoint and feel betrayed all over again. If I can find a way to settle things with Cherry, then hopefully I’ll deal with it and put it away.”
“I’m pretty impressed that you can even think about getting to that point already.”
Day 6, Dinnertime
Berry stared at Egan, wondering at the connection building between them. And glad her sister wasn’t here to mess it up, then feeling crappy for having that thought. “Our parents are very not accepting. They’re quite hard-nosed in fact, which is probably part of the reason why Cherry did what she did. Anything for a little rebellion,” she said, with a groan. “But to go after me? That’s where I find it hard to be accepting.”
“Of course,” Egan agreed. “Siblings are always in a unique relationship, but—in your case, being a twin—it’s even more so.”
She nodded. “Despite all that mess, I really do love her, and I’m sorry that she’s done what she has because I think it makes her feel even worse,” Berry explained. “If she had ever talked to me about it, back then or even now, I would have eventually helped her to feel better.”
“Maybe,” Egan replied, “though, with her in that mind-set, maybe there has never been anything you could do. It’s all up to Cherry.”
“You’re right. I likely couldn’t do much, at least nothing substantive. Still, I don’t feel any better going over years of our history and seeing how many times people in my life—who were supposedly there for me—were not,” she stated. “And that’s where I’m really struggling.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Egan noted. “So don’t expect more out of yourself than is reasonable. To even consider the fact that you could forgive her for this is huge already. Do what you need to do for yourself first, then find a way to make peace with it if you can. Just remember. If that peace in your soul doesn’t happen right away, don’t beat yourself up over it. It is perfectly reasonable to say that you need time to sort yourself out, and you sure don’t have to buckle down and forgive Cherry right away.” Egan snorted. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure doing that would be beneficial to her.”
“Why not?” she asked, looking at him.
“Because it seems as if your sister has had a pretty easy ride and has gotten away with an awful lot of stuff that she probably shouldn’t have. Maybe it’s time for her to grow up and to realize that there are consequences to her actions. This wasn’t a single act. She did things to hurt you again and again, over a period of many years. So to let her off the hook too easily won’t be something she’ll learn anything from and will essentially be enabling her.”
“Will Cherry learn though?” she asked, giving him an odd look. “If she’s been doing some version of this over the course of our whole life, I’m not sure she even gives a crap.”
He nodded vehemently. “That’s partly why I’m hoping you don’t let her off the hook too soon. … I can see that you want to, and it’s obvious that taking on her baggage is a major part of who you are, which really just highlights the differences between you two.”
“That’s one of the things that I’ve been sitting here suffering through,” Berry admitted, with half a smile. “I finally understand, in painful and vivid detail, that, although outwardly we appear to be the same, in reality we are so very different in all the ways that matter.”
“I would totally agree with that,” Egan confirmed, “at least from what I’ve seen so far. No offense to your sister, but honestly I really like this twin the best.”
She smiled up at him. “You’re just saying that to be kind.”
He frowned at her, then shook his head. “No, I’m not. Everything I know and have seen about you tells me that you are a really good person. Hold on to that.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“And now we should go see about getting dinner first. Maybe that would be a good thing to do,” he suggested, as he rubbed his tummy. “Then we can come back, and, I don’t know, find something to occupy our evening.”
She laughed. “You mean, something healthy and wholesome?”
“Sure, whatever you want to do.” And that’s what they did.
When they got back after dinner, he held a deck of cards in his hands. “What card games do you know?”
“Not many,” she replied ruefully. “We played several all the time but outside of those ones, I don’t know any. Honestly I played them for my sister’s sake.”
“We’ll keep it simple.”
“Just don’t even begin to mention strip poker,” she warned.
He looked at her and then grinned. “I wouldn’t, but now that you’ve mentioned it …” Egan waggled his eyebrows.
“Hell no.” Berry laughed. “That would not be my thing. Not at all.”
“No, but I gather it would be your sister’s.”
“No doubt”—she frowned, as she stared off in the distance—“it would be.”
