Alexander stood at Mila’s door debating whether to knock or wait to see her later for their flight to London. It was late and after days of hiking and a rollercoaster of emotions, perhaps it was best to just keep walking to his room. But the door opened.
“Oh! Alexander!” Mila beamed, opening the door wide. “I was about to go check on you.”
“I apologize, I know it’s late, but we didn’t have dinner, would you care for something to eat?”
“What about a quiet evening here? Would you like to come in for a glass of wine together?” Mila motioned for him to enter.
“Lovely idea, thank you.” Alexander walked in, following her. She seemed to float like the fireflies in the garden, in a silk night kimono robe.
Mila lit another lamp warming the ambiance while Alexander picked a wine from the bar cabinet. The suite was spacious with a scent of French lavender and wildflowers. She waited on the loveseat by the glowing soft light of a lamp nearby. She studied him, his face was relaxed like the calm after the storm.
Alexander offered her a glass of Syrah from the local winery and sat by her. They faced each other in silence, gazing into each other’s eyes, as if their souls were doing the talking about their unpronounced affections. He reached out for Mila’s hand and to his relief, she stretched her hand to him, closing the gap between them.
“Would you stay with me tonight?” Mila asked, looking at him expectantly. She knew that given their luck, another night such as this would never come.
“There is nothing else I want more than to stay,” Alexander replied, wishing to bring her closer in an embrace…and kiss her. Life was violent and lonely as he knew it thus far, then it was up to him to make their moment an exceptional bliss. But he settled for holding her hand and reciting loving words. “‘I still recall the wondrous moment: when you appeared before my sight as though a brief and fleeting omen, pure phantom in an enchanting light. In sorrow, when I felt unwell, caught in the bustle, in a daze, I fell under your voice’s spell and dreamt the features of your face. My soul attained its waking moment: You re-appeared before my sight, as though a brief and fleeting omen, pure phantom in an enchanting light. And now, my heart, with fascination, beats rapidly and finds revived, devout faith and inspiration, and tender tears and love and life… And you.’” Alexander kissed her hand softly, unhurriedly. “It’s exactly what I feel when I think about you,” He said, amazed by how the words had just flown out of his chest, out into the open for Mila to do with them as she wished.
“It sounds so familiar… A master poet I used to know perhaps?” Mila closed her eyes as though hearing it again echoing in her mind. She opened her eyes wide to meet his gaze. “No, it isn’t the poet that I know, it’s the sound of your voice whispering these words while caring for me while I was under the sedative…I know the poem the same way I know the scent of your perfume and the warmth of your touch, I’d recognize you in a crowd even if I went blind.”
“I’m a heartless, cold-blooded scientist, not a poet, remember?” Alexander said, sighing deeply. He let go of her hand and took a swig of his wine. “These are the words of my namesake and former countryman, Alexander Pushkin, one of the best romantic poets to come out of Russia.” He shrugged almost embarrassed.
“Poets feel too much and too deeply, Sasha.” Mila embraced him with her gaze while sipping her wine.
“It was very difficult for me to leave you by yourself in the laboratory. I had to convince Masae that my concern for you was out of commitment to the experiment.” Alexander caressed Mila’s face.
Mila welcomed his tender touch and held his hand on her cheek, closing her eyes for an instant, dissolving the divide. “You were by my side on the coldest of days and nights.”
Alexander leaned towards Mila’s face and found her longing lips. They kissed with their hearts bursting of longing, neither willing to let go of the other.
Alexander caressed Mila delicately, learning her frame and the softness of her skin for the first time with the permission she gave him. In the absence of words, both assimilated the language of the soul.
Mila knew Alexander wasn’t a stranger to her body. He had protected, cleansed and patched her time after time, and now with his kisses, he was also mending its beauty. Wrapped in his masculine scent, she savored the beginning of their unbreakable tie.
Alexander kissed her forehead gently and stood to leave. “Mila, I should go now. I don’t want to intrude in your life anymore. It’s crucial you recover your memory undisturbed. You have people who love you and wait for you. Actually, they have never stopped searching for you.” He collected his suit blazer and moved to the door.
2 AM South African Standard Time
“Would you stay with me, Alexander?” Mila went after him. “Please, keep me company one more night.” She led him by the hand to her bed, intuiting his predicament due to their past. He wouldn’t make any move that could make her autonomy falter again. “I feel exhausted, do you mind if I lay down?”
Alexander found his place next to her. He wrapped her in his arms as she claimed her space on his chest. They stayed still and silent for a long time, listening to each other’s breathing, letting tenderness heal their hearts.
“Can you give me another piece of truth about us?” whispered Mila, admiring the sharp edge of his jaw in his profile as he looked at the ceiling.
“About your past?”
“About us now.”
Alexander thought for a second. He wanted to give her something that would match the vulnerable step she took to allow him to be there, by her side. “I know your dreams and nightmares?”
Mila lifted her face and examined his face. She leaned on one elbow. “You mean figuratively? As you are getting to know me you can see them, is that it?”
“No. I see them. It is a special ability. I guess, the way Masae can hear thoughts and the way you move back and forth in time.” He peeked at her smiling, then went back to stare at the empty above them as she rested her head back on his chest. “Sometimes your dreams are full of color in a vast jungle; there are lovely people…” He paused. He had seen her loved ones in her dreams… How would he tell her who her father was? David Bosco, Shinji and Masae’s right hand. “Sometimes there are frightening fights. And the reel repeats. A beautiful and turbulent life.”
Mila rolled on her back, peering into the space for a while. “Do you know about the places and people in my dreams? I mean, who are they or where on the planet I’ve been?”
“Not everyone. But I knew one person and had indirect knowledge of one place.” He waited for Mila to ask who that person was and what he knew about the place, but she remained silent. “I saw all this upon your arrival, when you were kidnapped.” Alexander turned Mila’s face gently to him to look into her eyes. “I didn’t watch your dreams to invade your privacy for some deviant desire, please believe me. I just wanted to learn about you, through you and not through Masae’s lies.” He imagined that Mila was hating him now, and soon she would ask him to leave. But he would take the outcome of this truth telling with the bravery that Mila deserved. “I couldn’t understand the dialogue, but the images were vivid enough for me to grasp what was happening. There was one, the saddest of all. It was with that vision you reached inside my own void, bridging your loss to my own.”
“Does Masae know you have a gift?” Mila asked calmly. There wasn’t need for drama.
“No, of course not. No one knows aside from you. Your dreams are safe.”
She nodded.
“Would you want me to leave?” He tried to get up.
“No. You know too much to let you escape,” Mila whispered, weary, yet longing for his company. She pressed herself to his side as if trying to merge with him, so he would know that she wanted him there. “In some ways you know me better than I know myself. I wish to ask you about the person you recognized or knew… but…” The earth shuddered, the chamber became a blur as the light wrapped around and blinded her. Time took her to a clandestine laboratory in Singapore, a place where Masae was building her hybrid army, although none of the specimens had turned out like her. And now Mila understood why. All those vagabonds of the world went through the real neogenesis editing, which gave them extraordinary, but easy to manipulate, animal strength…and that was it. And Masae didn’t care anymore as long as she could sell disposable super soldiers.
“Good morning, Dr. Lyashenko, are we making progress?” said Shinji, Masae’s son, who Mila had been told was her brother…
Mila listened and watched from the corner she had appeared. Alexander had been in deep thought when Masae and two men arrived.
“Glad you are here, Shinji, David. I’ll show you, if you could follow me to the testing chambers.” Alexander guided them through the corridor leading to over fifty chambers isolating people. They all looked weathered, mistreated by the drugs and streets in which they had been found. Mila walked behind them with a hand over her mouth suppressing a gasp, seeing the beginnings of the Norfolk’s heinous project was terrifying. What she had been shown in the lab was the end result, a product that until that day she thought she was part. She fixed her attention on the men, one she knew by pictures as her supposed brother, but the other was a stranger. He seemed calm, secure, serious. His bright green eyes were focused and deep. She had seen those eyes…But where? Her heart began beating faster.
“I have adjusted the formula. I’m using carbon nanotube peptides I developed for NASA with the pathogen. They hijacked their neurochemistry, altering their behavior on command.” Alexander pointed to one man who at the click of a button, began struggling as if wrestling with an invisible opponent. “I was testing the formula in this specimen when you arrived…”
“It’s amazing how the brain is open to manipulation and redirection if prepared,” said the man Mila was following closely. He peered into the active specimen’s chamber.
“Right. These behavioral changes came about when I found the two encoded enzymes affecting the production of dopamine. This molecule acts as a chemical messenger between nerve cells.” Alexander was explaining to Shinji and the man that was becoming more familiar…Mila felt as if she was suffocating. Her stomach churned out of disgust when the earth shook and the flashing lights returned her to her present. She jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom.
Alexander ran after her. “Mila, what’s happening? What is wrong?” He asked her, supporting her head as she bent on the bathroom sink and vomited violently.
“I saw… you, Shinji… and a man named David.” Mila replied, trembling. She accepted the hand towel Alexander offered her. “I saw the chambers in the laboratory with the men and women captured for experimentation…” She splashed her face with cold water and buried her face in the towel in an attempt to wipe her shock and tears.
Alexander led her out to the sofa and handed her a glass of water.
Mila stared at him, unsure as her thoughts raced inside her head. “I saw the beginning of the project…Who were those people?”
“As far as I know, they were unidentified vagabonds, stranded drug addicts living in the streets. None of them had any kind of documentation on them when they were picked up and brought to the lab for a cold turkey clean up.”
“Who was David?”
“He was your father.”
Mila almost dropped the glass of water, but she managed to clutch it with both hands. “How could this be, Alexander?” She lifted her eyes to meet his desolated gaze. “I come from a monster! I’m the seed of someone no better than Masae!”
“Mila, I don’t know what you saw, but…” Alexander sat next to her. “Be careful with drawing conclusions. Things taken out of context can be terribly damaging for everyone involved… especially for those unable to present their case in defense. I’m not excusing myself or your father. We each arrived at the Norfolk empire by deception or forced collaboration or by a personal debt to pay. My mother, for example, worked for Masae at Pharma-NorTech, like I do now. That’s how Masae tracked and sponsored my education. I knew what had happened to other scientists who refused to cooperate. It was your father who advised me to choose wisely. He told me that we can make amends while still alive. All this to say that, your father must have had his own story, before becoming Shinji’s right hand… but must know that Masae never trusted him.”
“And now, Shinji is dead; David might also be.” Mila mumbled, testing how that loss felt in her heart.
“Your father’s journey is something to understand when your memory is restored, but not before.” Alexander sighed and got up.
Mila only stared at the ground, did she really want to remember? “My mother… My real mother…was she good?” She murmured, recalling the solitary woman on a boat disappearing against the horizon.
“There is something I have to give you. I’ll be right back.” He left the room.
After a few minutes, Alexander returned and sat on the sofa next to Mila. He held a small box, he studied her and wondered if he should wait.
Mila was paralyzed, as if standing on a personal island surrounded by raging waters, deciding to stay on the little patch of dry land or brave the waves to the truth. “Until recently I would have bolted at the first opportunity to know who I really am but now, after what I just saw about my father, I fear my past hasn’t been better than my present. Getting my memory back is all I’ve been plotting to achieve since I woke up, but now… I’m drained. I am not made of iron.”
“You are, Mila. ‘You are iron wrapped in silk’, as your father often said in your dreams.” Alexander decided to comfort her and embraced her as tight as he could.
“David spoke as a loving father would have but also as a man who had endured more than his share. ‘Love without sacrifice isn’t love.’ Did I understand it right? My Spanish is a little rusty .” He stopped to let the words find their way into her heart. “That’s what you hear him say in your dreams, right?… And the message resonates with me, and this love growing in my heart finds its meaning.”
Mila took refuge in his arms around her, supporting her, comforting her. They were beyond the privacy break-ins; she was glad Alexander had seen her hectic and confused mind while she was asleep; she was glad he knew her. She rested her head on his chest, secure in his warmth. “It’s one of those dreams that repeat often. His words echoed in my mind often, I just didn’t know who he was.”
“It’s an overload of recollections, events, dreams, people, love and despair. Like in your archeological digs, you are excavating your own life, square by square, piece by piece. All left for you to arrange in the proper order of time and place.” Alexander kissed her head.
Mila listened to Alexander’s beating heart, pondering about what would have happened had she known the truth before this trip. They surely wouldn’t be there, as intimate as they were despite the horrors endured.
Alexander deposited the box in Mila’s hands. “Let me give you this. I don’t know if it has any meaning, but it belongs to you.”
Mila blinked unsure. She lifted her eyes from the box to Alexander’s sparkling brown eyes. He encouraged Mila with a nod to open the box. And she did.
Mila ran her finger over the smooth aquamarine stone and the delicate engravings contouring it. She admired the shining jewel. It was a rare jewel with gold filigree patterns encircling it like delicate lace. Mila traced the elegant engraving. It wasn’t a random decoration, but the melodic curves of an ancient language, Mila recognized it. It was the language behind which she often hid her thoughts from Masae. It was the language of her most pleasant dreams. “The ring has a message for both of us, Alexander. Here it is written: Choose life so you may live.”
“You were wearing this ring the day Masae brought you to the lab. I removed it to go along with the charade of a medical procedure. Masae ignored it; she was interested in you and the neogenesis alteration.”
Mila put the ring on. It seemed made for her but she could not remember the story behind the jewel.
“It’s another piece of the puzzle,” whispered Alexander, admiring the ring shining on her smooth skin.
“Yes, it is. Didn’t Masae notice its disappearance?”
“No. You rarely pay attention to details such as a ring when you have a world to conquer,” said Alexander, stroking her hand.
Mila sighed. She turned to him and kissed his cheek.
Alexander got up and prepared to leave.
“And where do you think you’re going, now?” Mila stood, puzzled.
He tried to evade her gaze, taking a few steps to the door.
“Alexander, the brave, please don’t go!” She requested softly.
He turned his face to her.
“We are in all of this together, don’t know? Besides, if you save a life, you are responsible for it.” Mila extended her hand to him to, asking with a yearning gaze to return to her. “Don’t leave, unless that’s what you want, but not because you think that that’s what I want… because I don’t.”
“No. I don’t want to go anywhere without you.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, his feelings were exposed as never before in his entire life. What would be the point to hold back now? “I don’t want to be without you. Yet, it would be better if…”
“If I wait to have my memory back. Until then, I must restrain my heart and avoid falling in love,” She took a few steps toward him. “Because there might be someone in my life I haven’t registered yet, someone you have seen in my dreams. But guess what, it’s too late for that. Love born despite so much loss, is a powerful force, Sasha, don’t you think?” Mila gazed at him. “There is so much uncertainty about my memory, about those I left behind and who haven’t find me yet, about our future…” Mila caressed the ring on her finger. “But suddenly, there is this hope growing in my heart, as crazy as it may sound. Hope for a new life, not the old I left or what it is with Masae as a puppeteer, but life in which we can use these gifts, this knowledge.” Mila welcomed him by her side and spoke gently from her heart. “Hope for this love of ours to grow. We only have a few hours left before the flight to London, to what’s been so far,”
“…To what will soon change!” Alexander pulled her to him. They kept each other in a tight, but tender embrace, neither wanting to ever let go.