by Jenn Burke
Finally, he flipped the wallet open, remembering at the last second to select the voice-only option. “‘Lo?”
Silence greeted him, stretching for long enough that Zed wondered if the call had gone to a message after all. Then, “Zed?”
“Ness. Hey.”
“You sound like shit. Why no holo?”
“‘Cause. My brother did something to my brain.”
“What?” Wow, she sounded way more startled than she should. And loud. Fuck.
“Drinks,” Zed explained. “I drank. He drank. We drank.” He swallowed, then swallowed again. No more talking about drinking.
A pause. “Are you still drunk?”
“Uh...no...I, uh...oh God.” Zed held the wallet aside as he heaved into the toilet bowl. Again. He’d lost count of the instances of retching, a bout of amnesia he was eminently grateful for. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he reveled in the slight breeze generated by the automatic flush before bringing the wallet back up. “Not after that?”
“Wonderful. Bloody freaking wonderful.” Nessa spoke as though her teeth were clenched together, the words underscored with a rumble. “Are you done?”
“Think so.”
“Good. That was disgusting.” She sighed. “We picked up the package on Petrel. Ran into an old friend who wanted to catch up, but we managed to get away without too much chatter.”
An old friend—Zed’s sluggish mind rotated around that reference. Had to be Agrius or the AEF. Given that Agrius didn’t give a damn about Dieter—as far as they knew—that narrowed it down. Shit. He hoped the lack of “chatter” Ness referred to meant they weren’t ID’d.
“Was the package, uh...intact?” Covert language was hard when you’d done your best to liquefy your brain cells. But he needed to know if Dieter was okay. Or as okay as he could be.
“Yeah. It’s all good. Protective casing still in place.”
Protective...casing...what? Before Zed had figured out that bit of intel, Ness moved on.
“Now, if I talk to you about Fixer, are you going to remember?”
Zed pushed upward, hissing as pain ricocheted through his entire body—head, neck, stomach...and intensifying the ache in his chest. Ignoring the discomfort, he focused on the voice in the wallet. “Is he okay? Did he get hurt on the—when you picked up the package? Can I talk to him?”
“He’s not okay.” Ness sucked in a breath and rushed onward. “He’s not injured or hurt, but he’s not okay, Zed.”
Not injured. Thank God. But Ness was right, he wasn’t okay. Zed knew that. The quietness, the distance, the more sensitive hair-trigger, the almost-cruelty the last time they’d made love...”Yeah,” he whispered.
“He’s not eating. He’s drugging himself with...I think he’s mixing the painkillers he got for his shoulder with the sedatives I gave him for his nightmares.”
Fuck. Fuck.
“He’s even more anti-social than usual. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s fuzzy from the drugs or...hell, this is Fixer, so it’s just an exacerbation of his usual state. But he’s disconnected himself from the crew. Holing up in his cabin, not talking to anyone. Eli’s worried. We’re all really worried, but you know how Elias is.”
Yeah. Elias thought of Flick as his little brother, and to watch him disintegrate this way had to be hard on the captain. At least as hard as it was for Zed to hear about it.
Damn it, Flick, why do you never ask for help?
Zed squeezed his eyes shut. Part of him wanted to be angry at Flick. Furious, righteous. He was the one who’d been wronged this time. In the darker moments, he’d wondered if Flick was doing this to pay him back for dying, to give him a taste of what that had been like, if only a small one. But hearing Ness’s worry for Flick deep-sixed those thoughts. And his actions...those were not the actions of a man who was making choices with any sort of premeditation.
Flick needed help. Afterward...afterward, they’d figure out what the hell all of this meant for them.
“What do you need me to do?”
A shaky breath wobbled over the connection. “I don’t know.”
“And when you guys get back?” Zed lifted a hand to rub at his aching forehead—then grimaced as the movement tugged at something on his chest. On his nipple. What the...?
“When we get back...” Another pause, another heavy breath.
“Your professional opinion. If this wasn’t Fix, if you didn’t know him, what would you recommend?” Zed poked at his shirt-covered pec. Okay, no, he hadn’t imagined it. There was something there. A bandage.
“I’d want him to see someone. Get evaluated.” Her voice took on some of the clinical crispness Zed was used to hearing. “I think it would be a good idea.”
“For Flick?”
“And you too.”
“Then I’ll arrange it. It’ll happen.”
“This is Fix we’re talking about.”
“It’ll happen.” Zed left his chest alone, the pain in his heart competing with the aches throughout the rest of his body. “Ness...it was Flick’s idea, wasn’t it. To leave? It wasn’t Marnie suddenly deciding—”
“Marnie didn’t suddenly decide, no.”
Zed gritted his teeth. “Do you think—”
“I think he isn’t thinking straight. Okay? Don’t read more into it. And don’t let him screw you two up. Make him say it to your face if he wants to end it.”
“I kept telling him I loved him. I rushed him, didn’t I?”
“Honey, I don’t know.” Fuck, things were bad when Ness brought out the endearments. “I think there’s a lot going on in Fixer’s head that he doesn’t even understand. He hasn’t faced what he went through with the stin, not really, and your death was the proverbial straw. That’s why I want him to talk to someone, okay?” He could hear the gentle, sad smile in her voice. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Right. I’ll...um. Keep in touch?”
“Will do. Take care of yourself.”
Zed tossed his wallet to the floor and leaned back against the wall across from the toilet. He wanted to take care of Flick, he wanted to fix all the things that were wrong...but he couldn’t bloody well do that if Flick wasn’t here, could he?
“Goddamn it.”
Sighing, Zed focused on what he could do at this moment—figure out what the hell was under his shirt. He poked at it again, then yanked his SFT over his head. He eyed the pair of bandages covering his nipples for all of a second before ripping them away. Not smart. Pain made his lungs seize, tears stinging his eyes, and sent him leaning over the toilet again. After a minute of unproductive retching—his stomach was finally empty—he turned his attention back to his chest.
Two new piercings greeted him on his previously virgin nipples. Flashes of the sequence of events the night before slithered through his lethargic brain. Drinking, planning the tattoo excursion—which had clearly turned into a piercing excursion—and Maddox talking about—
He shoved a hand down his shorts and inspected his dick, then breathed a sigh of relief. No metal down there. Not that he doubted Maddox’s assertion that it enhanced sensations, it just wasn’t for him.
Thank God Drunk Zed agreed.
* * *
Squashed into the corner of the booth that served as conference table and mess table aboard the Chaos, Felix worked on quieting his fidgets. He needed to be at this team meeting, physically and mentally.
“We can’t go back to Alpha,” Marnie began.
Felix sucked in a breath and nearly choked on the word rushing back out. “What?” Everyone gave him the look he’d come to recognize. As if you care, they all said with their variously sad eyes. “We were supposed to pick up Dieter and then go back, right?”
“If the AEF hadn’t caught up with us here, that might have bee
n nice,” Dieter answered from the end of the table. “But if we return now, we’re only going to endanger Zed’s position.” He lifted his chin toward Marnie. “Ryan get an ID on the male operative yet?”
“Martin Jimenez. Also Mil-Int, also a former desk jockey.”
“Were they the B Team?” Felix asked.
“As far as I can tell, they were the only team, which means someone is putting unknowns on this. People they can cast adrift if they need to.”
“Isn’t that what black operatives are for?”
“I don’t think this is officially an unofficial op.”
“Huh?” Felix tried and failed to unravel the logic loop.
“It’s a deniable operation run through convoluted channels. I doubt General Bradley is even aware of what his left hand is doing, if he even knows he has one. He’s the public face for this farce, nothing more. Point is, if we head back to Alpha, we could be bringing trouble for Zed and his family.”
“So where do we go?” Elias asked.
Felix repressed the urge to insist they go to Alpha, unsure why it was suddenly so important that he return to Zed. Maybe it was seeing what the AEF had done to another of their assets.
Dieter Sorge was confined to a hover chair which he’d positioned at the end of the crowded booth. He’d broken his neck in an accident just before the end of the war. Despite his disability, he still looked every inch the soldier, with burly shoulders and chiseled features. Blond hair cut regulation short, brown eyes foxed with lines of pain and fatigue. But he also exhibited clear effects of Project Dreamweaver. With alarming regularity, he faded. Ceased to be present in mind.
The injury had an upside—he could no longer Zone or phase-shift. As a result, the mental degradation that had claimed most of the team had been slowed. But no one questioned that he’d eventually get lost somewhere in the spreading blankness of his mind. Nessa had already imaged his brain. He had holes—big ones.
The hover chair had been a gift from the AEF. The only gift. Sorry you broke your neck, man. Here, have a chair. Now stop bothering us and go die peacefully. Which Dieter did not intend to do. He’d been on some obscure station working with bio-implant artists, trying to devise a way to regain the use of his legs. Apparently his research into nerve regeneration could hold clues to slowing his degradation further, which could be good news for the rest of the team. His mistake had been communicating that to the AEF. He’d been on the run for three months and had finally coasted to a halt on Petrel Station.
Now they were idling in a numbered system just off the main chart, trying to figure out where to go next.
“We have enough fuel for one traverse of jump-space before we will need to collect more gas,” Qek said.
“Alpha is a big place,” Felix put in. “Zed’s family has that private dock.”
Elias handed out another sad look. “You’d really do that to his family? To Zed?”
“This is his project,” Felix protested. “We’re...” His thoughts rolled sullenly back to the to-do list he’d made for himself that first day on Alpha. Reunite Zed with his family, reunite Zed with his team. Claim Zed for himself. He could put a double check next to that first point, couldn’t he? Would ticking off the second point gain some favor toward the third? When had doing the right thing become an objective list? Sighing, he scrubbed a hand through his hair.
Nessa spoke into the pause. “We’re all here because we want to help the rest of his team. Not for Zed’s sake, for the men and women still out there who need help. We’re the only ones who seem to care.”
Ever the humanitarian. Felix scowled at her. She ignored him.
“My family has an asteroid in the Balmoral system,” Dieter said. “We could go there.”
“An asteroid?” Qek asked.
“They bought the rights to it after it was mined out about a century ago. There was nothing there but a big hole inside rock. Made a great place to set up a habitat. Was quite the trend back then, to buy a hollow rock and move all the extended family inside. Attach a couple of thrusters to one end and you’ve got a mobile home.”
Felix had heard of cults buying asteroids and touring the galaxy in their moveable churches. He’d also heard of cartels doing the same thing. A mined-out asteroid wasn’t much use for anything else and they made quiet, out-of-the-way places to live, if you weren’t into crowds. Which he wasn’t. Idly, he wondered how much a big hollow rock would cost.
“Is your family still there?” Elias asked.
“No.”
“Oh.” Nessa’s quiet word could be interpreted as a question.
“The war...” Dieter trailed off and no one prompted him to continue.
The fucking war. Now was not the time to spin off into a bitter rant, however. “We can’t help Zed from an asteroid halfway across the galaxy.”
“No, but it does give us somewhere to take Dieter. Somewhere safe. Then we can go back to Alpha and sneak Zed out from under the AEF if we have to,” Marnie said.
Felix scowled at her. “If he wants to leave Alpha.”
“Oh, he wants to leave. Trust me.”
Trust a Mil-Int operative? He did have to wonder where she got that particular piece of intel, though.
“Set a course for Balmoral, then?” Elias asked.
Around the table, everyone nodded and then looked at him. Felix spread his hands. “What? Like you all care what I think. I’m just the decoy, remember?” He poked Qek until she exited the booth, then slid after her and strode toward the door.
“Flick—”
“Forget it. Whatever you want to say, just forget it. I’ll be in engineering looking for something to fix.”
* * *
Felix stared at the ghostly hand that jutted up from his work bench. He’d intended to work on his glove. He’d hoped doing something constructive might help him find his balance. That even keel. He’d hoped to distract himself from the vials of pills and the lure of another long and dreamless sleep. Nothingness, emptiness. An escape from the pain and anguish, for which he could only blame himself.
His mood confused him. The circular motion of his thoughts made even less sense. The rage swirling through his gut was familiar, though. A sharp, burning pain that at once galvanized and paralyzed. He wanted to break things and fix things. Break and fix. One after the other. Both, neither. He didn’t want to go to Balmoral. He wanted to turn around and go back to Alpha. Fuck pride, fuck the fact he’d probably left a few bridges smoldering. Leaving had been the wrong choice and the only way to make it right was to return.
Having Dieter aboard pretty much excluded that option. Returning to Alpha now would jeopardize the mission and the safety of all involved, including Zed. The right choice now was to stand up and be counted, to fully commit to the task. To stand up for Dieter and Zed, against the AEF. Stand for something, be someone. He had to stop wallowing in self-pity and despair and do the right thing by everyone.
But...fuck. It was hard. The broken pieces of him kept tearing away, leaving him raw and vulnerable. He fumbled in his pocket, fingers of his right hand grazing his little vial of dreamtime. Oblivion beckoned.
“He didn’t want to stay on Alpha any more than you did.”
Marnie’s voice was like some weird echo. Felix spun around, startled, but perhaps not really surprised she’d sought him out. He opened his mouth to make a smart response, but all that emerged was a soft croak.
“What happened to you?” Marnie asked.
“You know what happened to me.”
“I don’t mean during the war. I’ve read the transcript of your exit interview.” Of course she had. “I mean now. Do you know how long it took Ryan to get you and Zed into the same region of space, the same bloody station?”
“What do you mean?” He knew what she meant, but needed a moment to process what he con
sidered a betrayal.
“The Chaos was easier to move than Zed. He’s a wily bastard. But eventually the stars aligned and we got you both to Dardanos. From there, it was only a matter of rearranging the job queue so that he selected the Chaos first when searching for a ride to Chloris.”
She had arranged for them to meet up, to look for Emma together?
“Why would you do that?”
Marnie seemed truly puzzled. “You were both so lost.”
“But I wasn’t. I was doing okay!”
“Remembering to answer my messages once a year isn’t okay, Flick. I’m your friend. Zed is—”
“Stop calling me Flick.”
No one ever calls me that anymore. Except...
Marnie’s brows drew down. “Why?”
“Because Flick is dead. You’ve read the ‘script, right? The stin killed him. He’s gone.”
With those words, a void opened up, the black space both frightening and beckoning. Felix longed to slide into it, to embrace the sort of madness that would require Nessa and her syringe to visit engineering. Shoulders heaving with breath, hands shaking, legs trembling, he pushed away from his workbench and stumbled toward his quarters, intent on the other escape. His bunk, his pills. A hand arrested his purpose, fingers clamping around his shoulder and nearly pulling him from his feet. Felix spun into the restraining arm, tackling Marnie backward.
“Why are you here?” He had to force the words between clenched teeth. “What the fuck do you want?”
“To help Zed. I thought you’d want the same thing.” She ducked, evading his bunched-up right fist.
“He doesn’t need my help. He doesn’t need me.”
“But he does, Felix. God, do you even know what reports of your death did to him?”
She might as well have hit him in the gut. Felix staggered back a step. “I’m not dead.”
She cocked her head, shiny black hair falling across her jaw. “Just Flick. But not you.”