Darker Space (26 page)

I left the mess hall. Two marines followed me. For my protection. Leonski wasn’t going to gamble with our safety now, whatever he thought personally, and risk bringing the wrath of the Faceless down on Defender Three. Kai-Ren would destroy worlds for us. I knew it in my bones. My nightmare was also my salvation.

I headed along to the med bay.

Captain Loh was checking paperwork when I turned up. He nodded at me to go through to Doc’s office. Even before I got there, I could hear raised voices. Cam’s, mainly. I slid into Doc’s office and helped myself to a cigarette from the packet lying on his desk.

“Problem?” I asked.

Doc tossed me his lighter and then slumped back into his chair. “Your boyfriend’s a stubborn asshole.”

“He gets it from me,” I told him, lighting the cigarette.

Cam threw me a narrow-eyed look.

“I’m fifty-six years old,” Doc said, obviously taking up the conversation I’d interrupted. “I signed up to the military because my kids are grown up and I stupidly thought I could do some fucking good out here.”

I perched on his desk. “You do.”

He reached out and punched me gently on the thigh.

I closed my eyes for a second and remembered.

“I expected better from you, Garrett.”
He’d been so pissed, more pissed than I’d known him.
“I stuck my neck out to get you put in the medical stream so you don’t have to run laps every fucking hour for the rest of your natural life, and you repay me by turning up late? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Sorry, sir.”
Even now, I don’t know how I’d managed not to bawl.

“Drop and give me twenty, Garrett.”

Except that day, hurting from what Wade had done to me, I couldn’t even do three.

“What’s the matter?”
Doc hadn’t shouted that.
“Garrett, are you hurt?”

I wondered if that was what Doc had thought he would be dealing with when he’d come out into the black to do some good: sixteen-year-old recruits who’d just been raped in the showers.

We were supposed to be defending humanity.

Not much worth defending, really. Not then, and not now.

Cam reached out and twined his fingers through mine.

“Brady,” Doc said. “I want you to tell me that you’re okay with this, that you’re not being forced.”

I exhaled, sending a haze of smoke into the air. “A few days ago, I would have told you how the military was fucking me all over again by handing us over to the Faceless.”

Doc drew his craggy brows together. “And now?”

“Wasn’t the Faceless who tried to kill us.”

“Jesus, son,” Doc said.

“I’m not scared,” I said, and Cam raised his brows at the lie. “Okay, so I’m scared, but that’s pretty much my default fucking setting, isn’t it? But I know Kai-Ren doesn’t want to hurt us. I
know
that, and that’s more than I ever got from the military.”

More than I ever got from life, actually.

“It won’t be forever,” I said, dropping ash into the mug Doc kept on his desk for that purpose. “And Kai-Ren’s going to fix the link. He gets that we can’t be in each other’s heads. He knows we aren’t designed for that shit. He’s gonna make it so we can still talk to them, but we’re not living in each other’s brains.”

Doc’s gaze was steady. “Do you believe he can do that?”

“Doc,” I said, “I think I died out there in the black. I’m pretty sure if he could fix that, he can fix anything.”

Doc regarded me silently for a moment, then slid his top drawer open. He pulled out a syringe, ripped the packaging open, and set it on his desk.

Cam sighed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Give me your arm, Brady,” Doc said.

I glanced at Cam but held my arm out.

Doc pressed on the inside of my elbow to get a vein, then slid the needle in. He pulled back on the plunger, and my blood was drawn slowly into the barrel. I swayed a little against the sensation. I’d never known if it was something I could really feel, or something my imagination supplied for me: that sensation of a syringe working against my own heart, tugging against it, making me a little dizzy.

Doc withdrew the needle and pressed a cotton pad against the tiny wound in the crook of my elbow. I put my thumb over it. Clenched my fist and then flexed my fingers. “What’d you need that for, Doc?”

Doc huffed. “You think I’d send you off into the black with the goddamn Faceless without any fucking supervision? I like you, you little shit.”

He jabbed the syringe into his own arm and pressed the plunger down.

“Holy fuck,” I said. “Doc! Holy fuck!”

“Guess you’re stuck with me now, son,” Doc growled.

I laughed so hard I cried, or the other way around.

Or something.

* * * *

Some guys are meant to be heroes. I was never one of them. And maybe those guys wouldn’t have balked when the time came to step onto the Faceless ship for the last time in fuck only knows how long, but I did. I’d spent the past two days carrying shit on board, but now, this time, it was for real. This time the hull would seal behind us, and there’d be no going back.

Jesus.

What the fuck was I doing?

I watched as Doc walked on ahead, still grizzling at Harry for dropping his equipment on the last trip.

“I outrank you,” he muttered.

Harry only shrugged. “Rank counts for shit once the connection takes, Doc.”

True.

Andre moved past me, lugging another goddamn bag of whatever the hell the brass had decided we might need.

Chris clapped me on the shoulder as he reached me. “You good, Brady?”

I nodded, but of course he felt my trepidation.

“Brady?”

“Oh yeah,” I drawled. “I’m good. What could be better than spending the next however long trapped on a ship with my boyfriend’s ex?”

“Asshole,” Chris said, but it was almost fond. He rubbed his biceps, raising the ghost of his injury even though I knew it was gone. An hour in a Faceless pod had healed him.

I shrugged. “Hey, at least one of us will be getting laid, right?”

“Asshole,” he said again, a lot less fond this time. He shouldered past me.

I grinned at him and waited until he’d turned around to flip him the bird.

“Little fucking turd.”

My dad always said eavesdroppers never heard good things about themselves. The sooner Kai-Ren sorted our connection out, the better.

“Brady!”

I spun around to see Lucy rushing toward me. She flung herself into my arms and then pulled back and spun in a circle. “Do you like my clothes?”

Someone from the Q-Store had supplied her with a bunch of clothes made out of cut-down uniforms since she’d lost all her stuff during the mutiny. Shirts and pants mostly, but also a few gray pinafores with brass buttons to do up the tabs. She also had a few pairs of boots, in the smallest size the Q-Store carried, which meant she had to jam rolled-up socks in the toes to make them fit properly. Even the smallest sixteen-year-old recruits were giants compared to Lucy, but we didn’t know how long we’d be out here. We didn’t know if she’d outgrow her sneakers.

“You look great,” I told her. “Did they give you a gun too?”

“Don’t be silly!” She smacked me. “I’m going to make sure my bunk is above yours!”

The Faceless had hummed with interest when we’d moved bunks aboard. I didn’t know how they slept yet, or if they actually did. Guess I’d find out.

I watched her as a Faceless met her in the strange glowing corridor of their ship. Kai-Ren. He glanced at me and then reached out and touched Lucy’s head. She hugged him, and her warmth radiated though him, through me, though all of us.

She was safe with him.

Safe with the thing that had been my nightmare since I was a kid.

Fucking crazy.

“Yeah,” Cam said, his arms coming around me from behind. “You are.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “I’ve told you before, I remain undiagnosed.”

I turned around in his embrace.

Stared at his green eyes for the last time under the lights of Defender Three.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

I drew a breath.

I had no idea what the fuck was out there waiting for us, but how was that different from any other time in my life?

I was terrified.

Terrified, but I had Lucy, and I had Cam.

Some guys were meant to be heroes. I was never one of them, but fuck it, I could learn.

“Yeah,” I said, taking his hand. “I’m ready.”

Ready for whatever came next, as long as he was by my side.

Always.

We walked together onto the Faceless ship.

Loose Id Titles by Lisa Henry

Dark Space

Darker Space

The Island

Tribute

Co-written with J.A. Rock

THE BOY Series

The Good Boy

The Boy Who Belonged

* * * *

The Naughty Boy

(a Loose Id
The Boy
Spring Fling)

* * * *

The PRESCOTT COLLEGE Series

Mark Cooper Versus America

Brandon Mills Versus the V-Card

* * * *

“Fall On Your Knees”

Part of the anthology
Rated: XXXmas

With E.F. Mulder

Lisa Henry

Lisa credits her love of reading to her grandfather, who had stacks of books in every room in his house, and to her parents, who couldn't afford a television when she was child.

Lisa lives in Australia, and shares her house with too many pets. She still devours books today.

She also has a television.

Find what’s new with Lisa at
http://lisahenryonline.blogspot.com
.