by Hanna, K. T.
He nods and she pushes the issue a little. “How are your legs holding up?”
He watches her for a moment before responding. “Well, considering chunks of them were removed, I barely feel the difference between the old and new adrium anymore.”
She nods, and they move at a good pace toward the labs. Her imagination keeps throwing images of Aishke in all sorts of bad states at her. The bloodshed needs to stop. She’s seen far too much death recently. It’s starting to make her feel nothing. And if she lets herself think about Iria… She shoves the darkness aside.
It’s not a long run to find Mathur, who’s just coming out of his quarters. The morning is young, before the usual waking time of any sane person not on a watch.
“Mathur.” She stops in front of him, adrenaline pumping as her mind sorts through the things that need to get done.
“It is I,” he quips, a kind smile on his lips. “Is this about Aishke?” The smile fades just a little.
She shakes her head. “It’s about Bastian.”
“Oh?”
“He said the new lieutenants will be divided amongst existing groups of patrols. They will act as a catalyst for the pulse once it’s sent out. It won’t just disable—it will destroy.”
Mathur stops in the middle of the walkway. “Any idea how?”
“Owen—the replacement for those…” She eyes Dom. “The new head of the Domino Project. While not a part of the Exiled, he has his own reasons for wanting them shut down. He sought out Bastian.”
“I see.” This time Mathur’s smile isn’t friendly. “We find allies in the strangest places. You go be there when she arrives. I will wake Garr and get her down to the infirmary so we have all the skilled hands on this that we can. If I understand correctly, Mason is injured, too, just nowhere near as badly. Darrien called it in.”
Sai nods and heads toward the loading bay, finding it difficult to keep the sickening feeling confined to her stomach. It keeps trying to claw a way out of her throat.
There’s a lot of commotion in the loading bay. A lot of people Sai is sure are just there to watch. They’re cluttering up the entrance.
“If you aren’t necessary personnel, please leave the docking area.” She keeps her tone calm and smooth and levels what she hopes is an element of command into it.
Several people look at one another, a slight blush to their cheeks before they head out. She feels a little guilty. Most of them are probably just trying to check if Aishke’s okay, but if there’s one thing she knows her friend dislikes, it’s being on display.
“It’s okay, Sai.” Dom puts his hand around her shoulder and squeezes it lightly.
She leans into him, careful not to put too much weight on him in his current condition. “It has to be, Dom. This is all my fault. I should have gone with them. I should have taught her better or more or something. I’m sick of losing people who matter.”
His eyes shade over, losing the silver glow for a moment. “Did they really matter, Sai?”
She scowls bitterly at his candor. “Aren’t parents supposed to matter?”
“They weren’t really parents.”
“True.” She purses her lips and changes the subject. “I get that one person’s life is worthless if sacrificing it can save a thousand. But you know, in hindsight, I’d prefer my one Aishke over anything else. I think I’m selfish.”
“I don’t think you are. But I’ll let you pretend for a while.” There’s a smile in his tone and a reassuring soft squeeze of his hand.
They stand there, just resting lightly against each other like that, until the transport gets raised to the loading bay.
Her heart beats faster, and she steals herself against the inevitability that Aishke could be far worse than they think. She stands back as the door opens and the healthier troops limp out. Mason is aided by Kayde, a bandage around his head and chest and a stumbling gait. Sai frowns after him until she spies them wheeling Aishke out of the corner of her eye.
Ash’s tawny skin is paler than usual against her pink-tinged hair, but otherwise she looks perfect. Sai’s nerves are wrecked, and she follows them back to the infirmary with no idea what the hell she’s supposed to do to help her best friend. Except heal. Heal.
Once she understands what’s wrong with her.
Dom follows her quietly, a few feet behind. If she listens closely, she can hear a hitch to his step. It’s the one thing that tells her he isn’t quite his old self yet. “If you need to rest, please do.”
He reaches over and squeezes her hand briefly. “I will be fine.”
She nods, a little absent-minded, as they approach the infirmary. It’s quiet, even though Mason is already lying in one bed, his blue eyes gazing at the ceiling as if it’s the most interesting thing on earth. Sai frowns as Kayde tends to him. His wounds mustn’t be serious, even if he’s more drained than she’s ever seen him. She looks a little closer and is startled to realize there’s something…missing from him. But she can’t quite figure out what.
Her attention snaps back to Aishke as they move her onto the bed. She doesn’t appear to have been touched. There is no blood, no abrasions, no scratches, not even a bruise visible on her pale skin. Pale? Sai frowns. Regardless of being in the sun or not, Aishke’s skin usually has a healthy golden glow to it—a strange tawny-brown mixture. It’s not just pale. Her skin is pasty white. She reaches out with her senses and almost stumbles back before breaking contact.
“What’s happened to her blood?” she asks as she pushes through frantically and stands next to Jeffries.
“What do you mean?” he murmurs, checking her eyes, her pulse, and her shallow breathing.
“It’s like she’s completely anemic.” Sai touches her friend’s arm and closes her eyes and reaches out tentatively, confirming the almost complete lack of red blood cells. “Anemic—dangerously so,” she murmurs, eyes still closed and reaching farther in.
There’s something wrong about the way Aishke’s body is responding. It’s sluggish, like it’s in stasis and on hold. Sai frowns, uncertain if she should proceed. She pulls her presence out of Aishke’s body, squinting in the light to see if there’s anything she can see with her eyes this time.
“Her breathing is slow.” Dom points out what should have been obvious. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was in stasis or frozen. Cryogenic-like. You know the stories, right?”
Sai nods and reaches out a hand to touch Aishke’s. Her skin is soft and clammy to the touch. A second after their skin makes contact, Aishke’s eyes open suddenly. And then her scream begins. The sound chills Sai to the bone.
It last about five seconds, but that’s five seconds too long. Sai regains her balance faster than everyone else and pushes the others away from the bed. There’s something inside of Ash, something terrifyingly powerful and inherently evil. Every time she gets injured, every time she opens up, it’s there lurking.
“Leave her with me. I need peace and quiet for this. Jeffries and Dom stay with me, just in case. The rest of you get out.”
It doesn’t escape her notice that Mason didn’t so much as blink when his daughter screamed.
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Jeffries sounds drained and desperate.
“I might have an idea.” Sai feels the way he looks. If her idea falls flat, she has nothing to fall back on. “I just need you to watch both of us. You can either dive in with me, or you can guard us from outside. Either way I need you both to act as a failsafe in case I get pulled into whatever maelstrom made her scream like that.”
“Yeah, you go in…” Jeffries laughs nervously, and Sai understands his reticence. He’s an old-fashioned healer. Most of it is physical skill as his psionic abilities are limited. He uses them to reinforce his work.
Dom squeezes her hand before letting it go. It’s odd how much his reassurance helps. She closes her eyes and focuses on melding with Aishke the way she has countless times in training.
Usually it’s like phasing through
a vast clear area. But now there are projectiles, arrows of power, glittering daggers suspended in the air, threatening to careen her off-course, to upset her balance and send her spiraling out of the phase. Trying to dodge the interference to get to where Aishke’s center is requires intense concentration.
There are traces here and there of places her consciousness has been, but overall, it’s empty of anything she associates with Aishke. Like a void, it tries to suck her in, tries to soothe her into believing this is the place she should be.
If she could glare in there, she would, but instead she exerts her sense of determination and proceeds downward to the core. Just like she thought—there, in a bubble far too tiny to contain all of what makes up Aishke, is her consciousness.
Sai frowns. Ash is obviously straining against the bubble, trying to get out, squashing in something far too small for all of her that there is. But even Sai can feel the pull, the lull, the reassurances that got her there. While not exactly the same, it has a similar tug to the parasite that keeps trying to coax her and Dom.
The core is brighter than ever before, and the realization hits her—it’s feeding off Aishke.
There’s only one way to break down that wall, and that is to use brute force. There’s every chance Aishke could be lost forever, but if she doesn’t do it, then they’ve lost her for sure.
Aishke’s heart stutters, and the echo shudders through the void, replacing the thrum with a high-pitched shriek. Sai focuses her power on pulling Aishke up and out of the bubble. The screeching in her head grows louder, the protesting darkness buffets her against the sides of her own consciousness, threatening to try and take over.
With one last determined pull, Sai frees Aishke from the bubble prison, an audible pop and an angry but final screech in her ears.
“Sai?”
She opens her eyes and blinks at how blurry the ceiling is. Her head is pounding and her gut feels like she just got poisoned—writhing and nauseated.
“Don’t sit up,” Dom’s voice cautions her, but she has yet to focus on exactly where it is he is. Still, not sitting up sounds like a fantastic idea, so she obliges.
Instead, she closes her eyes and focuses on the sounds in the room. She can hear people moving around, opening sealed packets, clanking on some of the instruments while they swish the tips in sterilizer. Strange, how despite everything, they still rely on a liquid form of sterilization.
Old habits die hard.
Sai breathes out slowly, her chest heavy. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s okay.”
Sai frowns at the tone of Dom’s voice. “Is Aishke okay?” She directs the question to be more specific.
Dom chuckles softly. “Yes. Aishke is okay.”
She scowls at his evasion. “But not good, right?”
“Not good. You need to rest. Jeffries has this under control.”
Sai resists the urge to snort at the comment and tries to listen for something instead. If she concentrates really hard, she can hear Aishke in the bed next to her. Her breath is shallow and pained, if the short gasps are anything to go by. But if she’s gasping, it means she’s alive. So for right now, Sai takes it as a victory.
For a while she drifts in and out of consciousness, acutely aware of Dom’s hand resting next to her arm, of the way he occasionally taps a foot, of the flurry around Aishke’s bed.
“Sai?” This time the voice belongs to Jeffries.
“Mmm?” she asks without cracking an eye open. It’s comfortable and sleep is beckoning far too convincingly for her to want to stand up.
“Sai. You need to wake up. I can’t have you falling asleep again on me.”
“Why?” she pouts, not liking the instruction.
“Because when you fell, you smacked your head on the ground and knocked yourself out for a bit. You’ve probably got a concussion. So just humor me and don’t fall asleep quite yet.”
“Oh.” Why did he have to go and make sense?
She opens her eyes and pushes herself to a sitting position. At least, that’s the plan. What actually happens is more akin to wailing in pain and thudding back down on the pillow none too gently, cringing as her head reverberates with the impact.
Even though her eyes are tightly shut, Sai can hear Jeffries sigh. “I didn’t tell you to sit up.” His voice is soft and gentle.
“What is it you’re not telling me?” Suspicion tugs at her mind.
“Nothing.”
“Yet. There’s definitely something you’re not telling me yet.”
“There’s other things I have to take care of first, and I’m waiting for some tests to come back.”
Sai’s breath hitches. Aishke has to be fine. “Is she…is she okay?”
“She is definitely okay right now, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t be tomorrow unless you get her to do something stupid while she’s recovering like, oh, say, blow up something.” There’s impatience back in his tone, more like the old Jeffries who questioned her motives.
Sai can see him cross his arms out the corner of her still partially closed eyes. “It’s okay, Doc. I feel a bit like death warmed over, so I’m going to lie here for a while and make like a corpse.”
“Just don’t imitate the non-breathing part and we’ll be fine,” Jeffries says as he leaves the room.
“Listen to him for once.” Dom’s tone is more somber than usual. The whole situation is. There’s a nagging feeling in the back of Sai’s mind—something she tried to remind herself to tell everyone—but it’s playing elusive and evading her grasp.
“I don’t have time to be sick, and you are the last person who should be telling me anything like that.” Sai tries to struggle into a sitting position but gives up in frustration and exerts some of that energy into a trickle of healing instead. “I hate lying down,” she finishes.
“Why are you so determined to sit up?”
“I want to see if Aishke seems okay.” Sai’s voice is soft, just in case the other girl is awake and can hear her.
“She’s pale, but her color is coming back slowly. Jeffries said her brainwaves are back to normal.” He puts a hand on Sai’s arm and pats it awkwardly. “She’ll wake up soon.”
Sai closes her eyes again, reminding herself not to fall asleep. “There’s something I need to remember. Something I think I thought of while I tried to burst that bubble.” It’s better to talk out loud than to fall asleep and risk coma, synaptic burnout, or even death.
“Bubble?”
“She was in this bubble, behind the core, squashed into it—trapped. It was horrible and just wrong…” Sai shrugs and feels the pain in her head crank up a notch. Even the light starts to sting her eyes.
“You burst the bubble?” Even Sai can hear the mirth in Dom’s voice.
“Not like that, you idiot.” She closes her eyes, trying to be irritated because if she laughs, she knows her head will hurt more. “This entire room is too bright for me and my head is pounding.”
“Reaction headache.”
“What?”
“You have a reaction headache from overextending yourself too much.”
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Sai regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth.
“Right now, I’m probably the prime example of it.” The bitterness in his voice is uncharacteristic of the confident and controlled Dom she knows. Then again, so was ripping forty-odd attackers to shreds in no time flat.
“Dom…don’t do that.” She reaches out and barely brushes his arm.
“Do what?” He sounds tired, which is unusual for him.
“I didn’t mean anything by that—just that you’ve overdone things, too. You’re only human.”
“Don’t.” Dom’s voice is icy. There’s a sudden distance between them as he looks at her, the colors swirling rapidly through his eyes. “I’m not human. We’ve proven that. Just because it’s part of my origins doesn’t mean I aspire to be like that. I can’t afford to be that weak!
” He stops, and his eyes melt back into silver spheres, a hand flying to cover his mouth.
“I’m so sorry, Sai. I just…” He pushes his chair away and makes to stand, but Sai grabs the hand still resting on the bed.
“No one being is perfect, Dom. Every domino will have weaknesses, and you’ll have close calls. You were never immortal.” She tries to put all the reassurance she can into her words.
He laughs. “If I ever need to be taken down a few pegs, I know I can count on you.” Dom sits back down and rests his forehead against the bed. “Thanks,” he mutters so softly she can barely hear it.
She strokes his strange adrium hair and its glittering coppery-red strands. Sai isn’t entirely sure how long they stay sitting that way, but it’s quiet and relaxing.
Ash is obviously straining against the bubble, trying to get out, squashing in something far too small for all of her that there is. But even Sai can feel the pull, the lull, the reassurances that got her there.
The core is brighter than ever before, and suddenly the realization hits her—it’s feeding off Aishke.
Sai’s eyes snap open. She feels Dom’s hand stir on the bed next to her and frowns as she tries to move. Her head is still pounding, but she has to see for herself if Aishke is okay.
Finally sitting upright, she looks over slowly, her eyes blurring every now and again as the room swings in and out of focus, and a trickle of healing only helps slightly.
Aishke is lying in bed, her pale form flat against the sheets, almost as if her body doesn’t have any actual volume to it. Her chest rises and falls shallowly, and her skin appears clammy. Sai frowns as she takes it in. Her friend doesn’t paint the healthiest picture.
“Sai?” Dom’s brows furrow in confusion. “You’re supposed to be lying down.”
“I can’t. It’s trying to kill her.” Because she knows now. Even though the bubble burst, it still has its hooks in her. It might be slower in its feeding frenzy, but it’s still there. Chipping away. Morsel by morsel.