“Hey,” he said, and we sat in silence for a while, neither of us eating. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better.”
He glanced at my arm. “Does it hurt?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t hungry, but I tried to eat anyway. After a moment, he did the same. “You okay?” I asked him in return.
“Mostly. I…No. Not…” He looked at the food on his fork, then put it down. “Is it always like this?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know how to answer that. No, it wasn’t always like this, but…when something like this happened, it was always this bad. It was always this hard.
“Losing people is never easy,” I said finally.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is everyone else going to be okay?”
“Yeah. Mostly. Jai and J/O are still unconscious.”
He nodded. “Jorensen? He was down at the base when it happened, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah. He threw Jenoh into Jai’s shield, but couldn’t get close enough himself. More than a few broken bones, some stitches. One of his knees is pretty messed up.”
“I saw Jo flying right as I fell. She missed the worst of it?”
“She messed up her wing more trying to glide, but I guess it would have been worse if she hadn’t. Have you heard anything else about Jaya?”
We went over it again and again, checking on everyone who’d been involved, exchanging stories. He’d been at the top of the mountain when the rumbling started, he’d said. He’d activated his shield disk and jumped. He asked about everyone still in the infirmary—I was surprised that he knew everyone’s name, since he’d just met most of us. He seemed to really be trying to get to know everyone, really trying to fit in. I hadn’t tried half as hard when I’d first arrived…but then, I’d immediately been ostracized.
“It shouldn’t have to be like this,” he said suddenly, and something about the way he said it, the conviction in his voice, gave me pause.
“Like what?”
“Like…this. We shouldn’t have to fight.”
“We shouldn’t,” I agreed. “But we do. If we don’t, Binary and HEX will take over. They’ll destroy everything, make the Altiverse into what they want.”
“A silver dream,” he said, turning his fork over in his hands. I wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he continued before I could. “Joey…you know a lot of people are blaming you, right?”
“I’m blaming me,” I said honestly, and he shook his head.
“Don’t. It wasn’t your fault. I was there, I know it wasn’t. But…people are suspicious, anyway.” He hesitated, still playing with his fork. “I heard some of the officers talking…. They’re investigating the possibility of foul play.”
I just sat there, letting this run through me. It made sense, of course. How could I not have thought about that? The explosions I’d heard right before the rocks had fallen…those hadn’t been blasters, and even if they had been, the stun setting didn’t sound like that. The Old Man had said any actual injuries would be investigated thoroughly. There’d damn well been some actual injuries, so of course they were investigating. And what were they likely to find? Joey Harker, who’d fought with Jerzy right before he’d been killed. Joey Harker, who’d already been accused of selling out his team once. Joey Harker, who’d saved himself and let someone else die.
I’d been pulled out of the avalanche, too, which was probably the only reason I wasn’t being treated with outright suspicion, but Joaquim had it right. People were suspicious. The sling cradling my arm and healing my fractured shoulder was like my get out of jail free card, except I still wasn’t allowed to pass Go or collect any money.
I didn’t remember leaving the mess hall, or getting back to my room. I realized at some point that I was sitting on my bed, my shoulder was aching abominably, and the white cloth that held my arm across my chest was splattered with tears. Hue was hovering mournfully beside me.
“Jerzy was my first friend here, aside from you,” I told him. He bobbed sadly, turning a depressed shade of gray blue. I sat in silence for a while longer, before an idea occurred to me and a faint spark of hope flared in my chest. If Hue had been there, maybe he’d seen what had happened. Maybe he’d be able to show the Old Man it had been an accident, not my fault. “Did you see it, Hue? Were you anywhere nearby?” He flickered, giving the impression of a shrug with a well of color that rose to the top of his sphere and faded downward again. I felt the spark of hope do the same within me.
“Where were you?” I asked dully, not really expecting an answer. Or that I’d care for whatever answer he gave. Why did things have to keep going wrong like this?
Hue turned a reddish brown around his lower half, the upper part no single color but a multitude of them, all swirling and blending together.
I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, and sighed. “Okay,” I said, and put my head in one hand. I wasn’t tired, but I wanted to be. I wanted to sleep until everything was back to normal again.
The thought tugged a laugh out of me. I remembered when normal was going to school and coming home and doing homework, trying to get around doing chores and fighting with my sister over the television. I remembered, with a longing so sharp it hurt, what the dinner table looked like and where everyone sat. I remembered when normal was begging Mom and Dad to let us sit in front of the TV with dinner instead of around that table, and playing video games or messing around on the computer while I ate dessert. I remembered how my room smelled when I was about to fall asleep.
Normal hadn’t used to mean morning classes on oscillating solitons and supercontinuums, martial arts after lunch, then Hazard Zone sessions and various taxa of cacodemons before dinner. It hadn’t used to mean walking around a corner and running into a mirror, only to have your image excuse himself and step around you. There were some people here who still looked so much like me that I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it, no matter how many times I saw them.