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1. Denial
Doctor Alana Maxwell is looking down at her sleeves. They don't look quite right. She picks at them, tries to get them even, smooth the fabric out, somehow. It doesn't work.
She can't stand their color. But that seems to be the least of her worries at the moment.
'Would you stop that?', Jacobi mutters next to her. 'You're making me nervous.'
'You are nervous,' Maxwell corrects him. 'Well. You should be nervous, in any case. Do you think it's bad that no one has talked to us yet?'
Jacobi shrugs. 'Beats me,' he says. 'I'm mostly just relieved. Avoiding eye contact does wonders sometimes.'
'Oh my god,' Maxwell almost laughs. 'You're such a whimp.'
'Shut up.' Jacobi shoves his elbow into her stomach. She responds by stepping on his foot.
'You look ridiculous, by the way.'
Jacobi runs a hand over his dress shirt and then through his hair. Maxwell is right; he really is nervous.
'Could be worse,' he says. 'Best I could do in two hours. Besides,' he gives Maxwell a look and grins. 'You should see yourself.'
'I know.' Maxwell pulls a face. She looks down on herself. 'I hate this dress so much. I can't believe I didn't throw it out years ago.'
She knows exactly why she didn't, of course. It makes her itch all over her body, and yet.
'Well,' Jacobi offers. 'When this thing is over, we're gonna blow it up together. How's that sound?'
Maxwell snorts. 'Promise?'
'You know me.' Jacobi actually offers her his hand, pinky finger reaching out. 'I'm a man of my word.'
'You better be.' Maxwell extends her own pinky finger, and they shake on it.
'You know,' she says then, 'if he made this whole fuss about the holiday party only to end up not showing up himself-'
'That would be something he would do, wouldn't it?' Jacobi sounds way too amused for what he just said, and he notices just a second later as well. 'Oh god,' he says. 'That would be something- you don't think he-?'
'If he is, I will kill him,' Maxwell says darkly. Jacobi snorts.
'Well,' he says, sticking his hands into his pockets with very little grace. 'Now it's a Goddard party for sure.'
The smile on his face dies very quickly when he spots movement at the other side of the room. 'Oh fuck,' he says. 'Maxwell, avoid eye contact.'
'What's wrong?' Maxwell scans the crowd of guests for what has Jacobi so freaked out. When she sees it, her eyes widen.
'No,' she says. 'No, no, no, she's not coming here, that's not happening.'
It is, unfortunately, definitely happening.
Rachel Young looks amazing, of course. She probably had a lot more than two hours time to get ready for tonight, and it shows. Her dark green dress fits perfectly, and her smile is all business and knives.
'Mister Jacobi,' she greets them warmly when she's made her way over to them, 'Doctor Maxwell. You're enjoying the party, I hope?'
Like acrylic nails on a chalkboard, Maxwell thinks, and she gives Young a smile.
She’s really not good at the Rachel Young brand of smiles, though, so it probably looks much more like a pained grimace. (She’s tried to improve on them a few times, studying the major’s face when he looks at Young. It didn’t exactly work.)
Going off of Young’s expression, she notices as well.
‘Uh,’ Maxwell says when she remembers that Young asked them a question. ‘Great. I mean- yeah. It’s, uh, it’s great.’ She turns to Jacobi next to her. ‘Don’t you think so, Jacobi?’
She can’t exactly give Daniel a kick to the shin without Young noticing. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t try.
Jacobi makes a choked noise, then he nods. ‘Yep!’, he says, a little (a lot) too loudly. He looks down at his sleeves, fumbling with one of the buttons very intently. ‘Awesome,’ he says. He gives Maxwell a pleading look.
She looks back at him with a face that she hopes says, What am I supposed to do?
‘Couldn’t be better,’ she says instead. This is where she decides that yes, she is going to murder Major Kepler the first chance she gets.
Though, wait. Young would love that, wouldn’t she.
‘That’s… that’s very nice,’ Young says softly. This is where Maxwell decides that she’s going to murder Young the first chance she gets.
(Well, Jacobi says in her head, now it’s a Godddard party for sure. )
‘I have to say,’ she keeps going mercilessly, ‘you two really look lost without Warren. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?’
For some reason, this makes Maxwell’s face darken. Instead of doing what is probably the smart thing with Rachel Young (which is avoiding confrontation), Maxwell takes a tiny step forward. Jacobi gives her a look, but he stays quiet.
‘What,’ Maxwell says, ‘you don’t know where he is? Now that I did not expect, Miss Young.’
Young blinks. Jacobi takes a deep breath and avoids looking at either of them.
Maxwell wonders if this is when Young kills her (because her teeth look very sharp and Maxwell always assumed that it was tradition at Goddard company parties to have at least one dead person by the end), but she doesn’t back down.
Young is just about to open her mouth when a voice rings out from the side that somehow manages to make all three of them tense at the same time (even though it barely shows on Young’s face).
The voice says, in a very slow and infuriatingly condescending tone, ‘Miss Young. So glad you could make it.’
A beat passes, so short that Maxwell barely notices it, and then Young smiles in the most pleasant way possible. Out of the corner of her eye, Maxwell sees Jacobi move closer to her, just a little, until he’s barely (but still definitely) behind her.
Everyone turns to the major, because of course it’s him.
(Jacobi always says that he has a magic talent for dramatic timing. Maxwell hates that she’s slowly starting to believe it.)
‘Warren!’, Young chirps. ‘So nice to see you here after all. I wasn’t sure if you were invited. It would have been such a shame to not have you here!’
Kepler smiles, which just means he’s showing Young all of his teeth. ‘Well,’ he drawls, ‘I wouldn’t want to miss this for the world. It’s so nice seeing you at these parties. Always a sight to see you put some effort into your appearance every once in a while.’
Jacobi makes a noise he somehow manages to conceal as a cough. Young doesn’t even blink at Kepler’s statement. If anything, her smile only grows bigger.
(This is a bad sign, especially when it comes from someone that works so closely with Cutter.)
(Maxwell suddenly wonders if Young came to this party equipped with some knives, if Kepler has a gun hidden in his jacket, and if Maxwell maybe should have brought one as well.)
‘Thank you, Warren,’ Young says, her voice dripping with poison. ‘You look so good, too. I didn’t know you had anything to wear that wasn’t your uniform! The suit looks really good on you, I have to say. You almost look like a real human being!’
‘I need to get out of here,’ Jacobi whispers into Maxwell’s ear, ‘or I’m going to fucking die.’
‘Don’t you dare leave me alone with them,’ Maxwell hisses back.
Kepler shoots the two of them a look. It looks like his ‘Shut up’ face, so Maxwell and Jacobi do so.
‘I’m glad I managed to catch you yet,’ Kepler goes on, smooth as ever. (Maxwell wonders where the two of them take their energy from, then decides she doesn’t want to know.) ‘I was worried you were going to have to leave early to take care of all your… very … important paperwork.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t miss the secret santa exchange!’, Young says, equally as tireless. ‘You know, I put a dog collar in one of those gifts. I really hope you get it, I think it would fit you perfectly.’
She gives Kepler a wink, adjusts her dress, even though it looks as impeccable as ever, and then she walks away.
The three of them just watch her leave for a moment. Kepler’s face is impossible to read.
‘Well, sir,’ Maxwell says, because he’s late and he made them come here and he probably deserves this in some way, ‘I think it’s fair to say she won this round.’
This kicks Kepler into motion, and he turns to the two of them and gives them a long look.
‘You’re late,’ Jacobi complains. ‘Why the hell are you late?’
Kepler ignores him. ‘Doctor Maxwell,’ he says, any of the sweet passive aggression drained from his voice (and Maxwell’s shoulders don’t relax at this, because that would be stupid), ‘you look acceptable. I’m almost impressed.’ He turns to Daniel next. He smiles his trouble-smile. Maxwell rolls her eyes. ‘Mister Jacobi,’ he continues. ‘What are you wearing?’
Jacobi crosses his arms in front of his chest. ‘I look great,’ he says simply. ‘These are my lucky suspenders.’
‘Why do you have lucky suspenders?’
‘Why were you late, major?’
‘You are both,’ Kepler says, ‘insufferable.’ He shuts up after that, has a look over the rest of the party, then looks back at them. ‘You were here on time?’
‘Yeah, we were here on time!’, Jacobi complains. ‘Everyone else can be fashionably late, sure, but we have to hang out here for forty-five minutes with no one around but David fucking Clarke-’
A raised eyebrow is enough to silence Jacobi. Maxwell is almost about to continue his complaining with her own opinions of this party when Kepler starts speaking again.
‘I have to say, Mister Jacobi,’ he says, ‘I'm surprised by your attitude. I thought you of all people would appreciate the things this party has to offer.’
Maxwell’s face falls. ‘Major,’ she says, ‘don’t.’
Jacobi looks at him with a blank expression. ‘What are you talking about?’, he asks.
‘No,’ Maxwell pleads, ‘don’t tell him.’
Kepler smiles at Maxwell and yes, she really should have brought a gun, she should have brought a gun so she could shoot him right between the eyes right now so he’d just shut up and never, ever-
‘Well, you see, Mister Cutter spared no expenses,’ Kepler rattles on, ‘I think he spent at least three thousand dollars on the buffet. Most of it went into the cheese platter, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘I’m going,’ Maxwell breathes two minutes later, ‘to kill you.’
Kepler just smiles.
They’re both standing a few feet away from where Jacobi is currently ascending into cheese heaven.
‘Don’t you think he deserves to have some fun as well, tonight?’
‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ Maxwell says. ‘What about me, then? Do I deserve to have fun, because right now I’m feeling pretty homicidal.’
Kepler doesn’t look bothered by this at all. ‘Relax, doctor,’ he says. ‘We might just manage to have a good time here after all.’
Off her look, he says, without looking at her, ‘I have my car parked outside. Two hours. Then, if you insist, we can leave.’
That surprises Maxwell. ‘Didn’t know you were in such a festive mood.’
Kepler says nothing. This is where Jacobi returns to them.
Kepler excuses himself and walks over to a different group of people, no doubt to terrorise them (which, Jacobi comments cheerfully, just seems to be the Goddard holiday spirit).
Jacobi’s shoulders relax a little when Maxwell mutters a low, ‘Two hours,’ to him. He puts his hands into his pockets and scans the room.
‘Jacobi,’ Maxwell says softly. He looks at her with one raised eyebrow. ‘I truly hate this.’
He grins. ‘You and me both, Maxwell.’ He bumps his shoulder into hers. ‘It really sucks.’
‘Very awful.’
‘Honestly.’
‘Might be the worst thing that ever happened to me.’
‘Yeah.’
They’re only lying a little bit, Maxwell tells herself.
Kepler has clothes for Maxwell to change into in the trunk of his car. Jacobi doesn’t change out of his suspenders all night.
2. Bargaining
Maxwell’s lab doesn’t have any windows. That’s mostly because it’s one of the many underground labs that Goddard Futuristics has to offer. The kind of work people like Maxwell do down here is not meant to be seen by the public eye (which includes at least fifteen percent of the people currently employed at Goddard, naturally). So when she works, she’s hidden down here, and that’s a good thing. There’s no steps outside in the hallways or people around to distract her. It’s quiet, most of the time, and it’s easy to focus properly down here.
(Maxwell always had trouble concentrating at the Nash. But that doesn’t matter anymore, and she rarely thinks about it, either. She’s here now.)
This also means that she has no way to tell how time passes.
For the most part, that’s also a good thing. Things like days of the week or times of day only tend to distract Maxwell, and when she’s really working, she can’t afford distractions.
(Especially when she’s working on something like this, and when she’s already put this much time and effort and resources into it and she can’t afford to fail at this point because she can already feel the major’s eyes digging into her back like he’s waiting for her to give up so he can give her his very long look before opening his mouth and-)
No. She can’t afford distractions.
So she locks herself into her lab (which is a figurative expression, because no matter how many freedoms Goddard grants her, she can’t do that ), and she focuses, and she doesn’t notice time passing at all, and the days blur into each other, except-
Well. Except when they don’t.
Because no matter how much she complains, or how many pens she throws at them or how unresponsive she gets, they still keep coming back.
Jacobi is always first. He opens the door very carefully, like he plans to sneak up on her. Maxwell knows that the real reason he does it is most likely that he doesn’t want to break her focus. That doesn’t make her any more amicable, because no matter how careful or quiet he’s about it, he’s still interrupting her.
He doesn’t speak much. Maxwell does appreciate that. The first few times, he always had something to say. Something to complain about. Sometimes he just told her about the weather, like he was worried she’d forget there was an outside.
Maxwell ignored him for the most part, and eventually Jacobi fell silent.
Now he just walks into the lab and sits down next to her.
Jacobi hates being quiet. Maxwell knows that, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense just how long he stays.
She never asks him about it. She doesn’t ask him anything.
‘When was the last time you slept?’, he asks sometimes. Maxwell tends to ignore that question when it comes up.
Sometimes he brings things along. First time it's a book that he reads when sitting on the edge of her desk for at least a full hour before he gets up and leaves, a hand squeezing her shoulder for a short moment. He looks very tired for the one moment Maxwell looks at him.
The next time, it’s a cup of coffee. He puts it down next to Maxwell’s keyboard without saying anything. Maxwell doesn’t look at it for most of the time. She doesn’t even notice that the cup is empty two hours later, and Maxwell’s eyelids are a tiny bit less heavy.
She thinks to herself that she probably should thank Jacobi for that, but she keeps forgetting every time he comes back.
He keeps bringing her things, though. Sometimes it’s coffee. Sometimes it’s food. Sometimes it’s water. One time it’s an actual change of clothes. Maxwell never notices it’s there just when he brings it, but eventually always does.
‘Going alright?’, he asks one time. It takes Maxwell a minute to register the question, and another minute to answer it.
‘Yeah,’ she breathes. ‘Yeah, no, it’s going.’
‘That looks like a real tough piece of work,’ Jacobi says softly. Maxwell sighs.
‘It is,’ she says. ‘But I can save it.’
‘Of course you can,’ Jacobi says, and leaves it at that.
And Maxwell really can save it. She can make this work. It doesn’t matter that it’s been a long time or that the code keeps slipping away from her. She has to make this work.
Because she’s with Goddard Futuristics. And Goddard doesn’t waste resources.
She’s well aware of that. Because every time after Jacobi leaves, an hour or maybe two having passed, he comes walking into her lab.
Jacobi always opens the door like he’s worried it’s going to explode. Kepler, on the other hand, is never very gentle with it. He opens it almost cheerfully, like he wants to make as much noise as possible, just to make sure Maxwell notices he’s there.
(Maxwell notices, and would notice just as well if he didn’t do that.)
He also doesn’t stay quiet like Daniel does. No, he always has something to say.
‘Morning, Doctor Maxwell!’, he says cheerfully, or maybe ‘Good afternoon!’, depending on when exactly he walks in. Maxwell never answers, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. He always manages to talk enough for two people, anyway.
He sits down on her desk, always too close to her keyboard. Maxwell always pulls her shoulders up and squints at the computer very pointedly. It never works.
Kepler tells her things, because that’s what he does. Maxwell barely listens. She gets the message just fine, anyway. She knows what he’s trying to tell her.
He gives her updates on what’s going on upstairs, like Maxwell cares what kinds of deployments are being made while she’s down here working.
She knows what Kepler is trying to tell her. Kepler is telling her about results.
Maxwell knows that results matter in her line of work. She knows that they matter more than passion or interest. She knows. She doesn’t need the major to tell her about it.
Much worse than the times he comes down here to talk to her, though, are those times he doesn’t.
Because sometimes he’ll just sit there, and he’ll just watch. Maxwell can barely focus those times, but she forces herself to stay on task, because she has a job to do and it doesn’t matter how much time she’s spending on this, because it’s going to work and at the end she will have a result and this won’t crash again, and Kepler is going to stop looking at her like he’s assessing how much of her is still worth the trouble.
‘How’s it going, Doctor?’, he asks sometimes. Maxwell rolls her shoulders at it and doesn’t look at him.
‘Going just fine, major,’ she answers, every time. Kepler hums, and he puts one of his hands on the desk, right next to where Maxwell’s notes are lying, and Maxwell flinches.
‘That’s good,’ he says, every time. ‘That’s very good. Wouldn’t want you to waste your time.’
Maxwell knows Kepler. She knows how exactly he makes threats. She recognises them, when she hears them.
She blinks away the sight of him from the corners of her eyes and keeps working.
She can do this. She can do this.
‘I can do this,’ she mutters to herself the times she’s alone. ‘I can do this.’
She can’t do this. The code is too corrupted. She doesn’t get the system to reboot.
Next time Jacobi walks into her lab, she’s given up. She’s shut down the computer and is now sitting there, her head in her hands, and trying very hard to stay awake for no good reason at all.
‘Woah,’ Jacobi says, and walks over to her, ‘hey, Maxwell, you good?’
‘Yeah,’ Maxwell breathes, knowing just as well as Jacobi that she’s a shitty liar. ‘Yeah, sure. I’m great. Just- taking a break.’
‘Sure.’ Jacobi drags out the word and somehow manages to not sound like Kepler at all. He gets himself a chair and sits down next to her.
‘Alright,’ he says, with his business-voice. ‘When was the last time you ate?’
Maxwell looks up at him. ‘Do I look,’ she says, ‘like I have an idea what time it is, or how much time has passed since the last time we’ve seen each other?’
‘Oh boy,’ Jacobi says. ‘Kepler was right then. It didn’t work, huh?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t be talking to me if you weren’t still thinking about how to crack this, so I guess you…’ He falls silent.
Maxwell groans and lets her head hit the desk.
‘Shit, Maxwell, come on,’ Jacobi says, putting a hand on her back. ‘You’re good, it’s fine, you did what you could.’
‘I fucked it up,’ Maxwell says. She only rarely gives herself moments of weakness like this. Then again, she doesn’t usually waste a week’s worth of work days on something that ends up not working.
‘Sure, you did, but that happens,’ Jacobi says. ‘You didn’t blow anyone up in the process at least, so yay you.’
Maxwell looks up at him. ‘Kepler is going to kill me,’ she says slowly.
Jacobi raises an eyebrow. ‘Kill you?’
‘He’s been eyeing me the whole time,’ she says. ‘Just waiting for blood in the water, and lo and behold, here it is!’ She sits up and leans back, dragging a hand across her face.
‘I bet he’s on his way right now.’
‘What, Kepler?’ Jacobi grins. ‘No way. He hasn’t slept for about as long as you have. You know as soon as he got word that you stopped working, he went to take a nap.’
Maxwell squints at him. ‘You haven’t actually ever seen him doing that, have you?’
‘I don’t have to answer that, legally.’
‘Alright, you haven’t.’
‘Oh, come on, Alana!’
‘Mister Jacobi,’ Maxwell says, in the best impression of their superior she can manage. She can see the corners of Jacobi’s mouth twitch. ‘I work for Goddard Futuristics. I am a ruthless killing machine and a calculating tactician. I drink whiskey for breakfast. I do not take naps.’
‘Is that supposed to be anyone in particular, doctor?’
Both Maxwell and Jacobi jump at the new voice in the room. They turn around to see Kepler standing above them, looking just a little more smug than usual. Maxwell’s shoulders sink.
‘So you can open the door without making a sound,’ she mutters to herself, suddenly very tired. ‘I knew you had it in you.’
‘Doctor Maxwell,’ Kepler says, in his friendly tone that usually makes Maxwell’s skin crawl. ‘You look very pale. Haven’t seen the sun a lot the past few days?’
‘No, Major Kepler,’ Maxwell answers, looking up at him, ‘as a matter of fact, I haven’t.’
Kepler hums. Jacobi gives the two of them a look, like he’s trying to have a silent conversation with them both at once.
(It doesn’t work out for him. Maxwell is simply too tired to pay attention to the look on his face, and Kepler ignores him. He’s only looking down at Maxwell.)
The look Kepler gives her makes her think of the aquarium she went to when she was sixteen, and of the great white shark that seemed to stare at her from the other side of the glass.
‘That doesn’t sound very acceptable to me,’ Kepler says then. ‘Does that sound acceptable to you, Mister Jacobi?’
This is where Jacobi smiles, like him and Kepler are sharing a secret Maxwell doesn’t understand. Maxwell blinks.
‘No, sir,’ Jacobi answers. ‘That doesn’t sound acceptable to me at all.’
‘Well, Maxwell,’ Kepler says. ‘You heard the man. Let’s go.’
‘Where are we going?’, Maxwell says, still not entirely sure what just happened, and why Kepler isn’t currently killing her for wasting so much time and resources.
‘I don’t care,’ Jacobi answers in Kepler’s place, ‘as long as we get something to eat on the way. I’m fucking starving.’
‘Your wish is my command, Mister Jacobi,’ Kepler says. He looks at Maxwell, and she wonders if she’s maybe in on some kind of secret as well.
The failed project doesn’t come up until Maxwell has eaten, seen some sun, and slept for fourteen hours straight.
3. Anger
'Jacobi,' Maxwell speaks into the earpiece. 'Jacobi, do you read me?'
There's no answer. All that she can hear is the gunfire outside the door and the sound of bodies dropping to the floor. Maxwell closes her eyes and only hopes that none of those bodies is Kepler's.
(She could probably shoot her way out of this building by herself easily. She really, really doesn't want to, though.)
'Jacobi,' she says again. She forces her voice to sound even and collected. There's a cracking sound outside the door and then a noise Maxwell didn't even know a pair of human lungs could make.
'Jacobi, can you hear me? Please respond.'
There's no answer from the other side. Jacobi's earpiece is intact, though, because she's hearing something. It's just not Jacobi's voice.
'Daniel, are you there?'
Before Maxwell can keep talking or at least think of something smart and collected to do, the door bursts open.
'Getting heated out there, doctor,' Kepler greets her, checking his gun. 'You have anything left for me?'
Maxwell digs the rest of their additional ammo out of her backpack and tosses them to Kepler without a word.
'What about you?'
'Still have some left,' she answers. Her hand is pressed to her earpiece.
'Any idea on how to get out of here, then?'
Calm. Kepler is too calm. He's smiling too widely. This isn't right.
That's why Maxwell is sure that Kepler already knows when she says, 'I can't get ahold of Jacobi. Not sure if there's something wrong with my earpiece.'
She is, actually, sure that there's nothing wrong. She looks up at Kepler.
'I don't think there is, doctor,' he says. 'I can't reach him either.'
They're both just standing there for a moment, listening to the alarms blare. Maxwell watches the pulsing red light from the ceiling reflect in Kepler's eyes.
Both of them freeze when they hear something on the other side.
It's a voice, but it's not Jacobi's.
'Is he dead?'
Maxwell's breathing stops. Then, a second voice.
'No, just out cold. Gave him a good hit.'
'You better not have concussed him. We need him coherent if we want to get anything out of him.'
'I know, I know. Help me stop the bleeding.'
Maxwell's vision blurs, just a little. She looks away from Kepler, doesn't want to see the calculating look on his face.
'And get this thing out of his ear,' the second voice orders. 'We can't afford to have anyone else listening.'
The next noise is a sickening crunch, and then there's just static coming from Jacobi's end.
'Jacobi,' Maxwell says into the microphone, her voice shaking, 'Jacobi, do you copy?'
'Doctor, you heard them,' Kepler says. He's very calm still.
(He's always calm, no matter what goes wrong, no matter who gets hurt and no matter how narrowly they manage to escape. Maxwell remembers the time a bullet got lodged in his leg and he simply lay sprawled over the backseat, bleeding all over his very expensive suit, going paler by the minute, telling story after story with the most casual smile. The memory makes her stomach turn.)
Maxwell still doesn't look at him. She unholsters one of her guns, checking for bullets. Her hands are shaking all over. 'We need to go get him,' she says. She's trying to sound calm, but not as much as she's trying to sound sure, like she's not about to let Kepler disagree with her.
Kepler pulls the earpiece from his head. 'Doctor,' he says again. He still sounds calm. Maxwell wants to scream into his face.
Instead, she shakes her head. 'No,' she says, 'no, don't. We're not leaving him behind, we're going to find him and get him out of there. I don't care what you say, I'm not letting you leave him here, this is not happening, I'm not going to let you-'
'Doctor Maxwell,' Kepler interrupts her, his voice sharp. He grabs her hands, which are still shaking around the gun. His hands are warm.
(They always are. Jacobi's hands are always cold, but why is she thinking about that now? She doesn't have time for this.)
'Look at me,' Kepler commands, and Maxwell does. It's much more of a reflex than anything else, really, but looking at him somehow helps.
He looks so fucking calm. It's infuriating.
'You need,' Kepler drawls deliberately, 'to listen to me now. Can you do that?'
Maxwell takes a breath, ready to argue more, tell him that it doesn't matter what he has to say, that Jacobi is in danger and that they don't have the time for his stupid power play, but she finds that no sound is coming out of her mouth anymore. So she nods.
'Can you say it for me?', Kepler asks, and Maxwell hates it. But not as much as the fact that it's working. That she finds her hands still, and that she can almost stand on her feet without worrying about stumbling. She swallows.
'I can do it, sir,' Maxwell says. 'What's your plan?'
She's giving him one chance. No matter what the major is going to say, Maxwell knows exactly what to do.
'We're going to finish this mission,' Kepler says slowly, 'and then we're going to get out of here.'
'Jacobi,' Maxwell says immediately, her composure slipping. 'They've got him, he's hurt, they're going to hurt him-'
'We,' Kepler says, 'are not. Going. To let that happen, doctor Maxwell. Do you understand?'
Maxwell's eyes darken. But she stops shaking. 'Yes, sir,' she answers.
Kepler lets go of her hands. 'Good,' he says. 'Now. What are our options?'
Maxwell takes a deep breath. She pulls her pad from her jacket and does what she does best.
'This is the building layout,' she tells Kepler, like he doesn't know that. Kepler nods anyway.
'Where would they be bringing him?', he asks. And Maxwell prepared for this mission for a very long time, so she has an answer for him very quickly.
Kepler nods, and listens to Maxwell's answers without saying a single word.
Until, 'How fast can you disable their security?'
‘I can turn off the cameras, but they’re going to get them back soon enough,’ she answers. That was, after all, what got them into this mess in the first place. That’s the reason she’s here alone with him now, the alarms are blaring, and Jacobi is somewhere on the other side of the building, and she can’t reach him, and-
‘How soon?’
‘Minutes.’
‘Alright, that’s going to have to be enough. You still remember your shooting lessons, doctor?’
‘Very funny,’ Maxwell answers. Both of them know that Maxwell is better with a firearm than anyone on their team, including Major Kepler. She can hold her own in a fight more than well enough.
‘Good,’ Kepler says. ‘You know that we’re outnumbered. It’s too late to ask for backup now. It’s you and me, Maxwell. Every shot needs to hit. We can’t afford any more mistakes.’
She isn’t sure if it’s supposed to, but that still stings. Maxwell blinks it away and nods. ‘Ready if you are, sir.’
‘You sure?’
She looks up at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘Sir?’
Kepler is looking at her with the eyes of someone assessing their next kill. Maxwell knows that’s not what he’s doing, but that’s exactly what he looks like. It usually is, but he normally doesn’t look at Maxwell this way.
‘You sure you’re ready?’, Kepler asks. ‘This is going to take a lot of focus. We’ve got a lot riding on this working. Can you do this?’
Maxwell scowls. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she hisses, ‘sir.’
Kepler smiles like a knife to the throat. ‘Excellent,’ he says slowly, drawing out every single syllable until Maxwell wants to rip his tongue out of his mouth. ‘In that case, let’s go, shall we?’
And they do.
Maxwell has done plenty of fieldwork since Kepler recruited her. She doesn’t exactly prefer it to being his and Jacobi’s eye in the sky, watching them move through buildings with an impressive precision like two bodies sharing the same brain (which, in this case, is her). But she can work with it just fine. And right now, she’s especially motivated to get it done.
Maxwell lets the security cameras go dark and she and Kepler start moving. She directs them through corridors and Kepler kicks doors open and every single person that walks into them gets a bullet between the eyes.
(Most of them are Maxwell’s. She has to resist the urge to wait until she hears them speak, just to see which of them are the two she’s heard with Jacobi. Kepler, those times it’s his turn, doesn’t resist at all.)
‘How much longer?’, Kepler asks, his foot on one of the guards. He didn’t manage to get a clean shot, and the person is breathing heavily underneath him. His face is blank as he waits for Maxwell’s answer.
‘Two corridors down,’ Maxwell says. Her eyes are fixed to the blood that’s starting to pool around the guard on the floor. The smell fills the entire room. Kepler smiles.
He pulls out one of his knives and slits the guard’s throat in one quick and fluid movement. Maxwell doesn’t look away.
‘In that case,’ Kepler says, wiping the knife clean on his shirt (and is Maxwell going insane with adrenaline, or are Kepler’s fingers trembling, just a little bit, just enough for her to notice?), ‘lead the way, doctor.’
Maxwell does, and then they’re in front of the heavily armored door and they’re not even out of breath.
(Jacobi is going to ask her later, how many people the two of them killed. Maxwell isn’t going to remember. It’s the first time she really loses count of it, but it’s not going to be the last time.)
‘Do you want to do the honors, Alana?’
Maxwell doesn’t even notice he’s calling her by her first name. There’s too much adrenaline running through her for her to notice anything apart from the fact that she’s dangerous. That nothing is going to stop her from snapping as soon as people threaten her-
Her teammate. Her friend.
Maxwell smiles. This is the first time, she thinks to herself, she smiles on a mission like this. It’s very strange.
It’s not going to be the last time.
‘It’d be an honor, sir,’ Maxwell says. It takes her seconds to hack the door open. It’s a simple lock, no one expected them to even make it this far.
(But they did. She did.)
The door swings open and reveals a dark and empty room that has one single chair in it.
Daniel Jacobi is tied to it, his head hanging low. When he hears the door open, he looks up and gives the two of them a bloodied, steady smile.
‘You two really took your time, huh?’
His voice is raspy. There’s blood dripping from the corners of his mouth.
For this moment, Maxwell feels like she can do absolutely anything, no matter how insane or awful or cruel. She and Kepler step into the room in sync, and Maxwell’s entire body is buzzing with something.
(‘Do you think we’re monsters?’, she asks Jacobi a couple days later, once she’s driven him home from the hospital. She’s coming down from whatever kind of high the last mission put her on, and is suddenly remembering her father and his eyes and how they were always stern and disapproving, and the question just slips out.
‘Yeah,’ Jacobi answers. He’s lying flat on his couch, staring at the ceiling. He looks relaxed, and content, and he says, ‘yeah. For sure. Otherwise, we’d long be dead.’
Maxwell decides that yes, that’s right.
She also finds that she doesn’t mind at all.)
Kepler cuts through Jacobi’s ties with the same knife he just killed the guard with. He takes Jacobi’s wrists and brushes his fingers over where the ropes bound too tightly irritated his skin.
‘Come on, Mister Jacobi,’ he says. ‘Time to go home.’
Limping and covered in blood, but not trembling, the three of them walk out of the building. They keep Jacobi in the middle, because they’re sure some of his ribs are at least severely bruised, but he walks on just as steady feet as Maxwell and Kepler do.
4. Depression
Maxwell had loved seeing Earth all the way from above. She'd been glued to the window for hours, even until after the planet was long out of sight. She kept thinking about it for days. The way it had gotten smaller and smaller in the window, even though just a month ago it had been everything there was.
But Earth wasn't the only place anymore, and Maxwell was going to see all the others now.
She'd been giddy about the prospect of going to space ever since she first heard about Kepler's trip to the Hephaestus.
(Jacobi had looked very serious about it. Everyone at Goddard knows the name Hephaestus, but there's very few people in the company that have actually come back from it.
Kepler, on the other hand, had prided himself on being one of the few to have done so in one piece.
'Twice soon,' he told Maxwell the night before their launch, looking perfectly relaxed and also ready for absolutely anything. Maxwell had smiled at him, and he had smiled back.)
It was simply something that the small child she was what felt like a billion years ago, looking out of the window over nothing but grass and emptiness, never thought was possible.
Maxwell had done many things her younger self would have never thought possible. And now, to top it all off, she was going to go to space.
(Don't you think you're just a little too excited?', Jacobi had muttered that morning when they were putting on their suits. Maxwell had not thought that. She had not thought that at all.)
So yes, she was paying attention to the sights around her. The sounds. The word ‘world’ was starting to mean something completely different, and Maxwell was going to define it exactly the way she wanted to, and she was going to know as much about it as she could first.
The Urania is humming around them. It never really stops. Maxwell is used to rooms that hum, that whisper to her, almost. She’s been itching for a chance to pick the ship apart, have a look at its insides and the way it works.
It’s a very complicated piece of tech, and very impressive. Maxwell is going to have her chance to work very closely with it soon.
It’s only so long before the three of them make it to the Hephaestus.
Except that’s not quite true, of course. It is a while. It’s a long way.
‘End of the known universe,’ Kepler was going to say later, but that was a long while away. Maxwell wasn’t even going to hear it, but she was going to feel the distance in her bones.
Space, it turns out, doesn’t like Maxwell as much as she likes it. Space, it turns out, does the best it can to eat away at Maxwell until she wonders what it’s going to feel like when her feet touch solid ground again, and if it makes any sense to feel this heavy while being completely weightless.
It's after the first few weeks when this little change occurs.
Kepler ends up thriving in space. It’s almost frustrating to watch him, nearly buzzing with excitement the closer they’re making it to the station. He tells his stories like nothing’s wrong, keeps putting his arms around Maxwell and Jacobi and Maxwell doesn’t understand it at all.
(He was the one that already was up there. He was the one that spent all of their last weeks on Earth drilling them on how important, how crucial, how dangerous this was going to be. And now here he was, and he even has the audacity to look… younger, somehow.)
Jacobi doesn’t thrive, not exactly. There’s always a sense of ease to him when Kepler is happy, so this is not exactly a problem for him. He rolls his eyes and he complains about being tired and he complains about the food and he complains about the lack of gravity and explosions.
But he doesn't- he doesn’t flinch every time the ship creaks. He doesn’t lie awake at night for hours staring out of the window watching stars and emptiness pass by. He doesn’t feel like he’s drowning, like the air on this stupid spaceship is wrong and awful in her lungs, and-
(Maxwell nearly drowned once, when she was fifteen. She doesn’t remember the feeling at all, the memories of that summer blurred like most of her teenage years. She can imagine, though, that it felt an awful lot like this.)
The people at Cape Canaveral had warned them that it might be… difficult, to adjust to life in space. The three of them hadn’t paid it much mind, because Kepler had been to space before, and Jacobi was going to make it through everything Kepler told him to make it through, and Maxwell-
Maxwell was stupid enough to believe that space would welcome her, in a way.
(She’d never really belonged on Earth. She felt… right, at Goddard, but that wasn’t the same.)
(It seems that space isn’t exactly different in that aspect.)
They’re about halfway through the journey at this point. It’s night, which also isn’t true. Jacobi has no trouble calling it day and night, but it still doesn’t make any sense to Maxwell. They’re not spinning around a gigantic ball of gas after all, and there’s no sun rising or falling in the window that could feel familiar to Alana.
(Nothing. Nothing makes sense anymore.)
She’s at the bridge, because it’s the loudest room on the ship. She keeps her hands on the panel, not pressing down on any of the buttons. She just sits there, and tries her hardest not to look out of the window.
There’s nothing outside anyway. Right now Maxwell just also feels like there’s not really anything in here, either.
She takes a breath. She takes another breath. There’s nothing else to do.
‘Shouldn’t you be asleep?’, a voice behind her says. Maxwell doesn’t turn around. She shrugs.
‘Oh,’ Jacobi says. Maxwell can hear him smile. ‘You’re mourning the internet, huh? How long has it been since your last reddit gold?’
‘I’m not on reddit, Jacobi,’ Maxwell says, and she’s not smiling, she really isn’t, ‘please don’t insult me. I have a Ph.D.’
Jacobi snickers. Maxwell can’t hear his steps when he’s coming closer, because he’s floating, because Maxwell doesn’t even really have that anymore.
‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘You look tired.’ He sits down in front of the console next to her. ‘Something wrong?’
‘No,’ Maxwell tells him. ‘No, everything is fine, Jacobi.’ She looks at him. He looks relaxed. It’s good for him, to be this far away from the rest of the world with no people around except those that are his.
And they’re Maxwell’s, too. They are. But it doesn’t change anything.
‘Not very convincing, Alana.’
Maxwell hums, and turns her attention back to the console. ‘Any idea what day it is?’, she asks.
‘We didn’t miss your birthday, did we?’
‘Shut up, Jacobi.’ She can’t ignore the smile this time. She runs a hand through her hair. It’s floating around the room like she’s underwater.
(Maxwell nearly drowned once, when she was fifteen.)
‘No, that’s not it,’ she keeps going anyway.
The bridge is the loudest room on the Urania. But Maxwell feels a need to fill the silence all the same.
‘It’s just-’
‘Weird to be this far away from a normal Earth calendar?’
Maxwell’s shoulders slump. ‘I guess.’
‘Yeah,’ Jacobi says, with an easy voice, like none of this means anything. ‘You get used to it.’
'How did you get used to it so quickly?'
Jacobi shrugs, and Maxwell wants to strangle him.
'Look, I know it sucks, and it does, it sucks, but it's gonna be okay. We'll be back home before you know it.'
He bumps his shoulder into hers. Maxwell takes a deep breath.
'Alright,' she says. 'Fine.'
She knows that he's right. She does.
'You should really sleep, though.'
Now it's Maxwell's turn to shrug. Jacobi grins.
'Wanna stay here?'
Maxwell nods.
'We could have a sleepover.'
'Are you 12 years old?', Maxwell asks, but she accompanies Jacobi to their quarters to get the sleeping bags and set them up at the bridge.
'This is stupid,' Maxwell comments, but she falls asleep about an hour later.
She's here again the next night. Jacobi doesn't come to sit with her again, but that doesn't mean that she's alone for long.
'Making sure the ship isn't sinking?', Kepler asks at the door. Maxwell doesn't flinch, even though she didn't hear him come at all. It seems the lack of steps is something she's getting used to.
'You could say that,' Maxwell confirms.
(She hasn't really been looking at the data the ship's been showing her. But then again, it also can't exactly sink, so that should be fine.)
'One member of the crew keeping watch at night,' he comments, coming closer. 'Just like in the old days.'
'Is this the story about how you and Hermann Melville built a perfectly functioning ship out of nothing but gum and paperclips?'
Kepler doesn't grace her with an answer, but when he sits down next to her, he's smiling.
Maxwell drums her finger on the console while she waits for Kepler to say what he's come here to say.
Minutes pass, and they keep passing, and he says nothing.
'Okay, what is it?', she asks eventually. She doesn't snap at him. But it's really not far off.
Kepler raises an eyebrow at her. 'Excuse me?'
'What do you want?
'What do I... want.'
Maxwell groans. 'Yes, sir,' she says. 'Did you come here because you- what? Thought it would be fun to stargaze with me?'
Kepler looks at her for a long time before answering. Maxwell is already imagining all kinds of things he could be about to tell her, threats or thinly veiled insults or maybe he really is going to tell her a Hermann Melville story, but well. He doesn't.
'You should sleep,' he just says. 'It's not far now. Me and Jacobi are going to need you alert.'
Maxwell closes her eyes and sighs. 'Yes, sir.'
'The bridge will be here in the morning.'
'Yes, sir.'
'So will everything else.'
'I think I get it, Colonel.'
'Good.'
They fall back into silence. Maxwell is realising that yes, she is tired. While she did fall asleep eventually with Jacobi last night, she didn't exactly sleep… well. Kepler doesn't need to know that, though.
'You know,' Kepler says then, keeping his voice slow. 'If you wanted to go stargazing, the windows at the armory are probably much better suited for that.'
'The armory doesn't have any ambience.'
'Didn't know you cared about things like that.'
'I really don't.'
Kepler chuckles. That's a sound Maxwell recognises, so she turns her head to the side to make sure the colonel can't see her rolling her eyes.
'Doctor,' he says, 'did I ever tell you about the time I got arrested when I was twelve years old?'
'No, sir,' Maxwell says, already barely present anymore, her speaking way too rehearsed to sound truly enthusiastic (which Kepler notices, and graciously ignores), 'I think I would have remembered that one.'
'Ah well, that was a very long time ago,' Kepler drawls ahead. 'But I remember it like it was yesterday.'
'Must have been yesterday when you came up with it,' Maxwell mutters, and she's sure Kepler hears her. But he's in it now, and he's not going to stop until he's done.
'You see, there was this planetarium just a few towns away from where I lived,' he goes on, 'and they had the biggest telescope there I had ever seen…'
Kepler's story drags on like they always do, and Maxwell doesn't pay any attention to it at all. She leans back in her chair and ends up closing her eyes, his words blurring together to a hum not unlike the engines'.
Maxwell doesn't fall asleep that night. And she doesn't exactly feel better in the morning either. But still, when she's on the Hephaestus taking apart the Urania piece by piece, she thinks about this moment from time to time.
Kepler tells her stories until the morning comes. Maxwell doesn't fool herself into thinking it might mean anything.
(But she doesn't forget about it either.)
5. Acceptance
Kepler is the last one that enters the room. He pulls the door closed behind him without making a sound, then turns and locks it.
'Jesus fuck,' Jacobi curses cheerfully, already throwing himself on the couch to kick off his shoes, 'this is real nice. Why do they always give us the goddamn motel rooms when we could just have this instead?'
No one has an answer for him. Maxwell sits down next to Jacobi and actually unties her shoes before taking them off.
She can't quite stifle the sigh of relief when she finally pulls the giant hair clip from her head, letting the strands fall down freely.
Jacobi watches her with a tired grin. She pulls the rest of the pins out and throws them all carelessly onto the couch table.
'All that hard work destroyed,' Jacobi laments. Maxwell only throws him a glare. 'You sit down for two hours to get stabbed and walk around with the knives in you for six additional hours,' she complains. 'I am never doing this again.'
This is where Kepler joins them at the table. He doesn't sit, just puts down the two bags of takeout down.
'Doctor,' he says, with the decency to actually sound tired for once in his life, 'remind me to never let Mister Jacobi pick the food again.'
'Yes, sir,' Maxwell says dutifully, and snorts at Jacobi's sour expression.
They unpack the bags anyway, and no one complains about the food again that night.
(Jacobi's taste isn't exactly bad, anyway. It's just potentially eccentric.)
Maxwell takes her order and makes her way straight to the bed. Kepler and Jacobi argue for a few minutes, then they end up following.
It really is a nice room, especially considering the fact that they weren't technically supposed to sleep here.
But unplanned things always happen, and undercover missions are especially prone to complications, so the one bed is going to have to be enough for them for tonight.
That's fine; it's not the first time they're forced to adjust their schedule. Besides, Maxwell thinks to herself between bites, the bed is probably big enough to have five grown people sleep in it.
It's definitely big enough for all of them to sit comfortably. Maxwell in the middle with her legs crossed, Jacobi sprawled out on his stomach with his feet dangling in the air, and Kepler on the end of it, leaning against the headboard.
No one really says anything for a long while. Until Maxwell reaches for the napkins and asks, 'When are we leaving, then?'
'0900 hours tomorrow,' Kepler says, 'to the minute, this time.' That's directed at Jacobi, who decides to ignore it. 'And I thought we were supposed to return to Canaveral as quickly as possible,' he comments. Kepler simply shrugs.
'Change of plans,' he says vaguely. 'Cutter wants to make sure nothing goes wrong down here first.'
Maxwell hums. 'You think this has anything to do with the last mission?'
'Oh, please,' Jacobi says, 'they wouldn't blow it this much out of proportion, would they? We did fine.'
Kepler shrugs as well. 'I don't know if it's that,' he says, 'but I'm sure they won't mind if we think it is.'
‘Right,’ Jacobi mutters, ‘firing up the Goddard Futuristics paranoia machine.’ He buries his face in the covers of the bed. ‘At least it’s actually comfortable this time.’
No one comments on that. Maxwell thinks Jacobi has actually fallen asleep for a moment, but he ends up turning on his back and simply staring up at the ceiling.
He’s right. It’s very comfortable. They’re not always lucky enough to be comfortable. They also don’t tend to have enough time on their hands to really not be sure what to do with it.
(This is, of course, something they’re not feeling all that lucky about.)
Even though they do have it, no one moves much more that night. Kepler is the only one that gets up from the bed, and all he does is throw away the takeout boxes and disappear into the bathroom for a few minutes. Maxwell fishes her pad out of one of the backpacks they came here with and sits up against the headboard to get some work done.
‘Seriously, Alana?’, Jacobi mutters against the blanket. ‘How can you not be tired right now?’
Maxwell doesn’t answer. She is, of course, very tired. They all are.
They don’t even change out of their clothes. Maxwell pushes up the sleeves of her dress and Jacobi somehow manages to escape out of his tie, but he doesn’t even open the buttons of his jacket.
To Maxwell’s surprise (even though she only realises in the morning), neither does Kepler.
He sits down next to her and has a look over her shoulder while she works. Maxwell finds that she doesn’t mind. She’s used to Kepler’s scrutinising eyes, having a look over everything that happens around him, no matter if it’s in his area of expertise or not.
She’s come to rely on this part of him, would maybe even miss it if he stopped.
(She’s not going to admit that to anyone, though.)
(Not even to Jacobi.)
No one closes the curtains; the city outside is loud, even with the windows closed. It’s not distracting, but still different from Maxwell’s apartment in Canaveral.
They sit in silence, and it takes Maxwell a few minutes to realise that this is unusual. None of them are particularly loud people (well, except Jacobi maybe), but still. Usually during the nights (or mornings) after a mission, there would be plenty of noise. Sometimes it’s just the frantic feeling of not being quite done, of needing to get out, get away, get home.
(Hmm. That’s new. When did she start calling it that? It doesn’t sit quite right in Maxwell’s mind, but she finds there’s really not a single other word that would describe the place for her properly.)
(The thought is only concerning for a minute, which Maxwell supposes is concerning in itself. She doesn’t think about it much more. Not until much, much later.)
But other times it’s slow and- not exactly relaxed, because they very rarely relax, and Maxwell is definitely not going to with Kepler at the wheel, but easy, maybe. It’s difficult to put into words.
Still, even during those moments, there’s no silence.
Not for very long, at least. Not with the people Maxwell works with.
‘I wonder if I’d get some peace of mind for once if I went into Young’s goddamn department,’ she muttered once on a particularly exhausting and long car ride. The look Kepler had given her through the rearview mirror was a whole lot of things- most of them something akin to amusement. Jacobi had only snorted and said something that Maxwell didn’t exactly remember. Maybe it was something about Maxwell missing them. Or maybe going insane working too closely with Young. She hadn’t answered anything to that.
No, there was no quiet for Maxwell, even though she always preferred to work in silence.
Kepler was always talking, wether he was giving them a lecture on the proper work of an SI5 agent (those Maxwell usually pretended to listen to) or one of his endlessly convoluted stories (those Maxwell usually didn’t pretend to listen to), there was something coming out of his mouth. Sometimes he even talked in his sleep.
Even when he had nothing to say, Maxwell would swear that he was sitting there behind the wheel, humming. Maxwell would sometimes wonder if it was a test, to see what kinds of distractions Maxwell and Jacobi could work with, what would make them snap and finally try to kill him.
Maybe he just likes the sound of his own voice. Maxwell never got to the bottom of it.
And he wasn’t the only one, either. There was always also Jacobi.
Between the two of them, it was a real miracle that Maxwell ever got any work done, or that they completed any missions at all, really.
This moment is different. Maxwell looks up from her coding, half expecting to be alone in the room. But Kepler and Jacobi are still right there, and they’re both still awake.
Kepler is still sitting next to her, his fingers tapping out a rhythm only he can hear on his arm. His eyes are cast down, he’s not even looking at her work anymore. He doesn’t look tired, though. He looks the same as always, which is, of course, indecipherable.
And Jacobi? Maxwell turns her head to the side. He’s curled up on the bed next to her (god, it’s really a big bed, she thinks to herself, this is honestly excessive), looking impossibly small. From her angle, Maxwell notices some soot still sticking to his face, right at his jaw. She wipes it away with her finger, and Jacobi looks up at her.
He doesn’t look all that tired either, but he’s much easier to read than Kepler is.
‘You should really shower,’ Maxwell comments. ‘They’re never going to get the smell out of this room otherwise.’
Jacobi grins, but he doesn’t move. ‘That’s the authentic ballistics expert smell, show a little respect, will you?’, he says. His words are slightly slurred with sleep.
‘Go to sleep, Mister Jacobi,’ Kepler mutters from the other side of the bed. Jacobi’s smile softens a little, and he does close his eyes. Maxwell ruffles a hand through his hair, ready to pretend that she didn’t later. She turns back to her work. She notices the way Jacobi’s face twists up when she pulls away her hand, though, so the plan about pretending she didn’t is quickly forgotten.
Coding with one hand isn’t quite as easy, but not many things can stop Alana Maxwell.
Jacobi is out in just a few minutes. Maxwell notices the way his breathing evens out and feels her own shoulders relax.
‘This is really weird, you know,’ she tells the major. She blinks a few times, but her eyelids keep feeling almost too heavy to keep them open.
‘Whatever do you mean, doctor?’, Kepler asks. His voice is low, like he’s worried Jacobi is going to wake up if he speaks too loudly.
‘You,’ Maxwell says. She tries not to look up at him from her pad, but fails.
Kepler is still wearing that expression that Maxwell can’t define for the life of her. Maxwell is way too tired to worry about him scolding her for asking strange questions, though. ‘You’re… very quiet, sir.’
‘Oh?’, Kepler leans closer to her, close enough for their shoulders to touch. ‘Is that… a complaint, doctor?’
‘Definitely not,’ Maxwell says pointedly. She turns back to her pad. ‘Even though it’s sort of hard to concentrate on the numbers when you don’t have two- two people in the background constantly talking about something. ’
(She realises that that's true and suppresses a shudder. These two really seem to have ruined her.)
Kepler hums. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I promise I’ll make sure there’s not going to be a moment of peace or quiet for you for as long of tomorrow as we’ll have together, Maxwell.’
Maxwell rolls her eyes. ‘Why, thank you, sir. Always nice to know you care.’
‘You should probably try to sleep as well,’ Kepler says. He’s not looking at her anymore, but he’s still sitting as close as the second before. Maxwell doesn’t mention it.
‘I know, yeah,’ she says, stifling a yawn. ‘I’ll sleep soon, I just need to finish this thing first. I’m almost done,’ she promises. It’s only sort of a lie.
And she does try to finish it, even though her eyes keep losing focus and Jacobi’s even breathing doesn’t help very much.
(She can’t really hear Kepler breathe. She isn’t sure why that is, but she never really caught onto his breathing pattern. That’s also something she doesn’t think about a lot.)
Ultimately, she doesn’t even notice Kepler pulling the pad from her hands and put it down on the nightstand. Her eyes just fall shut by themselves, and while Jacobi nestles in closer next to her, she falls asleep against Kepler’s shoulder.
He doesn’t move away until he wakes up himself in the morning (before the other two, like usually). To Maxwell, for tonight, at least, it’s the most natural thing in the world.
5+1.
And then Maxwell is alone with Minkowski, and she’s laughing at the gun the lieutenant is pointing at her face.
They’ve been here before, both of them, except last time Maxwell was unconscious and about to be cooked alive. Maxwell didn’t have anything to fear then, and she’s not afraid now.
Minkowski’s hands are shaking around the gun. Her shoulders are pulled up. Her aim is flawless, but that doesn’t matter. Maxwell had plenty of guns pointed at her heads, and she can tell when there’s a reason to worry.
There’s no reason to worry now, not with Captain Lovelace dead on the Urania and Jacobi in the comms room with eyes on everything that’s happening around them.
‘Lieutenant,’ Hera urges Minkowski. ‘Put the gun down.’
Smart girl. Maxwell leans back in the chair Minkowski has her tied to. It’s almost a shame, Maxwell thinks, what’s going to happen to her when they’re done.
‘No,’ Minkowski says, her voice calm and her face unmoving. She looks brave, like a perfectly good little soldier. Maxwell can see right through her. ‘I am not giving up again.’
Maxwell thinks about the time back on Earth, just a few months ago, with Jacobi tied to the chair looking up at the two of them like there was nothing that could ever hurt him as long as Maxwell and Kepler were there.
It was true then. And it’s true now. So Maxwell leans back and smiles at Minkowski.
There’s nothing that can hurt her, not as long as Jacobi and Kepler are there.
‘Eight seconds,’ Jabobi says. ‘Here we go.’
Doctor Hilbert keeps moving through the vents, towards an awful and fiery ending.
It’s almost ironic, Maxwell thinks to herself. Her eyes wander away from the gun. The way he’s up there, all by himself. He doesn’t even know where he’s going.
He doesn’t even know that everyone is there with him, watching. He has no idea what's coming for him.
‘How stupid are you?’, Maxwell says, and she’s imagining Jacobi’s face in the comms room, watching the timer tick down until the world rips apart and the two of them walk out of the ruins to continue being sharp, and dangerous, and in control.
Nothing about Jacobi is afraid in this moment. It only makes sense for Maxwell to mirror him.
Minkowski doesn’t answer. She barely looks like she’s hearing Maxwell speak at all. Her eyes are fixed to the speaker they’re listening to Hilbert from.
And Maxwell wasn’t really saying this for the lieutenant’s sake, either. She’s talking to Jacobi.
That’s what she’s telling him now.
I’m not afraid.
I’m in control.
I’m dangerous.
When this is over, Maxwell thinks to herself, we’re going to unleash hell on them.
‘Minkowski, do you copy?’ Maxwell closes her eyes and prepares for Hilbert to speak his final words.
And he does.
‘Can anybody hear-’
Everything goes very quickly, then. The world around Minkowski and Maxwell bursts into pieces and shaking and noise.
A shudder goes through Minkowski’s body. Maxwell prepares for her to lower the gun.
When she pulls the trigger and the world goes dark, Maxwell is in the middle of a thought.
When this is over, she thinks to herself, I-
And then there's a bang, not quite as loud as the explosion that tears Hilbert apart, and Alana Maxwell’s story ends.