A Solid Core of Alpha (26 page)

“Do you hear me, baby?”

Anderson went boneless against him. “Just calling me ‘baby’ doesn’t make you want me any less,” he pointed out, and C.J. closed his eyes.

“Don’t you think you have enough to worry about without taking a total fuck-up like myself into your bed?” he asked, begging Anderson to hear his tone and follow his lead and smile.

Instead, Anderson pulled back a little and surveyed C.J. soberly in the dim light from the front room lamp. “I meet people, real people, during the day, C.J. I meet people who spend all their money at the hub, and people recovering in physical therapy because they’re clumsy or didn’t think something through. I sit at the kiosks and watch relationships that make my time with Alpha look like a country picnic.”

C.J. pulled one corner of his mouth up. “Your point being…?”

“Don’t patronize me, C.J. You’re not a fuck-up, and I know exactly what it is I like about you and why I want you.”

C.J. closed his eyes and pulled Anderson to his chest again, because he couldn’t do this when they were face to face. “Why is that?”

Anderson’s voice was muffled against him, but he didn’t struggle. Not this time. “I want you because you’re kind and you’re real,” he said softly, and C.J. squeezed his eyes tight, and that still didn’t stop them from burning. “And because you care enough to think that sleeping with me is wrong, even though you really, really want to do it.”

C.J. had to chuckle, and again he tried to lighten the moment. He thrust his hips at Anderson a little, just enough for the man to tell that C.J. wasn’t unaffected by being close, by being intimate, and Anderson pulled back, surprised.

“If you’re not going to use that, grinding on me is just mean,” Anderson complained, but he was smiling kindly back, and C.J. nodded, although he didn’t let Anderson go.

“You want to go out dancing?” he asked, out of the blue. “Julio is getting some people together next week to go out dancing. It’s your birthday next week. You want to go down to the hub and hit the clubs and go dancing for your birthday?”

Anderson’s smile was… God. It was beautiful. It was blinding. It was healthy and whole and strong.

C.J. looked at him and smiled back, and felt that strengthening body against his, and tried to block out the memories of seeing that body brutalized, abused, and violated. Desperately, he tried not to wonder at the emotional fracture hidden beneath that new growth of joy.

J
ENSEN
never
looked this worried. He hadn’t looked this worried when C.J. broke up with him, when he blew out his kneecap throwing disc on the beach, or when he asked Molly to move in with him. C.J. had known Jensen for eleven years, ever since their first year in university together, and he had never seen this level of concern even
exist
on his friend’s emotional range.

“Send him down planet
now
,”
Jensen commanded, and C.J. grimaced.

“Now? Jen? Do you really think now’s a good time? He’s still visiting with the other holos once a day, and I’m the only person he’s really attached to. I mean, now? Can’t we wait until my break, until we get this project done and
then
send him—”

“Now, C.J.—don’t tell me you don’t see how dangerous this is to you!”

Wince. “Well, really, Jen, I’m mostly worried about Anderson. You’re the one who said I needed to hang in there through the long haul.”

Jensen groaned and thunked his head against his desk in front of the computer console. “I didn’t mean for you to self-destruct with him, you moron!”

C.J. had to crack a smile. “I’m fine, Jensen,” he said gently. “Truly. All good. Cassie and I made a pact—we haven’t gotten drunk in almost two weeks now, and, well, we hold each other up while we’re screening the recordings.”

Jensen groaned again and looked up at C.J. with weary eyes. “The fact that you’re even watching this shit is fucking you up, Cyril.”

“Aw, crap, you’re not calling me ‘Cyril’ too!”

“I’ll call you whatever the hell I need to in order to get you to ship that boy planetside, and if you really loved me, you’d come with him and send your I-know-all-sorts-of-bullshit sister too. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad….”

“Six different degrees in abnormal psychology—”

“Three!”

“And all I can get from you is ‘bad’?” C.J. shook his head and tsked with his tongue. “Really, Jensen, I’m surprised at you. I expected better. Really did.”

Jensen slammed his fist down on his desk, and C.J. popped his head back, even though they were only interfacing through the computer screen. “Don’t fuck with me here, C.J.—I’m not bullshitting you. This is bad shit. It’s bad for you and Cassie to watch it, and it’s bad for Anderson to deal with, and you are all going to need my help. You need it
now
, not a month from now, not when your leave is due, but
now
, or one of you is going to completely melt down, self-destruct, and maybe, if you’re lucky, it won’t be you, and if you’re really lucky, and it’s Anderson, he won’t bring down the entire fucking space station. Do you fucking understand me?”

C.J. did. He pulled in a big breath and let it out and allowed some of his bravado to slip out with it. “Jensen, I don’t want to yank him away from the shuttle
and
me at the same time, okay? I hear you, but don’t you think a sudden break might be worse than, say, a prearranged vacation? I can take him down, show him the sights, and make a prolonged stop at your clinic, one that maybe goes past my leave, until you’re ready to send him back up.”

“Why would he want to come back up if he’s better, C.J.?” Jensen asked, his voice hard, and C.J. stopped and flushed suddenly, so badly that he started to sweat too.

“In case he wants to,” C.J. replied, his throat so dry that his voice whispered out. “You know. He’s got friends here. He can work about half a dozen jobs up here, if he wants. It’s a place to—”

“Do you love this kid, Cyril?” Jensen asked, so baldly and so gently that C.J. could only look away from the screen.

“Yeah,” he confessed.

“Then you’re going to have to, at some point, leave him alone and let him come to you. Do you understand me?”

C.J. nodded. He’d had that thought about six billion times himself. “Yeah.”

Jensen sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to break your heart, but….” He paused, and C.J. hated himself, because Jensen paused because C.J. was wiping his eyes on his sleeve, feeling like a total asshole. C.J. pulled himself together, and Jensen continued. “But you need to know it’s coming. His feelings for you could be very real, but he’s not going to be able to feel them, really feel them, and know that they’re true, unless he and I work out some shit, okay?”

C.J. nodded. “I know. You know I’m good with it. I’m not normally such a pussy about my feelings, Jen, but….”

“But you’ve been watching this kid get abused six ways and sideways in a really fucked up situation, and your heart is breaking for him. I hear you. That’s why I’m saying that you can’t wait much longer here. One of you is going to do or say something that’s going to trigger an emotional bomb here, and I don’t know if you’re ready for the fallout.”

C.J. nodded again. “Can you give us a week, at least?” he asked, feeling pathetic. “We’re taking him out for his birthday, and he’s really looking forward to it.”

Jensen nodded. “Of course. Of course. I’m not a total hard-case—give the guy a birthday with real candles, right?”

C.J. grinned, trying very hard to lighten things up. “And a dance night at the hub. We
are
on the space station. We should do it up right!”

Jensen groaned and went back to thunking his head on the table again, but C.J. managed to smile through the horrible oppression that had begun to dog his every hour since they’d reached the “abuse section of the Anderson program,” as Cassie had called it.

“Come on, Jen, some dinner, some dancing, let Anderson have his fun. I’ll tell him tomorrow that we need to take him planetside. I’ll make arrangements with Marshall, spend a week or so there, and then come back at the break.”

Jensen looked at him soberly. “You sure you want to commit to all of that? It’s going to be a long haul, CJ. It’s going to take more than one cycle.”

C.J. looked away. “It’s not like… it’s not like I’ll even feel like seeing anyone else in the meantime, okay? I….” Suddenly, he had to be real. “You’re right,” he said softly, looking at Jensen through the computer. “My chest is shredded, I can’t sleep, and I’m crying all the fucking time, man. I’m too fucked up to get involved with anyone else, and I sure as shit am not going to blow off Anderson for a fuckbuddy just to prove that I’m all right, okay? But… we’re his home now. He needs to know we’re with him on this, and he needs to know he has a place to come back to when it’s over. You feel me?”

Jensen popped his hands on the desk like he was pounding drums and nodded, sort of his characteristic way of saying, “So be it.”

“You love him, man,” was what Jensen did say. “You love him so much, you’re making plans to go to hell for him.”

C.J. grinned. “Just make sure you’ve got my return ticket booked, right, buddy?”

“Yeah, baby. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got you when you fall.”

C.J.
AND
Cassie could hardly look at the screen anymore. At this point, they recorded the painful, page-by-page pull up of the archival footage and scanned it into the station’s computers so it would never be lost, then made note of what Alpha’s triggers were. At night, when everyone on the shuttle went to bed, someone (usually Anderson) would program the next segment of media to play for the holo-recorders. Fortunately there were markers for that, because after Alpha and Anderson began their painful go-round—not every night, but did it have to be?—C.J. and Cassie would turn the sound down and look at their hands, or the power readouts, or at the blank wall of the house where the holograms hid, because they didn’t want to see it.

“So,” Cassie said, very carefully not watching as Alpha strangled Anderson during sex. In the background, there was a folk singer from Anderson’s colony playing—her voice was hauntingly beautiful, and someday, C.J. wanted to hear this song, this lovely, playful, wailing song, played loudly and in its entirety. But not now.

They knew Anderson woke up. They did. Anderson, the real Anderson, was walking the ship, looking healthier and happier by the hour. They didn’t need to see this again. They just needed to record the music feed that was playing over the holodeck’s intercom while it was happening so that this song was not lost forever with the death of the singer.

“So what?” C.J. answered, very carefully not watching the same thing. He’d looked up Alpha’s program on the console. He knew that it would take two keystrokes to delete him—that was all. Two keystrokes, and that fucker would be dead, gone for good, cancelled forever. It did no good to tell himself that Alpha was just an extension of Anderson. At this point, that didn’t even feel real anymore. Yes, Anderson possessed some of those qualities, but then, didn’t everybody? Isolated, put under pressure, forced into action by Anderson’s reluctance to hurt the things he’d created, Alpha had become monstrous, barbaric, a thing apart.

“So, you’ve put in for some leave when this is over?”

C.J. nodded. “I told Marshall I’d take the job as second in command if I could spend some time planetside making sure Anderson’s okay before my next month off. I….” C.J. swallowed. “He’s a nice kid. He needs someone.”

Cassie nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I, uhm, I think I’ll join you.”

C.J. laughed, and it was an anemic, depressed sort of sound. “Jensen has a suite booked for us, I think.”

“Good,” Cassie said, her eyes darting toward the screen. “Make sure I have flowers every day. If I’m going to the funny farm, I want some fucking flowers.”

The horrible farce had played itself out, and Anderson was unconscious, naked, and vulnerable on the bed.

C.J. looked, too, and watched as Alpha masturbated on the unconscious Anderson, coming in a clockwork spurt over his face. He turned away at the climax and closed his eyes. Once, and once only, he’d watched with sort of a clinical detachment to see which parts of Alpha lasted past this moment. Did the bruises he left fade immediately? No. The bite marks on Anderson’s skin? No. But the come? The spit? The other things? Yes. Those things faded almost immediately. And Anderson had already said there was no lingering smell.

“Gonna share those flowers, Cass? I, uhm, kind of like those pink things that look like morning glories from old Earth, myself.”

Cassie nodded. Without looking at the screen, she made some adjustments to the recording and turned up the audio. The first song playing on the intercom had ended, and the next one began, so she made note of that in the records and left the audio on. In the morning, the people on the ship would list the songs and the singers and musicians in big print on a tablet and hold it up to the one camera they knew existed, the one in the living room where they watched vids on screen in the evenings. By now, everyone knew all the vids word for word, but that didn’t keep them from watching, from trying very hard to share some fellowship in the intense, pressure-filled atmosphere of the tiny ship, running on emotional and physical fumes.

“We can have adjoining rooms. You and Anderson can share.”

C.J. looked at her and, without looking, managed to gesture to that still, pathetic figure, naked on the bed. “You really think he’s going to be up for sharing a room with anyone?”

Cassie nodded somberly. “Count on it, C.J. You might be the only person in the world he could ever trust again.”

S
O
ALL
things considered,
God
,
was C.J. looking forward to going out to dance.

He and Cassie were down to the end of the recordings by now, and he watched compassionately as Marshall all but dragged Cassidy out of the shuttle every night. C.J. wished fruitlessly for someone, male, female, Artellian, human, or damned spider-kitten, who would come to the shuttle and grab his hand and walk him down the shuttle plank and tell him that it was all going to be okay.