by Nalini Singh
"Think you can keep some solid food down?" Finn asked and, at Aden's nod, left the infirmary to organize it.
Unable to fight the urge any longer, Aden walked around his bed to get to Zaira's. Her breathing was even, her skin tone back to its normal warm shade between cream and golden brown rather than clammy and bleached of color. When Aden picked up a scanner Finn had left nearby, Remi didn't protest. Aden checked her vitals, focusing on the areas of injury, and was satisfied the healer had done a stellar job stitching her up. All that remained was for Zaira to punch through the veil of darkness behind which she was currently trapped.
Keep your promise, he said silently. Stay.
Aloud, he spoke to Remi. "Thank you for the assist."
Remi raised an eyebrow. "Why exactly did you need an assist? Arrows are usually a law unto themselves, from all I've heard."
"Even Arrows can't heal bullet wounds on their own." Not strictly true. There was one Arrow who could, but Judd Lauren's ability was so rare it was nothing most people would ever know.
"It wasn't a criticism." Remi shook his head. "I don't know how you walked on that leg if you came from where I heard that chopper circling."
Aden had walked on it because he'd needed to walk on it to save Zaira. He'd been hit on his way back inside to her, had quickly bandaged up the wound while searching for supplies. The black of his combat pants had hidden the blood from Zaira, his decision not to tell her a conscious one. He hadn't trusted her to agree to come with him once she knew he was wounded, too. She'd have fought to stay and hold off the enemy, give him a head start. Since Aden would've dug his heels in, it had been quicker to prevent the argument in the first place.
"Do you know who occupies that land?" If the RainFire alpha was willing to share data, Aden had nothing to lose by gathering it. He would, of course, double-check all information after he left the pack.
"No. They fly in and out." Remi's T-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders as he leaned back against the wall and folded his arms again.
A relaxed pose if you didn't notice that watchful, dangerous gaze.
"We've kept an eye on them since they moved in about four months back," the alpha said, "but they don't impinge on our territorial boundaries so we generally mind our own business." He glanced toward the doorway. "I can scent food on the way. Eat, wait for your squadmate to wake up, then we'll talk."
Returning his attention to Zaira, Aden willed her to wake up, but the brain monitor remained static.
Two hours passed.
Three.
Three and a half.
Chapter 12
ZAIRA DREAMED, WAS aware she was doing so. It was the first time in a decade that her discipline had faltered to this extent, but she was wounded, weak, and the dream pushed its way inside before she could slam the door shut. Only it wasn't truly a dream but a memory so surreal it could've been a figment of her imagination.
"Zaira."
She looked up from the table where she'd been strapped down. Bruises and cuts marred her legs and her arms, her collarbone still fractured but her ribs feeling as if they'd been fixed. She didn't wonder why someone had fixed one of the injuries she'd sustained in the fight for her survival yet left others untouched--people liked to hurt her, that was simple fact.
The pain didn't matter; pain was something she'd learned to handle long ago. It was the confinement, the aloneness that threatened to drive her to madness. The ones who'd come for her after she'd beaten her parents to death had trapped her in matte-black shields she couldn't breach, the psychic loneliness crushing. "What?" she snapped in response to the sound of her name, willing to talk simply to hear another voice.
"Are you there?" she asked when there was no immediate answer, not sure she hadn't imagined a companion. She'd done that before, had full-color "delusions," as her parents termed them. Delusions that had been her friends. Delusions that had made her feel less alone as she existed in the place that was her cage.
"Shh." A slender boy with dark eyes slanted above sharp cheekbones, his straight hair gleaming black and his skin light brown, walked into her line of sight. He was silent, quieter than anyone else she'd ever met. She didn't know how he did that. Every time she tried to walk quietly, she stumbled or thumped or gave herself away.
That was why she had a fractured collarbone--she'd made a noise in her ambush and her mother had turned and hit Zaira with the datapad in her hand hard enough to slam Zaira off the chair on which she'd been standing. It hadn't saved her mother or her father, though. Zaira's bone might've cracked, but she still had a mind that had stealthily grown beyond her parents' ability to leash.
And she'd still been able to swing the rusty metal pipe afterward.
When the boy who walked so quietly touched her restraints, she began to struggle, the bracelets cutting into her wrists and the manacles into her ankles. "Don't touch me," she said in a hiss of sound. "Don't touch me." The feeling of helplessness made her want to scream, but beneath was a cold rage.
"Quiet," the boy said, the command in his voice so strong that she stopped speaking.
"I'm going to undo your restraints," he told her. "If you start struggling or screaming or fighting with me, it'll alert the trainers and they'll come strap you down again."
Zaira just stared at him. The instant he released her, she'd do everything in her power to take him down. He was bigger than her, but she'd killed her parents. She could kill him. Once she'd done that, she'd escape this place where they tortured her by making her alone just as her parents had done.
The boy with the dark eyes and the silent feet held her gaze. "Don't," he said, and it was another order, though one given in a soft, solemn tone. "Do you know where this facility is? Have you looked outside?"
"Mountains," she said, remembering what she'd seen from the vehicle that had brought her here. "Some green things. No trees." She'd been born in Jordan and though she'd rarely been permitted out of her cage and never beyond the walls of the family compound, she'd glimpsed enough of the landscape through the bars of the gates to know she was no longer anywhere near the region where she'd been born.
But the air outside had felt as dry, the sun as warm, so maybe she was just in another part of Jordan?
"That's all there is for miles and miles and miles," the boy said. "Even if you somehow manage to outwit all the security protocols and escape, you'll die of thirst and heat exhaustion within hours."
"So?" Dying was preferable to being trapped.
"So we can't win if we all die."
She didn't understand him, didn't want to understand him. He was a stranger and even if he was a boy, that didn't mean he wasn't allied with the adults. None of her siblings or cousins had ever helped her. Instead, they'd reported on her when she went out of bounds and tried to squeeze through the bars of the main gate. "Okay," she said, just so the boy would do what she wanted.
He moved to the ankle manacles and used something she couldn't see to unlock them. When he paused at the second one and glanced at the door, she froze. Was there someone there, someone who would stop him before he set her free? But he returned to his task a second later.
Fighting the rage inside her that made her want to scream and kick, she forced herself to pretend to be following his order to behave, even once her ankles were no longer bound. Except the boy didn't free her wrists. He just stood beside her and watched her.
"What?" she asked, so angry that she just wanted to beat him until he had no face.
"I know you'll run," he said. "If you do, the trainers will realize Vasic and I can get into these rooms, and they'll punish us. That means we won't be able to help anyone else until the punishment is over."
What did Zaira care about anyone else? No one cared about her. All she wanted to do was get out of here. "I won't run."
"Yes, you will," the boy said, and then he put his tool to her wrist manacles.
Zaira wanted to stay silent, but he was confusing her. "Why are you letting me go, then?"
"Because," he said in that quiet voice that made her listen, "I won't be like them. I won't use threats or pain to keep you from doing what you want."
Zaira didn't understand him again. So she just waited. And as soon as he freed her, she jumped off the table, ignored the throbbing pain all over her body, and bolted.
The boy and the taller one who'd been waiting outside for him went in the opposite direction from her, and then she was through a heavy door on the other end and the alarms shrieked. Her heart in her throat, she kept running, her bare feet slapping the cold surface of the floor.
She didn't know what made her glance back. When she did, she saw the boy had come back and was now by the doors that had set off the alarms. Their eyes met, and at that instant she knew he was going to pretend it had been him who'd set off the alarm.
He was giving her time to hide.
*
ALL of them had been caught, of course. Zaira didn't have Aden's stealth and she didn't know the facility. Aden and Vasic had been punished far more brutally than Zaira, a fact she didn't learn until over ten years later, when she'd become skilled enough to hack into secure records databases.
All she knew then was that the boy with the dark eyes and the quiet feet had come back for her. When he unlocked her shackles a second time, she didn't beat him with her fists . . . and she didn't run despite the need inside her. Because another need was stronger.
"Why do you do this?" Zaira asked him as she lay curled up on the examination table, under a heat blanket he'd smuggled in for her. He'd told her he couldn't treat her wounds except in subtle ways no one would notice, but he could make her more comfortable. "Why do you help me?"
"So you'll be strong enough that they won't break you when I'm transferred," he said, continuing to work on a crushed bone so it wouldn't hurt as much when they came back and forcefully switched off her psychic pain controls. Her parents had taught her those controls so she wouldn't pass out before they were done with her.
"Where are you going?" she demanded, infuriated. "When?"
"I'm being sent to another facility in ten months," he told her. "Does the bone hurt less now?"
"Pain doesn't matter," she said, trying not to think about the fact that the only person who had ever treated her as something better than garbage would soon be gone, leaving her once more alone in the darkness. "I can think past pain."
"I know. But the spirit can also be broken."
"What's that?"
"It's . . ." He paused, thought about it. "Have you seen the birds in the sky?"
"Sometimes." She'd spent most of her life in a cell without light, but there had been times when she'd been let outside, when she'd had to interact with other children. Her parents had called it "socialization" training so she wouldn't be "an uncivilized monster" as she grew. Zaira didn't think it had worked, but she was talking to Aden like a real person, so maybe she was wrong and it had.
"I think of the spirit as being a bird with wings that can fly free."
Zaira tried to imagine that, failed. "My spirit's already gone. It flew away a long time ago."
"If it had, you wouldn't want to run, wouldn't want to escape." He lifted away the laser he'd been using on her bones. "Your spirit is strong--it's a wild, angry fire inside you. I need you to hold on to that fire."
"Why?" she asked again. "Why do you care?"
"Because you're mine now."
*
ZAIRA woke to find the boy by her bedside, dream merging with reality. Only he wasn't a boy any longer. He was a tall, strong, powerful man, but he still moved with silent grace, and he still had the same dark eyes. Eyes that told her she had to be strong, that he needed her to be strong.
Yet if she stumbled, he wouldn't call her a failure; no, he'd simply break her fall and help her back up. Even after he'd been transferred out of the Turkish facility where she'd spent the rest of her childhood and teenage years, he'd found ways to tell her he hadn't forgotten her, that she existed to him as a unique individual and not just another trainee.
Once, it had been an e-mail he'd managed to route past the firewalls and the security. Another time, Vasic had broken the leash on his mind and teleported Aden to her. The visit had lasted five minutes before they had to leave or risk being caught, but in those five minutes, Aden had made Zaira remember that she was a sentient being and not the robotic killer her trainers wanted her to believe she was.
He'd made her remember that she was her own person first, and his, second.
No one else had a claim on her.
"Zaira." His voice was calm now, his expression betraying nothing. "We were rescued by the RainFire leopard pack. We're safe."
There were cues in his words her fuzzy, aching brain struggled to comprehend, but then he did something highly unusual. He took his hand and closed it over her own, squeezed. The physical link jerked her to full consciousness, anchoring her in the present even as her brain scrabbled for a psychic connection that would dissipate the silence inside her skull.
A vast aloneness.
No PsyNet.
No telepathic link with Aden.
Not even the vicious backlash of pain she'd felt earlier.
Nothing but crushing isolation.
As in that dark room of her childhood where no one could hear her scream.
Her breathing threatened to turn uneven. Squeezing her fingers around Aden's, their connection concealed by her body and his, she regulated her respiration by falling back on basic Arrow training. As her brain cleared, she realized he didn't want her to betray their psychic weakness.
So she didn't.
Allowing him to help her into a seated position, she took the opportunity to scan the room. They were alone except for a lithely muscled male with light brown hair and eyes so brightly green that she wasn't certain his irises were real. Identifying himself as Finn, the medic ran her through a barrage of scans and tests after checking to make sure her brain was registering the correct patterns.
Zaira cooperated in the checkup, the loose drawstring pants she wore bagging around her ankles until she bent and folded up the hems. Her white top was also too large and made of a cotton so fine Zaira didn't know what use it was as clothing--it wouldn't effectively stop a scratch from a child, much less a bullet.
At least the medic seemed to know what he was doing.
"You had some pretty bad internal injuries, never mind the brain stuff," he said after he'd completed the tests. "I've fixed you up, but you'll be tender for a few days, possibly up to a week. Take it easy. Not that you'll have much choice, given the weather." A grimace. "And ignore any snarly cats you see--we're not used to being penned in."
Aden didn't speak until Finn walked out of the room to retrieve something. Then, placing his lips close to her ear, he said, "Changeling hearing is acute." When she nodded to show she understood the warning, he spoke again in that near-inaudible whisper. "Do you have access to the PsyNet?"
Fingers clenching on the edge of the bed, she admitted the terrible truth. "It's silent inside my head."
In Zaira's eyes, Aden saw a hollow darkness. "You're not alone," he said, aware Zaira's reaction to extended psychic aloneness could spin in either direction. As a seven-year-old new trainee locked inside a trainer's shields, she'd gone into a berserker rage in an effort to break out; the trainer had been forced to knock her out lest she claw out his eyes. A week later, in the same situation, she'd gone catatonic for five days.
A permanent note had been made in her file: Zaira Neve is not to be confined on the psychic plane. This flaw does not negate her usefulness as an Arrow--once out of training, she will never be in such a situation.
No one could've foreseen their current circumstances. "You're not alone," he repeated, though he knew words wouldn't be enough. The damage done to her as a child had been some of the worst seen by the squad's mental evaluation panel--according to the records, the debate on whether or not she was even worth the effort had been long and intense.
In
the end, it was her intelligence and proven strength that had saved her: Zaira hadn't broken under the childhood abuse. She'd fought back and she'd done so with a cold intelligence the squad appreciated. "I need you to stay strong," he said, speaking to the part of her that was the fire. "Zaira."
She gritted her teeth and gave him a nod, betraying nothing of her psychological state when Finn returned to the room with Remi. The alpha held his silence until Zaira drank some water and waved off an offer of food.
"So," he said, "now that you're both awake, who shot you?"
Chapter 13
ADEN GAVE HIM the facts--there was no reason to hide the truth. Either RainFire was already in on it, and knew, or the pack might be of assistance in unearthing further information. "The men who were holding us were a combined Psy-human team."
"Human?" A skeptical look. "You sure?"
"Yes." The surprising development lined up with one other factor in this situation. "The implant Zaira and I had in our heads," he said, reaching into a pocket to retrieve the small, flat container in which he'd earlier put the surviving implant, "shows signs of being a patch-up job involving human and Psy technology."
Aden had borrowed Finn's microscope to have a closer look at it. He was no expert, but he'd previously seen both the Aleine implant and the Human Alliance one, and the one he held clearly showed evidence of both. "A roughly done fusion."
"Goes with the sketchy nature of the surgery," Finn said, his tone unforgiving. "They might as well have used a hacksaw, it was so badly done."
"Yeah, but these ham-handed butchers managed to abduct you two," Remi pointed out with a directness Aden was coming to expect from the RainFire alpha. "Everything I've heard about Arrows tells me you aren't exactly easy prey, so the abductions were well planned."
Aden looked at the rough-edged male with new respect. Aden had never disregarded changelings, never underestimated their intelligence as so many Psy did, but he'd come perilously close to downgrading Remi's threat level because the other man appeared so ruggedly physical. He wouldn't make that mistake again.