Excerpt: With Earth In Mind (Episodes 6 and 7)

Haley was on her feet before she had the first clue as to the goings on. Immediately dizzy after so quick an unexpected transition from husk back to her living self, it was all she could do to suppress a strong wave of nausea. That, and stumble along in the direction of momentum this strange man had going for him.

“What?” Was all she got out on first try. After that, she nearly doubled over in surrender to a second even more powerful wave of disorientation and sickness. “What’s going on?”

Whoever it was who had her by the elbow, he didn’t even look back at her. He just took step after unwanted step. When Haley nearly stumbled to her knees, her… well, she didn’t know what to call him in that moment. Either way, her quasi-assailant let go long enough to round on her.

“Get back up!” he shouted in a hoarse voice.

Okay, Haley realized in that moment. This isn’t a friendly encounter.

Though she’d moved to comply, when another genuine wave of dizziness overtook her, sending her back to the ground on her rear end, Haley found the wherewithal to make a quick scan of her surroundings.

Well ahead of her, and nearly through the thick glass doors leading into the nearest shallows’ lobby, Laney seemed to be enduring the same experience she was — though, in her case, it was a woman and man who had her by each arm.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Haley barked out, not quite oblivious to the cliché twinge she felt in asking. “What are you doing with me? With my sister?”

“Enough already,” the balding brown-haired man shot back impatiently. From what Haley could read of his demeanor, he didn’t come off as menacing, per se… just, upset. Anxious, perhaps. Certainly in a nervous hurry. “Get back up,” he insisted, when Haley still had yet to regain her legs.

“I’m dizzy, dammit! Can’t walk straight.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” the roughly-dressed man complained. He reached out to grab at her wrist even as another two men strode up. One wiry man who seemed to prefer wearing black over just about anything else, and a somewhat more built individual with thin graying hair.

When, at first, Haley thought they meant to assist this unnamed individual with her capture, she recoiled even further, allowing her back to briefly touch the dry sloping biocrete surface of the upper cetacean shallows. Then, though, when both simply passed by, giving their unidentified compatriot a simple nod and sympathetic glances, Haley knew she had a chance.

They’re for Bach, she knew. But why? And now what?

Instinctively, she rolled to her right, putting an extra meter between her and her heavily breathing assailant. Cursing profusely, he took one large step forward… and, apparently failed to account for the random slope of the shallows’ floor. His momentum carried him into an unbalanced gait, and he had to hop a couple times just to keep from falling face first into the otherwise unforgiving surface.

“Stay back,” Haley yelled, more out of a desire to keep the man distracted — though, to be fair, she also really did want him to stay back.

Up upon her knees in that moment, Haley tested her connection to the wireless, and found it intact. Whoever these people were — another group of protestors, she immediately bet with herself — they hadn’t either the sophistication or means to tamp down upon the billions of bits flying through the air around them. Not that such is all that easy, anyways.

Reaching out, she immediately touched base with Bach. “Watch out!” she whispered to him ethereally. “There’s a crowd here and they have Laney already. I’m about to try to get away,” she added. “Two men are coming for you right now.”

Haley felt more than heard Bach try to answer back, but she couldn’t afford to stand there and have a conversation with the young engineer while this other man stood kept trying to grab at her, becoming ever more agitated with her uncooperative resistance.

“Stop moving,” he cried out again, as if she would just because he said so.

Instead, Haley imagined herself rolling away once again, albeit in a tangential direction. Since the man she faced sported an obnoxious set of flame-like figment tattoos running up and down the length of his arms — as well as a strange silvery halo not quite in contact with the periphery of his unshaven throat — she knew he had to be connected to the wireless as well.

And then he fell for it. Where the man didn’t think to question his eyes when she barreled off to her left, she instead launched herself up off her heels in the opposite direction. Splitting her consciousness in that moment probably cost her mirage several effective seconds, it also let her focus a beacon of distress out across the watery horizon seen between hills marking either side of the artificial lagoon’s main entrance.

Whether it was overheard or not, Haley bound for the water as hard as she could. Her assailant, already a steady font of profanity, cursed all the more prolifically in the moment that followed.

He’s seen through the figment already, she realized. An over-the-shoulder glance still told her of at least three, maybe four meters between him and her, and that would have to be enough. There was about the same between her and the lagoon’s lapping edge.