He hadn’t expected that he’d find her lying naked and face down in the muddy grass, though.
“Stay right there. I’m coming,” said Aaron, not that he thought she’d go running through the street in that condition.
Moni’s skin didn’t look right. It seemed darker and thicker somehow. Aaron didn’t steal too long a glance before he grabbed a jacket out of the trunk and covered her. Rolling over and clutching the jacket against her shivering flesh, she didn’t look at her supposed prince charming. She glared at her hands and then yanked a braid from atop her head before her eyes. Instead of a bunch of hairs scrunched together, it resembled a bushel of hair fused into one.
“Those hair treatments you used on your braids combined with that nasty water, make something foul,” Aaron said. “Let me help you dry it off.”
He fetched a blanket from the cruiser’s trunk. It absorbed the water from her hair pretty well, but Aaron smelled something burning. Her damp hair had singed the blanket. She had swum in the acid, and strolled on out. Moni blinked at the damage she had caused the blanket. She didn’t seem at all surprised.
Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. When she stood up, Aaron figured he better follow. They dashed through the yard away from the lagoon, even though putting weight on his tender foot made him buckle. Seconds after they started running, what Aaron heard behind him sounded louder than a hundred school buses falling from the sky. The entire yellow bubble started collapsing, and splashing down into the lagoon. The initial cracks widened into fissures, and then massive patches with narrow strips connecting them to the greater wall. It didn’t happen in random spurts like some avalanche; each layer fell together, level by level atop one another. It looked as organized as a planned building demolition. The problem was they didn’t bother moving the bystanders out of the way. Before Aaron’s eyes a wave of crystal clear water lapped ten feet onto land. He bounded backwards as the skin-scolding tide rolled in toward his feet. Moni gripped his arm and locked him against her side. She had already brought him far enough away. When the acid receded, it left everything it touched charred and withering. If they hadn’t moved, they would have been stripped of their flesh.
Aaron and Moni stood side by side, marveling at what remained of the former ecological treasure. Fragments of the yellow alien dome floated on the surface of the water like a great scab. Corpses of gators, manatees, dolphins and bizarre blobs of biomass bobbed in the water in place of buoys. It reeked so bad of rotten eggs and decaying raw meat, that Aaron coughed and covered his mouth. It didn’t bother Moni, though. The stench slowly dissipated, along with the pieces of the barrier. The repairs had begun, but life in the lagoon wouldn’t become normal for a long time, Aaron thought. He just wished he knew where he got that notion from.
Turning to Moni, Aaron figured he better not ask the obvious, yet painful, question about Mariella. When he saw her emerge from the lagoon by herself that told him enough about her fate. But, the way she loved the little one, he never thought she’d do it.
“I know you did some bad things, and hell, I really screwed up too,” Aaron said. Moni finally locked eyes with him. Her exotic beauty, with her scalded yet resilient hair and bare shoulders, knocked him so far for a loop that he could hardly continue. “I don’t know how I’m so lucky that I made it through this with you. A lot of amazing people didn’t… They had us confused and we did horrible things that we would have never done. If we had been in control of our minds, we wouldn’t have let the people we care about get hurt.”
A single teardrop streamed down her cheek. He caught it with his palm. Moni drew closer and wrapped her hands around his shoulders. Every fiber of Aaron’s being wanted to lock lips with Moni and pour his heart into a most improbable kiss. He couldn’t do it without first asking one more question of her.
“You know who did this to us, Moni. But what I don’t understand is how you overcame their brainwashing. How did you destroy them?”
Moni parted her lips and started mouthing out words, but not a sound came out.