“Are you ready to go to the armory?” Marco asked uneasily, not looking directly at him. Her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her face was still a deep pink.
Sergio nodded energetically, as it seemed that he and Marco both wanted to escape from the curious insinuations of Katya. Not wasting another second, Marco tore out of the room without saying goodbye to her and Sergio followed quickly after her. Even after exiting the mess hall he could hear Katya’s giggling faintly behind them.
It seemed that just as soon as he’d regained himself from his earlier ineptitude, the air had become tense again and Katya’s words echoed in his ears. What exactly was she trying to suggest? Had Marco really described their encounter with the anomaly to her in such a way as to make her think that Sergio had acted like some story book hero? Marco was certainly no damsel in distress type needing to be rescued. Then again, he was starting to understand how his carrying her limp body out from that disturbing hallway could be seen in a different light.
“Katya likes to play jokes,” Marco began to make excuses for the strange behavior, once again reading his mind and answering questions he had never asked aloud. But then she seemed to forget what she wanted to say next.
“It’s alright.” Sergio attempted to show a comforting smile, but Marco didn’t look at him and so it was lost on her. Maybe changing the subject would relieve her and then the atmosphere might return to normal between them. “Did something happen with Anna?”
“Oh, that.” Marco let out a huff as if trying to vent out her annoyance. “No, nothing bad happened. I just don’t like her attitude. She seems entitled, kind of a know-it-all type. I mean, I already know how to use a Dragunov and she’s treating me like a child.”
“Did Sacco teach you about it?” Sergio spoke before he had meant to, but Marco didn’t seem to mind the question this time.
“Of course. What else, I told you he taught me a lot of things.” Marco held up a hand as if she could physically hold all the individual things that Sacco had shown her.
“Sorry, I just…” Sergio set about apologizing; trying to get his mouth to catch up to where his mind was a hundred meters ahead of him asking its own questions.
“No, I know. He left you completely unprepared. I mean, I’m sure you knew already how to use a rifle before you got here…” Marco stammered, seemingly also detached from her actual thoughts. Then she spoke in a softer tone. “There’s a way he has about his mind, how he looks at things, processes them. It’s a sort of meditation, and he can sense things that you can’t see or hear.”
Sergio couldn’t nail down a specific question to add to the conversation, but he was delighted to hear Marco speak of the man who had constructed his current life path. She had known Sacco much more intimately and Sergio was finally learning to be appreciative of the fact as it afforded him more information about the man he only thought he understood.
“I can’t do that like he can, but it was always fascinating to watch him. Sometimes we would go into the tunnels towards Turganevskaya, just to see how quiet we could be.”
Sergio examined her face as she reminisced, her mind transported to those very tunnels on the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line which he used to call home. He scoffed internally, trying to imagine why anyone would go into that cursed tunnel just for fun. Sometimes he still couldn’t decide if Sacco was boldly reckless because he was so sure of himself or just plain mad.
“Once we got stuck overnight near Marksistskaya—” Marco’ voice had gotten higher.
Looking over at her again, he just noticed she was dabbing at her eyes with one hand, trying to wipe away tears before they fell. Her happy recollections of the veteran Stalker had only instigated her guilt and grief. Without a second thought, he stopped and reached over her shoulders and pulled her closer until she was tucked under his arm. They were only a few steps from the lift, so he thought it was better to help her compose herself before heading into the usually busy armory where Vera and Maro were probably already waiting for him.
“Do you really think he was killed, Sergio?” Marco’ eyes pleaded, the silvery blue shades of grey reminding him of the gloomy sky over the city far above them.
“I don’t know.” His head sunk and he had to look away from her sorrowful eyes before they consumed him. “It’s just strange that he would completely disappear. If he had gone down fighting, there would be a trace of him somewhere.”
“Didn’t anyone go after him?” She grasped at the sleeve on his other arm, trying to steady herself as she breathed sharply.
“I don’t even know how long it took me to get to Polis after he left.” Sergio speedily flipped through the memories of all the misfortune he’d encountered on what seemed like such a simple journey. “Two weeks? A month? When I finally found Colonel Vera, the task was to find D6 and use the missiles to destroy the Dark Ones.”
Marco shook her head in disbelief and sniffed back another wave of tears, now gripping at both of his sleeves as he had loosened his embrace. He suddenly felt as if he had personally failed her, and regretted that no one had gone to look for Sacco at any time they were on the surface, even as they had gone to OsloTower.
“I’m sorry. I wish I knew.” Sergio’s voice cracked at the end, as it seemed he had been swept under by the current of her sorrow – dragged into the limitless depths beneath the unstable platform he’d built up in his mind to stand on which made his worthless life just barely tolerable enough to go on with.
There was a long time spent standing there with Marco clutching his sleeves and Sergio remaining as still as a statue, lost in the torrent of disappointment and regret that flowed around them both. The elevator passed their floor several times without stopping, and Marco had become completely still and silent. He could barely tell from his angle above her that her eyes were shut as if she were intensely concentrating on something but he couldn’t be sure what she was thinking at the moment. After another minute of watching her, he decided to take her hands with his own. If she wanted to hold on to him, then he wanted to be there for her.
“Marco?” Sergio said softly after several more minutes had passed in silence. He almost wanted to lift her head the way he had seen Nikolai do earlier, but didn’t want to let go of her hand.
She stirred slowly, her brows twitched and then relaxed. Her eyelids fluttered and then opened fully, and she looked up at him with a bewildered appearance as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“Are you alright?” He asked tentatively, wondering if she even noticed that he had been holding on to her hands all this time.
“I was trying to meditate, like he used to, to see if I could sense him… or something like that.” She looked around them, as if expecting to see Sacco’s ghostly apparition floating nearby somewhere. “I couldn’t see anything, but I heard his voice.”
“What was he saying?” Sergio indulged her fantasy if only to keep her calm, as she seemed to be now.
“I don’t know… it was sort of jumbled.” Her voice wavered, and she looked up at him again and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s probably just old memories.”
“Maybe you should get some rest. Have you slept?” Sergio convinced himself to let one of his hands go from hers, at least to see if she noticed the sensation or not.
“Not very much. When Anna brought me to the barracks I had a few hours, but this place is so big I just couldn’t settle down.” Marco released his other hand and Sergio was regretful that he had brought her attention to it.
“After this, you should try to sleep. It’s late and I don’t know what might happen in the next few days.” Sergio pressed hard on the button that summoned the elevator.
Marco simply nodded her head in agreement; it seemed her head was still wrapped up in her aural imaginings of Sacco.