Page 14 of Reformation
[Your dad know about this?]
[Jonah’s the reason I have to get there.]
[What about the other one?]Jack never used Garrett’s name if he could help it.
[Doesn’t agree, doesn’t need to.]Cody forced down the swell of guilt that threatened to choke him. [He won’t know. Promise.]
Actually, the idea of getting one over on Garrett probably really appealed to Jack. He’d been sore ever since Garrett had broken his elbow during a custody dispute when Cody was a kid, then gotten out of serving time for it for medical reasons. Cody could barely remember how Garrett had been when he was off his meds, but he had a vague impression of fury and fierceprotectiveness, coupled with an underlying confusion. It had been a rough time for Garrett.
Cody bit his lip. He needed to stop thinking about his stepfather, or the simmering guilt would boil over and change his mind, and he couldn’t afford that right now.
[We can meet. No guarantees, bucko.]
Cody exhaled heavily.[When?]The sooner the better as far as he was concerned.
[One hour, Durham district, Rascal’s Bar. Bring everything you’ll need.]The subtext there screamed:everything anaturalmight need.Jack might want to have a relationship with Cody these days, but he’d never gotten over the fact that his son, his and Jonah’s only child, had been born with an incurable disability. Cody had tried for years to disabuse him of the notion that being a natural meant he needed to be coddled and given special privileges, but it hadn’t sunk in with Jack yet.
This would be good for them. A chance for Cody to show his father what he could do. He wasn’t a kid anymore: he was an excellent pilot, a decent mechanic, and an innovative engineer. He could take care of himself.
[I’ll be there.]
The connection died, and Cody shook his head as the imprint of the last message slowly faded out of his vision. Once he could move without seeing things that weren’t there, he picked up the pace getting back to his room. He had to pack. He had to … fuck, he needed to leave his friends messages letting them know he—
No. No, he couldn’t. The more people he told, the more likely it was that Garrett would find out and stop him before he got away. No, as much as he hated to leave Grennson and Darrel in the dark, they knew his dad; it was too risky. He’d just leave a message for Ten.
Who was going to kill him.
No, if anyone would understand what Cody needed to do, it was Ten. Ten would forgive him. After a long and painful period of groveling, at least.
Apollo Tower was deserted at this time of the morning, every cadet attending class. Cody slinked into his room, wanting to get out of sight of Hermes’ surveillance as soon as possible. The sooner he got off campus, the better. He opened the door to his room, then almost jumped out of his skin as he came nose to nose with Ten.
“Shit!”
“What happened?” Ten demanded, not wasting any time on pleasantries, as usual.
“What … how did you—”
“Oh, please.” Ze rolled hir eyes. “It’s like you don’t know me at all. I have an app in my implant that connects directly to Hermes and lets me know when you make abnormal movements that don’t correspond to your schedule, and I have another one that alerts me to a lexicon of unusual words that correlate to your personal history when they come up in the news. There were only a few mentions of Pandora before things were stifled, but it was enough to catch my attention. That plus you being called into Liang’s office? And then not contacting me?” Ten folded hir arms and glared. “What the hell, Cody?”
“You are seriously invasive sometimes,” Cody said sourly. How was he going to get away now?
“And you’re seriously naïve if you’re only realizing that today. I want to know everything about you. All of the time.” There was an edge of helplessness to Ten’s voice, like ze didn’t knowwhyze wanted to know everything, like being in love still mystified hir. Cody was charmed despite himself. “I want to be with you, I want to do things with you, and I don’t want you doing things without me. Especially not crazy, stupid things.”
“What makes you think I’m going to do something crazy?” Cody prevaricated.
“If you weren’t, you’d have told me about it already.”Fair enough, Cody supposed. “So? What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
Cody opened his mouth to lie, to tell Ten just enough truth that ze thought he was leaving with Garrett’s babysitters. He stopped, closed it, and reassessed. Cody was shit at lying, not because he couldn’t do it in the heat of the moment, but because inevitably, he felt so much guilt for it that he punished himself until he came clean. It was a childish impulse that he desperately wanted to get rid of but couldn’t ever seem to.
Ten, on the other hand, had never had a problem with lying. Ten was such a master of the art of bullshitting that sometimes not even Cody could wade through all the half-truths and misinformation to get to the heart of a matter. If—when—Jack took him up to the Helms ship, Cody knew that he still wouldn’t be among allies. His grandmother disliked him, and he didn’t know anyone else up there. Surely it would be better not to have to rely solely on Jack? Plus, he’d miss Ten worse than anything.
“Okay,” he said at last. “But you have to promise not to send off any messages or try to talk me out of it. Because it won’t work.”
Ten tilted hir head. “When have I ever tried to talk yououtof anything?”
Good point.
Explaining to Ten didn’t take long, maybe five minutes total. The only time hir intent expression faltered was when Cody glossed over his fight with Garrett.
