Future

Chapter 4: Expedition

Kail wasn't exactly talkative after that, so I sprawled out on one of the couches and tried to take a nap. Maybe the restorative powers of sleep would bring back my memories or something. Instead, I just found myself thinking too hard. What were my visions trying to tell me by showing me Kail's past? Why was Kail so important? And worst of all, what if it wasn't an accident that my memories had been erased? I tried not to think about that last one. These three were the only people I'd ever known, as far as I remembered, and they'd been good to me. I wanted to trust them. But why did I have that nagging feeling in the back of my head that something wasn't right here? I decided to save my suspicions until I had more facts, and I drifted off into a light sleep.

*

I was being suffocated.

Lights danced in front of my eyes as I furiously squirmed and bucked, trying to get to a place where I could breathe. Panic knifed through me. Had I somehow slipped in my sleep and was smothering myself through my own stupidity, my head jammed in a couch cushion? Or was someone trying to murder me? My lungs were burning, my head felt like it was being squashed, and my only thought was that I was going to die.

"SPARK! WAKE UP!" Suddenly, air rushed into my lungs, my eyes cleared to see Kail shaking my shoulders and Pipe and Holli standing behind him, looking worried.

"What-?" I decided to stop talking and catch my breath first.

"You were having a nightmare, or something. You wouldn't breathe," Kail looked concerned.

"I?? Air? Huh??" I made some gaspy noises that may have had words hidden in them. My heart rate was finally slowing a bit, adrenaline receding, leaving me with shaking hands.

Holli was idly doing up her pigtails, the danger of me dying over. She offhandedly added, "I read somewhere that traumatic dreams can come with memory loss. It means, like, your brain was freaking out about not being able to remember stuff." Pipe and Kail looked at her in amazement.

"Where'd you learn that?" Pipe asked, twisting the top off her energy drink.

"Dunno," Holli shrugged. Kail looked me over carefully before taking his hands off my shoulders and stepping back. Maybe I should have life threatening dreams more often. On second thought, no, that was terrifying.

"You need anything? Food, water, etcetera?" Kail asked, heading into the kitchen.

"Yeah," I answered, "Anything to eat would be cool." In my head I wondered why Kail was being excessively nice now. Just a few hours ago he'd been a jerk who wouldn't address me directly and referred to me as the new girl. Maybe being in a life threatening situation had helped? But then, we'd been through the whole killer robot thing before he changed his attitude. I had this feeling that it had something to do with sharing that vision together, followed by Kail's, um, emotional moment. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd never cried in front of Pipe or Holli before. After all, he was the masculine team leader, the action hero.

Kail returned with a sandwich and bottle of water for me quickly, and I thanked him. Pipe, Holli, and him all started discussing some strategy or whatever. I admit I may have zoned out a little bit. War talk is just so boring.

"I got news of a team north of here that was looking for a new safehouse while I was sleeping. Think we should find 'em and bring 'em over here?" Holli asked. Holy shit this was a good sandwich. Is Kail some kind of fucking sandwich magician?

"Should we really risk another jail stay just to bring a team over here?" Pipe questioned Holli. I wondered, briefly, why everyone around here had weird-ass names. Pipe, Spark, Kail. Holli was kind of a normal name, I guess. And I suppose that from the vision I had that Kail was really named Caleb. This led to me wondering who in their right mind chose for their name to be the same as a green, leafy vegetable. Maybe he thought it sounded more badass than Caleb, in a vegetable rock god kind of way.