“Rykus!” she called again. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her vision. Thick black smoke rolled through the destroyed hangar. Missing chunks of the roof littered the ground, and nearly unrecognizable pieces of the shuttle burned and sizzled.
Her name came out as a strained groan.
She turned. She only saw more destruction, more flames, but she stumbled that way, sensing her fail-safe was there.
She found him pinned to the wall by what looked to be a piece of the shuttle’s hull. He was trying to push it off. He didn’t have the right leverage.
Ash knocked away a burning piece of insulation, then got a grip on the debris.
“On three,” she said. “One. Two. Three.”
The sharp edge cut into her palms. She roared, funneling all her strength into lifting the slab of metal.
“I’m out,” Rykus said.
She dropped the hull piece and collapsed. Her body screamed for her to stop, to take a rest, to lie down and put life on pause.
She stayed upright and swept her gaze over Rykus.
Seeker’s God, the right side of his body from the hip down was ravaged. He wasn’t going to be able to walk. She wasn’t going to be able to—
The air shook. A rumble vibrated the destroyed hangar. Ash launched herself on top of Rykus, shielding him with her body as a huge chunk of ceiling crashed down.
Debris pelted her back. Sparks singed her neck and the left side of her face. She held on to her fail-safe, hoping she was enough to shield him from more damage.
When the world finally settled, Rykus tightened an arm around Ash’s waist.
“You have to go.” Pain laced his voice.
She climbed off him but kept a hand on his chest, assuring herself that he was still there. Still breathing. The only exit not blocked by fire or debris was a window on the upper level that rimmed the building’s wall. A beam had crashed into the stairs leading up to it, but it looked like it might still be usable.
Her spine ignited when she tried to straighten.
She cried out, fell back down.
“Hey.” Rykus gripped her shoulder. “Baby, you have to go.”
She clenched her teeth and nodded. She had to get him up. Had to get him out.
She tried to get his arm over her shoulder.
“No.” He swallowed. “I’ll slow you down. Go without me.”
“Not happening.” She pulled on his arm. He grabbed both her hands.
“I’m not going to make it. The rest of that roof is coming down. You have to go now.”
She knocked his hands away. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You are.” He sucked in a breath. His face pinched into a grimace. “It’s an order, Ashdyn. Go.”
She rose. Halfway up, she recognized the grip of the loyalty training.
“You bastard,” she whispered.
She took a step backward. Then another one. He’d caught her off guard. Her defenses hadn’t been up.
“You promised,” she said. “You swore you wouldn’t—”
“Go.”
The compulsion hooked her willpower and nearly shredded it, but no.
No! She was not going to lose him. She couldn’t.
She dropped down beside him.
He cursed. “Ash—”
“You bastard.” She kissed him, a hard, desperate capitulation to their fates. He tasted of smoke and strength and stability, of an allegiance to a future she could finally see. She would have made a thousand promises, committed a thousand treasons, to keep him at her side, but it was too late for that. All she had was this kiss and this man and this moment of surrender.
She eased back enough to meet his gaze. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Rohn and Valt—”
“Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up.”
He closed his eyes, shook his head. When he looked at her again, he drew in a long, deep breath.
“Left pocket,” he said.
She frowned but felt down his leg and slipped out a hard black case, a case that was identical to the one she carried her boosters in.
“Found it on one of the anomalies,” he said, taking it from her hand.
He opened it.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Yeah.”
It might help, and it didn’t matter that it was too soon to inject another booster or that Rohn’s anomalies shouldn’t have had access to them for at least another two weeks. She had to get Rykus up those stairs and out of there.
He flicked off the safety, then plunged the needle into his thigh.
Ash stared at it, not understanding.
Her fail-safe huffed out a breath.
He huffed out another one.
Then he pounded his fist against his leg and cursed.
“Rykus?” It didn’t make sense. She was the anomaly, not him.
Seeker’s God. Not him.
“What the fuck did you do!” She jerked the needle from his thigh.
“You wouldn’t leave without me,” he said. “So we leave together.” He pulled his good leg under him, tried to rise, but started to tilt toward the ground instead.
She caught him. “Rip—”
“Hell. This… this is a lot to handle.”
Her heart thundered in her chest, erasing every one of the loyalty training’s hooks and replacing them with panic. “I have to… You can’t—”
“Help me up.”
“You won’t survive without medical care.”
He looked into her eyes, into her. “Then we better get me to medical care.”
Something crashed behind her. A cloud of smoke and sparks billowed around them. She didn’t feel the heat or her injuries, only his fingers intertwined with hers, his presence woven into her soul.
Somehow he rose to his feet.
“Come on.” He pulled her toward the stairwell.
She didn’t know how he was moving. His leg was broken, probably his hip too, but he kept limping toward the stairs.
She moved closer, looped his arm over her shoulder, and supported him. It would hit him any minute. The booster would assault his nervous system. He’d collapse. Go into cardiac arrest.
He’d die.
The panic beat against her rib cage.
They reached the stairs. The broken railing glowed red. The steps creaked and bent beneath their boots. She carried most of his weight, but he kept moving, kept dragging his shattered leg behind him.
The metal floor tilted when they reached the top. A brace pulled loose from the wall. She did her best to remain steady, to help him limp toward the window. She was breathing harder than he was.
“Now I know why you think you’re immortal.” He leaned to look out the broken window. Ash did too. It was a long way down.
“I’ll lower you,” she said.
He grunted, then climbed out the window feet first.
Ash reached out to help, but he didn’t take her hands.
“I’ve got this,” he said.
“Rykus.”
He lowered as far as he could, then let go.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Ash jumped out after him, hit the ground, and rolled.
The maneuver didn’t make it hurt less, but she didn’t break anything that hadn’t already been cracked or fractured.
She lifted her head. Saw Rykus still curled on the ground.
“Rip?” She crawled to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah. I’m… I’m good.”
He didn’t sound good. He sounded like a man about to die.
“We’re almost there.” Where the hell “there” was, she didn’t know. She tried to lift him, tried to get him somewhere.
He said something unintelligible.
“You can make it,” she said. “You’re going to make it.”
She scanned the night. A line of men jogged toward the burning hangar. She recognized the leader.
“Arek!”
He looked in her direction, changed his trajectory.
“He injected a booster,” she said when he reached them.
Arek frowned. “He’s not an anomaly.”
“He needs help!”
He stared at her, then said, “Katie.” He picked Rykus up and effortlessly hoisted him onto his shoulders. “Incoming with the commander. He’s injured and injected a booster.”
He was transmitting to Katie. Ash had lost her voice-link—she couldn’t hear Katie’s response—but by the way Arek’s mouth tightened, it was loud and furious.
She struggled to keep up with Arek’s jog. They were headed back to the institute. Ash barely registered it. She barely saw the white walls, the startled doctors, the guards with their weapons drawn. She barely heard Arek tell them to back off.
“In here,” Katie called.
Ash followed Arek into a room. He laid Rykus on the bed. A red stain immediately spread across the white sheets.
Katie cleaned the back of Rykus’s hand, inserted an IV, then fastened a bio-band around his wrist. The screens on the back wall lit up.
Rykus made a sound and his head lulled to the left.
Ash stood beside him and brushed her hand across his forehead, wiping away blood and sweat and dirt.
“Move,” Katie said.
Ash shifted to the foot of the bed. She kept a hand on the ankle of his uninjured leg, needing to touch him.
She needed to talk to him. Needed him to open his eyes.
“I need that serum!” Katie yelled.
“It’s coming,” someone responded. Another doctor.
Katie reached for something on a shelf beside Ash. A pair of scissors.
“You have to move, Ash.”
She stepped back. Katie cut up the length of Rykus’s combat pants. God, his leg was a mess.
The monitors registered his vitals. A graph signaled his pulse was going way too fast.
Numbers jumped across the screen, then one red-lettered warning after another.
Ash reached for his hand. “Rip. You’re going to be okay.”
He didn’t respond. The monitors didn’t respond. Nothing was getting better. Just worse.
“Do something,” she said to Katie.
“I am.”
“You’re not. His vitals are crashing—”
“Damn it, Ash. Move! Arek, get her out of here.”
The instructor grabbed her arm.
“Let go,” Ash snarled.
He swung her away from the bed.
She threw a punch. He caught her fist, twisted her arm behind her back, and used his massive body to maneuver her into the hall.
“Stay,” he ordered.
He slammed the door in her face. But he hadn’t needed to. She didn’t move. She stood there frozen in place because she could see a monitor through the room’s observation window. A new warning flashed across the screen, blinking faster and faster until the words turned a deep, bold crimson. Beneath them, his heart rate spiked one last time, then flatlined.
If sound had a color, the roar in Ash’s ears would have been red.
29
Rykus felt like shit.
No. Worse than that. Worse than he’d ever felt in his life. Consciousness was close by, just beyond his eyelids, but he didn’t want anything to do with it. He wanted the darkness. He wanted the numbness of oblivion.
Someone was in his room though, talking quietly.
Not talking quietly enough. Every damn word shot through his head like a pulse-pistol at close range. They needed to shut up. He couldn’t understand anyway. The words were familiar, so were the voices, but his brain didn’t want to decipher them.
A hand touched his wrist, adjusting the bio-band wrapped around it.
Ah. A bio-band. Made sense. He hurt, and he was in a medical ward…
A medical ward on Caruth.
Hell.
He opened his eyes. A woman smiled down at him.
Not the woman he wanted to see smile.
“Ash?” That’s what he tried to say. Mouth didn’t want to work.
“Here,” Katie said. The head of the bed slowly lifted—that nearly made him vomit—and she brought a drink with a straw to his lips.
The liquid helped. He swallowed, loosened his jaw some, then said, “Ash.”
“You’re still on a high dose of painkillers,” Katie said. “We need to get you moving, but you should take it slowly.”
He scowled. He’d pronounced Ash’s name just fine the second time.
He looked past Katie. Arek leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
More memories came back: the trek to Arek’s, the ambush at the institute, chasing Rohn to the hangar.
Seeker’s God, the hangar.
He sat up. Every muscle and joint in his body popped and snapped. His bones felt like they were replaced by nerve disks that had been cranked to high. A warning alarm rang out.
Katie grabbed his shoulders. “Didn’t I just say to take it slow?”
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“She’s not here, you idiot.” Katie silenced the beeping. “Lie down.”
Not here. That implied she was somewhere, and somewhere wasn’t dead. He didn’t remember anything after hitting the ground outside the hangar. Had Ash been there? She had to have jumped out right after he did. She’d been injured too.
“Is she in another room?” She’d hate that. This place was her personal hell. If she hadn’t woken already, he needed to be with her when she did.
Katie held the cup and straw out again. “Drink.”
He lifted his arm to push it away, but he had so many wires coming out of him they tangled with the IV line.
He peeled a sensor off his left temple, then his right.
“Rykus.”
He plucked more sensors off his chest.
“Rykus!”
He pulled the IV from his wrist and threw back the blanket. He was naked except for the right side of his body. His hip and leg were entirely encased in a regen cast. Silver lines crisscrossed it, receptors that sensed when he wanted to move and allowed him some mobility.
“We had to replace your hip and femur,” Katie said.
“Clothes,” he demanded.
“You do not have permission to get out of this bed.”
A pair of loose pants hit him in the face, followed by a shirt.
“Arek!” Katie snapped.
Arek resumed his arm-crossed lean against the wall and met her stare.
Rykus pulled on the shirt first because it was easiest. The pants were a problem. Katie wasn’t watching, but she’d be able to see him struggling in her peripheral vision, and he was certain she was getting some personal satisfaction from that. But hell if he would give up or ask for help. He needed to see Ash.
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty, but he got the damn pants on. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hard and trying not to throw up.
“Maybe you want to drink now,” Katie said.
He nodded.
She passed him the cup. He tried to keep his hands from shaking as he took a sip. If he could get the whole thing down, it would help him recover.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Seventeen days.”
He stared. Seventeen days? No wonder it felt like Caruth’s gravity had tripled.
“You were a mess,” she added. “It wasn’t just your physical injuries. You injected a booster.”
His shoulders sagged. That’s right. He’d almost forgotten. For about two minutes, he’d felt invincible, filled to the brim with strength and energy.
He set the cup on a side table. “Ash wouldn’t leave. She was going to stay there and die.”
Mouth pressed into a thin line, Katie nodded.
A chill crawled into his chest and wrapped its cold fingers around his heart.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She wet her lips. “Arek found you. He brought you here.”
“Ash—”
“She was with him
. She was hurt. I didn’t get a chance to treat her, but her injuries looked serious.”
He slid off the side of the bed and managed to stand. “And now she’s where?”
She tried to press the cup back into his hand.
“Damn it, Katie. Stop making me ask questions.”
“You really should sit.”
“Tell me what happened!”
“She snapped.” Arek’s two monotone words made Rykus turn so quickly he had to brace a hand on the bed to stay upright.
“She’s loyalty trained,” Rykus said. It was the only defense he had against those words.
“The loyalty training prevents snapping in theory,” Katie said gently. “But it hasn’t really been tested.”
“You don’t think it was tested when they charged her with treason?”
“She’s been through a lot—”
“And she’s survived it. She’s stronger because of it. She hasn’t snapped.” He’d raised his voice. He could see it in Katie’s face—she’d never had patience for soldiers who yelled.
She shoved him.
If the bed hadn’t been behind him, he would have crashed to the floor.
“Shut up. Sit down. And we’ll tell you what we know.”
He clenched his teeth together and waited.
“Ash might think you’re dead,” Katie said. “Your body went into shock. You flatlined, and we had to put you on full life support. You had a thirty-two percent chance of recovery. Ash disappeared sometime during the night. We don’t know when or the direction she took. Security vids went down. We think that was Rohn’s doing.”
“He escaped?”
Katie nodded. “Valt too.”
He looked at Arek. “I thought you had Valt secured.”
“Rohn took him,” the instructor said. “My anomalies didn’t know not to trust him.”
Rykus gripped the edge of the bed. “Ash hasn’t snapped. She’s going after them.”
“She has not reported in. She is not answering our calls. We were able to track her for a few days by the bodies and destruction she left behind. The signs are there, Rhys.”
“They were there on the Obsidian too,” Rykus said. He had to get out of this room. He needed to get in front of Ash. Then he could prove she was fine.
“There’s also this,” Katie said. She swiped her hand across her comm-cuff, syncing it to the central monitor. A news report from the assembly on Meryk, the Coalition’s capital planet, played on the screen. The volume was off, but the banner at the bottom of the screen read Fallout from the Telepathic Infiltration.
Shades of Allegiance Page 28