18% Gray

by Anne Tenino

  He also knew what was going to happen. James didn’t want these guys here, but he really didn’t want to send them packing and not know where they were.

  Matt opened his mental dam and confirmed what James was thinking. Looked like they had guests for the night.

  Chapter 7

  MATT took first watch. Instead of telling James, he let his intentions to do so flow out of his head. James glanced at him and gave him a little nod.

  This was fucking freaky. Partly the idea that James could understand his intentions, but even more freaky was how easy it was to control what he wanted to “tell” James.

  He had completely untapped reserves of talent, looked like.

  He watched James roll up in his bag and settle in. Matt turned off the solar-battery light and leaned against a tree, alert but relaxed. Either their “guests” were faking some very convincing snores, or they were asleep. He’d reset the perimeter alarms, in case of more bipedal, nocturnal visitors. James had his shotgun within easy reach this time. Typical SOUF. Except for that leaving-the-shotgun-with-his-sleeping-bag thing earlier. Matt smirked a little.

  James started to snore. Oh well—at least it was somewhat entertaining. And he wasn’t as attractive when he snored.

  Matt glanced over at James. His forearms were bare even with the temperature dropping rapidly. He only wore a tight old-style T-shirt, and his broad shoulder was impressive even hunched over his chest in sleep.

  And dammit, his hair was still sexy. Matt didn’t recall ever finding any other guy’s hair sexy. He didn’t even like curly hair. Except on James. His Basque ancestry gave him a golden skin tone, and his hair was a few shades darker, sort of brownish golden. Even his eyes were dark brownish gold, heavy on the gold. He should appear monochromatic and blah, but instead he gave the appearance of a lion. He was… tawny. Especially with the hair. It was sort of like a short mane. James even moved a little like a lion. Slow and smooth. Negligently graceful.

  Matt’s mind started to wander into areas better left alone. Like, what would it be like to be run down and caught by that lion, the back of your neck gripped in his jaws while he shoved his cock in you?

  “Fuck,” Matt muttered, rubbing his hand over his face. He was half hard and having bestiality fantasies about the guy who not only persecuted him in high school, but could crack his mind like an egg and make him do stuff he didn’t want to do. Or did want to do, but knew was a very bad idea.

  “You are a sick fuck,” he told himself under his breath. He glanced back over at James. His eyes were open, watching Matt. Matt looked away after a second. Had he been projecting to him? “Fuck,” he muttered one more time.

  When he looked over again, James’s eyes were closed. The snores started up again.

  About four hours later, Matt was watching James again when he came awake suddenly, flailing a little and coughing, like he’d choked on something. “Bug,” James muttered hoarsely, running a hand through his hair and blinking rapidly. Then he ran both hands over and down his face and sat up to face Matt. “Swallowed a bug in my sleep.”

  “They teach you that super-covert wake-up technique at Fort Lewis?”

  James growled. “Time’s it?”

  “0123. Oh that’s weird.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s zero, one, two, three.”

  James stared at him. “I’m going to take a leak. Then you need to hit your bag. You’re getting loopy.”

  Matt kind of agreed. “Go toward the road. One of our ‘guests’ went down toward the river a minute ago.”

  When James disappeared into the bushes to the south, “guest” number two reappeared from the opposite side of the campground. Matt watched unblinkingly while he rolled himself back into his worn Mylar cocoon. He seemed strangely meek. No defiant or sullen looks. Huh. No balls without Daddy to back him up.

  JAMES woke Matt up at 0600 with a pouch of instant-hot coffee. “God, I could get used to that.”

  “Having someone bring you coffee in bed?”

  That too. “Uh-huh. Nice, thanks.”

  “Thought you’d wanna be outta here soon.” James gave him an intent look.

  James wanted the match on that retinal scan as badly as Matt. More. They had to get away from their nighttime visitors before he could check in at 0730.

  “Let’s get to it, then.”

  By the time Matt was pulling up the perimeter alarm, their visitors were coming to. James had put the coffee away already, and Matt tried to work up a shred of guilt for having nothing to offer the intruders—oops, he meant guests—but he just wasn’t up to the job. Matt and James left with barely a word to them.

  James hadn’t asked for any details about their exact route. When Matt started looking for a good spot to check in from at 0715, James said, “It’ll be nice to be myself again.”

  He either wasn’t totally convinced that Matt believed he was James Jeremiah (ha!) Ayala, or he wasn’t comfortable with everyone at QESA not believing. The people who could scrub this mission and strand him here. Not that they would.

  Well, Anais might.

  They weren’t in the best spot for checking in. They’d entered the small town of Emmett, but it had been pretty much unavoidable. Matt’s experience was that towns like this were often half abandoned, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find someplace covert.

  But the problem with this damn town was that it was too prosperous, and didn’t have a lot of abandoned buildings or hidey-holes. Shit, this usually wasn’t an issue. It must be one of those communities that had banded together and avoided selling their water rights and/or land to foreign agribusiness for a quick buck decades ago. Asia owned more land in Idaho than the locals did.

  Matt was working toward a park he’d seen from the hill coming into town. There’d be something there.

  “Here,” James said quietly from behind him. Matt looked to where James indicated with his chin. There was a shipping container in that little ravine to the east of them.

  “’S’exposed; can’t get in without anyone seeing.”

  “D’you see it when we walked beside the ravine thirty seconds ago?”

  “No.” Matt scowled. Jerk just had to be observant.

  James gave a little snort. Matt was starting to understand some of them. He was pretty sure that snort meant “you’re being immature,” aka “quit sulking, whiner.”

  “If we go in under that little bridge over there, I can keep an eye out. Pretty sure your lines of sight are obscured.”

  The ravine was an ag canal, but this time of year it was just a sun-baked gully with willow brush growing up its banks. Matt sat inside the somewhat rusted-out container with various somewhat creepy fauna and disassembled himself. This was annoying. Did other half-assed secret agents have to remove their faux calf muscle to phone home?

  Fucking military doctors.

  “Matt.” Andry greeted him with an overly formal nod.

  “Andry.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Where’s Grampa?”

  Before he could finish the question, Lance was kicking Andry off the vid-datascreen and greeting Matt.

  “You still with Ayala?”

  “What would I have done with him?”

  “Thrown him in a river?” Lance looked cranky as all hell.

  “He can swim. Okay, lay it on me, old man. Stop being grouchy and just spit it out.” Matt knew it couldn’t be good.

  “His retina scan didn’t match the ones on file.”

  Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. “How old are they?”

  “From when they accepted him into Psi-force.”

  “Nothing after that?”

  “They don’t change much, Matt.”

  Matt was thinking fast, about possibilities he hadn’t even entertained. “Can you overlay the scan I sent you on the ones from his—Ayala’s—record?”

  Lance was obviously only just suppressing an eye roll. He turned to the other datascreen. Matt could see just enough of his face to see that his expression changed, but not to
what. “Weird,” he muttered. “Hang on a sec,” he told Matt. He brought up more screens.

  “All right. I’m transmitting the image of the overlay to you, and another overlay. We have to end this transmission; everyone’s on short com. Look at these and reconnect in three hours with a plausible explanation for me.”

  Before Matt could acknowledge the unusual orders, Lance cut the vid feed. Matt’s hookup chimed softly, indicating new mail. He opened the images from QESA.

  And sucked in a breath. He’d thought this was a possibility, but wasn’t really prepared for it. James’s file retina print was laid over the scan Matt had sent, and showed an exact matchup. All the vessels in the original print matched the scan he’d taken, but in the scan there were extra vessels. Almost twice as many. Way more than a regular retina should have. And there was something about them….

  Matt opened the second image. This time, the scan he’d sent had been split and each eye overlaid the other. The original vessel print had been removed. Only the new blood vessels were shown. They were a perfect match. It had to be intentional. Someone had to have implanted those blood vessels.

  Or circuitry?

  “Matt,” a voice called almost silently from behind him. Matt whirled and reached for his pistol. James was looking at him from a rusted-out hole in the back side of the container. “We gotta go. Our nocturnal visitors are heading this way.”

  “Those guys again?” he asked, duck-walking for the back. That hole might be big enough to get through. “Which direction?”

  “Same way we came in.” The back door exit was preferable.

  “Can you help me open this thing up a little?”

  “Use your weapon? Can you recharge it?”

  “Doesn’t really have cutting capabilities. And I might have forgotten to recharge the solar charge-pack,” Matt admitted. “It’ll take a few hours to recharge.”

  James sighed a little. “Let’s look for other options.”

  Matt’s heart rate was beginning to pick up when they found an opening on the west side, near the wall of the ravine. James reported on the other guys’ progress from the northwest corner as Matt squirmed out.

  “They know we’re in here, using willow brush and trying to approach us covertly. They don’t know we know they’re coming.”

  “Shit.” Matt’s utility belt got stuck on a finger of metal. He tried to wrench himself free. He hated feeling like his legs were open to attack while his upper body was in the open. Well, sort of open—his head was mashed into the dirt wall outside the container. This was a graceful exit. “They had to have been following us.”

  “I never saw them.”

  Matt decided not to question James’s skills. For some reason he was hesitant to bruise James’s ego. Matt finally broke the small finger of steel holding him back and tumbled out. Okay, now he was eating dirt. And animal droppings? He got on his hands and knees and spit a couple of times. “How’s it look, now?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Hmmmm, what?” He demanded when James didn’t elaborate.

  “They’re keeping an eye on the container, not moving. Feels like they’re waiting for something.”

  “Like an airstrike?” That didn’t sound as sarcastic as it had in his head.

  “No, like… backup.”

  “Fucking lovely.” Matt spit one more time, then crept up and tried to peek over the top of the ravine on the west side. He couldn’t see jack, mostly because his head didn’t clear the top.

  “Maybe you should let me keep an eye on them and you should be checking out other possibilities. You know, try and get in the open. Line of sight and all.” Couldn’t James pick up brain waves from a long way away? “Could the container be blocking you?”

  James looked a bit startled. “Yeah. Not used to the range I have now. Wasn’t thinking.”

  Matt crawled to James’s position as quietly as possible. He hadn’t been silent coming out of the container, but they subbed their voices to preserve every advantage they might have. James pointed out the other men’s positions, nodded at Matt and left.

  Nothing happened in the five minutes James was gone, except one of their “guests” proved he was a fidgeter. The willow brush he hid behind kept wiggling.

  James tapping on his shoulder startled him a little. Matt managed to stop himself from jumping. James gave him a disgusted look, but said, “Quite a few guys are coming right up the ravine, I think, from the south. Never saw them, but I was getting, I don’t know, a ricochet or something. Nothing from the west but some kids, I think we can make it out that way, if we can find someplace where those guys can’t see us.” He indicated their watchers with his head.

  “You didn’t find a path out?”

  “Thought we’d better move together, I don’t know how close the others are. Still don’t know my range.”

  Crap. They moved to the southern edge of the container, closer to the unknown threat, but away from the known danger. They could only go so far before they would be visible to Mr. Shaky Bush, in the southernmost position. “Hey, can you get a read on the guy who keeps fidgeting? What’s up with that?”

  “Um, something’s bugging him. Physically. Maybe bug bites? Or… bugs?”

  “Can you try your mental judo on him? Make him more distracted? Might get more distance before we’re exposed.”

  “I can try and amplify his agitation. You’ll have to search, though, ’cause I can’t do both at once.” There was a moment of silence. Then James broke out in a slow smile. Matt was a little dazed. Had he ever seen James smile before? He wanted to see it again. It was a great smile.

  “Okay, got him.” Matt whapped himself upside the head lightly to get his head back in the game. James looked at him strangely. “Dammit, got distracted, lost him. Okay, got him again.”

  Okay then, no distracting the psychic warrior. Matt moved south, keeping to the sparse vegetation as much as possible. Two meters past where they were visible to Mr. Fidgety, he found a tiny gulley in the side of the ravine. It was dry and sunk into the dirt maybe twenty-five to thirty centimeters. At best. Yay. Vertical belly-crawling.

  When he turned back toward James, he saw the willow brush shaking so hard little clods of dirt were rolling down the wall of the ravine. Matt smirked his way back to James. “Found it; let’s go.”

  They made it to the little wash without attracting the attention of the fidgeter, but James had sweat beading his forehead. Matt could feel his concentration half on following Matt’s boots and half on the guy he was distracting. “Shit,” James hissed. He must have lost it again. Matt was just in the wash, and James went for the land-speed record in army crawl and crowded in behind him, pushing the whole length of his body into Matt’s. His groin was against Matt’s ass, the muscles in his chest hard against Matt’s back.

  Uhn. Matt tried not to shiver. And tried to refocus on the objective. What was it?

  Oh, yeah. Escape with life intact.

  James nudged him to get Matt moving. He moved.

  Once he reached the top of the ravine, Matt stayed flat and rolled away from the edge. James rolled up next to him without incident.

  Then something hit Matt in the thigh. He was on his back, reaching for his weapon, searching the open space behind them.

  A crowd of preteen kids was staring at them. A football was lying on the grass nearby. Fortunately, his hand was mostly hiding his weapon between him and James.

  “Nice observational skills,” James rumbled.

  “Hey, guys,” Matt was using his most engaging smile and his pleasant voice. “Um, we’re just playing some mock battle games in the ravine with our buddies.”

  The kids all relaxed, and one tall boy held out his hand for the football. James sat up and reached across Matt to throw it to him, while Matt put his weapon in his back holster. “Who are you?” the kid asked.

  “We’re from Boise,” James informed him calmly. “Came up for some new terrain. Needed a challenge.”

  This was apparent
ly believable, judging by the way most of the kids started to wander away. “Wanna help us out?” Matt asked.

  The kids’ eyes showed interest. “Sure,” a smaller girl said. Matt bet she was the one really in charge here. She had a look of Anais about her. “Whaddya want us to do?”

  “When they come up here looking for us, tell them we went upriver. They’ll probably try to claim we’re criminals, fake you out, but don’t buy it. They’re just trying to win. There’s like ten of them and only two of us.”

  Was that a guess or did James know how many were coming?

  The kids all liked the idea of messing with the grown-ups, so James and Matt took off west with their full cooperation.

  “How do you know they weren’t just messing with us? They could tell those guys anyway.”

  “They won’t. They thought we were cool.” James had a smug quirk to his lips.

  Duh. Mental judo.

  They put off parsing out the near-ambush until they were the hell away from Emmett, and had at least a little breathing room.

  So they kept moving, Matt musing over James’s ability to express emotion with, apparently, the use of only three facial muscles. Well, except for that smile in the ravine. Otherwise, the man was all subtle lip quirks and snorting. The scariest part was Matt had been around him less than two days and already understood most of them.

  Chapter 8

  MATT knew he and James had to talk sooner or later about this morning. “About my check-in….”

  “Yeah?” James was wary. “I’m cleared, right? I’m me?” He sounded as if he knew he wasn’t.

  “Well, sorta.” Another snort, a sort of weary-sounding one. “Your scans didn’t match the file prints, at least not initially.”

  James was silent, waiting for the explanation.

  “When you lay the file print over the scan I took, the blood vessels match exactly, but the scans also have way more vessels. And if you lay the new vessel patterns over each other, they match exactly.”