CHAPTER 10
JET
Dreams are just that—dreams—until coupled with the skills and training that we are gifted with at the Academy. You should each and every one of you be thanking your proctors and Corp for the ability to protect and serve that they have given you. I know I am, because my dream to serve a greater good is finally reality.
Celestina’s valedictorian address, Class of 2099
Jet didn’t know she was screaming. Well, she didn’t know she was screaming in real life. In her dream, oh yeah, she was shrieking for all she was worth.
“Joannie,” the black thing that had once been her father said, “come out and give your papa a kiss.”
Jet … no, Joannie, she was Joannie, she was five and could barely make Shadow puppets on the walls … whimpered and shrank back to the farthest corner of her closet.
Outside the door, her father giggled. It was a wet, burbling sound that made Joannie think of the water in the big plastic jug whenever she pressed the button to fill her cup. Glug glug went the water; glug glug went Papa as he hic-cuped laughter. “Joannie,” he said, stretching her name into something terrifying. “Don’t you love your papa?”
Yes. But her real papa wouldn’t be scaring her like this. Her real papa wouldn’t have wrapped Mama in a black blanket and squeezed her until there was only a spill of bright, wet red on the ground and an empty thing that used to smile and laugh and call her “My precious Jet.”
“Go away,” she whispered to the monster that was her father.
“Joannnnnieeeee …”
“Go away!”
“You broke the rules, Joannie.”
She shivered, cradled her arms around her legs and rocked, wishing the floor would swallow her up. He was going to hurt her. He was going to rip open the door and grab her and shake her and squeeze her, no matter how much she cried for him to stop.
Stop, her mama had screamed. For the love of Jehovah, stop!
But he hadn’t, not even when Mama had used his private just-between-Blackout-and-Angelica names. George, her mama had shrieked, please! Stop!
And then came the crunching sounds, like leaves in the autumn, caught underfoot.
“You’re a bad girl, Joannie. You broke the rules, didn’t you?”
She swallowed, felt hot stabs of guilt and shame in her belly and her heart.
“Come out, girl, and take your punishment like a good Squadron soldier. I won’t hurt you.”
She covered her ears, thinking, Liar, liar, pants on fire …
The closet doorknob rattled. “Time to come out. Give Papa a hug.”
Like the way he’d hugged Mama, just before. Papa had wrapped bands of blackness around Angelica and squeezed. Maybe her mama had thought he was joking at first, and that was why she hadn’t fought until it was too late. Maybe, even as the inky strips had squeezed Angelica like a hungry snake, maybe she thought he was just kidding, playing Bad Guys the way they did with Joannie. Because Angelica didn’t cry at first, not even when the black bands squeezed too much—she’d waited, with a patient smile, as if she knew that Blackout would stop and everything would be okay, because he would never hurt her, not really …
At least, that was what Joannie thought her mama had been thinking. That was what it had looked like to Joannie, who’d been standing in the kitchen, sneaking a third cookie before dinner. Sneaking, like a thief. Taking something that she knew she wasn’t supposed to have.
Papa had seen the crumbs on the floor. And that was when he’d gone all scary Shadow and had started yelling at her. And when Angelica tried to calm him down with her Light touch, like how she’d do for Joannie when Joannie was a baby and crying when the things in the dark whispered to her, that was when Blackout let the shadows out and made them hug Mama.
Wrapping her arms around her legs, keening softly, Joannie understood, deep in her soul, that this was all her fault. If she hadn’t been sneaking, stealing, this wouldn’t have happened.
“Joannie, are you going to make me come in there?”
She swallowed, said nothing.
“Here I come, Joannie. Here … I … come!”
That was what he’d said to her after he’d dropped Mama to the ground—empty, misshapen, broken. Bleeding. Joannie didn’t even really see Angelica’s body—she was too busy scrambling for the Panic Button next to the comlink on the wall. She skidded in a pool of thick, red wetness and banged her small fist against the big red button—the one thing she was told never, ever to do unless someone was hurt because the button was a Serious Thing, and if she did it just for fun, she’d get into so much trouble that she’d never sit down for a whole week.
Remember, Angelica had told her from the time she was little, no touching the Panic Button unless it’s an Emergency. She’d taught Joannie that “Emergency” meant they needed the heroes to come, fast.
She really needed the heroes to come, right now, and make everything okay. Make her papa not a monster and make her mama well again. Make her stop being so scared.
So she’d hit the button and run into her room and slammed the door, and she’d run into the closet and slammed that door, too, and she’d scampered to the very back and had hidden in the darkness, waiting for the nightmare to end.
There, in the darkness, with her mother’s blood staining the bottoms of her bare feet, the voices started to whisper to her.
lost so lost little girl lost little lamb
They sounded like part of the closet itself, like the walls had peeled away and stretched long and thin like rolls of paper and had crumpled into words pasted on the thick air. She pressed her hands against her ears and tried to listen only to the sounds of her heart thumping madly in her chest, of her ragged breaths, tried to convince herself that she was really very brave and not at all scared because she was supposed to grow up to be a hero …
… and then her father had found her.
“Here … I … come!”
The door ripped open, and Joannie screamed and screamed and screamed …
… and her father’s hand clamped onto her shoulder and she screamed louder, so loud that she almost didn’t hear Iridium’s panicked voice: “Jet! Wake up! It’s a nightmare, Jet. Listen to me—it’s a nightmare! Joannie, wake up!”
Jet stared owlishly at the girl on her bed, blinked as she took in the clear blue eyes, the thick black hair, the worried set of the mouth. Recognition dawned, pushed through the fog of her dream. “Iri?”
“Yeah.”
She exhaled, slowly, and when she mopped her sweat-slick bangs away from her eyes, her hand trembled. As she took another shaky breath, she noticed that the room had every light panel on. “Where …” Her throat was raw, and she swallowed, tried to work some moisture into it before she spoke again. “Where’re my goggles?”
Iridium bent down, grabbed something from the carpet. “You mean these?” She dangled the ruined optiframes from a finger. “Looks like you tore them off in your sleep.”
“Oh.” Biting her lip, Jet felt her heart sink into her stomach. Without the special lenses, how would she shut out the darkness at night?
Iridium placed the goggles on Jet’s nightstand, right next to her clock. “Um. Until you get them fixed, you can, you know, keep the lights on overnight.” She sounded caught between worry and embarrassment.
“But …” Jet frowned, said, “but that’ll interfere with your sleep. And it’s against code.”
“Don’t worry about me—I’m happy in the light.” Iridium grinned wickedly. “And as for code, what the proctors don’t know won’t hurt us.”
“But it’s breaking the rules.”
Her father’s voice, smoky with insanity: You broke the rules.
If Iridium noticed how the blood had drained from her face, she ignored it, instead stabbing a finger at Jet. “You want to sleep in the dark?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivered. Her voice a whisper, she said, “No.”
“Then let me do this for you, and don’t bitch about it.” Iridium blew out a frustrated breath. “Christo, I try to do something nice, and I get ‘code’ shoved in my face.”
“Sorry.”
Iridium blinked at her, then sighed. “No, I’m being bitchy. Happens when my sleep gets interrupted with the screaming meemies. So. You want to talk about it?”
Remembering her mother’s bloody, broken form, her father’s capering glee, Jet shook her head.
“Well. Okay.” Iridium got up and headed to her own bed. “You change your mind, you know where I am.”
“Thanks,” Jet mumbled, lying back and surrounding herself in the thick comforter. “You sure you’re okay with the lights like this?”
“Jehovah!” Iridium spat. “Don’t push your luck. Bad enough that I’m nice to you. People hear about this, and my rep’s ruined for sure.”
“Sorry …”
“Christo, Joan, I’m joking.”
Jet shivered. She wanted to tell Iri not to call her that—it was against code to refer to each other by anything other than their designations. And she still heard the echoes of her father’s voice, whispering her name. But she held her tongue.
“Listen,” Iridium said, “my dad once told me something when I was little, and it’s helped me whenever I get nervous.”
Jet rolled onto her side to look at her roommate. Iri, nervous? Unheard of. “Really? What was it?”
“A quote, from a long-dead president. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”
What utter nonsense. “And that helps?”
Iridium shrugged. “Yeah. It reminds me that whatever’s scaring the piss out of me is also scaring everyone around me, even if they’re not showing it. So all I have to do is not show it. So I don’t. Next thing I know, I’m really not afraid anymore.”
Spoken like someone who didn’t learn the hard way that you really should be afraid of the dark. But still, maybe she had a point. “So a nightmare’s just a nightmare, and let it go?”
Iridium beamed. “Look who took a crash course in psychology. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Thanks.” Jet smiled, faintly, not because she felt better but because Iri expected it.
“Stick with me, kid,” Iridium said, rolling over. “I’ll get you through this hellhole of an Academy.”
“You really think it’s that bad?”
“Nah. But I’m not convinced it’s all that good. ’Night.”
This time, Jet smiled for real. “Lancer.”
She and Iridium laughed at the old joke, then Jet settled back and eventually fell asleep, feeling safe in the light … and in the company of a friend.