by Lolita Lopez
All around her, there was collateral damage from the explosion. Ceiling panels dangled precariously. Smoke filled the air. Pipes had fractured. Torn wires sparked. She dodged each hazard as the bomb’s timer continued to tick away the seconds. She looked down and winced at the sight of one minute and seventeen seconds remaining.
Up ahead, she spotted the cargo bay and kicked up her pace, sprinting with every ounce of energy she had left in her battered body. She slapped the door button but nothing happened. Realizing it had been damaged, she set the case on the floor and growled as she tugged on the heavy door with all her might. It slid open just enough for her to squeeze through with the case.
She rushed inside the dimly lit the cargo bay. It wasn’t very big, maybe forty feet by forty feet. The pale green glow of emergency lights powered by batteries illuminated the space. There were sealed bins of medical waste stored all the way to the ceiling. Many of them had fallen over in the blast, spilling out used needles and empty vials. In the far corner, she spotted a familiar device. It was the broken hyperbaric chamber that had necessitated her traveling to the Mercy for treatment.
She found the control panel just to the side of the door. When she raced over to it, her heart sank. It had been damaged in the explosion. The screen was broken, and there was no power to the unit. She slapped it angrily. “No!”
Seeing the seconds ticking by on the bomb’s timer, she glanced frantically around the room. Her eyes lit up on the emergency ejection button. She had read about the system for ejecting damaged sections of the ship in the event of an attack. Each section could be sealed off from the ship, maintaining hull integrity and giving the ship a chance to stay in the sky until repairs could be made.
She glanced back at the door she had squeezed through to get into the cargo bay. There was an emergency lever to close and lock the door from the inside. She looked back at the emergency ejection button as a wave of crushing sorrow overwhelmed her.
Was there really no other way?
An image of Cipher looking down at her as they cuddled in bed, his strong hands stroking her face as he gazed at her with such tender adoration tore at her heart. The days she had spent with him had been the happiest of her life. She had finally found the one person in the entire universe who liked her just as she was. She had found her life partner, her mate.
I love him.
I love him so much.
It was that love she had for him that spurred her into action. She had one final act of courage left in her.
She put the bomb and gas canister on the floor. The timer had ticked down to twenty-eight seconds. It was now or never.
Crying and shaking, she marched to the broken door and gritted her teeth as she pulled it shut. Her bloody feet slipped on the slick floor as she tugged with every bit of muscle she had. It slid into place, and she reached for emergency lock handle. She had just started to push it down, irrevocably locking herself inside when someone appeared in the small window there.
“Brook!” With panic in his eyes, Cipher slapped the window with his bare hand. “Brook! Open the door! Now!”
She stared up at him, taking in his handsome face and committing it to memory. Those dark eyes, the strong line of his nose, his square jaw. She wished more than anything that she could kiss him one more time. She wished she could hold his hand and tell him how much he meant to her.
Praying he would understand her actions as a vow of love, she forced the emergency lever down all the way. It locked with a clang, and he reacted with shock on the other side of the door. He started to beat on the glass. “Brook! No! No! Open the door! OPEN THE DOOR!”
She placed her dirty, bloody hand on the glass as if to stroke his face. With tears clouding her vision, she said, “I love you.”
His eyes widened, and he touched the glass where her fingers were. “I love you.”
Crying harder now, she nodded and stepped away from the door. Unable to look at him a moment longer, she turned her back and ran. Her gaze flitted to the timer on the bomb. Thirteen seconds.
She scrabbled over the bins of medical waste and reached the emergency ejection button. Not allowing herself to hesitate or second-guess her decision, she lifted the clear cover and pressed it. It took more force than she had expected, probably to make sure it was never hit accidentally, and then it locked into place. Instantly, the emergency lights in the room shifted to red. A ringing alarm sounded.
I don’t want to die.
She wanted to live. She wanted to grow old with Cipher. She wanted to experience all the wonderful delights the universe had to offer.
As the venting doors started to hiss behind her, her focus shifted to the broken hyperbaric chamber. An idea struck. If it still sealed, she might be able to survive the explosive depressurization. Maybe. Possibly.
It’s a chance.
She ran toward it, clambering over the medical bins and stabbing herself on discarded needles. She didn’t care. She ignored the pain. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting into that chamber.
She hefted the lid and scrambled inside, grabbing the handles on the inside of the lid and tugging it closed. She slid one lock into place, sealing the lid, before the venting door was blown from its hinges.
She was thrown forward in the chamber, smacking her head on the clear lid. Screaming with fear, she moved the second lock into place as the chamber started to skid across the floor. Medical waste bins whizzed out of the hole and into space. The bomb and gas canister flew by the chamber and bounced off the frame of the missing door before being sucked out into the cold emptiness.
Then the chamber was flying. She screamed again, even louder, and wondered if this was it. Something slammed into the chamber from behind, probably another piece of discarded equipment, and she rocked forward and barely avoided knocking her face on the lid. She started to panic as a strange sensation gripped her lungs.
There’s no air.
I’m going to suffocate.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Brook!” Cipher beat his hand against the window as she turned away from him and scrambled over the medical waste bins to the emergency ejection button. “BROOK!”
When he tried to grab the handle, strong arms wrapped around him and jerked him away from the door. He kicked and snarled, trying to free himself as another set of arms grabbed him. “Let me go! Fucking let me go! Brook!”
“It’s too late!” Raze shouted, holding him back from the door with Venom’s help. “It’s too late.”
“No! We can get the door open! We can get her out!” He struggled against his friends, hating them for keeping him away from her. “Brook! BROOK!”
A blast rocked the ship as the doors were blown free. Desperate, he bit down on Raze’s arm, and the boss hissed as he let go. Cipher shook off Venom’s hold and rushed back to the door. He pressed his face to the glass, letting his eyes adjust to the red emergency lighting. Everything in the room was being sucked out of the hole.
“She got into the tube,” Torment said, his finger pressed to his earbud. “Savage watched her get into it before the door blew. She’s inside it still.”
“In space?” Cipher asked dumbly. “Is it pressurized?”
“I don’t know,” Torment admitted. “If the seal holds, she has a chance until...”
“Until she suffocates from the lack of oxygen,” Cipher finished. Squeezing his eyes shut, he couldn’t help but imagine her gasping for air and choking to death while clawing at the lid of the chamber.
“Ci,” Raze said softly and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did all you could.”
He roughly shrugged off Raze’s hand. “No, I didn’t. I promised I would keep her safe.”
“She made her choice,” Torment insisted. “She chose courage and bravery. She made the hardest decision any person can make. She chose to sacrifice herself for you. For me. For everyone else on this ship.”
Cipher’s eyes burned, and he blinked angrily. “She can’t die. I can’t lose her.�
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In a move that shocked him, Torment gripped the back of his neck and drew him into an embrace. “I’m sorry, Ci. I really am.”
A wave of devastating grief tore the air right out of his lungs. A sound he didn’t know he was capable of making escaped his throat. He clung to Torment as he unleashed a ragged sob that came from the very depths of his soul.
Over and over, he replayed the moment she had touched the glass and spoken her love for him. He hadn’t been able to hear her voice very well through the glass, but he could see in her eyes how much she loved him.
As much as I love her.
It was a painful blow to lose her just moments after declaring their love.
“What?” Raze said harshly. “Say again. Your transmission is breaking up.” He paused. “Where?” he shouted. “We’re on our way.”
Raze snatched Cipher by the shirt and jerked him away from Torment. “She’s alive. Move!”
“What?” Cipher stumbled after Raze, his shirt still clenched in the boss’s hand. “How?”
“Hazard,” Raze said, starting to run. “He was approaching on a cargo flight when the first explosion happened. He saw the door blow and intercepted the chamber when he heard Savage’s call go out to all stations.”
“Hazard?” He repeated in shock, racing to keep up with Raze.
“That wild son of a bitch,” Raze remarked with a relieved laugh. “He’s the only who would be crazy enough to try a mid-air retrieval on a cargo ship.”
Cipher’s panic and grief gave way to such intense hope. Was she hurt? Was she still breathing? Had she inhaled any of the gas?
Please be alive.
He silently begged the universe over and over as he rushed through ship, following Raze with Venom just behind him. His legs were shaking from the adrenaline and the fear that Raze was wrong, that Hazard hadn’t grabbed the chamber and recovered her alive.
Please. Please. Please.
They burst into the medical bay with such force that the doors rocked on their tracks. A medic took one look at him and indicated the major trauma room at the rear of the hall. Cipher pushed by Raze and sprinted to the room.
“Hold on!” Stinger caught him before he could rush to the metal slab where she had been laid out by medics. Risk didn’t even look up as he treated her, his full focus on saving her life. “She’s alive. Cipher!” Stinger demanded his attention. “She’s alive. She’s a little banged up, but she’s alive.”
Cipher sagged with relief. His legs crumpled under him, and he dropped to the floor, slamming his knees against the ground. He didn’t even care about the pain. It felt good. It was a tiny bit of what his incredible, awe-inspiring mate had experienced tonight.
Stinger squeezed his shoulder. “You’re a lucky man, Cipher. She’s a hell of a woman.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “She is.”
*
Hours later, so late he couldn’t decide if it was still night or early morning, he sat at Brook’s bedside as she endured yet another breathing treatment. She grimaced behind the mask, holding it to her face with one hand and clinging to him with the other. Their gazes met briefly, and she smiled at him. He smiled right back, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. “I love you.”
She laughed into the mask. He had been saying it to her every few minutes since she had awoken in the trauma bay. Stinger had been right. She was banged up. Both of her feet were covered in a skin healing gel and wrapped in bandages. The medics had pulled a small pile of metal slivers from her feet before cleaning and treating them. She had a bump on the back of her head, and a gash on the hairline up front as well as a mild concussion. Her hands were a mess of cuts and scrapes. She had to take two bags of IV meds to protect her against any viruses or bacteria she might have been exposed to through the used needle sticks.
But it was her lungs, her damaged but healing lungs, that had saved her life. In the most bizarre twist of fate, she had gotten so used to a lower concentration of oxygen that she had been able to survive longer in the broken chamber than a healthy person.
It seemed almost poetic in a way. Her hardscrabble life as a child miner had all but saved her tonight. From the bombs she had dismantled to the climbing and crawling through tight spaces to the quick-thinking that convinced her to take the gas to a space vent, she had used all the skills of her childhood to save everyone on the ship.
“They’re calling you a hero,” he said as she finished her breathing treatment and handed the nebulizer to the medic who had come to check on her.
She rolled her eyes and coughed. Shaking her head, she protested, “I’m no hero. If anything, I’m the biggest dummy on this ship.” She gestured to her battered body. “What the hell was I thinking? I’m not a soldier!”
“And yet you kept pace with Terror and saved everyone,” he insisted.
“Has he woken up yet?” She glanced at the long window that looked out across the infirmary. Directly across the hall, on the other side of the medic station, Terror had been admitted for his injuries sustained in the explosion. He had a broken leg, some cracked ribs and quite a few gashes, but he was alive.
“I don’t know.” With a wry smile, he said, “When he does, we’ll probably all hear about it.”
“You should go down to the shops and get him some oranges if they have them.”
He thought she was joking. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll go down in the morning when they open.”
“Thank you.” She cleared her throat and made a face at the taste of the nebulizer treatment clinging to her mouth. “What about the other one? Pierce?”
“That man has the worst luck in the entire universe. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be twenty-percent original parts soon. If they don’t force him into early retirement, I’ll be shocked.”
“Poor guy.” She frowned. “I hope he recovers quickly. Being stabbed like that has to be awful.” She looked back toward the window. “What about Chance?”
“Still in his medically-induced coma as far as I know.” Cipher bent down to unzip his boots. “I’m not sure how things will shake out for him or his family.”
“Or hers,” she remarked. “If her family or his were working with Reckless and the Splinters, his whole life will be flipped upside down.”
“If he didn’t know,” Cipher replied, standing and toeing off his boots. “He might have been in on it all along.”
She shook her head. “No, he’s not that kind of man.”
“You hardly know him.”
“True,” she allowed, “but I saw his face when he talked about Nika. When we were on the Mercy, he was upset on my behalf and tried to stop Reckless from being so nasty. He wouldn’t have done that if he was secretly some racist Splinter nutbag.”
“I guess.” Cipher decided to reserve his judgment until there were more known facts. He closed the door of her hospital room and activated the privacy setting on the window. With the glass frosted, he peeled out of his uniform shirt and undershirt and took all his gear from his pockets. Exhausted, he tugged his belt free and turned toward the bed where Brook had wiggled over to make room for him. “Ready for bed?”
“Only if you come over here,” she said, holding out her hand. “I need you.”
“Not as much as I need you,” he replied and slid into the hospital bed.
“Is it a competition?” she asked with a little laugh.
“Maybe,” he said, sneaking in a kiss. Pulling back, he gazed into her beautiful eyes and felt emotion well up inside him. His voice cracked as he said, “When I thought I lost you...”
Unable to continue, he dropped his gaze. She traced his lower lip with her thumb and ducked her head until she captured his attention. “I know.”
It was a simple statement, just two words, but it meant so much. She knew exactly what he had felt because she felt the same thing. It must have been the hardest thing in the world for her to choose death to sav
e him and the rest of the ship.
“You are everything to me,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”
“I love you.” She pressed her soft lips to his. Smiling, she confessed, “It makes me feel giddy to say it.”
“Same,” he admitted as he slipped his arm under her shoulders. Leaning back against the pillow, he sighed and enjoyed the peace of their quiet, intimate moment. “We’re going on vacation,” he decided rather suddenly. “As soon as I can get you out of here, we’re going to Blue Shores. You. Me. Sunshine. A beach. Lots of water.”
She drew her initials on the skin of his chest. “I think we’ve earned it.”
“Hell yes we have,” he agreed. “Damn war council should pay for it,” he grumbled. “A little rest-and-relaxation stipend after the way you risked your life twice to help us.”
“We’ll be lucky if they don’t send me the bill for blowing a hole in their perfectly good ship.” She laughed and snuggled in closer. “You think they might give me a medal? I could hook a medal onto my new collar.” She glanced up at him with a saucy smile. “Maybe then you can call me sir.”
Cipher snorted and kissed her forehead, being careful to avoid her stitches. “I’ll call you whatever you want, baby girl.”
She giggled and sighed happily. After a few moments of stroking his bare chest, she quietly confessed, “I want a baby, Cipher.”
Surprised, he glanced down at her. “Like right now?”
She swatted his chest. “Be serious!”
“I am being serious.” He gestured toward the door. “If you want one right now, I need to go lock that door.”
She laughed as he nuzzled her neck. “Not right now right now, but soon.”
“Little one, you just say the word and I’m there.”
She placed her small hand on his neck. “Promise?”
He took her hand in his and threaded their fingers together. Hoping she could read the love in his adoring gaze, he vowed, “Promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Two