by Darien Cox
“I was just telling JT we’re going to start having daily meetings once this current fiasco with the hybrid is figured out. You’ll each be receiving specific assignments from me. You’ll have deadlines. You’ll keep me apprised with regular reports. And you’ll work separately, unless the project calls for collaboration.”
Nolan burst out laughing. “You’re trying to separate us like bad kids in school? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Yes, you must find that funny, Nolan. So here’s another knee-slapper for you. I don’t approve of romantic relationships among my team members.”
“Dude,” JT said. “Gimme a fucking break. You’re out of line.”
“I saw every single person involved compromise their professionalism due to personal feelings today. Including your sheriff boyfriend, Christian. I can’t police what happens behind my back but my honest assessment is that some of these relationships should be severed.”
“Guy,” Nolan said. “Do you even have an idea what we do here? Any experience?”
“I’ve been to space, Nolan, I think—”
“I’ve been to space! I’ve been to space! That’s all you keep saying.” Nolan shook his head. “So you saw a Grey in a saucer. Boo-fucking-hoo. Our team, including Sheriff Murphy, have collectively been terrorized by Whites, paralyzed by an offshoot hybrid, thrown across a room. I personally cleaned urine off a baby White’s butt. But most importantly, we forged a peaceful if tentative relationship with an advanced alien race. We did that. The four of us. You think we achieved that because some asshole gave us homework and sent us to bed early?”
Elliot glanced at Nolan, trying to hide a smirk. Go get him, Nolan. Nolan had never stood out for his self-expression. JT or Elliot were usually the ones giving speeches. But Nolan was pissed, Elliot could see it in the darkening of his gaze.
“Just because you’re doing things a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s the right way,” Brett said. “Doesn’t mean some new tactics wouldn’t bring better results. Consider please, Nolan, that as an outsider I can see where your decisions are lacking. And when your focus…” Brett glanced at Elliot. “Is on the wrong things.”
As Nolan leaned forward, his neck muscles tightened and his fists clenched. JT, Christian, and Elliot all went still. Elliot saw a storm in Nolan’s eyes, but when he spoke, his voice was eerily calm.
“No.” Nolan pointed at Brett. “You want to tell us you’re dissatisfied with our work? Fine. But you wait until you’ve actually worked with us before you get that privilege. And also, the only kind of person that would tell a grown man he can’t handle his own love life is someone who’s either lacking life experience or is an impotent little weasel who has to abuse his petty authority over people to get his limp dick hard.”
Brett flushed, staring at Nolan, temporarily at a loss for words.
“So fuck you, Brett. You and your new tactics. You want to keep this shit up? Then I quit.” Nolan stood. “I’m going for a walk,” he said and strode out of the room, punching a napkin holder off the bar as he passed.
Mouth agape, Brett looked at Elliot. “Did he just quit?”
Elliot smiled. “You probably shouldn’t have told him he couldn’t fuck me anymore.”
JT doubled over, wheezing with laughter.
“Yeah,” Christian said. “That was a mistake. Big, big mistake.”
Brett stood. “I’m going to talk to Nolan.”
All of their eyes followed as Brett left the room.
“Oh my God,” Christian said. “Brett just got fucking served.”
“Well what did he expect?” Elliot said. “He can’t actually expect us to follow his lead when he says dumb shit like that. Ogden knows us. How could he possibly think this guy was a good fit to be our supervisor?”
Christian stood abruptly, and Elliot followed his gaze. Rhonda and Dr. Sullivan came through a door at the far end of the room.
“Rhonda!” Elliot stood, as did JT.
Rhonda and Dr. Sullivan approached. Rhonda looked tired, and Dr. Sullivan’s face was grim. “Hey, guys,” Rhonda said.
Elliot searched her eyes. “What happened? How is Baz?”
“Okay.” She held a hand up. “Baz had some sort of seizure during the procedure.”
“Fuck!” Christian paced a circle. “I knew that transfusion was a bad idea.”
“Now, hang on,” Rhonda said. “Baz came out of the seizure. We had to stop the transfusion, so we didn’t get as much into him as we’d hoped to. But there’s good news. It’s early yet, but we’ve already seen some improvements.”
“Really?” JT said.
“His pulse is strong again,” Dr. Sullivan said. “And he briefly woke up. He even spoke. I’m pretty sure it was English, too, though it didn’t make much sense.”
Christian turned to Elliot, his face so full of emotion that Elliot pulled him into a hug. “He woke up,” Christian said and withdrew from the hug. “What did he say?”
Rhonda shrugged. “Sounded like…shady behind.”
Elliot scowled. “Shady behind?”
She nodded. “He said it three times. He’s sleeping now. I gave him a sedative, and thank heaven it worked. He needs hours of rest if he’s going to recover, and I had to fight Ogden and Wiley off. They wanted to interrogate the poor thing. Baz was barely coherent.”
“Rhonda got tough with them.” Sullivan smiled at her, and Elliot sensed a crush there.
“Shady behind.” JT scratched his head. “Like someone shady is behind something?”
“Um, I don’t want to contradict my colleague,” Dr. Sullivan said. “But it was less a phrase and more two separate statements. ‘Shady. Behind.’”
“You know what?” Rhonda said. “That’s not quite right, either, the word ‘shady’. It was more like ‘shate he’ though I don’t know for sure. Maybe his own language? The ‘behind’ was clear though.”
“Shate he…” Elliot looked at JT. “He said your name. He calls you ‘Shaytee’.”
“That’s it,” Christian said. “He was trying to say ‘JT’. But what does it mean? Shaytee. Behind.”
JT’s head bowed. “I don’t know. But it sounds like he definitely came looking for us if he said my name.”
Rhonda took a step closer and squeezed JT’s shoulder. “I held his hand as he drifted off again. Called him Baz. Told him who I was and that he was safe, among friends. That he needed to rest because he’d been injured. I’m not sure if he heard me.”
“So what now?” Christian asked.
“We’re going to watch him through the night. He’ll be protected, I assure you. Even from Ogden. We’ll continue to monitor him. But I’d say give it until morning. Go home and get some rest yourselves. I know you care about Baz. I will call you if anything changes. But all things considered, it looks good, guys.”
“Thank you,” Elliot said.
She nodded at Elliot, then left with Dr. Sullivan.
“Thank God,” Christian said. He frowned at JT, who stood with hands on his hips, head down. “JT, this is good news.”
JT’s blue eyes shifted to Christian, then to Elliot. “What the fuck happened to Baz, guys?”
Elliot shook his head. “Nothing good. We’ll just have to wait until he wakes up I guess.”
Ogden stuck his head in the door suddenly. “Hey. Where’s Nolan?”
“Talking to Brett,” JT said.
“Rhonda talk to you all about Baz?”
“Yes,” Elliot said. “She just left.”
Ogden nodded. “I’m gonna hold off until morning for a briefing, when he have more information about Baz’s condition. Hang tight until you hear from me.”
“Okay,” JT said.
Ogden disappeared out the door. “We need to talk to him about Brett at some point,” Christian said.
Elliot nodded. “Agreed. Because if Brett’s hell-bent on continuing his hardass routine, I’m quitting too.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Nolan! Wait up a minute.”
Nolan had just stepped outside the back door of the brewery and was heading down to the river to get some air. Hearing Brett’s voice made him tense up again. He kept walking until he reached the fence, then leaned over, staring down at the water. If Brett wanted to talk, great, but Nolan felt no responsibility to make it easier on him.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
Nolan turned when he heard Quint’s voice. Quint and Brett were both walking toward him.
“I need to talk to Nolan alone, Quint,” Brett said.
Quint puffed up his flannel-clad chest. “Listen Brett, I like you. But I’ve known Nolan for years too. I heard the argument in the tasting room. You gotta let him calm down before you get in his face.”
“I’m not going to get in his face, I just—”
“I know what you’re doing here, Brett, and I don’t like it.” Quint pointed in Brett’s face. “You think you know these guys because you read some files? You don’t.”
“Oh, and you do,” Brett said. “Why, because you drink with them?”
“Sure. That’s part of it.”
Forgetting his rage for the moment, Nolan looked back and forth between the two, frowning at the ensuing argument. “What are you talking about, Quint?”
“This is not your place, Quint,” Brett said. “I have instructions from Ogden.”
“I know about your instructions.”
“Yeah, sure. You and Ogden are homies,” Brett said snidely. “You heard what happened to me. You’ve known about this shit for years and you didn’t have my back! Sat up here mixing your beer and taking in the mountain air, didn’t say a word in my defense.”
“I couldn’t!” Quint said. “I had no choice. Look, Ogden’s my friend. But I know a wrong decision when I see it and what he’s got you doing now is a wrong decision.”
“No one is Ogden’s friend!” Brett shouted, pointing in Quint’s face. “He doesn’t have friends, he has minions!”
“Okay,” Nolan said. “Whoa. One of you better tell me what the fuck’s going on.”
Quint walked away, then called back, “It’s not working, Brett. Tell Nolan the truth. Or I will.”
Brett glared at Quint, then let out a deflated sigh.
“What’s he talking about, Brett?”
Brett moved to the fence and leaned over, sighing. “I’m not cut out for this anyway.”
“Won’t get any argument from me on that,” Nolan said.
Brett looked at him. “You can’t quit the team. Jesus, this is the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to achieve with you guys.”
“What do you mean?”
Brett tugged a tangle of dreadlocks behind his ear and stared down at the river. “In the past year, three members of your team have looked into protocol for quitting.”
Nolan frowned. “Who?”
“Christian. JT. And Elliot.”
“I knew Elliot had considered it, but Christian and JT? I don’t believe it.”
“They only looked into it. I don’t believe any of them have immediate plans to leave. Christian and JT probably don’t even realize Ogden knows about their inquiries.”
“Well, big deal,” Nolan said. “I’m sure we’ve all thought about leaving this life. Some day.”
Brett looked at Nolan, his blue eyes troubled. “Ogden isn’t unhappy with the team. Just the opposite. He values all you’ve achieved beyond measure. And he doesn’t want to lose you. But you’re all getting older. Forming attachments. Creating lives. He’s worried he’s going to lose you one by one, and he doesn’t want that. He wants you all to stay in the village. To continue the work. To be happy.”
“Then why the fuck did he send you in to make our lives miserable!”
“I’m here to help. Ogden’s caught up in some huge stuff and won’t always have the time to offer guidance when certain smaller problems come to light. Things like this? Baz? He’s here of course. But I’m supposed to take up a lot of the slack. I asked for it, but that’s my story, and doesn’t matter now. But I am here for you guys Nolan, not against you.”
“If you were here for us you wouldn’t be trying to change what we do and give punitive speeches and tell us we can’t love who we want.”
“I know.” Brett blinked slowly. “The first phase of infiltrating your team was to present a test and then scold you for failing it. After that, I was to make my presence known, and question your competence and commitments to your jobs. I was to be the asshole and become a common enemy. The idea being that pride in your accomplishments would band you all together against me. A common enemy. It was supposed to reestablish your connections with each other, to the team, and your commitment to the work.”
Nolan blew out a breath he’d been holding. “Ogden sent you to manipulate us? Just because a few of the guys checked exit protocol and got a boyfriend? He could have just told us how he felt! Asked us to stick with it. Maybe offered a few incentives, not…this!” He pointed at Brett. “There was nothing wrong with our commitments to the job. Or each other.”
“I know.” Brett rolled his eyes and turned away, leaning on the fence again. “I discovered that pretty quickly. I’ve still got bruises from Christian’s commitment to the job.” He rubbed his ribs, then looked at Nolan. “And I like you. All of you. None of this has been easy for me.”
“Ogden’s a fucking nutcase.”
Brett laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know. Ogden destroyed my life. Then he gave me a new one. I have both contempt and gratitude for that nutcase.”
Nolan’s shoulders relaxed a bit. He didn’t want to open up with Brett, make him a confidant, but he was curious. “What did Ogden do to you?”
“What did Ogden do,” Brett said, drumming his fingers on the fence. “Let’s see. First he had me declared unfit for my job with NASA because I wanted to speak about what I saw up there. The saucer. Once Ogden showed up, my own employers—people I’d known for years—looked me in the eye and told me I had ‘space sickness’. I was let go. So I thought, fuck it. I’ll talk anyway. Got nothing to lose now.”
“Yeah,” Nolan said. “Bet that didn’t go over well.”
“I couldn’t even get a teaching job after that. Ogden made sure I was blackballed everywhere. Suddenly no one would hire me. I mean no one. My emails were hacked. Phone tapped. I was being followed, you name it. It was too big a coincidence. Someone like me not being able to get work, with my background and degrees?” Brett gave Nolan a tight grin. “I’m pretty smart, believe it or not.”
“I believe it. Brave, too. I’ve seen your resume.”
“Yeah. Guess I forgot to include ‘impotent little weasel’ in my bio.”
Nolan chuckled. “I’m not going to apologize for that. You were being a dick.”
“Fair enough.”
“What did you do? After Ogden screwed with your ability to find work.”
“Tracked Ogden down. That’s not easy to do, mind you. But I found him. Demanded he stop fucking with my life. He demanded I stop talking to my friends about seeing aliens in space. Ultimately, it went kind of like this. Ogden saying to me…okay fucker. You want to learn about aliens? I’ll give you a job, you cocky prick.”
“You accepted?”
Brett nodded. “Ogden sat me down with a whole big honkin’ set of files on Singing Bear Village, New York. I was appropriately stunned.”
“And this morning you helped dig a wounded alien hybrid out of an inactive vent from an underground installation housed by tall white aliens.”
Brett chuckled. “Yeah. To say Ogden kept his promise is an understatement. I wanted to know.” He looked at Nolan. “Now I know.”
“And how do you feel about it? Now that you know.”
Brett stared at Nolan, eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry Baz is hurt. I’ve read the files. I know you all have a connection with him that goes beyond any peace treaty with the Whites. But Nolan?” Brett’s lips tightened and his eyes grew glassy. “He’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You like this work.”
Brett nodded. “It’s beyond anything I ever dreamed of.” He chuckled. “And I’m one of the few little boys who actually grew up to be an astronaut.”
Nolan watched Brett swipe his eyes, and against his will, his heart softened. “Ogden must trust you. Sending you here to work with us? Telling you about the Whites? That’s a pretty big promotion. Not that I’m questioning your qualifications.”
“He thought I’d fit in.” Brett laughed. “That’s pretty funny now.” He looked at Nolan. “I have a combination of skills he thought would mix well with the four of you. I’d be able to understand JT’s astrophysics briefings. Christian’s eye for strategy. I’ve been the target of a disinformation campaign, so I can relate to Elliot’s job. And you? We’ve both got the military background, and I’m not a bad design engineer if I do say so myself. Also, I’m bisexual.”
Nolan’s eyes widened. “Wait. Are you telling me that Ogden includes a willingness to suck cock in his list of attributes for sending a male candidate to Singing Bear Village?”
Brett’s laughed softly. “And women who…well, you get the idea.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Hey, it’s not his fault the Whites reside in the mountains above a gay mecca. Ogden wants people who’ll fit in. What’s he gonna do, send some homophobic dude here to oversee things? Not that being gay or bisexual necessarily means one will fit in. Just look at Tyler.”
“Oh, man.” Nolan rested his arms on the fence and hung his head. “Well this has been…eye-opening, Brett.”
Brett sighed. “Yeah. And now I have to give my resignation.”
Nolan looked at him. “Why?”
“Why? I failed. In record time.”
“Ogden doesn’t have to know that.”
Brett stared at Nolan for a long time. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“Do you want to stay in Singing Bear Village? Work with us?”
Brett nodded. “I do. Very much.”
“Well,” Nolan said. “Then stay.”
Eyeing Nolan warily, Brett smirked. “You’re not going to go running to Ogden, ripping into him for sending me to manipulate you?”