Alternate Realities

Visual Prompt: Rising from Above, Marecal

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I understand that it's necessary, but being in front of them, in their living room, having roused them before dawn, makes me want to crawl right out of my skin. Farley didn't want them to find out through rumors, but telling them seems cruel. The way they stare at me, and only me, it's pressure on an already stressed situation. There are so many things that could go wrong let alone whether or not we achieve our secondary targets. And though we don't tell them that, Mare is only a secondary target.

"So, you're going to get her?" Ruth asks.

I look directly at her. I make eye contact. I don't waver in my expression or my stance. No matter the doubts I have, or the hope I refuse to gather, I can't steal away her's. It's harder than rallying a legion of doomed soldiers.

"If we can," Farley says.

She's consciously keeping her hands behind her back and not on her belly. She waivers a little as she stands and shifts her hand so it presses into the small of her back. Why she never takes the easy path, I don't know, but I won't undermine her by asking her to sit. Farley won't be coming with us, not into the battle.

"But... she'll be there, right?" Daniel asks, picking up on Farley's tells.

He also refuses to sit down. Sara's work is nearly finished and he's done looking up at me after all our briefings. Few things scare me more than Mare's love for her family and how much influence they might have when she comes back. Mr. Barrow and his acceptance, or lack-there-of, scares the shit out of me. I don't show weakness, but I'm also too scared to talk.

"We believe so. And she is certainly a primary target for extraction," Farley says, lying slightly by saying a primary target, not the primary target. Subtle.

They seemingly dismiss her assurances, all their eyes click to me. Farley isn't coming, but I am. And that makes me responsible for getting her back. Just me, out of all the operatives and squads and the embedded spies, me.

"You're going to get her, right?" Ruth stakes me to the wall with her stare.

"She is a primary focus–" I try but Ruth isn't having it.

"You'll get her back, right? You promised me, promised us, you'd get her back," Ruth reminds me.

"Yes, ma'am. I will get her back," I nod.

I replay the faces of Mare's parents over and over and over and over. As the plane prepares to take off, I have a knotted gut and a pulsing headache. I try to do my normal check list, but I only make it so far before Ruth's eyes stare into me. I tighten my buckles and turn towards the horizon where the sky has been lightening for the past ten minutes.

The jet barrels down the runway and we're roaring into the air, the angle steep and the throttle at full power. The pilot levels off and then banks wide out over the ocean. Through the window I watch the sun peek over the line and spread. Together, the plane murmurs, "Rise, red as the dawn." And I murmur with them. Today could be the day I get her back.