Seventeen
Gage Bronson, Dax Janner, Blythe Sol, Jenica Swan, Sayer Strom, Laura Rosenberg and Professor Neville Hinkley
Stonehead Prison Facility
Washington D.C.
August 18, 4010
4:00 a.m.
Jerking myself from my wandering thoughts and shaking off the dark mood my memories have brought on, I stand and mutter to no one in particular that I’m going to the bathroom. The tiny, tube-shaped room at the back of the craft is small and cramped, with hardly any room for a guy with shoulders as broad as mine to turn one way or the other, but it’ll do. I handle my business and leave, ready to take my seat again, when the rumble of voices speaking in hushed tones stops me in my tracks. I pause in the doorway, cracking it just enough to find the Professor and Jenica standing to the left of the aisle, in a darkened corner. I realize that we’ve stopped, the craft hovering several thousand feet above our destination. Toward the front of the craft, I can see Dax, Blythe, and the rest of our crew standing to stretch and prepare for the next phase of our plan.
It makes sense that these two would want a quiet moment to go over any last minute details of our mission, yet something about this feels wrong. I feel like a voyeur watching them, and I don’t really know why until the Professor reaches out to clasp Jenica’s hand. The touch is not one of friendship, or even camaraderie and reassurance. There is more there, and as I watch the human side of Jenica Swan’s face soften—an expression I would have never thought her capable of—I understand what I am seeing. Between these two, who fight at the forefront of the Resistance, there is more than friendship and respect.
There is love.
“Stop it, Neville.”
My eyebrows shoot up at Jenica’s gentle tone, as well as the fact that I’ve never heard anyone refer to the Professor by his first name before. With all her formality and hardness, she’s the last person I would have expected to hear it from.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, his voice quavering in the darkness between them. “I just thought it might be worth trying to convince you one last time.”
“I won’t stay behind. You can’t ask that of me.”
He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners behind wire-rimmed frames. “I know. You are loyal to your crew and to the cause and I love that about you. But this isn’t about you or me, it’s about—”
“Don’t!” she interjects, a bit of her usual harshness pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t you dare try to use that to make me feel guilty!”
The Professor sighs, his shoulders sagging. “It’s not just you and me anymore, Jen. We have to think about it, even if you don’t want to. At some point, you’re going to have to face it.”
“I will,” she insists, her voice dropping even lower as her gaze darts about the craft as if afraid the walls will overhear them. “Just not right now. This mission—Olivia—it’s all too important.”
The Professor nods but I can tell, even in the darkness, that he’s not happy about letting her off the hook. “Just be careful,” he says, grasping her slim waist and pulling her in toward him. “If something were to happen to you…”
He doesn’t finish, his words screeching to a trembling halt as if he’s afraid of what he’ll say.
Jenica exhales noisily and lays her head on his chest. “I will, I promise.”
After a few quiet moments, the two leave the back of the aircraft and return to where the others have gathered. I count to thirty slowly before emerging from the bathroom and making my way up the aisle to where everyone is receiving last-minute instructions. When I come up on the back of the group, I feel Jenica’s narrowed gaze on me. I meet her eyes and try to smile, but my lips are frozen. Her cold, dark eye—the human one—appears to be boring into me. The other one, a piece of machinery built into the metal covering half her face like an opera mask, whizzes and whirs as she watches me. She knows that I spied on her. She knows that I heard them.
As I tear my gaze away and try to refocus on the task at hand, I can’t help but wonder how a love affair between the Professor and Jenica Swan came to be. They seem like a very unlikely pair, but then, so are Blythe and I. In fact, I know if we ever crossed paths in our previous lives, we would probably have never noticed each other. The same has to be true for them, but I can see how desperate times have caused them to cling to each other. I can also see that I’m not the only one around here with secrets.