‘Is it asthma or something?’ Harry asked.
‘No, you idiot,’ Juno snapped. ‘He’s having a panic attack.’ Juno remembered what she had been taught the afternoon their instructors had hauled Poppy’s shaking body out of the sensory deprivation tank. She instructed Jesse to take deep breaths.
Eliot’s pale face appeared in the doorway. ‘Should I get Fae?’ he asked quietly.
‘Yeah, do that.’
‘Don’t!’ Jesse managed to gasp, but Eliot had already disappeared. Jesse dropped his head into his hands. Juno was pleased to see he was breathing more evenly now. ‘I’m fine. Jesus Christ…’ he gasped. ‘I feel so stupid.’ His hands were still shaking. He clenched them into fists. ‘I really am fine. Don’t tell anyone.’
‘You’re okay,’ Juno said, trying to comfort him with a smile, smoothing the sweat-soaked baby hairs from his forehead. ‘You will be.’
A few minutes later, Eliot and Dr Golinsky appeared in the corridor, and they helped Jesse up to the infirmary. Although some of the colour had returned to his face, he still needed to lean on both of them to stand, the muscles in his thighs twitching uncontrollably.
Harry stood silently the whole time, pressed up against the wall near the gearbox, his face blank. Once Juno heard the sound of their footsteps fade away, she climbed to her feet and faced him. As she did, she noticed the spots of blood on the inside of the porthole where Jesse had tried to claw his way out, a greasy handprint against the polycarbonate. Rage boiled up inside her so suddenly that she flew at Harry before she could calm herself and slammed him against the wall.
‘You sadist. What were you thinking?’ Although she’d taken Harry by surprise, he was a lot stronger than she was and even in that moment Juno could feel the bulk of his muscles flex beneath his flight suit.
‘It was just a game, you know… I didn’t know he would freak out like that.’
‘You were going to throw him out of the airlock. You were going to kill him. Of course he “freaked out”.’
‘I wouldn’t actually have done it.’ Harry shrugged Juno off easily. He was twice her size, and – not for the first time – Juno resented his power over her and the rest of the Beta. The authority he’d been given under Sheppard.
‘I guess we’ll never know that,’ she said, stepping back.
‘Never know if I’m capable of killing a person?’ Harry smiled wryly. ‘Don’t be dramatic, Juma. I was just teaching him a lesson, that’s all.’
‘What lesson?’ she asked, her body still tight with fury.
‘That it takes some nerve to do what we have to do. That you have to deserve to be here.’
‘He does deserve to be here,’ Juno said. ‘And what gives you the right to—’
‘I’m the commander. Or have you forgotten?’ They stood in silence for a moment, Juno’s fists clenched.
‘Commander-in-training.’
‘Have a sense of humour,’ Harry said finally. ‘It was only a game.’ He ruffled her hair, then made to walk off.
‘You’re not fit to be commander,’ Juno shouted after him. ‘You’re not fit to be behind the wheel of a car, let alone a spaceship, if this is all just a game to you.’
Harry didn’t even turn, just spoke over his shoulder as he strode down the corridor. ‘That’s all there is up here, though. Games. And everyone chooses to play because we’re all bored out of our fucking minds.’
Chapter 27
JESSE
29.08.12
WHEN JESSE OPENED HIS eyes in the infirmary, Juno was standing over him. ‘You’re okay,’ she said softly.
‘I guess so…’ he began, but as soon as he said it, the memories flooded back. The cardiac plunge he’d experienced when he’d looked in Harry’s eyes and realized that he really was about to die at his hands. The violence of his final moments, thrashing at the sealed door, the bruises around his elbows where pinpricks of blood had burst out of his capillaries. Juno had been the one to save him. He recalled, with a visceral shame, his own begging howls, the tears that had come to his eyes, the way she had looked when the airlock opened, a floodlit nimbus about her face, the fleeting moment of wonder at her touch. All of a sudden, Jesse wished she would leave.
‘I’m fine. I’m really fine,’ he said, trying with some effort to sit up. ‘You can go. You probably have something to be doing.’
She shrugged. ‘I have an excuse to miss dinner, which, today, I’m glad about. I think if I see Harry again today there’s a real danger I might stab him with my fork. Eliot and I are going to tell Sheppard tonight.’
For a moment Jesse was sick with fear and embarrassment. He imagined trying to explain what had happened. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please. It’ll only make things worse.’
Juno shook her head doubtfully. ‘Sheppard should know. Fae already knows you had a panic attack—’ Jesse grimaced at the word. ‘But she doesn’t know what Harry did to you. The senior crew should know that Harry’s dangerous. Possibly insane.’
‘Don’t be dramatic. It just got out of hand, that’s all.’ Jesse tried to swallow, though his throat was tight. A flash of Harry’s grinning face came to him and he turned cold with rage. ‘I don’t want to talk about it again. To anyone.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ Jesse said darkly.
‘That was a terrible thing he did. I can’t actually believe…’ Juno trailed off, shaking her head in puzzlement.
‘Can’t you?’ Jesse asked. ‘Everyone acts like it’s a surprise whenever Harry does a bad thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just because he’s been chosen to be here and is a good pilot doesn’t mean that he’s a good person. He’s going to be our commander when Sheppard is gone but he’s nothing like Solomon Sheppard. He’s not quiet and humble, or wise and good. He’s cruel. Just because he’s a talented pilot, just because he’s good at sports and handsome and shagged half the girls in our year, doesn’t make him a leader.’
‘I guess you’re right.’ Juno looked down. ‘There were always those things he did, like pranks and mean jokes that I thought he just did because, I don’t know, he’s a teenage boy. But now I wonder if that’s just the person he is. The person he’s become.’
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Jesse revealed something he hadn’t admitted before. ‘You know…’ He searched Juno’s face for a sign she would understand. ‘I’ve been thinking… I think I, kind of, hate Harry.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Juno frowned. ‘You’re just angry, that’s all. I am too. But we’re a team. And we’re supposed to be a family.’
‘A family.’ Jesse snorted. ‘Some dysfunctional family that I’m sure as hell not part of.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Juno was getting upset. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you don’t actually have to do everything that Harry says.’
‘Of course I know that,’ Jesse snapped.
‘Then why do you always go along with his games? You follow him around like—’ she paused. ‘Like you admire him. Almost like you want to be him. You watch him at dinner, you laugh at his jokes, you sit in the games room and just watch him while he plays on the simulator. For hours.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Jesse said.
‘No, I don’t.’
For a moment he hated them all. All the members of the Beta. They were grossly entitled and self-absorbed. He hated the way they had swanned through the school in the final days, crowds parting in awed enchanted waves before them. The way they had emerged before the entire world, that day before the launch, as if they were crowned in laurel, the whole country chanting their names when only a week later they’d been absorbed again in their little problems.