Two-Factor Theory

Two Factor Theory

1

The Gatchaspartan’s doors whispered open, and Ken appeared, Jun’s limp body draped between his arms. Both he and Jun were covered in blood, and when he stopped moving it flowered in bright, wet red blossoms at his feet.

Kneeling, he laid her carefully on the floor. Jun moaned a bit as he pulled his arms out from under her, her dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks. Jinpei skidded to his knees beside her, stripping off her crimson-spattered white gloves so he could clutch her hands.

Ken straightened, automatically bracing himself against the tilt of the ship as Ryu dodged the basilisk mecha. His blue gloves were black with Jun’s blood.

“We need to use the Hypersuit if we’re ever going to get rid of that thing,” he said. “So I’ll be back.” To Jinpei, he said only, “Keep her awake.”

Ryu and I had to stay in our seats as the Phoenix tore through the basilisk, shredding it like so much tissue paper. It exploded in our wake, but I could hardly say I was sorry.

Ryu immediately turned in his seat, craning to see Jun. The Gatchaspartan wobbled a little in response.

“I’ll go take a look at her,” I said.

I went to my knees beside Jinpei, laying a hand on the kid’s thin, trembling shoulder.

“Joe-aniki,” he said, his voice choked, pleading.

“She’s going to be okay, you’ll see.” It was a useless, empty platitude. There was so very, very much blood, great red blooms of it all over her uniform. I was hard pressed to find a clean spot larger than my thumb.

I tugged off my gloves, intentionally turning them inside out. My hands were cleaner than the cloth, and it wouldn’t do for me to probe the wounds with my gloves on.

I had to tear her uniform to reach the injuries. I gripped the bottom hem of her skirt with both hands and ripped upward, leaving just enough material covering her breasts to be modest. Even her white undergarments were red.

The wounds were bad; she had been shot five times with a projectile weapon, and I knew without turning her over that the exit wounds would be at least twice as big as the ragged holes I could see.

I gently peeled off Jinpei’s gloves, laid his hands over two of the wounds, and bade him push. I took two of the others, folding my inside-out gloves over them first, forced to leave the one I deemed least dangerous uncovered.

Ken reappeared, looming above us and looking even more haggard than he usually did after we used the Hypersuit. His skin was paper white, and even through the pale azure of his visor I could see bruises forming beneath his eyes.

“You all right?” I said, aware that my question was absurd, considering how badly Jun was hurt.

He reached up and tugged his helmet off. His hair tumbled across his forehead and down around his shoulders in rumpled waves. His eyes were disturbingly blue against his pale skin.

Without acknowledging me, he lifted his wrist, opening a line to G-Town. “This is G-1. Jun is badly injured.”

Jun stirred at his voice, opening her eyes, a vivid jungle green in contrast to all that crimson.

Ken described the injuries quickly, even angrily, and Nambu promised to have a medical team waiting for us.

“Ken,” Jun said weakly. Her gaze roved a bit, and he lowered himself to one knee, across her body from Jinpei and me, so she could find him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “that I…got hurt.”

His face was impassive, unreadable, but his eyes shone with unshed tears. “As fast as you can humanly get us there, Ryu,” he said tersely.

“That’s what I’m doing,” Ryu replied. I could hear the anxiety in his voice.

Jun lifted her hand and fumbled for a moment before finding Ken’s arm. “I’m dying,” she said.

“No, you’re going to be fine.”

She shook her head slightly. Her eyes were a little glassy. “I know…I’m dying.”

I thought about Cross Karakorum -- it seemed so long ago now -- when I had lain in that wet grass, the scent of earth and blood filling my head. You really did know when you were about to die. There is a sense of finality, an almost preternatural awareness of your soul coming loose from your body.

I felt tears burn my eyes, the back of my throat. If that was what she felt, we were going to lose her.

“I have to…tell you something,” she whispered.

“You’re going to be fine,” Ken repeated.

Holding his eyes, she said, “I love you.” Her fingers tightened around his arm, and I saw tears slide from the corners of her eyes, back into the darkness of her hair. “I’ve been in love with you for years, but I…didn’t tell you. I wish I had.”

At Cross Karakorum, I’d told Ken and Jun to leave the team, to make a normal life together. When I returned, there had been a part of me that was angry at them for not doing as I told them.

I glanced at Ken, at the strong clean lines of his face, pinched now with concern.

And there was a part of me that had been relieved, though I still hadn’t quite sorted out why.

“I love you,” she said again.

Ken shook his head, once. Denial. “You’re afraid,” he said. “What you feel is fear. You’re just misinterpreting it as love.”

“No,” she said, that one word as assured as any I had ever heard her utter. And I believed her. It wasn’t like I had never seen her cast longing glances in his direction. It wasn’t like I didn’t know why she really let him get away with never paying his tab at the Snack J. “Ken. I adore you. What I wouldn’t give…for another chance…”

“They drilled this into our heads,” Ken said, cutting her off, drowning her out. “The two-factor theory of emotion. You feel one strong emotion, but you interpret it as another because of the circumstances. Fear becomes attraction.”

They had drilled that into our heads, “they” being the shrinks on staff at G-Town. If you find yourself attracted to your teammates, it’s a trauma bond, they said, based on the two-factor theory…

We’d heard it all. Stockholm Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ingroup bias and outgroup homogeneity. Whatever. She loved him. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she?

“We’re down,” Ryu said.

I was the one who gathered the now-unconscious Jun into my arms. She curled against my chest, her silent tears soaking through the fabric covering my chest. I laid her gently on the stretcher they had waiting, and the medical team ran down the hall to the OR.

We went down after them to wait.

#

I don’t know how many hours passed, but they worked on her for a long time. We could hear the murmur of their voices, and twice shouting erupted, the chaos and then the breathless silence that accompanied the use of defibrillators. Twice techs went by with bags of blood; all of us had to bank our blood on a regular basis. Especially Ken, because he has a rare blood type.

Dr. Nambu was the one who came out to tell us when the surgery was done. He looked almost as worn as Ken. “They’re going to try the regeneration tanks,” he said.

“When did they test the tanks for something this serious?” Jinpei said. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, his cheeks chapped from wiping at his tears.

“They haven’t been tested,” Dr. Nambu said quietly, slipping his hands into his pockets. “We don’t even know if it will work. But it’s the only thing we have left.”

“The surgery…?” I said.

“They did what they could. She’s too weak, they kept losing her on the table, and finishing the work they need to finish to keep her alive will kill her.”

Jinpei began to cry again. Ryu put his arm around him. I wished he’d shut up. My nerves were shot, I was scared to death, and listening to his sobbing was just making everything worse.

“Go get cleaned up,” Dr. Nambu said to us. “It’s going to be at least an hour before we know anything more.”

I glanced at the others. Ken’s uniform was ruined. Blood, stark against the white of his chest and thighs; brown blood flaking off his gloves; even a dried copper smear across his cheek. Jinpei had blood under his fingernails and on his knees, and even Ryu had spots of it on his boots.

We walked down to the locker room, all four of us silent, walking as if we shared a heavy weight. Ken still hadn’t said anything, not even to Jinpei, and so the task sort of fell to me. I sat down on one of the wooden benches so I’d be at eye level with the kid.

“She’s gonna be fine,” I said, wondering what I was going to do if I was wrong. “Remember that knife cut I got, all the way to the bone, the one on my arm?” I pushed up my sleeve. “Not even a scar after half an hour in the regen tank. That’s what they’re going to do for her.”

He nodded miserably. He didn’t look like he believed me. His hair stuck out in every direction, all of his cowlicks still rebelling against the idea of his helmet. For once, he looked more pathetic than comical.

Jun was his mother, his sister, his everything. Someday he’d probably grow up and fall in love with a woman just like her. And he could do a hell of a lot worse.

“Come on,” Ryu said to Jinpei. He was back in his corduroy pants and his favorite green shirt. “Let’s get you changed and then we’ll walk down and see her.”

#

The door swung shut behind them just as Ken reappeared from the showers, his jeans on but only haphazardly buttoned. His skin was red, like he’d turned the water on too hot, and the bruises were stark beneath his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

He glanced at me. “I was with her. I was supposed to be watching her back. If I’d done my job, she wouldn’t have been shot.”

It irritated me when he played hero like this, when he tried to carry it all on his shoulders. “You’re only one person,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I knew what he was thinking: But I’m Gatchaman.

He tossed his things into his locker, but rather than slamming it shut, he paused, leaning his hands to either side of it, his head dropping between his shoulders. Delayed reaction, I thought, but then I noticed the taut line of his back, and that his fingers had curled in, the knuckles whitening. He was literally holding himself up. He shoved away from the locker, bravado squaring his shoulders, but his legs gave beneath him, and he sat down hard on the bench. I heard his teeth snap together.

“Ken?” I said.

“I’m fine,” he said, but what he meant was, Go away. Don’t look at me when I’m like this. Don’t see that there’s something wrong with me.

I knew, because I had done it to him.

Maybe I was especially aware that something was wrong because we were already in danger of losing Jun. Maybe my senses were just ready to see the sickness. Or maybe I had known now for a while, and I just hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.

The muscles shifted in his back, in his arms, and his hands opened and closed, like he was trying to hold onto something ephemeral. I remembered my own double vision, the blackouts, the dizziness, the flashbacks. He had asked me more than once what was wrong, and every time I had sworn it was nothing, go away, leave me alone. And he had respected that.

“I think you should see a med tech,” I said.

He stood, carefully, but his legs held him, and he let his arms drop to his sides. “I’m tired,” he said. “That’s all.”

“That’s what I told you when the shrapnel in my brain was killing me.”

He stiffened a bit, then shook his head. “I don’t have any old injuries like that. I’m fine, Joe. I’m just worried about Jun. I’m going to go sit with Jinpei and Ryu to wait.”

I knew I should go with him, but I couldn’t take any more of Jinpei’s crying. Which left me with nothing to do except take a shower.

I had just turned on the water when Jinpei burst back through the doors to tell me Jun was going to be all right.

#

I stood under the hot water for a long time, trying to wash my fears about Ken down the drain with Jun’s blood.

When I was clean, I walked back out to the med sector, passing through a pair of checkpoint doors. G-Town’s security was as tight as Crescent Coral’s had been, but my thumbprint opened most of the doors. The only person who had higher clearance was Dr. Nambu.

I had to check several of the med chambers before I found the right one. The facility is arranged kind of like a honeycomb, with a corridor that leads in, and separate chambers organized around it. Jun was suspended in the regen tank in chamber five, her eyes closed, her hair floating around her in a dark cloud. The med techs monitored her breathing and other vital signs, and one rose when I walked in.

“She’s doing great,” the tech said, her smile genuine. She had short, wavy auburn hair and rectangular librarian glasses with black frames. “In fact, she’s healing faster than we thought she would.” She touched my arm, as if to draw my attention to one of the monitors. “You can see the healing progress here.”

I could feel her looking at me as I studied the image.

“Dr. Nambu sent the others to sleep for a while,” she added. “Jun will be in the tank for the rest of the night.” Her hand on my arm again. “You should get some sleep, too.” Looking at me, the invitation there: I could come with you.

She was pretty, but I wasn’t in the mood, and the last time I slept with one of the employees, Nambu read me the riot act for over an hour. I didn’t have the energy to go through it again.

I heard Nambu’s voice, as if my thought had summoned him, and I glanced back at the door through which I’d entered. He disappeared into another of the med chambers. I hesitated, wondering if I should tell him that something seemed to be wrong with Ken. I wasn’t a snitch, and I’d have killed anyone who told on me when I was sick, but…

Maybe I could just sort of see if Nambu knew anything. I wouldn’t tell him anything, I’d just play it cool and see what I could learn.

Decided, I glanced one more time at Jun’s serene form and headed out the door. The chamber into which Nambu had gone opened at my thumbprint, and I shoved my hands into my pockets and sauntered inside.

Ken was lying on a stainless steel examination table, his shirt cast onto one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, electrodes glued to his abdomen, chest, neck, and temples. His eyes were closed, and an array of monitors blinked and flickered around him. Dr. Nambu stood on the far side of the room, his back to me, studying a series of monitor readouts.

I knew immediately that I was seeing something not meant for my eyes, and I instinctively backed up, catching the door against my body before it banged into place. I slipped back through the opening, as silent as I’d been taught to be, and still Ken’s eyes slid open, bluer than the heart of a flame, touching me, sending a shock of guilt through me.

And then the door slipped into its frame, and I was retreating, half expecting him to come after me.

He didn’t.

2

I don’t know if I slept that night. I say I don’t know because I slid in and out of half-coherent nightmares, but they might just have been echoes of my fear that we would lose Jun, or memories of my own sickness. Or reflections of my terror that Ken was heading down the same path, and that I would be as helpless to save him as he had been to save me.

Or maybe I wasn’t helpless.

I knew that something was wrong. I knew, and I could refuse to let him explain the problem away, like I had.

But what would I say? I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of my bed, my head in my hand. It had to be the Hypersuit. Every time he came down after we used it, he looked like he’d been to hell and barely made it back. And maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth.

3

I walked into the Snack J around dusk, and everything was back to normal. Jun was pink-cheeked and exuberant behind the counter, looking healthier and happier than she had in a long time. She leaned into the back to bait Jinpei, laughing at his snappy reply.

Ryu was back there, too, bustling around like he belonged. Earlier in the month, he’d told Jun to let Jinpei work at his own pace. She’d offered to let Jinpei work at his own pace if a miracle occurred and a second person appeared to do the rest of the work.

I had a funny feeling Ryu might become a permanent installment at the J.

There were a lot of other people filling the booths and the space between the counter and the windows. Kids, most of them, which is to say they were my age, some a bit older. The faceted disco ball rotated above them, but the lights were still up, so it went mostly unremarked.

Ken was sitting on a stool near the window at the far end of the counter, one heel propped on the rung around the base. Jun fluttered in and out of his space, her long black hair loose and flowing, her laughter ringing familiarly through the crowd.

She seemed so happy that I’d have thought Ken had told her he loved her back, if Ken hadn’t been ignoring her.

I felt the oddest sense of relief.

I moved expertly through the sea of people, hesitating only when I was within arm’s reach of Ken. He turned his head, probably sensing me in that uncanny way of his, and his eyes locked with mine. He watched me for a long moment, and I stood tense, ready for anything, but he only turned back to the counter and proceeded to ignore me, too.

Jun flitted back to our end of the counter and leaned over the bar. I reached over and touched her, reassuring myself that she was real, and all right, and it wasn’t the first time I’d done it that day. “You’re sure you should be working tonight?” I said.

“I feel great.” She beamed at me. “I don’t even remember last night. None of it. One of the techs told me that’s normal, something about electrical activity related to a trauma interfering with the creation of new memories.” She shrugged. “Whatever, I really feel wonderful. I should get hurt more often, just so I can get another go-round in the regen tank!” She shifted her attention to Ken, at my elbow. “Can you go in the back and get those crates I told you about half an hour ago?” She put enough emphasis on the last three words that I knew she was trying to prod him to do it now.

He glanced again at me, a displeased expression. I remembered last night, and he knew it. But he said nothing, just slid off the stool and disappeared into the back.

I followed. Ryu and Jinpei were laughing uproariously, and I reminded myself to check on them on my way back out, to see if it was safe to eat while they were both cooking. As practical jokers go, they’re the kind you gotta watch.

The noise faded as I made my way into the back rooms. It’s just storage back there, but there’s a double firewall because of the ovens in the kitchen, and Jun and Jinpei’s old rooms are above.

“The Hypersuit is killing you,” I said to Ken, and he dropped the crate he had lifted, turning to glare at me.

He spread his arms, they way you might to show you’re unarmed, making his shirt pull against the muscles of his chest. “I’m fine,” he said. “Mind your own business.”

I hadn’t thought about what I wanted to say, and I suddenly wished I had. I find myself in that situation a lot.

“That’s why you look like shit after every mission where we use it,” is what came out of my mouth.

“If I look like shit, it’s because I’m putting up with so much crap from you.”

“I’m not letting you kill yourself with that thing. I’m not letting you die.”

He retrieved the crate. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Joe, but even if there were, you made your decisions about how to handle your health. I’ll make my decisions about how to handle mine.”

I braced an arm across the door right in front of him, so abruptly he nearly ran into it. I stepped forward, blocking his path. Maybe I was wrong, how I dealt with things, I thought. Maybe I should have told you.

But I couldn’t say that.

He was angry. I could feel hostility rolling off of him in waves. I thought about yesterday, about learning that Jun had been injured, about Ken’s initial fear--communicated via the bracelets--that she was dead. Without G-Town’s regen tanks, she’d be dead, not dancing from beer tap to liquor bottle to a disco beat. Yet I hadn’t responded to the possibility of losing her the way I was responding to the potential loss of Ken.

I love Jun, love her like a sister, and it would kill me if we lost her. But there was something else here, now, with Ken, something vivid enough to burn, and I didn’t understand it. Was it because I knew Jun would tell us if she were sick, but Ken was more like me, determined not to burden the team? Was I more upset because this came so hard on the heels of Jun’s injuries yesterday? Or because she had not chosen to be injured, while Ken could stop the process that was killing him?

I was suddenly, excruciatingly aware of the moment, as if it had frozen, and I had had the time to examine it at length. The dark shadows huddling in the corners of the room, the dusty smell of the crates and their contents mixed with the scents of fresh greens and the metal of cans, the velvety folds of Ken’s shirt, the disheveled waves of hair, the tracery of veins across the backs of his hands and up his forearms.

“Move, Joe,” he said, and I could taste his voice, and it left my mouth dry.

Mindlessly, wordlessly, I moved.

4

My bracelet woke me the next morning, and we went out in the Phoenix and destroyed the latest mecha with the Hypersuit.

It wasn’t fair, really; the Hypersuit was so powerful it made short work of all Galactor mecha. I don’t know why they bothered to keep building them. Unless they were trying to wear us down.

Ken returned to the main cabin. I didn’t usually turn around to look at him when he came in, but I did today. His gaze caught on mine, warning, forbidding, but the effect was ruined when he fell.

He tried to catch himself on the back of his chair, but his legs had failed him, and he hit the floor gracelessly on his knees.

Jun was out of her seat immediately, her fingers pressed over her mouth. “Ken, are you all right?” She tried to reach up under his visor to touch his face, but he turned his head to the side.

I was on my feet, too. I didn’t remember standing.

“Worked you over a little too hard in the dojo this morning, huh?” My voice was a little too loud. Everybody looked at me. I leaned over and slid an arm around Ken, and he gripped my shoulder and found his way into his seat.

“I’m fine,” he said. And then, seeing the wide eyes of the others, he flashed me a weak smile. “Guess my leg’s still weak from that kick.”

“Gotta move faster,” I said, because that’s what I would have said if it had really happened. I dropped back into my own chair and crossed my arms. The Hypersuit wasn’t just killing him. It was killing him now. He was worse than I thought.

Jun went back to her seat.

#

When he came through the door of the J later that night, I could see that he looked like shit, even with that damned disco ball flinging shards of light through the murk in all directions.

I shoved away from the counter and met him halfway across the floor. “Come on,” I said. “I’m taking you home.”

He shouldered past me. “Leave me alone.”

I gripped his forearm, yanking him back around. He didn’t have the energy to fight me, or wasn’t strong enough to try. Both possibilities scared me.

“I don’t want your help,” he said.

“You going to walk home?”

His skin was white, flawless, his cheeks sunken and his eyes dull, and yet he retained the kind of ethereal beauty you associate with ghosts and mirages, but--at least for now--he was real. I could feel his pulse under my fingers, the heat of his skin.

We were supposed to stay at G-Town, but none of us really liked to. Except for Ryu, we had all maintained our outside living quarters. And Ken was in no condition to walk the two miles back to his.

“The ride is going to have to be with either me or Jun,” I said. “Your choice.”

Again, Jun might not remember what she had said to him, but the rest of us did. We just pretended we didn’t. Ken glared at me.

“If it’ll get you to leave me alone,” he said finally.

I caught Jun’s eye to let her know I was going, and she waved, her gaze catching a bit on Ken. Then one of her customers flashed some money at her, and she went to get his beer.

I slid into the driver’s seat of my custom and leaned over to unlock the passenger side. Ken settled back into the white leather seat and sighed, closing his eyes.

“Next time we have to use the Hypersuit, I’ll do it,” I said without preamble. “It can’t hurt me.”

Ken sighed again, but this time he sounded annoyed. “You’ll overload the circuitry, Joe. Or it will overload yours.”

I winced a little. I hated being reminded of my cybernetics, hated even more that the others knew that they existed. Hated being less than human.

“We’ve never tried it with me,” I said. “We don’t know for sure. And there has to be a way around it interfering with my…ability to function. And to keep me from interfering with it.”

“If there were, don’t you think we’d have found it by now? We’ve been looking. Harder since…” The sentence went unfinished, but I could hear it in my head: since we realized it’s killing me.

“What…” I stopped, cleared my throat. The interior of the car was dark, except for the soft, occasional glow of overhead street lights. I shifted slightly in my seat, and my knee bumped my keys, making them jangle discordantly. “Can’t Nambu’s people figure out how to stop the process of whatever’s happening?” I finally said.

“I really don’t want to talk about this.” He said it with finality, his I-don’t-intend-to-argue-about-this voice.

“I can keep driving for as long as it takes you to tell me, Ken. I like to drive, I’ve got a full tank, and we can just go around in circles as long as we need to.”

He was silent for several long minutes. He had to know I wasn’t kidding. Maybe he was trying to figure out what to say.

To be honest, if he didn’t tell me pretty soon, I wouldn’t go around and around the block. I’d take us out on the highway and open up. I pushed down on the gas, let up, listening to the engine growl, thinking about the 400 horses I’d put under the hood.

Leisurely speeds make me crazy. In fact, everything but breakneck, foolhardy, racetrack speeds are too slow for me. There’s no challenge to driving the speed limit.

“The current generated by the Hypersuit is degrading the neuron synapses in my brain and spinal cord,” Ken said, breaking my contemplative silence. “So the neurotransmitters aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.”

“Which means what?” I knew that neurons let the brain communicate with other parts of the brain and the body. I knew that neurotransmitters were the messengers neurons sent out--through the synapses--to communicate with other neurons.

“My neurotransmitters aren’t doing what they’re supposed to, because the spaces where they work are decaying,” Ken clarified. “And so I feel like shit.”

“But that shouldn’t be killing you,” I said slowly.

“No, but other messages, messages about things like pain, also aren’t getting to where they’re supposed to, so I’m in danger of hurting myself badly and not realizing it. And since my brain is having trouble sending messages…it’s like a short somewhere along the way. So I fall, or I’m blind for a while, or--“

“Blind? Like totally blind?”

He was angry with me for making him talk about it. “Yes.”

Shit, I thought. He knew what a nightmare the double vision had been; blindness would be unbearable. “That’s happened often?”

“Not often, but enough. Most of the time it’s just tunnel vision, rather than complete blindness.” He sighed again. “Eventually the message that isn’t getting sent is going to be to something essential.”

I turned the car toward Ken’s place.

So one day Ken was going to come down from using the Hypersuit, stumble like he had today, and never get up again. I felt myself shaking my head, but horrified anger had robbed me of speech.

I pulled up the dirt trail to the front of Ken’s shack, which was dark, and put the car in park. “We need you,” I said, glaring at the odometer. Saying the words was easier without light. “You have to stop using that damn thing.”

“I’ve been through this with Dr. Nambu.” Ken’s hand fell to the door handle. “But until we have an alternative, we have to use the weapons that work.” He opened the door and rose, only to fall. Again.

I swore, flinging open my own door and stalking around to the other side of the car. I leaned over him, the way I had on the Gatchaspartan, but he made a sound of irritation.

“I’m fine.” He planted a hand firmly in the center of my chest and shoved me backward. He gripped the doorframe and levered himself to his feet, only to stagger again.

I caught him before he fell this time, but his weight was more than I expected, slamming me back into the side of the car. He was dead weight in my arms, and for an instant I was afraid that he was going to die now, this moment, here in the dark with only me to witness his passing.

But he was either conscious or had only blacked out for a second, because he stirred against me. I drew a deep, shuddering breath, my fingers digging so hard into his arms that I was probably hurting him. I pulled him up against me, embracing him, my commander, my brother, my friend, as if I could seal this moment in time, when he was safe, alive, here with me.

“I can’t lose you,” I said, and realized I had said it wrong. We can’t lose you, those were the words.

“You were so damned stubborn when it was you,” he said, his words close to my ear. “So determined to hide it from us, and I had to leave you there, dying in the grass while we went to finish off Katse and X…”

“I was wrong,” I said. There in the gentle darkness, with his body warm against my side, in that moment that didn’t exist, I could admit it.

“This time it’s my turn,” he said. He shifted his weight, and I realized suddenly, jarringly, that I was turned on. Not just a little, either; I was rock-hard, aching against the heated metal zipper of my jeans. I tried to ease away from him without him realizing I was doing it, galvanized by the idea that he would know, feel…

But he was still weak, and his weight settled against me again, placing his leg there, against me, and it was all I could do not to grind against him.

His head fell forward, and I thought for a moment that he’d lost consciousness again, but then his face touched mine, just the heat of his cheek. He was nuzzling against me, his leg still pressing against my groin. Shit, I thought. Did he feel the same thing I did?

“Two-factor theory of emotion,” he murmured, and it took a moment for my lust-fogged brain to decipher what he meant. “It’s not attraction, it’s fear.”

“I was terrified Jun was going to die,” I said. “I wasn’t attracted to her.”

“Neither was I,” he said, a little stupidly. “But…” He straightened, finally able, it seemed, to bear his own weight. He gazed at me in the dim reflected glow of the headlights. “This”--his eyes actually flickered downward, to the aching bulge in my jeans--“isn’t real.”

I drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid,” I said. I was kind of impressed with myself, that I could admit it. “But the way I feel about you isn’t new.” I resisted the urge to take it back. It was true, I realized; I’d just been pushing it down. But now I was afraid, like Jun had been, that I would never get to say it, and the feeling refused to be suppressed.

“I’m straight,” he said, and my immediate, instinctive reaction was to snarl, Well, so am I!

But that was what he wanted me to do. Fight with him, move into the familiar territory of argument and fists, away from dangerous things that shouldn’t be said.

“Men don’t turn me on," he said, his tone harsher this time, as if he wanted to drive the words down my throat.

“They don’t turn me on, either, but the only two factors here are you and me, and I’m in a pretty serious fucking state.”

Even as I said it I was stepping forward, tangling my hand in his soft, disheveled hair, kissing him. He opened beneath my lips, his tongue driving hard into my mouth, and now I was the one whose legs were weak. He came closer, bringing his body into contact with mine again, and he really did want me, in the crazy, fucked up way I wanted him.

I banged into the car again, fumbling with his jeans. Right here in the dark, in the dirt, it didn’t matter, I just knew I needed him in a way I’d never needed anyone else.

And then a bright light sliced across the yard, piercing the velvet night and bringing sharp reality stabbing home.

Ken yanked away from me, and I sagged against the car, bereft, confused; but I still managed to lift a hand to shield my eyes.

Jun climbed off her bike. “I just wanted to make sure everything was all right,” she called.

“Fine,” Ken and I said at the same time. He sounded out of breath, and I didn’t sound much better. Fortunately, Jun didn’t seem to notice.

“Dr. Nambu called the J,” she said, tucking her keys into her pocket. “He was looking for you, Ken.”

Ken had moved to stand across the hood of the car from her, his hands resting lightly on top. He was standing close enough to the car’s cab that she wouldn’t be able to see his groin. I had conscientiously done the same thing, keeping the car between her and me.

“If Dr. Nambu needs me, he can use the communicators,” Ken said.

She shook her head, looking from one of us to the other. She knew something was up, but she didn’t know what. Thank God.

“He just said you should have come in to see him tonight, and you didn’t. He said you should come in tomorrow morning, instead. I didn’t realize you’d both left, so I told him I’d tell you.” She shrugged. And then her eyes softened. “Are you all right, Ken?”

“Sure,” he said. “Of course.”

“You have that kind of wild look Jinpei gets when he has a fever.” She walked around the front of the car, toward his little house. “Come on, I’ll make you guys something to eat, and then I gotta get some sleep.”

Since neither of us could cook, we followed her. What else were we going to do?

5

She left on her bike; I left in my car. But rather than going home, I found myself heading for G-Town.

I’d be damned if I was going to let the Hypersuit kill Ken.

My heart pounded, and I wondered if I was really going to do what I planned to do. I considered my options. Trying to make it look like a Galactor infiltration, trying to make it look like Galactor had a confederate inside, but either would waste money and maybe even hurt good people.

I took the route I was best at: I walked right into the chamber in which the Gatchaspartan, complete with Hypersuit, was housed, loaded her up with charges, and blew her to pieces.

It was easier than you might think. I blew up Galactor mecha all the time, and they usually weren’t in imminent danger of killing one of my teammates.

While everyone in G-Town ran to see what had happened, I walked down to the lab where all of the technical files and blueprints were stored. And I destroyed those, and all five of the backup servers, too.

By morning, Nambu and our little military force would have gone through the security records, and they’d know I’d been responsible. I didn’t really care what they did to me, though.

Ken was safe.

6

I actually hid out for over a week, waiting while Nambu blew off some steam. I probably should have hidden for a few months, or even years, but there was a mecha stomping on Disneyland, and I figured we’d have to do something about that.

I went to Ken when we got the call, just went to his front door and knocked.

He already looked better than the last time I’d seen him. Color had returned to his cheeks, and his eyes were summer-sky blue again, not that washed-out indigo they’d been so recently.

“Joe!” he said.

Memories ricocheted back and forth between us, memories and something more potent.

Ken pulled the door closed behind him. “We have to go in,” he said. His communicator was still flashing, a reminder, an admonition, an exhortation.

“You think Nambu will have me court martialed?” I said.

“I think he'll have to, but the thing is, now we have to use the original Phoenix, and you’re our gunner.”

The original Phoenix. Good ol’ red, white, and blue. I’d never liked that paper-airplane replica we’d been flying around in for the last year. That had probably made it easier for me to destroy it, too.

And the idea of firing bird missiles again was enough to get my blood racing. But…

“Ken. Before we go…”

He shook his head, sharply, cutting me off without speaking a word. “It never happened,” he said.

“It did happen.”

“It shouldn’t have. Two-factor--“

My hand sliced through the air, severing the end of his sentence. “Then I shouldn’t feel it anymore. You’re safe.”

He looked away. “I know.” He eased around me and walked out to my car, opening the passenger-side door.

I guessed I was driving, then.

He turned back, hand resting along the top of the window frame. “I was furious with you for destroying the Hypersuit. But then I realized; I would have at least been tempted to do the same thing if it had been you.”

A moment as intoxicating as the feeling of him in my arms, a moment in which anything was possible.

“The thing is, everything’s back to normal.” He said it slowly, quietly, and the moment, so fragile, broke open and was gone.

And yet I didn’t know how anything could be normal again.

I must have said it out loud, because he responded. “It has to be. That was unreal, insane…”

If he mentioned Two-factor theory again, I was going to hit him.

“G-5 to G-1,” came Ryu’s voice through Ken’s communicator. “You seen Joe?”

Ken lifted his arm, his gaze still lingering on me. “I’ve got him with me. We’ll meet you and you can pick us up.” He let his arm fall to his side. “It’s past,” he said to me, finally turning his back.

And I realized that it was; it had to be.

There was a part of me that was relieved that we could put it away and pretend it never happened.

And another part that felt like crying.

I slid into the driver’s seat and we went to meet the rest of the team.

###