Today, to celebrate this thing going off to line edits, I wanted to share a brief excerpt from Darker Space. This is a little moment of introspection from our MC Brady. Not an action scene, because I didn’t want to give anything away! I still don’t have a release date for Darker Space, but it’s on the home stretch now, and as soon as I know when it’s out, I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this glimpse back into Brady’s slightly screwed-up psyche:

That night, at home, I watched Cam’s famous face while he sat on the balcony and gazed at the stars. Cam loved the black. Even after everything, he loved it. And I hadn’t had to be a passenger in his head to know it. Cam had felt freedom out there in the stars, diving into them, reckless, breathless. I hadn’t. The whole time I was on Defender Three I could feel the black creeping at my back, threatening to suffocate me. Threatening to rip the breath right out of my lungs and crush me.
Space will kill you.
I watched him in profile, with the darkness behind him. I’d seen him, once, framed in starlight. I’d seen him floating underwater like a pale corpse too, with silver writing glowing on his ribs, while he dreamed of the stars.
I lit a cigarette—the only reason I ever came out here at night—and we sat together quietly and let the remains of the day drift away from us like curls of smoke.
“I thought you were quitting,” Cam said at last.
Here again?
The pattern of our life.
Cam was still looking out for me, just like he had since the moment we’d met. The only guy I let close, just like when it had been him and me against the black. I didn’t want to lose him. I couldn’t lose him. But I was scared this was it. This was how it was always going to be. It was better than I’d ever dared to hope, and I was sabotaging it with my attitude, just like with everything.
He couldn’t want me forever.
Not the same angry, fucked-up kid I’d been when we met.
The same angry, fucked-up kid I still was, and would always be.
Cam turned his face to look at me and smiled slightly, then looked again to the stars.
Here again.
Same old nightmares, same old dreams.
I sighed; my breath escaped me in a smoky haze.
“Did you make Lucy’s lunch for tomorrow, or should I do it?” Cam asked.
I licked the bitter taste of nicotine off my lips. “Your mother dropped her off with a full lunchbox.”
After school, most days, Lucy went to Cam’s parents’ place until one of us finished at the base. It shouldn’t have rankled, but it did.
“Hey.” Cam put an arm around me, and I leaned into him. Rested my head on his shoulder and remembered that time it was just him and me against the universe. How scared I’d been—so scared that the nightmares still gathered in the back of my skull, regrouping there throughout the day, waiting for me to sleep before they attacked—but how simple it had been as well. All that fear I had, all that anger; I still had it, except now I had nowhere to point it. It hung over me like a cloud, and I breathed it in. Couldn’t get past it, couldn’t get through it. It was just there.
Maybe it was just me.
Maybe it wasn’t Kopa, or my dad’s death, or Lucy. Maybe it wasn’t Defender Three, or Cam, or the Faceless. Maybe it wasn’t the tests, or the questions, or even Lance Corporal Lingard and those endless fucking halls that needed to be mopped. Maybe it was none of that at all.
Maybe, if you took all of those things away, I’d still be the exact same fucked-up asshole I was now.
“Love you.” His breath was warm against my ear.
Because underneath everything, the shitty truth of it was that Cam really did love me. I was less than he deserved, but he loved me. Sometimes I thought if he could only tell himself that a hundred times a day, tell me that, then he wouldn’t have to notice the empty void behind those words. He wouldn’t have to notice that Brady Garrett, and that everything about our life together here on Earth—his job, our apartment, Lucy—was just the consolation prize he’d won when they’d told him he couldn’t go back into the big black. When they’d told him he couldn’t keep chasing that starlight.
He wasn’t happy, not really. He would never have admitted that to himself, let alone to me, but Cam wasn’t the only one faking it.
I put my arms around him. Held him tight.
Cam held me back. I don’t know if he even noticed I didn’t answer. He was staring at the sky again, lost in the stars.