by Lisa Henry
I listened for his answer, but nothing came.
The MP moved back at last.
Major Hanron was watching me intently. He perched on the edge of his desk like a smarmy schoolteacher about to address the class. “I’ve read your file, Garrett.” His thin mouth turned up in a humorless smile. “Interesting things, files. You have to learn how to read them. Sometimes it’s not what’s in them that tells the story, but what isn’t.”
I stared at him.
He picked up his notes and flicked through them. “A month after you arrived on Defender Three, you were put on a course of antibiotics, but there’s no mention of the reason. Hold on. You were training to be a medic, weren’t you? Can you tell me what’s so special about…” He squinted. “Benfacil.”
I shook my head, my stomach twisting.
“Oh, surely you can, Garrett.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Shall I tell you? It’s not just an antibiotic, is it? It’s also a postexposure prophylactic.”
I drew a deep breath and held it until my heart stopped racing. Met his gaze and nodded.
I wasn’t ashamed of what had happened. At least, I tried not to be. I’d been sixteen, and Wade had been bigger than me and stronger than me, so I knew it wasn’t my fault, but logic’s got no voice when it comes to shame, does it? But if Hanron thought he’d break me using that, he was wrong.
“What do you want, sir? A big congratulations for reading between the lines of my medical records?”
He regarded me quietly for a moment, and then shook his head. “Well. Something you and Rushton have in common, I suppose.”
A sour taste flooded my mouth. I bristled. Rolled my shoulders again in a futile attempt to loosen them and stared at the floor. I tried not to think about what drug was swimming in my blood, and what it was going to do to me.
“You’re a troublemaker, Garrett,” Hanron said, tapping his fingers on my closed file. “Just some reffo brat from Kopa who thinks the world owes him a living.”
Seriously? World’s worst fucking psychologist here, if that was what he thought my problem was. I narrowed my eyes.
“He’s just trying to get a reaction,” Cam told me.
“I know that.”
Hanron stood up and stretched. Walked around behind me, and I twisted my neck to watch him. He slid one hand into his pocket and winked at me. Put his other hand on my shoulder. I did my best not to flinch away.
“Well, it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Hanron said. “What matters is where you’re going. Or not.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
He leaned closer and dug his fingers in. “I mean, Garrett, that Rushton is useful. He looks good in uniform and smiles for the cameras. He knows how to behave, here and in public. He’s not some snarling, feral piece of shit like you.”
Okay. Yeah.
His breath was hot on the back of my neck. “You, Garrett, are a fluke. Rushton picked you up like a parasite. You’re not important. You think, whatever happens from here, that anyone gives a fuck about you? You want to spend the next ten years in a cage underground? Or the next twenty?”
The blood hummed in my skull. He couldn’t do that. Surely he couldn’t. Except what if he could? What if this fucking asshole actually could keep me locked up underground for years?
“You think you’ve got any leverage here? Do you think you can outsmart the tests?” He shifted his hand. Curled it around my neck. “Can he hear me, now?”
“We’re not linked,” I lied, my heart racing a little.
“You’re okay,” Cam told me. “You’re okay.”
Except I was starting to feel like I really wasn’t. Hanron swiped his thumb up the back of my neck. I jerked forward, out of his grasp. My skin crawled. “Why the fuck are you touching me like that?”
“He’s trying to get a reaction out of you, Brady.”
“Is that all? Because it feels like he’s trying to get his dick up my ass!”
“I wonder how long you’d last in solitary, Garrett. Of course, you’d never be really alone, would you? Not with Rushton in your head.” Hanron let go and moved around in front of me. “He is in your head, isn’t he?”
“No, sir.” I didn’t like the way my voice rasped. I felt a little dizzy now, and I didn’t know if it was the drug or my fear.
“Liar.” His mouth turned up in a thin, sharp smile.
I glared at him. Prove it.
“The Faceless are coming again.” His smile vanished. His face was drawn. He looked tired, suddenly. More than that, he looked afraid. “Years, Garrett. I could keep you down there for years. You wouldn’t see Rushton again. Wouldn’t see your sister again. You’d be alone down there, in the dark. Does the thought of that scare you?”
Yes, Fuck, yes.
His voice softened. “It’d scare me too.”
I swallowed. “Why…why are you threatening me? Sir.”
“I’m not threatening you, Garrett.” His smile was back, but it wasn’t as sharp at the edges anymore. “I just want an assurance that you won’t lie to me.”
“I won’t, sir,” I said. “I haven’t!”
But we both knew that was total bullshit.
Hanron tapped the spot on my arm where he’d shoved the needle. “Sodium amytal.”
It took a little while for me to place it. “Are you kidding me? A fucking truth serum?”
Hanron laughed softly. “Not a truth serum. Just something that helps lower resistance. And you, Garrett, are nothing but resistance.”
“You want to hear some truth? You’re a fucking asshole.”
“I’m not the one keeping secrets about the Faceless.”
“I don’t know anything!”
Hanron checked his watch. “You had a nightmare last night, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” The truth slipped out, but that didn’t have to mean the drug was responsible. What was the harm in telling Hanron that the truth about last night? Nightmares were nothing worth hiding.
“So did Rushton.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened, Brady?”
I shifted in my seat. My limbs felt a little heavier than they should. I didn’t like that he called me by my first name instead of my surname. Hanron wasn’t my friend. Hanron was an asshole. But it suddenly seemed like too much effort to fight him. “Was on the ship.”
“The Faceless ship?”
“Yeah. Always go back there.”
“What happens there?”
“Cam is there. And Lucy. It’s real bad. I don’t like it there. Kai-Ren says my name.”
“Are you still connected to the Faceless?” Hanron’s voice was soft, but his eyes didn’t match it. They were too sharp for that, too keen.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it.” A wave of dizziness caught me, and I swayed in my chair. I felt drunk. Hadn’t been drunk in so long. “What’d you…what’d you do?”
“What happens on the ship?”
“Cam says don’t go in, but I do.” My eyes drifted shut, and I forced them open again. I didn’t want to fall asleep and find myself on that ship again. My guts roiled. “I feel sick.”
“Brady? Brady!”
I rubbed a clumsy hand over my forehead. “What?”
“Don’t say anything!”
“I’m not gonna,” I mumbled.
Hanron leaned forward. “Brady?”
“Fucking what? Just shut up.” Bile rose in the back of my throat, and my mouth flooded with saliva. “Everyone just shut up! I don’t feel good.”
The door opened, and I twisted my neck to look. Chris Varro. He strode forward. “What’d you give him?”
“Amytal. He’s been very receptive.”
“Sir, that’s illegal.”
“Did Rushton send you here to stop it?” Hanron shook his head slightly. “You’re very close to compromising your position, Captain Varro.”
Chris tilted my head back and stared into my eyes. He was frowning.
“I don’
t like you,” I told him. “I don’t like you had him first.”
“Shut up, Garrett.”
What an asshole. I jerked forward, and Chris took a step back. Not fast enough, though. I vomited on his boots and passed out.
* * * *
I was alone when I woke up back in the cell.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Everything I’d said came washing back over me. I’d told Hanron that Lucy was on the ship as well. I’d answered Cam, aloud. I was fucked now. We both were. Rage boiled up inside me, with nowhere to go. I clenched my fingers into fists and punched the wall of the cell. Punched it again and again, until I felt something crack in my hand.
Pain was good.
I slumped back down onto the floor and stared at the smears of blood on the glass, and panted until I got my breath back. My right hand hurt like fuck. My left one was worse. It was bloody and starting to swell. I didn’t care.
I don’t know how long I was there before another MP came to fetch me. It was the same drill as last time: hands cuffed behind my back. Then marched into the elevator, and upstairs again. At least it was warmer up here.
The MP took me to room 2F. Flash cards.
Fucking seriously?
Cam was already sitting there.
I grimaced when the MP took the cuffs off. The MP shoved me down into the chair opposite Cam. Then the MP left and locked the door behind him.
“You okay?” Cam asked in a low voice.
“Yeah.”
“I fucked up, Cam. I think I fucked up badly.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
He didn’t answer. He’d always been better at managing the link than me. He’d been able to keep secrets from me, while every random thought I ever had was broadcast at him in fucking stereo.
I stared at Cam across the table in 2F, and he stared back.
A window ran the length of the room. It was made of dark glass. I had no idea who was on the other side, watching us. Hanron, probably, but I didn’t know who was with him. And I had no idea what they were saying to one another.
A divider bisected the table. There was a screen on my side and, I guessed, on Cam’s as well. I couldn’t see his screen, and he couldn’t see mine.
“What are they gonna do?” I muttered. “Force us to do this stupid test again?”
Cam didn’t answer. His eyes were dark with worry.
“Brady.”
Why was my name wrapped in regret in his head?
I stared at the screen. It was blank. No flash cards yet. A shiver ran through me. I was still unsettled from Hanron, and now from Cam. Where were his words of comfort, if only in my head? And not that I needed them, not that Cam wasn’t more to me than just the guy who picked me up when I fell down and whispered comfort to me when I was scared of the dark. But maybe I needed that part of him now, and he should have known that—he must have known that if he was in my head—so where was it? I wanted reassurances now, and then later I could hate myself for being so needy.
Cam didn’t meet my gaze again.
The intercom squawked with static, and then that static became words:
“Lieutenant Rushton, you may begin.”
A triangle appeared on my screen.
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. I looked Cam in the eye and tried to keep the smirk off my face.
“Triangle,” Cam said.
What the hell?
The design on my screen changed.
“Wavy lines,” Cam said, his voice even.
“Cam?”
“Circle,” Cam said when the screen changed. Then: “Triangle.”
My blood ran cold. “Cam?”
I didn’t know why he was doing this. The military wouldn’t let us go now.
We’d be lab rats. We’d be prisoners. We wouldn’t see Lucy again. Why would he throw away our lives like this, when all we had to do was bluff them? All we had to do was outlast them. He’d said. He’d promised.
I tried not to look when the screen changed again. Tried not to see the design.
“A star,” Cam said.
“What are you doing?” My voice broke. “Don’t. Don’t.”
I closed my eyes, but not before I saw the next picture flash up on the screen.
“A square,” Cam said.
“Brady.”
“Fuck you, LT. Fuck you! What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Brady.”
I opened my eyes. Saw the screen. Met Cam’s gaze and felt the hot, hopeless rage rising in my gut. Knew that he could feel it too.
I hated him in that moment.
Hated him like I hadn’t hated anyone in a long time.
My last memory of my sister would be me grousing at her for taking too long to eat her breakfast and her yelling at me that I was being unfair. I couldn’t even remember if I’d told her I loved her when I’d dropped her off at school. And if I hadn’t, that was on me. But this right here, this betrayal, was all on Cam.
Cam held my gaze. Then smiled slightly, ruefully, and opened his mouth. “Circle.”
I stood up so quickly my chair tipped onto the floor. Launched myself at Cam, screaming at him over the noise of the blood roaring in my skull. Over the sudden rush of words in my head—mine and his, rage and regret. Had him on the floor, my busted left hand wrapped around his throat and my right hand clenched into a fist.
I punched and punched and punched before the MPs burst in and pulled me off him.
* * * *
I woke up facedown on a blanket with my swollen hands cuffed behind my back. I twisted my neck from side to side. My head was buzzing, and my blood was humming. They’d sedated me, I guess. Probably a good thing.
“Cam?”
Guilt burrowed into my guts. All I could feel was my fist meeting his face. Again and again. What the fuck did I do? But what did he do? He’d shown them our link was active again. He’d sold us out. I was sorry, though. I was still sorry.
“Cam, I’m sorry.”
It was supposed to be him and me against the fucking universe. That’s when we were solid. Backs against the wall, feet planted, we were solid. And I was sorry that it couldn’t be more than that—that I couldn’t be more, when we trying to make a life together, but my feet were always planted in the dirt and he was looking at the stars—and I was so fucking sorry that I lashed out at him. So fucking sorry that Hanron had drugged me up and pulled my strings like I was nothing but a brainless puppet, and it was Cam I hurt instead of that asshole.
Cam had saved me. He’d saved me on Defender Three when Wade and the others had left me for dead. And he’d come running when I found Marcello hanging. Whenever I needed him, Cam was there. Always.
The brightest thing in my universe, and it was also the weakest. Touch it, and it might shatter into a million glittering pieces like starlight.
“Cam?” I couldn’t make a fist with my left hand. It still hurt too much. “Cam?”
“Brady.” His voice sounded tired. “Are you okay?”
I choked out a sob. “Are you?”
“You don’t hit as hard as you think, you know.” There was a joke in there somewhere, but I couldn’t reach it.
“I’m sorry. Cam! I’m so sorry!”
His hands on my shoulders, gently rubbing where the pull from the cuffs ached the most. I tried to get myself up onto my knees, but his hands gentled me back down. “Stay there. Just for a bit, okay?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” Regret stole over him, silent and slow as evening shadows. Slid over me as well.
“Where are we?”
He didn’t answer.
“Cam?”
His voice was low. “They’ll let us go, I think. When this is done. I spoke with General Reid directly.”
I rolled away from him. “Where the fuck are we?”
I could feel his breath shudder out of him. I could feel his heartbeat race. I
turned my head. It took me a moment to get my bearings. A moment before everything shifted and I realized it wasn’t my blood humming at all. It was the vibrations in the floor.
I saw a gray metal wall, scuffed and dull. A row of seats in front of us, empty, with the twisted harnesses hanging loose from the anchor points. More seats in front of that, and faces turned toward us: curious, shuttered, or afraid. A small round window. And through it, starlight.
Fuck.
We were in a Shitbox.
We were in the black.
They were taking us to the Faceless.
Chapter Eight
There was less room to move on the Shitbox than in our little underground cell. It was just as cold here too, but at least I was dressed in a uniform again. A uniform with a bright orange armband on it marking me as a prisoner. Cam was wearing one too.
We had the back three rows of the seats to ourselves, and the space behind them. Up the front of the cabin, the newest batch of recruits straight from the base kept what little distance they could and tried not to pretend we were a fucking spectacle. Some of them did, anyway. A few of the others gaped at us openly like we were the freaks in a sideshow.
“What the fuck’s going on, Cam?” I asked him when an MP finally came and took my cuffs off. The sensation of blood flooding back into my injured hands was not one I wanted to repeat anytime soon.
“We’re negotiating with the Faceless,” Cam said. His bottom lip was cracked, and there was a livid bruise on his cheekbone. “Or translating. Whatever they need us for.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring at his face. My throat swelled, and my eyes stung. Regret, hot and bitter, burst in my chest. Guilt followed it, twisting through me, squirming in my guts like eels through water, trying to break free. Why the fuck had I done that? How could I have wanted to hurt him, when he was everything to me?
“I know.” He rubbed his thumb gently over my busted knuckles. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t. How could it be? I didn’t deserve his forgiveness, but that was all Cam, wasn’t it? When life fucked me over, I got angry. When it fucked him over, he didn’t blame anyone. Not even the asshole who’d punched him.
