Chapter 35: Volume II: Chapter 2: Jack Mathews

Chleo rushed into the med bay with Will in tow. Her hand laced through his, she refused to let go, even as she saw her dad eyeing the connection. A small teasing smile crossed his lips, and a weight she hadn’t noticed before lifted.

 

“So when did this finally happen?” he asked.

 

Her hand and Will’s shot away from each other like magnets switching poles. “When did what finally happen?” She cleared her throat looking at the machine behind her father’s head. It really was interesting how they could get it to beep by harnessing electrons.

 

“Seriously, still?” he asked, voice edged in exasperation as he turned to Dai. She shrugged and shook her head, smirking as she checked one of the tubes sticking out of his arm.

 

Chleo bit her lip, purposefully avoiding their exchange. From the corner of her eye she watched Will’s face morph into blank face number two, nothing but a tinge of red. They still hadn’t talked about their near… their almost… what almost happened when she had been half out of her mind in the magically glowing book’s cellar. She crossed her arms. It wasn’t her dad’s or anyone else’s business.

 

“How are you feeling?” she asked, eyes narrowed. He lifted his hands in surrender. A soft laugh curled around his lips.

 

“Much better, now that you’re here. I was just about to ask Dai to get your mom. Have you seen her?”

 

Dai froze, hand clenched around the stand holding whatever they had pumping into him. Chleo reached into her pocket to fiddle with her mother’s watch. Her thumb hit the latch. The cover flipped open. Her forefinger snapped it shut. Repeat. Will was unnaturally still by her side.

 

“What is it?” His face chilled, granite working the edges, preparing for a beating. He turned to Dai for answers. “Where’s Melody?”

 

“Jack.” She flit an eye to Chleo and Will. “Maybe we should wait to dis-”

 

“Where’s my wife, Dai?” His shoulders were as stiff as his voice.

 

Chleo watched her slump, the blue filling the room dipping with her posture. “We don’t know.” The soft words echoed.

 

Looking down, Chleo studied the floor. It wasn’t anything like the infirmary in the palace. No stone in sight, just clean, sharp, tiled edges.

 

“Yes, we do,” she said quietly.

 

“Chleo,” Dai warned.

 

“What?” She looked up suddenly angry. Will put a comforting hand on her should. Whether it was for restraint or support, she wasn’t sure. “We have a lead.”

 

“A shaky lead at best. You said it yourself, the doctor you asked wasn’t sure. Not to mention, he was under duress at the time.” Pity colored Dai’s tone, setting Chleo’s teeth on edge.

 

Her dad stared between the two of them, hope on the edge of caution. “What is it?”

 

“Jack, we really should wait to ta-”

 

“If there’s a lead to find Melody, we should check it out, right? Why wouldn’t we?” he cut Dai off, ignoring her concern.

 

“He said she might be somewhere called Umbra,” Chleo said quickly before Dai could stop her. Maybe, with her dad awake, someone would finally listen rather than brush them off as traumatized kids. She watched a spike of fear straighten his spine. A hint of panic flicked his eyes toward Dai before his granite mask slid back into place.

 

“Like the myth?” he asked his tone overly neutral. Chleo sighed, another adult that would act like it didn’t exist, then. She let her disappointment show.

 

“No, well maybe it was named after it, but it’s a real place.” Will jumped in, recognizing the same pattern she did. “Look, we have the headings, we just need a ship to get there.”

 

He pulled a piece of paper out of a pouch on his belt and handed it over. Her dad took it, looking it over with a practiced eye. His gaze stuck on the three numbers.

 

“Where did you get these?”

 

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Chleo thumbed her mother’s watch. Flick open. Snap closed. Flick open. Snap closed. She bit her lip to keep her thoughts firmly inside her own head.

 

“We found them,” Will said, hand stuffed in his own pocket. Chleo wondered if he was fingering his watch, too. His words were chosen with care, shaped to navigate around a lie.

 

Her dad’s gaze traveled to Will’s pocket. His eyes narrowed. He must have had the same thought.

 

“Where?”

 

“We were on the ship,” Chleo cut in, misinterpreting his question on purpose, “during the trip from Luna. There wasn’t much to do trapped on board for two days. We were hoping Mic could take us out there to have a look.”

 

“There’s nothing to see,” her dad said taking another glance at the coordinates.

 

“So everyone keeps saying,” Chleo grumbled annoyed that Will’s watch stayed stubbornly dim. Then in a stronger voice added, “What would it hurt to fly by then?” The spike of fear was back, permanently attached to her dad’s spine. “Didn’t you just say we should follow every lead to find mom?”

 

She watched him share another worried look with Dai. “You leave finding your mom to us,” he said sending her a smaller version of the smile she’d been waiting almost a month to see, “but for now, I just woke up from a pretty long nightmare, and I’d kill for one of my daughter’s famous hugs.”

 

His eyes softened as he raised his arms, an invitation. She wanted to stay mad. The tantrum was halfway to her fist ready to beat out its frustration on the nearby table. One look at her dad, his face open and vulnerable, a quick flash of a memory, his watch open as he played a lullaby by her crib keeping a king’s echoing question at bay, and she was in his arms taking as much comfort as she gave.

 

He was soft. He was warm. The smell of grease and steam clung to his shirt as she breathed him in. She was home.

 

~*~*~

 

“Dai,” Jack asked as she returned from forcing the kids to leave his side for dinner, “what happened?”

 

He watched her raise a questioning brow. “To Chleo,” he clarified. “She’s… different.” The word came out uncertain not quite fitting what he wanted to convey. She seemed to grasp his meaning despite it, in the way only old friends could. It was good to see her again.

 

“We don’t know the whole story,” she said haltingly. Her blue glow filled the room soothing his worry. “She’s rather reluctant to talk about it but…” Dai took a breath. “There was an incident… with the seventh point at his palace. We ran some tests after the rescue… er, escape… just to make sure there wasn’t any permanent damage.”

 

“Permanent… Why was she there at all?”

 

“Jack,” Dai said, casting an anxious eye at the monitor as its beeping increased, “you need to stay calm.”

 

He took a deep breath trying to make the beeps slow from sheer force of will. “Dai,” he tried again, “what did that Lunalit fool of a king do to my daughter?”

 

“Seriously, you’ve been flooding your system with cortisol and adrenaline for the past three weeks. You need to relax.” He gave her a look. “Or at least control your heart rate.” She rolled her eyes.

 

He took another breath, holding it for a count of three. His glare never left his friend. He released it for a count of three. The look lacked any real heat, but he could still see the guilt building behind her eyes. Another breath in, another breath out, and the beeps started to calm.

 

She still didn’t say anything, busying herself with the med tablet on the side table. “Dai.” It came as a warning.

 

She ground her teeth without looking up. He watched her jaw flex as she forced the words out. “They injected her.”

 

He felt his heart stop, the frantic beeps in the background were lying. If the watch Melody made for Will were in the room it would have filled the area in green because there was no way his heart would still be beating if his daughter had been injected. “Over his dead body,” he’d always said, and he meant it.

 

“It was only a partial injection,” she continued softly. Her hand reached to lay on his shoulder. He shook it off. Melody, he needed Melody. She would know what to do. Except, he remembered, she was missing, presumably on Umbra. He shuddered.

 

“Are you sure I’m awake?” he asked. Silently, he waited for the telltale question to echo out of her mouth, hoping for the scene to shift as he refused to give in. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take in the current dream.

 

Dai’s stubborn hand found its way back to his shoulder. “Yes, Jack. You’re awake.” His heart sank.

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