Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Four

Notes: Back at last! Sorry for the delay, and the fact that it's not terribly long, but hey--it's here. And Cody and Ten! Yay!

Also, again--sorry for the delay, but winners of the audiobooks for Where There's Fire will be announced tomorrow! The conference was fun, the networking was great, but omg--I'm so tired now.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Thirty-Four

***

Chapter Thirty-Four

It felt different than ze had expected, approaching the planet like this. Ten had done the same exposure and zero-g training that every cadet at the Academy did, and while careening through a planet’s atmosphere in an attempt to safely land a modified hoverbike on its surface was decidedly not one of the training scenarios, it shouldn’t have made any difference. Ze’d been exposed to crashes, explosions, breakaways—every nasty thing the programmers could think of. Hell, Ten had been in actual shuttle crashes, so this really shouldn’t have fazed hir at all.

Which was why ze couldn’t understand why hir heartrate was spiking so abnormally, or why it felt like their oxygen supply had already run out even though ze knew, logically, that that was impossible.

“Everything looks good,” Cody said from in front of hir, his eyes glued to the instrument panel. Never mind that the bike was projecting data that could be read directly through their implants—Cody had never quite attached himself to doing things the easy way, like cadets who’d grown up with the technology. “We should start falling through the top layer of atmosphere in forty-five seconds.” Ten could hear the excitement in his voice. “Time to see how good our heat shielding really is!”

“It’s—the best,” Ten replied, and why was ze stumbling over hir words? “Nat-naturally. I-I-I’m the one who…the one who des-designed it.”

“Ten?” Cody turned his head around to look at hir. “What’s wrong?”

Ten shook hir head. “Noth-nothing.”

“This doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It’s nothing!” Ten snapped, pleased at how anger kept hir words together better. “I’m perfectly fi-fi-fine!”

“Ten…”

“I don’t know!” ze burst at him. “I don’t know what’s wro-wrong with m-m-me! I feel like I’m having a hear-heart-heart attack! I don’t even know wha-what that feels like, but it must be a lo-lo-lot like this!” Stars that had no place in the sky were swimming in front of hir eyes now, and Ten blinked rapidly trying to clear them. Hallucinations? Ze couldn’t be having hallucinations, there was no reason for it!

“Ten.”

Hir eyelids were fluttering fast enough that they blurred the back of Cody’s head. The stars were getting thicker.

“Ten! Listen to me!”

“I-I am!”

“You need to take some deep breaths before you pass out!”

“My brea-bre-buh—” Ze stopped talking to save hirself the embarrassment. Obviously if ze couldn’t even get a word out, hir breathing wasn’t fine.

“Here.” Cody moved one of hir hands from around his waist up to his chest. His suit was too thick to feel anything through, but a moment later a reassuring thud pulsed through their combined grip. “You feel that? Breathe when you feel the beat.”

Ten would have argued, but ze didn’t have the air to spare for it. Ze pushed hir pride aside and tried to breathe along with the next slow thud. It was…harder than ze’d anticipated.

“Good,” Cody said encouragingly, and it shouldn’t have mattered because being good at breathing was a stupid thing to try and excel at, but the strange, crackling tension in Ten’s chest eased slightly. “Keep it up. Keep breathing with the beat.” The planet grew larger and larger, filling all of Ten’s view, looming immense and inescapable as the light surrounding their shields began to glow with heat. “Breathe with the beat, Ten.” Cody squeezed hir hand. “You don’t have to watch,” he said gently, his voice as sweet as any touch he’d ever shared with hir. “Just close your eyes and feel. Feel the beat. Feel me. I’m here with you. We’re together.”

And it might have been cowardly, and any other day Ten might have scoffed and rolled hir eyes at what seemed like such condescending gentility, but not now. Now ze pressed hir head tight to Cody’s back, closed hir eyes against the brilliant fire surrounding them, and focused on the beat.

Ze didn’t need to look death in the eye when life was holding hir hand.

***

Miles swayed back and forth like he was lying in a wave pool, like the kind he and Claudia had taken the girls to a while back. It had been nicer than he cared to admit out loud, the warm air contrasting perfectly with the cool water. He’d closed his eyes and floated for over an hour, until his kids had pulled him into a water fight. It was like being back there, except…he was cold. And dry. And—fuck.

He forced his eyes open and looked around the darkened interior of the pod. The emergency lights were on, and the locator beacon was beeping soundlessly—the speaker must have broken in the fall. His cadets were still, unmoving on the floor, and Miles reached out to them, ignoring the sudden stabbing pain in his leg. He touched Grennson’s neck—there was a pulse, a strong one, but he had a bleeding head wound. And Darrell’s own heartbeat was thready, and from the odd way his tunic sat against his chest, Miles could guess why. Shattered ribs, in all likelihood. More than the simple Regen kit in the pod could handle, but he pulled it free and gave them each a shot anyway. Grennson’s wound stopped bleeding, and Darrell’s breathing eased some, so it clearly hadn’t hurt.

Cadets stabilized, now he needed to stabilize their craft. Miles tapped into the computer with his implant. Current status?

Pod is 88.5% inoperable. Hull is cracked. The rate of leakage into the space between the outer and inner hull will force complete submersion in approximately five minutes.

Submersion… Outside environment?

H20, Cl-, Na+, Mg2+, Ca+—

Seawater. They’d hit the ocean. Any air?

The top 23% of the craft is yet uncovered.

Then they still had time to get out. The parachute that had deployed to keep them from dying when they hit the surface doubled as a life raft, if he could get it to inflate. Miles crawled to the hatch at the top of the pod and checked for it. Still there, still attached. Good. Activate raft inflation.

Affirmative. The raft puffed into life in front of him, and Miles breathed a little easier.

Location of detachable emergency beacon? It glowed into existence in his mind, much subdued compared to the motion of the other one. He grabbed it and tucked it away in a pocket. “Emergency kit? He took it and stowed it away, then gingerly slid the boys into inflatable vests, careful not to move them too much.

Speed of saturation is increasing. This pod will face complete submersion in thirty-four seconds.

“Shit.” Miles wrenched the hatch open, shivered for a moment at the chill air and the splash of icy water that entered through the hole, then lifted Grennson up. It wasn’t easy, but he got the cadet onto the raft and secured with just enough time to get an arm around Darrell before the pod was completely submerged, and water filled the rest of the interior. Miles held his breath and reminded himself not to panic. He could do this. He’d been in worse situations, and at least the chill of the water was numbing the pain in his leg.

Darrell’s best inflated automatically, buoyant enough to lift the cadet but slim enough that Miles could still get him through the darkened porthole. He followed and pulled the lever detaching the raft from the pod before it dragged the whole thing down, then got onto the raft himself before gently lifting Darrell up after him. He secured the cadet’s vest to the raft, pulled a thin survival blanket out of the emergency gear and nestled in between the kids, then covered all of them with it. They were both still breathing, and the beacon was going. If anybody was looking for them, they’d be found.

Before the next storm, he hoped. 

The Academy Post #36

Notes:  Not quite the last episode, but close. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more planned for the boys, but all good things must come to an end at some point. Life continues to be epically busy, but I don’t think I’ll fall behind again. Enjoy, darlins.

Title: The Academy

Part Thirty-Six: Tying Up Loose Ends

***

The worst thing about going back to class wasn’t the questions, it was the staring.

Questions were something that Cody could have dealt with. He knew how to talk to people, he knew how to prevaricate, he knew how to tell them something without really giving them anything—years with Garrett had ensured that Cody could handle challenging conversations. The staring, though…that he wasn’t so good at dealing with.

Cody didn’t have enhanced hearing, but even he couldn’t help picking up a few snatches of conversation as he walked by. “Did you hear—I thought it was an accident—What happened to Alexander—Have you seen Valero—Pamela is dead, he—Maybe lovers, or maybe—What do you think really happened?”

Cody just walked by, making his way from final exam to final exam and doing his best to ignore his classmates. Just a few more days and he’d leave all this behind for a while, and he was so, so ready for that. He was disappointed he wouldn’t get to see Garrett or Miles or Claudia and the girls before he left but, as his dad had told him several times, there was no way this side of Hell they were letting him near Liberty right now.

“Ain’t gonna happen, bucko,” his dad said, not without a sigh of commiseration when Cody’s face fell.  “I know you want to see them, but they aren’t coming here and you definitely aren’t going there. When you get back from Perelan we’ll see what we can do about a reunion, but for now you’re gonna have to make do with me.”

Cody frowned exaggeratedly. “I guess that’s okay, since I can’t get anything better.”

“Watch it, kid,” his dad had growled at him, then pulled him close and ruffled his hair before Cody could escape. They had laughed a little, and things had felt almost normal for a while.

Of course, nothing was really normal. What the general population at the Academy did know was that their quad was making a special trip to Perelan as part of a goodwill delegation. No one knew about the attack on Grennson, he was wearing a very good holographic emitter to hide the damage to his quills. So even if Kyle had stayed and Pamela’s death could have been covered up, they would have been the objects of mass attention. As it was, though, that attention was a lot sharper than it would have been, fueled by distress over Kyle Alexander’s seeming assassination of another cadet and the silences that all of them were forced to uphold.

Things weren’t perfectly easy between the four of them, either. Grennson was…well, clingy was the best way Cody had to describe it. He stayed closer to Darrell than ever before, and always had to know where Cody and Ten were. He cooked and baked and kept himself busy, but there was a tightness around his enormous eyes that hadn’t been there before, an indicator of emotional exhaustion that Cody couldn’t alleviate in any way other than letting Grennson coddle him.

Darrell was probably doing the best. He’d suffered the least at Pamela’s hands, and he still looked the same as ever. Things weren’t wonderful with his family, Cody knew, but he wasn’t letting that stop him from coming to Perelan with them. Moreover, Darrell was an absolute rock for Grennson. The empathic bond between them grew stronger day by day, and Darrell seemed to take it completely in stride. Cody could feel the edges of a similar connection between him and Grennson, nothing more than errant feelings of anxiety that he knew didn’t belong to him, faint but disconcerting. It had to be much more intense for Darrell, but he weathered it all stoically, and always had a smile for Grennson that soothed the Perel’s tension. He and Cody talked about it a few times, the strangeness of their situation, the newness of his bond.

“I don’t mind it,” Darrell confessed as they sat together on the edge of the paraball field. The sport had been put on indefinite suspension following their team captain’s arrest. “I know this is probably going to sound conceited, but I kind of like having something that’s just…uniquely mine, I guess. Something that was never my father’s, something my family doesn’t expect. And it’s not like it’s hard to be best friends with Grennson, after all.”

“Do you think this is…I mean, the only other time this sort of thing has happened was with his parents, right? And you’re not…”

“Not interested that way, no,” Darrell agreed. “But his matriarch thinks this is probably the result of being isolated from his own kind and needing a surrogate support system. It’s not about romantic love, it’s about friendship. Grennson has made his own family here, and we’re it.”

“Huh.” Cody thought about his own family, so far-flung and dislocated, and wondered how bad the distance would feel if there was actually an empathic bond to stretch and sever between them. “I’m glad we can help, then.”

“Me too.”

If Darrell was coping well and Grennson was a little desperate, Ten was downright driven. Ze was back to ignoring the world, insisted that ze should be allowed to take hir finals in isolation since ze was clearly still suffering from the trauma of being controlled by a psychic sociopath, how could you expect hir to just waltz through the crowds here without being scarred for life, are you insane? So ze knocked all hir tests out in one day, then spent the rest of the time poring over data from the coronet, muttering to hirself and occasionally coming out of hir room to badger a very sheepish Bartholomew or eat a meal forced on hir by Grennson or Jonah. Ze was a lot better at coming when Jonah asked, actually, despite hir intense new interest in empathic bonds and the differences and similarities between them and psychic interference.

Every day was spent locked in their room at hir little lab, but every night Ten spent in Cody’s bed. They didn’t really do anything, much to Cody’s consternation, but it still felt good to be wrapped up in Ten, who seemed to know just how to hold him to keep his collarbone from hurting, and who counted his heartbeats and shaped the numbers with hir lips. “Later,” Ten promised, kissing Cody’s shoulder and curling in ever closer. “When we’re actually alone, without your dad sleeping on the couch and Grennson keeping such close emotional tabs on us. The only person I want to be sharing an orgasm with anytime soon is you, thanks very much.”

“You get that he might not stop anytime soon, right?” Cody asked with a sigh.

“Yes, but he also won’t be so distraught in the near future. Trust me, I’m monitoring this, I know exactly how strong Grennson’s connections are and they’re already tapering off a little.”

“I guess I’ll survive.”

“If a stupid human boy couldn’t survive not having sex every now and then, one half of the binaries would have murdered the other half for being insatiable bastards long ago,” Ten muttered sleepily. “Now stop talking, you’re messing up my count.”

The night before the Perel delegation was set to arrive and whisk them away, Jonah took Cody out to dinner in town. They had some distant bodyguards, but they were discreet enough that Cody almost felt like he and his dad were actually alone. They ended up at a posh place that was so outside of something Jonah would normally have chosen that Cody actually said, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not my choice, kiddo,” his dad mumbled. “Just—bear with me for a minute.” They introduced themselves to the maître-de, who led them to a private room deep within the labyrinthine depths of the restaurant. It had a crystalline theme that made Cody’s head spin a little, there were so many reflections on all sides. The private room was fortunately a little less sparkly, enough for Cody to tell that someone was already waiting for them there. He knew who it was even before the man could stand up and throw off his hood, and rushed forward and into his arms, feeling breathless and strange and young and so, so grateful.

“Garrett!”

“Hey Cody,” his dad said, sounding a little breathless himself, and it felt like forever since Cody had seen him, so long, too long, he was close to his quad mates and he was fine, really, just fine after everything that had happened, but Garrett was his dad, and he was here, and he had both of them here and it was really just—

“How?”

“Experimental transit technology and a very brief window, darling,” Garrett said, pressing a kiss to his head. “But I thought that even if it was just long enough for dinner, it would be better than nothing.”

“Yes,” Cody said emphatically, relaxing a little more when he felt Jonah’s hands on his shoulders, heard the brief kiss that passed between his parents. It was so much better than nothing.

 

***

 

Darrell’s coda:

 

After his last call with his grandparents, Darrell had known better than to be in the same room as Grennson for a while. They were insistent that he come home; he was just as insistent that he would be going to Perelan, and the call had ended with his grandmother tears and his grandfather telling him if he was going to be this way, he could just not bother coming home at all for the forseeable future.

Which, fine. Darrell was tired of forcing himself into a mold that had never fit him very well, tired of trying to be his father and failing again and again. He was finally figuring out how to be himself, and thanks to his trust and his Legacy status he had options for taking care of himself, in case they really decided to cut him off. He almost hoped they would. If his mother didn’t care enough to even speak to him while he was calling home, then he didn’t need her. He didn’t need any of them, he had Grennson now.

Still, the anger was too fresh and too bright to make him want to be around Grennson, so Darrell took himself off to the paraball field, sat down in the stands and let himself fume for a while, working through the emotions so he could get over them. He felt the bond between him and Grennson press a little, then recede when Grennson realized he wanted to be alone.

Except alone wasn’t in the cards, because a little further down in the stands was a girl with short, pale hair and pink skin, and before he could think better of it Darrell called out, “Valero?”

She turned, and—yes, it was Valero, but not the Valero Darrell remembered. Gone was the hauteur, gone was the precise grooming and flaunted beauty. This was a thin, haunted girl, who blanched when she saw him but didn’t retreat. Darrell’s anger melted away into morbid curiosity, and he came down and sat next to her. She let him, but didn’t speak for a few minutes. He waited for her.

“They still don’t feel like mine,” she said at last. “The legs,” she clarified, prodding one of her calves with a slender finger. “They grew on my body, they should feel like mine, but they don’t. The doctors say I’ve got issues with dissociation now, I’m seeing them twice a day for treatment.” She smiled humorlessly. “Hasn’t helped so far.”

“You lost your legs?” Darrell felt kind of stupid for asking it, but he hadn’t realized she’d been hurt so badly. He should have, being set on fire was more than enough to kill you, shit, he was being an idiot—

“Yeah. And a few other things. All my hair, obviously.” There was a hint of the old Valero there as she brushed her hand over the short strands with a disdainful look. “I can’t stand short hair, but they won’t let me grow it out any quicker yet. Something about overwhelming my reserves. Bullshit.”

Darrell didn’t know what to say to that, so he changed the subject. “When did you get out of the infirmary?”

“Last week. Just in time for finals, hooray.”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“Yeah.” She stared down at her feet for a moment, wiggling her toes curiously, then looked back at him. “I know he didn’t do it. What they say he did, killing her…I know it wasn’t like that. I wish I could tell everyone, but I’m not allowed to. And now he’s gone.”

He must have been Kyle. Kyle had been Valero’s mentor, if anyone had known what he was up to, it was her.  “I’m sorry,” Darrell offered, actually genuine.

“Me too. For everything. I’d tell your quad mates myself, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t think they’d care to see me right now. I don’t think I care to be seen, really.”

“I’m sorry,” Darrell repeated. Valero ducked her head and looked away, but stretched her fingers out toward him. He took her hand, carefully, and they sat together in silence until the light was gone from the sky.

 

***

 

Grennson’s coda:

 

“I am unsure of the wisdom of this course of action,” Matriach Grenn said, her quills bristling slightly as she shifted her weight. She was sitting on an x-legged stool, the same stool that Grennson had seen a thousand times in her den back on Perelan. She was only here as a projection, but even so she exerted a powerful presence that made Grennson want to bow his head. She was his matriarch, and her disapproval was a blow.

Fortunately for Grennson, he had Jason Kim on his side.

“This is what makes the most sense,” Jason said, his own projection on Grennson’s right, between him and the matriarch. “Grennson needs the support, the boys need the distance from the Central System and it will be a good opportunity for the Perel to interact with new people while under close supervision.”

“It also sends a message that the Perel are coming down on the side of the opposition forces, and we do not benefit from staking a claim for either side in a purely human conflict right now,” Matriarch Grenn argued.

“The Perel were relegated to the opposition’s side without the need for their input,” Jason said frankly. “The Libertarians support a closed, uniform, decidedly human empire. The Mazzi have already been removed from several planetary embassies, and you know about the ‘pirate’ attacks. Whether or not things come to open conflict, it doesn’t make sense for the Perel to keep their heads in the sand about this.”

Matriarch Grenn’s quills fluffed up again. “What is this ‘sand’ and why would anyone put their head into it?”

Jason sighed. “It’s an old human idiom, Grenn, forgive the confusion. It just means that ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.”

“I don’t propose to ignore it, but I would not have it made worse either. Bringing human cubs to Perel, especially ones that are the children of well-known politicians, could bring undue attention to our home. We are not equipped to fight a war with the Federation, Jason.”

“This isn’t that sort of escalation. If anything, it’s a symbol of sanctuary, not an insult. Beyond that, before you let any of your sons go out into the universe, you promised you would help them when they needed it. I’ve rescued five Perel in various dangerous circumstances since I became your council’s traveling diplomat, Grenn, and you didn’t care about the circumstances or humanity’s impressions then. This is no different.”

Matriarch Grenn’s quills finally settled. “One would think that I would have learned the futility or arguing with you after so long, Jason.”

Jason smiled. “I’m persistent.”

“You are stubborn. But you are also possibly right. Grennson,” she turned to her foundling, and he snapped to attention. “You have suffered much. Are you sure you would not rather simply return to Perelan for the foreseeable future, to be with your own family again?”

Grennson gave the question the consideration it was due, but answered at length, “No, Matriarch. I don’t want to run away. In order to be trusted by humanity, we must show trust as well. I wish to return here, for the next year, but to bring my friends home with me in the meantime. Please. They are important to me.”

“So it seems.” Finally she inclined her head. “Very well. Ferran has informed me that the two of you are already on your way there, Jason. You did not give very much weight to the possibility of my disapproval.”

“I knew you would be reasonable, as always,” Jason said, and Matriarch Grenn grunted with laughter.

“You are so…what is the human word your mother uses…cheeky, Jason Kim Howards Grenn. And your attitude is catching. Grennson, try not to imitate your foster father too much. I can only take so much.”

Grennson beamed at her, feeling a little more of his fear wither away with her approval. “I’ll try,” he said disingenuously.

 

***

 

Ten’s coda:

 

Being marched to Admiral Liang’s office wasn’t exactly confusing—Ten was sure he’d caught hir out on something, ze just wasn’t quite sure what is was this time. His damn sergeant refused to tell hir, so ze waited for a few minutes in perturbed silence before finally getting permission to head into his office.

Figuring the best defense was a good offense, ze walked in saying, “Whatever you think I did, I absolutely did not do it and I’m sure you can’t prove it, and even if you think you can I’m sure I can explain it, don’t you understand anything about the creative process, it’s not like I can just stop myself from having these ideas!”

“Relax, Cadet St. Florian,” Admiral Liang said dryly. “I’m not here to address any of your recent experiments, although your reaction has me questioning whether or not that’s a good idea.”

Ten rerouted in an instant. “Of course I’m not doing anything wrong, I just told you that. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I don’t want to talk to you about anything, actually,” the admiral said. “I want to give you something.”

Ten was about to make a snarky remark about inappropriate relations, but a second glance at the admiral’s face had hir reevaluating. He looked completely serious, his hands folded on the desk. Next to them was a tiny vial, with a rotating series of numbers and letters around it. It glowed the glow of cryosetting, which meant that its contents were perishable, which meant… “What is that?”

“Something that might help you, if you’re still interested in cracking the code on naturalism,” Admiral Liang said. “I know you’ve been working on other things lately, and if you’ve given up then our conversation ends now.”

Ten’s eyes jerked from the vial to his face. “I haven’t given up, I’ve just been distracted,” ze snapped. “By insane psychics, or have you forgotten about that already?”

“Not at all. Answer the question.”

“Yes, I’m still interested in finding the cure for naturalism.” For Cody. “What’s in that?”

“Just another possible pathway,” Admiral Liang said. “Before I give it to you, I need to know you will keep the contents of this vial, and its provenance, completely private. You don’t write papers on it, you don’t toy with it, you don’t do anything other than use it to work toward a cure. Otherwise I cut off your source for it, and knowing how you experiment, I forsee you needing plenty of samples. This substance doesn’t synthesize well, so don’t even think about circumventing my restrictions that way. It can’t be duplicated, not currently. It can only be manufactured in one place, and I control access to that. Do you agree to my terms?”

“Yes,” Ten said immediately, hir mind already spiraling off in a hundred different directions. A vaccine, maybe, or a cellular bath, or a new Regen prototype, or a— “What is that?”

“You’ll find out,” Admiral Liang said, and handed the vial over into hir hands. Ten cupped it preciously, watching the notations spiral around and around the outside. Genetic markers…a chemical blueprint for something…

Ze was determined to find out exactly what.

 

The Academy Post #35

Notes:  Another long one, plus lots of explanation, plus…arg, WHY!!! Why do I do this to myself, I’m such a freaking cockblock, arg arg arg. I swear to god, I’m going to give you an explicit scene before this story completely ends if it kills me. It may come in the form of a special semester break posting for the boys, but it’ll happen. Anyway, enjoy.

Title: The Academy

Part Thirty-Five: Onward and Upward, Never Look Back

***

By the time Nurse Don’t-Fuck-With-Me’s door chime woke them up the next morning, Ten was feeling more sanguine about life in general. It wasn’t that ze had magicked away hir boundless issues with the power of affection and Cody’s copious body heat, but ze hadn’t slept nearly as much as Cody had last night, and had had plenty of time to ruminate. In the hours that ze had spent awake, hir head tucked beneath Cody’s chin, moving gently on the swell of his breaths and soft but definitely present snores, ze had decided that the best way to deal with new trauma was the same way ze’d dealt with old trauma: ignore it unless doing so became completely untenable. That strategy had gotten Ten through the worst disappointments of hir life so far with minimal scarring, so to speak. Ze would get through the rest of them just the same.

Of course, ignoring the trauma didn’t mean that Ten was completely insensible to the things that made hir feel better. Waking up next to Cody was definitely one of those. Not just across the room from him, watching him roll and toss in his sleep, but actually next to him, in the same bed, sharing space, sharing everything. It turned out that Cody was much less mobile when he was sleeping with someone—or maybe that was a side effect of the broken collarbone, but whatever, it was good news as far as Ten was concerned. Cody’s arm across hir shoulders was nice, a pleasant weight rather than a bar holding hir down, and despite the fact that he had morning breath—one of the worst side effects of not being able to use Regen, as far as Ten was concerned—overall he smelled pretty good. Ten wanted to analyze the air molecules, siphon out the things that made up the smell of Cody, classify and codify and see if ze couldn’t isolate what it was that made his scent so—so nice.

“No ‘speriments before breakfast,” Cody muttered, and Ten held back a blush as ze realized ze’d been speaking out loud.

“Don’t try to set an arbitrary timetable to my experiments, you can’t stop science,” Ten replied quickly.

“Mmm…we should get up,” Cody said, then frowned. “Why should we get up? Did she say?”

“Nurse Pain-Before-Pleasure doesn’t believe in explanations,” Ten said, curling a little closer into Cody’s body. If anything, the nurse’s directions made hir more determined to stay even longer in bed. Ze shifted, wondering why hir perch had suddenly become a lot stiffer—oh.

Cody realized what was happening a second after Ten did, and his whole body went rigid, matching his…well. “Um…it just happens in the mornings,” he said sheepishly, his face flushing with heat. He couldn’t beat back blushes the way Ten could.

Ten considered the situation for a moment, then positioned hirself more fully on top of Cody. “You mean it’s not because of me?” ze asked coyly, rubbing hir own hardness down against Cody’s. It had been a long time since Ten had done anything physically pleasurable with anyone, certainly nothing at the Academy other than hir aborted kiss with Cody not so long ago. Ze had tried sex before, all sorts of sex, and ze had decided that apart from using it as a tool to get what ze wanted it wasn’t really hir thing. With Cody, though, Ten found hirself responding to him before ze’d given hirself permission. Hir organs were simple things that responded to simple stimuli, but hir mind…you had to be something interesting to get Ten’s mind involved. And right now all ze could think about was how incredibly good it felt to be touching him like this, to feel like ze had power over Cody not because ze’d planned it that way, but because he wanted hir.

Cody was shy though, he was conservative, there was no way he—

Cody used his good hand to pull Ten down harder even as he rolled his hips up. “It’s definitely because of you now,” he said breathlessly, his brown eyes huge and hungry. “But the nurse is going to be back in here any second, so if we’re going to do something we have to do it fast.”

Oh. Oh, he wanted to… “Okay,” Ten said, almost stammering with how turned on ze suddenly was. “Okay, we can do that, I can absolutely be fast, just—”

The door chime rang. Ten turned hir head and snarled at it. “Go away! Don’t you have some other people to torment with your impossibly bad timing?”

“’Fraid I don’t,” a new voice said, and both of them froze. That wasn’t Nurse All-Business-All-The -Time, that was…

“Oh shit, it’s my dad,” Cody said, covering his flaming face with one hand. “Don’t come in, we’ll be out in a minute!” he called out. “Just…just wait, okay? Please?”

“Well I’m definitely not coming in, bucko. Hustle, though, we’ve got a lot to talk about before you can get back to class.”

“Okay, we’ll be right out.” Cody looked up at Ten with a hunted expression on his face. “Do you think he was using the viewport?”

“I have no idea,” Ten said, both oddly titillated and completely repulsed by the idea of Jonah Helms seeing them in this position.

“I hope not. Shit.” Cody sighed. “I guess we’d better get up and dressed.”

Ten felt something slipping right then, all of the burgeoning more that had been building between them suddenly reduced to a whisper, in danger of vanishing entirely. “Only,” Ten said seriously, making sure ze had Cody’s gaze, “if you promise we can actually do this soon. You’re driving me crazy here, I can’t be held responsible for my actions if you keep throwing yourself at me and then taking yourself away again.”

Cody boggled. “Me…you’re the one who started it!”

“And I’m going to finish it too, if you’ll let me.” Ten fluttered hir eyelashes mock-seductively, and when Cody laughed the tension between them relaxed, but kept the hint of promise instead of letting it fade away.

“Okay, yes. I promise to stop tormenting you with my sexiness and let you have your way with me as soon as humanly possible,” Cody said. “I really, really want to touch you too,” he added, and damn it, now Ten really was blushing, how did Cody do that to hir, it was utterly infuriating.  “You have to get off of me if we’re going to get dressed,” he said a moment later.

“Oh, right.”

It was odd to get ready to face the day while still feeling so strange, somewhere between agitated and effervescent. It was even odder to leave the room a step behind Cody and watch him practically fall into his father’s arms, all awkwardness gone in the wake of the incredible affection they shared. That…that had to be normal, didn’t it, that sort of tenderness between a parent and their child? Ten had always thought that sort of sentiment was nothing but a biological urge that some procreators were able to conquer faster than others, setting their offspring free to fend for themselves, but apparently it persisted for most people. Parents kept on loving their children. It was obvious with Cody, it was clearly there with Grennson, even though he was adopted…even Darrell, who never talked about his parents, was still in touch with them all the time. Was Ten really the aberration here? What had gone wrong with hir situation, ze wondered. Was it that hir parents had simply lacked that instinctual love, or was it that Ten had done something early on to lose it?

“Hey there, Ten,” Cody’s dad said, and then all of a sudden Ten was drawn into a hug of hir own, and oh no, Jonah smelled a lot like Cody, a few more scents—hints of dust and oil, coffee and ozone—and Ten gripped him back hard, stupid, awful tears springing into hir eyes for absolutely no reason at all. Ze didn’t want to let go and Jonah didn’t make hir, just held on for a minute before relaxing a bit and turning them toward another room. “C’mon, we’re runnin’ a little late for the meeting,” he said.

Inside the other room were Darrell and Grennson, Grennson looking decidedly worse for wear but also himself again, and Cody being the mushy ball of fondness that he was, he was over next to them in an instant, hugging and asking questions and so concerned it was enough to make a normal person nauseous from the sweetness. Ten would have gone over hirself, if ze could have pulled away from Jonah. Ze couldn’t quite manage that, though, so they came to hir.

“I’m very pleased your mind is your own again,” Grennson said, leaning in and pressing his cheek against Ten’s in the Perel version of a hug.

“My sentiments exactly,” Ten said. “But look at you, you look utterly ridiculous. How long does it take for those quills to grow back in? Are you going to have to pull the burnt ones and just let them start over from scratch? What exactly are they composed of, did they act as conductors for the neural net or was the effect more like—”

“Oh shut up,” Darrell said, but there was no bite to it. “Clearly you’re feeling better, your mouth is already going at lightspeed.”

“Too fast for your brain to catch up, is that what you’re saying?” Ten snarked comfortably.

“If you could all be seated, we’ll get this conference started,” Admiral Liang said from where he sat at the other end of a small rectangular table. There were six empty chairs around it, and Ten wondered why until a hologram of a Perel suddenly appeared. Ah, Grennson’s parent.

“Good morning,” the Perel said in standard, then purred something at his son that made Grennson smile. They all found a seat, Ten shoehorned between Jonah and Cody in a way that felt very, very nice, and then Admiral Liang began to speak.

“I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about what’s happened to you over the past few days, and why. I probably can’t answer every question, but I can clear a few things up for you.”

Ten rolled hir eyes. “As though we need you to. Obviously we were targeted by a small group of people under the direct command of either President Alexander or one of his close confidants, probably because of Cody and Grennson but mostly Cody because he’s the son of one of the men who’s causing problems for Alexander on Liberty, and Pamela was a spy and assassin who was supposed to take Cody out but got carried away trying to blame things on Kyle while getting the job done because I’m thinking there are some serious issues between Kyle and his brother, probably having to do with their father, and Pamela is lucky she’d dead, because I’d kill her otherwise, and I bet it was Cody’s Politics and Policies professor who was helping her, wasn’t it? Colonel Friehoff? Because he was a biased idiot and also had a background in technology enhancement and probably knew how to help her cover up her tracks. Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I? I’m so right.”

Admiral Liang stared at Ten for a long moment before smiling. “Absolutely correct. We’re quite fortunate that you haven’t taken over the universe yet.”

“As if I would, I don’t care about ruling over people, people are idiots,” Ten said, although ze felt a little warmed by the regard. “I care about ruling over science.”

“And you may yet. Yes. Colonel Friehoff was collaborating with Pamela Wu, along with a few other people in our technical division. It’s how we lost sight of her time and again on the security feeds. She was responsible for the attacks on Marcys and Valero—”

“Where is Valero?” Darrell interjected, looking concerned.

“Valero was apparently mind-controlled into damaging your bike, Cody,” Admiral Liang said, and Ten felt Cody shudder a little at the memory. “And afterward, she was directed by Pamela to set herself on fire. Fortunately the mind resists such attempts to destroy it, but she was still badly wounded. The med staff has had to regrow some of her limbs, which is why you haven’t seen her around. As for Marcys…”

“Why attack him?” Cody asked. “I can understand Valero, I guess, but Marcys barely knew any of us. He didn’t really have anything to do with this at all.”

“The day he was attacked, Marcys was testing a new type of camouflage,” Admiral Liang said, and Cody nodded. “It works beautifully on normal people, people who Regen, whether or not they’re also psychic. You were inside Hephaestus Tower that day, and Marcys was sitting outside. He saw Pamela approach the building and attach a device to it that would have illegally given her access. She didn’t see him, and didn’t know he was there to sense. Psychic power generally needs to be directed to have an effect. He confronted her, she attacked him, and soon thereafter you found where she had dragged his body.”

“This girl seems most disturbed,” the Perel—Ferran, that was it—commented.

“She isn’t typical of our cadets, I assure you,” Admiral Liang said. “Nevertheless, changes will have to be made to staffing and more rigorous protocols put in place for cadet oversight. I have a great deal to do over the semester break, and once you four have taken your final exams—which, yes,” he said, looking straight at Ten who had just opened hir mouth to object, “you do still have to take, you’ll all need to leave campus for a time.”

Cody frowned. “I’m supposed to be on the year-round program, though. It’s part of the operative training program.”

“I’m not certain that training to be an operative is the best future for you, Cody.” Admiral Liang held up a quelling hand. “It’s not a criticism, it’s merely an observation. There’s more possibility in your future than covert affairs, and I’m certainly not going to make you leave just because you’re following an atypical path for a natural at the Academy.”

“I’m supposed to be year-round as well,” Ten said, hoping it would make Cody feel a little less isolated.

“I’m supposed to go home,” Darrell mumbled unhappily.

“My plan has always been to bring Grennson back to Perelan for the duration of his break from the Academy,” Ferran said. “I have spoken with my husband and our matriarch, and they have agreed to extend an invitation to Perelan to the rest of you. You would all come home with us for your break. We have never had so many young humans in our clan before, but,” Ferran smiled, “I think you will be very welcome.”

“It would also give you a measure of safety, as well as making a statement of inclusiveness,” Admiral Liang continued. “Perelan is well protected and keeps very exacting track of every foreigner on the planet. Not to mention, this is an opportunity afforded to very few humans.”

“It’s okay with me,” Jonah said when Cody looked at him. “And with Garrett. Neither of us care to take you back to Liberty right now, way things are there.”

And then both of them looked at Ten, who—what, was this actually a question? They were really in doubt? “Of course I’m going, are you crazy? The number of experiments I could do on the atmosphere alone, we have to bring my lab along, is there room on your ship for my lab?” ze asked Ferran, who smiled.

“I’m sure we can make room for your equipment,” he promised, and Ten felt hir mind begin to soar with ideas, that familiar high of possibility and discovery. This was going to be amazing, incredible, ze could already think of a dozen experiments ze wanted to do and oh, now ze would have to read every scientific paper ze could find about Perelan, possibly combine them into some sort of meta so they’d be more easily searchable, and oh shit, ze needed to be at hir workstation now, and where was hir tab, and—

“Steady there,” Jonah said gently, and Ten realized ze was vibrating under his arm.

“Sorry,” ze said.

“S’okay. Just don’t get carried away quite yet.”

“You still have exams, all of you,” Admiral Liang reminded them. “There will be an increased security presence in your hall and in your classes for the rest of the semester. If people ask you questions, either tell them it’s classified or direct them to me. Get through your final week, keep this information to yourself, and be careful. I don’t anticipate any more problems but, very clearly, I’m not prescient.”

“What’s going to happen to Kyle?” Cody asked suddenly. “Are you really going to send him back to his brother?”

“Kyle’s already gone,” Admiral Liang said grimly. “It’s out of my hands now, I’m afraid.” He shared a look with Jonah that Ten wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret. “Now. Back to your quad. Captain Helms will escort you, he’s going to be staying at the Academy until you leave for Perelan.”

Damn. Getting some alone time with Cody suddenly seemed like much more of a challenge. Still, Ten couldn’t stop hir feelings of excitement from welling up. Ze had Cody to look forward to, science to look forward to, even time with Jonah to look forward to.

Things were definitely looking up.

The Academy Post #33

 

Notes:  So, not the longest chapter here, but one that I found really satisfying to write, and that I hope you enjoy too. I’m in such a great mood, I got a call from a publisher I’ve been dying to get in with this morning who said that they loved my work and wanted to see anything else I had, so…hooray for professional development! I needed that boost. Really winding down now, darlins. I’ve still got some explaining to do, but…

Actually, speaking of explaining, I have a confession to make: I’m not actually sure what I’ve done to Valero. I’ve got a few options but no strong feelings about it. If anyone cares to give me their thoughts about Valero’s fate, and doesn’t mind if I write it up if I like it, please feel free to share. Otherwise I may just consign her to the pile of “lost plot threads” that shamefully exists, and that would suck.

Title: The Academy

Part Thirty-Three: Use The Force, Darrell

 

***

 

It was five hours since the attack, and Darrell was exhausted.

Well, okay, he was more than exhausted. He’d been exhausted after finding everyone on the floor of their quad. He’d been emotionally wrung out at the sight of Cody and Ten and Grennson, especially Grennson, lying there with smoke still rising from his quills, clutching Pamela’s dead body and making that horrible noise. Just stepping into the room had given Darrell an instant headache, something in the air maybe, something that made his temples pound and his whole spine prickle. And then, impossibly, it had gotten worse.

Darrell had almost blacked out when the medics got Grennson onto the stretcher and took him away. They’d had to sedate him first, because the Perel had still been growling, snapping when they got close. No one was entirely sure how to properly sedate a Perel, though, and whatever they’d given Grennson, it had worn off in minutes.

Darrell had stayed close, unable to tear himself away even when the nurse wanted to put him out to treat the headache and his bruises from the fight with Kyle. He’d insisted on staying close, and so he got to watch them put Grennson in a room that was almost more prison cell than living suite, and then listen to them argue about what to do next. Regen was the human treatment of choice, but there were no settings in Regen for any aliens, much less the newest species to be known to the Federation. Meanwhile, Darrell watched Grennson become more and more aggravated, tearing at his own quills in between growls, thrashing his head from side to side like something was stuck inside and he was trying to shake it out. The longer Darrell watched the projection, the sicker he felt, until finally he pushed past the medical staff and let himself into the room.

They had tried to follow him, but as soon as Darrell stepped inside Grennson’s eyes were on him, and his hands stilled. Darrell started speaking in Perel—stupid, simple things, basic shit that he could barely remember thanks to the pain in his head. Grennson was—not calming down, exactly, but at least not actively hurting himself anymore.

“Whatever you’re doing,” one of the doctors said lowly, “keep it up. We’re going to try and get in touch with his parents. If you feel unsafe at any time, the door will open for you.”

The mere fact that they were willing to let Darrell stay spoke volumes. It was irregular—no, it was crazy—to let them interact like this, with Grennson unpredictable and Darrell not even sure he was having much of an effect, but the medical staff had even less of a clue than Darrell did. The last thing they wanted was for their one alien cadet to go insane on their watch though, and frankly that was the last thing Darrell wanted too. He was more than willing to be the guinea pig in this experiment.

Even do, after hours of the same thing, he hadn’t made any progress. Grennson wouldn’t let him come close, certainly not close enough to touch, and whenever Darrell stopped talking he started growling again. Darrell’s throat ached from so many glottals, and he was starting to feel dizzy from lack of water. He’d have to give up sooner or later, and then he had no idea what would happen to Grennson.

“All right,” a soft voice suddenly said through the comm. Both Darrell and Grennson started in surprise. “We’re in contact with one of Grennson’s parents, and we’re going to try something new.” A moment later the blue-white light of a hologram projected down from the ceiling, adding color and depth and finally resolving into the shape of another Perel. It was Ferran, Grennson’s Perel guardian. He immediately looked straight at Grennson and crouched down on one knee, speaking their language smoothly and melodically. Grennson still wasn’t growling, but he didn’t look any more relaxed either, just more confused.

“Hmm.” When Ferran looked over at Darrell, Darrell froze, feeling like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “Hello, Darrell.”

“Hi,” he said hoarsely. “Look…um…”

“The staff explained to me what happened,” Ferran said softly, his huge, luminescent eyes going back to his son. “I know that you’re helping as best you can.”

“Can’t you do more?” Darrell asked. “Do you know what’s wrong with him, can you fix it?”

“I have a thought about the problem,” Ferran said, and his quills flattened in the same way Grennson’s did when he was feeling sad or uncertain. “I don’t know much about human psychics, but I believe that the mechanism works in much the same way a Perel’s empathy does. The pain of the neural net, the harsh way it stimulated his brain even if it didn’t make total contact, and then facing down your psychic attacker after that…I’m afraid Grennson’s empathy is stuck on a loop. It can happen when we’re confronted with intense violence or fear. If I were there, I would meditate with him. We’re connected in such a way that my empathy would influence and calm his own.

“I’m not there, though, and while there are human sedatives that would work on Grennson, they would not free his mind from its turmoil. His pain would follow him into sleep.”

Darrell rubbed his eyes on the heels of his hands. “There has to be something we can do.”

When he looked up Ferran was grinning at him. “I like how you said ‘we,’” Ferran told him, still smiling, but his voice was serious. “Because I think there’s a chance that you’ll be the one to calm Grennson down.”

“I’ve tried, I’ve been trying,” Darrell protested. “It’s barely done anything.”

“You’ve never seen a Perel in a frenzy before, Darrell. I know humans use medicine to regulate their darker moods, but Perels rely on meditation, family and the strong presence of our matriarchs to keep us level. With none of those at hand, Grennson should be utterly manic right now, hurting himself, needing to be restrained. He isn’t, and that is your doing.”

That was…wow. Good to hear, but… “So what else can I do?” Darrell asked.

“Sit down on the floor. Cross-legged, with your hands palm up on your knees,” Ferran instructed. “Perel usually kneel when we meditate, but human knees are less robust. This is how Jason prefers to sit.”

Darrell lowered himself to the floor, wincing a little he tilted his aching head forward. He crossed his legs, got his hands into the right position, then said, “Now what?”

“Now I’m going to sit as well, but within you. Grennson can’t sense me, but seeing you coupled with my silhouette might be comforting to him.”

Right, the spines. Darrell held still as Ferran’s hologram sat down inside of him. It wasn’t that he could feel it, exactly, more like he thought he should. Either way, it wasn’t entirely comfortable, but whatever helped Grennson he would do.

“Now you need to calm your breathing,” Ferran said softly. “Let it start in the belly, then up into the chest. In through your nose, but out through your mouth, nice and slow. Go with me.” He inhaled and Darrell copied him, feeling his stomach muscles object to being asked to unclench. Once they did unclench though, Darrell found that he was breathing a lot easier.

They just breathed, just that, for several minutes. Grennson watched them from across the room, almost completely still, his eyes glittering through the slits of his lids. “Good,” Ferran said. “Very good. As you calm down so is he. I thought he might have established an empathic connection with you, but I couldn’t be sure until now. It’s only happened between a very small number of humans and Perel, and then only after sharing close quarters for a significant amount of time. Now. Look at him, and think about him. Think thoughts of warmth and comfort and family.”

When Darrell thought of his family, he was very rarely comforted. But, he realized, that didn’t matter. He wasn’t thinking about them, he was thinking about the family he’d chosen to have, and that began right here, with Grennson. Darrell looked at his roommate, his best friend, and thought about staying up late to practice Perel, and how awful his accent had been, how patient Grennson was with him.  He thought about the warm, sweet smell of lhosa tea, and the deliciousness of Grennson’s cooking. He thought about how finally, for the first time ever, he felt like someone had accepted him not for who his father was, but for who Darrell was, as his own person. Grennson was never malicious, never hurtful, sometimes teasing but never sharp. He made Darrell feel like there was more to life than the heaviness of other people’s expectations, and he had shared everything with Darrell: his culture, his language, even his own family. It was more than Darrell could ever repay, and he was so, so grateful.

Grennson crept across the floor, first fitfully, then with more confidence, until eventually he knelt directly in front of Darrell. Slowly, he leaned forward and touched their foreheads together.

It was like a window opened in Darrell’s mind. At first there was pain, and he could hear Pamela’s screams in his head, and feel her desperate, clawing attacks against his mind—no, no it was Grennson’s mind, but it felt like his own. That faded quickly though, until a minute later they were sharing the same emotions, a dizzying blend of gratitude and love and utter relief.

“Darrell,” Grennson said in a small voice, and that was it for meditating. Darrell pulled Grennson forward into his arms and hugged him tight to his chest. Grennson returned the embrace, slowly but tightly.

“My good boys,” Ferran said in Perel, and Darrell saw the Perel’s holographic arms emerge from his own body to stroke at Grennson’s head. Grennson purred, and Darrell kind of felt like purring himself, even though neither of them could feel it. “My good, dear boys. You’re all right now.”

Darrell thought they really might be.

The Academy Post #29

 

Notes:  This one is a bit on the short side, but I ended up splitting what I thought would be one scene in two. You get some action, some answers, and a set-up for the next chapter, which is going to be…well, you’ll see when you read this one. I swear I’m not dragging this out on purpose, it’s just how things have ended up flowing, narratively speaking. We’re still on trajectory to finish this before the end of July, and I am going to wrap things up very nicely before we dive into Soothsayer.

Title: The Academy

Part Twenty-Nine: Cognitive Recalibration

 

***

 

When Kyle hit, he hit hard.

Darrell blocked the first punch, and the second, but he wasn’t expecting the knee to the side of his thigh, striking him hard just above the knee and making his leg buckle. He grunted with pain and staggered, barely staying on his feet, but luckily Xenia was there to distract Kyle before he could finish it, giving Darrell some breathing space.

Or he would have had some breathing space, if he didn’t see Ten race forward, the syringe in hir hand leading the way, scarily intent on Kyle. Which, no. Ten was going to get hirself killed, and there was no way Darrell was going to watch that.

Darrell reached with one hand and caught the back of Ten’s tunic, jerking hir almost off hir feet as he pulled hir back.  “Stay out of it!”

“I have to get his heart,” Ten said, not even looking at Darrell. “I have to get his heart!”

“We have to stop him first,” Darrell snapped. “Stay back here!” He pushed Ten behind him and threw himself back into the fight, which was going…not well.

Xenia was a good fighter, better than Darrell, and Darrell had been practicing Akumu-ru bujitsu since he was old enough to walk. Xenia was tall and strong, with a solid stance and a linear style that gave her immensely powerful kicks and punches, and she attacked Kyle without reservation, giving everything to the fight. Xenia was an Amazon, with a superiority complex a kilometer wide, and she didn’t give quarter anywhere, not on the field and not off of it.  She was giving this fight her best, giving it her all.

It wasn’t enough.

Kyle was trained as a fighter, of course he was; he was an Alexander, every Alexander had to excel at personal defense due to their status. These days fighting mods could be programmed into your implant, and a few hours of mental and physical review could result in a smooth, effective fighting style. The Alexanders were probably implanted with the best money had to offer.

This, though, was not the easy efficiency of an implant, the straightforwardness of Xenia or the flare of Modo-savate, the most popular fighting art on Liberty. Kyle moved in circles, slipping and sliding, dodging and weaving around Xenia’s long reach and wrapping her up like ribbons, immobilizing each limb that came at him just long enough to strike at a major nerve center before disengaging again. Which was…odd, there was no reason for him to be disengaging, if he held on he could finish it faster instead of letting Xenia pull back and regroup, but he was. It was almost like he wasn’t paying all that much attention to her, he kept looking beyond them, looking at—

It didn’t matter. Darrell would show Kyle that it was a mistake to underestimate them. He and Xenia had never fought together, but on the field they were a good team. Darrell was better at grappling than doing this standing bullshit anyway. He lunged at Kyle from behind just as Xenia snapped a kick forward, narrowly dodged a back kick to the chest, grabbed Kyle’s foot and pulled. Kyle’s weight shifted back, he started to lose his balance, and Darrell adjusted his grip higher while Xenia closed the distance again from the front, and this was it, they were going to get him down and then—

Kyle leapt straight up, high, way higher than a normal person would be able to. Mods, Darrell thought faintly as he struggled to keep his hold on Kyle’s leg, but Kyle wasn’t trying to escape him. He thrust the ball of his foot into Xenia’s throat, sending her to her knees, coughing, then bent double in mid-air and tucked before he could hit the ground, rolled right between Darrell’s legs and used a complicated ankle lock to send Darrell sprawling forward onto his front, just barely getting his arms up in time to prevent his chin from hitting the paving.

Kyle was wrapped around Darrell’s legs and he felt a moment of fear, because he was so vulnerable right now. Kyle could destroy his ankles, his knees—shit, if he had an edged weapon on him that he’d been holding back he could end things right now, a quick slit to the femoral artery and Darrell would be gone before help could come—and where was the fucking help? Why were they doing this alone again? What was going on?

Kyle rolled them before Darrell could try to wriggle away, so that Darrell was on his back and Kyle was somehow on his feet again. “I’m sorry about this,” Kyle said, and he actually did sound a little sorry before he snapped the palm of his hand hard against the very top of Darrell’s forehead, making sparks fly across his darkening vision. Darrell didn’t even feel himself being let go, barely noticed Xenia’s yells and the renewed sounds of combat, because all of a sudden he found himself thinking that everything, everything happening right now, was completely wrong.

“Xenia,” he called out hoarsely, but that was as far as he got before Ten literally tripped over him on hir way toward Kyle. Darrell reached out and grabbed Ten’s legs, bringing hir down as gently as he could manage while his ears were still ringing. Ten didn’t even seem to notice, ze was completely intent on Kyle, even trying to crawl forward once ze realized ze wasn’t standing up anymore. “Let go,” Ten said, not looking back at Darrell, never letting hir gaze waver. “Let go! I need to get his heart!”

“You need to calm down,” Darrell said, and narrowly missed getting one of Ten’s heels in the teeth.  “Ten! Calm down!”

“I can’t!” Ten screamed, finally looking back at Darrell, and that was when Darrell noticed how wide hir eyes were, how dark hir pupils and how much ze was sweating, a clammy, cold sweat. “I can’t I can’t I CAN’T!”

“Ten!” Darrell dodged hir flailing limbs and straddled Ten’s waist, immobilizing hir head with his hands and looking straight into hir eyes. “It’s okay, look at me. Just look at me, don’t think about anything else, just me, okay? Look. Look. It’s okay.”

To Darrell’s shock, tears welled up in Ten’s eyes. He’d never seen hir cry before, not even after the fight with Valero.  “But I have to get him!” Ten whined, hir voice breaking pitifully. “Or he’ll hurt Cody. I have to get his heart, I have to get him in the heart.”

“You don’t,” Darrell promised. “I swear, it’s all right. Kyle isn’t your enemy.”

The scene playing out behind them begged to differ, but a moment later Kyle hit Xenia with his elbow right in the center of her forehead, and she went down like a falling star.  Kyle bent over her and felt her pulse, then sighed. “She’ll be all right when she wakes up, but I had to knock her out. I couldn’t count on her fighting through the compulsion as well as you have.” He looked over at Darrell and raised an eyebrow. “You are thinking straight again now, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Darrell affirmed. “We were…honestly I don’t know why we were fighting, we were just supposed to ask you about Cody.”

“We were fighting because a direct blow to the frontal lobe is a crude but reliable way of breaking mild psychic compulsions, and because you would have fought me anyway before I had a chance to explain anything.”

What the hell… “Psychic compulsions?”

“Obviously.” Kyle gestured to Ten, who was struggling weakly, hir eyes fixed unerringly on Kyle. “Can you think of any other reason for Ten to be acting like this? Completely irrational, switching from scientist to assassin in the space of a single morning? Ze’s under a strong psychic compulsion. It’s not legal, but nothing about the Psy program is strictly legal.” Kyle came over and laid a hand on Ten’s forehead, ignoring the way Ten snapped hir teeth at him even though it shocked Darrell.

“So can you hit hir on the head and break it?” Darrell asked. He was deeply uncomfortable with Ten’s behavior, so different from what he was used to now that he knew what he was looking at.

“Not safely. You and Xenia were under light control; it’s much deeper with Ten. Pamela must have been working on him for weeks.” Kyle’s expression suddenly seemed to sharpen, and he looked out at the expanse of the arena behind them like a predator, thrumming with unexplained tension. “She’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

”Pamela.” Kyle got to his feet and reached a hand out to Darrell, jerking him to his feet. They picked Ten up between them, Kyle deftly relieving Ten of the syringe and ignoring hir inarticulate cries of rage. “She must have gone to your quad. She could be there already, shit.” This was the most agitated Kyle had been since their confrontation had started, even during the fight. “Is Cody alone?”

“No, Grennson is with him,” Darrell said, still feeling inexplicably slow. Maybe it was the headache. Kyle had been precise, but he certainly hadn’t been gentle with him.

Kyle’s shoulders lost a little of their tension. “That’s good. I think, I have no idea what happens when a psychic and an empath go after each other, the Perel have never let any human scientists study them and Captain Kim refuses to let himself be examined as well.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We have to get to your quad. You handle hir, I’m going ahead. We have to stop Pamela before she finishes the job.” Kyle started to run, and Ten whimpered, hir hands curling into claws as ze pushed against Darrell’s enclosing forearms.

“Finishes what job?” Darrell yelled after Kyle.

“Killing Cody,” Kyle yelled back, and then he was gone, leaving Darrell to handle a struggling Ten and listening to Xenia groan as she started to come around. He wanted nothing more than to run after Kyle, but he had responsibilities, and those included making sure the people he was with were all right before he went charging off after a psychic who’d already whammied him once. But still…

“Why does everyone want to kill Cody?” Darrell muttered, then cursed under his breath as Ten suddenly scraped a foot down his shin, lunged forward out of the circle of his arms and stumbled off after Kyle.

“Wha th’ hell…” Xenia muttered, looking up blearily. Darrell glanced at her and grimaced.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said before taking off after Ten.