Page 42 of Hollow Code
"Thirty minutes."
"I did twenty."
"Underachiever." She smiled. "What did you do when you weren't working? And don't say gaming, because I already know that part."
"I hate to run, but I enjoy walking. I would get up early and walk around the city. It helped me clear my mind." Getting close to people had always been difficult for him. It was one of the reasons he’d never had lasting relationships with women, or best friends. He kept people at a safe distance. He couldn’t explain to himself, or anyone else, why. It wasn’t because of the losses in his life—he’d been like this since he could remember. Yet, he had an urge to share his thoughts with Zadie. With Hopper. With all her personalities. "I cooked, but badly. I read—history mostly, some science fiction. And I rebuilt things. Old radios. Broken clocks. Stuff I'd find at thrift stores."
"That’s different. Why?"
"I took them apart to understand how someone else solved a problem with the tools they had." He shrugged. "I've always been more interested in how things work than what they do."
"Makes sense." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm the opposite. I don't care how it works as long as I can make it do what I want."
"That's why we'd make a good team." He dropped his hand to her shoulder and gave it a good squeeze.
"I’m curious. What was the military like for you?" she asked.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "The structure saved me. I needed someone to tell me where to be and when and what mattered, because I'd spent two years working that out alone, and I was exhausted by it." He clasped his hands together. "The hardest part wasn't the physical stuff. It was the proximity. Thirty people in a room. Eating together. Sleeping together. Training together. No space that was just mine. I'd been essentially on my own since I was sixteen, and suddenly there was nowhere to hide."
"That’s a big change."
"By the third month, I figured out that being around people didn't mean I had to perform for them. I could just exist in the room and contribute when I had something to say and be quiet when I didn't." He shifted his gaze. "That was a revelation."
"It took me about a week."
"Because you're better with people than I am."
"That's a low bar." She tilted her head. "Were you close to anyone? In your unit?"
"There was a guy named Desmond. He was from PEI and he talked in his sleep—full conversations, both sides, like he was running a radio show for an audience of no one. I'd lie there at two in the morning listening to him negotiate the price of a used truck with someone who didn't exist."
Zadie’s lips parted and her eyes went wide. "That’s wild. Where is he now?"
"He finished his service, and I believe he went back east." Gideon shrugged. "I didn't stay in touch."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm good at building systems and terrible at maintaining connections." When he met her gaze, a million of their late-night gaming conversations flew through his mind. How they’d connected, how she understood his need to disconnect from the real world and walk into the fantasy world created in video games. "When Darwin helped get me the job at Hyperon, one condition of the job was sticking with a project. It wasn’t about creating a functional structure and then having the software developers figure out how to maintain it. I needed to see it all the way through and keep it going. I committed to that with ETHER, but in doing so, it forced me to make deeper connections. That was hard. Probably why I dove so deep into our online world sometimes."
She shifted, turning more toward him, and rested her hand on his knee. "I’ve always walked through life with a smile on my face. It’s something my dad taught me." She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. "Everyone thinks it’s easy for me to make friends because I’m always so bubbly. But that’s my way of keeping a piece of my dad with me."
"I don’t believe for one second it would be very easy for you to walk away from this team. Not like I walked out of my life." Gideon held up his hand when she opened her mouth. "I understand the world believes you’re dead. But you’re not hiding. You’re fighting to get your life back. To give Darwin his, and you haven’t known him very long. You suck people in without even trying. And I mean that in a good way."
"In part, I went into my position in the military because I’m good at what I do. I have a passion for it, and I’d heard about you and that inspired me. But you know as well as I do that my position is "attached" and therefore not permanent placements to any team. For me, that was by design. And until this team and Neve fought for me, I wouldn’t have had it any other way."
He ran his finger across the back of her hand.
"I’ll never forget my first deployment," she continued. "My desk was in a windowless room in Petawawa. I had four monitors, two keyboards, a coffee machine that belonged to my CO which I wasn’t allowed to touch, and a chair that squeaked every time I breathed. Eleven months monitoring encrypted comms and writing reports that no one read."
"You said you hated coffee."
"I do. But I hated being told I couldn't have it more."
He laughed.
"Thing was, I kind of loved that little dark office where all I had to do was chase data. I was petrified of where I was going to be sent next. The orders arrived, and I boarded a transport plane headed overseas. The location was hotter than hell, the food was criminal, and I shared a tent with three women who I became friends with. Real ones." She pulled at a thread on the cushion. "That was six years ago, and I haven’t talked to them since." She turned her hand and threaded her fingers through his. "We’re individuals with a history of weak relationships, who used fake online identities, and now, one of us is deceased, and the other might be a criminal. That's a hell of a foundation."
"I’m sure there are worse ones out there." Gideon ran his finger across her skin. "Or how about the ones who refuse to acknowledge it?"
