Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
EDDIE
Jett stared at Eddie, his perfect face scrunched in disbelief. “The corruption is a Song,” he repeated, voice flat.
“Yes,” Eddie replied, his mind jumping straight to the explanation he’d prepared for Jett.
“It is similar to the weave of a piece of fabric, or a braid. The signal has three streams of data woven together: audio, video, and text. Corruption can affect one or all of those, but it is usually within the data streams themselves.”
Eddie pulled out his tab and switched to the audio file he’d found.
“What I found was a fourth data stream woven in and around the others. I pulled the signal apart piece by piece and each was uncorrupted on its own. It was only corrupted when this piece was part of the whole.”
Jett continued to stare at him. Guilt scratched in his throat. He knew Jett didn’t understand most of what he said when it came to tech. This wasn’t what he liked—what he did—like it was for Eddie. So he smiled down at the man, and hit play on his tab.
A whoosh swept through the room followed by a deep, rattling grumble. It droned under a slow, rhythmic bass line, creating a dark, dissonant chaos that reminded Eddie of metal grating on metal.
Jett’s confusion turned to surprise. His eyes widened, mouth opened, cybernetic eye pulsing in sync with the bass line.
A tinkling of glass broke through the grating, sparkling in the darkness, slowly trailing off into nothing. The grating chaos continued on, sometimes raising then lowering in pitch, other times quickening then slowing down. Eddie’s heart chased the beat, spiked with crashing and shattering glass.
Parts repeated, faded, resurrected themselves. The metal on metal crunched, groaned, growled in the deepening darkness within the room.
A howl that made Eddie think of a star flickering on, screaming in ecstasy.
Then another, ten thousand more. The crash and tinkle and screams overlapped, drowning out the metal on metal in the background.
They changed subtly. Sometimes they exploded into supernovae that blocked out every other sense as they died.
Others just disappeared, slowly consumed by the dark.
Crunch.
Groan.
Shatter.
Pressure on his leg broke the spell for a second while the noise faded back to the beat. Jett’s hand was on his thigh, his eyes staring off into some unseen distance, as further stars flickered alive and died in crushing agony.
Crash.
Tinkle.
Scream.
The sounds overlapped, rising in tone and pitch, all but deafening Eddie to everything else.
Then the singing began.
Far off in the distance, beneath the stars and grating metal, a wail spun up. It whined and moaned and flowed around and between them; latched onto something in him and bound it with crystalline threads to an identical something in Jett.
Stars burned, crashed, crystallized in the dark, then the Song faded to nothing.
And suddenly Eddie could feel what Jett felt: wonder and fear and love.
Jett wanted so badly to reach out to Eddie, but couldn’t.
Guilt and shame and loneliness lurked in the corners of Jett’s heart, corrupting everything until Jett felt more like an android than a man.
He saw the world in terms of give and take and it took, took, took, until there was little of Jett left to give.
Jett stared up at him with stars in his eyes and for the first time in a months, perhaps years, Eddie felt he understood Jett. He knew why Jett was the way he was, did the things he did.
Eddie longed to hold Jett again, to kiss him, to make love to him. To reassure his beloved that Eddie loved him best of everything in the system, in the universe.
Leaning over, Eddie tilted Jett’s awestruck face to him, but Jett turned aside. Eddie felt the full loss of Jett. Felt the full weight of the man on his life and his soul, felt the loss deeper than any wound. He was hollow, a shell of a man, without Jett.
“I don’t know what happened just now,” he said, hand clasped over his heart. “But we can’t, Ed. We just can’t.”
The earlier rebuff was nothing compared to this one.
Nothing compared to the anguish that raked him, burned him, crushed him.
Eddie’s heart fractured and threatened to shatter.
Tears that had stung at the corner of his eyes fell down his cheeks to wet his beard.
There was just enough of him left to stumble away from Jett as pain wracked him.
“I am sorry,” he muttered before composing himself. “I am sorry to have imposed on you so long.” And he turned for the door.
“Eddie!” Jett called, but Eddie didn’t turn back until a hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him right into Jett’s arms.
“Stop! Just stop running away from me.” Jett buried his face in Eddie’s chest. “I can feel everything, Ed. All that pain…” He trailed off and sucked in a ragged breath.
Eddie didn’t wrap his arms around Jett, didn’t lean down to comfort him. He alternated between the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, so he stood and let Jett hold him. His own emotions were too much for the bond between them to transmit what Jett felt.
“It hurts me every time I have to deny you, Eddie. But we cannot focus on us right now.” He leaned back and met Eddie’s eyes. Anxiety threaded its way through Eddie’s guts and up to his chest. His own and Jett’s mingling together.
“We will talk when this is all over. I promised you.” He wiped a tear from his cheek. “And I have so much to tell you; so much I should have told you years ago. Do you understand?”
Eddie nodded. He did understand that there were bigger things than them, but to him nothing was more important. That’s what the last several months had taught him: Eddie loved Jett and nothing was more important than that.
“I feel that, too,” Jett whispered.
“Then let me tell you.”
Jett shook his head. “Feeling it is enough, Ed.”
They stared at each other for long minutes. Eddie pushed at the part of Jett in his chest—the part implanted there by the Song—and felt warmth fill him. It would have to be enough for now.