Fragile Hope

Chapter 1-2

Jack approached her.

The instant he was within range, Anna got off the couch, stood up on her toes and kissed him on the lips. It was a soft kiss, tender and sweet, but it soothed away some of his frustration. Well…Okay…Most of his frustration.

Instinct kicked in, and he slipped his arms around her, holding her close and letting her rest her head on his chest. “What's all this for?” he asked.

She looked up at him with her lips pressed together, concern shining bright in those big blue eyes. Concern for what? He was about to ask when Anna hugged him tight and said, “I want pajama cuddles. Just you and me and a big warm blanket.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

A few minutes later, Jack returned to the living room in gray shorts and a big blue t-shirt, pausing with one hand on the wall to admire his girlfriend. There were moments when he marveled at how a guy like him could end up with a woman like her.

Anna was stretched out on the couch with the blankets pulled up to her shoulders, her head turned so that she had one cheek pressed into the pillow. For half a second, Jack thought she was asleep. Then she startled him by saying, “Are you gonna come join me?”

He didn't need any more prompting.

It felt so good to get under the covers with her. Pretty soon, he was lying on his side with his arm around Anna's tummy, sighing as she pressed her back against him. All safe and snuggled up. The warmth of her body seemed to drive away autumn's chill.

Jack nuzzled the back of her neck. “You're amazing,” he whispered in her ear. “This is just what I needed.”

She rolled over to face him, wrapping an arm around him, and he knew right away that she was worried. More to the point, Jack knew that he was the cause of her anxiety. “Something's been eating away at you,” she said. “I was hoping you'd tell me what it is.”

Jack shut his eyes tight, trembling as he drew in a breath. “Oh, you don't want to talk about that, do you?” It was more of a plea than a question. “I'll be fine by tomorrow. I promise.”

By the time he finished speaking, Anna was lying on her back with her arms folded, staring angrily at the ceiling. “You've been stressed out for weeks,” she said. “You think I don't notice, but I do. Out with it.”

He propped himself up on an elbow, resting his cheek on the knuckles of one fist. “You really wanna talk about this?”

“I do.”

Jack sat up and ran a hand over his face, pushing dark bangs off his forehead. “It's about what happened on that Ragnosian ship,” he began. “On the day that you and Cassi came to rescue me.”

“Go on,” she urged.

“My fight with Arin…”

“What about it?”

“I lost.”

With a heavy sigh, Anna sat up and shook her head. “Sweetie, is this some kind of Earth masculinity thing?” she asked. “Because I'm pretty sure we talked about this in the medical bay. Everyone loses sometimes.”

“No, it's not that,” Jack assured her. “I just keep…I keep thinking about Ben. About how I couldn't save him. And then there was Arin…I beat him once before and I was sure I could do it again. But I was wrong. I just keep screwing up. Maybe I don't have what it takes to be a Justice Keeper.”

Gently, Anna laid a hand on his cheek and turned his face toward her. She touched her nose to his. “My poor Jack,” she said. “You are the strongest person I know, and not because you can Bend space-time.”

“Then why?”

“On the day I met you,” she said. “You put yourself in harm's way to help a perfect stranger. And then you did it again for Summer. That cop Hutchinson had a gun pointed at your chest, remember? He gave you a choice: give him the symbiont and he would let you go.”

All of those memories came rushing back. Suddenly, Jack was right there in his big sister's living room. Hutchinson was standing over a passed out Harry, choking up on his pistol, snarling like a dog that wanted to sink its teeth into something.

He remembered all of it: the terror, the sense of helplessness and the growing fire in his belly that refused to let him back down even when he knew he couldn't win. And then he remembered meeting Summer. Those memories brought warm emotions, and not all of them were his. Summer loved him; he knew that.

Anna pressed her lips to his cheek. “You decided that you would not sacrifice an innocent creature to save your own life,” she whispered. “Even though you knew it was futile. Hutchinson would kill you and take the symbiont anyway. It didn't matter. Right is right regardless of its futility. That's what makes you an amazing Keeper.”

“Well…When you put it like that.” There were times when Jack forgot his greatest hits. It wasn't as though he had lost those memories, but it had been so long since he had thought about those events.

His selective amnesia on the topic of how he became a Justice Keeper seemed to annoy Summer. And really, could you blame her? Forgetting the events that led to their Bonding had to be an insult. He offered Summer a silent apology, but that just intensified her irritation. Jack gave up trying to understand what he had done to provoke his Nassai. She could tell him the next time they talked. “But,” he said. “I'm the only one in our little group who keeps piling up defeat after defeat.”

“Oh, really?”

He knew he was in trouble when Anna got off the couch and stood over him with her hands on her hips. “Six months ago,” she said, “Isara got out of her cell and ran into me on her way out of the building. We fought; she overpowered me and went on to kill several people before Melissa took her down.”

“Yes, but-”

“Two months later,” Anna continued, speaking right over him. “We tracked Leo to that castle. I fought him, and I had him subdued, but he triggered a hypersonic pulse and escaped. The oldest trick in the book.

“Harry took on Cara Sinthel and got shot,” she added without pause. “Melissa and Rajel both fought Isara when she attacked Justice Keeper HQ, and she tossed them both around like a cat toying with a pair of field mice. We've all had our setbacks. That's what happens when you go up against powerful enemies.”

“Okay, I take your point.”

“Good.”

Anna hopped into his lap, slipping an arm around his back and snuggling up close with her head on his chest. “Because you're wonderful and brave and clever,” she added. “And I love you with all my heart.”

Jack squeezed her tight.

They spent the rest of the night in each other's arms, cuddling, laughing, sharing the details of what they had done that day. After a light dinner, they curled up together under the blankets and put on a movie. Some Leyrian sci-fi flick about time travel. Jack always found it interesting how Leyrian fiction – especially anything that might be considered sci-fi or fantasy – often found ways to work the Overseers into the plot. And more often than not, they got the details wrong. But the movie wasn't the highlight of his evening. It was feeling Anna doze off in his arms that made his night complete.

The arch-shaped window in the library should have been admitting warm sunlight into the room, but water flowed over the glass in sheets so that all you could see through it was a vague gray haze.

It was so odd to see a library without books. There were no stacks, no shelves. No physical books of any kind. Leyrians kept all of their books electronically, accessing them through tablets or customized e-readers. There were repositories where hard copies were stored, but they were designed mainly as a way of safeguarding knowledge in the event of some planet-wide catastrophe.

Instead, this library was filled with small tables, spaced out to give students plenty of room for quiet study. Harry found his daughter at one near the window with a tablet propped up and connected to a keyboard made of nanobots. Clearly, she was using it as a laptop. And she was stressed. He could see that.

Maybe the container of hot soup he had brought would help. He smiled inwardly. So, he had finally reached the point where his kid was up all night studying for exams. That was some kind of milestone, wasn't it?

Melissa looked up and blinked at him. “Dad, hey.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she stiffened. “Are you really here or is this some hallucination of my sleep-deprived brain?”

“I brought you some dinner.” Harry set the container of hoy chicken soup down next to her. “I think maybe you're working too hard.”

“End of term,” Melissa grumbled. “Can't be helped.”

He sat down across from her, resting his hands on the chair arms and watching her for a very long while. “You don't have to push yourself quite this hard,” he said. “You've already got a symbiont. They're going to make you a Justice Keeper no matter what.”

Melissa bent over with her elbows on the table, covering her face with both hands. Her groan made Harry flinch. “True,” she agreed. “But that's no excuse for slacking off.”

“I've taught you too well.”

“Yes, you have.”

Clamping his jaw shut, Harry nodded once in approval. “Well, then,” he said, rising from his seat. “I'll leave you to it. But don't work too hard. We don't need another Aiden situation on our hands.”

Melissa threw her head back, staring blankly upward with glazed eyes. “Oh, don't remind me.” So, she'd had no luck on that front. When Harry first met that boy, he had liked him. But now he was beginning to wish that his daughter would just cut ties. There were days when he wanted to ask what exactly was going on between her and Aiden, but pushing a teenager – even one who was technically an adult – could result in them shutting you out.

He turned to go, slipping away with his head down and his coat pulled tight against his body. “Dad,” Melissa called out behind him.

When he looked back, she was sitting up straight with a bright smile. You would never have known that she had been strung out just a few minutes earlier. “Thanks,” she murmured.

Harry nodded.

He moved quietly through the library to a set of double doors that led to the lobby. Once through them, Harry found himself face to face with the hologram of an old woman who wore her white hair pulled back in a clip. “Thank you for visiting the library,” she said. “Did you find everything you needed?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She vanished when he answered, allowing Harry to carry on to the front entrance where raindrops pelted the window pane. The heavy glass doors required some effort to push open, but he grunted and shoved, and then he was out in the drizzle.

The university was a small collection of white and gray brick buildings with a line of windows on every floor. Skywalks on the second level connected each one to its neighbours so that students could easily traverse the campus in the event of inclement weather. That being the case, there were few people out on the street.

Harry followed a concrete path around the library to a road lined with skeletal trees that dripped water from every branch. The small, igloo-shaped houses on either side of the street were naked without foliage to conceal them. He saw lights in several windows.