Chapter 9: Queen’s Pawn Pinned

“Hey, Kai – Any idea where the boss wandered off to?” Kai was in the command room, running some analytics on the ship’s systems.

She looked up briefly. “He’s in the simulator.”

“Oh,” Zephyr said, surprised, before adding a belated “thanks.” We went down to what I thought of as the operations center, and sure enough Hermes was plugged in, with Blake on watch, headphones on.

“Howdy,” Blake said as we poked our heads in. “You going in tonight?” He moved one of the muffs of his headset so he could hear us better.

I shrugged. “I think so, but we need to talk to Hermes. Did he say how long he was going to be?”

“Nope. Not that he ever does.” Blake grinned. “This is some seriously light duty.”

Zephyr asked, “What’s he doing?”

Blake took a look at his monitor for a moment, to all appearances confirming what he already knew. “He’s sitting on the grass under a cherry tree.”

“Eyes closed?” Zephyr asked.

“Yup, that’s the ticket. Don’t know what it does for him.”

“We’ve got to do some planning,” Zephyr explained. “I know he wasn’t wild about having Noelle go back to the pub, but that’s what the target wants, so we may have no choice.”

Blake grunted. “Going to go with an alternate insertion point?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Zephyr agreed.

“Not one of the ones close in, though, right?” Somehow, Blake always looked like he should be chewing on gum, or a plug of tobacco. Not that such things existed in the real world of 2200, or whatever year it might be in the old Gregorian Calendar.

Zephyr nodded. “I was thinking something further out. Draw attention away from the pub, in case the Agents feel anything when we enter the Matrix.” He had explained to me on an earlier occasion that utilizing our tap to jack ourselves inside created an anomaly that generally drew Agents to investigate, but as near as anyone could tell, our continued presence in the Matrix didn’t have the same effect.

Which didn’t mean that Agents couldn’t find a way to track us down once they knew we were in. However, they appeared to rely on more conventional means to do so.

“Well, London’s got that great public transit system,” Blake responded. “We can put her in anywhere, and she won’t have any trouble getting where she needs to be.”

“Works for me,” I said. I’d been to London any number of times, as Noel, and the Tube – formally, the London Underground – was one of the easiest and most extensive systems I’d ever navigated in a major city. Which is strange, in a way, since it wasn’t created as a unified system and the different lines weren’t merged until the 1930s, when some lines had already been in operation for seventy years.

We kicked around some thoughts for a few minutes before Blake said, “Look, if you can spell me for a couple, I can go run a few ideas through our tap and get you some options. Won’t take ten minutes.”

Zephyr said, “I don’t even know if we’re a ‘go,’ yet. Hermes was seriously opposed to having Noelle go back to the pub. More than I would have thought, under the circumstances. I assume he had a reason.”

“Well, all you’re doing is yacking,” Blake replied practically. “Might as well have a plan ready when he’s done pondering the mysteries.”

He had a point. So Zephyr took the headset and Blake went off to the Matrix Monitoring room. After he left, I said, “You think Hermes has a concern other than the ones we talked about?”

Zephyr shrugged. “He might. I’m considered the egghead around here, but Hermes can think circles around me. Who knows what’s got his radar twitching.”

I had a sudden inspiration. “Zephyr – can you get me into his sim?”

“What? No. He’s on 24/7; if he thinks he needs time to meditate, he needs time. Short of an emergency, he gets it.”

I looked at him fondly. The good XO. Perfect, really – though there was no doubt in my mind that he’d make an outstanding commander in his own right, when the time came. “I’m not being whimsical. If he’s got significant concerns about me, about my returning to the pub, about Cleo or Davydd, I need to hear them. And we don’t have a lot of time.”

“He knows what time it is.”

“Does he know about Cleo’s email?”

Zephyr sighed. “I don’t know. Not as far as I know.”

“Well then?”

He chewed on his cheek for a moment, then came to a quick decision. “All right. Saddle up.” Indecisive, he is not.

I sat in the chair next to Hermes, leaned back and closed my eyes. “Okay. Ready.” And the cold probe entered my brain . . . .

“We’re losing her! Lew!!! Lew!!! She’s . . . .” My Mam’s voice, panicked. Hysterical. Terror- and grief-filled.

. . . . And, just like that, I was standing on perfectly-manicured grass, spring green and lovely. A cherry tree’s gnarled and graceful arms were laden with blossoms, stirring in a gentle breeze.

My eyes followed as a single blossom, pink and translucent, detached and fluttered toward the ground. Instead of the green grass, it alighted on Hermes’ blue-black hair, looking like a butterfly about to take wing.

“Noelle. Please, have a seat.” He didn’t open his eyes, which was a bit disconcerting.

As directed, I sat a few feet from him, stretching out my legs and burying my fingers in the rich, fresh-smelling sod. “I’m sorry to interrupt you. You’re entitled to a little R&R.”

“I was expecting you.” He opened his eyes and looked at me without surprise.

“You were?”

“Dakota forwarded Cleo’s email to me. I needed to think about it further, and I assumed you would need to as well. This is a good spot for thinking.”

I still didn’t know how he figured out that I would barge in on him, but it wasn’t really important. “I understand your misgivings about my returning to the pub. Or at least I think I do, and . . . I share them. But I still think it’s the best way.”

“I reached the opposite conclusion,” he said seriously. “Which is why I needed to come here. To think, and think better. Are you prepared to go back?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Then, I agree. Not alone, this time. We’ll want at least one person in the pub with you, and we’ll need to be prepared to do an extraction tonight. That means a full team.”

I nodded. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. Cleo’s got to make her choice, and we have to be ready if she is.”

“You have a plan?”

“We’re working on it. Zephyr and Blake and me.”

“Good. Time will be short.”

Again, I nodded, but made no move to get up. “Hermes . . . what made you change your mind? Zephyr said you were adamant that I shouldn’t go back.”

“A feeling. Nothing more. You, Cleo, the pub, Davydd . . . there are connections there. I don’t know what they are, but I sense them.”

“I don’t understand. Are the connections reasons to go there, or not to go there?”

His lips turned up in a half smile. “Both, of course. The danger is easy to see, which is why I opposed your going back. Adamantly, as Zephyr correctly noted. But danger and opportunity are two sides of the same coin.”

“You think it’s worth the risk?”

“We can’t beat thinking machines by calculating odds, Noelle. That’s their strength. Intuition is ours.”

To say that this was foreign to my way of thinking was an understatement. It smacked of superstition and mysticism, shamanic rites and burnt offerings under a dark and moonless sky. “I don’t know if I can function that way. God knows, I never have.”

“When the time comes,” he said serenely, “you will know what to do, and you’ll do it. Trust yourself.”

“Okay, boss. What are you seeing?”

“There is a difference,” he replied cryptically, “between knowing the path, and walking the path.” He rose gracefully. “Come. It’s time we walked.”

I got up slowly. I had no idea what Hermes was talking about, but I had to respect the fact that he’d been fighting the machines for forty years and he was still alive. If gut instinct is a thing, he has it.

If.

~o~O~o~
Evening found Zephyr and I walking past an enormous stainless steel box that some “modernist” in the 1960s imagined would be a fitting memorial to the scientist Michael Faraday. It was the sort of structure that led me to believe that the base memories the AI gave us at each Matrix reset bore no resemblance to what had happened in the “real world” years leading up to the 1990s. Surely no human consciousness could imagine that such a monstrosity was attractive.

Zephyr looked like a pixie – slender and slight, with short hair sticking out in all directions. I didn’t tease him about it, and wouldn’t, since my residual self-image wasn’t anything I was happy about either. Here in the Matrix, I towered over Zephyr, gangly and blocky.

Not that it mattered; I wasn’t foolish enough to judge Zephyr’s strength in a simulation based on his apparent size and muscle mass. These were the sorts of rules we bent – sometimes, beyond recognition. But he had chosen a different weapon – the Smith & Wesson 9C – because it was a better fit for his Matrix-sized hand. Currently, his weapon, like mine, was concealed in his coat.

We entered the old Elephant and Castle station and took the lift down to the platform for the Bakerloo Line. As it descended, I looked at him and said, “I don’t suppose you brought brownies.”

“No luck. But there’s another trick to dealing with claustrophobia, you know.”

“Do tell.”

“Not minding.”

“Aren’t you a big help!”

But he wasn’t actually wrong. I could put it aside, and the mental discipline that I had learned during my time with the Belisarius helped me to do so. The same discipline was all that was keeping me functional while I was being bombarded by flashes of memory from my life before the last reset of the Matrix.

The Elephant and Castle is an old station by American standards, and bears little resemblance to the massive and modern BART stations I was more used to from my recent time in the San Francisco Bay area. But form must bear some relationship to function, and the areas of similarity were reassuring. A platform is still a platform, and this one had its share of interesting characters.

We didn’t have long to wait for the train to arrive, and we took the second-to-last car. Unlike the last time I had been in a train with Zephyr, I had all the pertinent details about the train, the station, the line, the service lines, and all possible means of escape committed to memory. If an Agent showed up, we were as prepared to flee as we could be.

Of course, the whole reason why we jacked ourselves into the Matrix in Southwark was to deflect attention from the area around the pub where I was supposed to meet Cleo. If, after talking with me, Cleo was willing to meet with Hermes, we would walk to a new location, close to the pub. Then, and only then, would we bring Hermes, Abhaya and Dakota in. If everything went according to plan, they wouldn’t be inside for long.

The ride was smooth enough; the clip-clip, clip-clip, clip-clip of the wheels against the rail ties was almost soothing. I might not like being underground, but it was certainly efficient. Lambeth North . . . Waterloo . . . It was time to get up.

We disembarked at Embankment and made our way to the northbound platform for the Northern Line. Having just missed a train, we had a bit of a wait.

“Mind . . . the gap. . . . Mind . . . the gap . . . . Mind . . . the gap . . . .” The recorded voice of someone long since dead played over and over again as we waited for our train. After the twentieth repetition, I looked at Zephyr and rolled my eyes. “In the real world, do you think they left it like this? Or did they just fix the damned gap?”

He chuckled. “Machines are more efficient than we are. I bet it’s a true detail.”

Charing Cross . . . Leicester Square . . . . Brightly lit stations followed by dim tunnels, steady progress measured in light bouncing off blocks of concrete. We were off the train again at Tottenham Court Road, changing to the Central Line. There were more direct routes, but again, we hoped that our more random-seeming choices would make any sort of pursuit or tracking more difficult.

We left the tube altogether at Bank, less than a quarter mile from our destination. Zephyr dawdled at the station for a few minutes, then followed along, keeping me in sight and checking to see whether I was being pursued.

I walked up Princes’ Street, turned left on Lothbury, then took an immediate right on Coleman Street. From there, it was just a short walk to the pub entrance. Before I turned to go through the covered walkway, I looked back.

Zephyr was walking purposefully, but made no sign. So, safe as far as he could see.

I went through into the courtyard, then walked into the pub.

If anything, it seemed like it was busier than the night before. I did a quick scan and again did not see Cleo.

But Davydd was there at the bar, talking to a customer and laughing. Even from a distance, his laugh lines were merry.

“Oh, no you don’t, Bronwyn, my girl!”

“Tada!!!!” She dissolved into a mess of giggles as he picked her up and spun her around.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see you, angling for the sweets!” He was laughing as he twirled her, his eyes sparkling in the sunlight, his white teeth flashing . . . .

I clamped down hard on my memories and forced myself to look away. Remember the mission! The machines MUST BE DESTROYED!

Slowly, easily, I wandered to the far side of the bar and found a spot to stand that gave good views of the whole pub.

Zephyr came in a couple minutes later and took up station at the other end of the bar. He would be able to spot things I didn’t. I kept him in my peripheral vision, but made sure I wasn’t staring.

“Came back, did you? What’ll you have?”

I tried my very hardest to make my smile natural and my voice easy. Tried to keep the memories from overwhelming me. The grief of it all. “Pint of the Bluebird, please . . . or, wait. Do you have the Tomos Watkin Old Style?”

“A man after my own heart, I see!” Davydd said cheerfully. “Brilliant bitter. Just brilliant! But it’s a bit too Welsh for this lot.”

I smiled in return, and hoped it did not look brittle. “You look like someone who appreciates the better things! Well, a Bluebird will certainly do in a pinch.”

As he drew my pint, he called back, “You didn’t develop a taste for Tomos Watkin in the States!”

I shook my head. “Certainly not. I went to the source.”

“My home country, as I’m sure you guessed.” He put the pint down in front of me and I slid the money across the bar. “It’s lovely, and I miss it, but the jobs are here.”

“Redundancy notice,” he said, and shrugged. “Too much to hope we’d be spared, Cariad. But I don’t know how we’ll make it here.”

“I don’t want to live in London, Davy! I want Bron to be raised here, like we were!”

I don’t know how I managed to keep my face from betraying me, but he didn’t seem to notice anything odd in my behavior. “Well, I for one am glad you’re here,” I said with joviality that I certainly didn’t feel.

He chuckled and moved on, going to the other end of the bar. Where, I was amused to see, a couple young men in suits seemed to be eager to buy Zephyr a pint. Oh, he’ll be hating that!

Cleo arrived about twenty minutes later, just as I was starting to get nervous. I was still nursing my first pint, and Zephyr did not appear to have caused any international incidents.

Cleo looked slightly surprised when she spotted me, but she walked straight to where I was standing. “Noel. How good to see you again. Shall we see if we can find a table?”

“Would you like to grab a drink first?”

“That won’t be necessary.” She had a resolute look that did not bode well for our conversations.

We managed to locate an open booth, though the sitelines were awful. I couldn’t see Zephyr from where we were sitting and had to assume he would move when the opportunity presented itself. “How was your date?”

“Splendid. Which is all I intend to say on that particular subject. You tracked down my number and interrupted my day. Tell me what this is about.” She was brusque almost to the point of rude — a significant contrast from the prior evening.

“I’m sorry for intruding. You just seemed so distressed yesterday, I felt like I needed to get you more information that I’ve learned.”

“I warn you now,” she said in a tone that was icy cold, “I will not listen to any gossip concerning Anne Howard!”

“Who?” I was momentarily confused. “Oh, that’s the woman you’re dating? No. It’s nothing like that. It’s about our, ah, mutual condition.”

She grimaced. “Please. Do you really think I haven’t thought about that? Factored it in? I’ve been living with this at least as long as you’ve done. Read every published monogram. I know what I am; know what I feel. But it doesn’t change what I have to do.” In our current location, there was absolutely no chance anyone would overhear us, so she made no effort to obfuscate her meaning.

She was trying to shut me down, and I needed to change the dynamic. I went straight into it. “Cleo . . . You said that the world seemed to be off . . . to be a mirage. That the sense of wrongness eats at you.”

“A common delusion, I expect. You’ll need to do better than that.”

Do better? What's that about? “Not common at all . . . but unfortunately, one hundred percent true.”

“Oh, bollocks.”

“Listen to me. This isn’t reality. You, me, sitting here in a pub in London. It’s not true. There is a real world out there. You sense it . . . feel it! And it is possible to get there.”

She looked at me silently, her eyebrow raised.

I couldn’t read her expression, so I tried again. “I was sitting in your seat the better part of a year ago. I was given a chance to find out the truth, to see the reality behind the mirage, and I took it. And I discovered that something else I’d always known, but couldn’t prove, was true as well. I am a woman. Not just inside; I’m biologically female, with all that entails.”

“Fascinating tale,” she drawled. “Out of curiosity, was that before or after you evaded arrest by your American security services?”

“What?”

“You didn’t think I’d investigate? After you ‘happened’ to show up at my usual haunt? And then tracked me down the following day?”

“Never gave it any thought at all. And as far as I know, no one ever put out an arrest warrant for me.”

“You’re far too modest, my dear. It wasn’t just any arrest warrant. It’s the sort that results in Interpol getting a Red Notice. Surely that wouldn’t have slipped your attention?”

I was cursing myself for not having an outstanding Matrix query on my deadname. It was certainly possible the feds were after me for some of my hacking activities . . . or some of my even dodgier activities for that matter.

But the last group of goons to come after me, in my pre- red-pilled state, were Agents.

“Listen, I don’t know anything about that. Like I said, I haven’t been ‘here’ for months. I’m concerned with the real world, not . . . this.” I waved a hand, indicating everything around us.

“I’m sure,” she said, sounding skeptical. “But if I may play along for a moment, just for fun, if this ‘world’ is no concern of yours any more, why are you here? And why are you dogging my footsteps?”

“It’s what we do. We try to rescue people, bring them to the real world. The real earth. But most people, by the time they’re grown, they can’t break free. They can’t see past the illusion. You and I, people like us . . . sometimes, we’re able to.”

“I see. Well, so how do we get to this real world, anyway?”

She didn’t sound like she was serious. But . . . maybe? I decided I had to try. “I’ve got someone you need to meet. We can be there in just a couple of minutes, and he’ll explain how it works. Then, you can decide. In or out.”

The look in her eyes was strange. Disappointment? Satisfaction? Had I said something wrong?

“Enough of this, Noel. My government contacts were right, evidently. They were sure you had some scheme to get me alone, after which I would wake up in a warehouse someplace, bound and gagged, whilst you tried to squeeze a ransom out of my mother.”

Government contacts! “What are you talking about? What have you done?”

“They reckoned you’d spin some kind of a tale to catch my interest, but I must say I’m impressed despite myself by your capacity for sheer nonsense. Well, it won’t work.”

I tried to interrupt, but she leaned forward and said, “You need to listen to me, now. If you cooperate, they’re prepared to recommend leniency.”

“Cooperate?” My brain went into immediate overdrive, trying to figure out how Zephyr and I could escape what was quickly looking like a trap.

“They want your confederates. All of them. They specifically mentioned a chap who goes by ‘Hermes.’”

I wanted to grab her by the throat, but . . . The mission came first. No way I could persuade her, but maybe the others could.

Some day.

“Your loss, Cleo. We had such hopes for you.” I rose.

“The name,” she replied coldly, “is Sir Anthony. You’d do well to remember it.” She looked behind me, towards the bar, and nodded her head. “All yours, gentlemen.”

I spun around to find two burly men in suits that barely contained their muscles were rapidly approaching the booth. “Come with me, sir,” one of them said in a condescending manner. “We don’t want to make a scene.”

Well, I for one was boiling mad and suddenly had no objection – none whatsoever – to making a scene that the Old Doctor Butler’s Head would never forget, even if it stood another three hundred years.

Michael Jordan, in his prime, could make a four-foot vertical leap. Straight up. It was amazing to watch and made him an absolute star on the basketball court. The same maneuver has other applications, however, and my equally high leap allowed my anger-driven kick to make solid contact with goon number one’s chin, snapping his neck back and sending him flying toward the bar.

Goon number two was on me before my feet were back on the ground, but I’d anticipated that. As he reached out with both arms to tackle me, I brought my descending upper arm bones crashing down on either side of his neck, right onto his comparatively weak collar bones.

I calculated that the humerus would vanquish even the most well-tempered clavicle, and so it proved. He shrieked – a truly frightening sound – and crumpled, his arms useless and his tackle forgotten.

In the heat of the moment I had managed to tune out the hubbub of the pub, but it hit me as soon as the second goon went down. This was not the sort of establishment that was used to dockyard brawls – and what I’d just demonstrated was on another level altogether.

“Watch out!” Zephyr’s voice reached me, as he pushed through a throng of people streaming to the door.

I spun back to see “Sir Anthony” reaching forward to grab me, but when I turned on him he jumped back, comically unwilling to try me face to face after my display. I shoved the table, pinning him in the booth. “You goddamned turd!”

Before he could answer, Zephyr was at my side. “Let’s go! Back exit!”

Much as I wanted to sweat answers out of Cleo, Zephyr was right. I charged behind him toward the exit, just as I had done in multiple simulations.

Except that in this simulation, the door we were dashing towards opened and a half-dozen uniformed men charged in. “Shit! They had backup!”

Zephyr and I had practiced together. Six humans, locked into their beliefs about what was and wasn’t physically possible in the Matrix, wouldn’t be enough to take one of us, much less two. To give Zephyr room for independent movement, I backflipped over a booth and landed on my feet facing the flood of police.

With the booth now in the way, they couldn’t rush me. The first one to come within reach was grabbed by the wrist, spun and thrown, generally in the direction of “Sir Anthony” as he attempted to get out of the booth. I’ll deal with you later, you aristocratic little shit!

The next one was almost on me. Although I was hyperfocused on his every move, I could hear one of the other officers calling for backup. “Get the AFOs in here NOW!!!”

It’s true that police in the UK are unarmed – generally. It’s not true that all of them are, and the ones who do carry weapons know how to use them. I knew we had to finish this quickly, before some of the latter type showed up.

“Wrap it up, Zephyr!” I shouted as I executed a round kick that connected with the second police officer’s head and sent him sprawling.

“Way ahead of you,” Zephyr shouted back. And indeed, he’d already taken down three. The odds were now two to one in our favor, and the last officer was diving to get out of the way. I was more than happy to let him, especially as his dive was taking him straight at Cleo, who was just managing to extract herself from the limp form of the officer I had thrown at her.

I couldn’t imagine how we’d complete the mission now, and I didn’t have time to process what the consequences of that failure might mean. We need Cleo to fight the machines!

She shot me a last glance, a strange mix of anger and longing. And then, suddenly, terror. Agony.

Her face began to change.

“Zephyr!!! Agent!!!”

More police were coming through the back door. We couldn’t deal with them and the Agent at the same time.

Zephyr dived behind a booth and came up with her S&W in her hand. I dashed in the other direction, knowing it would be harder for the Agent to target us both if we weren’t together.

The Barretta 92SB-F is a semi-automatic pistol that fires fifteen rounds quickly – if you know what you’re doing and are strong enough to handle one hell of a kick. But courtesy of my simulator training, I was an expert shot and had the capability of at least fudging Newton’s laws of motion. I was unloading my first burst at the Agent as I ran, even before he had his own weapon out, aiming — yes, I was that good — for a hit that would disable the Agent without killing the host.

Cleo must live!

I was shooting with inhuman accuracy. Zephyr was firing the S&W from the Agent’s flank, and his shots were even better than mine.

It didn’t matter. The Agent’s form bent, twisted, moved up and down and in and out impossibly fast. Our bullets were dead on target . . . until, just before impact, the target somehow wasn’t there. How is it doing that???

The booth where Cleo and I had been sitting was dissolving under the hail of bullets, splinters and fragments of red leather flying in all directions. Screams and cries of patrons joined with the pounding thunder of our heavy guns, a cacophony of terror.

The Agent was unfazed.

My first fifteen rounds were gone and I was well into my second without any sign of progress. I wasn’t even bothering with precision any longer. Zephyr was only carrying the one pistol and had stopped to reload.

Somehow, the Agent was firing in Zephyr’s direction even while he was dodging the suppressing fire I was putting down!

Then I was out, and Zephyr was out, and there was no time to reload, because the Agent was up and shooting back. This time, at me.

And it came to me, suddenly. I knew how the Agent had done it! It was a trick of the Matrix . . . a simple enough trick if you knew where to look . . . it was almost like I could see the code surrounding me – the pub, the bar, the Agent, the gun, the bullets . . . all just . . . code. And I understood their hack.

The bullets were coming straight at me, and I dodged, bobbed, weaved. It was as if I could see the bullets in slow motion, instantly calculate their ballistic trajectories, and synchronize my movements to avoid them. Left, right, up down . . . . Glass shattered behind me and an entire exterior window came crashing down.

The Agent was in motion too, and at first I thought he was coming toward me. But when I realized what he was actually doing, it was too late.

His gun came up, seeming to move slowly. Deliberately. Like it was part of a ballet. It was aimed at me, to be sure, but there was a secondary target, right behind me. A target I could sense without turning my head.

In the strange, Matrix code world that I suddenly could sense, the secondary target stood out with incandescent brightness. A mere mortal, a hostage to the Matrix. Just another human whose life was spent generating energy for the machines that kept him captive. I could even sense the lines of energy going from him to some distant collection point.

“Noelle . . . They’re captives, but they’re still people. People with hopes, dreams, fears . . . .”

The gun fired and the bullet moved toward me. I knew, somehow, that I wouldn’t be able to snatch it. My mind was processing with blinding speed, and I recognized that for whatever reason, the Agent’s trick didn’t work that way.

A million things had brought me to this moment – roads taken, roads forgone – but I had reached the point in my decision matrix where all that remained was a simple, binary choice: Take the bullet, or dodge.

And if I dodged, Davydd would die.

Death approached, inexorable, and the choice was upon me. In the end, though, it wasn’t hard. I had failed with Cleo; Hermes would have to find another way to reach her. There was no greater purpose to be served, no reason to value my life above my love. I could only hope that Zephyr would make his escape.

My life for you, Cariad!

There was no time for speech. The world was operating at its normal speed, and my words wouldn’t outrun the bullet.

I stood still.

To be continued . . . .
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Author’s Note: I’m posting this installment a bit early because I’ll be traveling and I’m not confident that I’ll have access to WiFi. For the same reason, I may not be able to respond to comments right away, and the next installment will be a bit delayed. It’s my intent to post it a week from Monday, on the 28th of August.

Don’t hate me, Trinity!