Page 66 of Lifeline

I really can’t continue doing this for much longer; this isn’t fair to…

I cannot, in all good conscience, continue to maintain the facade I have been entrusted with, and from this point forward I feel it would be better…

Listen, you pompous fuck, this was bullshit from the start and I’m sick of doing this shit, so how about I just come clean and see what kind of mess I can…

And then, right at the bottom, as if needing to type his thoughts out to understand, was:

Fuck me sideways. I got myself into this mess, and now I don’t know how to get out of it. Not without causing shit to fly. I’m so tired of finding my foot stuck in it no matter what I do. I should have never agreed to this shit, but then what? Then I wouldn’t be here in the first place, and I wouldn’t have Mika, and the rest of the guys. So, do I keep my mouth shut, keep going and feeling like the dirtbag that I probably am? Or do I come clean and accept the hate I’m going to get?

Yeah, yeah, I know the answer. I’ve known it for a while, but after the other day, what can I do? Maybe it’ll be easier if I’m hated by other people and not just myself.

Yeah, right.

But when?

Fuck.

“What?” I asked softly, heart hammering in my chest as I tried to make sense of the words I couldn’t stop reading repeatedly. My first wild thought was that he had been dating someone before he’d come here, or that he’d been seeing someone else the whole time.

Except…except that didn’t track. For all the crimes I could have imagined about him, cheating had never entered my head, even at my most cynical and suspicious moments. That, and even if it tried to enter my thoughts now, the draft wasn’t addressing a lover. I searched the words to make sense of them until my attention latched onto the email address attached to it. It was a last name that sounded vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t quite make sense of it, along with a letter that was probably the initial.

The draft was clearly addressing someone who was familiar to Aidan, though, so he had probably emailed them before. I knew it was wrong to search, but it sounded like Aidan wasn’t doing something he thought he should do either, something that might affect everyone here, if not at least me. Two wrongs didn’t make a right, but forewarned was forearmed after all, and I didn’t want to be blindsided by whatever he was doing.

Tapping the email address into the search bar generated several emails, and heart hammering, I scrolled past all the individual emails and settled on the last of a chain of emails between Aidan and this AndersonB@gmail. I read quickly and felt my heart sink.

Aidan was thankful for the opportunity to work at the outpost, as the position sounded like the perfect way for him to get his life back on track. I remembered he’d made an offhand comment once that before coming here, his life had been fine, but fine wasn’t good, and without a sense of purpose or stability, he would never achieve better. But he questioned if it was necessary, and he asked for forgiveness for the loaded phrasing, for him to spy?

The reply was professional but cool. It was couched in professional speech, but the answer was clear: if Aidan wanted the chance to better his life, he would remember his place and do as he was told. He was to write reports on the doings of everyone at the outpost to keep AndersonB in the loop of what was happening. That it didn’t matter how Aidan felt about what he was being hired to do, and it didn’t matter if he thought a detail was unimportant, he was to report it.

And that was when the individual emails started being sent by Aidan, the first one dated the first night he worked here. They were the reports, and as I read them, skimming mostly, I couldn’t help but admit that while Aidan had always been a pretty good writer, he had improved in the intervening years.

He had described what he’d witnessed, the jobs he saw everyone doing, and even commented on some relationships. I was barely mentioned at first, but although I couldn’t remember the exact date we had started getting along, I would bet the first mention of my name came right after that. There was how close Jake and Reno were, how tightly knit Mav and Carter were, and how Colin was shaping up to be an unexpected second in command because he was good at dealing with all of us, and handling Xander who could be ‘difficult, obstinate, and at times, aggressive.’

Horror mingled with anger and a sense of betrayal. Even as I read on and saw how the reports grew vague, veering away from observations about interpersonal dynamics and focusing more on how everyone worked together, I still felt the ugly, festering pit of outrage and fury stewing in my gut. Sure, it seemed like he had been hesitant about doing it in the first place, but he’d done it anyway. And sure, he had obviously been growing less interested in including details in his reports…but he was still doing them.

He wanted to stop; he was trying to stop; I tried to tell myself.

But he hadn’t stopped, and he hadn’t told us.

True, but he wanted to tell us, or at least me, but he again didn’t know how.

After all that talk about honesty and not keeping secrets, and then to see he was doing exactly that, still?

I wanted to understand; I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I wanted to punch him and make sure he was never allowed to come back to this place, my home.

“Fuck,” I hissed, slamming his laptop shut before I could bring myself to read everything on the screen again.

Everything I had just read was the story of a desperate man making an impulsive choice that had backed him into a corner and left him at odds with what he believed was right. A man who had pushed through his own unease but was still forced to drag it along even as it grew bigger and heavier. A man who had kept doing something he despised, feeling trapped in a web he might not have created, but had watched wrap its way around him. Desperate and at war with himself, as he had done what he was supposed to do, while desperate to break out and do what he should do.

“And what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” I demanded of no one.

I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen what I had seen, but what else was I supposed to do? Wait for him to find a way to talk to me about it? Confront him about it? Tell the others?

No, I couldn’t tell the others. I was furious with Aidan for what he’d been doing behind our backs when he had been welcomed with such warmth and trust, but damn it all, it was Aidan. He could be so stupid sometimes, an idiot as Xander would say, but for all his clumsy fumbling idiocy, he was a good man at heart. And it was clear he was trying to be that person, even if he was lost and utterly alone in the attempt.

I at least owed him the opportunity to explain, even if that meant I chewed him apart.