by Chloe Garner
She didn’t work like the others.
He wasn’t sure, with her, like he always was with the women he met, out. Didn’t know if she would follow, or if her eyes would lift and she’d just look him in the eye, inscrutable, flustered.
She leaned toward him and he slid back toward his seat, her breath matching his. He brushed her lips with his once more, his fingertips itching for the back of her neck.
“You said…” she breathed.
“Who the hell cares,” he answered, pressing his mouth harder against hers. She gasped, then twitched away, turning her face to the front again. He sat back into his seat, feeling electric. If she’d just go, there was so much.
“You were right,” she said after a moment. Cleared her throat. “You were right. Not until it’s all done. You could get in trouble.”
He wanted to tell her he didn’t care. It was true, right that moment. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to lay in a bed with her and watch her sleep. He wanted to hold her against him, skin on skin, slick, loud. He turned his face away, smiling.
“That’s the first time I’ve felt like me all day,” he said.
“What do you… Well. At least there’s that,” she said, opening her door and getting out. He put his head against the headrest once more and sighed, then grinned and got out. He felt better than he had in days.
“You never did tell me what you want for dinner,” he said.
*********
Jesse and Cassie sat at the beach. The sun was coming up. Their flight didn’t leave for another three hours.
“D.C.,” Cassie said. It was the first either of them had spoken since dinner the night before.
“Not a surprise,” Jesse said.
“It’s where the power is,” Cassie said. “D.C., London, Beijing.”
“Could have people working all three places,” Jesse said. Cassie shook her head.
“Help comes through the portal program,” she said. “So do rivals. After that, the whole planet is theirs.”
“You have theories what they want with it?” Jesse asked.
“So do you,” Cassie answered.
“A Wob-wob,” Jesse said.
“It’s a nice, quiet planet,” Cassie said. “Comfortable enough, if you’ve got a Caladais to civilize it for you.”
“You broke her out,” Jesse said. “And she met you. That’s a virus they’re never going to get out of her.”
Cassie nodded.
“Hope so.”
“I don’t know Olivia,” he said.
“I do,” she answered. He nodded.
The sand under her fingertips was damp and lodged itself under her fingernails. Her slacks would be wet, when she got up. She didn’t have a change of clothes. She’d track sand onto the plane.
“You could have gone on without me,” he said.
“You waited for me,” she told him. “You deserve to be there when I find them. You put in the work.”
“You short-circuited me,” he answered and she let the corner of her mouth come up.
“Dumb luck,” she said. “Just doing a favor for a friend.”
“You going to tell me how you plan on finding your missing base personnel?” he asked.
“Going to find who’s keeping them,” Cassie said. “They’ll tell me where they are.”
He openly looked over at her, now.
“I know that you don’t want my advice…”
“Then don’t give it to me,” she cut in.
“… but you need to think about who you want to be. You knew who you were, before, but Mab handed you a whole bag full of new skills, and you need to decide who you want to be, after you figure out how to use them. You don’t have to be anyone different than who you were, if you don’t want to let them change you.”
She drew a deep breath and held it for a moment.
“I found my best friend in the middle of an unknown universe using technology I didn’t understand, a year ago, and pulled him back here by carrying his energy in my body. I’m never going to be the woman I was, when the portal program told me I was too old to go on jumps again.”
“Cass, I really did like her.”
“I know you did.”
He’d patronized her, he’d withheld truth, he’d left her hanging so he could swoop in and save her. But he’d liked her. She did know that.
She smiled.
Being Palta was complicated.
Things said.
Things unsaid.
Things known.
Things guessed-at.
“I’m amazed you managed to sustain the species,” she said.
“There were population scientists who modeled the ongoing risk of population collapse,” he said. “Not many species have to worry about their members failing to procreate because they can’t stand each other.”
“It isn’t that,” she scolded, and she heard him smile.
“No, it isn’t that. It’s that we’re too difficult.”
“When was the last time you had sex?” she asked.
“If you wanted to know, you should have asked when you had leverage,” he answered. She wondered if sex was taboo among the Palta the way it was with humans. It seemed more than likely, knowing Jesse, but it was possible he was just unimpressed with it.
“Being Palta is going to change me,” she said. “But did you ever consider that being around humans might change you? Make you better?”
“Better than being Palta?” he laughed. “Never. No.” He sighed. “I’ve spent less time with humans than most of the species I went to with my dad.”
“But you stayed with us,” she said. “Voluntarily.”
“I was doing penance,” he said.
“Lie.”
“You think?” he asked.
“I do.”
“I cause the slow-motion extinction of my entire species, and you don’t think I might bury myself among primates for a while and really meditate on how bad that was?”
She snorted.
“You do that full time,” she said. “Don’t need us to help.”
He smiled again.
“I’m never going to get over it,” he said.
“If you did, then maybe I’d start worrying about whether or not you were as bad a person as you think you are,” she answered.
“I’m never going to move on.”
She drew another breath.
“Lie.”
He looked over at her and she nodded slowly.
“At least this one, you’re lying to yourself, too. You’re too happy and too resilient, and you’ve got too many years of life left. If you haven’t already moved on, you will. You won’t ever get over it, but you will move on.”
He lay back on the sand. He was going to get sand in his hair that way.
“I don’t want to be happy,” he said. “I shouldn’t be. They’re all dead.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees, picking sand out from underneath her fingernails with her thumbnails.
“I’d point out that you’re doing a bad job of being miserable, with as much fun as you have at everything, but that wouldn’t help,” she said. “And I won’t argue that it wasn’t your fault, because it was. There was a rule and you broke it. I can tell you that I understand. And maybe… maybe I can hear that you’re telling me from your own experience that I should pay a little more attention to the big rules, because they’re there for a reason.” She held out a lone finger at him without moving. “Maybe.” She heard him laugh softly. “But it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to live on without them, or if you’re going to spend the rest of your life feeling guilty for doing it anyway.”
“You know me so well,” he teased. “What would you do if I told you that I’m going to figure out what Mab did and put you back the way you were when I found you?”
She looked over.
It was possible he meant that.
Penance.
“I would fight you,” she said evenly. “The same way I wou
ld with anyone wielding a mortal weapon against me.”
“Mortal weapon?” he asked. “For making you human again?”
“From a very simple perspective, you’d be robbing me of hundreds of years of life,” she said. “Most people would consider that a delayed form of murder, yes.”
“Not if that life wasn’t yours to begin with,” he said.
“I didn’t steal it,” she said. There was a flicker as they both thought of Mab, of how she had taken Mab’s life with the gift of years - and ability - that Jesse’s Palta daughter had given her. He didn’t say it out loud, and neither did she.
“I could do it,” he said quietly. “Without you knowing. And you couldn’t reverse it, as a human.”
She tipped her head to look back over her shoulder at him thoughtfully.
“Do you know that?” she asked.
“You’ve thought about this,” he said. “You said you hadn’t figured out how to reverse it.”
She shrugged, looking back out over the gray ocean.
“I would fight you,” she said. “And I’m not sure if I would ever forgive you.”
“I could live with you fighting me,” he said. She nodded. She heard what he hadn’t said.
She knew so many things that she never would have known, as the human version of herself. Even just simple things about the beach where she sat. The idea of going back to being blind like that… She’d liked herself. Still did like who she’d been. It didn’t mean the idea of going back wasn’t revolting.
“You do it,” she said after a few minutes. “You change my DNA back to human, you’d better erase my memory, too. It’s the only way it would stick. And I wouldn’t know you anymore. Wouldn’t remember any of the things I’ve seen. Any of the things I’ve done.”
“I could never do that,” Jesse said. It was an admission that cost him. One that ran so firmly counter to his Palta nature that she was genuinely surprised he’d said it.
“Mab said that she turned me Palta so that you wouldn’t be alone,” Cassie said, matching sacrifice for sacrifice. “And yet we spend less time together than we did when I was human.”
“She wouldn’t have been surprised,” Jesse said.
It was done.
Whatever it was, it was done. The strange penguin-dance of being romantically involved with a Palta was complete. For now. It had so many stages. They watched the waves roll in for a while, and then a family came down to the beach and Jesse played frisbee with the two kids, taking off his shoes and his socks and running out in the waves with them while their parents looked on from blankets.
He was happy. He loved to play. It had been her first experience with him, that sense of play. He looked up from the sea foam at her, once, grinning, mouth open, carefree. There was something about him that only came out with strangers.
It didn’t just make her jealous.
It made her hungry.
*********
Olivia slept on the couch.
He couldn’t convince her to take the bed, even against his promises to sleep on the couch, because she said he was still recovering. He suspected the idea of being in his bedroom made her uncomfortable as well, and he hadn’t pushed it beyond what he had to, to feel honorable about it. He made dinner and they ate quietly, then he went to bed. She woke him twice, checking on him, then his alarm went off and he got up and showered while she made coffee. He would have made breakfast, but he was running late already, so he left with apologies, going down to meet his driver.
Not that kind of girl.
It’s what Cassie had said about herself, long ago. Olivia wasn’t that kind of girl, either.
He hadn’t known how to be what Cassie wanted him to be, but damn if he wasn’t going to figure it out with Olivia. You didn’t let it happen twice, not if you weren’t stupid.
The files on his desk were gone, sent to be executed, and he sat down in his chair, opening his e-mail and going through the overnight reports from the portal.
A few minor mishaps, but nothing requiring more than an acknowledgment that he’d seen them. The terminations from among the second portal staff were continuing, but the prosecutions were beginning to spin up, as well. Charges would be filed for almost a full dozen of the supervisors who should have realized just how unacceptable Donovan’s orders had been, should have stepped around him in the chain of command. It wouldn’t have done them any good, but they hadn’t known that, and it made them culpable.
Poor sods.
He signed several of the forms to move charges forward, then looked at the stack of resumes Peterson had sent to him. It was an act of protest. These were the guys whose careers he was ending before they began, because the next crop of jumpers would take all of the next set of openings - younger was better, so long as they’d graduated.
There wasn’t anything Troy could do about it.
They were building a second portal, according to the budget reports. He had to pinch pennies to afford it, all of the things they had to go do again to make it look like the secondary portal was an acceptably big effort.
He couldn’t make all the things right that were going wrong. All he could do was fix the mess he’d walked into as best he could, to make the program capable of going forward, after that.
He wished Olivia had come to bed with him. It would have made the morning easier.
Bridgette came in with coffee.
“You aren’t going to like it,” she said.
“Do I like any of it?” Troy answered, taking his cup from her and settling in for the bad news.
“Lieutenant du Charme’s ID was used to buy a ticket from Buenos Aires to Washington D.C. for this morning. We think that Jesse the Jalnian is with her.”
“Why am I not going to like it?” Troy asked. She twisted her mouth to the side.
“Because Secret Service heard about it before we did, and they’re going to meet the plane before it’s allowed to go to the terminal. They’re going to arrest her.”
Troy blinked.
He didn’t know whether to get angry or laugh.
“What charges?” he asked.
“Espionage,” she said. “Terrorism. Colluding with foreign governments. Colluding with foreign terrestrials.”
“She is a foreign terrestrial,” Troy said. “And did no one learn anything from arresting Jesse? You can’t hold them.”
She scratched her chin and sat.
“Look, my friend could get in big trouble if they find out she told me, but I think you deserve to know, and she… well, with the Service being implicated with the Major, she thought she owed it to us.”
Troy raised his eyebrows, and she nodded.
“They’re going to hold her as a human. They say that she isn’t foreign terrestrial because she wasn’t born a foreign terrestrial, and that her… changes… are cosmetic only.”
Troy did snort at this.
“Cosmetic,” he said. “They should have met her when she was a giant fish.”
“A fish, sir?” she asked, and he nodded dismissively.
“Never mind. Yes, it’s true. What are we doing to take care of her?”
She shook her head.
“The Air Force considers her an asset, not a service member. They don’t have the resources to stick out their necks for her.”
Troy shook his head.
“We have a contract with her,” he said.
“You don’t want to invoke that,” Bridgette said. “She’s on a plane from another country to the capital and you aren’t with her, nor did you know where she was.”
“Are you suggesting I protect myself and don’t help her at all?” Troy asked. “Because you need to know that that’s not going to fly.”
She pressed her lips.
“I’ve read your trial records,” she said. “The ones that weren’t over my security clearance. Which is impressive, by the way. I know that you’d risk everything for her, but if you get yourself pulled out of this chair, no one is going to like the man who rep
laces you. I’m not saying you should protect yourself and leave her twisting in the wind. I’m saying you should protect the base and let her take care of herself. Because,” she said, lowering her head to look at him firmly. “As angry as it makes you that they’re doing this, I don’t honestly believe that you’re worried about her.”
“Can we get her a message?” he asked. She looked up for a moment, then back at him again.
“I think so. So long as it’s something that you and I, plus my friend, are going to be the only ones who ever know about it.”
“Just tell her I’m acting with faith, not fear,” he said, and she nodded.
“I’ll do my best.”
He shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee and setting it down on his desk.
“Odds are only fifty-fifty that they take her off the plane,” he said. “After that, the idea that they’re going to hold her until you can get her a message are pretty low. Especially if Jesse’s with her. They have no idea what they’re up against.”
She frowned.
He didn’t like that frown.
“There are two ways of looking at it,” she said slowly. Troy sat forward.
“I’m listening.”
“Either they took the risk seriously and acted in good faith against two important and dangerous threats…” she started.
“Okay,” Troy coaxed.
“Or they’re going to use the rest of the humans on the plane as hostages to make the Jalnians go along with the arrest.”
Troy frowned, folding his hands in his lap.
“They’re going to make her come in by threating disproportionate violence that would have collateral damage,” he said.
“No one on the ground there would ever agree with that statement,” she said quietly. It was a yes.
“Cassie will go with them,” he said thoughtfully. “But they can’t keep her.”
“They’ve been studying Jesse…” she started, and Troy laughed, surprising both of them.