by Chloe Garner
“Who have you told?” Troy asked Conrad, still struggling to get a handle on how bad this was.
Conrad shrugged.
“I’m telling you now, but I think you’re the only one who doesn’t know about it.”
“What?” Troy asked. “The EMI sensors should have caught this,” he remembered, speaking out loud before the thought finished itself.
“I expect they turn it on and off when you’re in protected areas,” Conrad said. “I read that you guys had good security. I wouldn’t wonder if they just tagged you for this.”
“You’re going to have to tell me what you’re suggesting,” Troy said, glancing at his phone again.
“How well, exactly, do you know who you work for?” Conrad asked.
“I thought I knew pretty well,” Troy said, “but you seem to think you know something I don’t.”
Conrad winced.
“So, here it is, cards on the table. Three days after they first got in touch with me for my security review, a guy in a suit showed up at my house and told me that you’re a risk to national security, and that they want me to spy on you.”
It was like the silence after a boulder hit the water, just the ripple of water on the shore and waiting for the thump when the rock hit ground far below.
“You’re telling me this,” Troy said.
“I’m telling you this because I smell a rat. The guys that I’ve been talking to for the last three weeks aren’t straight guys. They aren’t military, and they aren’t keeping secrets because they have to. They like keeping secrets. They like knowing what I don’t, and they like the idea of using me. And you and your team are honest people. You may or may not have a leak there, I don’t know, but I trust you before I trust any of these guys in their suits with their words that don’t mean anything.”
“Plus a bug on your phone,” Troy said sourly. Conrad nodded.
“And half a dozen in my house. I have no idea what they’ve got recording. Minnie knows, but she’s playing along that I’m dumb about it, and that I’m planning on going along.”
Troy sat back in his seat.
“Tell me about these men.”
Conrad shrugged.
“Standard-issue pricks, really. Black shoes, black suits, black cars. Lotta doublespeak. They talk about how bad you are, that you’re blocking information and planning on selling it, or that you’re sticky. Someone actually called you that. That you keep important things to yourself, and that they need to make sure that everything that belongs to the US military actually gets logged and passed up the chain of command.”
Troy almost laughed.
“They probably believe that,” he said.
“Is it true?” Conrad asked. Troy shrugged.
“We do complicated things,” he said. “Sometimes you make a call. I’ve never had anyone question my decisions to my face.”
Conrad nodded.
“I’ve spent some time talking to my dad. There were a lot of things I couldn’t tell him and a lot of things he couldn’t tell me, but I gather that everything here is complicated.”
Troy nodded, waiting. Conrad shrugged one shoulder higher than the other.
“I’m not saying I’m signing on for complicated. But the most interesting things in life are usually complicated, and you have to dive in or bail, you know what I mean?”
“I do,” Troy said. Conrad looked over at the phone and shook his head.
“I’m your man. I’m going to find out as much as I can, what they’re looking for and why. If you don’t know this is going on, you need to. You’re going to have to tell me what I can tell them and what I can’t, but I’ll bring back everything I can.”
Troy’s head was spinning with what it might have meant, who might be so interested in the lab and his work as to try to embed a spy.
“You need to make sure that you’re dealing with our team,” he said after a minute. “I don’t want you feeding them anything until I know that we aren’t committing treason, doing it.”
Conrad nodded.
“How do I do that?”
“I need names,” Troy said. “You get every name you can, and I’ll run them through my channels to make sure they’re the good guys.” Conrad raised an eyebrow and Troy shrugged. “You get to accept that sometimes the good guys aren’t who you’d want them to be.”
“I can do that,” Conrad said. Troy swallowed, considering what Conrad was volunteering to do.
“Are you sure about this? I don’t know who’s involved or how bad it could be. You’re just a college kid looking to start his first job.”
There was an introspective expression that settled on Conrad’s face for a moment, then he grinned.
“I missed out on jump school. I got to do the normal thing. I’m ready to do something else, now.”
Troy nodded.
“Okay,” he said. He needed time to think. Jesse had known.
How had he known?
What had he known?
Conrad was watching him with an earnestness that made him want to warn him off. It was a great job, but it was only a matter of time until Colonial Oliver gave up and retired or transferred, and then all of the pressure from on high would fall onto the lab leads. Troy wouldn’t be surprised if they asked him to take the role; he wasn’t sure if that was worse than them filling it with someone from the outside.
He needed to know what was going on. What he’d thought was simple politics clearly wasn’t. This was more than maneuvering and ego. This was subterfuge on a much larger scale, and apparently he’d been out of it for too long. He nodded to himself.
“Thanks, man. I can’t tell you what’s going on, mostly because you don’t want to know, but I’m going to figure it out.”
“Can you do anything about it?” Conrad asked. Troy looked over his shoulder, taking in the rest of the people in the restaurant.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
*********
He needed time to think.
Time to plan.
He didn’t get it.
As he threw himself onto the couch and put his feet up onto the coffee table, the door opened.
Old training kicked in and he found the gun out of the basket on the shelf before he went to go see what had happened.
He took a step around the corner to see the front hall to find Cassie looking at him, her eyes mocking.
“Expecting someone?” she asked, taking a step forward.
“Cassie,” he said. She gave him a half smile and took another step.
“Howdy, airman. You gonna use that thing or put it away?”
He reached behind him to put the gun up on a shelf again, and when he turned back, her mouth was against his.
The taste of her was intoxicating, like a hole blown in his world, and his body remembered her with a hot thrum. The color of the world changed. He crushed her in against himself, remembering…
… that he was supposed to be thinking about something…
… that something was wrong…
… that something else was wrong…
… that something…
… nothing.
Breath.
Scent.
Heat.
Cassie.
Dark.
*********
She wasn’t there the next morning. Which surprised him and came as a fractional relief, because just for a few minutes, he could believe that it was some strange memory that had happened to someone else. There was no sign of her in the apartment, other than his gun being out of place on the mantle, and, with a distinct sense of unreality, he made himself breakfast and sat down to read the news.
Around ten, he got a text from Olivia asking him to meet her for lunch, and he felt his stomach jolt through his feet.
He stared at the text for a long time, feeling guilty for the first time in his life over sex.
He was going to have to tell her.
But he didn’t know what he could tell her. Cassie
wasn’t technically alive, and very specifically, she was not technically on Earth. He couldn’t tell Olivia who he had been with or why, and being secretive was just going to make it worse.
He ached with the temptation to just leave it well enough alone. She would never know, they would keep on with exactly what they were doing, and last night would never hurt anyone.
But he knew that wasn’t who he was. Well, he believed that wasn’t who he was. He had never cheated on anyone in his life, and he only rarely lied, usually when he was forced to by other specific requirements on his honor.
He couldn’t believe Cassie had just left. That wasn’t like her at all. They hadn’t talked, they hadn’t eaten, they hadn’t done anything but screw around for a couple of hours and then fall into a sweaty sleep.
And it hadn’t even been ten when he’d fallen asleep, if he had the timeline right, which made even less sense than Cassie sneaking out.
He looked at the text again, and again the bottom fell out of his world.
What if being with Cassie were on the table, a dark voice asked. Wouldn’t he want her, instead, anyway? Maybe it was for the best that this happened now, before he’d gotten really serious with Olivia.
He tried to put that away, but once asked, the question had to be answered.
Would he prefer to be with Cassie, if that was an option?
Olivia made him happy.
It was a new kind of happy, one that he didn’t feel like he understood it, and one that made him secretly afraid because if he didn’t understand it, he couldn’t control it. He couldn’t be sure of what was going to happen next.
Some people dug that kind of ambiguity, that sense of the unknown.
Troy did not.
Cassie made him happy the way she always had, plus now she made him happy the way everyone else always had. It felt like a sure thing, and he rationalized it to himself that he was supposed to be safe dating his best friend. That was what friendships were good for, among other things. You marry your best friend, and you’ll be happy for the rest of your life. His father had told him that when he was young, and his parents had been happy. Still were.
But it felt like grasping. Justifying.
He looked at the text again.
I’ll see you there, he wrote, then shoved his phone away and went back to reading.
*********
Olivia’s car was already there.
He parked at the other side of the parking lot and sat with his keys in his hand for a long time, looking at it.
He didn’t deserve her.
Earnest and honest and uncomplicated, she’d managed to upend his life and tie it in knots, and he was sure that that meant there was something wrong with him. Honesty should never result in that kind of complexity.
He knew his place, and he’d taken an opportunity that he should have known better than to go after.
He should have known better.
Somewhere he knew that he was blaming things that weren’t wrong with Olivia for things that were wrong with Cassie, that were more wrong with himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to look closely at what had happened with Cassie. It had been amazing, and it didn’t make sense. The memory of her breath across his skin brought goosebumps to the back of his neck, and he clenched his fist around his keys, forcing himself out of the car.
He had to face her.
He stepped through the door and glanced around the room to find Olivia sitting at a booth. Across from Cassie.
His entire body went cold and, after a moment, he found his keys dangling from the end of his fingertip on their slow slide down toward the floor. Olivia waved at him and he struggled to catch the keys before they fell. Olivia was already back talking to Cassie as he made his trudging way across the room, narrowly missing a server.
“She says you knew,” Olivia said.
“What?” Troy asked stupidly. His brain was slow, wading in knee-deep confusion, and Olivia looked delighted with herself.
“That she’s alive,” Olivia said, scooting over for him. He sat down and Cassie gave him an innocent look.
“You’re late,” she said. He blinked.
“How long have you been keeping it a secret?” Olivia asked.
“What?” he asked again. She elbowed him.
“Her.”
Cassie smiled quickly at Olivia.
“I’ve surprised him, sorry. He wasn’t expecting to see me here. I’ve been back a few weeks, but it’s under wraps for a while, yet. No one is supposed to know, but he just went on and on about you, and I had to meet you.”
Olivia shrugged.
“We’ve met a few times before.”
Cassie gave her a knowing look.
“Troy is my best friend. Shaking hands at some point doesn’t count.”
Olivia grinned.
“So what happened to you? We had a memorial and everything.”
Cassie shrugged.
“It’s all still classified, sorry. How long have you two been together?”
Olivia elbowed Troy again, shaking her head at him.
“I can’t believe you kept her a secret. I didn’t have a clue.” She paused. “I’d have thought you’d have been… different.”
“Uh,” he said. She laughed.
“I guess you keep secrets for a living. Um, I guess it’s been a month now,” she said, turning back to Cassie.
“You changed jobs for him,” Cassie said. Troy felt his eyes widen, the reality of what was going on subtly changing for a moment.
How did she know that?
Olivia laughed and shrugged.
“I did. I mean, it was a good career move, too, I don’t want it to sound like I gave up that much. I’m not a crazy person.”
“No, I get it,” Cassie said. “Took a risk. You took a risk on the right guy.”
At some point, food had arrived.
“Eat,” Olivia said. “I ordered for you. Hope you don’t mind.”
“He’s predictable,” Cassie said with a wink. “So what are you doing this weekend?”
“You know, just chores and stuff I don’t get to during the week. Where are you staying?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Cassie said. “He isn’t taking you out?”
“Uh,” Troy grunted. Olivia laughed.
“We’re here, aren’t we?”
“True,” Cassie said. Olivia nodded, shaking her fork at Cassie.
“So… are you working? Have they got you doing all kinds of debriefing stuff?”
Cassie drew a slow breath and frowned, creasing her eyebrows hard.
“No. Not specifically. No.”
“You know what we should do, then,” Olivia said cheerfully. Troy continued to stare at Cassie, trying to work out what was happening.
“What’s that?” Cassie asked.
“Are you allowed to… you know, do stuff?”
“Of course,” Cassie said. “I just have to stay away from the base and anyone who would recognize me.”
Olivia grinned and wiggled in her seat.
“We should go dancing. Next weekend.”
This triggered something in Troy’s brain that resembled a reaction.
“What?” he asked. She nodded at him.
“You aren’t eating. We should go up to Chicago. Go see Whisper. I bet Cassie gets him, and then you can stop worrying about whether I’m crazy.”
“I never said you were crazy,” he said. She shrugged.
“Still. We should go.”
“What is Whisper?” Cassie asked.
“Who,” Olivia corrected. “He’s a DJ and he’s amazing.”
“Oh,” Cassie said. “Forgive me, but I didn’t have you pegged as a night-out-clubbing kind of a girl.”
“Oh, I know,” Olivia said. “This is…” she shrugged. “Well, you really have to be there to understand it. They say some people get it and some people don’t. He’s amazing.” She used her fork to motion to her plate. “This is really good.”
> “They have great lunch specials here,” Cassie said. She looked at Troy. “I think that sounds like fun.”
He felt his mouth hang open before he could figure out how to stop it. Cassie nodded.
“We should do it. You guys fly up for the weekend?”
“Troy can’t take another day off, so we’ll have to just do Saturday and Sunday,” Olivia said, nodding.
“That will be fun,” Cassie said. “I’ll book the tickets. Send you both the flight information.” She raised her eyebrows at Olivia. “But as far as anyone else knows, it’s just the two of you going up on your own.”
“Oh,” Olivia said, putting her hand up in front of her mouth. “Oh, yeah.”
Troy shrugged, looking from Cassie to Olivia. That had been innuendo, he was pretty sure, though he still felt about six steps behind the conversation.
“We don’t have to go,” he said. Olivia sat with her hand curled in front of her mouth for another moment, then sat up straight and shook her head, tossing her hair off her shoulders.
“They’re going to think it anyway,” she said. “They can think whatever they want.”
“Celeste will want to go,” he said. She gave him a tiny, devious smile.
“Not when I tell her it’s just us,” she said. He sighed and she giggled.
“It’s going to be so much fun.”
He looked at Cassie one last time, hoping for an explanation. She was inscrutable.
“It will be fun,” she said evenly, returning her attention to her meal.
*********
Somehow, it was the weekend.
Looking back, he had no idea how he’d made it to this point, no idea what had happened that week or who he’d talked to.
He hoped his decisions at work had been good.
There were important things going on, he was sure, but he’d walked in a cloud all week, functioning on autopilot, bewildered, with a sense that someone was looking over his shoulder and he was going to be in trouble for whatever it was he was doing, but he could never quite figure out what he’d done wrong.
He went to dinner with Olivia.