Face to Face by Linda FFF

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Face to Face, Part 4
by Linda

"I know better than to believe you now. I won't allow you or anyone else to use my memories of my daughter to destroy me again."

Mouths dropping, both Julia and Alonzo took a small step toward the woman holding them at gunpoint and stared at her intently, her words still ringing in their ears. Julia put a hand on the shelving unit to steady herself. She thought she had heard everything by this point, but life on this planet never failed to shock her.

"Your daughter?" They echoed her in unison.

"Wow. They're recruiting better and better actors for the Council these days." The woman looked grim, shifting position to gain even more control of the situation and flexibility of motion. "But don't bother to pretend you don't know who I am. After all, the Council knows all -- right?" She finished by resorting to sarcasm.

"Look. I don't know who the hell you are, but I do know that you are not Devon's mother. Cynthia Adair died a long time ago on the stations. Devon told me so herself. Who are you?" Julia's focus was no longer on the gun pointing at her head, but instead on the one real female friend she had developed in her lifetime. Devon had given her a second chance, had become her best friend -- heck, her only real female friend -- and she was not about to let some woman claiming to be her mother cause Devon any grief. Of course, it didn't escape Julia that she needed to make sure she came out of this alive if she wanted to help her friend. But somehow that plastic gun seemed a heck of a lot less dangerous than it had moments earlier.

Meanwhile, Alonzo took advantage of the woman's focus on Julia to shift the knob on his gear that changed it from tracking to audio reception. While they couldn't respond, at least he and Julia might be able to have a clue about what the rest of Eden Advance was doing. All of the sudden, Danziger's voice filled the room. "Base to away team. C'mon Julia, Alonzo. Look guys, this is no time for a romantic tryst. I'm warning you. Adair's standing right here and she's going to tear your heads off with her bare hands if we don't hear from you any minute." The joking tone Danziger affected did little to mask the gruff concern underlying his words.

In the communications tent, Danziger turned to Devon. "I'm sorry but I think we'd better send a search party -- just in case. I'm not that worried since their gear appears to be functioning, but on this planet...."

"I know. I know. Better safe than sorry. Besides, I don't think Julia'd be so irresponsible as to stop and make out in the woods without calling in for hours. After all, the last time anyone had contact was when we told them to check out the signal. How about you, me, Magus and Baines?" The woman sighed, figuring at least she could try to use the situation to help out Laura.

"Playing matchmaker, Adair? Bess was just trying to set up the same couples, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer."

"Look, I just set up a practical search team, one that can move quickly on foot since the vehicles appear to be out of commission. If you have a problem with it, you fix the search team." Devon glared at him, defensively raising her voice. The last thing she wanted was John Danziger thinking she was trying to construct ways for them to spend time together. "Better yet, fix the vehicles. And I am nothing like Bess Martin...."

"And fortunately, she's nothing like you." Morgan Martin's voice interrupted them. "The natives out here are getting restless. Have you made contact?"

"No." Devon turned to face him. "We were just talking about a search party. Fortunately it doesn't look like they're that far away. We should make it to them by nightfall."

"Yeah, right." Morgan raised one eyebrow. "Who do you want to go? Do you have recent coordinates?"

"Adair, Magus, Baines and I. We still have coordinates on their gears. Hopefully their gears are still with them. Anyway, could you handle the com tent 'til we get back?" Danziger didn't wait for an answer as he determinedly stepped out the door. Devon followed him, calling out to Baines and Magus. Before long, the four -- armed with weapons and medical supplies they hoped they wouldn't need, as well as enough gear in case they had to stay out overnight -- left camp on foot in search of their missing mates. Before leaving, Devon asked Yale to check on both True and Uly, since they didn't come out to see their parents off.

Yale found Uly in his tent, engrossed in a game of VR. He told his tutor that he didn't even realize Julia and Alonzo were missing. He was too busy saving a small town in the Old West from a short, but evil, gunslinger named True. But he assured his tutor that he didn't know where the human embodiment of that desperado might be.

As Yale searched for True, the young girl was making her way through the forest, careful to go neither in the direction Eden Advance was supposed to head nor in the direction from whence they came. Hurt, angry and confused, she was not about to wait for her father to reject her in favor of Devon Adair and her gross kisses. In the wisdom of her youth, True figured that she would leave first. Once she was gone, they'd be sorry. They might miss her but they'd never find her, 'cause she didn't need them and she didn't want them if they didn't want her. And her dad had made it clear in the com tent that it was Devon he wanted.

So engrossed was True in these thoughts that she did not see the small creature that followed her on her path through the crowded woods. But she did feel it, when it sank its small, sharp teeth through her trousers and into the soft tissue of her left leg. As True yelped in pain, she spun around and watched the six-legged neon orange creature scamper up a tree. It looked like nothing she had seen ever before, but that wasn't exactly a new experience for True since coming to G889. The small girl bent down, pulled up the leg of her trousers and saw the teethmarks in her leg. But the wound didn't look bad or hurt much, and she decided to continue on and find a safe place to spend nightfall. As the sun set, she knew from experience, the woods became dark and shadowy, like a place out of those horror stories her father liked to tell when they were all sitting safely around the campfire.

"It'll be getting dark soon." Magus made her observation as the foursome moved across the land toward the spot at the base of the mountain where Alonzo and Julia had abandoned the Dunerail in favor of continuing on foot. "If Julia and Alonzo are off on some passionate encounter, I may murder them with my own two hands."

"I think Adair reserved that honor," Danziger quipped, one eyebrow raised for emphasis.

"I just hope we find them soon." Ignoring Danziger's provocation, Devon put her matchmaking plans on the backburner as her worries about Alonzo and Julia grew.

"Don't worry, we will." John had worries of his own, but figured there was no use getting excited until they knew what was going on. "Besides have you ever known Alonzo to miss any party? There's no way he'd skip out on his own engagement fiesta, even if he doesn't know about it."

"I really wish we could have taken the Transrover," Baines groused as the group moved slowly on foot across the difficult terrain toward the coordinates tapped from their friends' gear. "These packs are getting heavy."

"Well, geez. I wouldn't have taken either the Transrover or the ATV apart if I had known the dynamic duo were going to pull a disappearing act," Danziger replied. "I thought I had until tomorrow morning to get them up and running again. Besides we can walk faster than the Transrover on terrain like this. Traveling tomorrow is going to be a nightmare."

"They both certainly were in bad need of repair." Magus jumped into the conversation. "I don't think they were meant to take the kind of abuse we're giving them."

"I'm going to call Morgan to see if he's heard from them yet." Devon's worries grew with each step she took. She put on her gear.

Danziger bit his tongue to refrain from pointing out that Morgan would have contacted them if Alonzo or Julia had called in. Then again, he remembered who was manning the communication system. Maybe Adair had a point. For once.

"Morgan, have you heard anything?" Devon asked.

"No." Morgan Martin appeared to Devon. "But I have discovered that Alonzo's gear is no longer set to tracking. He switched it to audio."

"On purpose?"

"I don't know." Martin was puzzled. "If he did it on purpose, wouldn't he have called in?"

"So basically you're saying that wherever he is, he can probably hear us but not respond." Devon wanted to make sure she understood. "So should we try reaching him again?"

"I don't know. I'm just telling you what the technology's telling me. I don't know why Alonzo would set it that way."

"Thanks, Morgan. I'll try calling him." Devon groaned with frustration and switched the frequency of her gear to align with Alonzo's. "Alonzo Solace, this is Devon Adair. Can you hear me?"

The gray-haired woman looked at the gear from which Devon Adair's voice was emitting. "Nice trick," she said. "But I've played in virtual reality before. You can get that machine to play whatever voice you want."

Alonzo was getting frustrated. He was sick and tired of watching this woman hold a gun to Julia's head. Time was passing rather slowly and it felt like they had been playing the same game for days, although in reality it had only been a few hours. If there one thing Alonzo was sure of, it was that neither he nor Julia represented the Council -- at least not any more. It seemed as if the woman wanted to believe them, but just couldn't bring herself to trust. On the other hand, he didn't trust her much either, between the gun she was carrying and her claims of being Devon's mother. But he was beginning to think the only thing that would convince this deluded woman to let them go was Devon Adair herself.

"It's not a trick." Julia was still attempting reason.

"See for yourself." Alonzo jumped in.

"In your little VR plaything?" The woman laughed. "Don't think I would trust anything that came out of that piece of machinery."

"How about in reality? We could go back to our camp and you can see Devon for yourself."

"I'm not going to walk into a Council trap like some sort of dimwit."

"You don't have to. You have the gun. We'll just go down the mountain and toward camp. We can approach quietly so you can see for yourself."

"Let's look at this logically." Julia interrupted Alonzo, shooting him a powerful look that told him to stay quiet. "The fact of the matter is that if we were Council operatives, then you would be dead. If we had come up here hunting you, then you would be dead. We certainly wouldn't have been caught off-guard by you and your plastic weapon. And even if you had managed to catch us unawares, the Council teaches that the mission is more important than the individual. Alonzo could have reached the Magpro while you were pointing your gun at me. If we were Council, he would have sacrificed me to achieve his objective -- either killing you or wounding you to bring back to our leaders."

The woman studied Julia intensely. She wanted to believe this woman, even if she was Katharine Heller's daughter. But she also remembered how well Katharine had faked sincerity. After several moments of silence, she decided to take the risk.

"OK, this is the deal. Alonzo, I want you to give me your gun. If you do that, we'll all walk down towards your camp together," she paused. "However, if I have any reason to believe this is a trap, then I will make sure that Heller dies -- even if that means I die as well. Is that clear?"

Alonzo and Julia exchanged a look and then Solace slowly took the weapon off the bed and slid it across the floor to the woman. As the evening grew dark, the threesome made their way down the mountain toward the Dunerail, in which hours earlier Alonzo had proposed. They reached the spot at the same moment as the foursome who had set out from camp to track their missing friends. Danziger, Baines and Magus pulled out weapons and pointed them at the woman who appeared to have their friends held captive. Devon Adair simply stared in shock at the woman, who in turned stared back at her. With Alonzo and Julia's eyes focused on her, Devon finally managed to open her mouth and utter just one word.

"Mother."

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