by Astrid Amara
After all, even with the Jarrow ship’s bone knitter, Tover’s bones had never properly healed from their first breaking. Tover had conceded to himself that he would never return to his former athletic grace.
But under Lourdes’s care, his body grew stronger every day and pain receded to the point that when he woke up, he felt merely a generalized ache. He reacted well to the bone and ligament strengtheners, and he diligently followed Lourdes’s exercise instructions every morning.
Once he was comfortably walking, he didn’t want to stop. He indulged in long strolls through the violet fields, occasionally accompanied by Ana or Lourdes, but usually alone.
Over the weeks of his recuperation, Tover began to see patterns amongst the Pulmon Verde. There were those who saw Tover as a prize to be sold, and who seemed unwilling to forgive him for the loss of one of their own on the Jarrow ship.
But there were others who treated their job of guarding Tover like a vacation. Most kept their distance but some had approached him, asking nervous questions about his abilities, inquiring about his family and how he felt. These guards didn’t bother to control Tover’s movements and let him wander from the house completely free, keeping their focus on the strange all-terrain vehicles instead.
One of the guards, a young man Cruz and Lourdes called “Feo” but whom Ana seemed to have a liking for, came into the house every time he had a shift at the Arcadios and joined the family for lunch. At first Tover found his presence threatening. Like Cruz, he rarely took off his weapons. But Feo was affable and cheery, and treated Tover like he were a member of the family, not a commodity to guard.
While indulging in his long walks alone, Tover initially considered making a break for it. But the idea was purely fanciful. Kilometers stretched between the house and the next settlement, and Villazul had been an hour’s drive. There was nothing but agricultural land, separated by untamed swathes of marsh that defied all attempts of cultivation. There was nowhere he could go, and the Pulmon Verde clearly knew this.
So instead he wandered amongst the tall fronds of alien plant life. Bursts of heat and cold from the changes in starlight and breeze gave him a thrumming, exotic sense of connection through his body. He sensed a smallness that also felt like being part of something huge and whole and beautiful, and with a shock he realized he’d never been alone outside. Harmony had provided an escort for him from the moment he had graduated from the training institute. Solitary time outside Dadelus-Kaku Station was a rare, pleasing privilege, and he took full advantage of it.
Cruz no longer stayed in town. He lived in the house, although he kept his distance and never joined the others for meals. Tover was hyperaware of his presence, and Cruz seemed to sense that and stayed away.
But there were small hints that Cruz was equally sensitive to Tover’s residence in the house. During the CTASA soccer playoffs Tover found a recorded holocast of each match saved for him to watch on Lourdes’s holoscreen.
Electronic magazines covering soccer news appeared at his bedside table. One time there was a magazine whose home screen specifically opened to an article on a new aviary design.
There was even a small stuffed toy in the shape of an African gray parrot left for him one evening. Tover’s heart clenched, missing Ronda more than words could express.
He assumed it had been Ana who had brought it for him, but she said she had no idea how it got there, and besides, she’d never give anyone a bird.
So clearly these small offerings came from Cruz, who knew Tover’s interests so well. And their presence, while infuriating, also placated his boredom. He wished he was strong enough to toss them aside on principle of who provided them—but the truth was, he really wanted to know who won the playoffs.
And eventually Tover’s own curiosity got the better of his good judgment, and he simply asked Lourdes about what Cruz worked on that kept him out of the house all day.
Lourdes looked at him in surprise. “His report! The evidence he collected is being formatted into an exclusive newscast,” Lourdes answered him as she cleaned up the surgical table in her office. She had had a steady stream of patients that morning, and the room looked trashed. Tover helped her put things away.
“Cruz is working with Zoya Verishnikov,” Lourdes announced proudly. Tover shrugged.
“You don’t know her?” Lourdes asked. “She’s famous! A prime reporter for the Star Newscast. They’ve scheduled the exposé to air in a few weeks, but Zoya is a stickler for details, especially in a situation like this where it will lead to a scandal. The two of them are finalizing research and conducting interviews to add footage.”
Tover wondered if his assistant Gull, or Harmony Port Operations Chief Peter Owens, or his publicist Alexey Jade, would be watching the newscast. Would they make the connection between the scandal and his disappearance? Probably not.
One morning, as Tover wandered the house, bored, he came across a beautiful, onyx-inlaid Arlandian Parcheesi set. Lourdes admitted she received it as a gift from a grateful patient years ago, but that she had never bothered to learn the strategic fine points of the game.
Tover loved Arlandian Parcheesi, with its complex pawn-capturing rules and jumping strategies, and so he set up the board in the living room and showed Lourdes and Ana how to play.
Ana seemingly played only to humor him, but Lourdes got a wicked gleam in her eyes and watched Tover trounce her three times before changing strategies, beating him the next two games with calculated cunning.
Cruz walked in the house, his face bloody and sporting a black eye. Game play instantly stopped and Lourdes stood. “What happened to you?”
Cruz shrugged. “Got in a fight with Ramirez.”
“Again?” Lourdes sounded disappointed. She shook her head. Still, she grabbed Cruz’s wrist and led him back into her office. She returned, but Tover could tell she was distracted, her heart no longer in the game.
Cruz re-entered a few minutes later. The skin around his eye shone with swell-reduction spray. He watched them play, leaning against the living room wall. Tover felt uncomfortable with him standing there.
“Who’s winning?” Cruz asked at last.
“Who do you think?” Ana complained. “Who always wins?”
“Tover and I are pretty even,” Lourdes said. “He has a home-team advantage.”
“Yeah, but I think you cheat,” Tover grumbled. Both Ana and Cruz laughed.
“She’s totally a cheater!” Ana cried. “Cruz and I have bitched about it for years. Our dad never believed us.”
Cruz looked into Tover’s eyes. Tover quickly looked away.
“Is the network still down?” Cruz asked.
Lourdes nodded. “Can you do anything about it? It’s becoming a real hassle.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Cruz shrugged. “I’m not real popular at the moment.”
“Why not?” Ana asked.
Cruz’s eyes flickered back to Tover but then looked away. “It doesn’t matter. But I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” Lourdes moved her piece forward, and Tover saw the mistake she made. He quickly pushed his pawn into position and landed his piece home.
Lourdes and Ana stared at the board in shock, and Tover had to restrain himself from gloating. It was an old trick, one that most Arlandians knew. He should have felt ashamed for pulling it on two players who’d only learned the game a few hours ago, but Lourdes was too clever for her own good.
“How did you do that?” Ana asked.
“I’m very good,” Tover bragged.
Lourdes grinned. “Sneaky. I won’t lose to that move again.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Feo entered, smiling as soon as he saw Ana.
“Hey! Am I too late for lunch?” he asked.
Cruz frowned. “Where’s Chucho?”
Feo shrugged. “Sick at home. Only me today. How you feeling, Nav
igator?”
Tover nodded. “Good, thanks.”
Feo barely registered the comment, he was too busy grinning at Ana.
Ana smiled back. “You want a steak? Mom got some fauxbeef from a patient last night.”
Feo’s eyes lit up. The two of them wandered into the kitchen. Lourdes still stared at the board.
“I should take Tover,” Cruz said quietly. “Feo won’t care, and Ramirez is setting the guarding schedule for next week.”
Lourdes glanced up. She looked frightened.
“What will happen if—”
“It’ll be fine.” Cruz nodded to Tover. “Come on. Get your boots. We have to be fast.”
Tover didn’t know where they were heading, but he sensed Cruz’s urgency, so he didn’t hesitate. He walked briskly to his room and pulled on his boots. He took one last look around the place, a little sad to be leaving a room that had been such a warm space of healing for him after his hell on Jarrow.
But he didn’t linger. He met Cruz at the door.
“I’m going for a walk with Tover,” Cruz shouted into the kitchen. Tover heard Feo talking to Ana and Lourdes. He didn’t bother to respond.
“Can I say goodbye?” Tover whispered, realizing this could be the last chance he would ever see Lourdes and Ana again, the thought shockingly dispiriting.
Cruz shook his head, and gripped Tover’s arm. He led Tover out of the house and into the nave.
Cruz peeled out of the driveway. They turned left once they hit the main road.
“It’s a longer drive this way but fewer chances to pass other soldiers,” Cruz explained. He kept looking in his rear viewer as if expecting to be followed.
“Where are you taking me?” Tover asked.
“The Harmony base.” Cruz’s eyebrow cocked up. “Isn’t that where you want to go?”
“Yes.” Tover felt nervous anticipation coil in his stomach. How would he explain to the Harmony personnel, and to Peter Owens, his boss, why he couldn’t jump anymore?
It didn’t matter, he told himself. Safety was moments away.
For the first twenty minutes of the drive, Tover and Cruz shared the vehicle without speaking. Tover had to focus on the view to avoid looking at his former lover, but every time Cruz struggled with the nave over rough terrain, his thigh would tense under those thin cargo pants, and Tover found himself fantasizing about the body hidden underneath those clothes.
Cruz finally broke the icy silence, although the topic surprised Tover.
“My sister. Did she say anything about Feo to you?”
“What? No. She didn’t say anything.” After a minute Tover asked, “Why?”
Cruz clenched his jaw and gunned the pedal, jumping the nave over a ravine, bouncing it hard onto the other side of the wet clay road.
“I don’t want to see her falling for another fucking soldier.”
“Why not? You’re one.”
“Exactly. And I can’t count how many times I’ve nearly died. I don’t want to see her mourning over someone again.”
Tover leaned back against the bench seat, accepting the neutral topic. “She’s old enough to make decisions for herself, you know.”
“Yeah.” Cruz looked annoyed. “But she can be a real dumbass when it comes to shit like this.”
“Oh, and you’re an expert?” Tover snapped. Instantly, he regretted the comment.
Cruz looked at him, his expression searching. But then the nave hit a rock, and he had to turn back to face the road.
“Nice back route,” Tover mumbled.
“The main entrance and orbit launch are monitored by the Pulmon Verde,” Cruz said. “This will wrap around the back to the loading bay. But it’s still a long shot.”
“Why are they watching the base?”
“Admission is restricted to those with security passes. We have a team of people noting which Caridans have access to see if we can work with them to get inside.”
“Is the entire mission of the Pulmon Verde obsessed with ruining Harmony?” Tover asked bitterly.
“No.” Cruz deftly swerved as another nave rounded a steep incline. He looked back anxiously but then judged whoever it was a non-threat and relaxed. “We want to save Carida. That’s the mission. It happens that Harmony is Carida’s biggest threat.”
“You worked for Harmony for five years,” Tover said. “You’re telling me, in all that time, you couldn’t see any of the good the company does?”
Cruz shrugged. “Its shareholders are treated like gods. And for its own employees? Sure. It takes great care of its executives. Employees like myself, lower on the pay scale, didn’t have quite the benefits you were offered.”
Tover shook his head. “I can’t believe Harmony personnel were stupid enough to hire a terrorist.”
Cruz raised an eyebrow. “I am a trained structural engineer. All of my qualifications are sound. That’s why los jefes approached me. They asked me to do the job because of my training.”
“So you became a spy.”
“What would you have done?” Cruz sounded tired. “I’m about to be moved into an internment camp. Everyone I know is going to lose their livelihood, the rights to the air they breathe. I’m told by people I trust that there’s more to this story, and they need evidence. Of course I volunteered to get the information for them.”
“You kill people too,” Tover reminded him. “Don’t forget you’re a fucking murderer.”
“I learned soldiering as part of my training, yes. And I have killed in self-defense.”
“You shot an unarmed man point-blank in the face.”
Cruz stared at him, his jaw working silently. “I didn’t intend to do that,” he finally admitted. “But when I saw what they had done to you, I…” Cruz swallowed. “I lost control of myself.”
Tover didn’t ask any more questions, and Cruz seemed inclined toward silence as well. The rough road they traveled flattened onto a marshy landscape and bugs flew into Tover’s face. He grimaced and brushed them off, appreciating the novelty of doing so. He’d never been anywhere that bugs could haphazardly land on his face and die.
The marshy lands seemed to dip down into a steep valley on one side of the road, but on the other side Tover could see the Harmony base. It was hard to determine its distance, given its enormity—the translucent shell around the structure towered over the landscape and seemed to stretch into the upper atmosphere of Carida.
“Shit!” Cruz slammed on the brakes and Tover flew forward, barely bracing himself before hitting his head against the dash. Cruz yanked the nave right, straight into the slushy marsh by the side of the road.
“Lay down, hurry!” Cruz hissed.
Tover saw another nave heading toward them. Nothing about it seemed particularly sinister, but the panic in Cruz’s expression was enough to convince Tover to follow along. He lay flat on the bench seat of the nave.
Cruz climbed on top of him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Tover cried.
“Shut up. Kiss me,” Cruz demanded.
Before Tover could respond, Cruz leaned down and kissed him. Tover’s voiced protest was muffled beneath Cruz’s lips. He struggled and tried to resist but Cruz was stronger, he pinned Tover with his body. Tover felt Cruz along the length of him, the hot press of Cruz’s groin against his thigh. Cruz slid one leg between Tover’s, and against Tover’s wishes, his body began to respond.
Cruz’s arms were trembling as he covered Tover with his body, something Tover had never noticed him do before. Tover opened his eyes and looked at Cruz as they kissed. Cruz looked afraid.
Tover heard the crush of rocks under the tires of the nave. It sounded as though the other vehicle stopped on the road beside theirs.
“Is that you, Arcadio?” someone yelled.
Cruz intensified their kiss, pushing his tongue again
st Tover’s mouth until he opened. Tover let go and was surprised by the relief he felt as he let Cruz inside. Too long, he thought. I’ve waited too long for a kiss…
“Arcadio!” the man yelled.
Cruz broke their kiss and glanced up, lips swollen, looking a little stunned. He hovered over Tover, concealing him from sight.
“Go away,” Cruz growled at the man. “I’m busy.”
“Who you got there?” the other man asked.
Cruz grinned lasciviously. “Just a fuck.”
“Pervert,” the man mumbled. “You screw every guy you meet?”
“Haven’t done you yet, Peres. Want to try? I can make it feel good.”
The other man made a groan. “You sick bastard. I’ll see you tonight. Tony and Leah are up the road, say hi to them.”
Cruz gave a quick wave then kissed Tover again. Only once the tires could no longer be heard did Cruz stop. His left hand had curled around the butt of his pistol.
“He’s gone?” Tover whispered hoarsely.
“Yeah.” Cruz seemed to sag a little. He rested his head on Tover’s shoulder.
“He’s gone,” Tover said again, a little more angrily.
Cruz let go of Tover. As he sat back up on the bench seat Tover could see the pronounced bulge in Cruz’s pants. He glanced down and saw his own thin trousers did a poor job of hiding his own reaction. He turned from Cruz, embarrassed that his body forgot who his true enemies were.
“We can’t go to the base now.” Cruz ran a hand over his face. “Tony is too close to Ramirez and will question us being alone. We’ll have to try again another time.”
Tover’s heart raced in his chest. The idea of being caught again by anyone, especially the enemy Pulmon Verde, terrified him.
“I’m sorry that didn’t work out.” Cruz cleared his throat. “We’ll have other chances. I’m winning my argument with los jefes, that it would be better for you to become part of the movement than sold for the profit.”
“Wow. Great. Thanks so much,” Tover said bitterly.
“Sorry. It’s not much, I know, but if I can get you rights as an activist on our side, we can stop the patrols and get you to the base.”
