by Jenn Burke
Ness turned to block the hatch. “I’ll get him. You help Qek.”
Scalp prickling all over again, Felix shook his head. “No. I’ll get him.”
“Fix—”
“You know as well as I do what he’s planning.”
She bit her lips together.
“Let me outside.”
Nessa moved aside and Felix jumped down and strode toward the bunker. He couldn’t see Zed, so he assumed he was lying down across the roof.
“Zed!” Still no movement. “We’re about to get this thing off the ground. C’mon, let’s go.”
A boot appeared, then a knee. Finally Zed’s face showed over the edge of the roof. He made an impatient gesture, waving Felix back toward the shuttle. Felix planted his feet and put his hands on his hips.
“Flick—”
“Don’t do this. You’re not a soldier and we’re not civilians. We’re crew.”
“One of the skippers has a pulse cannon mounted to the roof.”
“Then we need to go now.” Zed opened his mouth and Felix raised a hand. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Goddamn you, Felix. Get on the fucking shuttle.”
“No. If you were planning a heroic action, you shoulda run down the road.”
“You’d only have followed me.” Zed sounded tired.
“Damn straight.” Behind him, the shuttle’s engines clicked. A soft whine followed ignition, then slowly built in intensity so that Felix could barely hear himself breathe. Still, he called out again. “I’m coming up there.”
He started forward.
Zed disappeared from view, causing Felix’s heart to jerk against his breastbone. Blood hissed and snapped in his veins—panic, sharp and stinging. “Zed!” He reached for the roofline and jumped, fingertips only just scraping the edge. “Fucking fuck. Zed!”
A shadow dropped down beside him, then an arm swept around his shoulders. He was hauled up off the ground with breathless speed. Seconds later, the blur that was Zed thrust him through the shuttle hatch. Curling forward, Felix grappled with the indistinct shape in front of him, desperate to catch and hold Zed, stop him from senseless sacrifice. His fingers slid down the twitching fibers of Zed’s SFT before glancing off his belt.
“Eli, grab him!”
Light flared behind the bunker, silhouetting the low and blocky shape. The skippers had crested the last hill up to the crater.
The blur that was Zed suddenly stuttered. He slumped forward, obviously having lost the ability to Zone, and Elias caught him. Felix grabbed a hold of his shirt. Beams of light crossed over the top of the bunker, illuminating a sky that was no longer dark. Felix caught a glimpse of Zed’s face—too slack, too pale.
“Hurry!”
From the side, Nessa helped pull until they’d hauled Zed’s heavy body inside the hatchway. Felix slapped the panel to seal the door. Sucking in air, he fought two urges. No, three. The shitstorm of emotion inside him needed an outlet, and Zed would make a good fucking target. Given what he’d just tried to do, he should wake up with a few extra bruises or maybe a broken nose. Equal parts of Felix simply wanted to cling to him, though. Wrap himself around Zed, align their bodies so they touched all the way down, and hold him tight enough that he’d have to be pried away with a crowbar.
Instead, he acted on the most sensible urge, the need to do something useful. Choking on something that felt suspiciously like a sob, Felix gained his feet and backed away from Zed. “Get him strapped into one of those cargo shelves.” He turned and pulled forward to the copilot’s chair.
Qek glanced over. “We have a secure hull and enough power to leave the planet.”
Blinking, Felix studied the holographic display, noting errors and warnings across the board. Likely, most of the faults were a simple matter of disuse. Calibration shifts and broken linkages. But he saw nothing that warned him off using the shuttle to escape the planet’s atmosphere. Hauling in a breath so raw it hurt his throat, he said, “Let’s do it.”
Qek activated the external feeds, and a hazy image shimmered into being over the cockpit display. A skipper pulled around the side of the bunker, dark figures spilling out. Small flashes of light could be muzzle flare. They didn’t worry him as much as the cannon strapped to the top of the vehicle. Inside the shuttle they wouldn’t hear personal arms fire unless a lucky shot knocked out an essential system. The pulse cannon would punch a hole in the hull plating. Felix swore softly when he saw the telltale glow of the arming mechanism. Not a subtle weapon. How had they even got it planetside—and weren’t they afraid of the beasties in the woods?
“Get strapped in!” he yelled as he scanned his share of the console. Several flickering lights requested his attention. Safeties for the copilot to disengage. He glanced at Qek. “Ready?”
“As I will ever be,” she said, her tone not quite as glib as perhaps she hoped.
Felix tapped his console, giving full control to the pilot. Qek’s blue fingers flew across her console. Beneath them, the shuttle shuddered. The muffled whine of the engine rose to a roar and then they were up, off the ground. Felix watched the view of the crater dwindle in the external feed. Two more vehicles slid into view. The barrel of the cannon was lifting toward the shuttle.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Then a large shadow rolled into the crater from the north. Felix enhanced the visual. The shape was a number of multi-limbed creatures moving in a pack formation. The trajectory of gunfire changed, as did the angle of the pulse cannon.
“The stories are true?” Surely those shapes were colonial security, just multi-legged and…
Shit and double shit.
“It seems the ban on energy weapons is valid,” Qek said.
“That’s…” Letting gravity push his head into the headrest, Felix breathed out. “I never want to come back here. They can take their Risilium and stuff it.”
“I am in complete agreement with you.”
Felix couldn’t turn his head, so he called out. “How’s everyone doing back there?”
“We’re good, Fix, just get us off this rock,” Elias shot back.
Ness added a grunt and Zed let out a long, low moan before starting to retch.
“Now he decides to vomit.”
Chapter Seven
Living on the Chaos for the next couple of days was like waiting for a timed detonation to count down to zero. Zed knew the explosion was coming. He wasn’t sure when, or where, but he was thankful that Flick decided to hold off until his head felt as though it was mostly reattached to the rest of his body. So when Flick stomped into Cargo One where Zed was swiping a sonic cleaner back and forth—a nice, easy job that didn’t strain any of his remaining brain cells, despite the whirring that reverberated through his arm—Zed wasn’t surprised to see his eyes filled with fire, making them seem even more green in his fucked-up vision. He sort of breathed a sigh of relief.
“So are you going to tell me?” Flick demanded, his arms crossed and his hip cocked against a bulkhead. His shoulders were stiff and his arms kept flexing, as if he was trying to hold back the urge to throw a punch. He had to raise his voice over the rumble of the cleaner, but Zed figured he’d have been all but yelling anyway.
Flicking the holo off-switch on the simple display, Zed waited until the vibrations diminished into nothing. The ache in his head receded slightly but didn’t go away. It never did anymore. “What, did Ness give you the green light to come yell at me?”
“Don’t fucking avoid the question.”
Zed pushed the cleaner upright and locked the handle in place with a snap. “Flick—”
“No, don’t ‘Flick’ me. I’m not some subordinate you can fluff off with a reasonable tone and empty words.”
“Do you think I’d do that to you? Really?”
“Haven’t you been?”
“I—” Zed sighed. “Maybe. Yeah, you’re right.” He pressed two fingers against his closed eyelids, hard enough that sparks danced across the darkness.
Zed moved his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose.
When Flick spoke again, his voice was softer. Almost begging. “Please tell me it wasn’t what it looked like. Please tell me it wasn’t some suicidal ploy—”
Zed moved quickly, dodging around Flick’s lean form and aiming for the exit to the corridor. For once, his innate grace abandoned him—he couldn’t avoid Flick’s hand as it whipped out to catch his elbow.
“Don’t you walk away without a fucking word. I can’t—” Flick’s words were choked off by something between a sob and a growl. “I can’t fight this if I don’t know what I’m fighting.”
Zed jerked his arm from Flick’s grasp. “There’s no fighting anything. You think if you stand there and stomp your feet loud enough, the poison in my blood will just disappear?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Don’t be naïve!”
“I get it, okay?” Flick lifted a hand to grab at curls that no longer resided on his head and let his hand fall back to his side with a grunt. “You’re going to lose it. I know it’s going to happen—”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Because you’re not telling me anything!”
“I’m already losing it!” Zed straightened and backed off a step. Heart thudding, Zone beckoning, his gaze shifted instinctively from side to side, as if he was looking for an escape, but there was no getting out of this conversation. Maybe there never had been. He looked at the deck instead. “It’s happening.”
Flick rolled on with hardly a pause. “Okay, so we’ll go see Ness. She’ll have something that’ll—”
“Stop.”
“—slow the process or help—”
“Stop!”
“No!” Flick charged forward and grabbed Zed’s shirt in his fists. Zed jerked his gaze up to see determination in every hard line of Flick’s expression. “You’re not fucking giving up.”
“I’m tired.”
“Will you stop talking like that? Goddamn it.”
The fight drained out of Zed, leaving his muscles watery and weak. Slumping forward slightly, he leaned his forehead against Flick’s. “Doesn’t change the truth.”
Flick swallowed harshly enough that Zed felt the motion. Heard it. “Your head?”
“Hurts all the fucking time.”
“Ness will give you more painkillers. That’ll help.”
“I’ve been Zoning. Without meaning to.”
Flick’s fists opened, his palms sliding across Zed’s chest to cup his upper arms. A pair of shaky breaths passed his lips. “Okay. We’ll deal with that.”
“I—” Zed gritted his teeth. “I Zone when I come.”
“Oh Jesus. Babe.” Flick’s hands skimmed upward to thread through Zed’s hair, tugging him forward into a full hug, his face tucked into Flick’s neck. “Is that why…why you…”
Why he’d been coming to bed late and getting up early. Zed nodded against Flick’s shoulder. Flick’s grip tightened, his hands and arms squeezing Zed to the point it was almost painful. But Zed was okay with that.
“This shit stops now,” Flick whispered raggedly. “You have got to talk to me.”
“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to admit it.” His voice threatened to disappear, so he cleared his throat before continuing. “I didn’t want it to be real.”
“There has to be something…some treatment…”
“Damn it, there isn’t.”
Flick shoved him back enough to glare at him. “How do you know? Maybe they figured something out in the last few months. I’ll contact Brennan.”
Zed pulled out of Flick’s arms. “What? No!”
“If anyone can find something to help you—”
“I don’t want my family involved. This isn’t something I can throw my last name at and make go away.”
“What about talking to them? Telling them—”
“Telling them what? That I volunteered to have a stin POW poison me because humanity was that fucking desperate? No one needs to know that. No one needs to know how close we got to not winning.” Zed pressed two fingers to his temple and squinted at Flick. “No, just no.”
“Don’t you want to live?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“A valid one, considering you’re shooting down the one viable option to get you help!”
“There are more important—”
“Oh, fuck you and your martyr complex, Zander. You’re not a soldier anymore. The AEF doesn’t fucking care about you or Emma or me or anyone!”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“What about me? I’m supposed to just sit back and watch you fade?”
Zed froze, ice stiffening his spine and seeping into his gut. “I can leave.”
Flick’s eyes widened. “No! Fuck, I—” His good hand scuffed across his shorn skull. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
The ice melted, taking the last of his energy to fight with it. Zed didn’t know if Flick would prop him up again, so he stepped over to the bulkhead and braced his back against it as he slid to a sitting position. Psychologically, it wasn’t a good position to continue an argument—but he didn’t care. He was done anyway.
“I’m just trying to…to minimize the hurt I leave behind me,” he said softly, looking up at Flick. “I know you want to believe there’s some magic solution out there—” he talked over Flick’s strangled protest, “—but there isn’t. There isn’t, Felix. And pulling my family into this clusterfuck is just…it’s going to hurt a lot more people than just them. Can you understand that? If Dad gets it in his head to go up against the AEF, that’s going to hurt Anatolius Industries and all our workers, and maybe other people too, I don’t know.”
Flick settled onto the floor beside him, their shoulders touching. “When are you ever going to let the big picture go in favor of looking after yourself?”
“Never.” Zed let out a sigh and leaned his head back against the wall. He didn’t look down when he felt Flick’s head resting on his shoulder. He just welcomed it.
“I’m not ready,” he admitted softly.
Not ready to be done. Not ready to give up Flick. Not ready for whatever came next.
A soft noise escaped Flick and he shook his head against Zed’s shoulder. “Neither am I.”
*
“Trying to reconfigure those circuits with your mind?”
Felix almost jumped. Instead, a twitch traveled the length of his frame, starting at his eyelids and ending somewhere around his knees. “Huh?”
Elias tipped his head toward the half-finished web of wire covering the mold of his left hand.
Turning his gaze back to the glove, Felix studied it for a moment, still blinking as if he’d just emerged from a dream.
“Everything all right?”
Felix answered with a shake of his head.
Elias drew closer, his caution warranted. They both knew Felix’s moods could be unpredictable and savage. Felix held up his hands, showing Elias the bruised and abraded knuckles on both. “S’okay, I already beat something up.”
“Jesus, Fix.” Elias took his left hand gently in his and studied the damage. “What happened?”
Felix closed his eyes. “He’s…” Darkness didn’t hide the truth. Opening his eyes again, Felix sought the compassion he needed in Elias’s expression. “He’s losing it.”
Extracting his hand from Elias’s grasp, Felix glanced at the wall he’d used as a very unsatisfactory target. The pitted and stained metal looked the same as ever, but his knuckles were a mess. With Zed sleeping in their quarters, the weighted bag Felix kept in the corner had been unavailable, and while Zed needed undisturbed rest, Felix had needed an outlet. So he chose that wall, and the memory of what else had happened there, of him holding Zed so intimately, Zed’s confession that he’d Zoned with his climax, had driven him to nearly break his hands. It was stupid, but sometimes life felt equally
stupid.
Elias caught his arm and tugged him away from the workbench. “C’mon, let’s get Ness to clean up your knuckles and then we’ll talk about what we can do for Zed.”
“He’s losing time, Eli.”
“Losing…”
“Zoning.”
“Where is he now?”
“Sleeping, I think. For all I know, he could be Zoning. Fuck, I don’t know if he’s present half the time when I talk to him anymore. He’s always so thinky, you know? His mind never stops.”
Another twitch caught him, head to toe. Felix realized it was a shiver when his scalp continued to creep afterward. For all that Zed’s predicament sucked, the idea that his brilliant mind might be affected was almost the worst part. Almost. Felix was selfish enough to admit that losing his lover hurt more. It felt as though Zed was abandoning him all over again, except this time, instead of stepping onto a shuttle as he had after graduation, following his future with the AEF, Zed would fall away from him in small, jagged increments.
Pain flared across his abused knuckles as he tried to curl his hands into fists. Never had he felt so powerless, not even when locked deep beneath the surface of Isroth, subject to the whim of his stin captors.
“Well…shit.” Elias looked as if he might pull him into a hug. Felix leaned away, afraid he’d break down in such an embrace. Lose his stuffing, his strength. He needed to be strong now, stronger than ever before. He had to be all Zed needed him to be.
“Do you think we should call his family?”
“I don’t know.” He wanted to, but going against Zed’s wishes seemed cruel, given the circumstances.
“I know Zed isn’t hot on the idea, but they’ve got resources.”
Carefully, Felix pulled his arm out of Elias’s grasp. “They have. And connections. Thing is, Zed might be right. If the AEF can’t support the Dreamweaver folks, then maybe no one can. It’s not a question of resources, but knowledge.” He put his hands to the sides of his head and pressed his ears, frustrated by the lack of curls to tug. “How could they put all their time into creating tools they didn’t know how to fix…” Because Project Dreamweaver had been a desperate ploy. Humanity’s last hope of turning the tide of war. Now the AEF didn’t need their tools anymore.