Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Gideon stretched his legs under the coffee table and let the cold beer rested against his palm. The sofa cushion dipped where Zadie sat beside him with her legs crossed. She inched close enough that her knee pressed against his every time one of them shifted.
The family room settled into conversation Gideon hadn't experienced in nearly two months. They talked about normal things. The weather. The news. Even sports. They teased each other much like a family would—lighthearted, fun, and with a sense of love and belonging. It was as if they weren’t living in a bunker like ghosts.
Coulter had killed the overheads and turned on a floor lamp in the corner that threw long shadows across the bookshelves and the half-finished puzzle on the table.
"Not to be a gossip, but I’m not the only one who’s wondering about the two of you." Wynn pointed a finger at Zadie and wiggled it toward Gideon. Wynn had started out leaning against the large sofa but maneuvered herself to Darwin’s chair.
He'd made himself comfortable in the other recliner with a glass of red wine, his socked feet propped on the coffee table.
"We have a history." Zadie folded her arms.
"You just met." Scout was cross-legged on the floor with her back against the bookshelf, which seemed like an uncomfortable choice until Gideon noticed she'd positioned herself with a clear sightline to both exits. "And now everyone finds you kissing in corners like teenagers."
Gideon lifted his beer and took a big swig.
He kept his focus on his feet. Nothing like being the new kid and being in the hot seat.
This wasn’t anything more than good old fashion razzing.
Team members pushing each other’s buttons.
"Darwin knows I spent months trying to get Hopper to meet me in person. "
"Right. Gaming." Coulter raised one hand and wiggled his thumb as if he were holding a controller. "I’ve never understood why grown adults would want to play kids games all day."
Neve and Coulter had claimed one of the recliners—Neve in the seat, Coulter on the arm with his ankle crossed over his knee and a bottle of beer resting on his thigh.
"Like any hobby, it’s a community of like-minded people," Gideon said. "Everyone needs a release. Some people go to the gym. Others go to the shooting range. And we took to gaming. A lot of programmers and computer engineer types do."
"I’ve always thought that sometimes gamers take it too far, especially the ones that go to those fan conventions and dress the parts," Neve added.
Wynn grinned. "Gideon and Zadie brought fantasy land to the real world."
"Okay. You’ve had your fun." Zadie waved her hand. "It’s time to move on and talk about something else, like maybe how to breach ORACLE."
"Isn’t that what you were supposed to be discussing when I walked in on you kissing?" Darwin asked.
"For what it's worth," Gideon said, "I plan to continue discussing ORACLE at every opportunity."
Zadie closed her eyes. "You're not helping."
"I wasn't trying to."
Wynn laughed hard enough that Gideon suspected Kane could hear it from the medical wing.
Gideon leaned back into the sofa. He’d walked out of Hyperion two months ago and disappeared from his life.
He had no contact with anyone he’d once called a friend.
And now, he was in a room full of people who were teasing him about kissing a woman whom he’d admired—even if he hadn’t known it was actually Zadie. That was a bit of a mind fuck.
He trusted Darwin. He trusted Zadie. Therefore, he put his life in the hands of their team.
Coulter tipped his beer toward Scout. "For the record, I want everyone in this room to know that the ditch this morning was not my fault."
Scout laughed. "It was a drainage culvert, and I told you to go left."
"That’s not how I remember it." Coulter lowered his chin.
"She did say that," Neve said.
"You weren't there." Coulter shook his head.
"I don't need to be there. I know how she gives directions." Neve leaned into him. "Scout once told me to head toward the tall tree during an extraction. We were in a forest."
"It was the tallest tree." Scout shrugged. "Not my fault your depth perception is average."
Zadie laughed, and the sound rumbled behind Gideon’s ribs, settling deep inside his chest. He wanted to lift his arm and let his hand fall on her shoulder.
Instead, he took another sip of his beverage.
As comfortable as he felt in this room, with these people, he didn’t want to physically express his feelings.
It was one thing to tease and another to put it all out there.
"I want to run a perimeter check in the morning," Neve said. "Scout, can we coordinate?"
"Already mapped three alternative routes." Scout picked at the label on her bottle. "One follows the creek bed north, one cuts through the old logging road, and the third loops wide past the ridge."
"The ridge route adds an extra hour and a half," Coulter said. "For what?"
"For the vantage point at the top." Scout shrugged.
"You can see the same terrain from the creek bed with binoculars." Coulter stood and stretched.
"Binoculars show you what's there. The ridge shows you what's moving. It’s different data," Scout said.
"That’s overkill, don’t you think?" Coulter reached his hand out and Neve took it.
Gideon enjoyed watching the group. They were like different parts of a machine, working in unison to achieve the same goal.
"Overkill is my baseline." Scout took a drink.
"More like you just want to stay outside longer," Wynn said.
"Exactly." Scout lifted her beer and smiled.
Zadie reached for her wine and her shoulder brushed his arm. The heat traveled through him like a current—elbow to chest, chest to gut, gut to the part of his brain that ignited a fire in the rest of his body.
"All right," Neve said. "I'm calling it."
"See you all bright and early." Coulter wrapped his arm around Neve.
Scout jumped to her feet. "I'm headed to bed too."
Darwin sipped the last of his wine. "It's good to have you here, Gideon." He stood. "I mean that."
"I believe you."
"Don't stay up too late." Darwin helped Wynn up, waved her in front of him, and followed her into the kitchen before heading down toward their bedrooms.
Zadie turned slightly to face Gideon. Her hair fell past her shoulders, thick and dark, and he realized he'd never seen her without the braid. It changed her face. Softened the edges that were always sharpened by the mission, the readiness, the constant state of operation she wore like armor.
"You handled the teasing well," she said. "Some people would've gotten weird about it."
He stretched his arm along the back of the sofa. Not around her. Just near. "It was all in good fun. And they care about you. You’re family."
She traced the rim of her glass. "What about you? Outside of Darwin, did you have people?"
"At Hyperion?"
"Anywhere. I mean, you disappeared off the face of the earth two months ago."
He turned the bottle slowly in his hands.
"I had colleagues I respected. A few guys I'd grab a beer with if someone organized it.
But I was never the one setting up social engagements.
" He set the bottle on the table. "Put me in a room with a problem, one other person, and I'm fine.
Put me at a company happy hour, and I'm the guy standing by the appetizer table calculating the minimum acceptable time before I can leave. "
"Thirty minutes."
"I did twenty."
"Underachiever." She smiled. "What did you do when you weren't working? And don't say gaming, because I already know that part."
"I hate to run, but I enjoy walking. I would get up early and walk around the city. It helped me clear my mind." Getting close to people had always been difficult for him. It was one of the reasons he’d never had lasting relationships with women, or best friends. He kept people at a safe distance. He couldn’t explain to himself, or anyone else, why.
It wasn’t because of the losses in his life—he’d been like this since he could remember.
Yet, he had an urge to share his thoughts with Zadie.
With Hopper. With all her personalities.
"I cooked, but badly. I read—history mostly, some science fiction.
And I rebuilt things. Old radios. Broken clocks. Stuff I'd find at thrift stores."
"That’s different. Why?"
"I took them apart to understand how someone else solved a problem with the tools they had." He shrugged. "I've always been more interested in how things work than what they do."
"Makes sense." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm the opposite. I don't care how it works as long as I can make it do what I want."
"That's why we'd make a good team." He dropped his hand to her shoulder and gave it a good squeeze.
"I’m curious. What was the military like for you?" she asked.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "The structure saved me.
I needed someone to tell me where to be and when and what mattered, because I'd spent two years working that out alone, and I was exhausted by it.
" He clasped his hands together. "The hardest part wasn't the physical stuff.
It was the proximity. Thirty people in a room.
Eating together. Sleeping together. Training together.
No space that was just mine. I'd been essentially on my own since I was sixteen, and suddenly there was nowhere to hide. "
"That’s a big change."
"By the third month, I figured out that being around people didn't mean I had to perform for them. I could just exist in the room and contribute when I had something to say and be quiet when I didn't." He shifted his gaze. "That was a revelation."
"It took me about a week."
"Because you're better with people than I am."
"That's a low bar." She tilted her head. "Were you close to anyone? In your unit?"