High Flyght – Chapter 18

It’s Jinzo’s time, and though I can tell he misses me and wants to spend the time alone, we all sit on his bed together.

Gus pulls the blood pressure cuff off Ken and checks his health readings on a datapad.

“And how do you feel now?” he asks Ken. I’ve been catching up on my accounting, but I press my datapad to my chest and concentrate on them.

“I feel great.” He inhales through his nose and lets his breath out with a smile. “Honestly, I haven’t felt this good in years.”

“No hangover? No aches or pains? Any strange sensations in the mouth or smell or anything like that?” Gus looks at his datapad, ticking items off there.

Ken shakes his head. “I feel better than I felt yesterday. Like I’ve been energized or I’ve peeled back a layer over my brain.”

“Are you sure it’s not just getting laid?” Gus asks, and I let out a burst of giggles.

“Getting laid certainly helped. But no, life is definitely different now. I can feel…” He closes his eyes and holds his breath, and the rest of us freeze. “Hmmm, how much you respect us, respect Vivian. And Jinzo, he holds Vivi at the center of his heart.”

Ken opens his eyes and shrugs. “It’s not as strong as last night. Now, I get these brushes of feelings or a picture in my head.”

“Amazing,” Gus breathes out. “You check out as totally fine, so I won’t tell you to not do it again. But I’d be careful. It’s probably changed your body chemistry in some way, and you don’t want to make such huge leaps in short amounts of time. Regardless of what I see here, that can’t be good for you.”

Ken nods. “Makes sense. I’ll be careful.”

Gus packs his stuff into his bag, a satisfied grin on this face. I’m so charmed by his smile and his caring nature. And I just love the way he takes to medicine. He’s like an excited child every time he runs across something new to discover. He’s a lot like me and my fascination with plants. We have many of the same motivations, the same love of science and analysis.

“Okay, well, my work here is done, and Lia has fresh eggs and goat cheese, so I’m going to go make an omelet.”

My belly growls right on cue. “Sounds delicious. We should probably eat soon too. I don’t remember having dinner last night.”

“The kitchen was on strike.” Ken winks with a knowing smile.

“You use the kitchen first,” I urge Gus. “We’ll be along later.”

Gus mock salutes as he edges out of Jinzo’s room. His playful mood has reassured me. Ken will be okay.

And maybe we’ll all be okay now. After witnessing a few reactions to the Rio plants, I think we have a chance to make this business work for us. We could be on the way to profitability in no time. My mouth waters just thinking about all the products we can manufacture.

“So, guys, what do you think? What should our first product be?” The giddiness in my chest transfers to my legs, and they bounce on the bed.

Jinzo slips his fingers into mine. “What about Gus?”

The change in subject throws me off my one-track business mind. “Huh? What about him?”

“Vivi,” Ken sighs, poking at my leg, “he’s obviously into you.”

My face and neck begin to heat. This is too weird.

“He seems to care for you, and I think it would be a mistake not to acknowledge it.” Jinzo squeezes my fingers. “It’s all happened very fast for you, I know, but with his skills and connections to the military, he could be a good addition to the network.”

Ken shrugs. “I like him. How do you feel about him?”

“I, um.” This is so totally awkward, and having both guys ask me this question? My hands shake as I look back and forth between them. “I… I don’t want to talk about this.”

Ken smiles and softens, getting up to sit closer to me. That gesture, though, makes this worse. This is Jinzo’s time, and Ken should not be so close to me, and I should not encourage it.

“Please, Vivi. Don’t be upset. I know what I got into when I signed up for this.” He takes my other hand and sandwiches my fingers between his. “You don’t need to feel embarrassed or ashamed of your feelings for Gus.”

Oh shit. I do feel ashamed that I like Gus. Every time I look at him or talk to him, the interested part of me jumps up and down and cheers. But I keep burying it, so I won’t have to acknowledge the feelings or deal with them.

Ken is too astute, and now he’s psychically empathetic. There’s no hiding this from them.

I extract my hands from both guys, draw up my knees, and lay my head on them. I need to think without the interference of these two men. It doesn’t matter what my heart wants in this case. I’ve been lucky to find something unique with Jinzo and Ken, and I believe we’re on the way to being in love, but that doesn’t mean that I can bring in anyone I might have feelings for.

“Viv?” Jinzo pokes me in the hip. “Talk to us.”

I take a deep breath, put on my game face, and lift my head.

“As much as I like Gus, Marcelo believes that he’s not the right person to add to our network. And I agree with him. Gus is a kind and caring man. He’s bright and funny, and he’s just liberal enough to watch me do stupid stuff and still stick by me. But he’s my employee now because I have to concentrate on two things: a good connection with someone and the resources they can supply to help me get the family farm back.”

Jinzo nods, and with this encouragement, I keep going.

“Gus has a lot of pluses, but money is not one of them. I like you both, and I think we can make this work. My heart is open for you, and you know that’s a hard thing for me to admit. But…” I lift my shoulders and gain some strength. “But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have assets to add to my mission.”

I could cut the tension in the room with a knife.

“You feel like a horrible person for saying that,” Ken says, and never were truer words ever spoken.

“I am a horrible person, and I know it. This whole situation I’m in is because of my own poor decisions. We talked about it last night, but I know I fucked up. I should’ve handled the farm’s books myself, even if that meant I had to take time off school or lose more sleep.” I grab my stuff and stand up from the bed. “I think… I think I need a little time to process all” — I wave my hand in a giant circle — “this. I have to go through my messages, find credits from thin air, set aside money for Skylar, worry about this cryocontainer Gai Reis gave us, and come up with products to sell from these plants I’m growing.”

I try to run from the room now that I’ve embarrassed myself, but ugh. Wait, Vivian. Don’t be rude.

Turning around, I stop and sigh. “I’m sorry, Jin. This is your time. I apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Jinzo pulls back, his eyes wide, before he jumps off the bed to stand next to me. “I’m not sure what Ken told you, but the schedule is, by and large, at your command. If you need time or space away from us, we understand completely. One-hundred percent.”

I deflate a little as he pushes me to the door. “I’m so sorry. Really.”

Jinzo smiles as he gets me out of his room, then he pulls me to him for a quick hug. “And that’s why I’m with you and not Cressida. You think you’re a horrible person, but you care. I’ve never seen anyone care so much.” He lets go and nudges me towards my room. “Go. I’ll give you some time, and then I’ll come by later with food and something to drink.”

Ken pokes his head out the door and sniffs the air. “I’m going to go get food. You let me know if you need help with the business stuff, Vivian.” He slips his hands into his pockets and jauntily sticks his foot out to amble away.

I’m torn up inside, and Ken is going for a snack. Typical.

Jinzo shakes his head and laughs. “It doesn’t have to be complicated or messy. It can be easy if you want it to be.”

“Nothing about this is easy.”

“Just look at the way Alipha and Malina handle their networks and see if you can learn from them. I spoke with their mates, and they were happy. You can have that too. Go on.”

My heart aches as I walk away from Jinzo’s room and find myself back in my room, all alone. Not even Frogger is here. He’s probably off sniffing corners and making lovey-dovey eyes at the raposquirrels.

At my desk, I slump over and rest my forehead on my arms.

“What the hell, Vivian?” I say to myself out loud. “What was the point of all that?”

There was no point except for me to be embarrassed. Sigh. I rock my forehead back and forth on my arms before lifting my head and rubbing my face. I am not handling this whole relationship network issue well, and that’s a problem. I’m supposed to rely on these guys to stabilize me, but instead, I’m throwing wrenches into running machinery and walking away while it all explodes in my wake.

Why do I keep doing this?

I need to stop. I resolve to stop being so damned difficult about everything.

Hey, all you Vivians? It’s time to step into line and start being responsible and helpful.

Somewhere far away, someone is laughing their ass off right now.

“Ai, how’s Carlos coming along with that crack for the cryocontainer?”

I drum my fingers on the desk as I wait.

“Ai?” I pass my hand through the contacts on my desk and call up Carlos. He answers quickly. “Hey Carlos. What’s up with Ai? She hasn’t been responding to me.”

“Sorry, Captain. You were with the guys, so I didn’t want to bother you. Ai is currently offline. I had to take her down so I could deal with…” He pauses. “Stuff. Um, code that is way beyond layman’s terms.”

“Got ya. Look, I know I’m not much of a captain —”

He interrupts, “You’re a great captain!”

“But Ai going offline is a big deal. I need to hear about those kinds of things right away, okay?” Without an AI, we can’t descend to the Palo Alto’s spaceport on Skylar’s license. She’s just not qualified enough yet to land at a Class A spaceport without autopilot provided by an AI.

“Okay, sure. Sorry, Captain. I told Skylar.”

“Well, she should definitely be the first person to hear about this. Me second.” I smile at him to let him know there are no hard feelings.

“Ai will be back online in about fifteen minutes. I’m running a set of diagnostics on her, but she’ll be running again in time for landing.”

“And what about the cryocontainer?”

“I was able to interface with the cryocontainer this morning. It’s a standard interface for sending animals in stasis. The various inputs allow for temperature manipulation, drug injections, and monitoring brain waves and vital signs.”

“Cold sleep?” Hibernation is not something we need to do a lot of now that we have the jump rings. About two hundred years ago, cold sleep, also known as hibernation, was our primary method for moving about between the Duo Systems in combination with bulky and costly jump drives. Now, only military vessels have jump drives, and the rest of us use the rings.

“Yep.”

“Can you tell what’s in there?”

“No, Captain, not unless we open it up. I’ve obtained some figures about what may be inside based on the settings of the cryocontainer. There’s a report in your messages inbox.” Carlos yawns and shakes his head. “Sorry. I was up till four and awake again only a few hours later.”

I remember the days of staying up late working on a problem or project. Now I’m staying up late doing other things. I think Ken and I went to bed around an hour before Carlos.

Just the thought makes me yawn. Even when I do sleep, I’m still awakened by nightmares almost every night, so I’m nowhere near rested.

“Okay, I’ll check your report before I get to work.”

In my inbox, I find a quick note from Carlos about the box. He’s confident it doesn’t contain fish. “My digging around seems to point to a mammal, possibly the size of a dog. The sleep drugs are tuned to something small, and the temperature is set to a warmer mode. That’s usually the case for smaller animals with thinner limbs and less fat to shield internal organs.”

Okay, but there’s nothing in that report to give me any peace. It could be a dog. It could be human. Who knows unless we open it up?

I want to open it up.

It’s time to see what’s so important in there.

I shift back to my inbox and stop dead, covering my mouth with my hand.

No.

“No,” I say out loud and jump up from my desk and away from the datapad. “No. No no no no no.”

What did I just see?

I approach my datapad like it’s a wounded animal and turn it over. There, in my inbox, is a news alert from Rio. I asked Estrela to send me any top news, especially about deaths or scandals, so I could see if Tomu had surfaced or been caught.

“Police are investigating the suspicious death of Kostas Levine, Esquire, partner at Almada and Levine Partners in Oitavo.”

Oh shit. My heart beats way up in my throat, and my stomach shrinks to a tiny ball. I close my eyes and try to calm myself before Ken busts through my door and asks me why I’m on the verge of a panic attack.

But this is too much.

“Mr. Levine was found dead, early yesterday morning, in a hotel room he booked for two nights in Terceiro. The death is allegedly being called a suicide, but with no note, and no prior mental illness reported, Mr. Levine’s wife and the head of the relationship network he belonged to, is calling for a full investigation. More details to follow.”

What do I do?

I set the datapad down and step away from it.

What can I do?

I glance around and consider my options.

Nothing. I can’t do anything. I can’t go back there. I can’t acknowledge I was one of his clients. I can’t contact the police. I can’t go back in time and never have contacted him.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and cry.

I can’t do anything but cry.