Page 10 of The Academy (Liminal Space #3)

Chapter ten

C ody

The first thing Cody heard when he woke up the next morning was an argument. It shouldn’t have surprised him; he shared a room with Ten, after all. Ten barely knew what to do with hirself if ze wasn’t arguing. Cody was still tired, and his whole midsection ached like he’d—oh yeah, like he’d been kneed in the stomach before falling into a wall. He decided to give himself a break and prolong his time in bed instead of forcing himself upright. He drifted for a bit, listening to words that didn’t really make sense until, quite suddenly, they did.

“—have an appointment with Cody this morning, one which he’s going to be late for if he doesn’t get up right now.” That sounded like Phil, which was strange. Phil never came by the quad; Cody always went to her when they had something to work on.

“What kind of appointment?” That was Ten, sounding suspicious.

“The imminent kind, so if you’d let Cody know I’m here, I’d appreciate it.”

“He’s sleeping, and he never sleeps this late unless he really needs it, so I’m thinking you should just reschedule his appointment for a later time.” Only Ten could make that particular tone seem natural, somewhere between snide, supercilious, and sincere.

Cody could practically hear Phil gritting her teeth. “Just tell him I’m here, Cadet St. Florian. Or maybe I should report you to the master sergeant for obstruction of a senior cadet?”

Ten just laughed. “If you think that anything you tattle on me to Jessup about is going to change things, think again. I’m already on the admiral’s naughty list; you should go straight to him if you’ve got a problem with me. I can tell you how to find his office if you want.”

“Tiennan, this is important!”

“Convince me of how important it is, and I’ll let you in.”

“You’re not cleared to—”

Important … an important appointment. Cody rolled onto his back, stifling a groan, and stared at the ceiling for a moment before it all came flooding back to him. The fight, getting hit, Hermes, the medical office—shit! “I’m awake,” he called out. His voice sounded croaky, and Cody coughed and tried again. “I’m up, I’m awake! Sorry, Phil, I’ll be there in a second.” Cody swung his legs out of bed and grimaced as he stumbled over to the door and opened it.

Both Ten and Phil stared at Cody like he’d grown a second head. “What happened to you?” Phil demanded at the same time that Ten said, “Are you joking? Stay in bed!” Then they glared at each other.

“No, Phil’s right, I’ve got an appointment that I need to make,” Cody said. “Sorry, I should have let you know.” He looked Ten over, pleased to see that the bruise on hir cheek had faded to a shadow, and hir black eye was yellow now instead. “You look better.”

“You look awful.” Ten frowned. “Is this because you’re a natural?”

“Fuck!” That was Phil, who barged past Ten and shut the bedroom door fast before turning on Cody. “You told your quadmate?”

“No!”

“I figured it out on my own last night; I’m not an idiot.” Ten sniffed. “Between the aftermath of the fight and a little research on your planet of origin, it wasn’t hard. Honestly, if you really wanted to keep it a secret, you should have lied about your background.”

“No, that sort of manipulation throws up red flags to administrators,” Phil said automatically. “Shit. Cody, I told you to be careful!”

“I didn’t ask to get into a fight, it just happened, and once it did, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing,” Cody protested.

“Yes, you could have! We’re supposed to be innocuous, Cody—utterly forgettable! That’s the reality of your situation, and the sooner you adapt to that expectation, the better. You shouldn’t have gotten involved!”

Oh, that … that was a step too far. Cody stood up, ignoring the strain in his abdomen, and stared straight at his sponsor. “If I have to let my friends get hurt just so I can look normal , then I’m fucked,” he said flatly. “Because I won’t do that. I just won’t.”

“You’re going to have to learn to let go at some point,” Phil argued, but at least she had the grace to look ashamed of herself. “Naturals are covert operatives, Cody. We have to play to expectations, not buck them, if we’re going to be effective. Do you honestly think your intervention did Tiennan any favors last night?”

“Ten isn’t just some person, Ten is my friend ,” Cody argued. “Maybe I didn’t help in the fight, but ze wouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place if ze hadn’t been defending me, so unless you’re advocating that I give up all social interaction completely and turn myself into a hermit, it’s not going to happen.”

“Being alone is safer,” Phil said.

“You’re an idiot.”

Both of them turned to look at Ten, who stood there, arms crossed, staring back and forth between them like ze didn’t know who was stupider. “Seriously, idiots, both of you. Have either of you even met Admiral Liang?”

Phil frowned. “Of course. What does the admiral have to do with this?”

Ten rolled hir eyes. “Wow, you’ve been here for what, eight years now, and you still haven’t caught on? You really are an idiot. At least Cody has the excuse of being new.” Ten heaved a sigh. “When you started at the Academy, did you have quadmates?” ze asked Philomena.

“Yes,” she replied, a bit defensively.

“And were they naturals like you?”

She started to respond, then hesitated. When she began again, her voice was more measured. “One of them was.”

“Uh-huh. Out of the thousands of students at this school, you, a natural, got paired with another natural for a quadmate. There probably aren’t more than a half a dozen of you in this entire place, so we can reasonably assume that your pairing was deliberate.” Ten spoke in a sing-songy, this-is-so-obvious tone. “So you had someone like you that you could be friends with and confide in.”

“My other two quadmates weren’t naturals, and they never found out that we were,” Phil protested, but her insistence was starting to weaken.

“Yeah, fine, you were working on being covert together, you learned how to keep a secret, wah-wah.” Ten waved hir hand dismissively. “Cody is probably ten times more sociable than you, though, and he was put in a quad with—count them— no other naturals. On the contrary, he was put in with, like, the farthest people there are from naturals, and one of us is an empath. An empath, someone who reads emotions; do you not see where I’m going with this?”

“You think he did it deliberately,” Cody said, finally putting together what Ten was saying.

“Of course , he did it deliberately,” Ten exclaimed. “Admiral Liang is a genius when it comes to figuring out people’s strengths and weaknesses. Trust me, I know.” Ten’s eyes lingered on Cody for a moment before ze plowed ahead. “You,” ze said to Phil, “might do just fine all by your lonesome or with very few confidants, being all naturally secretive, but Admiral Liang knew that Cody wasn’t going to be able to hack it alone.”

“Hey!”

“It’s not an insult, it’s a statement of fact! You’re a shitty liar, but you’re a good person, and so the admiral put you with a group of people who were bound to figure out you were a natural, then ensured that we would like you enough that we wouldn’t care. That we, in fact, would help cover for you when things went wrong, like they so obviously did yesterday.” Ten frowned vociferously at Cody. “You should have told me you were really hurt instead of lying there hoping it would go away, you moron!”

Ten was so indignant, so angry, so worried even as ze was tossing insults around like they were sweets … Cody couldn’t help it, he fell back onto his bed with a pained grunt and started to laugh. Phil and Ten both looked at him like he was crazy.

“Sorry,” he gasped, “I’m sorry, but Ten … you are so smart, and you are so bad at telling people you like them!” Cody covered his eyes with his hands, his breath hitching as he fought to get his laughter under control because damn, it hurt his diaphragm. “I like you too,” he said around a giggle, “just so you know.”

“Of course, I knew that; didn’t I just say you couldn’t lie?” Ten grumped, but ze sat down next to Cody and patted his knee. “Now stop laughing before you injure yourself; honestly, you have no sense.”

“I can’t believe it,” Phil said, still standing against the wall with a dumbstruck expression on her face. “I can’t believe the admiral would intend for all of you to know. The more people who know, the harder it is to keep it a secret.”

Ten scoffed. “Oh, please. I have no other friends, Daryl is the embodiment of ‘strong and silent asshole,’ and everyone is too in awe of Grennson to ask impertinent questions about him, much less to him about us. We’re the perfect secret keepers although honestly,” Ten added, “I think the admiral could have done better than Daryl.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Cody protested. “Considering all the crap he has to deal with because of his grandfather, I think he’s doing pretty well.”

“You would think that,” Ten said with a sniff, but ze didn’t stop petting Cody’s knee. “Frankly, I just think he’s here because of his connec—hmm.” Ten’s eyes narrowed. “Now that’s an interesting thought.”

“What is?” Phil asked.

“What? Oh, nothing, nothing,” Ten said, not even pretending ze wasn’t lying. Phil looked highly offended, and Cody started laughing again. This was one of the most ridiculous starts to a day he’d ever had, and he and Wyl had once “borrowed” a tank before dawn to test out its max speeds over uncertain terrain. Robbie and Grandpa had not been pleased.

“If you can laugh like that, you can’t be too badly off,” Phil muttered, coming over and helping Cody sit up. “Lean against the wall.” Cody complied, and a moment later, he felt the familiar thrum of the scan. Phil was having a rapid-fire conversation with Hermes if the twitching behind her closed eyelids was anything to go by, and a few moments later, she pulled back. “Hermes notes nothing but improvements in your condition since last night, so I’m canceling the trip to the medical office. I’m also canceling your time on the hoverbike course since you’re not that healthy yet,” she added firmly.

“Thanks, Phil,” Cody said.

Phil snorted. “Don’t thank me. I can’t believe … Cody, this … this …” She shrugged helplessly. “This just isn’t how it’s done. Not for us.”

“Your own status should be safe enough,” Cody assured her.

“It’s not that. It’s …”

“It’s that you’re weird,” Ten said, not without a tiny bit of compassion as ze looked at how Phil was struggling. “You’re a well-adjusted freak of nature who was raised to be comfortable with yourself, surrounded by people who love you despite the fact that you’re not going to live even a quarter as long as most of them will. I think it would be hard for a lot of families to really bond with a child they knew had such a limited life expectancy. Right?” ze asked Phil.

Cody wanted to protest, to say that he really wasn’t all that exceptional, but his own memory betrayed him. The strain between Tamara and her father, the way Lacey fought with her own family, how her dad wouldn’t let her near the new baby as though being a natural was contagious. Cody had always been the one to have people over to his house on Pandora, never the other way around. He’d been the most popular kid in school, and maybe more of that was due to the fact that his dads never looked like they’d measured you and found you wanting than because Cody was just that awesome. His folks weren’t perfect, but Cody was pretty sure no parent was.

“I’ll be careful,” was all he said once it was clear that Phil wasn’t going to speak. “I know I have to prepare for the future; I’m going to have to get used to fitting expectations, but this is my home now. I should be able to be honest here.”

Phil sighed. “If you say so.” She stood up and brushed off her uniform. “I’ve got things to do. Study up on those schematics before our next session; I want you able to rebuild three different types of listening devices out of an abandoned neural implant in two hours.”

“Got it,” Cody told her. “Thank you for coming to help me.”

“You’re welcome, but it looks like you didn’t really need my help.” She caught Cody’s gaze and held it for a long moment. “Just be careful, all right?”

“I will be.”

Phil shut their bedroom door behind her, and Cody shut his eyes and relaxed against the wall for a moment, counting the seconds before Ten started to—

“I want to look at your medical records.”

—demand things. “Why?” Cody asked, standing up and pulling a fresh shirt out of his storage compartment. If he was going to have the morning to lounge around, he was going to do it in clothes that weren’t sweat soaked and smelling like pain. Getting the old shirt off was rough; Cody could barely lift his arms as high as his shoulders, and he had a dark bruise spreading across his rib cage like a negative constellation, black on white. Getting the new shirt on was going to be a bitch.

“Good fucking grief,” Ten snapped, standing up and taking the shirt from him. “Arms in, I’ll get it over your head. I want to look at your records so I can start figuring out how to cure you, obviously.”

Cody chuckled for a moment before breaking it off with a hiss of pain as Ten tugged the shirt a little too hard over his shoulders. “Naturalism doesn’t have a cure,” Cody said once he had his breath back. “Just ways to manage the symptoms, and that doesn’t include a way to prolong life beyond about a hundred yet.”

“ Yet ,” Ten emphasized. “Just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it never can be; that’s what science is all about.”

“You’re a chemist,” Cody pointed out.

Ten crossed hir arms. “Medicine is chemistry,” ze said stubbornly.

There was no use fighting it. “I’ll send you a copy later,” Cody said. “After breakfast.” He was a little surprised to find he was hungry, but his stomach’s growling was too loud to ignore.

“You’re going to tell them, aren’t you?” Ten asked as Cody moved toward the door. “Tell Grennson and Daryl about you.”

“Yeah, of course I am.” There wasn’t much of a point in hiding it as far as Cody was concerned. He already felt better at the thought of the veil of secrecy lifting.

“Good.”

It would be. At least, it had to be better than lying, Cody rationalized as he headed out into the common room to explain his … complication … to his quadmates.

Daryl

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that something serious was happening behind Cody and Ten’s closed door. Daryl tried not to look at it, but he couldn’t help glancing over whenever the volume rose loud enough to be heard through the walls. They were supposed to be soundproof, but apparently no soundproofing had yet been invented that could withstand Ten.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Grennson said from the other side of their newly requisitioned kitchen table, where he sat and sipped on the spicy tea of his world. It was sweet and peppery, and Daryl was trying hard not to develop an addiction for the stuff, but Grennson always poured him a cup in the mornings. It tasted so much better than coffee or bissap juice.

“I’m not worried,” Daryl said quickly, and it was such a lie that he wasn’t surprised when Grennson raised one eyebrow. It was a very human expression of disbelief, and Daryl wondered if he’d learned it from Captain Kim. “Fine, I’m a little worried. Who’s Ten yelling at?”

“I believe it’s Cody’s sponsor.”

“Why is she here?”

The quills on Grennson’s back fluffed up a little, like a full-spinal shrug. “I’ve no idea, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.”

Daryl frowned. “Why would they tell us anything?”

“Because we’re their quadmates.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything,” Daryl objected. “All being quadmates does is put us into close proximity with each other.”

“Proximity is an important part of forging emotional bonds,” Grennson said.

“It’s not a guarantee, though.”

“My human father is very fond of saying, ‘There are no guarantees in life,’” Grennson replied tranquilly. “He also says, ‘True families are made, not born.’ Given that he chose to make his family almost entirely out of another race on an alien planet, I think that second saying is rather apt.”

“You can’t get rid of the family you’re born with,” Daryl said dully. He’d listened to two messages from his grandmother already that morning, one asking why he wasn’t the captain of the paraball team yet, one about his “disciplinary issues” with regards to Ten. She’d let him know that she’d be calling in another fifteen minutes, presumably so she could reiterate her problems with Daryl to his face.

“No,” Grennson agreed. “But you can minimize their impact if it has a negative effect on you, and I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that your family’s effect on you is rarely positive.”

“And you think all of us being friends is going to fix that?” Daryl knew he was being harsh, but he’d barely slept at all the night before, guilt and anger warring in him until he’d twisted so much that his blankets became a prison, wrapping him up tight.

“I think it’s a good place to start,” Grennson said. “I certainly enjoy being your friend; I don’t see why Ten and Cody won’t.”

“Ten hates me.”

“No,” Grennson corrected him. “Ten takes advantage of your weaknesses in order to elicit a particular reaction from you. Very few people have ever treated hir with kindness, and now ze lashes out at others before they can hurt hir first. If the anger and disappointment comes as a direct result of something Ten has done, rather than what ze is, Ten can understand and cope with it. You really aren’t dissimilar at all,” Grennson added.

“I am nowhere near as rude,” Daryl said.

“True.” Grennson sipped his tea and said nothing else, and after a moment, Daryl couldn’t bear the silence.

“What?”

“Hmm?”

“What else do you want to say that you aren’t saying?”

“There’s nothing else I want to say right now,” Grennson replied with a smile. “How does the saying go … ‘Silence is golden’?”

“If you have a problem with me, you can tell me,” Daryl pressed. “I want you to tell me.”

“I’m not the one who has problems with you. You’re always perfectly nice to me. You’re my friend, and I value that friendship very much.” He said it with the sort of earnestness that made Daryl want to shy away. “And that—you see, that emotion, I feel it. I feel all of your emotions, I can’t help it, and I know when I am making you uncomfortable. So I won’t.”

“Yeah, but …” But how was Daryl supposed to improve if Grennson wasn’t telling him what he was doing wrong?

“I am your friend, not your nanny,” Grennson murmured. “Or your grandmother. I’m not here to tell you all your faults and demand that you fix them. Change isn’t something you can force on someone.”

“That doesn’t keep people from trying.”

“No, but it doesn’t mean you have to put up with it either.”

Their conversation was cut short by the abrupt opening of Cody and Ten’s door. Cody’s sponsor came out, red-faced and flustered, and stared at both of them for a long moment. “He’d better be right about the two of you,” she said finally. “You better not let him down, or so help me …” Her voice trailed off, like she couldn’t quite catch her breath, and then she straightened up and walked out of the quad without another word.

Daryl turned to look at Grennson. “What was that?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Grennson replied, looking worried. “I’ve been trying not to feel what’s going on in there, but it’s hard not to notice someone else’s fear.”

“Fear of what?”

“I can’t tell you,” Grennson said, and he looked sad about that. “I’m not supposed to know. It’s a secret.”

“Whose secret?”

“My secret,” Cody said from the door. He looked a little worse for wear, and Ten was standing behind him and scowling at him but not, as of yet, saying anything, which was a miracle as far as Daryl was concerned. “I should have guessed you already knew it,” Cody continued, looking at Grennson with a little smile.

“You can trust me to keep your confidences,” Grennson said seriously.

Ten huffed and pushed gently at Cody’s shoulder. “Get out of the way, already; why don’t you go sit down?” Cody complied, and Daryl took in the stiffness of his back and the little hunch in his shoulders and realized that Cody was still injured.

“Why haven’t you healed yet?” he asked, standing up and pushing his chair toward Cody. The table had been replaced fast enough, but several of their chairs had been broken as well, and apparently the Office of Requisitions found them harder to come by. “Do you need a Regen boost?”

“Don’t you think if that would have worked, I’d have already tried it?” Ten snapped. “Are you as blind when you play paraball as you are with people?”

Daryl bit back the insult that hovered on the end of his tongue. You don’t have to say anything, Ten’s just trying to get a rise out of you . The anger and worry he’d been fighting with all night sharpened in his chest like a knife, though, and Ten was such an easy target, ze could take it, ze was asking for it …

“Don’t be an asshole,” Cody said tiredly. To Daryl’s shock, Ten backed down, crossing hir arms and looking sulkily at the floor. Cody sighed, then reached out and took Ten’s hand. “And don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad, I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Ten said, sounding ominous. But ze didn’t try to take back hir hand. Cody glanced over at Daryl and grinned. It was slightly pained but genuine.

“I guess you’re the only one out of the loop.”

“What loop?” Daryl demanded.

“Mine, I guess. I’m … okay, so … shit. I guess the easiest thing to do is just come out and say it.” Cody tilted his head back toward the ceiling and exhaled heavily, then said, “I’m a natural.”

“A natural what?”

“For fuck’s sake—”

“Ten, c’mon, please,” Cody entreated, and Ten shut up again. That was more astonishing than anything Cody had said so far. A natural …

“I’m a genetic natural,” Cody continued. “My body won’t accept Regen. It’s hard to get my body to accept a lot of medical treatments. I’m going to age at a normal human rate, which means that if I’m lucky, I’ll live to see a little over a century. I don’t heal as fast as you do, which is why I’m still feeling the knee I took to the stomach yesterday. I was accepted to the Academy with the idea that eventually, I would go into covert operations, so it’s kind of a big deal that I’m telling you this.” His dark-blue eyes were fixed firmly on Daryl’s face, gauging his reaction. “No one else can know. Ten found out by accident this morning, and I guess Grennson’s known for a while …”

“I wasn’t completely sure until last night,” Grennson said. “But I did suspect something like this.”

“I was supposed to keep it a secret,” Cody said. “But I wanted you guys to know. I would have told you from the beginning if I could have.”

“Because you have no sense of self-preservation and are a terrible liar,” Ten interjected. “We need to know if only to help you keep your cover. Which we will,” ze added, staring at Daryl like ze could bore holes through Daryl’s brain if ze just tried hard enough. “Right?”

This was … confidential. This was majorly, majorly confidential; there was no reason Daryl should know this. He wasn’t brilliant like Ten or empathic like Grennson, he wouldn’t have figured it out on his own. He shouldn’t know this. He shouldn’t be part of some secret society, like they were a special little club, like they were—fuck, family.

Daryl still hadn’t said anything, and Cody was starting to look concerned. “Daryl? Will you help me out here?”

Fuck this. Fuck this, Cody shouldn’t be relying on Daryl for anything, didn’t he know how bad Daryl was at this? At everything? He could ask for a transfer, someone else could take his place here, someone who really knew how to be a friend and keep a confidence …

Daryl’s comm unit rang. Mechanically, he pulled the caller information up on the tabletop. Grandmother. Right, she had an appointment to tell him how disappointed she was. How unlike his grandfather he was. How hard he needed to try to live up to that impossible, unreachable ideal.

Grennson’s hand on top of his made Daryl jump. He looked up at the Perel, but Grennson didn’t say anything, just smiled.

It was too late to keep from disappointing his family. Maybe, though, Daryl might manage not to disappoint his quad. He turned his comm unit to DNR, cutting off his grandmother’s call, and brushed her caller ID away. “You can count on me,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“You’d better not,” Ten sniped, but Cody just grinned again.

“Thank you.” Daryl felt himself start to blush and made himself act nonchalant, shrugging slightly.

“Sure.”

“Yay, we’re all on board,” Ten cut in. “Hurray for the four Space Rangers. Now we just have to figure out why we’ve been turned into a unit, and life will be lovely.”

“You think there’s a reason we were put together?” Grennson asked.

“For the umpteenth time, yes, seriously, all of you need to meet Admiral Liang and figure this shit out for yourselves; the man is brilliant, nothing happens by chance, are you honestly that na?ve? Yes ,” Ten said.

“Why, though?” Daryl asked. “What are we supposed to do together?”

They all stared at each other for a long moment. “That,” Cody said finally, “is a really, really good question.”