CHAPTER TEN - EXPLANATIONS
B stared down at his feet, knowing that if he looked at Brian’s face the emotions would betray him. He couldn’t hide anything in his green eyes; they would always give him away.
Brian placed his hands on B’s shoulders and he could feel his gaze burrowing into him. “Tell me,” Brian whispered.
B turned away from him and shrugged his hands away as he thought back to the way things were between them in his own time. Slowly he sat down upon the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure where to begin,” he confessed. “It’s a long story.”
“Start from the beginning,” Brian said gently. He sat down on the bed and patted the place next to him, motioning for B to sit.
B obediently seated himself beside his father and he fiddled with his hands awkwardly in his lap. He couldn’t tell Brian everything, there was no telling how he would react. He couldn’t tell him the truth…
Brian sighed and he placed his hands on B’s shoulders to turn him to face him. “Start by telling me how you and Sammy are. Are you both doing okay?”
B nodded. “We’re both fine.” Well, Sammy was but B wasn’t so sure about himself… Sammy had everything going for him at the moment, but B was just plain unhappy with everything in life at the moment.
“You still living at the base with the others?” Brian asked.
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment as he took a moment to relieve his throat of the irritating tickling and he reached for a tissue from the bedside table. “It’s been about six months since you left,” he whispered. “It’s 2024 and we were beginning to rebuild some villages. Me and Sammy moved out to one of them because he thought I would be better off in a proper home.” He didn’t mention the third person involved in their lives… “We still saw Darren and the others a lot. Darren met with the other resistance leaders and they discussed what they were going to do next. Most of the captured Gerai were executed, a few were allowed back into society and the rest were imprisoned until they thought of what they could do with them. Sammy and I weren’t really involved. We just lived in this pretty little village with a few others.”
“So what changed?” Brian whispered.
B’s eyes flickered closed. What had changed? For a brief time everything had been fine until he had realised how different certain people were… Maybe it would have worked out if it wasn’t for the Gerai. “Then the Gerai attacked,” he said simply, remembering that day a handful of troops had entered the defenceless village and wrecked havoc. A rain of fire had fell from the skies, burning everything and covering everything with a filthy layer of ugly, black smoke. “There was only a small number of them, but we couldn’t fight them.” He glanced up and stared at Brian. “They were after me. They were targeting me and they destroyed the entire village to reach me. I was lucky to get away, but a lot of people died…”
Brian wrapped his arms about him and B found himself falling into that loving embrace, allowing the arms to cover and protect him.
“We sent an SOS to Darren and the others and they came, but not before everything was destroyed. They took all the survivors back to the base and then they told us where the Gerai came from. There was one tiny, research facility that we overlooked. We didn’t even know it existed and in that final battle, we missed it completely. It was a research centre, highly classified, and it had very little contact, if any, with other Gerai bases. The Gerai there kept their heads down; they knew they could never attack and defeat us all. Kevin heard about it and he confirmed the rumours of the base, but it was buried underground so they couldn’t just attack it, they couldn’t even get inside.”
“And they think you can help them change things?” Brian guessed.
“I don’t know,” B replied. “They tried to break into one of the prison blocks to free the imprisoned Gerai, but they failed. They want to regain what they had before, but they’re too small. If they get me though, they can destroy everything.” He rolled his sleeve up to reveal the ugly scar that tainted his arm. He slowly trailed a finger down it, wishing for the thousandth time that he could just be free from its curses. This was the cause of all the trouble that had occurred lately. “We managed to scan my computer chip and we saw what was on it. We saw why they wanted it so much,” he whispered, remembering the time he had watched while the information flickered up on the black screen. He could still recall the looks of pure horror that had graced Sammy’s face as he realised what his little brother was carrying. “It’s a biological weapon,” B said. “There’s a formula for a virus here.”
“A virus?” Brian said. “What kind of virus?”
B hesitated as he sneezed into his tissue a few things. He really wasn’t feeling good at the moment and his head had started to spin again making him feel nauseous and dizzy. “It’s horrible. Nick looked at it and it could wipe out half of our people in a week. They’ll be so much more stronger if they get it. They might even be able to come back again. All they need to do is to be strong enough to break into our base and steal the time machine. They could do anything if they could travel through time!” he wailed.
Brian rocked him comfortingly in his arms. “They’re not going to come back! They won’t get you, I won’t let them!”
B suddenly realised that his cheeks were damp with tears as he pressed them into Brian’s shoulder. He had missed him so much… In his own time there was only Sammy who he shared a special bond with. There was nobody else…
“They have spies everywhere though!” B cried. “I had a friend and he turned out to be a Gerai! He was the one who attacked me and tried to kidnap me just before I used the time machine! He set a bomb off in the base and killed so many…” He broke off as he sobbed slightly and clutched Brian tightly as if he could somehow keep hold of him in his own time…
“Come on, it’s all right,” Brian said softly. “I’m not going to let him get you.”
“I had to come here!” B cried. “Everybody got hurt because they were after me!”
“All right, all right, shush, calm down,” Brian soothed as he held B in his strong arms, making him feel so safe and protected.
“I don’t want this thing anymore!” B sobbed and he viciously smacked the scar on his arm, but cried out at the fierce burning pain that tingled down his arm and throughout the rest of his body, making him shudder and whimper.
“Are you all right?” Brian asked in concern, his hand gently stroking B’s scarred arm.
B closed his eyes tightly as the fire raged through his blood but eventually it seemed to die down. His thoughts sunk to the malevolent computer chip that hid within the folds of flesh and blood in his arm. If only he could rip it out and destroy it, but it was as unbreakable as an ancient curse, determined to claim his life and any others that became involved with him.
“Why do I have such a bad life?” he murmured. He’d never been free. This chip had always kept him its tethered prisoner.
“It’ll get better,” Brian said gently. “One day…”
B wiped his sore eyes on the back of his hand. The tears had left their mark upon him, just as his unsettling past had left an awful blemish upon his life. Tears could normally wash away any sorrow, but no amount of tears or even time could alter B’s fate it seemed. One day…
They were always saying that. As a child he had always been frustrated that nobody would let him go outside and play and he’d always been told the same thing: ‘One day you’ll be able to go out…’ But now he was seventeen and he still wasn’t free of his suffocating life. Claws still sought to possess him, like some precious object, but they weren’t interested in him but in the horrifying destruction that was located within that tiny, seemingly insignificant computer chip that did nothing but torture his life.
Even here in a completely different time he couldn’t be free, not while he still feared the Gerai that had tried to capture him in his own time. They wouldn’t let him get away. Not even time was going to stop them getting their evil creations. They wouldn’t stop until they claimed him as their own. It was almost as if he couldn’t have a life without the Gerai destroying it.
B untangled himself from Brian’s arms, struggling not to let even more shameful tears drift down his face as he thought about what he had to do. “Maybe it’s best that I don’t stay here,” he murmured. “Anything could happen.”
“B!” Brian placed his hand on B’s cheek and turned his wet, melancholy eyes to stare at his father’s face. “You’re not going anywhere! You almost died on the streets once and I will not let that happen again! Besides, how will your brother find you when he comes looking for you?”
“I just don’t want to get you into trouble,” B cried. “Can’t you see that I don’t want to destroy this time like I destroyed my own time? I don’t want you to get hurt!”
B, nothing is going to happen! What can one Gerai do? This time is very different to your own and I’m not going to let anybody hurt us.” He clasped his arms about B and held him tightly, refusing to let him go. “I protected you in your time and I can do the same now can’t I?”
B smiled slightly. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Just don’t run away, okay?” Brian whispered.
B pressed his head against Brian’s shoulder. He didn’t want to leave yet. He liked it here and he already felt happier than he had in his own time. The warmest feeling of all was that Brian loved him here and B didn’t want to give that up so easily.
“Okay,” B promised eventually. His eyes drifted closed and he realised how much he meant to Brian as he held him close.
“Good, I don’t like the idea of you getting lost in this world,” Brian replied.
B opened his mouth to reply, but the beginning of a sentence was exchanged for several, violent sneezes. He shivered slightly as his head began to pound heavily.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Brian said. “Now Nick’s gone I can finally get you your hot water bottle.”
Hot water bottle… that sounded like a good idea, especially as the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped by a few degrees. B was shivering even in his thick jersey and he could almost feel the coldness creeping over his skin. He glanced about the room and then back to Brian. “Can I go downstairs? It’s kinda boring up here and I wanna see the rest of your house. Besides, there’s nothing to do up here.”
“You’re ill, you’re not supposed to do anything!” Brian chided playfully.
“So?” B croaked, trying to ease his mind from the painful events in his own time.
“You’re gonna moan wherever I put you aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
Brian laughed slightly and wiped his wet eyes and B saw the faintest traces of tears there as if he had relived B’s pain with him. “All right, you can stay downstairs. I’ll fix you up a sick bed on the couch.”
B smiled before he sneezed again, but he was pleased to have wrangled his own way. Sammy would never have him anywhere but in his own bed piled in blankets no matter how much he had whined as a child.
Sammy… Wait a moment… Where was Sammy? There was a supposed to be a tiny Sammy running around Brian’s house somewhere…
“Uh, won’t the little Sammy notice something odd if I’m here?” B asked.
“Sammy? Don’t worry, he’s not here,” Brian replied. “He left yesterday to go on holiday with his friend. He won’t be back until the end of the week.”
“What will happen when he gets back?” B asked, suddenly panicking as he realised how little time he had before that happened.
“Don’t worry, we’ll think of something,” Brian said turning way from him briefly.
He was torn, B realised. He wanted to spend time with B but at the same time he knew that he couldn’t abandon Sammy.
“He’ll probably have come for me by then anyway,” B said faintly.
Brian gently stroked his hair out of his face. “Either way, it’s wonderful to see you again, even if it is only for a short time.”