Page 25 of Hollow Code
"I didn’t think so until I saw him get out of that truck yesterday. But he was always so exhausting. Like a child who constantly needed to be told he was good enough. I had to toss him bones all the time. I thought it was just the age thing. He sometimes called me kid." Gideon tossed the grass. "We managed, but now, I wonder. Of course, I wonder about a lot of things and people since I left Hyperion."
"Did his demeanor toward you ever change?"
"Not really. But the last year I worked there, he was more persistent, especially with wanting to know about ETHER. However, he wasn’t the only one. It was an enormous project."
Zadie listened for the sound of an engine, but it appeared the chopper was gone.
"Can I ask you something?" Gideon said.
"You're going to regardless."
He chuckled. "The legend thing. Were you serious about that?"
She kept her eyes on the canopy. It was easier to talk about this when she wasn't looking at him. He was cuter in person than in his pictures. His hair was longer, and he had more facial hair. She liked that.
He was also taller than she’d expected. At least six three. His eyes were a soft blue, and if she looked into them too long, she’d get lost. It had been a long time since she’d been attracted to anyone, and he was the complete package.
Although, she hadn't quite expected him to be so awkward around a rifle. He'd served in the military, and nothing in his bio mentioned he might not be capable. Maybe he was just rusty. It had been a few years.
"You were the standard. In Electronic Warfare, your name came up constantly. Not just your work—your story."
"My story?"
"Kid loses both parents at sixteen. No money. No connections. Gets himself into the Royal Military College on nothing but grades and grit. Builds systems that change how the military handles encrypted data. Leaves after nine years and walks into a corporate career most people spend a lifetime chasing." She turned and stared at him. "That story."
"You make it sound like I’m special or something. I’m not. I’m just a man who had challenges to overcome. Everyone has a story."
"Not everyone can come from living on the streets and do what you did," she whispered.
He reached out and ran his finger along her chin. "Tell me your story."
"Not that big of a deal."
"You know mine. It’s only fair that I know yours."
"I guess I walked into that one." She pulled at a thread on her jacket sleeve. She didn’t like to share hers, and she suspected Gideon didn’t like his to be whispered about in hallways where he couldn’t control the narrative. That hadn’t been very nice of her. But maybe he’d appreciate the why. "I went to a two-year college. That was all we could afford. My dad was a pipe fitter. Small town outside of Winnipeg. The kind of place where the biggest employer is the plant, and the second biggest is the bar people go to after the plant." She smiled at the memory. She was proud of her dad. Proud of the man he was and how he’d raised her. No shame in where she'd come from.
"He worked doubles most of my life. Came home smelling like rust and grease, and he'd sit at the kitchen table and ask me what I’d learned. Didn’t matter if it was after a night shift. A day shift. Didn't matter how tired he was. He wanted to know what his little girl was learning at school."
"Sounds like a good man."
"He was the best." She swallowed hard. No one asked about her dad much these days. And she didn’t offer. Sometimes, it hurt too much, and Zadie preferred to be the girl who walked around with her chin up and a smile. To be her father’s Zadie-girl. "He died during my second year in college. An accident at the plant—a mechanical failure on a press line. They said it was instant, but they always say that. But I want to believe it. I wouldn’t have wanted him to have suffered."
Gideon was quiet. Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet of a person who didn't know what to say. The kind that said he knew exactly what losing a parent was like and respected the silence too much to fill it with words. Or at least that was what she was going with.
"After that, I almost quit college," she said. "Almost walked away from all of it. But he'd never gone to college. Never had the chance. And when I started my first year at college, he told me…" She pressed her lips together. "He said, 'You're going to do the things I only got to dream about.' So, I didn't quit. I got my grades up. Got a scholarship into a university transfer program. Financial aid covered the rest."
"I’m sure your dad would be proud."
She nodded.
"I went military because it was the only way I was getting an education. You already had one, so why enlist?"
"This is going to be embarrassing." She looked back to the sky. "I was working on a systems architecture project. Security protocols for distributed networks. My professor assigned a case study on early military encryption frameworks, and one of the primary sources was a paper co-authored by a student at the Royal Military College." She turned her head and looked at him. "Three guesses."
"I think I only need one." He laughed. "Good lord."
"It wasn't just the technical work—though the work was brilliant, and I mean that. It was that the bio note said you were twenty when you wrote it. Twenty. And I thought, if this guy can do that at twenty with everything he's been through, then what's my excuse?"
