“There,” I said, and nudged the tiny machinery so that she could pinpoint where I meant. “Heat there.”
She gave my fingers a light squeeze and settled deeper, not just manipulating me, but becoming me in a way. I felt the touch of her hands on mine even as I felt her attention inside me, knowing every molecule and deftly pinpointing the few that she needed to touch. Just a little tap, and the cells blazed up. Her accuracy and swiftness surprised me, and I shied back. Then I remembered myself and plunged into the fire, directing it to the neighboring machines. Cells died, fried in their own flames, but I didn’t feel the damage as pain. That might have been a blessing, or maybe it just made me more reckless. I had the beating heart of the government’s link with me in my grasp, and I would destroy it. I didn’t care what else died. Vaguely, I was aware of Natalia dousing fires and rebuilding tissue, but not fast enough to save it all as the machines cooked and melted. The communication pulse skipped and went silent. The positioning circuit burned to a crisp.
I yelled out. My cry bounced off the close walls. Nat caught me, closed cool arms around my feverish skin. I jerked while a small ember winked out in my head and turned to char, and Nat held me tight.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that. I shivered and sweat while my body reset its temperature and my skin sat over me like a tight, wet coat I couldn’t shed. At length, Nat stirred and murmured to me. I didn’t hear the words. I let her help me to my feet. The world didn’t rock exactly, but I found myself standing upside down and sidewise with my feet firmly on the ground. I gripped her wrists. The positioning system had been integrated into my brain’s natural balance and position centers. I’d destroyed both, because they’d become the same.
Nat offered to carry me, but the thought of losing my only anchor, the ground beneath my feet, horrified me. So she walked at my side as I made my slow way down the halls and up stairs, step by step. She cupped my elbow and I could feel her shaping me, holding my nausea in check. But there was nothing she could do for the bone-deep sickness of my brain trying to work around the clump of dead tissue. And there was nothing she could do for the disorientation. I walked into doorways, drifted into walls. Nat guided me patiently. It was a long way to the safe house, made longer by my injury. I stopped once to sag to the ground and rest my forehead against the cool floor. I felt as a burnt-out fire must feel.
We did make it back, and Nat brought me to a private room that had her smell and personality about it, the little personality it had. There was a single tank with one small iridescent fish, nothing like the lush aquariums of her house. For a while I lay on the bed and watched the fish swim back and forth, drifting with it. Nat eased the pain and the nausea, which made existence bearable, but I had this terrible sense that I’d been injured in a fundamental and irreversible way.
After a while, Nat stepped out to talk with someone. My hearing was still very sharp—all of my senses were—but I didn’t pay the conversation any attention. I thought I recognized the other voice as that man who’d first introduced me to Natalia.
I might have dozed, hanging suspended in time and space just as the fish hung suspended near the bottom of the tank, sleeping in its own way, but not sleeping.
Nat sat down and took my hand. I came back to awareness in drifts, focused on that connection. When she made to stand, I roused and said, “Please don’t go.” I gripped her hand. She relaxed again and we shared another silence. The feel of her skin was so human, and my body hummed with a trillion tiny circuits, and I was so, so afraid to let go. She seemed to know this and gripped tighter.
I said, “You kept the lamp I made.”
“Of course I did.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this. I looked at our joined hands. Nat turned mine over and caressed my knuckles with her thumb.
“Was it only guilt, the reason you saved me?” I asked finally, daring.
Nat was slow to respond. “I wouldn’t lose you again.”
I nodded and settled into my pillow, letting my gaze drift, disappointed in something.
“And not just because of the promise I made your parents,” she added, at length.
At her peculiar, careful tone, I met her gaze. It was her turn to look away. I played her hand with mine, opening it, smoothing it, mesmerized by the feel and also by the gentle art of our slender fingers dancing slowly.
Eventually Natalia lifted my knuckles to her mouth and kissed them. A warm thrill shot from my toes to my belly.
This was something they hadn’t taken from me. I traveled my hand up the inside of her forearm and gently grasped her elbow to draw her down. She obediently crawled into bed. We lay facing each other. She stroked my hair back from my temple and I closed my eyes. Here, like this, I felt human again, whole and at home. Her soft touch moved to my cheek and traced my bottom lip. I felt her warmth close to my face and then the press of her lips.
I opened my eyes, surprised, and before I could return the kiss, she pulled back. Her own eyes gleamed in the room’s low light. With tears, I thought. She smiled.
“My beautiful Lark,” she said. “You’re home.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine lives with her writing partner in the wilds of urban Oregon, where they raise weeds, worms, and eyebrows.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dansedesirable
Website: http://www.christinedanse.com/
Email: [email protected]
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
London Wells
The Spires of Turris
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Shaper (The Mi'hani Wars Book 1) Page 5