Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
JETT
Three days after his outburst, Jett returned to their quarters.
Everything was as he remembered it: bed, desk, and lounge chairs in the same spots.
Freshly laundered clothing and Jett’s belongings sat on the carefully made bed, ready to be put away.
Even the trinkets Jett left behind were in their places beside Eddie’s desk-tab and on his old bedside table.
Eddie hadn’t erased Jett from his life.
Jett collapsed against Eddie, let the man pick him up and place him on the couch.
“Better?” Eddie asked as he covered Jett in his old, worn blanket. He’d missed it, but hadn’t had the guts to reach out to get it back.
Sliding flat against the smooth surface, Jett sighed. He hoped the pain meds would kick back in so he could sleep. But he also wanted to enjoy the room, the physical memories of their life together. It’d been so long, but it had to wait.
“Ed?”
“Yes, love?”
Jett opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling. “We need to talk.”
“Not now. You need to rest.”
“I don’t think I can sleep.” Jett was beyond tired, beyond exhausted, but he needed to get something off his chest. Something he should have shared years ago.
He heard Eddie sigh. “Can you sit up without help?”
Jett pushed himself up and a twinge of pain made his arms shake, his vision bloom white. “Yeah, kinda. But sit your ass down before I pass out.”
The cushion sank beneath Eddie’s weight and Jett fell back into his lap. An arm covered his chest and Jett looked up into Eddie’s bright green eyes.
Eddie was ready. Now Jett just needed the courage to begin.
He opened his mouth, but his throat constricted. He tried again and was able to cough through the tense muscles. It was now or never; and never meant that Eddie would have good cause to leave him again.
“I’m gonna tell you how I got my scars.”
Jett closed his eyes, fought back the impulse to be gentle with Eddie. He was an adult with trauma of his own, but Jett didn’t know how he would take this story, or the revelations therein.
“I have to give you some backstory first. Some stuff I probably told you before, but I don’t remember anymore.” Jett breathed in, breathed out. “When I was sixteen, I was forced into the Charon Defense Force’s youth program for killing an enforcer. He molested my first boyfriend, Gin.
“Gin…he—” This part was painful to remember. Jett didn’t think it would ever get easy. “He killed himself; found a knife and slit his throat while I tried to get help. I came home empty handed and he was just…there. Dead.”
Eddie squeezed Jett’s hand, planted a kiss on his forehead.
“I found the son of a bitch who did it by listening to gossip at bars near the local Enforcer hub.” Jett ground his teeth.
“I followed him one night after taking a hit of RUSH, lifted his blaster, and shot him execution style while he begged for his life.” Jett felt a ghost of RUSH in his system, clearing his head, lowering his inhibitions, giving him the resolution and strength.
He had done it for Gin’s memory and his own conscience.
“I don’t think he ever saw my face, or knew why he was being killed. And I didn’t care either.
“I was caught on camera and was thrown before a CDF Counsel. They gave me the choice of mine work or joining the YCDF. Mine work meant a slow, painful death in Industrial Dome 4; it was essentially slavery, with no chance of freedom. I chose the CDF, which probably pleased the Counsel to no end, but I’m sure Gin would’ve been disappointed… ”
Jett remembered the way he’d shut down those first few days of waiting in a cell-like room. He’d refused food, wouldn’t talk, didn’t do anything but sit and stare into the distance. Then Maria appeared, and gave Jett a reason to live again.
“I thrived in YCDF and when I was done with the basic training, they moved me to Emergency Response. They liked how I was willing to throw myself into anything without thinking; liked how I was strong and reckless and able to stay calm under simulated fire. They didn’t know that I was just trying to get myself killed so I could be with Gin again.
” They’d been so proud of his rehabilitation, so ‘grateful’ for his dedication.
It’d all been a facade that Jett kept up to protect his heart.
Eddie squeeze him, no doubt troubled by Jett’s youthful ideation.
“In ER I met Jack. He took me under his wing, taught me everything he knew, treated me like a brother. He told me that I was in a position to help people, not enforce the laws of the highest class.
“I was enthusiastic about the work, careful, learned how to lead as well as follow. I excelled, rose through the ranks quickly, and when I was 20, I got my own squad.” He remembered the day he got his promotion, how he felt like he’d finally found a place where he could thrive.
He had friends and a purpose. Goals. A future.
“We specialized in rescue missions...”
Eddie flinched. Jett didn’t know what was going through his mind. Maybe the vague words Jett had said before going to the Golden Lion had finally clicked.
“We mostly saved people from pirates or ship malfunction; sometimes we’d get sent out when disasters happened or there were hostage situations.
Whenever they needed a team that was quick, quiet, and effective, they sent us.
As time went on, they started sending us where other teams wouldn’t go because it was risky. We were luckier than we ever realized.”
Eddie smoothed his hair while Jett gasped for breath. “I’ve got you, love. You’re okay.”
“Then our luck ran out. We’d been out on patrol when we got word that a relic-runner went silent about half a day from Charon. A professor at the University of Humanity was worried about them, so they contacted the CDF. We were the closest ship to their last known location.
“When we got there, we found the ship with one end blown open to the Void. There was nothing else on the scanners, so we assumed it had been done by Kuiper pirates. We prepared to retrieve bodies and called for a tug to bring the wreck back to Charon.”
Jett stretched and adjusted his position.
He should’ve done this years ago, should’ve trusted Eddie with the story that only a handful of people in System Sol had ever heard.
His worst, most pervasive memory. But he’d been scared of rejection, of disgust. But Eddie seemed unfazed as he stared ahead at the wall or beyond it, and Jett knew that he was paying attention as closely as he could.
“Other than the cargo hold, the ship was in okay shape. Our pilot dropped us off in EVA suits and backed off to a safe distance in case something happened. We entered through the blast and found the hold littered with boxes and crates, old Tech scattered all over the room. When we got into the ship proper, everything looked normal. There weren’t any sighs of a fight, no damage to the halls, no blood, nothing.
We searched, but didn’t find any bodies.
We thought then that maybe slavers had gotten them, since the cargo was still secure.
“Control told us to deactivate the distress beacon and install our own. They’d send the tug out and we could go h-home.”
An itch grew between Jett’s shoulders. He twitched, tried not to scratch at it, but it moved down his back, following his spine, nerve pain snaking after. It crept down to his thighs, his legs, settled in the arches of his feet.
Jett worried over how detailed he should be. Should he describe the sounds? The smells? Or sanitize it for Eddie?
He decided against the details. Eddie had no idea what it was like to smell his own flesh roast under the heat of plasma, to feel his eye being ripped out of its socket, his ligaments and muscles chopped.
To hear his friends dying around him as he was being tortured.
To know that death was just outside the door, a slice or stab away.
“We were ambushed on the way back to the ship. They fried the sensors in our suits and gassed us somehow.” These details were still fuzzy.
But he knew that the pilot had testified that a ship appeared and disappeared out of nowhere before they could react.
Jett still had no idea where the pirates had been hiding.
“I woke up strapped to a table in a room empty except for me, the table, and a stool. I kind of went in and out of consciousness for a while, then a sharp pain in my stomach woke me with a rush of adrenaline. I tried to break out of the restraints, but I wasn’t strong enough.
And whatever they’d injected into me was laced with drugs that made me see shit. ”
“What did you see?”
Jett considered the question for a moment. That was a part of the fuzzy details that he’d lost over time. One of the few blessings he’d been granted.
“I can’t really explain it. It was like being outside my own body, watching what happened while feeling it at the same time. There was a man and a woman with those gaudy-ass tech tattoos, all holographs and flashing lights.
“The woman pushed the stool next to my table, she pulled a small knife out of somewhere and said: ‘Let’s see if you scream as loud as the others.’ Then she carved the checkmark into my chest.” He ran a finger along his scar, pale pink raised up from the rest of his chest. “I was riding the high of the drugs and I barely felt it. That pissed her off, so she sliced my face.” He ran a finger down his cheek, lips, and chin, feeling the scar there. At least that one had healed well.
“I tasted blood, but it confused me more than anything else. I still didn’t scream, but it brought me back to my body and the dull pain. She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t hurt me again. I think they talked for a while.”
He couldn’t remember the words, but they had argued while Jett laid there, blood dripping down his throat and chest, leaving a trail of warmth and copper and the smell of raw meat.
“Then she pulled out a bigger knife.”