by R S Penney
He sat down on the edge of the mattress with hands on his knees, head hanging as he let out a breath. “The kid was brave,” Jack muttered. “I'm going to miss him, but this was not your fault.”
Anna leaned against the windowsill with her arms folded, turning her face up to the ceiling. “I know,” she whispered. “That's the problem. I should be torn up with guilt, but I'm not. So what does that say about me?”
“Nothing.”
She barked a laugh.
Turning around with a growl, Anna braced her hands on the windowsill and leaned forward to peer through the pane. “Is this what happens to us, Jack?” she asked. “Do we just get more callous over time?”
Jack closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “I don't think so,” he replied in a soft rasp. “I think that when life forces you to carry the weight we've had to carry, you eventually get used to it.”
He tried to sound resolute – for himself as much as for her – but when he studied his friend, Jack had to admit that he could see her point. She was overstating her case, but there was a grain of truth in it.
Was this the same impulsive, headstrong woman who had wandered into his thrift shop all those years ago? That Anna would never have been comfortable leading troops into battle. She had gained confidence in herself, and it made Jack so very proud of her. On the other hand, the Anna of four years ago had laughed a lot more.
Come to think of it, so had he. True, most of his one-liners had been thin veils for the gaping pit of self-loathing that made him second guess his every decision – and Jack was pleased to say that he too was more confident than he had been as a youth – but he didn't laugh as much. Maybe he just didn't feel like laughing.
And that was sad.
He stood.
As if sensing his intentions, Anna turned away from the window and practically stumbled into him, slipping her arms around his back and burrowing against his chest. She trembled with every breath.
Jack returned the hug, and then, by instinct, he began to sway from side to side. Without even thinking, he ran his fingers through her hair. That was the tipping point for both of them. The damn that held back their emotions burst.
“He was just a kid,” Anna whimpered.
Jack sniffled, hot tears streaming over his cheeks in rivers. “I know,” he whispered, unable to stop his own shivering. “We pulled him out of that hell hole only to throw him head-first into another.”
Anna pressed her face into his chest and trembled. Her fingers clutched the back of his shirt. “We should have taken him somewhere else,” she said. “Back to Leyria Or…Or I don't know, but somewhere!”
There wasn't much they could have done; on a rational level, Jack knew that. At the time, keeping Raynar close by had been a good idea. After Keli's betrayal, Jena was right to wonder what kind of damage a telepath could do on a world that was not prepared to deal with such power.
Still, there was grief; grief was a good thing. Hell, emotion of any kind was a good thing under circumstances like these. Anna's concerns about being cut off were not totally unfounded. Only then did Jack realize how deeply he had suppressed his sadness, putting it out of his mind so that he could focus on his job. It was a useful skill but not a virtuous one. Not by any means.
Anna must have done the same, and now – with no one else around – it all came pouring out of her. She shook and sniffled and left a big wet spot on his shirt. Not that he minded in the slightest. “It's not your fault.”
Anna pulled away, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I know.” She sat down on the windowsill with a heavy sigh. “Companion have mercy, but I know that. I just feel like it should be.”
“Why?”
“Because accepting that it wasn't my fault means accepting that there was nothing I could have done to save him. And that is so much harder to deal with. With all my power, I still couldn't save him.”
“Maybe not Raynar,” Jack said softly. “But literally thousands of people are alive because of what we did here. I just got the report from Jena. Two Keeper teams raided Slade's warehouse.”
“They got him?”
Chewing on his lip, Jack winced and shook his head. “I wish,” he said, backing away from her. “Slade escaped through a SlipGate, but they managed to capture the last of his drones and ziarogati.”
Anna sat on the bed with hands folded in her lap, staring down at herself with a frown on her face. “Well, that's something,” she murmured. “Now all we have to worry about is your basic, run of the mill psychopath.”
“And those are on the run,” Jack said. “The teams we have patrolling the city have captured several of Slade's paramilitary cells. We've spotted others fleeing to New Jersey or booking it up the 495. They're scared, Anna.”
Jack stood before her with his hands in his pockets, head bowed as he spoke. “It's over,” he said softly. “People are going back to work; shops are reopening. This city is back on its feet thanks to you.”
Anna looked up to meet his gaze. God, but he could drown in those gorgeous blue eyes. “Thanks to us,” she said, nodding once. “Not wanting to point out the obvious here, but you helped.”
“I guess I did.”
She stood up with a sigh, then hugged him once again. “Thank you,” she said. “I guess we better get going. If we're gonna help these people back into their homes, there's a lot of work to do.”
The school cafeteria was a trapezoid-shaped room of blue cinder-block walls, lit by windows near the ceiling that allowed sunlight to spill through. In just a few weeks, kids would be sitting in these chairs on the first day of school. That was a certainty now that they had reclaimed the city.
Melissa sat on the edge of one table with her hands in her lap, her legs swinging freely underneath. It was exhausting, carrying the weight of her emotions. Her father had come back from the fighting, as had Jack and Anna. She couldn't be happier about that, but Jena had given her the news a few hours ago.
Raynar wasn't coming back.
She closed her eyes, tears streaming over her face. “They should call me the kiss of death,” she muttered, getting to her feet. “Hey, boys, you wanna make out with Melissa? 'God, no! I want to live!' ”
Pressing the heels of her hands to her eye-sockets, she rubbed away the moisture. “You're being stupid,” she told herself. “There's no such thing as the kiss of death. Bad things just happen sometimes.”
It did nothing to make her feel better; in fact, contemplating the horror of that only made her start crying again. Of course, she understood that life didn't guarantee anyone a happy ending – on some level, she had always known that – but to truly contemplate the enormity of it…
The universe was indifferent to her, uncaring and unfeeling. All her life, Melissa had been a practising Catholic, but now she had to wonder, where was God in all this? She had no illusions about a sagely old man descending from the clouds to protect the righteous and strike down the wicked, but couldn't he tweak the laws of probability just a little? Couldn't he do something?
Sniffling, she looked up.
Her father stood in the open doorway, stroking his chin with the tips of his fingers. “It hit you hard, didn't it?” he asked, striding into the room. “I forget how new this must be for you.”
Melissa felt a tightness in her face and turned her head so that he wouldn't see. “He was my friend, Dad,” she whispered. “I liked him–maybe as more than a friend. I don't know, but he was too damn young to die!”
Harry closed his eyes and let his head hang. A sharp intake of breath betrayed his frustration. “I suspected there might be something…” If Harry started lecturing her about boys, she was going to scream. “Raynar was a good kid, Melissa. Braver than most. And you're right; he was too young.”
Melissa crossed her arms, shivering as she let out a ragged breath. “I don't know what else to do,” she whispered, stepping closer to her father. “I've tried to focus on my duties, but something just seems wrong.”
“
Something is wrong.”
“Then how do we make it right?”
Harry slipped his arms around her, pulling her close. Under normal circumstances, she would be worried about someone coming in to see her hugging her father – she was seventeen, for crying out loud – but today…Today, she accepted the embrace.
It was amazing how he could still make everything better with nothing but a hug and a few kind words. Melissa had been lucky. Not every kid grew up in a loving home. “We don't make it right,” Harry said. “Nothing makes this right, Melissa. But we go on, and the wrongness becomes easier to deal with.”
Melissa shut her eyes, tears leaking from them to spill onto her father's shirt. “So, this is what it's like to be an adult?” she asked, trembling. “You just keep enduring the pain until you stop caring?”
“You never stop caring,” her father said.
Melissa pulled away from him, brushing a tear off her cheek with one finger. “Is there going to be a memorial service?” she asked. “We should probably figure out what Antauran customs would be.”
“There will be a memorial service,” Harry said. “In a few days, when the current crisis is over.”
“I'd like to help plan it.”
Harry sat down on one of the tables, heaving out a sigh as he looked down at his own feet. “That's very kind of you,” he said, nodding to her. “Maybe I could speak to Dr. Hamilton. With Slade's forces on the run, she won't need so many-”
“No,” Melissa insisted. “No. I want to finish my work here.”
Her father looked up with a smile. “Seems I raised you right,” he mumbled. “The rest of us will be leaving the city once we're sure that key areas are secure. I'm told that people are already returning to their homes.”
“Isn't that a little premature?”
Harry shrugged and then sighed as he got to his feet. Melissa knew that look on his face, the one that said someone was doing something foolish and impulsive. “Larani told the mayor not to rush things,” he said. “But people want to rebuild.”
Her father leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. “You did a good thing here, kid,” he whispered. “Finish your work, and then come home. Your mother is probably pulling her hair out worrying about you.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
She would never be able to explain how much she loved him for moments like this.
Aamani Patel was lying on a bed in the med-bay with the blankets pulled up to just below her chest, her hospital gown rumpled. Her long black hair was in a state of disarray with flyaway strands in all directions.
The right side of her face was still red, but – for the most part – her burns had been healed. In fact, she actually looked content. Jena envied that. Right now, contentedness was the last thing she felt.
Jena was hunched over in a chair with her elbow propped up on her thigh and her chin resting on the knuckles of her face. “Well, this is what I get,” she muttered under her breath. “I should have been there.”
If she had been, she would have been too busy fighting off battle drones to save one woman from a burning townhouse, but it was a pleasant fiction, telling herself that she would have prevented Raynar's death. He was one of her people in the end, the youngest member of her team.
For all her experience, she had never dealt with something like this before. The loss of one of her people. Her long career as a Justice Keeper had been a solitary one. She had never had to worry about anyone other than herself.
Aamani's eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “How long?” she growled, sitting up. Black hair spilled over her face, but she brushed it away. “How long has it been?”
“Two days,” Jena answered.
“Two days?”
With a heavy sigh, Jena got to her feet and stood before the other woman with her eyes closed. “You've been sedated for most of that time,” she said, nodding. “They had to perform cellular regeneration.”
Aamani touched her face, then winced the instant her fingers made contact, hissing at the sudden spike of pain. “The drone,” she muttered. “I remember shooting it, and then the rest is a blank.”
“You were trapped in a burning building.”
“And?”
At times like this, she felt as if she should have been able to cry, but that wasn't her way. Oh, she could cry. She could cry buckets of tears on her own, but here in public, it just wasn't happening. “Raynar pulled you out,” she explained. “Brought you all the way to the barricade…”
Aamani looked up to meet her gaze, and Jena could see it in the woman's face. She had put two and two together. “What happened?”
Gritting her teeth, Jena let her head hang. She hissed like an angry cat, barely able to keep her fury restrained. “He didn't make it,” she whispered. “A stray ziarogat that we thought was dead…”
“I see.”
The other woman was already putting on the mask that every commander had to wear at one point. Jena knew it well. One night, while they had shared a beer on the roof of the safe house, Anna had remarked that Aamani was cold. The girl didn't understand. Not yet anyway.
When you were the person everyone looked to whenever things got desperate, you eventually learned how to put yourself second. Anna was very free with her emotions – and in some ways, that would serve her well – but sometimes you had to be the steady rock that other people leaned on for support.
Jena had been unprepared for that reality when she had accepted this position. In many ways, she and Aamani were a lot alike. Maybe that was why they had never really gotten along.
“So what now?” Aamani whispered.
“Now we find that damn Key,” Jena growled. “And then I put an end to Slade once and for all.”
Chapter 20
Thick clouds made a ceiling of gray across a field of green with a gravel path that gently rounded some pine trees. In the distance, maybe a dozen kids played on a yellow jungle gym, their squeals of delight echoing through the air.
Jack walked up the path.
Dressed in blue jeans and a black windbreaker, he shuffled along with his hands in his pockets. “I figured you might show up,” he said, turning. “You know, I was planning to stop by your apartment.”
His mother approached in dark jeans and a white t-shirt with frilly sleeves. Waves of honey-blonde hair fell over her shoulders, framing a face with only the faintest signs of middle age. “Your sister told me you wanted to go home one last time,” she said. “Of course you'd visit the park where I used to take you.”
“You know me well.”
“So,” Crystal began. “You're going to Leyria.”
Jack smiled, then looked down at his own feet. “Yeah,” he said nodding. “Good old Leyria: where poverty is a thing of the past, racism is a distant memory and Earthers are essentially cave men.”
Crystal chuckled, turning her head to stare into the grassy field. “You'll survive,” she said. “You always have. In some ways, I have more faith in your ability to adapt than I do in Lauren's.”
Tilting his head back, Jack rolled his eyes at the overcast sky. “That's really great, Mom,” he teased. “And you'll be pleased to know that your Machiavellian scheme to pit your children against each other is proceeding unhindered.”
In response, his mother spread her arms and waited for him to give the obligatory hug, a request he was more than willing to grant. It was good to see her. In truth, he had hoped that she might stop by; if this was the last time he visited the park where he used to play, it was only fitting that his mother be here.
“So,” she murmured, pulling away. “Big changes for Jack.”
“Seems like.”
“And will Anna be going to Leyria?”
Blushing hard, Jack closed his eyes and nodded to her. “Yes, Anna will be going to Leyria,” he explained. “But we won't be working together, and last time I checked, she's still got a boyfriend.”
Crystal backed away from him with her arms crossed, smi
ling down at herself. “At least you'll be together,” she said softly. “Forgive me for being Nosy Mother, but it seems to me you've been a lot happier since she came back.”
Mopping a hand over his face, Jack ran fingers through his thick brown hair. “Oh, Mom,” he grumbled. “You're really going to have to give that up. She's made her choice, and it's not me.”
His mother snorted – a response that somehow was more persuasive than the most well-reasoned argument – and then slipped past him and started up the path. Well, what was he supposed to say? Surely, his mother couldn't think it would be a wise idea to confess his feelings to a woman who already had a partner.
He would have said that was that if not for the fact that, somewhere in the back of his mind, Summer felt a touch of irritation and sadness. Apparently his Nassai had started shipping the two of them.
“Don't be silly,” Crystal said.
Jack spun around to fall in step beside her, marching along with his head down. “I am not the one being silly,” he insisted. “Trust me, trying to make something happen with Anna will only result in badness.”
His mother squinted as she stared off into the distance, shaking her head in dismay. “It's like you don't want to be happy, Jack.” she said. “I'm not suggesting that you go put on your 'Proud to be a Home-Wrecker' t-shirt, but do you really think she's going to settle down with that guy?”
“I try not to think about it.”
“Well, maybe you should re-evaluate that inclination,” Crystal said softly. “Jack, you're going to Leyria. She's going to Leyria. Do you really think this guy is going to uproot his life and follow her?”
“Again with the not thinking about it!”
Christ Almighty! Why was everyone so insistent that he deal with this? First Gabi, and now his mother? He'd been living happily in Denial-Land for the better part of – you know, he really wasn't sure when he had started turning a blind eye to his feelings – but the point was that he was fine!
As they came closer to the jungle-gym, he watched the kids playing on the yellow monkey bars. The equipment in this park had been different when he was a little kid. For one thing, it was green back then and a little rusty. Strange how somber he felt, thinking about how the playground he'd loved as a child had changed. Everything changed. Why should this bother him? “You're going to have to face it sooner or later,” his mother said softly. “The two of you are in love; you can only hide from that for so long before it bites you in the ass.”
