Chapter 22
Gavin didn't come back for several more days. The others didn't stop by much, either. They had day jobs, Jossey reminded herself.
So did she, if the doctors would ever release her to go do hers.
Her uncle's conversation stuck in her mind. She supposed she didn't have a choice about Patrol, not if the Minister of Intelligence himself had "suggested" her transfer.
To distract herself from both boredom and thinking about anything related to Patrol, she had read and re-read the novels Caspar had brought her, and she was starting to think she should try writing one, just to think about something interesting. Chase Spaulding and co. were not exactly the greatest thriller writers she'd ever seen.
Outside her room, the nurses' scheduling screen flashed on. The light stabbed into Jossey's head, and she flinched, looking away.
No screens. She groaned. It wasn't like there were any good shows on anyway, but she was even willing to watch reality TV at this point.
A nurse opened the door, the hallway screen's light shining through.
Jossey winced and looked away.
"How are you feeling, Miss Sokol?" the nurse asked.
"Honestly – " She gestured to the books. "Do you have anything better?"
The nurse tsked sympathetically. "I'm sorry, we don't, but..."
The door creaked, and both women turned.
Gavin poked his head into the room. "Visitor for Miss Sokol," he said breezily.
"...Commander Tskoulis here is to see you," the nurse finished, blushing. Turning to him, she murmured, "Commander."
She wrote a few hasty scribbles in her notepad, then said something about checking on Jossey in a few hours and hurried out of the room.
Jossey watched her go. "Do you really have to do that to everyone you meet?" she asked. Gavin laughed at her disapproving look and sat down next to her bed.
"It's not on purpose," he said innocently. "I'm just being friendly."
"Uh-huh."
He probably was just being friendly. She'd never seen him express interest toward anyone. Probably didn't know how to, she thought, with all the time he spent fighting Onlar and terrorists and whatever else Patrol did. She half-smiled. Not that she was much better, she thought.
He was wearing his Patrol uniform, and she was surprised as usual at how huge he was even when he sat. But not scary, not to her at least. To her he was just Gavin.
She examined his face. He looked...off. His face was drawn, dark circles under his eyes, but when she looked at him inquisitively he smiled.
"How are you?" he asked. "How's your head?"
She studied his face. "I'm doing okay. What's wrong?"
He winced. "Nothing. Rough week of training. Newbies. They don't know how to be silent up above. We had a couple close calls." Then he grinned. "Enough about me. I'm here to entertain you. I see your book collection is, ah, lacking."
"Enlighten me. I've been reading these 'novels' for the past four hours. I would be willing to listen to quadrant reports at this point."
Jossey tossed the offending books toward her feet. One slid off to the floor.
"Good," she said, glaring at it. "That one was particularly badly written."
He laughed a little, but his attention still seemed elsewhere.
Jossey tilted her head, looked at him more carefully.
"Gavin," she said. "What's wrong?"
He looked up, flinched away from her searching look.
She'd never seen him look this exhausted from just bad training. Newbies flunked out of Patrol all the time. It had to be something else, she thought. To her, fighting with Onlar was terrifying, but to him it was a thrill ride. He and Tark had snuck into the tunnels since the time they were old enough to figure out how, had play-acted Patrol in Tark's living quarters until they were banished for breaking a vase or two.
As far as she knew, Gavin had never wanted to do anything other than join Patrol, protect the City and its people. If he looked this drained...
"What happened?" she asked carefully. He hated when she brought this up, but – "Was it Karapartei?"
She knew the terrorists had been active recently, had been targeting Patrol down in ring 2.
He looked away.
"Can we talk about something else? I told you, I just had a rough training session." He grinned crookedly. "I'm fine. Tell me about Planet X or whatever."
"Okay." She glanced at the books ruefully. "You got any better recommendations than these?"
"Sadly, I do not. I mostly read old military stuff anyway, you know that."
Gavin was a regular old stick-in-the-mud when it came to interesting reading habits. "Do you ever relax?" she asked. "Read anything fun?"
He laughed, dark eyes amused. "I'm relaxing now." He gestured to her bandaged limb. "How's your hand?"
Jossey waved the bandage at him. "Pretty nasty looking, but they think it should heal quickly. And I might survive unscarred, or maybe with some battle wounds. Either way I'm practically Patrol." She smiled. "Like you said, now I've had that tunnel adventure you and Tark used to promise to take me on."
His smile vanished.
"Jossey." The word seemed to have slipped out, and he clamped his mouth shut.
She stared at him, unsettled. His eyes were suddenly fixed on hers, full of concern, she thought. Or frustration. As if he wanted desperately to say something. His fists were clenched, his jaw set.
"What?" she ventured.
He looked away, apparently angry. At her or himself, she couldn't tell.
She eyed him, confused. "What did I say?"
He was silent, but she could see that something had deeply upset him.
She'd hit some kind of nerve, she thought. But what, she had no idea.
She mentally went back over what she'd said. She'd only mentioned battle scars? Patrol?
Maybe he really didn't know about what her uncle had just done. "Didn't my uncle tell – "
She faltered. She doubted he would take this well, assuming he already knew. Uncle Sokol had told her Gavin had been informed that she was to transfer to Patrol. But her uncle might not be telling the truth.
His job, after all, was in Intelligence. Truth was used there as it suited his ends.
Gavin would probably have stormed in here if he'd thought she was about to join Patrol, she thought.
But she'd already started talking. Too late to take the words back now, she thought.
"My uncle," she began again.
Gavin's gaze was stormy, distant, elsewhere, as if he didn't hear her, or was trying not to.
"He's suggested I transfer to Patrol," she said in a rush, not looking at him. "I don't want to, I think it's a terrible idea, but you know how my uncle is, he's Minister of Intelligence, what he says goe– "
"Jossey," Gavin suddenly snapped.
She stopped, startled, and looked wide-eyed at him.
He stood up so fast he almost knocked the chair over. She shrank back involuntarily.
He paced over to the door, paced back, glaring at her.
He wasn't just Gavin anymore. He was Commander Tskoulis. The one feared by practically everyone in Patrol, the one who decimated the Onlar he encountered.
The Tiger.
She'd never seen Gavin actually angry, she thought. Not really.
"Gavin?" she ventured, not understanding this rapid shift. She was frightened by this change in him.
Was he that upset that she had been assigned to Patrol? She wasn't so fragile that she needed a babysitter, she thought angrily.
But even as overprotective as he could be, this was different. It was like he was an entirely different person – like she had struck a raw nerve. He seemed to be under some sort of terrible strain as he stalked back and forth.
He stormed back over to the chair and sat down, hard.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, shrinking back, fully aware for the first time just why people were so terrified of him.
Then she looked at his eyes.
They were bright with – tears?
"Jossey, I'm so sorry." He looked away from her. She stared in confusion. "I'm so sorry," he repeated.
"For wh– "
He was clenching his jaw, eyes bright.
She went on nervously. "Gavin, I don't hate Patrol, what I meant is I'm just not a fighter and I don't think it's a good id– "
He cut her off.
"We found Tark's body," he said.
Jossey gaped at him.
Gavin's eyes were unreadable as he looked at her. The dark shadows underneath were huge.
His face looked half-dead, as if he were letting her see the magnitude of his grief for the first time.
She didn't think he would make something like this up. Not Gavin.
The last time she'd seen him cry, he had been eight and he'd dropped his ice-cream cone. One of the street animals had trotted up and eaten it. Tark had bought him another one.
Tark.
She felt like she couldn't think for a moment.
Then the weight of what he had just said hit her like a physical blow.
She sank back into the pillows, blinking, seeing flashing lights. She couldn't breathe.
Somehow she gasped out, "Gavin – what?"
There was a weight on her chest, a great silence in her head.
Commander Tskoulis, the Tiger, was weeping silently in a chair in front of her. All she could see was the boy he had once been, the boy who had just lost his best friend to the creatures aboveground.
Because of me, she reminded herself.
He looked away from her, eyes red, and put his face in his hands. "I'm sorry," he repeated.
She felt the tears spill over and roll down her face, uncontrollable. She struggled to breathe. "Gavin," she said again, gasping for air. "Gavin, what?" Her throat hurt, an enormous knot fighting her airway for supremacy. She felt her face scrunch into a knot of its own. "What?" she repeated.
He looked at her.
"We found him on Patrol," he said quietly. "We were mapping a canyon and one of my recruits tripped and – "
He gave up speaking.
She stared, tears pouring down her face.
"How do you know it was him?" she finally managed.
He took a shuddering breath, looking at her, some terrible pain in his eyes. "Don't ask me that, Jossey," he said quietly. "Please."
"No, tell me, Gavin. How. How could you be su– "
He looked away, closing his eyes.
"Gavin, TELL ME." Her voice was barely controlled.
Gavin turned back to Jossey. His face was pale. "I don't want to hur– "
"TELL ME." Her teeth were clenched, her burned hand gripping so hard she yelped and released the fist. He glanced at her bandages, concern flashing across his face.
He sat back, raising his hands in surrender.
Jossey looked at him.
Gavin took a deep and shuddering breath.
In a deadened tone, he said carefully, not looking at her, "What do you most remember about Tark?"
"His sense of humor," she said, voice threatening to dissolve into tears again. "His stupid – "she half laughed. "His stupid jokes. Your pranks. Why?"
"No. Physically." Gavin's voice broke.
She blinked. Tark had always been a scrawny boy, tall, but very thin. He'd resembled their father, with pale eyes and even paler hair. The only one in his year.
They'd jokingly called him the Golden Boy.
"His hair," she said in a very small voice.
The weight in her chest was immense.
Gavin didn't meet her gaze.
She began to weep, and shoved her face into the pillow, trying to contain both the sound and her tears.
Gavin jumped to his feet, prying the pillow away from her. "Jossey, I'm sorry, I didn't want to tel– "
"I'm the one who killed him, Gavin," she choked, fumbling for the pillow. "It's my fault. Mine. Why don't you hate me?"
He stared down at her, letting her take the pillow from suddenly-still hands.
"Why don't you hate me?" she repeated, voice breaking. She pressed her face into the pillow again, clutching it to her, soaking it with her tears.
Gavin didn't respond.
As she cried, she heard him leave the room.
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