Darker Space

by Lisa Henry

  We played cards through the bars of my cell and talked shit about the officers for a while. Then, a few hours into my latest enforced visit to the stockade, I got a visitor. Sam stood up to check the monitor.

  “It’s your better half, Garrett.”

  “Bullshit. What if I’m his better half?”

  Sam snorted. “Kid, he’s had head lice that are a better half than you.”

  “Asshole.” But I smiled too because, unlike every officer in the world, Sam was only kidding.

  He headed out to the reception store to let my better half in.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Cam said when he made his way out to the cells.

  I grinned at him from behind the bars. “I know, right?”

  “They’re giving you a week this time,” he said. “So I guess you won’t be getting ice cream with Lucy and me for a bit.”

  My grin faded. “Tell her I’ll be home soon.”

  “I will.” He looked tired all of a sudden. “Brady, you’ve just got to… Shit. You’ve got to shut your mouth and stop letting them get to you. This is the military. The whole system is designed so the guys at the bottom don’t get a say.”

  “Yeah.” My throat ached a little. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was in here for a week, or because Cam was talking to me like I was too stupid to know what I did to get here. “You don’t need to explain it to me like I’m a dumb kid.”

  Cam huffed out a breath. “Then stop acting like one, Brady! Stop giving them an excuse to throw you in here!”

  I tried to swallow down my hurt. Tried to shrug it off with another grin. “You know me. I never saw a brick wall I didn’t want to bang my head against.”

  “Yeah, I know you.” He didn’t smile.

  I held on to the bars. “Pisses me off,” I muttered. “The way those assholes look down on me, and look down on you for being with me.”

  “Who cares what they think?” Cam’s expression softened, and he curled his fingers around mine. “I thought Brady Garrett didn’t give a fuck.”

  “I don’t!” My guts twisted. “I just— It’s like they don’t get why you’re with me, and so maybe I don’t either!”

  “Don’t buy into their bullshit.” Cam shook his head. “You never did before. I’m with you because I want to be.”

  “Why do you?” I whispered. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. “Not fishing for compliments, LT. Just wondering.”

  Cam sighed. He shifted closer to the bars. He let go of my hand and reached around the back of my neck. Tugged me closer so our foreheads met. “I love you because you’re you, Brady, and I don’t care if they get it or not. You’re the only one who has to get it.”

  “Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t get it. Not when I’d seen the way he looked at the stars and his whole expression shifted, opened, like he was seeing something beautiful, something wondrous. And something heartbreaking, because they’d never let him have that again.

  “I love you,” he said, and I wondered which one of us he was trying to convince. “You’re like a secret nobody else has heard yet, and the selfish part of me is glad that other people don’t know you the way I do, because if they saw how perfect you are, every one of them would try to steal you away from me.”

  “Bullshit,” I whispered, because how could I compete with the starlight?

  He rubbed his palm over my hair.

  “And fuck you, because if I cry in the stockade, I’ll be a joke,” I said, pulling away to scrub at my face.

  “Lucky you don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.”

  “Lucky,” I agreed, frowning at him.

  “Anyway.” Cam pressed his palm to the side of my face. “I don’t think Sam will tell anyone.”

  I glanced up at the camera pointing down into my cell. Right. Sam. And whoever the hell else was watching the feed. I stepped back and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Okay. I’ll see you in a week.”

  Cam got that worried look on his face. That one where a tiny line appeared between his eyebrows, at the top of his nose. Sometimes I liked to rub that spot with my thumb and tease him about getting wrinkles.

  “Wrinkles, huh? Pretty sure that one’s your fault.”

  “You blaming me ’cos you’re not pretty anymore, LT?”

  “You are such a bad liar. I’ll always be pretty.”

  “Dickhead.”

  He probably fucking would be too, but I hadn’t told him that. The planet’s poster boy didn’t need his ego stroked by me. Not when there were other parts I’d rather stroke.

  “Okay,” he said quietly, the soft skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling with concern. “Take care, okay? I’ll miss you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shuffling my boots on the floor. “Okay.”

  Cam opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. He just kind of smiled, then jerked his head in a nod and left. When he was gone, I sat down on my cot and stared up at the camera.

  Wondered if some asshole was watching the Brady Garrett show.

  Showed the camera my middle finger just in case.

  * * * *

  Came up from sleep. Choking. Gasping. The dream was still on me. Still had its claws in me. It was here. Fucking here. I could hear it breathing. Feel it in the darkness at my back.

  No no no no no.

  It was in here.

  I flung myself off my cot and hit the concrete floor hard enough to jar every bone in my body, but not enough to shake that dream. The dream was still on me and so was the darkness, the black pressing down, forcing the air from my lungs.

  “Cam!” I choked on his name.

  Bars. There were bars. I was in a cage, and there was a Faceless in here with me.

  Every nerve in my body screamed, soundless but at the same time deafening.

  The stockade. I was in the stockade.

  I reached the bars and held on to them, too afraid to look back into the gloom behind me.

  Too afraid of what I was sure was standing there.

  Bray-dee.

  Fuck.

  “Help!” I didn’t have the breath to make it loud.

  A light flickered on in the hall, and I heard the stomp and scrape of Stockade Sam’s footsteps. “What the hell?” he grizzled as he rounded the corner.

  “Sam…” I wanted to scream. Wanted to demand he save me from the Faceless that was standing behind me in the dark. Wanted to make him admit it was there, that it was real, that it wasn’t just a dream…but what if he did? What if he looked, and he saw, and it was real? What if it wasn’t just in my head? I wiped my face with my sleeve and sucked in a breath. “Had a…had a bad dream.”

  Sam grunted. “Get back to your cot, Garrett. It’s four in the fucking morning.”

  “Yeah.” Needed to catch my breath first.

  Sam pointed at the camera. “I’ve got my eye on you, kid.”

  He wasn’t threatening me. We both knew that. He was reassuring me. Comforting me, even though neither of us would ever admit it, because the guy who lost a leg in the war against the Faceless? He knew what nightmares were too.

  * * * *

  I spent three days in the stockade, missing Cam and Lucy and wishing I could shut my mouth before it got me into trouble. I missed them, and I knew they’d be missing me too. I hated thinking of Cam having to explain to Lucy that I was stuck in here again because I couldn’t remember how to keep my stupid mouth shut. I thought of Mike Marcello too, and how I was the only guy who actually visited and talked to him, and how I was a dick for letting myself get riled up by those officers at the tribunal, because who would Marcello play cards with now? It wasn’t just me they were punishing by putting me in here.

  I was still angry, though.

  Angry enough to punch the wall and bust my knuckles open.

  In the day, I was.

  I was still carrying that anger around, even though I’d tried to shed it.

  I’d
tried.

  It was supposed to be easier back home. Once we weren’t stuck on a Defender anymore, surrounded by stir-crazy guys pumped up on their own fucking testosterone and bristling to prove something to someone. Anything to anyone. There wasn’t a day out in the black when there wasn’t a fight or something, and nobody gave a shit about the consequences because at least a good brawl broke up the fucking monotony. Back home, away from that, everything was supposed to be easier. It was supposed to be better.

  But the military still had its claws in us, and Cam was still an officer and I was still enlisted, and he was from the city and I was from Kopa and sometimes I didn’t know how shit worked here. Sometimes I felt like Lucy, straight off the train, gaping at the tall buildings and all the people. Sometimes I knew that the officers, that the neighbors, that everyone except for Cam would always see me as nothing more than a filthy reffo from Kopa. And that one day they’d make him see it too.

  And sometimes I remembered that it was worse than that. Worse than the sum of our differences. Worse than the fact I didn’t know how to be a civilized human being.

  I’d looked a Faceless in the eye.

  I was a fucking insect.

  We all were.

  Sometimes anger was still all I had.

  Chapter Four

  “Garrett, do you want to get out of here?”

  If that question had come from anyone else, the answer would have been a resounding Fuck, yes. But coming from Chris Varro?

  I squinted up at him from where I was sitting on the floor, scraping marks on the concrete with a pebble I’d found lodged in the tread of my left boot. Well, there was nothing else to do. “What’s it gonna cost me?”

  Chris shook his head and grinned. “You’re a piece of work, Garrett, you know that? Three days in here, and you’re still full of fucking attitude. What’s your problem?”

  “Um…remember that one time your asshole buddies tortured me?”

  He snorted. “Torture? That was an advanced interrogation technique.”

  “You can take your advanced interrogation technique and shove it up your ass.” I showed him my middle finger. “Sir.”

  Chris curled his hands around the bars of my cell and stared through at me. His handsome face—and it was handsome; I would have preferred he had a face like the back end of a dog, but you can’t have everything—seemed shuttered for a moment. Then he smiled slightly. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “It was the Faceless. Would I stand by and let it happen again? Yeah, I would. If I thought someone was hiding information about the Faceless and I had to hurt some innocent guy to find it out, then yes. And I’m never going to apologize for that.”

  His truth hung between us starkly. Tension vibrated in the air between us, then shattered.

  And my truth—that I hated him less for his part in that than I did for the fact that he’d been Cam’s boyfriend first—slunk away with its tail between its legs.

  “You want out of here?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I said and shrugged. I tried to keep my attitude locked down for once. “Yeah, okay. I do.”

  He studied me silently, as though he was looking for the lie. There wasn’t one. I missed Cam and I missed Lucy, and I was sick of sleeping in a concrete cell with nothing but my nightmares for company.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll get you out.”

  I didn’t ask what it would cost me.

  Should have.

  * * * *

  “Brady!” Lucy was in my arms before I’d even managed to step inside the door. She squeezed me so hard I thought I felt a rib crack. “I got a B in my art project, and I made you a bracelet, and yesterday we had ice cream without you, and Cam’s making pasta and you have to tell him not to put carrots in mine!”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said, picking her up to swing her around. “But he probably won’t listen.”

  She squealed and, when I put her down, raced off toward her bedroom. “I’ll get you your bracelet!”

  I wondered if it matched the one that was on her wrist: pink and yellow glittery beads. Because that wouldn’t get me laughed at in public. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t wear it, though.

  Cam appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Brady?”

  “Got out early,” I told him.

  A frown settled across his forehead. “How?”

  “Chris Varro.”

  His frown deepened. “Chris?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal.

  He stepped forward to meet me. Our arms went around each other. Then Cam stepped back. He caught my hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the tape on my knuckles. “What’s this?”

  “Oh, that.” I squirmed a little under his scrutiny. “I may have punched a wall.”

  “Why?”

  “Bored,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I don’t know.”

  Bored and frustrated, and angry at myself for being in the stockade. And wanting to punish myself for that, even though it wouldn’t really be punishment because the pain in my hand would distract me from feeling miserable about missing Cam and Lucy. Punching that wall had felt good.

  “You have anger-management issues,” Stockade Sam had told me as he’d taped my hand. “Sort your shit out, kid.”

  “I really missed you,” I said, and this time my voice did crack.

  Cam tugged me closer and put his arms around me again. Bowed his head so our foreheads touched. Gave us a moment of quiet and peace right there in the kitchen doorway.

  The tension bled out of me.

  Did he know how much I needed that?

  Our hearts beat in counterpoint.

  Once, they’d beaten together.

  Then Lucy was back with us, grabbing at my hand and worming between us. Tugging an elastic band threaded with blue and green beads over my hand and onto my wrist.

  “Thanks, Lucy.”

  “Do you love it?” she asked proudly.

  “Yeah.” I squeezed her hard. “’Course I fucking do.”

  Cam raised his eyebrows at me.

  Right. Language. My three days in the stockade had not done great things for my manners.

  “Go on,” Cam said. “Go and help Lucy with her homework, and I’ll finish getting dinner ready.”

  “You sure?”

  He smiled. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”

  * * * *

  Sometimes, I figured I was still stuck in that fucking pod, and this life wasn’t real. This was just the fucking dream Kai-Ren’s pod played to me to stop me from fighting. That pod gave me everything I wanted, like an insidious drug swimming in my bloodstream now, that owned me. Maybe I didn’t even know I was a prisoner still. Maybe I was like those guys chained in the cave in that old story, watching a shadow play on the wall without ever being able to turn around and see the real thing.

  Back when I was stuck in a tin can in the black, I’d read a lot of books from Doc’s bookshelf. He didn’t just have medical books. He had a lot of stuff that mostly I didn’t get, but sometimes I got a glimpse of what the pages were trying to tell me. Like the guys in the cave, or the guy who had to push the rock up the hill every single day.

  Life is meaningless, I think that book said. Life is absurd. And a part of me laughed to read that, because it was so fucking true, but a part of me was scared as well, like the ground had just dropped out from underneath me and I was falling with no way to catch myself.

  Now, with my feet back on Earth, with Cam and Lucy, I didn’t trust I wasn’t still falling.

  “The blue is for the sea,” Lucy told me. She lay on her stomach on the floor, her legs bent at the knees and her ankles crossed. She chewed on the end of a plait while she colored in her map. “You can do the yellow if you want.”

  “What’s yellow for?”

  She jabbed her finger on her map. “For the gulf. For Kopa.”

  “Kopa was red.”

  “I know that,” Lucy said, huffing. “But on the map you do it in yellow.�
�

  I took the pencil, and we colored the map together.

  If Kopa was yellow on her map, I didn’t care. If she didn’t remember a thing about it in a year or two, I didn’t care. If I had a way to do it, I’d wipe Kopa right off the map myself.

  We colored until Cam called us for dinner. Then we ate around the small table while Cam and Lucy caught me up on their week. We had ice cream for dessert. Lucy complained because we were out of chocolate.

  “I can have vanilla,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “I suppose.”

  “Well, I don’t want to force you or anything,” Cam teased.

  She rolled her eyes.

  She was getting spoiled.

  Lucy Garrett, a reffo kid from Kopa, moaning about the wrong flavor of ice cream.

  Unbelievable.

  It should have felt fucking incredible, but right on the heels of that euphoria came something else, something that was maybe pride but was wrapped in thick layers of regret. I thought of my dad. Thought of how he’d worked himself into an early grave for us, his lungs rotting away until he choked on his last wet, sucking breath. I’d done what I’d always promised him—I’d looked after Lucy—but I wished he could have seen it, because I knew he must have died thinking she’d be next.

  Thinking that I’d failed.

  He must have died brokenhearted.

  I watched Lucy shovel ice cream in her mouth and tried to believe that this was real, that this moment was even possible.

  “Hey.” Cam was looking at me worriedly. “What’s up?”

  I drew a deep breath. “Nothing. Just tired.”

  Cam raised his brows.

  “Brady.”

  His lips didn’t move, but I heard it clear as fucking day.

  His voice in my head.

  Fear spiked through me. My heart forgot to beat.

  “Brady,” he said, reaching out to curl his fingers around my wrist. “Shit. You’ve gone white. Are you okay?”

  “You said my name,” I said. I couldn’t hear anything now over the sound of my blood rushing in my skull.