“He’s the General of the AMG. We showed our hand, and he showed his. They decide what to do about Segura’s research, and we go back to our lives and pretend it never happened. That’s it.” Lee shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, it’s not us he’s after.” They’d stirred the pot, but no, if he’d been picking up any hints, this went well beyond their scope.
There wasn’t anything more any of them could say or do at this point. The scientists and the people of Segura had escaped. The former ship’s operations had been nullified. And as for whatwas or wasn’t viable with the dark rays, that was in the hands of the Commanding Council. It was very much out of their hands.
And for once, Lee wasn’t in the mood to rage. He didn’t want to fight back. He just wanted to zip up his suit and put all of this behind them.
“We didn’t get kicked out yet,” Kat offered faintly, to which Whistler just grimaced.
“It’s not that simple. For someone like the General, there will be repercussions. You don’t get to just run like that and walk away,” Zane warned, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Maybe. But again, it’s not in our hands. What comes next is up to them. Commander Blanche has a seat on the council. If there’s anything left to be done, she knows how to find us,” Lee said. And he didn’t mean it to be combative, but the fact of the matter was that they were the ones left standing here, left in the dark to figure out how to move on. But, like Kat had said, at least they hadn’t been kicked out today.
Kat had turned away from them, studying something on the paneled, eggshell walls. He too stared over at the wall as he came up beside her. Their fingers brushed, like even now, gravity pulled them towards each other.
“I’ll come find you later,” he murmured, eyes dropping down to where their hands had touched.
He wasn’t sure where she was in all of this, what was going through her head. He would check in on her soon. Check onthis, soon. But right now he needed one thing.
And it was to be anywhere but here.
It was early afternoon before he caught up with Kat again in the Hideaway. Some of the icy weightiness from before had been replaced with a quiet numbness. Open-ended and swirling and bitter.
He wasn’t ready yet to visit the greenhouses, the blue-green lights a much too vibrant reminder of Segura. Instead, he had stolen away again to one of the smaller matted weight rooms on the lower training levels for a couple of hours after the debriefing as he let some of the shock thaw. It had been nice to relinquish his mind’s freedom to something physical for a while.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Lee said, conscious of the space between them as he leaned into the railing of the Hideaway, watching what was left of the lunch hour on the level below. The watering pond; the cadets carnivorous for both food and gossip. They would have a field day when word spread of the General’s involvement with their raid, and of Levy’s leaving the program, if they hadn’t already. Thus far, it had been eerily calm on that front, like the breath before a storm. Maybe they could keep it that way.
“Feel better?” Kat asked as she stared out over the dwindling, dawdling Canteen crowd. She had a fresh green juice in her hand, but she wasn’t sipping it.
“Nope.”
“Me neither.”
No, they wouldn’t, would they? Not for a while, he suspected.
No amount of workouts or raids would change the conversation happening at this moment behind closed doors. It wouldn’t change the evidence presented against Segura, or the hope of ever seeing something like it brought to life again.
He couldn’t shake the memory of the conviction he’d carried while standing onboard that ship. They’d been close that day to finding a solution for their galaxy, or at least come closer than anyone else. Fool’s dream or not, those gut feelings had beenreal. The dream he’d shared with Gaia and with Segura that night—the hope for their galaxy—and that final look before she’d rushed off from that ship’s control room to direct her people to safety. They’d been allies. Idealists of the same goal.
And maybe it had all been misplaced allegiance. They were all misfits in an eroding galaxy. But he’d believed them.
Like he believed in him and Kat.
She again stared out over the Canteen, likely as lost and absorbed in her own thoughts as him; taking her own spirals as they may. But she was out here. She’d left her room to face the Academy’s white walls. She was trying.
“Do you think they made it?” Kat asked quietly, her voice barely discernible over those roaring up around them in a hive of sound from below.
“I think they had enough of a head start to be lightyears away by now,” he said. Wherever they were headed, base or no base. He didn’t have enough energy in him to speculate over where that would put the people formerly of Segura. And it was only when he could feel Kat’s eyes on him that he braved a glance over, allowing her a glimpse into the confusion and the betrayal and the truth in his eyes.
“I think they had a lot more figured out than they ever alluded to us,” he said.
“You believe, then, what General Narron said about their mainframe, about the signature? That it was no different from the disaster before?”
“Do you?” he asked. There was urgency behind her pale grey eyes, and an insistence that he could only assume matched his.
He didn’t know why it mattered—why any of it mattered anymore. It was out of their hands. But standing here, facing the one person who’d been through it by his side, the one person who truly understood him…Perhaps it was the only thing that mattered.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said at last. And when she looked away again, he followed suit.
They watched the final leg of the lunch scene play out below them. He’d thought a few times over the last couple of days about just breaking into the kitchens and stealing a couple things to get them off the vending machine crap. But that, of course, required more effort and planning than he cared to expend.
