Free Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

no clue what had happened between them, and she didn't feel like enlightening him.
    “Twenty years is a long time, Quint,” she said. “I have no idea what you've done during that time. I didn't even know you would be here.”
    “Really?” he asked. “You didn't check the station manifest before you arrived?”
    “Should I have done that?” she asked. “What would it have gained me, besides learning that you were here?”
    He didn't respond for the longest time. Instead, he watched her. She wasn't sure what he was studying her for. Was he comparing the old her to the new her? Or was he trying to unnerve her?
    Or both?
    Then she realized he had unnerved her. She had been thinking about the past, and not the present.
    “What are you doing in my office anyway?” she asked. “There are a lot of people on this station. How did you even know I was here?”
    “I always check in the new arrivals,” he said.
    “What kind of job is that, checking in new arrivals?” she asked.
    “Security,” he said.
    He had been a promising scientist when she met him. But he had gone farther and farther away from science when they were together. She hadn't expected him to abandon it altogether.
    “I was surprised to see your name on the arrivals list,” he said.
    “I'll bet,” she said. “You didn't check me in.”
    “That's what I'm doing now,” he said. “You need a tour of the facility? An introduction to the other staff?”
    “That was already taken care of,” she said.
    “Because you're a VIP,” he said, and she couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
    “They seem to think I'm the godmother of stealth tech,” she said, trying to make a joke. Instead her eyes filled with tears. She didn't want him to see that, so she turned away.
    “Yeah,” he said, “we never really know who we're going to become, do we?”
    “Or who others think we should be,” she said. “Whether we want to be that person or not.”

“W here are we going, Rosealma?” Quint asked. He rubbed on his face, trying to remove the caked blood.
    She sighed, stood up, and got out her medical kit. Time to see how injured he really was.
    “I don't know where we're going,” she said as she tugged the small kit out of the storage area near the door. She set the kit on her chair.
    “You changed course a while ago,” he said.
    She opened the kit, slipped on some gloves, and removed some cleansing strips. “Yeah, I did.”
    The less she lied to him, the better.
    “From where to where?” he asked.
    She cupped the cleansing strips in her right hand and walked over to him. “I have no fucking idea. Now hold still.”
    “What about the rendezvous point?” he asked as she grabbed his chin with her left hand, and it took all of her control not to start in surprise.
    How did he know about her rendezvous with the others? And then she realized that he didn't. The scientists and researchers were supposed to gather at some point if there was any threat to the station.
    She tightened her hold on his chin. Her fingers were probably causing bruises, and she didn't care. She wrapped the cleansing strip around her index and middle finger and began to wipe off the blood. “Scrape it off” was a better way to put it.
    “I'm not going back to join anyone from the station,” she said. “I was stupid to go back in the first place. It's as if every time someone messes with stealth tech the accidents get worse. I can't keep involving myself in that.”
    “Yet you can't stay away, can you?” he asked, the words somewhat mangled from the force of her fingers on his cheeks.
    She didn't answer him. As the blood came off, she found a series of small cuts, some of which still had debris embedded in them.
    “What happened to you?” she asked him. “I thought there weren't any explosions on the station until that big one.”
    “Cloris Kashion saw something embedded on one of the stealth-tech tubes,” he said. “She decided to remove it.”
    Squishy's heart