CHAPTER FIFTEEN - HEADACHE
A loud ringing sound seemed to fill his head that screamed at him like an unpleasant alarm to wake up. He winced slightly and obediently his eyes flickered open, but the ringing continued incessantly. It was a sound in his head that felt as if someone were beating his ears with a drum.
“How’s the headache?” a voice asked.
He turned his head to see that Darren was watching him from the bottom of a make shift bed. He closed his eye for a moment and dampened his dry lips. “Painful and noisy,” he confessed. He blinked, but his vision was still slightly cloudy almost as if he were trapped in a mist. “Where am I?”
“The second med bay. It’s smaller than the other but still has what we need in it. The other one is a complete mess after the explosion.”
Brian tried to think, but it was very difficult with the sound still roaring in his ears. The explosion… yes he remembered it. He remembered the sound of it at least.
“I thought you said the med centre had been cleared,” he croaked.
“We thought it had,” Darren said. “We were wrong. Explo-charges are hard to find. Five others went off as well before we could deactivate them. Lance set them all to go off at different times. We think we’re in the clear now, but we’re not too sure.”
Brian placed a hand to his head and moaned in pain. Slowly he tried to sit up and Darren handed him a cloudy glass of water. “Have an aspirin,” he offered sympathetically. “I know how much the damn things hurt. They do a great job of stunning people.”
“How’s Nick?” Brian asked as he slowly sipped on the liquid, cringing as the foul, gritty taste hit the back of his throat.
“He’s fine,” Darren assured him. “He rested for a while and then was back on his feet. It’s always worse when you hear them for the first time though.”
Brian had never believed that a noise could be so harsh. He was used to loud concerts and loud music with loud, screaming girls but the explosion had been something he had never experienced before. “When will it stop hurting?” He could hardly hear Darren’s words over the screech of the echoing noise in his head.
“Soon,” Darren promised. “You’ll need some rest. A lot of people were hit by the noise of the explosions.”
The veil over Brian’s vision had begun to lift and he found that everything was clearing up to allow him to see the room. The reserve med centre was filled with patients and some, like Brian, were lying on made up beds on the ground. His heart began to hammer loudly as he noticed a person’s arm lazily draped over a cover. It wads covered in red sores caused by burns.
“What happened?”
Darren sighed and Brian suddenly realised how old and weary he was beginning to look. His dark hair was streaked with silvery grey. Sadly the older man turned his eyes about the room. “A lot of people were hurt. Two were killed, but that’s lucky. It could have been so much more. It could have been you.” Darren covered his face with his hand and Brian could see the fear and the dreadful ‘what ifs’ running through his mind. “I should have sent you to your room. Nothing went off even close to that area. The Gerai don’t want you killed and I should have realised.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Brian said softly as he placed the glass on the floor beside him. “Who would have thought Lance would plant something in the med centre?”
The loud raging ringing had begun to fade slightly to leave nothing but a dismal throb inside Brian’s head. It still hurt but at least his thoughts seemed to have room to breathe without a blaring noise crushing them all.
Darren still kept his face covered and suddenly Brian realised that something was sickeningly wrong. All heat was suddenly yanked viciously from his body and a hole had begun to open up inside of him. “Darren?” he asked.
Darren took a careful look about them to make sure that they were not being watched or over heard and then leaned his tired face closer to Brian’s. “We’re in trouble,” he whispered painfully. “Lance forewarned us of an attack and his explo-charges prove it. He targeted important areas. We’ve lost both of our communications rooms and another lab. One of the entrances to the base were also hit and half of our defences are down. We won’t be able to get them back up in time. A sentry has already spotted a group moving towards us.”
“Oh god…” Brian murmured suddenly realising how vulnerable they were. Darren’s base was the elite. He was the one who had urged people to fight in the first place and all other bases looked to this one for support and orders. Without it…
“I’ve given the orders for those unhurt to gear up and get ready to fight. There’s going to be a battle outside and I suspect they’ll be one in here. The southern entrance is a mess and I’ve placed extra guards there because that’s where they’ll come in.”
Brian nodded dumbly. His head felt as if it were swelling with all the sickening information that Darren was feeding him. There was a serious threat to the resistance. He had thought that it was all over after he had rescued B and Sammy last time and been told that most Gerai bases had fallen, but it was far from over.
“I was too soft!” Darren said harshly. “I should have been more careful to who I let inside this base.” He gave a deep, heavy sigh of melancholy. “It’s all falling apart.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself!” Brian hissed. “You couldn’t have known that the Gerai threat was this serious and it’s far from over! There is still other resistance bases and there is only one Gerai place left! Even if this place falls, other people will fight back! Howie and the others are still spying and they’ll make a move soon.” It wasn’t over yet, Brian wouldn’t let it crumble in his hands. He had been beta up, tortured and pushed to near insanity to win this war and he would not allow everything to shatter so easily.
Darren smiled weakly at him. “I guess I’m just not used to this base being so vulnerable. You’re right. The other bases may be much smaller since the end of the war but they can still fight back.” He stared around at the med centre. “I just don’t want people here to die. They deserve to see a better future.”
“You’ll hold them off,” Brian said determinedly. “You can fight this.” Brian’s feelings about Darren had always been mixed. He’d had a few run ins with the man’s temper before and Darren had never been able to stand the carefree nature of B, but beneath that he was good and honourable. He had worked damn hard to keep B alive and keep the resistance spirit flaring. Without him Brian suspected that the world would be even darker than it was now.
“I hope so,” Darren confessed. “We estimate the arrival of the Gerai at seven or eight hours. I wanna make sure that you’re holed up somewhere nice and safe before then. I know the Gerai wouldn’t kill you if they could help it, but I don’t want you to get caught in the cross fire.” He shifted uncomfortably for a moment. “Maybe we should even think about sending you home…”
“No!” Brian snapped, his heart lurching in his chest. “No, I’m way too involved now and I don’t care if I’m in danger! If anything happens then you can use the time machine and send someone to save my life or something! I am not going home!” It would be bad enough being kept out of the action and unable to help protect the base, but being back home over a decade away from everything and everyone he cared about…
“I thought you’d protest,” Darren said. “All right, but if this base falls then you go home before the Gerai find you.”
“It won’t fall,” Brian said determinedly. “You have better weapons than the Gerai. So what if one of the entrances is a walk in job. You just don’t let them get in.”
Darren grinned and then glanced at his watch. “I gotta finish making the preparations and I need to herd all of our non military inhabitants down to the security caverns so they’ll be safe. I’ll come back for you later.”
Brian nodded and yawned slightly. He was tired and his head still ached, but he knew that sleep would never come now. Now his body was tense and his stomach churning unpleasantly with nerves. He knew that Darren and his group could fend the Gerai off. He knew it… but he still felt nauseous.
“You gonna be okay on your own? Bri’s not here to sit with you anymore,” Darren said vaguely as he stood up.
Brian’s head snapped up and he frowned. Bri had been sitting with him? “What?” he asked. He’d thought Bri hated him…
Darren paused for a moment. “Bri was the one to bring you and Nick down here. He was, um, sitting with you until he and Nick left with their team. I wanted them to be well away before the Gerai got here.”
Brian’s heart seemed to sink slightly into the folds of his stomach. He had wanted to try and talk to Bri before he departed, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. He felt strange inside and there was a curiously empty part of his body. He had just been beginning to grow accustomed to his twin and now it was somehow lonely without him, even though the man still annoyed him worse than anything else on the planet. “Oh,” he said softly.
Darren stared down at him strangely. “I thought you would be glad to be rid of him. You two are so tense around one another, although it was good team worm to get the info out of Lance the other day.”
Brian shrugged. He did not know if he could even try to explaining the connection between the two. There was certainly hate but in their bond was mixed a thousand other emotions that Brian could not identify. He almost felt as if he needed his older twin.
“I wish I could have gone with them,” he confessed. “I know it was too dangerous but… B and Sammy.”
“You miss them?” Darren guessed.
Brian nodded and closed his eyes. “Every day. It was lovely having B to stay, even just for a short while. I really got to know him well.” He froze for a moment. He had felt numb and shocked at Bri’s sudden arrival at his home, but he could still recall the heated argument as Bri and B had yelled at one another. That would one day be him yelling at B and he could not see how… “How do I become like Bri?” he asked. “He and B are so far apart…” he said sadly.
“They love each other. Bri would give his life for B or Sammy but he worries a lot. B is very lively and, to be frank, a bit of a wild rogue sometimes. He has his moments when he sulks and you have to be patient with him. On the right day he’ll love nothing more than to be smothered but at other times he’ll bite your head off if you touch him. Sammy grew up used to this as he raised B, but Bri… Well, he didn’t see it quite as much.”
Brian shook his head. “It’s more than that. In my time B occasionally had his moments but I dealt with it and we were back on normal terms within an hour.”
“Bri is older than you,” Darren replied. “And he’s been through a lot,” he added quietly.
Brian leaned back on his bed. “I get the feeling that my own personal hell awaits me in the future. Something very, very horrible and nasty is going to happen to me isn’t it?”
Darren said nothing for a few minutes until he shrugged. “The main thing is that you survive.”