“Yup,” Edwards said, “it’s definitely me. I’m moving around the corner, kid. Don’t die.”
I didn’t argue with that, either. Just tried to enjoy the feeling of knotted, battered muscles relaxing in the warmth without falling over.
“Hey, Edwards?” I called as I began rubbing soap on with one hand, clinging to the rail with the other. “Can I ask you something?”
“Wondering what to do when you want ‘em both?”
I almost slipped off the hand rail. “What?”
A low, rumbling chuckle. “Nothing. Yeah, kid, as long as it doesn’t involve the words can you and scrub my, ask away.”
“I was just wondering… Davis and Mara and…”
“You’re wondering why I’m here when my fireteam isn’t?”
“Sorta.”
“I heard Dillard tell Carter to send over a couple fireteams from Second Squad to watch you. They were a bit more grateful than most for your spooky scud after said scud got those things out of their heads back at the worship hall. I just offered to tag along.”
“Why?”
“Alpha, kid, you trying to throw all your friends away?”
“No, I just…”
“I’m gropping with you. I just came to help. Couldn’t pass up the chance to chafe Evie’s hide, either. She was not a fan of me coming here. Says you’re cursed, demon or not.”
It took me a second to recall that Evie was the name he called Mara by, but when I did, I wasn’t overly surprised by the news. Those steely eyes of hers had never tried to hide the fact that it was an abomination she saw when she looked at me.
“And you’re not worried she’s right?”
“Eh, not so much. They’re a superstitious folk, those specters.”
I frowned. “Mara was a specter?”
She certainly wasn’t one now, unless she was hiding the shroud and parading with Hound Company for fun.
I nearly slipped again as Edwards jerked his head around the corner to shoot me an incredulous look. “Of course she was a specter, kid. Alpha, have you seen her shoot?”
“I, uh, yeah—But…”
Edwards seemed to remember himself then, and retreated back around the corner. “Look, I’m not gonna pretend like the stuff you do out there doesn’t put a little frost on my wrinklies. But I also can’t help notice you haven’t done a thing but try to save lives with your, uh, magic stuff. Hard to condemn that, as far as I’m concerned.”
I finished rinsing off lathered soap and waved the shower off. “I uh… Thanks, Edwards.”
I was surprisingly comforted by his words. And it only made me feel worse to realize that, in all my burning need to stop the raknoth and my indignation at being a tool for the very people who’d so recently been trying to kill me, I hadn’t even bothered taking the time to get to know the people who were more or less becoming my squad mates.
An apology was halfway to my tongue when Edwards’ massive hand reached around to offer me a fluffy blue robe. “Don’t mention it, kid. Just don’t ask me to pat you dry.”
I took the robe with a smile, deciding that I liked Edwards. “So why do you like pissing her off so much?” I asked as I cautiously stepped out of the shower, robed and feeling immeasurably better for the soft fabric and damp freshness pleasantly hugging my body.
“Who, Evie?” Edwards turned and looked at me like I’d asked why he bothered working out so much. “Because it makes the sex a thousand times better.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you two were… Oh.”
He grinned broadly at the look on my face. “Take my word for it, kid, there’s nothing hotter than an angry specter on top of you, going so hard you’re not quite sure if she’s trying to grop you or kill you.” His eyes went distant with some fond memory. “Or both.”
“Well, that’s uh… I don’t know. But speaking from recent experience, I think I could do without ever having a woman try to kill me in bed again.”
He came back from his daydream with a chuckle. “Nonsense, broto. You just haven’t pissed off the right lady yet.”
Stomach sinking, I glanced at my palmlight. Still nothing.
“Oh, I think I pissed her off just fine.”
“Ah, you kids…” He clapped a fatherly hand on my shoulder, then recoiled at my wince. “Oops. Sorry. But seriously, if it’s really right, you kids’ll make it work. Just don’t be a scudhead. Oh, and uh, while you’re at it, maybe don’t tell Evie I said any of this stuff about her either, huh? Unless…” He looked thoughtful for a second, then shook his head. “Nah. Not worth it.”
When we left the privy, there were two people waiting for us in the room—a dark-haired medic I didn’t recognize, and…
Son of a goat-gropper.
“Docere Mathis,” I grunted as Edwards looked between us in confusion, probably wondering why I’d stopped cold in the middle of the room. The medic, too, looked less than pleased by my reaction, frowning at the docere as if wondering if he should ask him to leave.
None of our reactions fazed Mathis’ stony-eyed stare, of course.
“Please,” he said, waving to the medic without averting his eyes from me, inviting the man to do what he would while also nixing any thoughts of his being asked to leave.
The medic turned to me, still frowning, and gestured for me to get back in bed. I almost argued, loathing the thought of taking a submissive position for whatever lecture my old docere might’ve come here to give, but my shaking legs were hardly pillars of dominant masculinity, so I let Edwards help me back into bed.
“Did the High General send you?” I asked Mathis as the medic went to work reconnecting my lines and checking the bedside machines.
Mathis was a rigid column of darkwood disapproval. “Something like that.”
Great.
“Here to berate me some more?” I asked, trying to spread my hands in indignant scorn and instead only earning myself an apprehensive tut-tut from the medic, who’d moved on to a light physical examination.
“She didn’t think the house arrest was enough?” I added, not to be silenced.
Edwards slunk back to his chair in the corner—at first, I thought, to retreat from the impending unpleasantness. But then he kicked his feet up like he was ready to enjoy the prime storyvid drama unfolding before him.
It might’ve made me smile if not for the look Mathis was giving me.
“I’m here to ask you some questions about last night,” he said flatly. “Though I’ll happily admit I think you deserve a lot more than house arrest, if you’re asking.”
“I’m not.”
His dark eyes burned, and I could practically hear him yearning for the days when he would’ve been able to take me to the sparring mats and beat that kind of attitude straight out of me. A cold smile pulled at my lips just thinking about how it would go for him if he were to try such a thing these days.
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought something about my expression actually made him uncomfortable. “Perhaps you could just answer my questions, then,” he said, uncrossing his arms and—I think—trying to adopt a more neutral pose.
“Isn’t this a job for the enforcers and Haven patrol?”
“It is,” he said, taking a few steps closer to the foot of my bed as the medic finished his work and retreated from the room. “But I offered to help.”
I frowned. I vaguely recalled Mathis had spent time as an enforcer in a past life—and granted, I was a bit rusty on these things—but that didn’t really check out with my working knowledge of protocol in this situation.
Was he here as a favor to someone, or just to stick his nose back in my business and maybe fit in a shot or two at my integrity of character while he was at it?
“Fine,” I said. “I didn’t see much last night, but ask away.”
“Why don’t you just start from the beginning?” he said, priming his palmlight to record the conversation.
With only a small sigh, I launch into as thorough a recounting of last nig
ht’s attack as I could, leaving out nothing but the ear nibbling and the fact that she’d been a telepath. I even considered telling Mathis the last part. Far as we were from being one another’s biggest fans, Mathis was an honorable man. I was pretty sure I could trust him as much as I could trust anyone else in the Legion.
Still, the words hesitated on my tongue. “She was… I think she was sent by the Sanctum.”
It was enough of the truth to set their investigation on the right path for now—assuming there was a right path in this scudstorm. But I could see in the slight furrow of his ebony brow that he knew I was holding something back.
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a feeling.”
“A feeling,” he repeated.
I tried not to wilt under his stare. “A strong feeling.”
He held my gaze for a silent stretch, and I thought for sure he was about to call bullscud when he instead rounded on Edwards, who was so engrossed now he was about ready to fall out of his chair.
“Give us the room, specialist.”
Edwards snapped to, remembering himself, and hopped to his feet. “Sir, yes sir.”
I wasn’t glad to see Edwards go—or, more precisely, to be left alone with Mathis—but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Mathis turned back to me, and I waited for the drill instructor face to make its appearance, but he surprised me.
“I’ll recommend they take this hunch of yours under advisement.” He closed his palmlight, ending the recording but still clearly wanting to say something. “You know we’re not your enemy, don’t you?” he finally asked. “You’ve been given every grace since—”
“Since you all tried to kill me?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He crossed his arms. “Did you see me pointing a gun at you, Raish?”
“You would have.”
“You were an outlaw.”
“A framed outlaw.”
He looked unimpressed by the distinction. “You broke into a private research facility—”
“Where they were killing people.”
“—and infiltrated a Legion stronghold—”
“To wake your asses up to—”
“To a crisis that should’ve been reported to the proper channels.”
“They owned the proper channels!” I growled, half a second from telekinetically removing his maddeningly calm ass from the room.
But to my surprise, he nodded. “They did. And what’s your excuse now?”
That caught me off guard.
“I won’t deny that what happened to you before was… wrong,” he pushed on before I could catch my balance, and I could see that the admission cost him something. “I don’t have to tell you that we’re dealing with a completely unprecedented situation. What I will point out is that we’re all still here, doing our best to adapt and overcome as a team, just like we were taught. Just like you were taught.”
So that’s what this was about…
I scowled at him. “I thought you weren’t here to berate me.”
“Old habits die hard, I suppose.” He gave me a pointed look. “But no harder than should the discipline of a legend’s son.”
“Yeah, there we are. Back to basics, right silver spoon?” I shook my head. “I’ll never be the man my father was. You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you convinced yourself that that’s what I thought about you all those years.”
“Oh yeah? And what did you think, Docere? What was it you were trying to teach me with all the silver spoon this and daddy’s boy that?”
His brow was knitting like he was wondering how I could’ve missed it—or maybe even questioning himself as to how he’d failed so completely. “I was trying to teach you the one thing you needed to learn.”
“And what the scud was that?”
The doubt on his brow disappeared. “That it’s not enough to be the best on the mat—the strongest, the fastest, the smartest. It’s not enough to be the best everything if you don’t know how to respect your fellow soldiers, if you can’t value them for their strengths and trust them to have your back when it matters.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I had nothing to say. I had nothing but the emptiness his words left at my core. Because I’d had a partner I’d truly trusted to watch my back. And he’d died doing it.
“I was trying to teach you,” Mathis continued, more calmly now, “that you could be more than a record on the tyro performance indices. More than any of that.” He gave an honest shrug—the first I think I’d ever seen from him. “I was trying to teach you that you could be more than your father, if you’d just step out of your own way.”
I couldn’t help but stare. That was what he’d tormented me for? Some vague aspiration that I was more than a boot-licking silver spoon?
He’d sure had a scuddy way of showing it.
“Well thanks for pointing all this out now that I’m a civie with the world’s brightest target painted on my head,” I muttered. “I’ll try to keep that in mind next time I decide to get in my own way.”
“I hope you will,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “Because it’s not too late. You’re in this thing, civilian or no, and people are counting on you. So next time you find yourself thinking it’s your place to try to outdo every man and woman who’s given their life to this planet—”
“I’ll be sure to think of you, Mathis.”
There it was—the old flash of docere anger I remembered in his eyes. But as quickly as it came, it was gone. “You do that. But for now, get your rest, Haldin. We need you.”
Unable to find a suitable reply, I watched him go, wondering how much of all that he’d actually meant and how much Glenbark might’ve told him to say—how much any of them cared about anything beyond the fact that I was their best bet at fixing their telepathy problem.
I didn’t have long to dwell on it before Edwards leaned into the room bearing two generous platefuls of eggs and toast. “Chow, broto?”
I was hardly hungry, but Edwards took my noncommittal grunt as an affirmative. I was still absentmindedly poking at a mound of egg a few minutes later when my palmlight finally gave the merciful buzz I’d been waiting for. My excitement was immediate, and nearly as profound as Edwards’ enthusiasm for the food he was scarfing down in his corner chair. When I saw the message was from Johnny, my spirits only grew.
And died back down almost immediately.
My fingers hovered over the palmlight display, a hundred different replies flying into my head and back out again. I felt angry, betrayed. And oddly deserving of Johnny playing the hand of the busy servitor, keeping me at arm’s length.
And meanwhile, not a word from Elise…
“You’d better eat that,” Edwards rumbled through a mouthful of eggs, shoveling more in and eyeing my full plate with borderline frightening intensity. “I make no promises for my behavior after this plate is empty.”
I sighed, picking up a piece of toast with a solemn prayer that—much as I appreciated Edwards’ time and company—this was not the new normal for my life.
23
Gallows
“There he is,” Johnny said from my bedside when I awoke the next morning. “The talk of Haven.”
I groaned, groggily fumbling for the memory of where I was and what was happening.
“Is he the Demon of Divinity?” Johnny continued. “Or could he be the Savior of Humility?”
“Don’t rule out the murderer of wise-ass gingers, either,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and laboring to sit up with aching muscles, which, while still plenty stiff, already felt considerably better than they had yesterday. Thank Alpha for nanites.
We were alone in the medica room, Edwards and my resident medic either waiting o
utside or having finally been cleared to leave me alone like a normal patient—or like one under normal room arrest by the fireteam outside, at least.
“And since when are you in a good mood?” I added, turning back to Johnny.
He shrugged, his cheery demeanor flickering for a second. It was a small glitch, but plain enough to one well-versed in Johnny-isms. “I dunno, man. Maybe I feel bad for you, what with all the headlines and the things people are saying.”
“What things?”
Johnny scrunched his face up, as if wondering where to begin.
“Where’s Elise, Johnny?”
His face fell, taking my stomach along with it.
“Why didn’t she…? Why didn’t either of you…”
“There was a lot to be done yesterday,” he said, looking everywhere in the room but my eyes. “Still is. Glenbark’s got me on three separate projects, and Therese and the other Vantage rescues are getting up and running to start tracking those facilities and everything.”
“Johnny.”
“Glenbark even agreed to bring Franco and his people onto the team since they’re… yeah,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard me. “And then there’s the case of Codename Siren, and everything else, and by the time we had a chance to breathe yesterday it was… Well, we figured you needed to sleep, and—”
“Johnny. What’s going on?”
For a long moment, he teetered on the edge. Then he let out a heavy sigh and finally met my eyes. “She’s not happy, Hal. Neither of us are.”
“What did she—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Broto, you know I’ll always be here for you.” He cocked his head. “You know, provided you stop trying to go die without me and everything. But you two need to talk. Like, really talk. To each other. You don’t want the wise-ass ginger playing messenger between you.”
He made a fair point. Enough so that I agreed and asked him to go find a medic to discharge me. They weren’t in any hurry to abide, but agreed to at least talk about it after I ate a solid breakfast. So, I settled for shoveling down fabbed something or another while Johnny briefed me on some of what I’d missed yesterday. The latest damage report from the hybrids’ last round of attacks didn’t exactly stimulate my appetite, but I forced the food down anyway, needing to get out of the medica.
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