Chapter 7 - The Desperation of Derek Halston
Derek’s eyes darted between me and the massive steel machine behind Julian. For a second, the corporate polish attempted to reassert itself, a bizarre, twitching mimicry of his usual boardroom confidence.
"Cast iron?" Derek laughed, a high, strangled sound that died in the vast concrete ceiling of the testing bay. "You don't know what you're talking about, Mara. Halston Marine uses certified metallurgical suppliers from Germany. We have third-party ISO compliance certificates for every batch—"
"The certificates are from a shell corporation registered in Limassol, Derek," Julian said, taking a step forward. He didn't raise his voice, but the sheer physical presence of him—the broad shoulders, the scarred hands, the quiet confidence of a man who had faced death in the dark—seemed to push Derek back toward the doorway. "My father had the Defense Logistics Agency pull the shipping manifests from the Port of Baltimore an hour ago. The raw material came from a scrap reclamation foundry in Hebei. You paid four hundred dollars a ton for scrap, had it poured into rough castings in Cyprus, and billed the United States Government thirty-six thousand dollars per finished assembly."
Derek’s eyes widened until the whites were visible all the way around his irises. "That’s... that’s standard supply chain optimization! Every major prime contractor does it! It’s within the allowable margin of variance—"
"Not on a submarine, it isn't," I said.
I leaned forward, reached for the silicone sleeve, and rolled it over my residual limb with smooth, practiced motions. I picked up the carbon-fiber leg, aligned the socket, and engaged the vacuum lock. The mechanical *click* and the soft hiss of the seal sounded loud in the cavernous space.
I stood up.
The three-degree adjustment Julian had made was instantaneous perfection. The load transferred evenly through the patellar tendon; the burning ache in the lateral scar tissue vanished, replaced by the clean, solid stability of balanced leverage.
I didn't use a cane. I walked straight toward Derek, each step firm, deliberate, and rhythmic. The click of the composite heel on the concrete was the only sound in the bay.
Derek backed up until his spine struck the edge of an industrial tool cart. A row of heavy open-ended wrenches rattled against their pegs.
"Mara, please," Derek whispered, his arrogance suddenly collapsing into a pathetic, whiny desperation. "You loved me. We were going to buy the house in Annapolis. We were going to have the wedding on the water. I know I was an idiot at the gala. I was nervous! Frank Vance was watching me, and Arthur had been riding my ass all week about the quarterly figures, and I... I made a stupid, thoughtless joke. People make jokes when they're stressed, Mara! You know that!"
"A joke," I repeated, stopping two feet from him.
"Yes! Just a joke! A tasteless, clumsy joke!" He reached out, his hands trembling, trying to grasp my shoulders. "You can't throw away three years over a sentence! You can't let these people use you to ruin us! If you sign off on this report, Arthur will cut me off! I won't have a penny! I’ll be blacklisted from the entire industry!"
"You're not being blacklisted because of a joke, Derek," I said, looking him dead in the eye. "You're being blacklisted because you are a thief who was willing to let young men and women drown in thirty fathoms of water so you could afford a lease on a foreign car and a membership at the yacht club."
"You don't care about the Navy!" Derek shouted, his face contorting into an ugly, spitting mask of hatred as he realized the pleading had failed. "You quit! You ran away to hide behind commercial barge reports because you couldn't handle being a cripple in uniform! You used me to pretend you were normal! You wanted the apartment in Georgetown, you wanted the dinner parties, you wanted to be Mrs. Derek Halston so people would stop staring at your damn robotic foot!"
The silence that followed was heavy and cold.
Julian didn't move to strike him, though I saw his knuckles whiten where his hands rested at his sides. He waited. He knew, with the instinct of a true warrior, that this wasn't his fight to finish.
I looked at Derek. I felt no anger. I felt no grief. I felt only a profound, crystalline clarity.
"You're right about one thing, Derek," I said softly. "I did want to be normal. I spent ten years trying to convince myself that if I worked hard enough, kept quiet enough, and smiled politely enough at men like you, the past would stop hurting."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, magnetic access card—the security badge that gave entry to the corporate suites of Halston Marine Systems, which Derek had proudly handed me two years ago so I could bring him lunch when he worked through the weekend.
I dropped it on the concrete floor between his shoes.
"Thank you for reminding me," I said, "that I am not normal. I am an engineer of the United States Navy. And my work begins at two o'clock."
I turned my back on him.
"Julian," I said, walking back toward the test press. "Mount the second transducer. Let’s bring the hydraulic pressure up to six thousand pounds."
May you like
Derek stood frozen against the tool cart for three seconds, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Then, realizing that neither of us was ever going to look at him again, he turned, stumbled through the doorway, and fled into the gray Virginia fog.
***
