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“Well, I don’t need it.”
Any living body would have done. A captive traitor or a brain-dead casualty were the usual candidates. But this was the body that Sebastian had inhabited for the past few years, always leaving it in Maxwell’s care at headquarters when he went out on a job and returning to it afterward, and he was undeniably attached. “You didn’t need to bring it. You could have used the space for more bandages or antiseptic or something.”
Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “We have plenty of bandages and antiseptic.”
Sebastian still regarded his body with a little frown. “It’s odd that Hess would insist on bringing it.”
“Is it? He was right that you’d want it, at least.”
“But why would he care?” That was what was bothering Sebastian. “Why would he care about my bodily comfort? He doesn’t. Which means he’s just insisted on bringing the body to make himself more comfortable. So he doesn’t have to remember what I am or what I do.”
“Sebastian—”
“My being a torvar is all well and good when he needs me to go blow something up, but god forbid he actually acknowledges me or what I am outside of that.” Sebastian threw his hands in the air.
“Sebastian, do you want to get in the body or not?” Maxwell’s voice sharpened just enough to get through to him.
Sebastian sighed. “Yes, I do.”
“Good. In you go.”
Sebastian would typically never let anyone see him do this. It was awkward even in front of Maxwell, who, though he was a torvar, had undergone gestation along with the fetus he’d inhabited and been born in his body. He’d never once left it.
Maxwell averted his eyes, and Sebastian took the opening gracefully. He grabbed the wrist of his usual body with Tesh’s hand and then unhooked himself from the remnants of Tesh’s brain stem. He raced down Tesh’s arm under the thick klah’eel skin and then tore out the back of his hand.
Everything was dark and hazy in his simple eyes—just large, blurry shapes—but Sebastian felt his way up his body’s arm, climbing rapidly to that soft hollow just under the skull that called to his instincts. He re-opened the scar tissue there with a quick claw slice and clambered inside.
He found his usual anchors, and in just barely a moment, he opened his eyes, and Tesh’s body hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Maxwell glanced back at him and clearly avoided looking at the klah’eel body on the ground. “How are you feeling?”
Sebastian sat up and rolled his joints. “Hungry.”
“Right.” Maxwell stooped to dig around in a cupboard and then stood with a couple of ration bars. “These should tide you over until dinner.”
Sebastian took one gratefully and started chowing down as Maxwell perched on a seat that must have once gone with this table-turned-gurney. Sebastian didn’t need to be watched over after climbing into a new body. He often switched bodies three times in as many hours, sometimes in as many minutes, when on a job. But a body that had been lying bedridden for days was harder to readjust to, and besides, he’d gotten used to these quiet debriefs with Maxwell, so he didn’t say anything.
Maxwell started his updates after Sebastian set aside the empty wrapper of his first ration bar. “So Colin and Garrett have been at it again.”
“Shocker.” Sebastian opened his second bar. “What about this time?”
“Something about the pool table and the dartboard.” Maxwell shrugged. “I can never keep it straight.”
“Oh, see, now that’s actually important.” Sebastian dropped his ration bar to his lap, fixing Maxwell with a serious stare. “The dartboard requires a lot of space. You need a clear line of sight to the board so you don’t take anyone out, and you also need to be far enough from the board for the game to be properly difficult. Garrett keeps trying to take necessary dartboard space for his stupid pool table because he can’t fathom the idea that just because the dartboard is not physically occupying the space doesn’t mean the dartboard doesn’t need it.”
Maxwell just smiled softly and nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
Sebastian shrugged and picked up his bar again. “Garrett is just an idiot.”
The degree to which the dartboard and the pool table were, in fact, not important could not be overstated. Sebastian didn’t doubt the soldiers had already found a room to turn into a cantina, but he did doubt anyone had bothered to bring the pool table as part of their original assault.
But it felt good to pretend. It was freeing for them to sometimes care about things that didn’t matter rather than be crushed by the reality of the things that did.
Sebastian sighed and ran his hand through his hair, which desperately needed a wash, as he thought back to the things on that data strip. “The Turners have made something awful.”
“Turners as in the Turner Corporation Turners?” Maxwell tilted his head. “I thought you were stopping them. Wasn’t that the whole goal of your job?”
“It wasn’t the whole goal. And I was stopping them from buying out our continent. I wasn’t stopping them from”—Sebastian grimaced and waved a hand about—“everything else they were doing.”
