18% Gray (6 page)

Oh, this was going to fucking suck balls.

Chapter 4

J
AMES
had known they couldn’t leave him here. He’d known someone would be coming, and even that it might be a contractor. The legalities around Enforced Emigration weren’t clear to him and he wasn’t sure they could send a team after him. But Matt Tennimore? He never saw
that
one coming.

It wasn’t like he held a grudge against Matt. He’d been the dick, there. He was so grateful he wouldn’t have cared, anyway. He just wanted out.

He’d been starting to get more sensitive to the implant. There were times he felt he could barely keep his brain in his head. In crowds, he could
feel
the intentions of other people pressing in on him so strongly it felt like his head might collapse. He avoided crowds when possible, but the job he’d been assigned as a re-educated former POW made it impossible. James was doing crowd control at religious rallies, of all things.

He didn’t have to work that much, fortunately. Maybe three or four events—fewer than twenty hours a week. He didn’t know what was with the light workload, but he’d take it. He’d thought that Red states liked to make their moral criminals make retribution to society through hard labor. Not in his case apparently. Busting up big rocks into little rocks did not appear to be in his future.

Maybe the RIA knew he was cracking up.

Or they wanted to coddle him, bring him over to the Dark Side. Which could also explain the cushy living situation. No one fresh out of queer re-education got a roommate: couldn’t give them a same-sex roommate in case they “slipped”; couldn’t give them one of the opposite sex in case the re-education actually worked. Fornication was as illegal between hets as homos, after all.

But did other parolees get a two-bedroom apartment in a halfway decent part of the city? It was a neighborhood from around the beginning of the millennium, not too run-down like most of the former middle-class neighborhoods. It had lots of brick-and-mortars in the area. Wealthy women from the hills above town came on weekends in their hydrogen sportsmobiles and
shopped
there, for God’s sake.

The only thing he’d miss about this pit was his apartment.

Okay, there was one other thing he would miss. He was walking right past Basha’s, so he stopped to order a chicken shawarma to go. May as well get the good stuff while he could.

Almira, Basha’s granddaughter, chatted with him a minute since there weren’t any other customers. Aside from the food, he liked Basha’s because the family didn’t care about the pink triangle on his chest. Most people looked right through him unless he forced them to pay attention. It made his job in crowd control a mite difficult at times.

James made it to his front door by 1725 with his takeout bag in hand. There was a pizza delivery bike out front, and a guy waiting on his doorstep with the standard flat box. He knew from half a block away that the guy was an RIA agent of some kind. A nervous one, full of bravado.

James stopped halfway up his walk and hooked a thumb in his waistband. “Musta forgot all about the pizza I ordered.” The guy just looked at him. James sighed and came to the door, pressing his thumb to the reader, disengaging the lock. He wondered why they didn’t wait inside for him. He knew they could get in without his thumbprint. He could feel the guy’s impatience while he unlocked the door, like he thought it was a useless gesture.

He waved the silent “delivery” guy inside, then followed him in. “Is there even anything in the box?”

“No,” the guy said. He looked at James and waited. James smiled. He could play this game better than this yahoo. He stared, unblinking, until the guy began to fidget.

“You’re supposed to be in for the evening at 1730,” he finally blurted.

“Right now, it’s,” James checked his timepiece, “1727.”

“Cutting it close, weren’t you?”

James stared some more. The guy fidgeted a little then made a visible effort to still himself. Or maybe it was a mental effort. Sometimes James couldn’t differentiate what sensory info he was picking up anymore. “I’m here to take your report.”

“First day on the job?”
Yes
. He could practically hear it.

The guy flushed. “Second,” he said, seeming to recognize the futility of bluffing. Much. “I’ll be your regular liaison for a while. You’ve been assigned a new caseworker. You need to report to her office by 0845 tomorrow morning, address in your hookup under ‘Caseworker’.”

James blinked. “Is that normal?”

“I’ve given you all the information I’m allowed. Just report to her in the morning,” the liaison snapped. He started for the door, wanting out.

“What’s your name?” James asked. He didn’t care, but he’d bet the guy wasn’t supposed to share info like that with him. He tried something he’d been working on and gave the guy a little mental push.

“Joel,” the guy responded. Then he froze mid-step. “Shit,” he said under his breath, and without looking at James, he slammed the door and left, more scared than angry.

James snorted softly. Now to decide whether it was better to wait until 0845 tomorrow or leave tonight. He went to snap on the light in the spare bedroom, then to pack.

I
T
WAS
barely dusk when there was a knock on the door. James opened it to find Matt in a Basha’s Restaurant shirt.

“Good evening, sir,” Matt’s voice was all calm professionalism. His face was all smirk and mischievous glint. James’s gut tightened in reaction to seeing him, just as it had this afternoon, when he had landed on Matt with that flying (literally) tackle. He didn’t get enough full-body contact with attractive men lately. “It appears you left your hat when you stopped by our establishment this afternoon.”

James stopped cataloguing all the changes Matt had undergone—he wasn’t exactly baby-faced anymore, but he was still punch-in-the-gut attractive—and glanced down at Matt’s empty hands. He raised an eyebrow, looking back up. Matt gave him a minuscule “it’s your line” kind of gesture.

“Uh, no. That doesn’t look like any hat I’ve ever seen.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Yes, sir, sorry for the misunderstanding. Almira thought it looked like one you had worn and asked me to stop by.” He smiled like he’d done something especially clever.

James gave Matt the two-handed “now what?” shrug. Matt continued. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Belatedly, James realized he couldn’t get a feel for where Matt was going with this. He couldn’t get a mental read on him at all.

“Exactly the kind of evening I like to be at home, sitting in my yard. With a beer.”

Matt stressed “beer” just a bit. James rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well I hope you get the chance for that, later. Bye.” He said a touch gleefully, shutting the door in Matt’s face. He made his own smirky face while he gave Matt time to go down the walkway and onto the street before walking to his cool-cabinet and grabbing a couple pouches of beer.

Out the back door, James had his own little yard and tiny patio. It was walled on both sides, with a shorter fence facing the brick-and-mortar across the road. Between the walls and the small pine tree, he had a yard that could only be surveilled from a few spots. He knew them all and checked them out visually. No sign of mobile surveillance, either. Flying micro-bugs were nearly unheard of in Idaho. He pulled a chair behind the pine, next to the fence, and pulled the tab on his beer.

Within a couple of minutes, he saw a guy in dirty safety-yellow all-weathers and a black old-fashioned ball cap plodding down the street toward him. He knew it was Matt, but he looked nothing like the Basha’s delivery guy who’d been at James’s door ten minutes earlier. His dirty-blond hair was hidden under the hat. More importantly, Matt moved differently now. As the delivery guy, he’d been quick, efficient, and professional—almost geeky—but this construction worker was dead-tired after a long day, barely picking his feet up off the ground. He even had a little hitch in his gait.

In spite of the glibness of his approach, James had to hand it to Matt. He seemed good at his job. So far. He’d always thought Matt might end up at SOUF, since half his family had, but QESA must be working out for him all right.

James picked up the other beer from the ground and handed it to Matt as he drew up to the fence. “Nice pants.”

“You like ’em? I’m just borrowing ’em. Can we talk here?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve swept it well enough. Within about one meter of this spot, we’re back in their range.”

“No vid?” Matt looked a little surprised.

James smirked. “They appear not to have that kind of budget.” A lot of things that the Blue could afford the RIA and other Red states couldn’t. There was almost no resource sharing in the Confederated Red States. Only some military entities and trade boards were nationalized under the Confederation agreements.

“They either have a hell of a budget for housing parolees or you are one lucky bastard.” Matt was looking around at James’s little yard.

“Yeah, they’re trying to win me over to the Dark Side. Or coddle me, ’cause they know I’m slowly cracking up.” Shit, he hadn’t meant to say that. He looked away from Matt.

Matt leveled an intense stare at him. He could feel it hitting the side of his head. “So, on that note, let’s get you the hell out of here tonight.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Apparently I’ve been assigned a ‘caseworker’ and I have a meeting with her at 0845. I’m thinking it’d be smarter to wait and see her.”

“What if meeting with her doesn’t mean any change in your surveillance? You could still have someone looking for you twenty minutes after we leave, wanting to do your daily check-in.”

“I don’t think so. Apparently now I’ve got the same guy every day, for a while at least. I think he might stick to the same late-afternoon, early-evening time frame for another day, at least. Especially since I have this meeting.”

“How long’s the meeting?”

James shrugged. They continued to hash it out, discussing the best approach to the job. Between the beer and the talk, James started to slip back into that place he’d been eight years before, that brief period when Matt had been his friend. James had liked him, so much he was afraid to let himself admit it. It had almost been a relief when he’d caught Steve and Matt together. It meant James hadn’t been forced to face something he wasn’t ready for. Something he didn’t fully face until five years later, when he first got his implant.

“So, whadya think?” Matt was looking at him, clear blue eyes looking into his. James let his brain come back into the present moment.

“Sorry.” he cleared his throat. “What do I think about…?”

Matt gave him another penetrating look. “About me staying in the Brick-and-Mortar Inn tonight, and I’ll stick around until you return from your appointment. James, we gotta get you outta here, buddy,” he added softly. Almost like he cared about him.

James was pretty sure he didn’t deserve any caring from Matt, but he wanted it. He cleared his throat again. “Yeah, I gotta get my head screwed on straight.” Then he decided to share something that was really starting to bug him. “I can’t feel you.” Matt gave him a slightly worried look. “I mean in my head. Your brain waves or whatever.”

“You said not everyone put them out there.”

“Well, most people do, and you did at first. But sometime this afternoon, it’s like you stopped somehow.”

Matt was silent a minute. “How about now?”

Suddenly, James could feel Matt there, pushing his thoughts out toward him. “Yeah, now I can.” James looked at him questioningly.

Matt seemed pleased with himself. “I was trying not to let you pick up on them, earlier.”

“Why?” James had no reason or right, but he felt a little bit hurt.

“I just figured it must be annoying for you, always picking up brain waves. Thought you might like some quiet.” He shrugged.

James blinked hard a couple of times. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I do like it. Thank you.”

Matt shrugged and turned the conversation back to the business of getting James the hell out of Idaho.

They worked out the plans for “what if” and Matt finished his beer, crumpled the pouch, and said good night. James sat there for another hour, lost in thought. Mostly about “what if.”

K
ANDY
M
ELORE
was a sharp, small-featured, angry little woman. And a homophobe. She made a point of telling James—frequently—how she tried not to let her personal views affect her treatment of her clients.

The woman was a grade-A prime bitch. He could feel her intent to needle him. Quickly followed by irritation when he appeared not to notice.

Mostly, James made no response to her unless he had to. It was a trick he had perfected back in childhood, when simply breathing around his father was guaranteed to irritate him. In school, he’d been quiet, but not shy. He just didn’t speak unless he needed to. He’d learned at a young age that things were better that way.

In adulthood, James started talking more, sharing things that weren’t strictly necessary. Once he had the implant and he could feel people’s bewilderment and confusion over his silence, he became much more open.