He went still the same way Cara did. Inhumanly still. Then, a moment later, he tried a little smile. Elvi had spent a fair percentage of her life thinking about taxonomy. About where a species began and where it ended. She realized that she didn’t know what she was looking at.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re good.”
“Great,” Amos—the thing that had been Amos—said. He pulled himself to the doorway, opened it, gave her a little thumbs-up sign, and was gone. The door cycled closed behind him.
Her comms chimed again, reminding her of the new message or messages. She didn’t open the queue. She let herself float for a few minutes, feeling something more than weariness bloom in her gut and her chest. She turned off the lights, pulled herself out to the corridor and away down it. She passed a group of her crew, and they all nodded to her as she passed. It was like being in a dream. Or dissociated.
Fayez was in their cabin when she got there. He looked over from whatever he’d been reading on his hand terminal, and some quip or comment died unspoken on his lips. She cleaned her teeth, washed her face, changed into fresh clothes to sleep in. Her husband watched and tried to act like he didn’t. He knew something had changed, even if he didn’t know what. She was right there with him.
“You . . . ah . . . You all right, sweetie?” he asked as she strapped herself in for the night.
“I am,” she said.
As she closed her eyes, the feeling in her chest and belly grew, swelling out and washing through her. She finally recognized it. She had wanted it to be relief, but it wasn’t that.
It was her body telling her that she’d just stared death in the eye. It was fear.
Chapter Thirty-One: Tanaka
Major Ahmadi was a trauma specialist and head of Psychiatric Services on Gewitter Base. She was a short woman, thick through the middle, with close-cropped graying hair and very dark skin. She seems nice. She makes me think of a teacher I hated. She reminds me of my favorite wife, said the chorus of distant voices in her head, that last thought accompanied by the tingle of distantly remembered sexual arousal.
“Your file, the portion I can actually access, says you were orphaned at quite a young age.”
“Yes,” Tanaka said. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Ahmadi’s office was all dark paneling and soft surfaces, intended to create a feeling of safety, comfort, and shared intimacy. It looked like every other head shrinker’s office Tanaka had seen, though she usually saw them as the final step in the interrogation process. After you’d fully broken the subject’s will with more intense techniques, and you were trying to build the rapport that let them feel like you were now friends as they spilled their guts.
After a few moments of waiting for her to elaborate, Ahmadi said, “Over forty years serving with front-line combat units. Though the nature of those deployments is largely classified.”
“Yes,” Tanaka said again.
“And you were recently shot in the face and had to be brought here for reconstructive surgery.”
Tanaka touched the bandage that covered half of her face. “That in my file too? Or are you just stunningly observant?”
Ahmadi didn’t take the bait. She smiled and touched something on the datapad that sat on her lap as if it were just coincidence and not her taking notes.
“You have led a life of more or less constant trauma.”
“Thank you for the flattery, but we can skip this part.”
“I’m not flattering you,” Ahmadi said. “I’m holding up a little mirror and asking you to look in it. You’ve been living in fight-or-flight mode essentially since you were a child. Everything a child is supposed to be able to rely on was ripped away from you without warning.”
“I’m not here to talk about my parents.”
“We can start anywhere you like. It’s all connected.”
“You sound like you already have me pegged.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but . . .” She shrugged. “I’m good at what I do. Most of your file is classified, but what’s available to me tells a compelling story. No long-term relationships. You’ve never lived anywhere longer than a year. You refused an advanced scholarship in order to enlist. You’ve repeatedly refused promotion so that you could stay a field officer. You’ve been on the run for a long time.”
Tanaka felt her hands curl into fists. “Running from what?”
“I don’t know,” Ahmadi said. “But this seems to be the first time you’ve ever sought out counseling.”