Mobius was gone. There was never going to be another STEM again. The thought was bizarre as the idea of STEM itself. Kidman wasn’t an idiot to think moving on would be easy, but she was going to try.
Watching Sebastian drive off to a sunset with Lily was a little unreal. If someone told her this would all end in a sunset ride into the horizon, she wouldn’t have given them any thought, and she would have continued making her contingency plans to try and save herself from Mobius. She had hope, but she didn’t expect fairy tale endings. And she was right. Despite the idyllic sunset, things didn’t turn out as clean-cut as she wanted. There were losses. Myra. Esmeralda.
Esmeralda was a bigger loss than she’d like to admit.
Looking at the scar on her left hand, she is reminded just how much Mobius took from her. She didn’t have a childhood before Mobius, but after joining, any chance of a normal life vanished. And now with Mobius and Esmeralda gone, Kidman was at a loss. What exactly do you do when you have nobody waiting for you at home? When the only thing waiting for you in bed are nightmares?
The gore and violence of STEM were almost forgettable. Too much of something and it can become background noise. But the nightmares that bothered her the most were the ones that imitated real life. The ones that start out fine. Where everything seems normal, and there is nothing except perfect routine. Then something appears in the corner of her eye, going in and out of her periphery. Sometimes it’s standing blatantly in the middle of the street just staring at her. A stranger. Monster. It never attacks, but the knowledge of it is terrifying as death. The slow realization that she never escaped STEM is like a cold grip to her heart, and she wishes in her mind that it is a dream, and the desperate fight to wake up is an unbearable torture. And when she does wake, it’s slowly and unbelievably. The paranoia sets in that she never truly woke up and that she never truly escaped Beacon Hospital the first time, and then she’s too shaken to leave her bed for a good part of the morning.
Sometimes she dreams of Esmeralda, and the guilt mixes in with longing. Kidman never had the opportunity or interest for a relationship until a handful of encounters with Esmeralda. At first, Esmeralda just seemed like another Mobius grunt. That impression was slowly replaced with respect and admiration. And eventually desire . . . There wasn’t time for more.
While Kidman maintained a cool and professional demeanor, Esmeralda was charming and friendly. Qualities that made Kidman stay away at first. That type of person didn’t fit in Mobius, and friendly people there usually wanted something. Kidman was too occupied with her plan with Myra that she couldn’t risk being ratted out or distracted.
But Esmeralda didn’t seem to care or have any motives other than doing her job and enjoying what little downtime she had. On one of those free times, Esmeralda had wanted to go out for a drink.
“I’m going to have to pass, thanks.” Kidman didn’t even bother to look over to see Esmeralda’s eye roll. She kept going through the Mobius employee files, looking for potential candidates for both Mobius’s and Myra’s plans.
“C’mon,” Esmeralda said as she leaned on Kidman’s desk. “You’re not getting enough sunlight. You’re so pale.”
Kidman ignored her and continued to make notes.
“Let’s go to a bar.” Kidman didn’t say anything. “I bet you like pina colada,” Esmeralda said in a sing-song voice. Kidman didn’t know if she should have laughed or been insulted.
“Another time, maybe.”
“Don’t give a lady like me false hope, Kidman.” Esmeralda chuckled as she straightened herself up and made her way to the door. “That would be too cruel.”
“Yeah right,” Kidman mumbled under her breath. At this point, she still didn’t know what game Esmeralda was playing at, and if Mobius had sent her as some kind of internal spy. She wouldn’t put it past them. She’s learned that Mobius isn’t happy until they’ve seeped into every crevice of everyone’s psyche. They probably knew of her occasional trysts with women at dimly lit bars. She couldn’t rule out the possibility that Esmeralda was on her team because of that fact.
Or maybe Esmeralda was just pretty and friendly, and Kidman was being paranoid. But paranoia is a good thing in Mobius. Maybe Esmeralda really was a spy. Or Maybe Esmeralda really was just pretty and friendly. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .
She shook off these thoughts and reprimanded herself for already being distracted.
And so Kidman kept Esmeralda at arm’s length for a while more, declining invites and questions about anything not related to work.
She never really had a true friend at this point. At the age of thirty, it would have been embarrassing if knew what normal really was. A childhood like hers didn’t offer a great start at normal. And shortly afterwards, she was in Mobius’s hands living out a lie at Krimson Police. She never had someone who truly wanted to get to know her. Or someone who even knew her complete past. The circumstances . . . just didn’t let it happen. It was partly her fault, she knew. She grew to be cold and distant and set in her ways.
So when she was approaching Esmeralda’s personal quarters in order to inform Esmeralda of new mission details, she was stopped by the loud gusto of laughter coming from the door’s other side. It wasn’t just Esmeralda. It sounded like Yukiko and Liam, too. And it sounded like they were having fun.
I’ll just message her, thought Kidman as she turned away.
It’s an understatement to say regret is what Kidman feels, thinking about that moment. And all the times she pushed Esmeralda away. This feeling is so different from what she’s used to. She wishes she could say it’s like looking into the barrel of a loaded gun or falling from a great height. This is much softer, and there’s no adrenaline to spur her into action. She only has the 4 walls of her bedroom and the long hours of the day to imagine what could have been, what could have at least been a friendship.
Kidman laughs suddenly into her empty bedroom. To think that after all the traumatic events from STEM, she ended up yearning for more connection with others.
“You just want something real.”
Esmeralda’s voice.
She should be startled. She should be wondering how Esmeralda could possibly be in her bedroom. She’s hopeful instead. In typical dream fashion, her reaction is sluggish, and her eyes drag to where Esmeralda is, on her right side of the bed leaning against the wall. Close enough to touch.
She takes the sight of Esmeralda in. Esmeralda looks exactly as she last saw her. Ponytail, blue v-shirt, combat pants, weapon and ammo holsters. She’s got her hands in her pockets, and she looks more comfortable than Kidman feels right now. Her expression is either friendly or flirty. Perhaps Kidman is projecting on the latter. She doesn’t rule it out.
“You died,” she blurts out. She wants a confirmation, to ground herself back to reality. To smother her stubborn hope.
“I think Mobius got you all confused. You can’t see dead people, right?” Now Esmeralda’s face is smug, that much Kidman can tell, and she even gets off the wall to sit right on the bed, next to Kidman. “You can see me, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Kidman says mournfully.
“And you don’t believe what you see?”
Kidman shakes her head. Esmeralda moves closer, and Kidman consciously tells her whole body to still.
“Then touch me.”
Excitement and fear rush through Kidman’s veins. Kidman definitively knows this is a dream, and that fact gives her both thrilling thoughts of endless possibilities and depressing ones of the meaninglessness of it all.
Her mind is racing, and the decision is ultimately made for her when Esmeralda reaches out for Kidman’s hand. Esmeralda’s hand feels warm and very alive.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone in Mobius, not Yukiko, not Liam, or anybody else.” Esmeralda is running her thumb over Kidman’s knuckles, and it’s a curious thing that Kidman focuses on.
“What?”
Esmeralda leans in close. Kidman doesn’t take her eyes off her hand. She feels Esmeralda’s lips moving against her ear. The heat from that travels to her spine and then her groin. She feels so tender and tense at the same time. She doesn’t hear the words coming out, but she does hear Esmeralda’s laughter and that laughter being swallowed up by a constant ring, ring, ring.
Now she startles.
Awake. Staring at the ceiling as her alarm clock nearly deafens. She hits the switch to silence it.
She sits up and waits. Waits for either the terrifying image or sound of a monster. Or the sweet presence of Esmeralda again. If she waits long enough for none of those things to happen, she can perhaps convince herself she’s in reality.
She wonders long she has to wait before she no longer has to wait at all.