Darker Space (6 page)

For as long as he’d have me, I wanted to stay.

I wasn’t gay, I’d told myself a hundred times on Defender Three. I’d blamed it all on that psychic connection. Live-streaming Cam’s wet dreams all that time had obviously scrambled my frequencies, right? And once Cam was out of my head, it’d all go away again, right?

It hadn’t.

Because I was an idiot. Cam hadn’t made me gay. Cam was just the guy who’d made me admit it to myself. Which wasn’t to say that a hot girl in a tight shirt couldn’t still get my attention. She couldn’t keep it, though, not when I had Cam.

That heroic guy on the poster? That so-handsome-you-hate-him-on-principle guy? All mine, and better than anyone else could even imagine. What he got out of the deal in return was up for debate. And I had a feeling the bunch of officers eyeballing the pair of us as we walked into the room would debate it at length once this interview was over.

And oh, great, Chris Varro was here as well, sitting on the end of a panel with his notebook open and his pen in his hand.

“Lieutenant Rushton and Crewman Garrett,” one of them said at last. “Take a seat.”

I slumped down onto a chair and fiddled with my tie. Cam sat beside me, his back ramrod straight.

The worst part about these interviews was that you never knew what they’d throw at you until it was already too late to prepare a defense. Assholes.

“Garrett,” Officer Three said, looking up from his paperwork. My heart sank as I recognized him. Hanron. Major Hanron. The psychologist. I didn’t like him or his flash card obsession. Every time I spoke to him, sometimes in interviews like this and sometimes in one-on-one sessions in his office, he always smiled a little at whatever I said, like he knew I was lying and he saw straight through it. Even when I wasn’t. He always asked about the psychic link Cam and I had shared, and asked a hundred different stupid questions and made me fill out a bunch of quizzes and play dumb games with colored counters and do lots of word association. And not just the sort I did in my head:

Officers: Assholes.

Military: Fuckers.

Major Hanron: Major Dickhead.

But the thing I hated most about Hanron was the way he always started with exactly the same question. He pointed his pen at me, and then at Cam, and then back to me. “Still together?”

“Yes,” I said and tacked on a belated, “sir.”

The officers looked at one another and then at Cam like they were trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. Why someone like Cameron Rushton would be with a dirty reffo like me.

Every fucking time.

Jesus. I really didn’t want to do this today.

“Interesting,” Major Hanron said, his mouth turning up in a smug little smile as he made a note.

Seriously, fuck him.

“Maybe it’s because I give better head than Captain Varro,” I said. “Sir.”

Hanron’s jaw dropped. The rest of the panel gaped at me. I don’t think any of them, even Cam, had thought there was any way I could dig myself a deeper hole.

“What?” I asked. “Oh, please. Look at him. He’s fucking
hot
. If he gave the word, you assholes would fight each other for the chance to get on your knees and suck his cock.” I looked at Major Hanron and twisted my mouth up into a sneer. “Particularly
you
, sir, am I right?”

* * * *

“Crewman Garrett,” Stockade Sam said when the MPs dumped me in his custody again. “Your usual room?”

“Can’t I get an ocean view this time?”

Sam grinned at me as I emptied my pockets on his desk. “Insubordination?”

“You’d think they’d have hardened the fuck up by now.”

“You’d think,” Sam agreed.

He let me keep my cigarettes. Sam liked a bit of insubordination himself. He was an older guy. He had a prosthetic leg, but more fool any dickhead who thought he was a useless cripple. Sam was tough as nails.

We played cards through the bars of my cell and talked shit about the officers for a while. Then, a few hours into my latest enforced visit to the stockade, I got a visitor. Sam stood up to check the monitor.

“It’s your better half, Garrett.”

“Bullshit. What if I’m his better half?”

Sam snorted. “Kid, he’s had head lice that are a better half than you.”

“Asshole.” But I smiled too because, unlike every officer in the world, Sam was only kidding.

He headed out to the reception store to let my better half in.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Cam said when he made his way out to the cells.

I grinned at him from behind the bars. “I know, right?”

“They’re giving you a week this time,” he said. “So I guess you won’t be getting ice cream with Lucy and me for a bit.”

My grin faded. “Tell her I’ll be home soon.”

“I will.” He looked tired all of a sudden. “Brady, you’ve just got to… Shit. You’ve got to shut your mouth and stop letting them get to you. This is the military. The whole system is designed so the guys at the bottom don’t get a say.”

“Yeah.” My throat ached a little. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was in here for a week, or because Cam was talking to me like I was too stupid to know what I did to get here. “You don’t need to explain it to me like I’m a dumb kid.”

Cam huffed out a breath. “Then stop acting like one, Brady! Stop giving them an excuse to throw you in here!”

I tried to swallow down my hurt. Tried to shrug it off with another grin. “You know me. I never saw a brick wall I didn’t want to bang my head against.”

“Yeah, I know you.” He didn’t smile.

I held on to the bars. “Pisses me off,” I muttered. “The way those assholes look down on me, and look down on you for being with me.”

“Who cares what they think?” Cam’s expression softened, and he curled his fingers around mine. “I thought Brady Garrett didn’t give a fuck.”

“I don’t!” My guts twisted. “I just— It’s like they don’t get why you’re with me, and so maybe I don’t either!”

“Don’t buy into their bullshit.” Cam shook his head. “You never did before. I’m with you because I want to be.”

“Why do you?” I whispered. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. “Not fishing for compliments, LT. Just wondering.”

Cam sighed. He shifted closer to the bars. He let go of my hand and reached around the back of my neck. Tugged me closer so our foreheads met. “I love you because you’re
you
, Brady, and I don’t care if they get it or not. You’re the only one who has to get it.”

“Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut.

But I didn’t. I didn’t get it. Not when I’d seen the way he looked at the stars and his whole expression shifted, opened, like he was seeing something beautiful, something wondrous. And something heartbreaking, because they’d never let him have that again.

“I love you,” he said, and I wondered which one of us he was trying to convince. “You’re like a secret nobody else has heard yet, and the selfish part of me is glad that other people don’t know you the way I do, because if they saw how perfect you are, every one of them would try to steal you away from me.”

“Bullshit,” I whispered, because how could I compete with the starlight?

He rubbed his palm over my hair.

“And fuck you, because if I cry in the stockade, I’ll be a joke,” I said, pulling away to scrub at my face.

“Lucky you don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.”

“Lucky,” I agreed, frowning at him.

“Anyway.” Cam pressed his palm to the side of my face. “I don’t think Sam will tell anyone.”

I glanced up at the camera pointing down into my cell. Right. Sam. And whoever the hell else was watching the feed. I stepped back and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Okay. I’ll see you in a week.”

Cam got that worried look on his face. That one where a tiny line appeared between his eyebrows, at the top of his nose. Sometimes I liked to rub that spot with my thumb and tease him about getting wrinkles.

“Wrinkles, huh? Pretty sure that one’s your fault.”

“You blaming me ’cos you’re not pretty anymore, LT?”

“You are such a bad liar. I’ll always be pretty.”

“Dickhead.”

He probably fucking would be too, but I hadn’t told him that. The planet’s poster boy didn’t need his ego stroked by me. Not when there were other parts I’d rather stroke.

“Okay,” he said quietly, the soft skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling with concern. “Take care, okay? I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah,” I said, shuffling my boots on the floor. “Okay.”

Cam opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. He just kind of smiled, then jerked his head in a nod and left. When he was gone, I sat down on my cot and stared up at the camera.

Wondered if some asshole was watching the Brady Garrett show.

Showed the camera my middle finger just in case.

* * * *

Came up from sleep. Choking. Gasping. The dream was still on me. Still had its claws in me. It was here. Fucking
here
. I could hear it breathing. Feel it in the darkness at my back.

No no no no no.

It was in here.

I flung myself off my cot and hit the concrete floor hard enough to jar every bone in my body, but not enough to shake that dream. The dream was still on me and so was the darkness, the black pressing down, forcing the air from my lungs.

“Cam!” I choked on his name.

Bars. There were bars. I was in a cage, and there was a Faceless in here with me.

Every nerve in my body screamed, soundless but at the same time deafening.

The stockade. I was in the stockade.

I reached the bars and held on to them, too afraid to look back into the gloom behind me.

Too afraid of what I was sure was standing there.

Bray-dee.

Fuck.

“Help!” I didn’t have the breath to make it loud.

A light flickered on in the hall, and I heard the stomp and scrape of Stockade Sam’s footsteps. “What the hell?” he grizzled as he rounded the corner.

“Sam…” I wanted to scream. Wanted to demand he save me from the Faceless that was standing behind me in the dark. Wanted to make him admit it was there, that it was real, that it wasn’t just a dream…but what if he did? What if he looked, and he saw, and it was real? What if it wasn’t just in my head? I wiped my face with my sleeve and sucked in a breath. “Had a…had a bad dream.”

Sam grunted. “Get back to your cot, Garrett. It’s four in the fucking morning.”

“Yeah.” Needed to catch my breath first.

Sam pointed at the camera. “I’ve got my eye on you, kid.”

He wasn’t threatening me. We both knew that. He was reassuring me. Comforting me, even though neither of us would ever admit it, because the guy who lost a leg in the war against the Faceless? He knew what nightmares were too.

* * * *

I spent three days in the stockade, missing Cam and Lucy and wishing I could shut my mouth before it got me into trouble. I missed them, and I knew they’d be missing me too. I hated thinking of Cam having to explain to Lucy that I was stuck in here again because I couldn’t remember how to keep my stupid mouth shut. I thought of Mike Marcello too, and how I was the only guy who actually visited and talked to him, and how I was a dick for letting myself get riled up by those officers at the tribunal, because who would Marcello play cards with now? It wasn’t just me they were punishing by putting me in here.

I was still angry, though.

Angry enough to punch the wall and bust my knuckles open.

In the day, I was.

I was still carrying that anger around, even though I’d tried to shed it.

I’d tried.

It was supposed to be easier back home. Once we weren’t stuck on a Defender anymore, surrounded by stir-crazy guys pumped up on their own fucking testosterone and bristling to prove something to someone. Anything to anyone. There wasn’t a day out in the black when there wasn’t a fight or something, and nobody gave a shit about the consequences because at least a good brawl broke up the fucking monotony. Back home, away from that, everything was supposed to be easier. It was supposed to be better.

But the military still had its claws in us, and Cam was still an officer and I was still enlisted, and he was from the city and I was from Kopa and sometimes I didn’t know how shit worked here. Sometimes I felt like Lucy, straight off the train, gaping at the tall buildings and all the people. Sometimes I knew that the officers, that the neighbors, that everyone except for Cam would always see me as nothing more than a filthy reffo from Kopa. And that one day they’d make him see it too.

And sometimes I remembered that it was worse than that. Worse than the sum of our differences. Worse than the fact I didn’t know how to be a civilized human being.

I’d looked a Faceless in the eye.

I was a fucking insect.

We all were.

Sometimes anger was still all I had.

Chapter Four

“Garrett, do you want to get out of here?”

If that question had come from anyone else, the answer would have been a resounding
Fuck, yes
. But coming from Chris Varro?

I squinted up at him from where I was sitting on the floor, scraping marks on the concrete with a pebble I’d found lodged in the tread of my left boot. Well, there was nothing else to do. “What’s it gonna cost me?”

Chris shook his head and grinned. “You’re a piece of work, Garrett, you know that? Three days in here, and you’re still full of fucking attitude. What’s your problem?”

“Um…remember that one time your asshole buddies tortured me?”

He snorted. “Torture? That was an advanced interrogation technique.”

“You can take your advanced interrogation technique and shove it up your ass.” I showed him my middle finger. “Sir.”

Chris curled his hands around the bars of my cell and stared through at me. His handsome face—and it
was
handsome; I would have preferred he had a face like the back end of a dog, but you can’t have everything—seemed shuttered for a moment. Then he smiled slightly. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “It was the
Faceless
. Would I stand by and let it happen again? Yeah, I would. If I thought someone was hiding information about the Faceless and I had to hurt some innocent guy to find it out, then yes. And I’m never going to apologize for that.”