Their Memoriam: A Reverse Harem Romance (Utopia Inc Book 1) Read online

  Sure enough, Hatch fell into step with me. At least he didn’t try to take my arm as we descended the hill.

  “You may not care about it, but you seem concerned about me.” Why couldn’t he have given me a few more minutes? I needed to get a grip on my emotions. They were all over the place and clouding my judgment.

  “Yeah, but not the way you’re worrying about.”

  “I never said I was worried.” Of all the opinions we might have about each other, my mother was the least of our issues. Right? Curling my fingers into fists, I fought to wrest the trembling under control.

  “Fair. You never said that. You’re snapping at me though, and you’re upset.” The quiet observation sent a bolt through me.

  “I can’t afford to be upset.” None us could. We still didn’t know why we were here.

  “Pfft.” Hatch’s snort paused me mid-step, and I pivoted to face him. We were still amidst the fields of soybeans. They weren’t the most attractive plants.

  “Excuse me?”

  He shrugged, and the fabric of his shirt tugged against his musculature. “Who the hell cares if you can afford to be upset or not? This is one fucked up situation, Valda. We have zero clue why we’re here, we woke up somewhere over a damn rainbow. Only a fool wouldn’t be worried, and only a damn fool would try to pretend they aren’t.”

  “You don’t seem very worried.” I twisted and continued on my way. At least walking gave me something to do with the wild energy surging beneath my skin. I was restless and exhausted in the same breath.

  “I don’t believe in freak outs, but I’m pretty freaked.” The honest admission nearly made me miss a step, but I caught myself and slowed. We were ascending one of the hills, and the higher we went, the greater the breeze.

  Even after turning the statement over in my head a few times, I couldn’t make it fit into the puzzle that was the easygoing pilot. “Why would you tell me that?”

  “Cause you’re not alone. We’re all a little fucked in the head about this situation.” The dryness of his tone did more to convince me than his words.

  “I don’t handle people well,” I told him, relenting. At the top of the hill, we could see what looked like miles. The water was even visible in the distance, glinting as though the sun struck it at the right angle. “Does the sun set down here?”

  I’d spent most of the last week only gathering samples in the morning, and the rest of the day in my lab. But what was morning or even evening without a sun cycle?

  “Sorta…it goes down there,” he pointed in in front of us. “And it’s a twilight, then it comes up over there.” He gestured with his thumb. “Takes about ninety standard minutes, then it’s up again.”

  That was weird. “So what does it look like during this twilight?”

  “Like—gray.” Another shrug. “Weird, really.”

  “That it looks like a solitary color, with no stars?” Canting my head, I tried to lift my gaze toward the blue sky again and it hit me what was so out of sync. “There’s no clouds.”

  “Nope.” Hatch slid hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “No change in temperature either, it’s always pleasant. Not too hot, not too cold.”

  “And when the sun is—down?” I disliked calling it the sun, but I couldn’t get a good look at it. Maybe I could when it set.

  “Chillier, maybe a few degrees.”

  “A few? Fahrenheit or centigrade?” A few degrees Fahrenheit wouldn’t be significant, but centigrade would definitely be noticeable if it were a few.

  “Fahrenheit.” He smirked. “We’re not suddenly freezing our asses off, and there’s never frost on the plants.”

  No frost. No real nighttime hours.

  “There are no insects either.” None—no parasites, no birds, no animals—the interaction upon the environment would have shown up in one of the tests we’d run. Granted, we didn’t have all the results yet, but… “Does it rain?”

  It was Hatch’s turn to stop, and he studied the sky for a beat, then shook his head. “Not when I’ve been down here. Granted, I haven’t spent twenty-four hours, so maybe it does.”

  “No frost?” I somehow doubted it. “Yet we have all this growth, and it’s flourishing, but no real weather patterns. No natural sun motion, yet we have temperate weather. It’s wrong—it’s all wrong.” So utterly out of sync with nature.

  “If we’re on the wrong planet, it might be normal.”

  “If we’re on the wrong planet, how can anything be deemed normal? Plant life scrubs the air, devours the carbon dioxide and produces oxygen, which allows us to have the air quality we require to survive. Yet, if we’re on a different planet, that is not in balance to our own, our life wouldn’t thrive here.” It was a catch-22, and a bad one at that. “It’s all so frustrating. And why would I agree to this?”

  “That’s the part that’s really eating you, isn’t it?” Hatch took the lead on the hill’s downward side, turning sideways so he could still look at me.

  “Yes!” I all but shouted the word, and the admission took the cork out of the overreaction I’d been trying to bottle. “I don’t like people. I’ve never been good with them. I prefer to work in isolation, it’s better for everyone.”

  “Okay.” He put a hand on my arm when I stumbled and released me as soon as I steadied. “And no ideas what would convince you?”

  “No.” Not even the good-looking men with their varying personalities and talents. “None. It’s—aggravating.” It was worse than that. “I didn’t extend my contact with the scientific community. I tried to publish a couple of small papers, but they were immediately dismissed or worse, attacked.”

  “Because of your name.” Well, Hatch was quick on the uptake. “Why didn’t you change it?”

  “It’s my name. Valda Bashan. My parents are Carter Edgland and Aloria Bashan. They gave me my name. Why the hell should I have to change my name?”

  “Babe, if you didn’t want the fight, you would have changed it. Nothing wrong with enjoying it, but don’t wear it like a martyr badge if you set out to push people away.”

  “My mom didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Okay.”

  That was it? “You just accept my word for it?”

  Scratching at the stubble on his chin, he shrugged. We’d reached more even ground and left behind the standard crops and weaved our way through a semi-vineyard. The grapes were too small, but they were there, which meant a water source. Why was it every time I found one small answer, I only made a longer list of questions?

  “Would you feel better if you could pick a fight with me?”

  What a strange question. “Why would that make me feel better?”

  “In my experience, when a woman walks the way you are, ranting about innocuous issues, you’re burying the lead to avoid what’s really pissing you off. You’re here, so you obviously accepted the job.”

  “Or I was kidnapped and sent here against my will.”

  I jerked to a stop and Hatch swung to face me. “Well, now. There’s a thought. If you didn’t volunteer, what’s to be gained by making us be here?”

  Meeting his gaze, I frowned. “You don’t think you volunteered either, do you?”

  “Not a chance in hell. I’m a washout, had PTSD, spent the last ten years bumming around the planet taking whatever job I could get. I’m the quintessential loner.” He sounded pretty damned pleased about that.

  “Doesn’t it make you angry to not have these answers?”

  “Not yet.” Then he smiled. “I’m saving all of that for when we have a target, then you just step to the side, beautiful. We’ll have our pound of flesh.”

  A shiver raced along my spine.

  He’d just promised violence. Normally, I abhorred such a base reaction.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” He wore the same playful smile as earlier.

  “No,” I admitted, shocking myself. “I really don’t.”

  “Fantastic.” Then he winked and offered me an a
rm. “Let’s keep walking.”

  Accepting the offer, I gripped his forearm and the muscle was steel beneath my fingers. “Where are we going?”

  “Wherever the hell we want, at the moment. You’re feeling better right?”

  The jittery feeling had gone away, and the thoughts crowding for my attention quieted. “I am,” I whispered, then smiled. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. So, tell me about Valda Bashan. Let’s skip worrying about all the crap we don’t know and tackle the pieces we do.”

  Not an unreasonable suggestion. The grapes gave way to another field, this one reminding me of prairie grass. The yellow-green blades flowed like an ocean in the breeze. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “I need something a little more quantifiable, everything might go into details you wouldn’t want to know, and I wouldn’t want to share.”

  He laughed. “Fine. What’s your favorite color?”

  “Currently? Blue.”

  Laughter twinkled in his blue eyes when he glanced at me. “Good.”

  Maybe today would get better. For now, we’d just walk.

  “Favorite food?”

  And, apparently, talk.

  Chapter 7

  Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you. - Michael Murdock

  Day Twelve

  Avoiding the others took effort but, team lead or not, I wanted the time to get some perspective. Daily yoga and meditation took the edge off my anxiety. Regular walks in Eden offered a different kind of respite for my soul. Numerous studies detailed the need for sunlight on a person’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being. I never realized how much time I spent outside until I woke in this bubble.

  Hatch and Dirk split cooking detail, as they called it, for our evening meals. They made no attempt to disguise their competition for who could prepare the most exotic dish. Oz took charge of breakfast—the man had a gift with standard fare like bacon and eggs or hot muffins. Though I wasn’t a fan of the communal meals, Andreas had made a point of saying that we needed to meet at least twice a day for situation reports or sit reps, as he called them.

  Everyone seemed to be putting their best foot forward, and I appreciated their effort. Yet, standing at the edge of the shore and gazing at the water rolling in, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around our situation. Nearly two weeks in and I was no closer to discovering the missing chunk of time I’d woken without.

  Based on various mentions, everyone was a little foggy on why they were here. No one remembered volunteering or being assigned, yet we all had videos assuring ourselves we had a mission. Did we record them because we didn’t expect to remember? Or did we record them because we believed we were involved in something else?

  A jolt raced up my spine. Was it really that simple? I stood in tree pose, eyes on the horizon as the water ebbed and flowed with the tide. My brain would never fully accept the impossibility of this place. We were in the uncanny valley. If the land around us really existed, then our quarters above would be visible when we looked up between the trees.

  They were, proving not everything we could see on this level was real. Where did reality end and surreality begin? The internal tug of war left me nauseated, so I focused on the horizon and worked on breathing. The uncanny valley surrounded us, literally, and the guys were exceptional at making the best of the situation. At least they were when I was around, and I had no reason to believe they fought when I wasn’t.

  Plodding through each day, we looked for options on what we needed to do. Harvest the crops? Store the food? Harvest only what we needed? And let the rest rot? Balance what was in food storage with fresh and hope for the best? How did we get any more to grow if there were no insects, bees, or birds for pollination? Some plants self-pollinated, but most did not, so what if we had to manually pollinate?

  Deep breathing exercises helped wash away the agitation of the questions relentlessly circling through my head. The whole point of hiking down to the sea had been to escape the institutional confinement found in those too-white rooms.

  It would be nice if, in their inventory, they’d found something resembling real color. I’d taken to draping fabric of the one sarong in my closet over the white sofa just to warm it up.

  And, once again, my mind had wandered away from the discipline of meditating. If I couldn’t find any furniture, art, or pillows to add some color, I could always…

  Every ounce of calm I’d managed to cobble together fled and I stared out over the ocean. Flowers. We had all this growth—fruit, vegetables, wheat, barley and grass. We had ocean, and rocks, and we had different aspects necessary to support biological life, and to create earthlike conditions with natural oxygen scrubbers.

  So, why not flowers?

  “Valda?” Andreas had the most incredible timing. No way he just happened to find me here. The shore seemed to be the farthest from the lift and took thirty minutes of walking to reach. The water prevented me from continuing to explore the horizon, at least until I worked up the courage to swim out there and see where it went.

  “Yes, Andreas?” I didn’t look at him, not while I was trying to sort through the emotional response to the lack of flowers. We had herbs, a significant number of them, but not flowers? It was a practical Eden here, and flowers had tremendous palliative effects and psychological value. What possible reason would they have to overlook them? Accidental oversight? Deliberate avoidance?

  “You haven’t come to see me,” he continued, the sound of his voice growing louder as he joined me at the water’s edge.

  Sparing a glance at him, I sighed. His color had improved, and he’d trimmed his beard down to a goatee. The sun shone on his dark hair, the length resting against his collar. The sallowness beneath his tan was almost completely gone, and the gentleness in his expression threatened to disarm me.

  “I know you don’t want to discuss our situation with anyone,” he continued as he squatted and looked out over the water. Satisfied he wasn’t staring at me, I followed his gaze. The ocean was supposed to ease my stress, not invite more down to join me. “Normally, I would respect your reticence and give you more time to come to the realization that we’re all on the same side. However, our situation is unusual enough that I think we all need someone to talk to and, currently, I’m the person tasked with assessing your mental well-being.”

  “Who do you talk to?” At least the breathing exercises had steadied my pulse. The focus also brought some discipline to my chaotic thoughts.

  “Excuse me?” He glanced up, and the wind chose that moment to toss his hair. It tumbled over his forehead, adding to his youthful appearance. What was he? Thirty? Thirty-five? My age. Hardly that young.

  Except I wasn’t thirty-five anymore, was I? No, I’d apparently passed into middle age while I was sleeping. Not my idea of a fairy-tale. “Who do you talk to?” I repeated the question. “You indicated we all need someone to speak to, to assess our mental status, particularly based on our unique situation. Who have you spoken to?”

  “Good question. I spoke to Oz for a few hours during my initial stay after the poisoning. He went over the medical history I could remember as well as what the computer listed for me. Considering my…fever…and delusional state, I’m sure I said a great deal more. He’s, however, done me the courtesy of not repeating any of it.”

  Doctor’s oaths hadn’t changed, even if our world had. “He’s a good man.”

  “Agreed.” He went silent for a moment. “Thank you for your concern. I realize you were a primary target, and I lashed out at you initially. Not the best way to begin a relationship which relies on trust.”

  “It might surprise you to know that I found your artless anger refreshing. My previous interactions with other professionals have either been coldly practical—my preference—or not so subtly insulting, with passive aggressive digs and acts of sabotage.” I did my best to avoid the latter, but unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life on Totoka, the
island I’d grown up on, then I had to accept not everyone in my rarified circle would be welcoming.

  “Artless anger.” He chuckled. “I like how you phrase things.”

  “English wasn’t my first language.” Not usually a subject I broached with strangers, even strangers with whom I currently shared a unique experience. “My mother preferred her native Russian. She sang to me in Russian, told me tales in Russian, and my first words were Russian. On the island where I grew up, we made friends with natives on other islands. They visited, and my mother sought to learn their language, so I picked up their words.” Strange, I hadn’t thought about the levu or being yalewa in years. “They also told the most wonderful stories, with rich and vibrant descriptions. My world is science, but the language they spoke was poetry.”

  Relaxing from tree pose, I sank to the sand and hooked my feet into lotus. Every wash of the water against the shore eroded the tension in my muscles. I needed to maintain my practice no matter what else happened among us. I needed the relief it provided.

  “What about your father?” It was a normal question, a reasonable one considering what I’d already shared.

  “He spoke Russian, French, Italian—the man had a gifted mind for nuclear physics and clean energy. He devoted most of his professional life to discovering alternative fuel sources to protect our world and make a better life for everyone. One of the problems of being such a gifted mind who saw only possibilities, is the world has a vast capacity to disappoint you.”

  “Has it disappointed you, Valda?” Andreas stretched his arms back and rested on his hands, his relaxed pose unthreatening. I recognized the action for what it was—he wanted to ease my tension further, to encourage my trust, and to get me to open up to him. Yet, even the knowledge of his intent didn’t prevent the body language from having an effect.

  “More times than I can count,” I admitted, not too proud to confess my disillusionment. “As you have already noted, my name earns instant judgment.”