by Anna Gaffey
“No complaints here.” Con took the clean plate from beside the little stove and dished up. He toasted a single slice of bread over the hot plate with quick precision, and looked askance before emptying the coffee beaker into the other mug.
“There’s creamer,” Jake offered. “I mean, don’t get your hopes up. It’s the powdered shit.”
Con messed around with cutlery and then sat down across from him, and Jake made an effort to clear away some of the finished memory gems into his Empties bin, and once he’d finished that, the table was clear and they were still sitting there.
“So,” Con said. “No one from Science keeping tabs on your chip function these days?”
Jake tapped the table with his mug and sloshed coffee over the rim. He’d miscalculated: clearly the Breakfast Sidekicks had left his concentration to fend for itself. “Not really. Direct reporting isn’t required, although the paper and bloodwork Lindy runs and Nat’s psych rigmarole, all that goes back to Science and the implantation team at the Bends. But I’ve also never attacked anyone before.”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“I wasn’t trying to.” As sparingly as he could, Jake laid out the sequence of the nightmare and the rules, and the current deviation. “Before you say anything, yes, I’m going to see Lindy about it. I don’t know what the hell she’ll be able to do, apart from scans or maybe some inventive experimental brain surgery, but I’m going.”
“I figured,” Con said mildly, as if they’d been having a particularly uninteresting discussion about space debris.
Jake sighed into his mug. If he tried to seriously examine his motivations for sleeping with his friend who was also possibly a covert operative, the personal dissolved under bleated justifications such as “Keep your enemies closer!” and “It’s all part of my master plan to trap him into compromising himself.” The mental misdirection would’ve been entertaining if it wasn’t inside his own head. He also couldn’t think long on the concept of “compromised,” especially in how it applied to himself. But he didn’t have to. Toby Carmichael would do it for him. When he finally showed Jake whatever the hell it was he’d found in Con’s file, and simultaneously discovered that Jake’s response to his veiled warning had been to sleep with the suspect, he’d probably throw them both in the brig. Or rather, back to quarters. Since they didn’t have a brig, only a cramped locking storage closet down on Level 7.
Con was sawing his toast into methodical rectangles. Jake woke the tablet and pecked through a few emails from Furbad Station’s head geologist (still employed after the Jupiter Defense takeover and only partially under duress), but it was difficult to concentrate on opaque meteorite descriptions when Con’s hands were wielding the flimsy plastic knife just across the table. Those long, sure fingers in his hair, on his shoulders, down his ribs, over his back, the touches were all still fresh in his head. Really, it was good he could monitor Con so professionally.
It was better than remembering his own hands wrapped around Con’s neck.
Even if Con was innocent of any involvement, and the whole Restore-serum-on-Selas-Station nonsense went nova, it was ludicrous for a contract station worker to consider getting seriously involved (although neither of them had mentioned it, and why would they?) with a shipping pilot. But how could he go the usual thanks and maybe we’ll do this again one of these months route with Con?
You can come back home. Go back to work in your own lab.
And presumably, the unspoken selling point of a relationship. That was enticing and clever.
But who would he work with? Jake would still be the same pariah no matter how much spin and gloss they covered him with. That was the consequence of the show trial, and woe to Science if—if—they wanted him back now. Also, if Jake’s parents had taught him anything sensible outside of the lab, it was that almost all Surprising Good Fortune was too good to be true. He hadn’t really gotten it, before—
Do what you did before.
And that lure made no sense at all. Jake couldn’t do what he did before; he didn’t know how. Perhaps they could magically restore his memory, remove the penitence implant, and then his strangely stuffed-down memories of pathology and genetics would clunk back into his brain. Jake doubted that was possible without further scrambling his eggs. But why make the offer? How could they, Science, the people who handwaved all his requests up to his failure and cover-up with Restore, and then they brought down the iron fist…how could they want him to restart Restore? The negative PR implications alone were staggering. Jake hadn’t considered it after the first self-deluding year in the Bends. And now that he was free again, he realized he wouldn’t restart it. And he’d be damned if he’d help anyone else do it.
If he accepted that about himself, and that Science or Defense or whoever his unknown adversary was would likely predict his negative reply, Jake had to know where Con stood. Sex wasn’t a good proving ground. Also, if Con had handlers watching his progress, they wouldn’t necessarily keep him out as Jake-bait forever. If they thought he’d gotten all he could, they’d pull him and put him to work elsewhere. A storybook interstellar relationship wouldn’t even break orbit.
Yeah, “ludicrous” fit nicely. Jake supposed he should be pleased to get one nice night out of it, but he was too exhausted.
“So…” he began. “Griffin.”
“So.” Con clinked his spoon against the side of the cup. “Jeong. Or—wait. Do you want me to start calling you Doctor?”
“What? No.”
“I could.”
“No!” No? Maybe…no. That way lies madness. “Uh, no.”
Con drank his coffee. Jake glared at the blameless reel of messages on his tablet screen and cast about again for his starting point. “Sorry. Did you know you talk in your sleep?”
Con chuckled. “What’d I say?”
“Um.” Jake accidentally deleted two unread messages. “Nothing too memorable. Something about eyes.”
“Hm.” Con took a big bite of beans and toast. He chewed the way he piloted, all methodical, slow, and steady. “So what are those all about?” He pointed an elbow at the pile of dark memory gems.
“Lab paperwork. Fascinating as always.”
“You’re really in charge out here.”
Jake choked and swallowed carefully. “Of the lab, yeah. And believe me, if I wasn’t up on that, Kai’d stage a coup and get me exiled to the surface.”
“What’s down there?”
“Opinions vary.” Jake shrugged. “Meaning I don’t really know yet. Did you ever see any scans of the original habitat? It’s old, and we haven’t had much chance to clean it up and restock it, so there’s lots of interesting stuff just moldering inside. At this rate with all the flus and freakouts and general shenanigans, I’ll never get back down there again.”
He meant to be flippant, but Con gave him a funny, furtive look.
“Oh. I mean, I’m not that much of an asshole—well, yeah, I am, but I don’t want, you know. Anyone to get hurt or anything, either.” He was surpassing eloquence today. But maybe he’d misread the look: Con was nodding and back to drinking his coffee.
“So what’s on for today?”
Jake tapped his tablet. “A quick check on the labs and Mei, and then meetings. One with Carmichael at oh-seven hundred. I’m Mr. Fix-it until we narrow down what exactly happened last night.”
Con stared into his mug. “You don’t think it was just Mei, then.”
Was that anxiety? Or maybe disappointment that Jake wasn’t going to continue his regular schedule? Surprise that Jake didn’t have a regular schedule? Worry about Con’s own piloting contract? Or maybe he just really enjoyed the sight of reconstituted freeze-dried coffee?
“Officially, we do. Unofficially, we don’t know what to think yet,” Jake hedged. “But we’ll talk about it, and then we’ll know if there is anything to, uh, to talk about.”
Con looked at the chrono on the wall. “Yeah, I’m doing roll call on the Harmon at oh-eight hundred.
Nothing too pressing. I’m sitting dead in space until you all say they can come back. Eating up the contract time.” He rubbed his forearms like he was cold, and then plucked a cherry from the cup and played it back and forth. It shone with a deep purpled red, dark as a bruise against his fingers.
“Er. Right, that’s right. It probably won’t be too long, Carmichael’s incredibly efficient.”
“So?” Con looked at him expectantly. Gods, but his eyes were dark. Gods, but Jake was an idiot.
“So what?”
“Not that I want to make you late.” Con reached out and stroked a finger over Jake’s wrist, and all logical thought fled Jake’s mind.
Nine minutes later, Jake rebuttoned his trousers, his shoulder blades still stiff from the icy floor. He hauled himself up on his elbows and glared over at Con, who was reclining on his back under the table, his wild black head pillowed on his arms, grinning an insufferably self-satisfied grin. He could make a bed of nails look like a down mattress. “Your concern for my punctuality is touching.”
Con waved a lazy hand. “I try.”
“Need a—do you need some help up?” A smudge of red juice stained Con’s neck. Jake bent down again and dabbed it up with his thumb. It was salty-sweet on his tongue.
“Nah. I’m comfy.”
Jake yawned. If he didn’t make it up to the lab soon, he’d miss any chance to check his samples for the next few hours, not to mention he’d have to withdraw every one of Kai’s sticky fingers from his work. And he wanted to get with Lindy about the Warringer. Jake jerked his shirt back into place.
“I’m gonna head up to Science and the infirmary—” he began, and then snorted as Con started up so fast he banged his head.
“Mind if I come along?”
“Knock yourself out,” Jake said, and chortled the whole way to the lift.
On the wall map, Alpha Lift was blinking somewhere around Level 6. Jake jabbed at the button, but the blinking blue box stayed firmly where it was. “Typical. Let’s take the other.”
The doors to Delta Lift sprang open, and they entered, Con somewhat warily. He tapped the sides of the lift. “Santos told me yesterday that this one doesn’t work.”
“Well, yeah, sort of. Usually.” Jake punched first for Level 2, Science. The screen pinged at him with an alarmingly shrill beep that radiated to the roots of his teeth. “But we sort of repaired it, too. It’s probably all right.” If not, he could always enlist Boxhill again, and they could squeeze underneath again and pull out all the memory gems and wiring again. Just imagining it made his head vibrate. Jake rubbed at his temples.
The lift doors slid shut with a repressive puff of air, and they began the slow, shambling lurch to the second level. Something metallic rattled underneath their feet.
“Maybe it’s safer on the Harmon,” Con said. “You know, I brought you techs for this kind of thing.”
“Earth techs,” Jake scoffed. “They might have read about this crap for a history course. It’ll take me weeks to break them in.”
“So death by lift collapse is better.”
“Oh, infinitely preferable. You should enjoy the ride, this is a tour of the past.”
The floor creaked. Con winced, and Jake tried unsuccessfully to stuff down a smile. It reminded him of their tunnel climbing adventure, in particular the bit when Jake was at the bottom of a shaft and Con was at the top with the rope in his hands, full of jovial assurance that Jake should grab on and climb up but, “um, to do it fast.” Jake had made it maybe three meters before the damn thing frayed apart, so the fall hadn’t bruised him too badly. Con’s laughter, on the other hand… So maybe karma was for real. If so, it had delightfully ironic timing: the creaky ascent, the tight tiny lift car, it was as close as they’d get to being back in the Saint Paul underground.
Why was that his first memory of Con? Richly vivid, it resonated through all Jake’s thoughts and feelings. His brain wasn’t supposed to be selective, not about things like this. Perhaps he should skip the lab visit. He had a wary anxiety that, the sooner he checked in with Lindy, the better.
It was quite warm in the car. Another thing for the ol’ fix-it list.
Was it his imagination, or were the corners of the lift ceiling skewed somehow? The corners met as corners did, smooth silvery planes of stellarcore composite colliding in a seamless join. Except when Jake turned his gaze to the location screen and watched their laborious progression past Control/Level 3 to Level 2, they didn’t look so seamless in his peripheral vision.
He saw a wide thread of darkness, a slippery shadow in the brightness of the car where there should be none. The thread leaked like a line of oil from the ceiling panels. When he stared at it straight on, he saw only unblemished silver and his and Con’s wavery, undefined reflections. Jake blinked. The screen showed Level 2. Three. No, two. There were three reflections. No, two. Only two.
When he peeked again, the shadowy crack had grown more pronounced. Jake rubbed harder at his temples. The constant aggravating jog of the car as it rose could have caused a breach in the material or the joins, if it were anything more than infinitesimal. Or he could be going blind. He could be seeing things. He could be still asleep in his bed, wrapped in warmth and rough sheets and Con—and oh, a headache, a brass blast through his skull. Jake steadied himself with a hand against the trembling composite of the lift wall. Strange, the surface was warm instead of cool. Perhaps it was an internal wiring malfunction, a fire hazard. Fire in space, that he’d never seen. But there was definitely warmth under his fingers, warmth soggy and unpleasant against his neck. It was stifling. He was still standing, yes, he felt his legs beneath him, but oh, how his head ached.
“She said she understood the consequences when she signed up for the study. What was I supposed to do, go against her wishes? Assume she doesn’t know what she’s doing? She’s—Rebecca, my sister, was a professional. She made the choice.”
“She may have changed her mind that day, Dr. Jeong.”
“I don’t remember that day, so I don’t know.”
“A convenient excuse. Convenient and cowardly. One that doesn’t excuse the needless death of human beings, the violation of our society’s most important law.”
The lift lunged up, then down, and then stopped with a mechanical wheeze.
“Are you okay?” Con’s voice sounded very far away. “You’re sweating.”
“It’s warm in here.” Jake wiped at his face. And the voices… He closed out the memory, smoothed it over with layers of concrete, stone, iron slabs, stellarcore, plastics, until it was as contained and hermetically sealed as a shipment of fruit. Rotten fruit, ashes, his mind supplied. Rebecca. Jake turned away, as if he could move out of range, and looked to the cracked corner of the lift.
Except it wasn’t cracked. The inner lining of the car was seamless, just as it was supposed to be. Jake shook his head. “Too damn warm.”
Con stood close, his face lined with concern. His hand fluttered at his side for a moment, but then he relented and touched Jake’s arm with cool fingers. “Yeah, it is. Are you okay?”
The touch dispelled the sinister crawling sensation, and Jake began to relax. “Yes. I think so.” He shook his head and wished they could return to that brief interlude inside his quarters. For a second, he could almost see the scene from Con’s perspective—his face looming close, all tense jaw and wary eyes.
His comm buzzed as the lift doors slid open. Con dropped his hand, and the fantasy dropped away, too. That was fine. Jake needed to pull his brain together. His comm buzzed again, too quickly. To be polite, he opened the general comm frequency so Con could listen in. “Good morning.”
Lindy’s voice iced over the comm. “I hope you’re bringing me back my evidence.”
“Bringing back? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play, Jake, I’ve been up too long already. Now bring back the Warringer so I can finish scanning it.”
Jake shot a glance at Con, who looked quizzical. “But
I don’t have it, Doc. Last time I saw it, you were holding it. Con and I are on our way now. I was just going to stop by the labs first…ah.” He understood. The labs. And there’s the obvious answer. “Kai. Did he stop by again last night?”
“Oh. Oh.” Lindy’s tone changed instantly. “Yes, he did. But I was so swamped. I didn’t miss it until this morning.”
She sounded so contrite Jake hardly recognized her voice. He softened his own. “Well, no worries. We’ll have it up and at you in a few minutes.” He clicked off.
“So, what now?” Con asked.
“Oh, right, you don’t know. So that flashy Warringer case from last night…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“…the headaches aren’t getting any better. Dr. Lindy says she’s been prescribing more painkillers than usual. These are a little easier to bear than the ones I’d get from Astro Courses, remember those? Gods, I thought my face was melting. Still seeing weird things, though…
“…So there I was in the lab. It’s late, I’m sifting the old Heart data for legacy scans of Helias, I’ve got the lights down so I can see the images better. I look up, and there’s a person standing across the way from me, between me and the viewscreen. And you know me, I shrieked a little bit. And I said something like, ‘You scared me. Who is that?’ And they didn’t say anything. So I got a bit tweaky and I brought up all the lights at once. And no one was there…yes, before you ask, I called security. They did a sweep. Couldn’t find anyone. In the morning I talked to Carmichael, and he sent me to Nat. You know what she’s like. Psychs. Although most psychs usually let you get a word in edgewise. She said we were all taking too many stims, herself included, and that she intended to have a word with Lindy about it. Big help. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t have any ideas other than I’m cracking up…