Page 103 of Retrograde

ARON

She is gone.

The bed is empty, cuffs hanging limp from the headboard. Her clothes have disappeared from the floor. Just a faint ghost of her scent remains. I rush to the bathroom and then back to the main room. I slam the door against the wall. Fragments of limestone fall to the ground. The wood lets out a creak as a fresh fracture runs from the handle like a scar, thin and insignificant.

Rage tears me apart. I ball my fist. Slam it into the wood over and over until it splinters. Blood soaks my glove and drips from my knuckles, but I feel no pain. All I feel is an overpowering surge of panic.

She is not here. She is gone. She is fucking gone. And I don’t know where she is or if she’s safe. I don’t know if they have caught her. I don’t know what they’ll do to her if they do. I can’t bear to think about it.

My insides twist, my pulse pounding in my ears, my whole body an electric wire about to snap. The pressure builds and builds until I explode, roaring, the sound raw and inhuman.

There is no time to lose. Urgency sears underneath my skin, burning me from the inside.

I rush out, slide down the ladder, gripping the sides, landing hard. The impact jars my bones and jerks my knees, but I don’t stop for a second. I turn on my heels and run towards my bike. Some men are already returning from the Abyss Gorge, covered in blood and soot, shining eyes jubilant in the slits of their skull masks. I shout orders at a few of them, telling them to hustle the others, to hustle everyone. No one rests. No one eats. No one does anything but look for her until she’s found, until she’s back with me.

I need to know she’s unharmed. All other needs become irrelevant.

It only takes one hour to locate Corrado’s body on a deserted road surrounded by whispering oleanders, grass bursting through the cracks in the asphalt. The road slopes down gently into a valley of long-abandoned olive tree farms, the first glimmer of the sea just about visible in the distance. The blood runs down the hill in thin rivulets, the taste of salt and metal fusing in the air. The body is still warm, and so is the engine of the overturned bike, just barely.

There’s no way to tell which way they went.

The urgent panic tearing at my gut turns into cold dread, a heavy weight crushing my chest.

“We have to chase them down,” I grit through my clenched teeth, my breath hot in my mask. “Call the others over here.”

To cover as much ground as possible, I’d split all the Retrogrades into search groups just large enough to discourage random coastal patrols from interfering with them. Now our search area has narrowed down considerably, but there are still at least ten possible routes from here to the official Continuum border.

“Aron ...” Alex addresses me carefully.

“Not now.”

Kneeling, I examine Corrado’s corpse more closely. I peel the glove off his left hand. His old wedding band is still on his finger.

“Military. Not raiders,” I say. “They didn’t rob him, and the shot is too clean, too precise.”

“Aron ...” He lays a hand on my shoulder—I debate hacking it off with my knife.

“We need groups of ten to fifteen. And whoever spots them first calls for backup.”

“Aron!”

“Fucking WHAT?” I shoot to my feet.

I’m the larger man by far, and he cowers.

“It takes one hour to get from here to the Continuum. Even if we don’t wait for the others, even if we get lucky and guess correctly what route they’ve picked ... we won’t catch them before they make it across.”

All oxygen disappears from around us. Without looking at them, I feel the other men stiffen.

“What the fuck are you even saying? We have to try!”

With my fist raised, I advance upon Alex, making him back away from me until he’s bent backwards over the seat of his bike. His eyes are wide with fear, his breathing shallow and ragged. But he holds my gaze as he objects in a shaking voice, “No. What we have to do is clear out, fast. Aron, she knows our location, she knows the way in ... we have to move. You can’t get her back anymore.”

I bring my fist down sharply, but twist around midway, punching air instead of his scrunched-up, frightened face.

Seeing I’m not going to hit him, he straightens but keeps his cautious eyes on me. I tear my mask off and pace around, raking my hand through my hair.

I shouldn’t care so much. She’s just a prisoner, just a fun toy. Right? Or else I’m a fucking liar.