My friend, I am not a good man.
I got into his messages and found the incriminating texts to Joan. You know, the ones where he offered to pay her to kiss me at a certain place, at a certain time, and facing a certain direction. Those went with the messages he’d sent, and she’d received, while we sat at the table with our bagels.
One message to tell her Laramie was in position and one to tell her to proceed with the kiss. Ialsofound GPS logs (thank you for recording literally every move a phone makes, Google) that proved Laramie had staked out my house and followed me to the store for ice cream the night of the barbecue.
The capper on this crapper of bad behavior? I found the outbound call to Owen the night Jackson and I arrived in Wyoming. I also found a corresponding text message from Owen that complained he’d called Jackson like Laramie asked, but that Jackson wanted nothing to do with him. The reply from Laramie explained he’d just wanted to remind Jackson about the consequences of dating disloyal trash, and that if Owen thought Laramie would help him catch Jackson again, Owen had done the wrong drugs.
I really hoped Laramie did not intend to go into information security at any point in his career. Like most of us, he just lived his life on his phone and didn’t consider that someone might harvest his activities for use against him.
Someone like me. I took screenshots and e-mailed them to myself. Ithoughtabout mailing them to Randall and Brenda, maybe Cheyenne and Sheridan, too, but I’m not a monster. They didn’t need to see these. Not today.
Then I turned off Laramie’s cloud backups of his data and asked the system to delete them. That done, I factory reset his phone so he would have to start over from scratch.
When a small knot of personnel, doctors and pilots and guards and potentially Knights Templar for all I knew, emerged from the facility to collect me, I had exacted my passive aggressive revenge on Laramie for my broken house phone. You are avenged, trusty handset. May you have peace in the halls of Valhalla, knowing your vengeance has been paid.
Revenge for the rest of the damage he’d done would come later.
* * *
I can only call the collection of medical specialists that descended upon me a “gang”. A gang of doctors, sporting gang colors of blue masks and purple latex gloves, intent on robbing my car and roughing me up a little. Or a lot.
Yeah. More like a lot.
They took the Trigeneris away to pack for travel according to guidelines Van Horn Biologics had sent them. It’s not unfair to say I wondered if they might do the same to me. Given what happened next, I kind of wish they had.
We’ll just skip the detailed explanation of the medical check-over they did on me and call it a “thorough examination”. Good news, I was healthy as a horse, outside the whole Speedbump Incident wherein a Jeep had run me over years before, and fit to fly into space. Bad news, I could never again look any of those doctors in the eye.
I received a small room with a bed, a desk, a tablet locked down to a few entertainment apps, and bathroom facilities. They placed a guard outside the door for my security, which I appreciated, since I’d heard Laramie’s cussing about his phone from half a wing away. My job for the night: eat a small dinner, try to sleep, and be ready to blast off at o-dark-thirty.
I’d managed to convince my nervous belly to accept the dinner without returning it to sender. Despite my profound exhaustion, I couldn’t drop off, though. Even after almost no sleep the night before and a wild day that started just after midnight, I’d pondered if I could convince the guard to hit me with a bat to smack me into oblivion.
A knock sounded at the door. Perhaps Laramie had come to beat me into unconsciousness instead?
No. Randall stood outside instead with a small, plastic pill cup and a solemn expression. “They were gonna bring you these. I asked if I could instead. Mind if I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, since sleep wasn’t happening and I’d started to feel the isolation.
He stepped inside to survey the room, and set the pills down on the small table next to the bed. Then he hooked the desk chair with one foot and dragged it over to face me where I’d plopped down on the edge of the mattress. A talk, then. I geared up to wish for the isolation again.
“You scared, boy?” Randall asked.
I snorted. “Of course I’m scared! I’m sane! Just because I always wanted to go to Mars doesn’t mean this doesn’t scare the shit out of me.”
“Good man.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands dangling between them. “You still think this drug will save my son?”
“Even more than I did before. I talked to the lead scientist in charge of developing it. They’ve improved it beyond what they have released to the press.” I ran my fingers through my hair and scratched at my scalp to loosen the tension. “Don’t get me wrong. There are challenges. It isnotguaranteed, and the success will depend on a lot of factors I won’t have a full grasp on until I get started with the treatment. But… I believe it will save him. I believe Jackson will come home.”
I did believe it. Ihadto believe it. Jackson was gone from me already, ready to sign for a divorce when he felt well enough to hold a pen. Saving him would never bring him back to the life we’d built. He wouldn’t walk into our home, happy and healthy and calling me his husband.
No more talks in front of the television. No more kisses. No more passionate nights. No more accidental husband.
But hewouldcome home to Randall. He would spend nights playing board games at their big table, surrounded by the other people who loved him. His family would have their son, their brother back. Jackson would live his life away from me, but he wouldlive, and that was all that mattered to me now.
Randall nodded. “Then don’t let anything stop you, Sebastian. I’ve got a lot of faith in you. More than you know.”
“I appreciate that.”
Silence crept in between us. He broke it after a moment. “I don’t know what happened between you and my boy. What I’m hearing doesn’t match what I’m seeing. You confronted your parents for the drugs we need to save Jackson’s life. You’ve driven to Boulder and back on short sleep. You volunteered to go to Mars, for fuck’s sake, without any training or preparation. You just saw that Jackson needs you, and that was that.”