Chapter Text
Shiro is eighteen minutes early for his meeting.
He’s been back and forth between the apartment and the Garrison all day already: driving Matt up early, coming back so Sam will have the car; riding back with Sam an hour later to help direct setup for the ceremony, catching a shuttle back to the apartment so he can eat some late lunch and get into dress uniform. He's tired, with the nauseous stressed-out kind of exhaustion that feels almost like hunger, and the early half of the day passes in a crawl.
Alone in the bathroom, he bends over the sink to splash his face with cold water, then straightens to run a comb through his hair. There's dark circles under his eyes that the icy water has done nothing to dispel. He looks pale and nervous and young in the filtered afternoon light; he looks out of place in the dress uniform, like a kid playing dress-up. He stares at his washed-out reflection in the mirror, then rubs his eyes and turns to leave.
He can't look at the pile of blankets on Keith's couch on the way out the door.
The 2:30 shuttle from the town to the Garrison is crowded, full of people riding in for commencement, parents and siblings of cadets, grandparents and neighbors and friends. One old man, his balding head gleaming with sweat from the desert heat, gives the bars on Shiro’s uniform a long doubtful look and turns to say something to his wife. Shiro keeps his face carefully impassive and sets his feet against the jostling of the ride.
Once inside the gates, he makes his way straight to the administrative wing without stopping. There's nobody in the main suite as he passes through, at least, except a handful of cadets. He checks in with the General's secretary and sits down to wait, straight-backed, on the bench facing the door.
He breathes.
The apprehension sits heavy. There's been no word to either Shiro or Sam all day, no messages, no calls. Shiro has no idea what is waiting for him on the other side of the door: he doesn't know if they've analyzed Keith's logs yet, he doesn't know if he'll be given the choice to remain Keith's mentor or if they’ve already got somebody else lined up.
He doesn’t know what he’ll say if he’s given the choice.
Sam’s words last night cycle through his head, over and over again, a corrupted audio file. He doesn’t know what they mean; he can’t tell if the commander was encouraging him to step back or not. He thinks-- he thinks no. Sam isn’t the sort to approach something indirectly like that. Sam said he would support whatever Shiro chose, if he was given a choice, and Shiro believes him.
But the idea of a more experienced mentor for Keith keeps tugging at him: somebody older, somebody who maybe has kids of their own and isn’t a teenager, somebody who knows what they’re doing. Keith deserves more than what Shiro has to give him, he deserves stability and confidence and structure.
His tablet buzzes in his pocket. It’s just a mass message to the set-up crew, something about parking for the catering trucks, but Shiro finds himself switching apps, scrolling through pictures and short videos from the last two months: Keith in the simulator, concentrating fiercely; Keith sitting at the island at home doing his homework, completely unaware of his chocolate milkshake moustache; Keith at the dog shelter with stars in his eyes, gently petting the beautiful retriever whose trust he’d won after three visits and almost five painstaking hours of sitting patient and motionless on the chilly floor.
And there, further up in the timeline: the two of them asleep in the corner of the couch, Keith’s head resting on Shiro’s chest, Shiro’s arm around Keith’s shoulders.
“He’s ready for you, Captain,” says the General’s secretary, and Shiro starts.
“Thank you,” he says to the young man behind the desk. He turns off his tablet and slips it into his pocket. Then he takes a deep breath in a vain attempt to steady himself, and steps through the door as it opens for him.
The General is alone in the office, which is both a surprise and a relief. He seats Shiro immediately, which is another--but then he leaves Shiro sitting there while he scrolls on the screen in front of him, frowning heavily. Shiro sits ramrod-straight, his hands on his knees, and tries to ignore the uncomfortable tugging of his dress uniform across his shoulders.
“You can relax, Captain,” General Beck says without looking up from the screen. “I didn't bring you here to bust your balls.”
Shiro swallows. The tight anxious feeling in his chest eases, but only marginally. “You'd be within your rights, sir.”
“I would,” agrees the General, and gives Shiro a brief sharp look that nearly makes him quail in his seat. “But I have very limited time, and that's what I keep Iverson for.”
Shiro decides it's safest not to answer. His hands clench and unclench nervously where they rest on his knees.
“I brought you here because I want your opinion on this log,” the General says, and turns the screen so that Shiro can see it. The familiar split-screen recording format is open, the brilliant white landscape of Enceladus visible on the left side of the screen.
Shiro looks at the screen, at the frozen frame of Keith on the right. “Mine, sir?” he asks carefully.
“You've worked most closely with Kogane,” says the General. “It'll be a few weeks before we can fully analyze the log and the scenario itself for signs of tampering. I want an idea of what we're looking at.”
Shiro hesitates, his eyes on the screen. “Is this--” he begins, and clears his throat. “This is the log where he finishes it?”
The General lifts his eyebrows and his shoulders at the same time, noncommittal and exasperated, and starts the log playing. “It’s the log where he appears to finish, anyway. Iverson’s insistent that it’s not possible.”
“What… what are we watching for, sir?”
“I want to know if his flying style is consistent with what you’ve observed,” says General Beck. “I want to know if this looks like Kogane to you.”
Shiro nods mutely and turns his attention to the half of the screen showing the landscape, the specs, the outline of the craft. It’s hard to focus, at first--he’s painfully aware of the General watching him--but then Keith starts to fly in earnest and Shiro forgets everything else.
He enters the geyser field significantly lower than Shiro would, and Shiro finds himself tensing with apprehension. But it’s working for him, impossibly, beautifully, his extraordinary reaction time on display for all to see. Shiro wants to laugh with the sheer delight of witnessing it.
A geyser catches Keith under one wing and Shiro inhales sharply--and then Keith’s rolling with it and Shiro punches the air before he can catch himself. “That’s--” he says to the General’s side-eye, trying hard to find his professionalism. “I taught him that, I taught him that maneuver on the Europa scenario two weeks ago, I can’t believe he…”
But the simulation is still running, and he trails off.
“What's your assessment?” asks the General when it’s finished.
Shiro has no idea what to say.
“Have you seen him fly like that before, Captain?” General Beck presses.
“Not…” Shiro begins, and stops. “Never that well, sir.”
“So your assessment is that the simulator was fixed.”
“No,” Shiro says immediately. “No, that is not…” He pauses and moistens his lips, trying to think how to explain the vast difference between his first few sessions with Keith and the latest, the difference that was not defined entirely by some massive jump in skill but by Keith’s comfort with Shiro’s presence in the cockpit. “He does better when… when he doesn’t feel like he has to impress the person watching.” He gestures at the screen. “He does best when nobody’s watching.”
The General sits back. His eyes on Shiro’s face are scrutinizing, disbelieving. “He is twelve years old,” he says finally, flatly.
Shiro swallows. “Yes, sir.”
“The Enceladus scenario is the most challenging scenario our simulators currently have to offer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re asking me to believe that a middle-schooler not only completed the scenario, but completed it with an approach that only one Garrison pilot has successfully used.”
“You asked me for my assessment, sir,” Shiro says. He realizes, a beat too late, that his tone is too defensive and sharp-edged to be anything like appropriate: he sucks in a breath and shuts his eyes for a beat. “I’m sorry, sir, that was out of line.”
The General lets him sweat, sitting back in his chair and staring at him with keen, considering eyes that make Shiro feel like a first-year cadet again. Then he says, “Convince me.”
“Sir?” asks Shiro, startled. The General lifts his eyebrows and gestures at the screen with patient irony, and Shiro gets it. “Ah,” he says, his stomach flipping unpleasantly. “Um. May I…?”
It’s the most off-the-cuff presentation he’s ever given.
The General transfers the log to Shiro’s tablet, and Shiro spends the next half hour breaking down the eight-minute flight, playing and replaying each maneuver, describing other times he's seen Keith use them, the context in which he learned them. The General’s face is unreadable throughout, and the awareness of what’s at stake is a crackling, electric hum of unease in the back of Shiro’s mind.
“This one…” he says, and trails off, watching as Keith hauls hard on the rudder to break out of an uncontrolled corkscrewing descent. Uncertainty stirs for the first time, but the General is waiting. “...I didn’t-- I didn’t teach him that one, sir.”
“Spin recovery is in the year one flight curriculum, Captain,” says the General dryly.
Shiro can feel the flush climbing his neck. “Right,” he says.
General Beck sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You realize,” he says abruptly, “he’s going to be facing questions and doubts about this for the rest of his time here.”
It’s too easy to picture. Shiro’s heart sinks. “It doesn't need to be public knowledge at this point, surely…”
“No,” says the General, “but this incident is in his permanent file. Anybody with the correct permissions will be able to view it, his teachers, his counselors, his superior officers if he decides to enlist in five years…”
“Then…” Shiro says. “Then… he'll just have to keep proving himself, he'll build up a record, he'll keep… They can't question it if it's consistently supported by similar results.”
“Is he up to it?”
“I'll help him,” says Shiro immediately. “I'll keep working with him, we'll--” He stops short, abruptly aware of the assumption he's just made. “If… that's…”
The General just looks at him, and Shiro thinks for a moment that lasts and lasts that he’s just screwed everything up. But then the General sighs again and looks back at the screen. “You believe him,” he says, gesturing at the paused log. Keith’s face in the frozen frame is wide-eyed and shocked.
“Yes, sir, I do,” says Shiro without hesitation. He pauses, then says, greatly daring, “With your permission, I’d like to fly that scenario with him to confirm it.”
“No,” says the General. “You’re too tangled up in this already. Iverson can take him, or Montgomery.”
Shiro draws in a slow breath, feeling his shoulders stiffen. “Sir,” he says carefully. “He can’t-- If he thinks it’s a test, that’s… it’ll affect his performance in a big way.” The General gives him a look that is exasperated and skeptical in equal parts, and Shiro pushes on desperately. “Sir, please, I’ve been working with him closely for the last two months--my CO can back me up--Keith does not do well when he feels like he has to be looking over his shoulder.”
“There’s going to be people watching over his shoulder his entire life,” the General observes.
“Not like this,” Shiro says, shaking his head urgently. “Not like this. Please, he’s-- He’s just a kid, and he hasn’t had a home since he lost his dad, and he’s scared that-- Do you know how many times he’s asked me if he’s going to be expelled and put back in the system? He doesn’t expect this to work out, he doesn’t think this will last and I’ve just started getting through to him--” He stops, closes his mouth. Swallows. “Do you know,” he begins again, slower, his eyes on the desk between himself and the General, “what it would do to him to be asked to run that course thinking that failure means he gets taken away from everything he knows again?”
The General is silent. “What do you suggest?” he asks at last, and Shiro can breathe again.
“Let me run the scenario with him,” he says, opening his hands. “Have Iverson observe, have whoever you want observe, but discreetly, from outside.” He hesitates. It’s a bold leap he’s about to make, but he doesn’t see any way around it. “Make sure he knows beforehand that-- that he’s not going anywhere, that his position here is secure.”
There’s no change in the General’s expression, and the relief is almost dizzying. Regardless of whether or not Shiro’s role with Keith changes, Keith will still have a home here.
“All right,” the General says finally. “We’ll schedule something for next week after all this with commencement is over. We’ve got a few days before teaching faculty all clears out for the summer. You haven’t said otherwise so I assume you’re still willing to host Kogane for the next few months?”
Shiro sputters a little, caught off-guard. “I--” he manages. “If that’s--”
“Yes or no, Shirogane.”
“Yes,” Shiro says hastily. “Yes, that’s-- I’m sorry, I thought-- You’d said, um... revisiting my… my role?”
“That’s going to be an ongoing conversation between myself and your CO,” says the General, clicking off the presentation screen. “For now, for the sake of stability, you’ll proceed as planned with the summer, but there’ll be no simulator time until this issue with Kogane is sorted out.”
“Yes, sir,” says Shiro, a little breathless. This is better than he’d dared to hope, this is-- In the back of his mind, in his darkest speculations, he’d seen Keith on a bus at the end of the day, shuffled off out of reach; his more realistic expectations had had Keith shifted to somebody else’s authority and Shiro himself firmly encouraged to keep his distance.
It’s not a promise that things will continue the way they are, not by any means--but it means that Shiro will be able to talk this out with Keith, to repair this strange rift, and he will take whatever time he’s given.
“Commander Holt will be checking in on Kogane over the summer on a weekly basis as his OIC, like we discussed,” the General continues, now looking down at his tablet, scrolling through a fine-printed document that Shiro can’t read upside-down. “A minimum of two in-person visits per month, the rest can be phone calls. Your stipend for Kogane’s care will be deposited directly into your account on the fifth and twentieth of every month as long as he’s with you.”
“Yes, sir,” says Shiro again.
“You’ll need to sign the documents I’m sending to you now,” says the General, and Shiro feels his pocket buzz with the file transfer. “Fill them out and return them before Commander Holt leaves.”
“I’ll do it tonight, sir.”
“Good.” The General turns off his tablet and puts it away, then gives Shiro a long wry look. “This is the second time in two months you’ve come in here trying to sell me on some wunderkind, you know.”
Shiro freezes up a little, wondering how he’s supposed to respond to that. He opens his mouth to say-- something, he doesn’t know what, but the General is waving his hand dismissively.
“Get out of here,” he says. “You have about fifteen minutes before you need to report to the auditorium.”
“Thank you, sir,” says Shiro. He hesitates a beat, all his unaddressed uncertainties coming abruptly to the forefront of his mind--but ongoing conversation, the General said. There will be time.
Shiro gets to his feet, salutes, and turns to go.
“Shirogane,” the General calls before he’s through the door.
Shiro turns back.
“If this turns out to be legitimate,” General Beck says, gesturing at the screen, “Kogane’s going to have all your records busted by the end of his second year.”
Shiro’s chest swells with the giddy, delighted pride he hasn’t had the time or space to acknowledge yet, but he manages to keep it off his face. “I hope so, sir,” he answers.
He has fifteen minutes, and he really should use the time to go over his speech one last time, but he finds himself turning toward Keith’s room instead. Nobody answers when he knocks, so he punches in the code and sticks his head in. “Anybody home?”
The room is empty. Malone’s side is already completely dismantled: a bare mattress, an empty desk, a cleared dresser. Keith’s side is not; there’s still blankets on the bed, but Keith’s not moving out entirely, so it doesn’t matter. His backpack with its faded cartoon astronauts is on the floor, a familiar blanket rolled up next to it, ready to go, and Shiro grins.
If you come back to your room looking for your stuff,
he messages to Keith,
I came by and stole it all.
(It’ll be in the car if you need it.)
He picks up the backpack and rolled-up blanket. Keith’s backpack is shockingly heavy for its size, and Shiro hefts it assessingly before slinging it over his shoulder and leaving the room.
Did you pack a backpack full of rocks?
The little message pending icon is hovering beside all three messages, a row of little yellow triangles overlaid by an exclamation mark. Shiro looks at it without much surprise--the Garrison’s network is probably overloaded, with roughly four times as many devices on it as usual, and drops his tablet into his pocket.
“Nice, sir,” says Burns, saluting when he passes her in the hallway. “Avengers in Space, classic.”
“I’m a gentleman of impeccable taste,” Shiro answers good-naturedly, hefting the yellow backpack. “Hey, have you seen Keith?”
“Not since lunch,” she says, shrugging apologetically. “The library or the auditorium, probably.”
“Thanks,” he answers, and continues on. It’s slow going: the passage of an officer through crowded halls tends to make them more crowded as all the cadets stop what they’re doing to snap to attention. He wonders, briefly and mischievously, if he could get away with just carrying around a giant balloon labeled with the words as you were at times like this.
The cadets would love it. The brass probably would not. Shiro dismisses the notion with great reluctance.
He drops Keith’s things off at the car and shuts the trunk, pulling his tablet out again. Where are you, he means to write, but none of his earlier messages have sent yet. He huffs out an exasperated breath and clicks the button to call instead. It rings once, then goes straight to voicemail. Shiro takes a moment to puzzle over this, but then the tone is sounding.
“Hey, Keith,” he says, “It’s me. Call me if you get this before the ceremony starts, otherwise I’ll see you afterwards.”
He hesitates, abruptly uncertain. There’s so many things they haven’t addressed yet, a wide sticky tangle that he doesn’t want to touch until they have time and privacy.
“I’m looking forward to this week,” he says finally. That’s both true and safe. “I’ll see you soon, buddy. Love you.”
He hangs up and pauses for a moment, then makes his way to the auditorium by a back route.
There’s a row of chairs on the stage behind the podium. One of these is his. Sam is already there, and Commander Hossein, and a nervous cadet Shiro knows by sight but has never spoken to. He climbs the steps and stands in front of them to salute crisply, aware of the hundreds of cadets filing into their seats in the wide auditorium behind him. It’s Hossein, as the ranking commander, who releases him from attention and gestures him to the seat on the far end of the row.
“How’d it go?” Sam asks quietly as Shiro sinks into the seat next to him.
Shiro lets out a breath. “Really well,” he answers, equally soft. “Better than I expected.”
Sam glances at him, eyebrows lifted. “Yeah?” he asks.
“We’ve been booted off the simulator for a couple weeks,” Shiro admits. “They’re going to have Keith’s Enceladus logs analyzed, but… the General asked me for a breakdown and I think he believes me. That Keith didn’t cheat, I mean. And-- they’re not cutting him loose. And he’s still coming home with us tonight. So it’s--” He takes and releases a breath, nodding.
“Good,” says Sam softly. “That’s really, really good.” He pauses for a moment. “What we talked about last night, did you…”
“No,” says Shiro. He thumbs at an invisible smudge on his knee and glances out over the auditorium, searching out familiar faces. “I want to… I want to think about it a little longer. I was really tired last night.”
“Everything’s ten times as overwhelming when you’re tired,” Sam agrees. “I’ll be here if you need to process out loud.”
“I appreciate that,” says Shiro, giving him a quick grateful look.
Sam grins at him, the corners of his eyes wrinkling, and turns away to continue his conversation with Hossein.
Shiro breathes in deeply, the familiar flutters of nerves that come before addressing a large crowd beginning in his chest. He touches his pocket, reassuring himself that the solid square of his tablet is still there, loaded with his notes and ready to go, then dries his sweaty palms on his knees and looks out over the filling auditorium again.
The front four sections are a sea of white and orange, broken by the gray of supervising officer uniforms. Shiro locates Burns first, Talmadge on the opposite side of their section, and begins scanning the rows between them for Keith.
He combs the section twice with his eyes before it dawns on him, and a third time, and a fourth before he’s sure. His heart begins a slow, heavy drumming. “Sir,” he says softly, but Sam is deep in conversation and doesn’t hear him until Shiro plucks at his elbow. “Sir,” he says again when he’s got Sam’s attention, staring out over the auditorium just in case he overlooked... “Keith’s not here.”
“What?” asks Sam, and looks. Shiro waits, willing Burns to look over at them--but she’s busy wrangling fifty cadets and can’t spare the attention to watch a stage where nothing is happening yet. He feels like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin with urgency by the time Sam finally asks, “What time is it?”
“3:41.”
“He’s still got four minutes to report in,” says Sam, but he sounds doubtful. “Check with the sergeant on the floor, see if they know his status.”
Shiro’s got his tablet out already, scrolling to Burns’ code. “Hey,” he says when she picks up and turns to look questioningly toward the stage. “Do you have eyes on Keith?”
“Ahh,” she answers, turning away to glance over her section, “I don’t, let me see--”
Shiro watches as she lowers her tablet from her ear and scrolls.
“Yeah, he hasn’t checked in from free hours yet,” she says. “He’s got a few minutes yet, I’ll go find him if he doesn’t show.”
“Thanks,” Shiro says, relieved.
“No problem, sir. Break a leg.”
Shiro pulls an exaggerated apprehensive face at her across the auditorium and hangs up.
He looks over his notes again, keeping half an eye on the doors as he does. There's a steady influx of cadets in bright orange, flanked by their families, separating out into their assigned seating toward the front of the auditorium--but Keith will be easy to spot due to his size. The time on his tablet turns over from 3:44 to 3:45, and Shiro watches as Burns glances up at the clock, then toward the stage to make eye contact with him. Then she's making her way up the aisle, pausing to speak with Talmadge, and disappearing through the wide double doors.
Shiro watches the clock, watches the doors for one last tardy splash of orange in the crowd. His knee is jogging nervously.
“Still no Keith?” Sam asks quietly.
Shiro shakes his head slightly, keeping his eyes on the door. “Burns is on the case,” he answers.
“She'll find him.”
“Yeah,” Shiro agrees, distracted.
But time ticks on. The flow of people entering the auditorium slows. The lights dim in warning, then lower completely, and Burns still hasn't returned.
The auditorium hushes.
Shiro breathes in.
They’re close, he tells himself. Keith probably fell asleep in the library. He found some quiet cubby to hide in. He’s been reading sci-fi and forgot the time. He’ll be embarrassed later, and it will be hilarious.
Shiro stands as the stage lights come up, takes three steps forward to the podium. He draws his tablet out of his pocket and sets it in front of him, opening his notes. His hands are cold and slightly shaky, and that’s no uncommon thing for standing in front of this many people--but for the first time he’s barely conscious of the crowd. His awareness is centered on the doors at the far end, and the resonant clang as they shut.
They’re probably coming down the hall right now.
“Officers and cadets of the Galaxy Garrison,” he says, and forces himself to focus on the uniformed rows ahead of him. To the shadowy sections further back, he says, “Family, friends, neighbors and teachers and coaches and babysitters, thank you for being here today.”
He can hear his own voice filling the auditorium, easy and confident and clear. It’s like somebody else is borrowing his voice and his words while Shiro himself panics quietly in the back of his head. He keeps talking, keeps his notes open in front of him; he feels his face making the appropriate expressions. His anecdote about the rivalry between the engineers and the cargo pilots that sprang up in his second year gets an appreciative wave of laughter, so he thinks he’s doing all right.
The doors open. Burns slips in, her silhouette just recognizable. She’s alone.
Silence falls.
He bolted, Shiro realizes with sudden dry-mouthed clarity. An image of Keith hiking through the desert alone sears itself across his mind--and then, just as quickly, he remembers the packed-tight backpack Keith had left in his dorm. There’s no way he’d leave without his things, without water.
Somebody clears their throat behind him, and Shiro is abruptly aware that he trailed off more than five seconds ago, and he has no idea where he was in his speech. The faces looking back at him from the audience are unsure, concerned. A couple cadets near the front are laughing.
Shiro licks his lips and skips straight to the end of his speech. He introduces Sam and Hossein, sparks a big round of applause for the nervous valedictorian--and then, instead of returning to his seat when Sam takes the podium, he strides into the darkness at the edge of the stage lights and takes the steps down to the floor.
Burns meets him halfway.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly before he can ask. She’s out of breath, and her eyes in the darkness are wide. “I don’t know, I checked his room, I checked the library, I went up to the simulator deck, I was gonna come and see if you had any ideas--”
“Okay,” says Shiro, thinking fast. He can’t push the idea of Keith alone in the desert out of his mind. “Okay. Um-- get Malone. I’m gonna get Matt. Meet us in the foyer.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, and starts toward the section where the third years are seated. Shiro pauses to send Sam a one-line message explaining, then makes his way to the opposite side of the same section where Matt is sitting.
Matt is already watching, alert and inquisitive, as Shiro stoops to speak to the lieutenant in charge of the section, and he wastes no time in squirming out of the aisle past his classmates’ knees when Shiro points at him and beckons.
“Is this a coup?” he asks in a whisper, falling into step with Shiro and glancing interestedly over to where Burns is extracting Malone. “I really hope this is a coup, Shiro, I’m honored to be part of your elite strike team--”
Shiro waits until they’re out of earshot of the cadets craning to see what’s going on. “Keith’s missing,” he says bluntly, and Matt shuts his mouth in surprise. “The patch for the cameras you did a couple months ago, can you do it again?”
“I-- yeah,” says Matt, shaking his head in confusion, jogging a little to keep up, “of course, I just need-- my laptop’s in Dad’s locker. Missing, what do you mean? How long?”
“Not sure,” says Shiro, opening the doors. “Go get your laptop, meet us back here.”
Malone and Burns come out of the next set of doors from the auditorium as Matt departs in the opposite direction, and Shiro hurries to meet them.
Malone is wide-eyed and confused, but he salutes briskly when Shiro approaches them. “Sir?” he asks. “What’s-- what’s going on?”
“When did you see Keith last?” Shiro asks instead of answering.
“Um.” Malone shuts his eyes for a moment. “Before lunch, it was before lunch, he left while I was packing up. Why, is he…?”
Shiro looks at Burns. “Was he at lunch?”
“Yes,” she says immediately. “He was there, he was fine. Um,” she amends, “no, he was a little out of it. He didn’t eat very much.”
“He’s missing?” Malone asks, sharp-eyed.
“Yes,” Shiro says, distracted, and looks back at Burns. “Is he sick, did he seem sick to you?”
Burns hesitates, and Malone puts in quickly, “He didn’t want to go to breakfast.”
“Okay,” says Shiro. “Okay…” There’s an app on his tablet with the Garrison floor plan, but he hasn’t used it since his first year. He pulls it up now. “So we need to check bathrooms, starting by the mess hall and the first floor south dorms. Sergeant, have you talked to security yet?”
“No, sir,” she says, straightening. “I wanted to get you first, in case you had some idea…”
Shiro nods. He zooms in on the app, checking the live positions of security staff. “There’s somebody on duty down that hall around the first corner, can you grab them?”
She goes. Then it’s just Shiro and Malone, standing in the silent foyer, the indistinct sound of Sam’s amplified speech leaking out the auditorium doors. “You can go back to your seat,” Shiro says, and rubs the bridge of his nose. “I just wanted to know if you’d seen him since lunch.”
Malone blinks at him, his mouth falling open. “I want-- I want to be involved, sir,” he says slowly. “I’m not going back in there if Keith’s in trouble.”
“You’ve already done everything you can,” Shiro begins, but Malone cuts him off.
“He’s been jumpy all week,” he says, short and sharp. “If something happened, it’s my fault.”
Shiro shakes his head slightly. “If it’s anybody’s fault, I’m pretty sure you’re not remotely on that list, Adrian.”
Malone’s face flickers with annoyance. “I want to be involved, Shiro,” he repeats firmly. “Please.”
His feet are planted, his jaw set: he looks ready to go toe-to-toe for this. Shiro looks at him for a moment, then blows out a breath. “Twenty minutes,” he says. “You can be involved for twenty minutes. I want you back before the graduates start to march.”
Malone looks like he’s thinking about arguing, but he pulls his lips between his teeth and nods once, jerkily. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
The auditorium doors open behind them. It takes a beat for Shiro to recognize Mendez, in civilian clothes with her hair down. “Tasha messaged me,” she says, joining them in a breath of daisy-scented air, and snaps a quick salute to Shiro with her long skirt still in motion. “What can I do, how can I help?”
And then Matt’s returning before Shiro can answer, breathless and hugging his laptop to his chest, and Burns and the security officer are coming down the hallway from the classroom wing, and there’s a small crowd converging with Shiro at the center, all talking at once, all offering to help--all, Shiro realizes, suddenly overwhelmed, looking to him for direction.
He takes a deep breath and folds his shaking hands behind his back.
“Okay,” he says, and the group goes quiet, watching him and waiting for orders. “Okay. This is what we’re gonna do.”