Tens of Draeken were on their knees haphazardly holding up their bare hands while trying to regain their balance. Stun blasts came from all directions as each of the four doors to the room were knocked in by squads at precisely the same time.
If the soldiers hadn’t been so well trained, they would’ve run the risk of knocking out each other in the crossfire, but Roden and Nalea had provided a clear blueprint of the stadium-style room. Everyone knew exactly where to fire. Low and center.
Nalea glanced around and frowned. “I don’t see Otas!” she yelled out to Roden, who rushed toward a corner of the room. He didn’t seem overly surprised and didn’t slow to double check that the com-tecs and guardsmen were down. Roden yanked an unconscious Draeken off a chair stationed at a computer screen, dropping the man to the floor. He typed furiously at the keyboard. Nalea came to a stop at his side, her breath coming in pants.
“Can you get to him?” Apolo asked, coming up to Roden’s other side.
“Of course.”
A click and a whir, and Nalea glanced up to see a stairwell open leading underground.
Suvaste.
She’d been in this room a dozen times and had never seen this before.
“Squad Alpha, with me!” he yelled behind him, then lifted his wrist-com. “Squad Echo, heads up. You’ve got company coming your way.” He lunged forward to the stairwell. Nalea rushed to keep up as they entered the belly of the base.
The hallway was narrow and long, a straight shot under the base. “Could he have escaped with the barrier still up?” she called out.
Roden shook his head. “The barrier would have gone below the surface a good fifty feet. He can’t be more than several seconds ahead of us.”
Her hand flew to her chest. Her heart pounded. Otas could set off her disjunctor at any time, and she feared his plan all along was to detonate her neck-charge when she’d be standing close to Roden.
She kept pace a few steps behind Roden as he led their squad in a sprint, past evenly spaced stark lighting. Keeping her distance, if the thing blew, it would only take her. The tunnel had no turns or doors, only curves until it came to a lone stairwell with Hillas’s doppelganger standing on it.
She gasped, pushing herself against the wall, separating herself from the rest of her squad as much as possible.
One of his guards — whose tattooed wings matched those of Meyt — was peeking through a slit in the floor above them, likely watching Sommers’s squads and timing their chance for escape. The other two guardsmen heard or saw the incoming squad at the same time. They raised their weapons at the same time Roden and Nalea did, along with the sounds of weapons of their squad raising behind her.
“Tucking tail and running? How
noble
of you.” Roden sneered.
Otas jerked around, face red, and shook a bandaged fist. “I must survive. Our people are lost without me.”
Roden belted out a laugh. “You seriously overestimate your value, Otas.” He inhaled. “There was a time I would’ve followed Hillas to death. But that time is long past. And you’re less than a shadow of that man. You’d be the demise of our people. And that I can’t allow.”
“Surrender, imposter,” Ace exclaimed from her left. “You are surrounded. There’s no way out.”
Otas’s gaze jerkily scanned the squad. He’d lost and knew it. Then his eyes honed in on Roden. No, not true. He was looking beyond Roden and at her. His mouth opened, and then closed.
When Nalea realized his intent, she backed up a step. “Take him down now!” she screamed.
Roden yelled out something indistinguishable.
Everything and nothing happened at once. Roden rushed her with a blade in his hand. She tucked her head and dove to the floor, but found herself yanked back. She felt a cold slice across her neck followed by the brightest, loudest explosion.
Blinded and deaf, she fell to the ground. Excruciating pain tore at her neck. She screamed, but no sound came out. Gasped for air but nothing filled her lungs. She fell back, clawing at her throat, choking to death.
The silent blackness was smothering. Then. Nothing.
Nalea came to consciousness with a gasp. Throbbing agony was everywhere. Her neck was a red-hot pin cushion, air turning to fire as it passed through her throat. She bolted forward, only to be shoved back down. Her mind fought to make sense of what happened, but the world around her was muted, as though she was entangled in grasses, caught swirling underwater in one of the hot springs of the Golran Sea.
As her vision came back into focus, she found Apolo kneeling over her. Sweat beaded his forehead as he leaned over her. He wiped his wet forehead with the back of a bloody hand before pressing it again to her neck. This time she felt the pressure and low tingle of energy through his palms.
Details seeped back into her mind as her healing wound burned and itched. They were on a mission to find Otas. But then …
The disjunctor.
She reached up but Apolo slapped her hand away. “Not until I get you stabilized.”
Frowning, she moved her head.
Suvaste
, her neck
hurt
. “I’m alive?” The words so rough and scratchy, she didn’t recognize her own voice.
“Because you’re incredibly lucky,” Apolo said as he pressed harder onto her neck. She coughed, fighting to breathe through the pressure. Her mouth tasted of iron.
The scene replayed. If she hadn’t been there, they could’ve taken down Otas without any injuries. She’d put them all at risk. “My fault,” she coughed out. “Otas. The mission … ”
Apolo shushed her. “Later.”
Her skin continued to tingle as it pulled his energy to heal her wound. It was a natural ability of her people and required no conscious effort on her own. It worked much the same way as the
tahren
bond. Sephians were more connected to living energy than other races they’d met.
Making only the smallest movements, she took in the scene around her. Most of the squad had disappeared. Otas was nowhere to be seen. Wync was bent over someone several feet away. It was another Draeken — she could tell by the wings. Wings covered in soot and blood, but underneath she recognized the tattoos.
No!
She reached out weakly. “
Roden
… ”
“Don’t worry about him right now,” Apolo said, his voice a bit too gentle. “Not until I get your wound sealed.” He glanced over to Roden and lifted his wrist-com. “We need med-tecs down here now, godsdammit!”
She watched as Wync worked on his commander. Her
tahren.
No movement. His back to her, his wings draped lifelessly across the floor. Her jaw clamped shut so hard her teeth hurt. She clenched her eyes closed against the fury boiling in her blood. She’d been wrong for demanding to come on this mission, but what the hells had he been thinking? When Roden came at her with his knife, her gut reaction was to defend herself, but she’d quickly realized he was about to do something very heroic … and very stupid. Why couldn’t he have — just once — done something that didn’t surprise her? If he’d let her die, then he wouldn’t be lying a pool of his own blood right now, and he could’ve had plenty of time to take down Otas.
When Apolo finally pulled away, she brought her hand to her throat. Her fingers traced a long, thick line of soft scar tissue. Hyper-sensitive skin made a curved path across the side of her neck. By the feel of it, Roden had nearly decapitated her when he went for the pendant, cutting her jugular wide open by the look of the blood around her.
She pulled herself slowly to a sitting position and the world spun, which, with the amount of blood soaking her clothes and the floor, was no surprise.
“Careful,” Apolo said, holding her steady, although he didn’t look much better. He looked positively drained, and she wondered how much energy he’d used up helping her heal.
“Otas?” she asked, her voice like sandpaper, but slightly improved from before.
“The coward used the blast as a diversion. The rest of the squad followed him. No word yet.”
Clumsily, she got to her knees.
Apolo put an arm around her. “You need to rest. The med-tecs will be here soon enough.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said as much to convince herself as Apolo. “Help Roden.”
His lips tightened. It was all the look she needed as she started to scramble toward the Draeken. Through blood and sharp debris, she crawled. Her palm slipped, and she went down. Apolo’s strong arms enveloped her, and she used him to steady herself as she crossed those long several feet to Roden’s wingtip. Reaching out, she touched the smooth velvet skin. Without the disjunctor, she should now feel his emotions, pain, something. But … nothing. No reaction.
With a whimper, she crawled around him and collapsed on an elbow. “You idiot,” she muttered, stroking a lifeless wing, wishing that he was Sephian so that he could pull her energy to heal. Tears fell down her face as she waited for his snide response. But none came.
He was lying on his side. Dozens of bleeding cuts from shrapnel covered his body. Fortunately, none of them looked too deep. But, Draeken couldn’t heal from energy, like Sephians could. They needed medical care. Worse, they got things like infections and illness, which made them so completely different. And there was so much blood.
Wync had bandaged Roden’s arm, where crimson blood already soaked the gray cloth. His chest was moving, slowly, raggedly. He was unconscious. He was so deep, maybe even in a coma, she couldn’t feel any of his pain, and she craved to feel him, no matter how much it hurt.
Despite everything he’d done, despite everything she’d told herself to feel, he’d driven himself into her heart and soul. And it wasn’t because of the bond, although it helped by introducing doubts into her mind about Roden. He wore his mask so well that even with the bond, it’d taken her some time to acknowledge the fact. Roden Zyll wore a mask to hide a very important fact that had nothing to do with being Kreed as well. The mask he wore hid the fact that he was a hero.
Exactly
like a hero of legend.
She reached out and gingerly brushed her fingertips down his cheek. His skin was still warm, but he showed no sign of reaction. She plucked out a tiny shard of shrapnel from above his eye. A bead of blood took its place. She reached for another, only to be pulled back. With a whimper, she jerked free, but Roden was suddenly surrounded by med-tecs, or medics, as humans called them. So focused on him, she hadn’t even heard them arrive.
She leaned back and then noticed the other Draeken lying near him, clearly dead. It was Elng — one of Hillas’s devout guardsmen. It looked like he’d taken the brunt of the blast. A messy, rough-edged hole burned into his torso, and a glint of metal caught the light. A piece of the pendant — with the Draeken royal symbol — still lay embedded in his chest. Her disjunctor.
Roden had pulled it off her and tried to throw it at Otas. Elng must’ve died protecting his false leader. She shook her head. “Why?” she asked, but no one answered her.
The medics moved fast loading Roden and then her onto stretchers. She tried to reach out for him, but found herself strapped down. She fought her restraints all the way back to the waiting ship. The medics set her next to Roden, and she was finally able to pull a hand free. She reached out and grabbed Roden’s uninjured arm, and she refused to let go the entire flight, even after they injected something that made her world spin and fade to darkness.
Nalea awoke to silence and the glow of the planet’s single, pale moon illuminating the room through large windows. Pushing herself into a sitting position, something tugged on her arm. Glancing over, she saw a bag holding some kind of clear liquid that had a long, narrow tube connecting it to her arm. With a frown, she tugged off the thing and came to her feet. Sienna had called it an
ivy
, or something like that, though it bore no resemblance to a plant.
It took a moment before the floor felt solid beneath her feet. She felt for the disjunctor to find it still gone.
Free at last.
A curtain enclosed her in a small area. Silently, she slipped between two fabric privacy panels, finding herself in a large room.
Definitely a human medical facility.
The walls were drab with an overabundance of white. Cloth, paint, even the strange long shirt she wore bore the same lack of color. And, unlike the med rooms she knew, small lamps were lit on tables throughout the large area.
Dozens of beds lined the two long walls. Several held occupants, some even with wings. But none held the one she sought. Barefoot, she marched out of the room and into the brighter hallway. Wincing, she covered her eyes and glanced in both directions. Two humans, a male and a female, each wearing a long white jacket, were walking from one direction. Upon seeing her, they paused. “Can we help you?”
She shook her head and turned away. She felt their gazes at her back for a moment and waited until they finally went into the room she’d just come from. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on something deep within herself. Focused on sensations, searching for anything that didn’t originate from her.
There
. Nearly too weak for her to catch, but the slightest sense of
bothness
was all she needed.
She sighed, and the tension in her muscles melted.
He’s alive!
Nothing else mattered.
Following the transparent thread, she turned left. Her footsteps slapped the floor as her walk progressed into a jog, then a run, as she went past several doors. Coming to a hard stop, she paused, turned, and returned to a door she’d just passed.
She pushed through the door to find a much smaller room with four beds, and only two occupants. She stepped to the bed, and her heart clenched. Roden lay on the bed, his eyes closed. More of those
ivies
hung from poles off to his side. Machines with electronic readings sat on a cart by his head. One machine made a recurring beeping sound. He’d been cleaned up, his wounds bandaged. Tubes went into his nose and arms. His long hair flowed down the pillow behind him. His wings fanned out behind him, his bed twice the size of hers to accommodate Draeken physiology.