It was still the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
Holding the penlight clamped between his teeth again, he used the laser at the lowest possible setting to burn the “legs” off the implant. When the tiny metallic square didn’t fall away after all the legs were gone, he used the tip of the scalpel to lift it off. It stuck for a stubborn second and he held his breath at what could be a sign of further connections beneath, but then it was falling into his hand.
And Zaira was bleeding again.
Dropping the implant in the medkit, he said, “Disinfectant.” It was the only warning he could give her before he washed the blood out with the burning liquid—the brain might not technically feel pain, but the skin and muscle at the incision site would. He would’ve never done this had he been in an infirmary, but out here, the risk of a fatal infection through the open wound was too high.
He had to take the chance the disinfectant wouldn’t do further damage.
Her spine went stiff before her body slumped. Catching her, he leaned her against the chestnut tree on her side and, repairing the membrane, lasered the piece of bone back into her skull, hoping to hell he hadn’t done permanent harm. The wound finally closed, if raggedly so, he put a small bandage over it, then got rid of the blood-soaked bandage below her neck by placing it, his gloves, and any other detritus in a small disposal bag and putting that in an unused pocket of the daypack.
If their pursuers brought in tracking dogs, he wouldn’t leave such a rich blood supply for them to scent. At least he and Zaira had the rain on their side—it would wipe away any tracks, wash away scents. The rising wind might also ground the chopper, which would take any heat-sensing technology out of the running; even if the chopper stayed up, the presence of bears in the area would bring up false hits their pursuers would have to investigate.
He didn’t immediately have to move Zaira.
Decision made, he slid the implant into a small plas bag that had held pain relief pills before he emptied the pills into the medkit. He placed the bag in the bottom of the medkit to protect it from the elements, weighing the bag down with the burned-out laser and putting all the remaining supplies on top before he shut the kit. That done, he used fallen leaves to line the floor of another small hide under the thickest part of the canopy and carried Zaira’s unconscious body to lie on it, building a tent around her using low-hanging branches he snapped off from the trees around them. It would make them invisible from the air and provide protection from the elements.
By the time he finished, the rain was hard pellets whipped into a harsh slant by the wind, but the canopy was holding off most of it. He checked the hide, gathered three more heavily leafed branches to cover the spots where water might get in, then slid inside himself. He’d stay awake, maintain a watch, but he needed to be close to Zaira.
Her breathing was too faint, her pulse sluggish.
No.
Turning her over carefully onto her back, he unzipped her jackets, pushed up her sweater, and found her Arrow uniform once more sticky with blood. When he peeled it up and examined the bullet wound, he saw it was bleeding steadily. Grabbing the last disposable laser, he gripped the penlight again and sealed multiple torn veins. By the time the laser flickered, she wasn’t leaking fresh blood.
He had to fight himself not to try to use his M ability to reach the internal wounds he couldn’t see. Given the viciousness of the pain feedback to any attempt at using psychic abilities, she could wake to find him burned out, unconscious. And much as Zaira liked to tell him to leave her behind, he knew damn well she’d never leave him behind. She saw him as critical to the survival of the squad—he’d never been able to make her understand that she was as important. So if he went down, she’d stay, guard his back. Die.
That fact and all the others weighed against testing the padlock on his ability.
That didn’t mean it was an easy decision.
Bandaging the wound, he found another one of the small, nutrient-rich drinks in the medkit and, lifting up her head, coaxed it down her throat, drop by tiny drop. Afterward, he placed her head on his thigh and kept his finger on the pulse in her neck, under the hood he’d tugged up over her head so she wouldn’t lose heat through her skull. The fact that the top of her head was tucked up against his abdomen should also help her maintain her body temperature.
“Stay with me,” he said as her pulse refused to grow stronger.
Zaira had survived a childhood so hellish, she should be insane or broken or a monster. Instead, she was one of the strongest Arrows he knew; she’d protected their most wounded, most broken for over five years. That many long years she’d stayed dead to the world, stayed in a tiny network that he knew must’ve felt like a prison to a woman who’d grown up in a barren locked room.
And still she’d gone because he’d asked her.
He would not allow her to die now, when, for the first time, she had a chance at a real life. This desolate landscape would not claim her fire. It had no right. “You will stay,” he ordered, his lips against her ear. “You promised me.” That promise had been made nearly twenty-one years ago, but he’d never forgotten, never would forget.
Even after months of sufficient food and daily outdoor exercise, she’d still been so skinny and small and with such anger inside her. Barely four feet tall back then, at least a foot shorter than him, and yet she’d said, “I won’t run anymore. I won’t try to leave. I’ve decided to stay and protect you.”
“Why?”
Midnight black eyes afire in a sun-browned face that was all sharp bones. “Because you don’t have a monster inside you.”
“Keep your promise,” he said now. “Don’t leave. Stay with me. Stay.”
His only answer was a pulse so faint, he could barely feel it.
Chapter 6
STANDING BELOW A star-filled North Dakota sky, Vasic tried and failed for the hundredth time to get to Aden or Zaira. “I can’t sense either of them,” he told Ivy where his wife stood next to him on the wide verandah both his lost squadmates had helped build.
The light above bathed the area in a gentle glow that didn’t penetrate the night darkness beyond. “I’ve never not been able to sense Aden.” The idea that his failure meant his closest friend was dead was a possibility he refused to consider.
Dark circles under the translucent copper of her eyes and lines of tension around her mouth, Ivy took the phone from her ear and thrust it into a pocket. “Sahara says Kaleb’s continuing to try, too, but he’s getting nowhere.”
That was bad. Vasic was a born teleporter and Kaleb Krychek a cardinal telekinetic who could also lock on to people rather than simply places. If the two of them couldn’t locate Aden or Zaira, no one could. “I can’t even tell if they’re together or not.” The timing of the abductions suggested the same foe at work, but they couldn’t rule out two separate actions or two separate prisons. “The Es connected to Aden and Zaira—they’re still sensing nothing?”
Ivy rubbed her face. “Yes. They’re saying it doesn’t feel like death . . . just as if they’re lost.”
Vasic had never known Aden to be lost. Even as a child, his best friend had known where he was headed, known what he wanted.
Wrapping her arms around him, warm and soft and loving, Ivy said, “Aden’s strong, resourceful, incredibly smart, and Zaira’s lethal, with a mind that thinks in ways no one can predict.” The bond between them rippled with her passionate belief. “Whatever the situation, I know those two will come out on top.”
Vasic held her tight with the single arm he possessed; Samuel Rain’s attempts at designing and building him a working prosthetic had continued to fail. Vasic could’ve halted the entire thing, but after what the brilliant robotics engineer had done to save his life, it was a small enough thing to indulge Samuel’s eccentricity and determination to succeed.
“He needs constant challenges,” Aden had said
a bare week earlier, while he and Vasic were going through a martial arts training routine in the open area to the left of the verandah. “Right now, you’re it.” A small pause. “Sooner or later, he will succeed or go mad trying, so you’d better decide if you do, in fact, want a prosthetic.”
“Since I was eight years old,” Vasic said to Ivy, the side of his face pressed to the soft black of her hair, “Aden’s always been there.” A quiet rock that didn’t shift or give way no matter how vicious the deluge. “The idea of not being able to speak to him . . . I can’t process it.” Vasic had once had a death wish; it wasn’t until this instant that he understood what it must’ve done to Aden to believe he’d have to watch Vasic die.
Ivy leaned back to reach up and stroke his hair off his face, her gaze potent with emotion. “He’s your brother.” She swallowed past the thickness in her voice. “And he’s our family.”
She understood; she’d always understood. Never had she begrudged him his friendship with Aden. Never had she failed to include Aden in their new family.
Love isn’t finite, she’d told him, it is infinite and it has infinite facets.
“I love him, too,” she whispered. “Even though he’s a year younger than you, he’s like a big brother.”
“Yes.” Vasic cupped the back of her head. “Aden’s always been older than he should be.” Always carried too much weight on his shoulders.
“And Zaira.” Ivy’s hand fisted against his chest. “She plays with Rabbit, you know.”
“What?” He’d never seen the commander throw so much as a stick for his and Ivy’s pet, had always thought she was too deep in Silence to pay attention to the needs of a small white dog.
Ivy nodded against him, fine strands of her hair catching against his jacket. “I’ve seen her when she thinks no one is watching. She’ll play-fight for his stick with him, and once, I saw her give him a treat she must’ve bought herself.”
Raw hope grew in his heart, dulled only by the dark fact that both Aden and Zaira were missing. “Is she capable of breaking Silence?” He’d never forget the defiant, bruised, and bloodied girl he and Aden had first met, the girl Aden had stayed in touch with even when he and Vasic had been transferred to a training facility on a different continent.
Vasic and Aden had shared so much growing up, but Aden’s relationship with Zaira was and had always been, separate. Vasic had never questioned it, seeing it simply as Aden being Aden and keeping an eye on a member of the squad who needed it. That was before Ivy. Being bonded to an empath had given him new eyes; he’d begun to glimpse odd inconsistencies in Aden’s interactions with Zaira, things that didn’t line up with his behavior when it came to the rest of the squad.
Vasic hadn’t said anything but he hoped that his friend would find with Zaira what Vasic had found with Ivy. He wanted that for Aden, wanted him to know what it was to find home in his lover’s eyes. Even more, he wanted the laughter for Aden, the joy of figuring out how to navigate this new territory of love and affection and tactile contact that wasn’t about pain or training or anything but pleasure. The only problem Vasic had foreseen was Zaira herself—the Venetian commander had never shown any signs of desiring a life beyond Silence.
“Zaira’s shields are so strong I never pick up anything,” Ivy told him, running a hand up and down his back in a petting gesture she didn’t seem to be aware of making but that was deeply familiar to him by now. “I don’t know if she feels or even wants to feel, but anyone with the capacity to be kind to a small animal who can offer her no advantage, has a heart.” Ivy looked up, a sheen of emotion in her eyes that punched him in the heart. “She has this blunt and deeply honest way of looking at the world. No filters.”
“You’re friends,” he said, the realization a surprise.
Ivy wiped at her eyes. “Not yet, but we’re getting there. I really like her even if she keeps telling me I have the survival skills of a newborn puppy,” she added with a wet laugh. “She’s planning to teach me self-defense moves tailored to my size and weight.”
“Did you tell her I’m already giving you lessons?”
A shaky smile. “She said the things you’re teaching me are fine if I plan to grow a foot and put on ninety pounds of muscle. Otherwise, I need to move smarter and be more sneaky.”
He felt his lips curve slightly. “Yes, that sounds like Zaira.” Pressing his forehead to Ivy’s when she drew in trembling breath, Vasic cupped her face in his hand. “You said it—they’re tough. They’ll survive and we’ll find them.”
“I know.” Ivy closed her fingers over his wrist. “I just hope they’re not being hurt.” Anger and worry and frustration. “It’s enough, Vasic. Enough. Why can’t the world just leave the Arrows in peace?”
Vasic had no answer for her, but he knew his next move. “I’m going to head to Venice,” he said, continuing to hold her face in his hand, her skin so soft under his touch and her love so sweetly fierce that he was astonished all over again that he had the right to hold her, to call her his own. “We still aren’t certain where Aden was taken, but Zaira’s team has pinpointed the exact location of her abduction.”
“I’ll come with you.” Ivy pressed her palms to his chest, his empath who was so generous with touch, with affection. “I might be able to help some of Zaira’s people. Especially Alejandro—he’s not functional without her.”
• • •
IVY had been right to worry about Alejandro.
The Arrow, who was only in his twenties, had imprinted on Zaira after his brain reset following an overdose of a drug Ming LeBon had used to turn Arrows into mindless weapons. As a result of Zaira’s absence, he was in a violent rage. Corralled in a secure room in the Venetian compound, he was crashing his body repeatedly against the door in an effort to get out.
“Be careful,” Vasic told Ivy, well aware she had a full measure of the empathic tendency to give too much, even at the cost of her own safety. “His brain is compromised. He may not react to empathic help in a predictable way.”
“He’s afraid.” Ivy’s voice held an echo of pain that wasn’t her own. “I can sense it from here—Zaira is his only anchor to sanity and he’s terrified he’s falling back into the abyss. More than that, he’s terrified for her.” Her head turned toward the door behind which Alejandro screamed in fury. “Keeping him trapped and unable to assist in the search for her isn’t a good idea.”
Vasic wanted to free the other male, but he also knew that to be an impossibility. “He’s a deadly threat. He’d think nothing of killing tens if not hundreds of people in his hunt to find Zaira.” The commander was Alejandro’s sole priority but not in a healthy way. “The best we can do is sedate him so he doesn’t harm himself.” And hope Zaira wasn’t lost forever, because if she was, so was Alejandro.
The clarity of Ivy’s eyes reflected her awareness of that terrible unspoken truth. “I’ll see if I can calm him enough that the process of giving him a sedative doesn’t turn into a bloodbath—and doesn’t cause him even more psychic pain.”
Waiting in the predawn darkness that cloaked this part of the world, he watched until he saw her reach the closed door guarded by two sentries who came toward her, no doubt with a report about Alejandro. Only then did he follow Zaira’s lieutenant, Mica, out of the compound that had functioned as a secret bolt-hole under Silence. It was here that many of their “dead” had come, the ones deemed useless by Ming and targeted for execution.
Aden, Vasic, Zaira, and the others at the heart of the rebellion hadn’t been able to save all their brethren and each loss lingered an open wound on their souls, but they’d saved enough that the squad was now the strongest it had ever been. Many of Ming’s useless Arrows had decades’ worth of experience to pass on to those coming through the ranks. Even Alejandro had something to contribute—quite aside from being a fully trained Arrow who could provide backup as long as Zaira gave him the order, he was a geniu
s with delicate explosives.
Ming hadn’t seen any of that. All he’d seen were men and women who were “imperfect,” and thus not worth the time or the effort to ensure they could remain a part of the squad. That made him a fool.
“What was Zaira doing outside the compound?” he asked Mica.
“I think she just needed downtime.” The dark-haired and stocky male, whose jaw was currently heavily shadowed by stubble, glanced around to ensure they couldn’t be overheard. “Some of the older Arrows occasionally do their best to make her brain explode.”
“I’ve always told Aden I’m surprised they’re all still alive.” Zaira was not known for her patience.
Mica’s expressionless facade didn’t crack. But when he spoke, Vasic understood why he was Zaira’s lieutenant. “I’ve offered to disappear them where no one would ever find the bodies, but Zaira says they’ll come back from the dead, they’re so stubborn about doing things a certain way.”
It would, Vasic thought, take time for the old guard to adapt to this new world. “Did she often take the same route on her walks?”
Mica shook his head. “She was scrupulous about never following a pattern . . . but she did go for a walk away from the compound at some point every two or three days.”
So someone had to have been watching her, waiting for her to get far enough away that the chances of backup reaching her in time were low.
“We’re here, sir.”
Though the canal water sat dark and placid beside them, the evidence of violence was easy to spot not far from where two older Arrows stood watch and kept away the robe-and-slipper-clad spectators who’d spilled out of the nearby homes. Splatters of blood marked the cobblestones, distinctive even under the dull yellow of the light seeping through the old glass of the ornate streetlamp.
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