My current work-in-progress will follow Petra’s story. Here’s chapter two (chapter one here) with the usual disclaimer that it is unedited and subject to change.
Chapter Two
Jesse pushes into the Alfama Haven, the boutique hotel he has picked especially to rendezvous with Petra to celebrate. They’d done it. Sixty-six field stations—reduced to rubble. A three-year mission, orchestrated by a hacker and a hurricane. And now? Lisbon, a hotel room, and a little ring burning a hole in his bag. For the first time in three years, Jesse feels like the future isn’t a mirage. It’s right there, waiting on the other side of a hot shower and a pastel de nata. He glances at his watch. He doesn’t know why. It’s not like Petra is on a plane. She is traveling Euroklydon style, which means, arrival time: whenever she pleases.
His heart beats with anticipation as he looks around the quaint lobby. Azulejo tiles adorn the wall behind the small front desk. Wooden beams arch overhead, almost low enough to reach up and touch, dark and rustic. Wall sconces reminiscent of the streetlights in the Alfama district cast a soft glow over the space. There’s not a soul in sight. It’s like stepping into a magazine spread entitled: “Places to Propose Before the Demons Catch Up.”
Jesse rolls his luggage to one of the armchairs and sits down, checking his watch again. He hopes she is waiting for him in their room. Maybe she is already having that shower. Maybe he will step into the room just as she is stepping out of s steamy bathroom with wet hair. Maybe she’ll throw her towel in his face and tell him to stop narrating his own fantasy fiction.
“Olá!” A bright, friendly voice jars Jesse from his daydream. “Welcome to the Alfama Haven. Sorry for the wait.” A young woman bustles into the lobby through a low wooden archway and plops into the chair behind the desk. She gives him a wide smile as she wakes the computer. “How was your journey to Lisbon?”
“Good, thank you.” Jesse moves to the chair opposite her.
“Wonderful.” She gestures to the small bar where an espresso machine sits beside an array of coffee paraphernalia. “May I offer you bica, or a complimentary glass of vinho verde? A little taste of Portugal to begin your stay?”
“Thank you, no. I’ll take água, though, if you have it.”
“Certainly.” She spins in her chair to open a small fridge beneath the counter and sets out a cold mini bottle of water before him, along with a glass and a paper coaster printed with the hotel’s logo. She returns to the computer as he twists the cap off the water and drinks. “Now, let’s get you settled. We’ve upgraded you to a suite overlooking the Tagus River. Very beautiful, especially at sunset. Here is your key—”
“Sorry, to interrupt, but can you tell me if my girlfriend has already checked in?”
A line appears between her perfectly tweezed brows. “Let me see… I’m not sure, as my shift just began but perhaps my colleague assisted her.” She scans the screen, clicking a few buttons and trailing the mouse.
“Gorgeous woman with black hair, silver-grey eyes, a smoky voice.” Jesse is in such a good mood, he can’t help but brag a little. She’s like dating a natural disaster—if hurricanes wore black hoodies and rolled their eyes a lot.
She smiles knowingly at him. “Well now, there’s no way we would have missed such a lady, but I’m sorry, no. Do you know when she’s set to arrive? We can call the airport, even arrange for a limousine service, if you wish to surprise her. We have a driver stationed—”
“No, that’s alright. I’m sure she’ll be along soon.” He finishes the rest of the water in a few gulps.
She slides a packet toward him. “I’ve got a map for you here, along with some recommendations for exploring Alfama—hidden gems, our favourite pastelarias, and the best places for live fado music. The Wi-Fi password is inside as well. If you need any help planning your time here, don’t hesitate to ask. This is a very romantic neighbourhood. You’ve chosen well. Just take the stairs or the elevator up two flights, down the hall on your right.”
Jesse thanks the hotel clerk and drags his luggage into the tiny elevator. He is a mixed bag of feelings and emotions. Exhaustion after his five-hour flight from Tel Aviv—the location of the second-to-last TNC exploit—excitement to have Petra in his arms again, and the anxiety that is his ever-present companion whenever she travels long distances.
He uses his key card to let himself into their room, reminding himself that she’s in no danger. There is no distance she cannot cover safely, and at astonishing speeds, too. She is not as fast as a plane, but she’s no slouch either. She is detectable by many different kinds of technologies—Jesse fell down that particular rabbit-hole at the beginning of their vigilante days—LIDAR systems, satellite imagery, Doppler radar and AERONET stations which measure dust movement and concentrations using photometers. There are more, but it’s all irrelevant. Petra looks like a sandstorm, even to the most advanced detection systems, because that’s what she becomes, although it’s a good thing weather satellites can’t track emotional baggage. He has asked her many times to describe what it feels like to blow apart into trillions of particles but she doesn’t have the words, just like she doesn’t have the words to describe how she generates an EMP. The one thing she has no trouble describing is the headache that results when she uses her telepathy for more than a few seconds at a time. “Picture a swarm of bees trapped inside a Coke can. Now give them opinions.”
The hotel room is just as quaint as the lobby; decorated with blue and white tiles, wrought-iron chandeliers, deep olive-green paint with splashes of mustard yellow. A double bed fitted with a pristine white duvet sits beneath an enormous painting of Alfa’s winding streets, with colourful laundry crisscrossing the alleys.
He unpacks and sets out his laptop, the one he has allowed himself to bring. He has left a lot of equipment locked up in a storage facility in Tel Aviv. In fact, he has high-tech equipment stowed in random places all over the world: Burner laptops, Faraday bags, USBs disguised as rubber duckies—he has gear stashed on four continents, and multiples of everything. If MacGyver and Edward Snowden had a baby, it would be Jesse’s luggage. Hacking means gadgets, and hacking on Jesse’s level means the latest tech available.
He and Petra have burned through a lot of his money over the last three years. Of the four million US dollars he was paid for the Saharan job, he has less than five hundred thousand left. Destroying a corporation is expensive, even when you have the world’s most powerful supernatural on the roster. But they still have plenty left to take a good long holiday. Petra wants to live a normal life for a while, and Jesse will do pretty much anything as long as they’re together. Maybe they’ll take French classes, move to Paris, open a cafe. Maybe they’ll buy a little vineyard in Tuscany and learn how to make wine, or press and bottle olive oil.
Jesse takes a hot shower, pausing to listen when there are footsteps in the hall, but the door to their suite never opens. He towels off, his stomach rumbling as he rifles through the clothing in his bag, picking out a plain blue polo and khaki trousers. He fiddles dubiously with his hair, which has gotten unruly. He feels certain Lisbon has plenty of good barbers, as he is overdue for a trim. Petra gave him his last one, and while she has some impressive talents, cutting hair isn’t one of them.
After they parted ways in Tel Aviv, he went to the Diamond Exchange District in Ramat Gan and picked out a ring. It is intricate and beautiful. Petra is drawn to all things delicate and feminine, probably because her destructive talents have made her feel indelicate and masculine. He doesn’t know yet how he is going to ask her, the time isn’t right, but the moment has to be as special and unique as she is. He will dream up something spectacular. They are still young, he is not yet twenty-five, and Petra not yet twenty-three.
He straps on his watch, trying to ignore the flutter of anxiety in his gut. If anything has happened to waylay Petra, they have only one way of getting in touch: a mutual email account where they write draft messages to one another without ever hitting send. For messages that need additional secrecy, they use a cipher they created out of the King James Bible, but now that they don’t need to be so covert, he suspects they won’t need the cipher any more.
He boots up his computer and logs in to the hotel’s Wi-Fi service, then their email account, but there are no messages in the draft folder. His stomach growls again, and when he stands, he sways from light-headedness. He needs to eat. Loathe to dine without Petra, he turns on the television and finds a movie to distract himself. But Skyfall isn’t enough to keep him from spiralling. Finally, he orders room service, with dessert, and eats while he refreshes the draft folder over and over until he’s sure the arrow icon is judging him.
Jesse unwraps the pastel de nata with only half his heart in it. It’s sweet, flaky, exactly the kind of thing he and Petra would bicker over in a train station or a market stall somewhere, both pretending they didn’t want the last bite. He takes a slow chew, refreshing the draft folder out of habit more than hope.
Then—a draft does appear.
He freezes, and for one perfect second, his heart leaps.
Then he sees the subject line.
I love you. I’m sorry.
The pastry drops from his fingers, landing custard side down on the tile. He swallows the bite in his mouth and takes a swallow of water, unable to tear his eyes from the subject line. He is more terrified to click on the draft than anything else he has ever faced, but—with a shaking hand—he opens the message. It is short, but Jesse doubles over in actual pain when he reads it. Every part of his body rejects what he’s reading.
Jesse,
I love you. You know that. I’m sorry. This isn’t about us—it’s about who I am, and what I might be. I can’t risk finding out too late that I’m… well, I don’t know. Something bad. I have to know what I am before we decide what we can become. Please don’t look for me. If you do, they might use you against me. And I won’t survive that. You’ve always believed in me. Let this be the proof that you’re right. I’m doing this because I’m still me. I’m the Petra you know, but I have a fight to win before I can be more, and I have to do it alone.
—P.
His chest caves inward. His heart is screaming. The screen goes blurry, but the words don’t change. He pushes away from the laptop, stumbles toward the window, as if he’s been punched. His knees nearly buckle. Somewhere outside, the bells of Lisbon’s cathedral begin to toll. Low, mournful, merciless.
He braces his hands on the windowsill and drops his head.
She’s not coming.
And he never got to say anything at all.
#
Jesse slouches in a booth in the hotel’s breakfast room, sunglasses perched on his nose—to shield his red-rimmed eyes from the light. And from pitying glances. He doesn’t want comfort. He wants a black hole. He is chain-chewing his way through a pack of gum like it’s an Olympic event. Cinnamon, the hottest he could find. His tongue is numb, his jaw aches. He doesn’t care. Better that than the rawness underneath.
An empty coffee mug sits on the table, his laptop open but forgotten beside it. He stares out the window, looking at but not seeing the sky. White napkins are strewn at his elbow like casualties of war—or in this case, heartbreak—each one scrawled with ink, scratched through in frustration, balled up and abandoned.
I love you. I’m sorry.
He read it forty-three times before he fell into an exhausted sleep last night. He doesn’t need to read it again to remember the words.
He still hasn’t replied. Can’t. Doesn’t know what to say. Her message is so final, so surgical. It opened him up with clinical precision and left him bleeding on the foundation of what they’d almost built together.
I have to know what I am before we decide what we can become. Don’t look for me. If you do, they might use you against me.
Who?
The question seethes beneath his skin.
What was more dangerous than what they’d done together in the last three years? Where was she going that he couldn’t follow? How long had she known she was going to leave? Jesse chews his lip as his vision blurs, but he refuses to let more tears fall. She’s made her choice. She didn’t leave because she doesn’t love him. She left because she doesn’t trust him.
He deserves this.
He betrayed Petra before he ever loved her. They met under false pretenses, pretenses he’d knowingly agreed to. He’d infiltrated her life as an agent for a company that wanted to dissect her, own her, control her. She was angry when he told her everything—it would be weird if she hadn’t been—but she’d forgiven him and accepted his help. Or so he thought. Helping her with TNC wasn’t just his way of trying to atone for what he’d taken part in, it was the only way he could be with her. It was his fault that she had gone on the rampage anyway. He was the one who had presented her with the research showing what TNC were really all about, and what they had done to Petra’s birth parents. When she vowed to destroy them, he’d had no choice to but to help. And now that it was all over, their mission completed, she had recalled his betrayal and left him for it, finally. She would never say so, but deep down in his heart, he believed that that’s why she left. No matter what he did, she would never fully trust him.
He rests his forearms on the table, shoulders hunched, sunglasses sliding down his nose. His mind flickers through old wounds like flipping channels on a broken TV. He doesn’t have to think about what he’s about to do. He does it almost on autopilot. There is one thing that he can do to help her, to show her that he loves her. Waking up his computer, he types his bank’s URL into the bar. His fingers are steady, even if nothing else is. He transfers eighty percent of his remaining funds to her, almost everything they hadn’t spent torching their way across the world. A final act of service. Of his love.
In the message box he types: You’ll need this more than me. I love you. Please be careful.
He hits send and it feels like the closest thing he’ll get to a goodbye.
Jesse powers down the laptop, packs up his things and wanders out of the hotel like a ghost and hails a taxi. There’s nowhere he needs to be anymore, but he can’t stay here.
At the airport he approaches the first empty ticketing desk. The man working the desk smiles at him. “Welcome to Emirates, how may I help you?”
Jesse sets his bag down with a thump. “Stick me on the next flight out please.”
“Where to, sir?”
Jesse shrugs. “Don’t care.”
The man’s smile falters, then disappears. “Sir… are you alright?”
“I’m fantastic. Just had my heart ripped out of my chest cavity and pummeled by a Cat 5 typhoon, so.” After a beat, and in the face of the agent’s obvious alarm, he adds: “Somewhere warm. Luxurious. Good parties. Reasonable odds of forgetting who I am for a while.”
Frowning, the man clears his throat and rattles off a few keystrokes. “A direct flight to Dubai boards in twenty-five minutes. Or one to Ibiza leaves in two and a half hours.”
“Dubai.” No hesitation. He wants distance. Anonymity.
“Okay.” The agent returns to his screen. “I have three economy seats available and one in first-class, but…” He sounds almost apologetic. “The ticket runs €9600.”
“Perfect.” Jesse pushes his card across the counter. “I hope the champagne is cold.”
Their bond? Complicated.
Their chemistry? Irresistible.
Their enemies? Biblical.
The first book in a new series scheduled for release Spring of 2025.
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