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“Come on, Maxwell. Lighten up!” Kepler’s voice breaks the silence in the van otherwise permeated by whatever local radio station plays the best bluegrass music.
Maxwell does not, in fact, lighten up. She sits in the back, shying away even from Jacobi, and staring out the window at the vast West Texas nothingness illuminated only by blinking cell towers in the distance.
“Give her a break, Kepler,” Jacobi says in a tone nonchalant enough to downplay his concern but stern enough to get his message across. “Everyone gets a little shaken up after their first time in the field like that.”
Kepler just shrugs, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Fine, then. Consider his break given.
Jacobi then turns to Maxwell, who is still wholly fixated, staring at the blackness of the desert despite being fully aware of Jacobi’s worry. “Are you…”
“I’m fine,” Maxwell cuts Jacobi off in a tone much softer and steadier than expected. “Just like you said… just a little shaken up.”
“Hey, if it’s any consolation, I was too. First time that happened on the job. But, uh, look at me now! I don’t even care about blowing people up now.”
“Jacobi!” Kepler scolds.
“What?”
“You can’t just say that. You probably made Maxwell cry back there.”
“No, no, I’m okay, Colonel,” Maxwell says, trying her best to incorporate a little giggle so Kepler can tell she isn’t lying. It comes out as more of a sort of sad, pitiful chuckle. Oh well.
She turns to look at Jacobi, who is still wearing a look of annoyance due to Kepler’s reprimand. Finally, she manages to muster an apparently passable smile and Jacobi returns it with a friendly half-grimace. Maxwell is more than used to the tough love exhibited by her fellow intelligence specialists—the “love” part, she would hasten to say, is even more apparent with them than it was with her own family—she just needs a little while longer to fully integrate.
However, she thinks to herself, slouching in her seat and relishing in the freedom of nobody being able to see her in the dark, and thus nobody being able to pester her for it, getting her first kill on an SI-5 mission might have given her a bit of a leg up. A step in the right direction, at the very least.
In all honesty, it was an accident. Maxwell has spent the past hour of the drive deliberating whether telling herself it was an accident (the truth), would be better than telling herself it was on purpose (a lie, but only she knew that). Killing somebody accidentally was clearly better for her from a moral standpoint, but doing it on purpose gave her, as Jacobi so kindly put it, indisputable street cred. She supposes she could switch it up depending on the context of a situation. She really can’t think of very many instances in which she would A) talk to someone outside her line of work and/or B) talk to someone casually, at all. There are plenty better things to do with her time.
Which is why she isn’t incredibly keen on Jacobi trying to make small talk. But alas, she really does have nothing better to do with her time.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“Nuh uh, I went to Ivy Leagues for eight years straight. My thoughts are worth at least two fifty each, not accounting for inflation.”
If Jacobi’s silence is anything to go off of, Maxwell would have considered that conversation yet another one of her colossal failures at communication. She just had to be snarky, and now Jacobi’s pissed at her for being such a smartass, she just knows it.
“Oh my God,” Jacobi stammers out between short, hiccuping bursts of laughter. “Kepler, did you hear that? Oh my God, that’s got to be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard on one of these boring-as-shit missions.”
“Language,” Kepler chides, to which Jacobi gleefully responds with a waving middle finger. Maxwell tries her best to restrain a grin. Watching the two of them fight like an old married couple and a tired parent with a rebellious son all at once still hasn’t lost its amusement.
“I can’t tell if you’re laughing at me, or if you’re laughing at me,” Maxwell says, crossing her arms.
Jacobi makes a show of wiping tears of laughter from his cheeks. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you. That was genuinely hilarious. Maybe you just needed some good old fashioned bloodshed to unlock your hidden comedy skills?”
“Maybe I’m just funnier when I’m sleep-deprived,” Maxwell responds, showing Jacobi her watch. 2:52 AM. Good lord.
“Maybe. And for the record, Miss–oh, sorry— Doctor Ivy League, I went to MIT too.”
“Now that’s funny.”
Maxwell expects laughter from this, but Jacobi just tilts his head in confusion, as if there’s a joke that Maxwell is missing. “No, I’m serious. Back me up on this, Kepler, I’m serious!”
“He is indeed serious,” Kepler sighs from up front.
The look on Maxwell’s face lingers somewhere in the middle of incredulity, shock, and disgust.
“Of course, I’m no teen prodigy who has a doctorate by 24, but hey! Credit where credit’s due.”
Maxwell has still made no effort to speak. It’s the most flustered Jacobi’s seen her since, well, since a few hours ago when she shot some lab tech in the head. Honestly, it was way more badass than most of the first field kills Jacobi’s witnessed. He replays the scene in his head, the crimson splash of blood across clean white tile and stark aluminum lab benches and manilla folders stuffed full of experimental evidence that Goddard needs to… borrow for an unspecified amount of time. They’ll return it at some point.
Judging by the look on Maxwell’s face when Jacobi finally snaps himself out of his contemplative state, she’s thinking of a similar series of events. However, the deep crease in her forehead and the way her eyebrows twitch as her eyes fixate on a single point inside the van suggests that her perspective on it is a lot less “badass” than Jacobi’s.
This is a normal thing, Jacobi reminds himself. He tries to remember the emotions he felt after he detonated his first purposeful deadly explosive. The intent was to disarm the security surrounding—ironically enough—an AI development complex. Jacobi didn’t know that “disarm” meant “kill” until Kepler was giving him the countdown from ten and Jacobi’s thumb was suddenly resting over the button on the detonator.
“Hey,” he says, gently. The past conversation about college and teenage prodigies paired with Maxwell’s expression is a jarring reminder to Jacobi that she’s still just a kid, practically. He was even older than her when he joined SI-5, which does make it harder to put himself in her shoes. Still, he can’t help but try.
Maxwell looks at him, and then immediately looks away, embarrassed to be caught at such a vulnerable moment. “I know it’s a lot to process. If you want to talk, I’m here. I mean, like, I’m available, and I want to listen, not just… physically here. There’s… nowhere else I can go, really. We’re still a good ten hours away.”
“Five hours, Jacobi. Five hours. Have you even been watching your surroundings?” Kepler actually turns around to look at Jacobi.
“I think you need to watch your surroundings, sir,” Jacobi says, sitting back in his seat and mirroring the way Maxwell slouches. He feels ten years younger already.
“And I think you need to watch your tone , Mr. Jacobi.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jacobi looks over at Maxwell, making a disgusted expression. Maybe he’s playing into this whole youthfulness thing a little too much. Maxwell’s 25, not 15. She can handle herself.
Still, Jacobi’s in his thirties and still acts like this with or without the incentive of being a good team player, so he’s riding mostly on that.
He subtly shifts so he’s closer to Maxwell, and takes it as a good sign that she doesn’t try to move away. “So… anything you want to talk about? Doesn’t even have to be murder-related.”
“Dear lord,” Kepler grumbles, resisting the urge to put his head against the steering wheel and not look up again until he passes the Houston city limits.
“Not really,” Maxwell says innocently, watching Jacobi squirm as the uncomfortable realization of his utter failure to socialize soaks in. He’s not as used to it as Maxwell is, and this is the most entertained she’s been all night. Or… morning.
“Well, okay then. Good. I didn’t want to talk to you anyways.”
Maxwell scoffs as Jacobi very dramatically folds his arms and turns away from her, sticking his nose up in the air like he’s the most important person to ever grace the dusty two-lane expanse of Route 90. Somehow, his attempt to cover up his mistake has proven even funnier than the original mistake; the image of Jacobi sitting there in the barely-there light in the backseat of a beat-up van like the goddamn Queen of England causing Maxwell to burst into a fit of laughter.
The laughter does eventually die down, because it’s 3 in the morning and the exhaustion is finally starting to settle in. Quiet bluegrass music laced with intermittent static can be heard for the first time in a while without the voices talking over it. Not a single headlight has been seen on the road since Kepler first started driving on it.
Jacobi has ended up leaning his face against the window, the cool nighttime desert air making the glass pane feel refreshing and comfortable. He (begrudgingly) has Maxwell’s legs in his lap after she insists on stretching out across the seats, throwing the newcomer card in there while she still has it. It was either that, or sit up front with Kepler and keep him awake while he drives. No, thanks.
“Did you know,” Maxwell’s voice is scratchier by now, the wear and tear of a day of shouting and screaming and, most unexpectedly, laughing, settling in. “When I was in high school—”
“At age twelve?”
“Maybe. What’s it to you? Anyways, stop interrupting me. When I was in high school, I was the star shooter on the rifle team.”
“You had a rifle team?” Jacobi asks, as if he’s never heard of such a thing in his life.
“Yes. Listen, this was a rural school in Montana. We didn’t get to do fun city kid things, ergo, weaponry was our best option.”
Jacobi nods. “Well, I was a member of the ROTC.”
“And now you’re here. Congrats.” Maxwell gives Jacobi truly the most pathetic jazz hands he’s ever seen in his life. They are both way too tired for this shit, but also way too tired to care.
“So that explains why you had such good aim. I mean, seriously, hitting a moving target right between the eyes was…”
“Really badass?” Maxwell winks.
“Yes. Really badass. So you’re good now? About the whole… you know? That thing?”
Maxwell shrugs. “What other option do I have? I know it’s going to happen again some time. I should be as prepared for it as I can.”
“I guess so. You’re pretty smart, Dr. Maxwell.”
Jacobi chuckles to himself at that one until eventually Maxwell laughs too, if not only just to get Jacobi to stop.
“I would hope so,” she sighs, leaning her head back against the seats, her hair splaying out in all directions. “I would hope so.”