by Lisa Henry
Cam frowned. “Yeah. I asked if you’re okay.”
“Before that. You said it before that.”
He looked confused. “What? When?”
“I heard it,” I whispered, half-afraid to say it aloud and make it true. “In my head.”
“No,” Cam said firmly. “No. You’re tired. You’re imagining things.”
I held his gaze.
“Are you sure, Cam? Promise me it isn’t real.”
Nothing but silence between us.
Nothing but my solitary, panicked heartbeat.
Cam’s gaze, his touch, anchoring me. Cam’s fingers pressing into the pulse in my wrist.
“Brady?” Lucy asked. “Are you sick?”
I flashed her a smile I didn’t feel. “I’m just tired. Must’ve worked too hard on your homework, hey?”
“You didn’t even stay in the lines, so I won’t get an A.”
“Well, a cheater never prospers.”
I wondered if she remembered Dad saying that. I never understood the saying. In Kopa, you might as well have been a cheater, since nobody there fucking prospered anyway.
Cam looked at his watch. “Bedtime, Lucy. We’ll come and tuck you in soon, okay?”
“Okay.” She took her plate to the sink, then skipped off toward the bathroom to brush her teeth.
I fell back into our routine like I’d never been gone.
I made Lucy’s sandwich for the next day while Cam packed her a juice box, an apple, carrot sticks, and oat biscuits. Had to make up for all that ice cream with healthy shit, right?
I washed the dishes while Cam dried them and put them away.
We put Lucy to bed.
Cam leaned in the doorway and listened while I read the story she picked out.
Then we sat on the couch and watched TV for a while.
Cam put his arm around me, and I leaned into him. He smelled so good. He smelled like warmth and comfort and home, and I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand and told myself I wasn’t going to break down and cry about how much I’d missed him, how much I’d missed this, and how much it hurt to have it because this wasn’t how the universe worked. The universe fucked Brady Garrett over every which way from Sunday, just because it could.
Because it was meaningless.
Because it was absurd.
Because if some unlucky fucker didn’t push that same rock up that same hill every single day, or get his guts ripped out by eagles, then how would everyone else figure out that everything was futile?
Doc once told me I’d missed the point of that story.
Cam put a finger under my chin and lifted my face. “You okay?”
“I don’t even fucking know.”
He kissed me gently, his lips barely brushing mine. “I’m sorry I couldn’t visit you more.”
“Don’t be. You had Lucy to look after.”
“Missed you,” he said.
“Missed you too.” This time I kissed him, a little more aggressively than I’d intended, but what the hell? Before he had time to respond, I was straddling his lap, my knees sinking into the couch cushions on either side of him. I ran my hands through his hair—it was longer than my enlisted man’s buzz cut, but shorter than it had been when we’d first met. There was enough on top to grip, though, so I made a fist in his hair until he moaned, and then I pushed my tongue inside his mouth.
He drew back and nipped at my lower lip. Caught it between his teeth and tugged it, sending a jolt of arousal straight down into my balls. I squirmed on his lap, my dick already hard.
He released my lip, then kissed his way up toward my ear. “Bedroom?”
“Yeah. Fuck, yeah.”
* * * *
The ceiling fan spun lazily above us as Cam lowered himself on top of me. I liked it like this, when we did this face-to-face. It was slower and gentler, and sometimes that was exactly what I wanted. Tonight it was. Cam ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, pushing my legs apart. Then, instead of paying any attention at all to my aching dick, he leaned over me and pressed his mouth to my stomach. He laid a soft trail of kisses on the skin there, each of them prickling briefly with cold when he moved his mouth away.
“Don’t tease me, asshole.”
He hardened his gaze. “Don’t disrespect me, Crewman Garrett.”
Oh, so that was his game.
I was so fucking good at this game.
I licked my lips and narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you gonna do about it, sir?”
Cam leaned back. He reached down and grabbed my balls, not tight enough to actually hurt, but tight enough that I sure thought twice about trying to pull away. “Don’t test me, Garrett.”
“No, sir. Wouldn’t dream of it, Lieutenant Rushton, sir.”
“I’d hate to write you up,” he said.
“I’ve got a pretty bad record already,” I whispered, almost jackknifing off the bed when his other hand closed around my cock. “Oh, Jesus.”
“I know you do. They warned me about you, Garrett. Said you were a smart-ass kid with a bad attitude. Know what I told them?”
I moaned as he stroked my dick. “LT!”
“I told them I could whip your ass into line.”
“Pretty sure you could do whatever the fuck you want to my ass,” I agreed. “Sir.”
Cam’s mouth twitched as he fought a smile. “Is that so?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. The game wasn’t real, but my rising desperation to get fucked was. “Please, sir!”
“Okay, okay, Brady,” he said, and I knew we were done with the game for the night. Sometimes we played it different, a little harder, but not tonight. I’d missed Cam, and he’d missed me, and I think maybe we wanted to be ourselves again before we were other people. I didn’t want Lieutenant Rushton to order me around tonight, and see how far we could push each other. I just wanted Cam, skin on skin, with nothing between us.
He leaned over me, the air a thick, hot layer between us, to grab the lube from the bedside table. He squirted some on his fingers, and I grinned at the noise it made, like a fart. Cam rolled his eyes, then wiped the dumb smile right off my face when he slid two fingers inside me.
“Little warning!” I gasped, arching off the bed.
“Wanted to see you jump.” He curled over me and pressed his mouth against my chest. Tugged at a nipple with his teeth.
“Fuck,” I moaned. “Jesus.”
He opened me up gently after that, moving his fingers slowly, crooking them so they rubbed against my prostate and sent a bolt of electricity through me. By the time he’d worked up to three fingers, my cock was leaking all over my abdomen, my balls were already drawn up tight, and I was wavering right on the sharp edge of coming. I almost did when he finally got his dick in me. Don’t even know how I stopped myself.
Jesus, the fucking stretch and burn. So good. Cam knew just how to do me right. He bottomed out and panted against my throat for a moment, until I squirmed underneath him and hooked my legs around his ass. The sudden shift changed the angle of penetration, and we both groaned.
“Come on,” I urged him, turning my head to lick a stripe up his jaw. “Come on, fuck me.”
He rocked into me. “Love you,” he whispered. “I fucking love you.”
“Love you,” I echoed, digging furrows down his back with my fingertips. “Cam, I missed you.”
We fell into a rhythm, each of us urging the other one higher. Heat coiled in me, tighter and tighter as we fucked. So close. I was so close. Then Cam reached down between us and closed his hand around my wet cock. I came, squeezing his dick tight inside me, and shuddering and jerking underneath him.
“Brady,” he moaned, muscles seizing before he tumbled right after me over the edge.
We lay tangled together, wrung out, hot breath and sweat mingling. My cum sliding between us, and his leaking out of my ass.
Even when everything else was fucked up or felt like it was falling apart, we always got this right. With everything else stripped away,
we were good. When he was the center of my universe, and I was the center of his, it was perfect. We were perfect.
So why, when it was perfect, was I always so fucking sure it was already slipping away?
Cam kissed me and rolled off me.
He fell asleep first.
* * * *
It was dark.
The floor underneath me was as smooth and oily black as the shell of a beetle. It wasn’t like any metal I knew. It was warm, like flesh. It yielded under my weight. It thrummed. Above me, in weird misshapen alcoves, lights glowed and faded, illuminating the ceiling and the walls, and the strange veins and arteries that pulsed close to their surface. If there was some sequence to the lights, I couldn’t pick it.
I knew this dream.
My subconscious always brought me back here, to Kai-Ren’s living ship.
I rose onto my knees, sucking in a deep breath. The air tasted different here. Not stale and cold like on a Defender, but warm and a little humid. I braced my hands against the damp, thrumming floor and climbed to my feet.
I was naked. Trembling, despite the humidity.
The knowledge that this was a dream was no comfort at all.
“Brady?”
“Cam?” I croaked.
“Stay there, Brady.”
I stumbled from the room into the twisting passageway. The walls bowed outward and bulged in places. They were damp, sticky with some fluid they secreted. Lights glowed and dimmed from within the walls, from within whatever system of veins and arteries ran through this ship. Strange, shapeless things swam in the walls like bluebottles, or were propelled through them like platelets in a milky bloodstream.
“Cam?” I called again, spinning around as a shadow shifted somewhere behind me. Whatever it was had already gone. I hugged my arms to my chest and continued on.
“Stay there, Brady.”
I never did.
“Don’t come in here.”
But I did. Every time. And even knowing this was a dream, and even knowing what I’d see when I rounded the corner, it was like a punch to the gut every time.
That thing was on Cam.
That Faceless thing.
Skin white and hard as porcelain, stretched tight over its face. Its clawlike fingers holding him by the throat. Its body bent over his as he knelt on hands and knees on the floor. The grimace on its face—that was maybe a smile—when it looked up and saw me watching.
“Bray-dee.”
Kai-Ren, the Faceless battle regent.
Cam lifted his tear-streaked face. “Don’t watch, Brady. Don’t watch.”
But it was the echo of his voice in my mind that drove me away. That voice that said more than he’d ever wanted me to hear: “Master, master, oh, master.”
I reeled back into the passageway.
Just a dream.
This was just a dream.
I leaned against the pulsating wall and sank down to the floor. Wrapped my arms around my knees and curled up tight.
“Brady?”
I opened my eyes to find my sister was sitting beside me in that place, in her butterfly pajamas. She held my bead bracelet out for me, and I put it on.
“Why are you crying?” she asked me. “Are you lost?”
“No. It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m gonna wake up soon, you know.”
“Okay,” Lucy said and pecked me on the cheek.
The universe collapsed around me.
* * * *
Awake.
Thank fuck.
I blinked up at the ceiling.
Cam shifted and stretched beside me. “Shit,” he muttered into the pillow.
“Yeah.”
He rolled over and flung an arm across my chest. “I had a weird dream.”
“Me too,” I told him.
“I was back with Kai-Ren,” he said. He sighed, and his breath caressed my cheek. “You were there.”
My blood ran cold. “You told me not to come in.”
Cam pulled away from me, twisting around to hit the switch on the bedside lamp. “Shit.”
The universe sucked all the breath out of me. Left me hollow, close to collapse. My lungs hurt. My eyes stung.
No no no no no.
Not again.
Not this.
“Fuck.” Cam raked his fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay. Okay, let’s not freak out. Maybe it’s nothing.”
We were sharing dreams again, and it was nothing? He didn’t believe that, not for a second. If we were in each other’s dreams again, how long until we were in each other’s heads all the time? And how fucking long until Kai-Ren was there with us?
“Cam,” I whispered, afraid that any second now, the panic squeezing at my chest would crush me. I pushed myself up so that I was sitting too. “What do we do?”
“It’s okay.” Cam put his arms around me. I could feel his heart beating. “We’ll figure this out. It’ll be okay.”
Our bedroom door squeaked open, and we pulled apart.
Lucy peered around the door.
“What’s up, Luce?” Cam asked her, his cheerful tone sounding forced.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure that Brady was here.”
Cam smiled. “He won’t be going back to the stockade for a while, will you, Brady?”
I stared at Lucy, suddenly sick to my stomach.
She wasn’t talking about the stockade.
“No,” she told Cam. “I thought he was lost. In that place where the walls are sticky. You know, the place where the Faceless are.”
Chapter Five
Everything had changed, but nothing had.
The next morning I had orders to report to Chris Varro at intel, and all I could think was the Faceless were somehow fucking with my head again, and he’d take one look at me and know. And then what?
Cam had wanted to talk about this, but what good would talking do? Our link was back. We didn’t need to talk, and we sure as hell couldn’t ask anyone else for help. We needed to run, because if Lucy was a part of this now, a part of our fucked-up Faceless head space, there was no way in hell I was letting the military get their hands on her.
These assholes had been sticking electrodes on me, making me run for hours on the treadmill, and jabbing me with needles for the past ten months. I’d given more blood for the fucking war effort than most of the guys who’d gotten medals. Turns out it just wasn’t considered heroic to give it in vials.
“No,” Cam had said that morning. “No, we don’t run. Running is the worst thing we can do. We can hide this, okay? We can hide it from them until we figure something out.”
Could we really, though?
Jesus.
Why this again? Why the hell now? And where do you run when it’s coming from space?
You can’t hide from it when it’s all around you.
You’re on a spinning ball of dirt, hurtling through the black.
There’s nowhere to go.
I sat outside Chris’s office and rubbed my eyes and tried to think everything through, but a few years of basic medic training didn’t exactly make me an expert in epidemiology. Hell, was it even like a virus anyway? If it was… Fuck, if it was, then all I could think of was how Cam and I had gone about the process of building our life together in the same blissful fucking ignorance as Typhoid Mary.
Maybe there had been no symptoms until now because Kai-Ren had guessed the military would quarantine us at first, like they had. And they’d demand regular tests, like they had. First every few days, then every few weeks, and now every month. Maybe whatever the hell it was would only activate once everyone was nice and complacent.
What if Kai-Ren had just pretended to let us go, when actually he was using us as carriers to infect the rest of humanity? What if we all ended up hooked into the same hive mind the Faceless had?
“Ah,” said a voice, and I looked up to see Major Hanron walking toward me. “Garrett. We don’t have an appointment today, do we?”<
br />
“No, sir,” I said. “I’m here to see Captain Varro.”
“Ah,” Hanron said again. He smiled that faint, smug smile of his. “I’ve been going over last month’s brain scans. Interesting stuff.”
I kept my mouth shut, for once in my life.
“Interesting,” Hanron said again, his smile vanishing and his expression hardening, and then walked away.
The voice in my head said run run run.
I wanted to go and get Lucy. Take her out of school and run. Go north, maybe, back up to the gulf. Because maybe we couldn’t run from the Faceless, but we could run from the military.
“Brady, no.”
I groaned.
“Stay out of my fucking head, Cam!”
Last night we’d shared a dream, and now I could hear him in my waking mind again. Jesus, if this was a contagion, we’d already infected half the city. I thought of Stockade Sam and Marcello. Thought of the woman I’d brushed past in the hallway of our building yesterday. The kid behind the counter at the shop where I got my cigarettes. Thought of the guys I’d stood on the parade ground with, sweltering in the sun. Thought of crowds I’d pushed through: bodies pressed against mine on the train, at a football game, at a bar.
I clenched my hands into fists and jammed them into my pockets. My heart was racing. I was flooded with adrenaline, and I just wanted to run.
“Settle down, Brady.”
“Settle down,” I muttered. “Fuck you, LT. That fucking thing’s in our heads again, and you’re telling me to settle down?”
Fuck him.
A part of me wanted to storm across the base, right into his comfortable air-conditioned office, and punch him in the head. The smart part of me—which didn’t often get a say—knew that drawing attention to us right now was just about the worst thing we could do.
“Garrett.” I looked up to find Chris’s door open and the man himself standing there. “Come in.”
I stood up, pulled my hands out of my pockets, and wiped my palms on my fatigues. I stepped past Chris into his office, and he closed the door behind us.
