Nina felt a shiver shake her arm as she reached two fingers to his throat. For a long second she feared she had searched all day only to find a corpse. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as her fingers felt a soft pulse, but he did not stir.
His shirt had been torn to shreds during his blind race through the wilderness. He wore only one sneaker and she spied small patches of blood on his pant legs and arms. Nothing serious, but another sign of the craziness of his flight through the woods. Her Emperor-her leader- reduced to a wild animal.
Nina studied the rough lines in his cheekbones and the strong shoulders that had carried her people so far for so long. Lying there, on the floor, those cheekbones seemed soft and the shoulders vulnerable. She realized she looked not upon an Emperor, but a man.
In that moment all the admiration, all the loyalty, and all the respect she held for him doubled. Trevor Stone was no super being, no powerful entity, no demigod. She saw him as a human being, no more, no less. And while that realization stripped away his aura of invincibility, it made him real and his accomplishments more worthy of admiration.
And he lay there, on the floor, alone.
A wave of sadness flew over her. No, not over, but from that locked part of her heart.
He will not be alone. He deserves better than that.
She yanked a quilt from the sofa producing a cloud of dust that caused her to cough and wheeze, but he still did not stir even as she draped the cover across him.
Nina placed her backpack on the floor and retrieved the oversized radio from inside. With her attention focused on the communicator, she did not see the Old Man staring in the front window, his face contorted into an expression of deep grief; tears streaming down his cheeks.
The transmitter offered only static. Nina did not understand why. After several minutes of trying, she left the living room and moved outside in time to watch the last rays of sunshine fade behind the peaks. Odin remained behind, curled on the floor in one corner of the room nursing his own exhaustion.
Still, no contact. She did not understand. The high powered radio should work, even in such a remote area. Something obstructed her call for help.
She turned off the radio, returned inside, and knelt next to him whispering, "Trevor? Do you…can you…hear me? Um…it’s me…Captain…it’s me…Nina Forest."
No response, only the slow rise and fall of his chest.
Nina considered her options. She could not carry him out of the mountains. Indeed, she could not walk out herself. The trip in had consumed her strength. Her legs needed rest. Furthermore, she suspected Trevor to be exhausted, which probably accounted for his lack of response. At least she hoped so.
The calendar, she knew, said July but they sat in the high mountains surrounded by forest. The cabin’s stale, cold air already felt chilly enough despite how hot the day had been. Certainly the temperature would drop even further as night rose.
She prioritized.
First, Nina slipped her arms under his legs and shoulders, grunted, and lifted him to the couch. He lacked weight. The Order had provided just enough nutrients to keep his body functioning.
With him secure on soft bedding and under the quilt, she turned her attention to the fireplace. On one side of the stone mantle a pile of yellowed newspaper, on the other a stack of dried logs.
Nina used the paper and twigs for kindling and a match from her survival kit to ignite the heap. After allowing the flames to build, she added wood to the mix. Soon a respectable blaze warmed the living room.
She slipped off her jacket and chugged from her canteen, careful to keep a healthy supply ready for him when he woke.
If he wakes up.
Nina found she had no appetite for rations. Eating could wait until morning.
With that in mind, she settled in for what promised to be a long but hopefully quiet night. She sat on the floor and propped her head against the side of the couch while he slept above and Odin remained in the corner. An hour ticked by, maybe longer, and the world outside grew dark while the fire inside cast the two in a warm glow. Nina’s eyes grew heavy and sleep beckoned……in a flash, her instincts chased off that sleep. She drew her weapon and leapt to her feet to confront the intruder. "Easy…easy there, missy."
He took a cautious step from the shadowy hall into the light of the living room. Odin glanced in the newcomer's direction, but to Nina's surprise her K9 friend appeared unconcerned.
Nina held the gun sure and steady.
"Hold it right there."
"Oh now, calm down," the Old Man spoke with his hands held up and his back slightly hunched. "I’m not your enemy, you know that, don’t ya’?"
She did not know that…or…or did she?
"Who are you?"
"Oh, now, that’s right. You don’t remember a lick, do ya? Probably for the best and all. Yep, definitely for the best. But now…well, now it’s a damned nuisance."
The Old Man’s words suggested he wanted to come across as flippant, but the tremble in his voice fell far short, sounding sad, maybe scared, to Nina’s ear. Still…she saw something familiar in him. Not visions, but feelings. Feelings of wonder and awe.
The sight of Trevor lying on the floor had made her see the Emperor as just a man. The newcomer standing in the light of the fire…she kne w-she knew — to be much more than that. "Now what is that I see in them eyes? Could it be…naw…could you be thinkin’ you recognize lil’ old me?" Nina did not react as the Old Man dropped his hands. "I…I don’t understand." She did not feel threatened by the stranger; merely puzzled. She tilted her head and studied the lines of his face. "We had a talk once, you and me, about our friend here."
The old timer nodded toward the sofa. Nina followed his motion, glanced at Trevor, and then returned her attention to the newcomer. She turned the pistol in her hand, thought, then slid it into her holster.
"Mighty obliged," he smiled a forced grin. "Anywho, I couldn’t really do you no harm even if that’d be my intention, seein’ how I’m not really here and all. At least, not the way you would be thinkin’."
As if to emphasize the point, the man took another step forward on the wooden cabin floor, but his footfall made no noise.
Nina had seen enough in the decade since Armageddon to maintain her cool. Nonetheless, her voice dropped to a whisper. "Who are you? What are you?"
He walked in a clumsy gait suggesting frailty. Nina guessed that to be an illusion, too.
"I’m a friend. Now, you can’t tell me you haven’t heard all them stories, right? You know, the stories ‘bout Trevor walkin’ off into the woods and comin’ back with fancy notions."
Nina had not heard those stories in recent years, but she had heard them.
She crinkled her brow and remembered the early days at the estate. However, to her memory those early days began nearly a year after she and Shep had crashed in northeastern Pennsylvania. From what Shep had explained, she had been spirited away by The Order and implanted with two dormant parasites before being returned to Trevor’s band of survivors.
Her mission, it appeared, had been to unwittingly collect intelligence for The Order. At some point in the process the parasites activated, recalling her to one of The Order’s bases. Or so Shep had said. Her discussions with Gordon and rumors of Trevor's own imprisonment by The Order at the same time made her wonder…had she once betrayed Trevor Stone?
Regardless, the survivors raided The Order’s base and freed her, removing one of the parasites but not knowing of the second implant’s existence. That second implant had been tied to her memory. Months later doctors found and removed the second implant but, in the process, she lost her memories between its removal and when it had been first inserted.
Seeing the Old Man standing in front of her and feeling a sense of recognition for him confirmed what she had long suspected: more had happened during those months than Shep or anyone had shared. Indeed, Nina’s decision to unravel the mystery of Trevor’s assassination had been driven by Ashley’s promise to shed light on that hole in her memories.