Darker Space (13 page)

“What happens on the ship?”

“Cam says don’t go in, but I do.” My eyes drifted shut, and I forced them open again. I didn’t want to fall asleep and find myself on that ship again. My guts roiled. “I feel sick.”

“Brady? Brady!”

I rubbed a clumsy hand over my forehead. “What?”

“Don’t say anything!”

“I’m not gonna,” I mumbled.

Hanron leaned forward. “Brady?”

“Fucking
what
? Just shut up.” Bile rose in the back of my throat, and my mouth flooded with saliva. “Everyone just shut up! I don’t feel good.”

The door opened, and I twisted my neck to look. Chris Varro. He strode forward. “What’d you give him?”

“Amytal. He’s been very receptive.”

“Sir, that’s illegal.”

“Did Rushton send you here to stop it?” Hanron shook his head slightly. “You’re very close to compromising your position, Captain Varro.”

Chris tilted my head back and stared into my eyes. He was frowning.

“I don’t like you,” I told him. “I don’t like you had him first.”

“Shut up, Garrett.”

What an asshole. I jerked forward, and Chris took a step back. Not fast enough, though. I vomited on his boots and passed out.

* * * *

I was alone when I woke up back in the cell.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Everything I’d said came washing back over me. I’d told Hanron that Lucy was on the ship as well. I’d answered Cam,
aloud
. I was fucked now. We both were. Rage boiled up inside me, with nowhere to go. I clenched my fingers into fists and punched the wall of the cell. Punched it again and again, until I felt something crack in my hand.

Pain was good.

I slumped back down onto the floor and stared at the smears of blood on the glass, and panted until I got my breath back. My right hand hurt like fuck. My left one was worse. It was bloody and starting to swell. I didn’t care.

I don’t know how long I was there before another MP came to fetch me. It was the same drill as last time: hands cuffed behind my back. Then marched into the elevator, and upstairs again. At least it was warmer up here.

The MP took me to room 2F. Flash cards.

Fucking
seriously?

Cam was already sitting there.

I grimaced when the MP took the cuffs off. The MP shoved me down into the chair opposite Cam. Then the MP left and locked the door behind him.

“You okay?” Cam asked in a low voice.

“Yeah.”

“I fucked up, Cam. I think I fucked up badly.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

He didn’t answer. He’d always been better at managing the link than me. He’d been able to keep secrets from me, while every random thought I ever had was broadcast at him in fucking stereo.

I stared at Cam across the table in 2F, and he stared back.

A window ran the length of the room. It was made of dark glass. I had no idea who was on the other side, watching us. Hanron, probably, but I didn’t know who was with him. And I had no idea what they were saying to one another.

A divider bisected the table. There was a screen on my side and, I guessed, on Cam’s as well. I couldn’t see his screen, and he couldn’t see mine.

“What are they gonna do?” I muttered. “Force us to do this stupid test again?”

Cam didn’t answer. His eyes were dark with worry.

“Brady.”

Why was my name wrapped in regret in his head?

I stared at the screen. It was blank. No flash cards yet. A shiver ran through me. I was still unsettled from Hanron, and now from Cam. Where were his words of comfort, if only in my head? And not that I needed them, not that Cam wasn’t more to me than just the guy who picked me up when I fell down and whispered comfort to me when I was scared of the dark. But maybe I needed that part of him now, and he should have known that—he
must
have known that if he was in my head—so where was it? I wanted reassurances now, and then later I could hate myself for being so needy.

Cam didn’t meet my gaze again.

The intercom squawked with static, and then that static became words:

“Lieutenant Rushton, you may begin.”

A triangle appeared on my screen.

I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. I looked Cam in the eye and tried to keep the smirk off my face.

“Triangle,” Cam said.

What the
hell?

The design on my screen changed.

“Wavy lines,” Cam said, his voice even.

“Cam?”

“Circle,” Cam said when the screen changed. Then: “Triangle.”

My blood ran cold. “Cam?”

I didn’t know why he was doing this. The military wouldn’t let us go now.

We’d be lab rats. We’d be prisoners. We wouldn’t see Lucy again. Why would he throw away our lives like this, when all we had to do was bluff them? All we had to do was outlast them. He’d said. He’d
promised.

I tried not to look when the screen changed again. Tried not to see the design.

“A star,” Cam said.

“What are you doing?” My voice broke. “Don’t.
Don’t
.”

I closed my eyes, but not before I saw the next picture flash up on the screen.

“A square,” Cam said.

“Brady.”

“Fuck you, LT. Fuck you! What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Brady.”

I opened my eyes. Saw the screen. Met Cam’s gaze and felt the hot, hopeless rage rising in my gut. Knew that he could feel it too.

I hated him in that moment.

Hated him like I hadn’t hated anyone in a long time.

My last memory of my sister would be me grousing at her for taking too long to eat her breakfast and her yelling at me that I was being unfair. I couldn’t even remember if I’d told her I loved her when I’d dropped her off at school. And if I hadn’t, that was on me. But this right here, this betrayal, was all on Cam.

Cam held my gaze. Then smiled slightly, ruefully, and opened his mouth. “Circle.”

I stood up so quickly my chair tipped onto the floor. Launched myself at Cam, screaming at him over the noise of the blood roaring in my skull. Over the sudden rush of words in my head—mine and his, rage and regret. Had him on the floor, my busted left hand wrapped around his throat and my right hand clenched into a fist.

I punched and punched and punched before the MPs burst in and pulled me off him.

* * * *

I woke up facedown on a blanket with my swollen hands cuffed behind my back. I twisted my neck from side to side. My head was buzzing, and my blood was humming. They’d sedated me, I guess. Probably a good thing.

“Cam?”

Guilt burrowed into my guts. All I could feel was my fist meeting his face. Again and again. What the fuck did I do? But what did
he
do? He’d shown them our link was active again. He’d sold us out. I was sorry, though. I was still sorry.

“Cam, I’m sorry.”

It was supposed to be him and me against the fucking universe. That’s when we were solid. Backs against the wall, feet planted, we were solid. And I was sorry that it couldn’t be more than that—that
I
couldn’t be more, when we trying to make a life together, but my feet were always planted in the dirt and he was looking at the stars—and I was so fucking sorry that I lashed out at him. So fucking sorry that Hanron had drugged me up and pulled my strings like I was nothing but a brainless puppet, and it was Cam I hurt instead of that asshole.

Cam had saved me. He’d saved me on Defender Three when Wade and the others had left me for dead. And he’d come running when I found Marcello hanging. Whenever I needed him, Cam was there. Always.

The brightest thing in my universe, and it was also the weakest. Touch it, and it might shatter into a million glittering pieces like starlight.

“Cam?”
I couldn’t make a fist with my left hand. It still hurt too much. “Cam?”

“Brady.”
His voice sounded tired.
“Are you okay?”

I choked out a sob.
“Are
you?”

“You don’t hit as hard as you think, you know.”
There was a joke in there somewhere, but I couldn’t reach it.

“I’m sorry. Cam! I’m so sorry!”

His hands on my shoulders, gently rubbing where the pull from the cuffs ached the most. I tried to get myself up onto my knees, but his hands gentled me back down. “Stay there. Just for a bit, okay?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”
Regret stole over him, silent and slow as evening shadows. Slid over me as well.

“Where are we?”

He didn’t answer.

“Cam?”

His voice was low.
“They’ll let us go, I think. When this is done. I spoke with General Reid directly.”

I rolled away from him. “Where the fuck are we?”

I could feel his breath shudder out of him. I could feel his heartbeat race. I turned my head. It took me a moment to get my bearings. A moment before everything shifted and I realized it wasn’t my blood humming at all. It was the vibrations in the floor.

I saw a gray metal wall, scuffed and dull. A row of seats in front of us, empty, with the twisted harnesses hanging loose from the anchor points. More seats in front of that, and faces turned toward us: curious, shuttered, or afraid. A small round window. And through it, starlight.

Fuck.

We were in a Shitbox.

We were in the black.

They were taking us to the Faceless.

Chapter Eight

There was less room to move on the Shitbox than in our little underground cell. It was just as cold here too, but at least I was dressed in a uniform again. A uniform with a bright orange armband on it marking me as a prisoner. Cam was wearing one too.

We had the back three rows of the seats to ourselves, and the space behind them. Up the front of the cabin, the newest batch of recruits straight from the base kept what little distance they could and tried not to pretend we were a fucking spectacle. Some of them did, anyway. A few of the others gaped at us openly like we were the freaks in a sideshow.

“What the fuck’s going on, Cam?” I asked him when an MP finally came and took my cuffs off. The sensation of blood flooding back into my injured hands was not one I wanted to repeat anytime soon.

“We’re negotiating with the Faceless,” Cam said. His bottom lip was cracked, and there was a livid bruise on his cheekbone. “Or translating. Whatever they need us for.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring at his face. My throat swelled, and my eyes stung. Regret, hot and bitter, burst in my chest. Guilt followed it, twisting through me, squirming in my guts like eels through water, trying to break free. Why the fuck had I done that? How could I have wanted to hurt him, when he was everything to me?

“I know.” He rubbed his thumb gently over my busted knuckles. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. How could it be? I didn’t deserve his forgiveness, but that was all Cam, wasn’t it? When life fucked me over, I got angry. When it fucked him over, he didn’t blame anyone. Not even the asshole who’d punched him.

Just another reason he was too good for me.

“You said the Faceless wouldn’t come back,” I told him, trying to resent him a little for that. If I could blame him for something, then maybe it would be easier to look at that bruise, at that cut lip, and tell myself it was his fault too.

Except of course it wasn’t.

“I know.” His voice was soft. He lifted my busted hand to his mouth and pressed his lips gently against it. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You told Hanron everything,” I said.

“Yeah.” The guilt bled off him, enveloping both of us. It curled around us like smoke; the connection was getting stronger. “He already knew. The way we acted with the nightmare…what happened with the drug. He knew. I just confirmed it.”

“Why?” My throat ached, and my breath caught.

“Because he gave me an ultimatum, Brady. It was either this, or that cell.” He held my gaze.
“Because he asked about Lucy as well.”

The breath that had caught in my throat suddenly punched out of me.

“He asked about her, so I gave him us instead.”

I hated myself more than ever. Hated the way I’d let my doubt twist rapidly into blind anger and leave bruises on his skin. I was a piece of shit.

Cam shook his head slightly and smiled.
“No. No, Brady.”

A few of the recruits were kneeling backward in their seats now, staring at us. They were kids, big-eyed and mostly skinny. I’d bet more than half of them were from refugee townships too, but guys like Chris Varro would always argue that was a statistical anomaly. At least a lifetime of getting fucked over by the government had trained these kids better than four weeks of basic could for spending the next ten years getting fucked over by the military. It was a lesson I was still learning, over and over again.

“You know that even if we do this, even if we get back, it’ll be the cell again anyway.” I didn’t trust those fuckers to keep their word. Not on anything.

“Maybe.” Cam closed his eyes. His lashes rested on his cheeks, and I remembered the way he’d looked when I’d first seen him, floating like a corpse in that Faceless pod, an air bubble caught in his lashes. He opened his eyes. “I also told them why I think Kai-Ren let us go the first time.”

I jerked back so quickly that I hit my spine against the wall. “Fuck!”

Cam winced as well, then slid a hand behind me and rubbed my back. His palm traced the path of the pain, soothing it away. We both relaxed slowly, and I curled toward him again.

“Why did he?” We didn’t talk about this. This, I shoved to the back of my mind, where it festered with every fucking nightmare I’d ever had about the Faceless. I was always trying to keep the black at my back, and I was always failing.

Cam lifted his spare hand to my face and cupped my cheek. “Because you were something new. Something different. When we were connected, all you saw was Lucy, so that became all he saw. He didn’t know people were like that. Didn’t know how it could feel. That intensity. They don’t understand that, but it was you who showed him, not me. It was all you.”