Wickerman Cove

Part 22: The Prime Directive

It took a second for her to realise that she wasn't out cold again. This time, everything literally had just vanished. For a moment, she was just... nowhere. No sound, no heat or cold, not even the sensation of having a body. Emptiness.

Was this what it was like as your brain shut down? Maybe someone had snuck up behind her and made the perfect kill shot. This was the last moment as she lay on the trail, her brains seeping out of the hole in her skull.

On the other hand, it went on for longer than she'd have expected. Maybe this was what her final psychotic break felt like, and she was catatonic, waiting to be shoved in some psych hospital's produce aisle and fingered by a bearded hospital orderly called Chuck.

No, it wasn't that either. there was something else. It was all around her, a pulse that was so loud and fast that it took a second to pick it out. A thrum that rose and fell with the ebb and flow of her consciousness. She was losing it sometimes – when the sound was at its strongest, she was gone. When it fell, she was back. Steph observed the process five or six times. It was hard to keep track of time, not having a watch. Or an arm. Or eyes.

It was hard to know how long the absences lasted, since all she knew was the bliss of the vibration. She rode it to the ground every time. It was better than sex. It was better than everything. What the hell had her life meant, when she could have just spent it doing this? Was this what heaven felt like? Mainlining the power of creation for all eternity?

Only one thing distracted from it – the tooth. She could still feel it, burning, a sharp pain as it pressed into her through her breast pocket.

Yeah, shit, she had a chest somewhere. A place where she kept her heart and lungs, which were connected in various ways to a stomach, intestines, a liver and kidneys, pancreas, appendix, bladder, bowel, bones, muscles, teeth, skin, fat and hair. She had Penny and her dumb dog and that goddamn Russian who Mansfield had shot in the ba—

Steph took in a whoop of gunpowder-tainted forest air as her lungs suddenly existed and decided to do their job. Everything in her body screamed for attention at once as the vibration vanished under the weight of pesky nerves reporting stuff and demanding attention.

She was on her back, facing up. It was hard to understand why the tooth was hurting, but it was. It pressed into her like there was a heavy weight on it.

She opened her eyes to see Penny – ordinary, dark curly-haired Penny – and Renard looking down at her. It was a weird angle, since she was cradled in Penny's lap, and Renard was sitting on her chest. A bolt of adrenaline made her try to leap to her feet, which she instantly regretted as the world did a barrel roll.

Penny hit her, a slap across the top of her head. She looked down with an expression of affront that was objectively hilarious, considering that it was Steph who couldn't move. Renard decided that maybe the problem could be solved with increasingly firm head-nudging, which he upgraded to dog-breathed face-licking when it didn't work.

"Hey," Steph said, moving his head away. "Pen, it's fine. I'm fine."

Penny glowered. You disappeared.

Steph raised an eyebrow.

Literally, you disappeared. You stepped into the darkness after the Guide. I thought I'd never see you again, how did you even survive? Penny signed.

Steph tried to put things together. "The Guide? There were three people. One of them had epically dry skin and a forbidding demeanour, the other was our Russian friend and Mansfield. Which one is 'The Guide?'"

Penny watched her for a moment. Steph could almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes. Steph had seen that look before – the tipping point moment, caught in the agony of decision: give up your brother to save your wife? Shoot the American you've just found taking a dump? Surrender or try for the shot?