Shards of Hope

by Nalini Singh

  "Water first," she said, her voice coming out a croak as she managed to sit up after bracing her hand on her pillow--which turned out to be Aden's thigh. He was warm under her touch and she didn't immediately break the contact. Being alone inside her head . . . it threatened to wake the feral, inhuman creature she'd once been, the one who had planned two murders and executed the plan so flawlessly that Justice had wanted to execute her.

  The fact she'd been seven years old at the time had been seen not as a mitigating factor but as an aggravating one.

  If the subject is capable of this level of violence at her current age, she will undoubtedly be a threat to society if allowed to grow to adulthood.

  That had been the conclusion of the joint PsyMed-Justice report done on her at the time, a report she'd accessed after she was an adult. They had been right in a sense; left alone, she would've no doubt become even more violent and out of control. It was Arrow training that had taught her discipline . . . and Aden who had taught her that she had value beyond her ability to mete out violence.

  "Here."

  Taking the water bottle from Aden in her spare hand, the fingers of her other one curling into the taut muscle of his thigh, she drank the whole bottle. "We'll have to get more."

  "The weather's going to make collecting water a nonissue."

  Eyes acclimated enough to the darkness that she could make him out, she saw Aden reaching inside the pack for more water. "No, not just now." Putting down the empty bottle, she lifted her hand to touch the incision site, but he tugged it away before she could make contact.

  "It's out," he told her after releasing her wrist. "Don't mess with it. Your head?"

  "As if there's a live jackhammer in there." The final sparks of the fireworks finally faded away to leave her conscious of the sound of thunderous rain outside. No wonder Aden wasn't worried about their water supply. "How long was I out?"

  "I don't have a timepiece but I estimate three hours."

  "The chopper?"

  "I heard it circling maybe an hour after you went down, and just before the rain got this bad and the wind turned into a gale."

  So they were safe enough for now. Their pursuers would be idiotic to try to track them in this terrain in the dark in such inclement weather. On the flip side--"They have to know we'll have holed up."

  Aden nodded. "We'll have to be ready to move as soon as the weather clears up enough that the chopper can take off again." Lifting an index finger, he made her follow it from left to right, then took her through a battery of other tests to check for any lingering impairment. "You're physically fine."

  "No PsyNet link," she said, answering his unasked question. "I instinctively did a telepathic scan when I woke and the pain was severe enough that I think a second attempt could cause me to black out again."

  The aloneness was a huge thing inside her, stretching and growing and swallowing her up until soon all that remained would be the rage that had burned in her as a child. "We should do your surgery now." Not only was her mental state unstable, her abdomen didn't feel right. "I think I might still be bleeding internally."

  Expression grim, Aden got her to pull up her blood-matted top and palpated her abdomen. "Yes," he said afterward. "I clearly didn't find all the damage."

  "It's not your fault." She put the top--plus the sweater--back down and zipped up his leather jacket, then the waterproof one she wore over it. "The fact you've kept me alive this long is a credit to your skill." He was only meant to be a field surgeon and medic, but Aden had never been "only" anything. "Let me pay back the favor. This weather makes it likely they'll press the kill switch the next time they can get up in the air. No point leaving you alive if they have doubts about being able to get to you."

  "There's just enough charge left in the last laser that you should be able to unseal the bone following the lines of the original surgery. You'll have to do the rest using a scalpel."

  She stared at him. "Aden I'm a combat telepath trained in hand-to-hand fighting and various weapons. I know how to slit a throat using any knife at hand, but I don't know how to do complex surgery." It would've been difficult enough with the laser. "I'll butcher you." End up with hands drenched in blood again.

  Her mind flickered with frozen snapshots of her palms stained a rust red that had an orange tinge, her arms splattered with flecks of brain matter. Each mental photograph was from the point of view of the child she'd been, the ground below far closer and her bare feet wet with the blood in which she'd walked as she brought down the pipe over and over again.

  Small, smeared footprints surrounded the bodies.

  Gritting her teeth, she slammed shut a mental door that hadn't opened since the day she perfected her shields. That screaming, bloodied girl was gone. Dead. "I can't do it."

  "You have to." Aden dragged the daypack closer and pulled out the medkit.

  "Aden," she began, fingers still curled tightly into his thigh.

  His eyes locked with hers in the darkness inside the cocoon he'd created for them. "I'm dead otherwise." An inescapable truth. "As you said, I'd make the same choice."

  To die attempting to fight their captors rather than allow them to blow up his brain from a distance.

  Breathing in and out, she tried not to hear the scrabbling nails of the murderous ghost she'd put back in her cell, and said, "Tell me how."

  *

  HUNDREDS of miles away, another meeting was taking place, the attendees hooked in via comm screens set to audio only, except for the one that showed the man in charge of the operation to retrieve Aden Kai.

  "A much bigger storm is scheduled to hit within the next hour." His jaw moved as he chewed. "We'll have a roughly five-minute window in about ten minutes--the current front is moving away from us and the real storm's not yet arrived."

  "Chances of retrieval?"

  "Low. I've got people on the ground but they're trapped on either side of swollen rivers and streams, or hampered by low visibility." A foul dark brown stream coming out of his mouth, his spit aimed at the ground. "We can take the chopper up in the window between the smaller storm and the bigger one. What do you want me to do? Search or eliminate?"

  "Please wait." Muting their side of the feed so he wouldn't be able to hear the discussion, the attendees spoke among themselves, their voices distorted by technology. The decision was unanimous: Aden Kai could have been a serious asset, one that would've significantly accelerated their long-term plans, but they couldn't risk him getting out alive.

  "Eliminate," they told the search leader. "Take the chopper up as soon as it clears and sweep the area while emitting the destruct signal."

  That signal had a range of two miles. The leader of the Arrows would be dead long before the second storm hit.

  *

  BLOCKING out the noise of the howling wind and the pounding rain, her heavy rainproof jacket off so she could move more easily, Zaira knelt behind Aden. He was taller than her but he'd taken a cross-legged position and bent forward so she could work on him.

  She gripped the penlight in her teeth, shining the beam onto the crudely sealed incision on the back of his head, and after cleaning it as he'd told her, picked up the laser and cut along the lines of the previous surgery. Aden had instructed her to do it three times, going a fraction deeper each time. The laser died midway through her third set of cuts.

  "You should be able to use the tip of the scalpel to lever up the bone," Aden said with no pain in his tone, though she knew from experience that this had to hurt. "The previous seal is weak enough now that it should break."

  Taking the disinfected blade, Zaira followed his instructions. Any hesitation could mean the difference between getting the implant out in time or not, the difference between Aden's life or his death, so she put her mind into the icy-calm state where nothing could reach her and used a knife on the one person she'd sworn to protect, to never harm.

  "Bone's out," she said around the penlight.

  Blood welled and she had to wash it o
ut using the disinfectant. "I can see the suture in the membrane."

  "Cut it open--use a delicate touch."

  She made the cut before she could overthink things. "Done."

  Aden's shoulders locked, his breathing rough, but he said, "You should see the implant."

  "It's not there." She made sure the beam was shining right at the wound, and that the blood had been cleaned out. A glint caught her eye. "Wait. I can see the very edge of what might be one of the 'legs' you described."

  "They did the surgery in a rush. The implant may have moved." Aden released a harsh exhale. "You'll have to widen the hole in the bone using the blade."

  The ice threatened to crack, her stomach churning. A single tiny error and she could stop his breathing. But if she didn't, she reminded herself, then the cowards who'd done this would kill him from a distance.

  "Get ready," she said from around the penlight and began to saw at the bone.

  The disposable scalpel bent a minute later and she had to switch to a barbaric-looking hunting knife. Disinfecting it, she continued on, having to clear away blood multiple times, the knife doing far more damage than a laser would have.

  She couldn't hold on to the ice. This wasn't some random target. This was Aden. And she was hurting him, blood slick on her thin surgical gloves.

  "Zaira."

  Realizing she'd frozen, she slammed the memory door shut again and continued to slowly, painfully widen the hole in his skull.

  Sweat trickled down her temple but she kept her hand steady. This was Aden's life. She would not fail. Putting down the knife after removing an inch-by-inch square of bone, she washed out the blood using the disinfectant because they had no other sterile liquid. Aden went rigid but stayed conscious. "Do you see it?" he gritted out.

  A glimmering square of metal in among the flesh and blood. "Yes," she said just as there was a tiny flicker of blue at the site, an electrical impulse passing through the device.

  "This'll be the hardest part," he said, his breathing rough. "You can't laser through the legs so you'll have to use the tip of the scalpel to lift them up." He asked to see the bent scalpel. "Yes," he said after she showed him. "The tip is still sharp and flat enough for it to work."

  It was like asking a giant to pick up a single fine sewing needle off a floor slippery with blood.

  But Zaira would do it. There was no other choice.

  "The rain's stopped."

  Zaira hadn't noticed, but now she felt the stunning quiet. No rain, no wind. The chopper would be in the air soon, their pursuers moving on the ground. It meant they, too, had to move, but she wasn't about to rush this and paralyze or kill Aden.

  She carefully disinfected the scalpel again using the near-empty bottle of disinfectant. She was just about to slip the angular and sharp tip under a metallic spider leg when she heard the faint, faraway echo of the chopper. Ignoring it, she went back to work . . . and suddenly the implant lit up, the electrical impulses turning it into an electric blue storm.

  Every muscle in Aden's body locked as the impulses started to snake up at rapid speed, going for his cerebral cortex. She didn't even think about it. Sliding the tip of the blade directly under the main part of the implant, she tore it off without finesse and threw it aside. "Aden? Aden!" He was bleeding badly, his head hanging forward.

  She washed out the wound with the last of the disinfectant and, with no way to repair the membrane, slotted in the pieces of bone she'd removed and slapped on a thick piece of gauze to soak up the blood while she tried to find a pulse in his neck. "Don't be dead," she said. "Don't be dead." It was a low, staccato mantra as she searched desperately for a pulse, her blood-slick fingers sliding over his skin. "Don't be dead, Aden." Don't leave me all alone. You promised I would never be alone again.

  Tearing off the gloves, she replaced the blood-soaked gauze and searched for a pulse again. Aden couldn't be dead. Aden was the squad's future. Without him, they'd crumble, fade away, break into a million pieces. "Don't be dead," she said again, and this time it was an order. "Wake up!"

  Thud.

  She halted, listened with her fingertips, and felt it again, the thud of his heart pumping blood. Removing her fingers from his throat, she quickly lifted the gauze and checked the state of the bleeding. Bad. There was nothing in the medkit to seal it up, so all she could do was tape a fresh gauze pad over the site and try to put pressure on the wound.

  It wasn't enough. He needed proper medical attention.

  Her abdomen cramped at the same time, pain shooting through her torso. Breathing past it, she found the second-to-last bottle of nutrient drink and, tilting Aden's body back toward her own so that his head was supported by her shoulder, dripped the enriched liquid into his mouth. When he didn't swallow, she stroked his throat. "Swallow, Aden, or I'll cut your throat and pour it straight in."

  There was little chance he could hear her, but he swallowed with the next stroke of her fingers, so she continued the action. "A little more. I need you conscious and able to walk." If necessary, she'd put his body against the tree behind her and kill anyone who came close, but he'd have a much higher chance of survival if she could get him farther from their pursuers.

  It took time to finish the bottle and the chopper got close to them more than once. If it came too close, the heat-seeking equipment would capture their images and betray their location, but the rain pounded down again just in time, the wind even stronger. So strong that it howled through the copse of trees, tearing apart their hideout in a matter of seconds and scattering their supplies.

  Chapter 8

  ZAIRA TURNED HER back into the wind, protecting Aden's face as the rain and the wind hit the leather jacket she wore. Realizing she couldn't afford to lose body heat through exposure, not if she was to get Aden to safety before her own body gave out, she tried to search for the larger rainproof jacket and could see nothing in the darkness and the rain. It was only when she shifted to better protect Aden that she realized she'd accidentally knelt on the jacket.

  Placing Aden's head very carefully on her thigh and making sure his hood was on, his jacket zipped up, she pulled on her own. She had to fight the wind to do it, water running from her drenched hair down her spine. That wasn't good, but hopefully the jacket would keep out the worst of it now. Pulling on her hood, she tied the drawstring under her chin tight before slipping on the gloves she'd stuffed into the pockets.

  Three hours she'd been out. If Aden was going to be unconscious that long, she had to come up with plan B, find some way to protect him from this vicious weather. She'd have to dig, she decided. Use her hands to make a shallow indentation where--no, the water would fill that up. If she lost consciousness and didn't keep his head up or keep the rain off his face, he could drown.

  Unable to sense his pulse through her thick gloves, she bent her face to Aden's, tried to feel his breath as she continued to consider and discard possible options. If only she could carry him, but he was too heavy. She might be able to create a litter, drag--

  "Zaira."

  Jerking up, she looked down at his closed eyelids, wondering if she was having an auditory hallucination as a result of the fragmentation caused by the aloneness, but then he lifted the thick, curling lashes so unexpected in the otherwise clean lines of his face. "Out?"

  She spoke against his ear so he'd hear her. "Yes, I got it out." When he tried to sit up, she helped him, leaning his back against a tree. "Keep your head down!" she said into his face, the rain and the wind loud around them. "I'm going to see if I can find any of our supplies!"

  "Line. Of. Sight." It was ground out between his teeth, and she saw more than heard the words.

  She understood regardless. "I won't go far!" It'd be easy to become turned around in this terrain and weather, lose one another.

  Crawling on her hands and knees in an effort to get below the wind, she banged her knee into the sharp corner of a metal object. The medkit. Immediately taking it back to Aden, she put it by his thigh. It held the implant
he'd taken out of her head; Zaira knew it was critical they protect that. Even if she and Aden didn't make it, if the squad found the implant, it would offer some answers.

  She protected the medkit with her body as she opened it to retrieve the last tiny bottle of concentrated nutrient drink. "You need strength," she said when Aden would've pushed it toward her. "I'm not leaving you and we need to move." This group of trees had appeared strong earlier, but the wind was all but pushing them over now, revealing their dangerously shallow roots. "I can't carry you. You're too damn big."

  As if in a period to her words, a tree not far from them crashed to the earth with a sound so loud it cut through the weather, the impact reverberating along the ground. Another tree fell soon afterward, snapped in half like a matchstick.

  "Quick," Aden ordered, and took the drink.

  Crawling forward again, in the direction of the wind, she found the now empty daypack plastered against a tree. The only other things she found were three solid energy bars trapped in the roots of a tree and, oddly enough, the penlight, which had become stuck against a large rock.

  She put the items in the pack, crawled back to Aden's side, and added the medkit to it. "Can you walk?"

  In answer, he levered himself up and seemed to find his balance after a shaky start. Getting up, she rose on her toes as he bent forward so they could speak. "The energy hit helped," he said. "My head's pounding, but I can function." Taking the daypack, he pulled it on, then slipped his arm around her waist. "Stay together!"

  She gripped the back of his jacket. "Go!"

  Another tree slammed to the earth only inches from them. It was no longer safe to stay here but heading out onto open ground left them brutally exposed to the elements. And those elements were in a punishing mood. Lightning lit up the sky in a jagged white-hot burst in the distance, thunder boomed, and each drop of rain hit like a tiny shard of ice, cutting at their faces and soaking everything not covered by the rainproof barrier of their jackets.

  Her combat pants had some built-in weather protection but nothing designed to deal with this kind of a storm. She could feel water trickling into her socks, knew her feet would be ice-cold before long. Aden had to be in the same situation. Cold, however, was a problem they'd handle when it became an issue. Right now, it was about making it to safe harbor, any safe harbor. They could not stay expos--