Her application had been weighing on her for weeks now as she watched the window to apply growing smaller and smaller. As the panic had set in and she’d tried to force herself through that opening. But maybe it was just that. A window. When what she should have been looking for—what she owed it to herself to uncover—was a door. Maybe there was more than one way to make that dream come true.
Because she wasn’t just Kat, anymore. She was KatwithLee. A shiny new version of herself. A version that although yet to be tried, felt ancient as her aunt’s ship she’d once dreamed of fixing up and flying off to a distant galaxy for a fresh start…
And whether they found a door, or another window, they would do it together. There had to be a place for dreamers likeher and Lee. A place where they could be safe. A place without dark radiation. She just had to find it.
Her lungs held out for longer than she’d thought they would. She really had taken things easy lately. She needed to kick her butt into shape again. But the muscle memory? Her mind remembered this. And it seemed her body was cool to follow.
They were running on borrowed time, now. Not much of it. But there was enough, and they would make it work.
When she turned off the track, it took longer than usual for her heart rate to settle. But eventually it got there, about the time Zane caught back up to her once more.
“You were always good at pushing me,” she murmured when they’d reached the base of the track once more.
“At least we had that,” Zane said, a gleam of white in the darkness. He stopped a half-meter away from her, and she could feel the heat rippling off him. His own pain and tension he’d been working off. And the air was charged between them once again—a different sort of charge this time.
It was a camaraderie. And an understanding. And when neither of them made any move to tease that, or speak on it, he tipped his head towards her, an unspoken acknowledgement. That understanding.Well done, Hanneman, he seemed to say.
She nodded back.“Bye Zane.”
He turned and headed for the door before stopping himself, glancing back and seeming to linger.
“Keep pushing him, Hanneman.”
And then he left the room.
Lee claimed a table near the railing with his holoblock when she finally caught up to him in the Hideaway, freshly showered and dry again.
“Hey—” he said, looking up, eyes tracing over her, and probably noting the fresh flyaways as she joined him. “How did the course go?”
“Fine,” she said as she sank down in her chair and Lee slid his green juice over to her.
“You guys ran long,” Lee said.
“I had somewhere to be,” she said, a soft smile on her face.
“You know, Flyn crashed through here not long ago…” Lee mused, eyes flashing up to hers. “Your doing, I’m guessing?”
Kat fidgeted with his straw. “I may have upped the stakes on them just a bit,” she said when he continued to peer back at her. “These young cadets need to be prepared. They have no idea what it’s like to be out there.”
“I agree,” he said.
Kat balked, accidentally flicking some juice at him with the straw. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lee said, straight-faced, even as he brushed some of the green juice composite from his chin. “I agree. It sounds like it was a bold stroke, and probably a shockwave to their systems. But I think they’ll be that much more prepared when they do get their turn out there.”
“You agree,” she repeated. “No lectures? No, ‘You ought to go easier on them, you went a little overboard and probably scarred them for life, they’re just IRs, Kat’?”
“Nope. I think you make an amazing raider.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
Kat wasn’t sure why his directness threw her. Or why she’d expected a different response this time. But she couldn’t help steal glances back over at the handsome Gamma across from her. With his boyish face, and the years spent down around theAcademy’s training levels, earning each bulge and ripple in his arms and back. And with the intelligence of any high-ranking AMG leader or Lieutenant. He leaned back in his chair, arms clasped behind his head, as if he could ever be so carefree as he let on.
When had he grown into such a man? She’d blinked and he’d transformed from the anxious kid on the transports.
She wondered what people saw when they blinked back at her. Could they see that transformation in her as well? Could they see that she had learned a few things of her own, even if it had taken her a while? Or did she need to work on projecting that change? She supposed everyone had to start somewhere.
She’d settled back in with a fresh green juice before she motioned to Lee’s holoblock and the holograms he’d drawn up before him. “Anything new?”
