My Familiar Stranger by Victoria Danann

had rehearsed what he would say when this moment arrived and now his mind was a blank. His chest heaved with a big sigh.
    “Elora, I’ve never deceived you and I don’t want to start now. Your being here, well, you’re a walking paranormal phenomenon. Oddly enough, or maybe not if you believe in synchronicity, that happens to be what we do. So this is probably a best case scenario as far as places where you might have landed. When we’re reassured there’s no reason to be afraid of you…”
    Elora barked out a sarcastic laugh. The sound startled him, but Elora was the one who was sorry because the jarring caused some remnant abdominal zingers. “So I am being held as an enemy combatant?”
    Storm looked like he was working hard at choosing his words carefully. “No. More as a phenomenon of interest.”
    “Hmmm. You know, in the place I come from, it is well known that befriending enemy combatants,” she gestured toward the chess board, “as you have done here, is a far more effective method of extracting information than torture.”
    “You are in the infirmary unit of a special operations facility. No one here has either desire or plans to harm you in any way. If they did, they would have to go through me and my... associates.”
    “And you don’t consider confinement harm?” His jaw tightened ever so slightly, but he didn’t answer. “What has to happen for me to gain release?”
    “Satisfy my superiors that you are not a danger.”
    “And how do I do that?”
    He scowled at the board for a moment. “I haven’t asked that. I’m not sure that’s been defined. But I can find out.”
    “Have I met any of these superiors?”
    “Not formally, but one of them was present when you... arrived.”
    “Why do you come here every day?”
    Surprise crossed his face. That wasn’t a question he was expecting. He repeated the question back to himself several times while Elora calculated what was taking so long and, more than likely, speculating as to whether or not he would lie.
    “I come every day because I like to. Do you like having me come?”
    She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Of course,” she smiled with a hint of flirtation that would have knocked him on his ass if he wasn’t already sitting. “You’re my angel.”
    She moved her queen. “Checkmate.”
    First, his stomach did a discomfiting, little flippy thing when she called him her angel. Second, he had to process the astounding news that he’d lost a game of chess for the first time since he was ten. Was he that distracted? Or was she that good? Either way, this was by far the best assignment he’d ever drawn.
    They were almost back to Elora’s room when the emergency double doors crashed open and a voice was on the P.A. urgently talking about codes. Three medics were moving fast, guiding a gurney bearing a young guy with an oxygen mask over his face. He was covered with blood. One of the nurses shouted, “Make way!”
    Storm pressed Elora backward toward the wall trying to make them as small as possible quickly, but gently keeping in mind that she was still fragile.
    Three guys followed the frantic activity. Every one of them looked haunted, soberly watching that gurney roll away with grave expressions and a lot of blood on their own clothes. A couple of them looked to be bleeding from their own wounds.
    In their dazed state it took a couple of minutes to register Elora’s presence. When they did, their heads came up in unison as they looked from Elora to Storm and back again. Their eyes came to rest on the familiar way he had his hands on her.
    Female personnel in the infirmary were common. A female patient wasn’t just an oddity. It was impossible.
    After their eyes swept over Elora’s still swollen and discolored body, they looked questioningly at Storm. He shook his head at them and turned Elora toward the door to her room. He knew that small, silent communication would be enough to suppress the spread of rumor, but that it was only