Testosterone had been sprayed and face had not been lost. Stupid assholes, the pair of them. Dom watched, wanting them to just shake hands and be the way they were, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever.
“Step aside,” Hoffman said.
Marcus did. Hoffman went over to Kim and started telling him about some great new plan to fuck the grubs for good with another fancy device the guys at the DRA had now developed. They were struggling without Marcus’s dad. They were just digging up his old notes and half-finished projects and trying to make some useful weapons out of it all. Dom watched Hoffman head for KR-239, suddenly in a more bullish mood than he’d been in a long time. For all the crap, he had to be happy to see Marcus back. He had to.
Then Anya stepped out of the Raven’s bay to relay a message or something. She must have known Marcus was there. Marcus wasn’t expecting her, though. She stopped in her tracks and looked at him. He stared back. It was hard to tell if she could see that terrible scar, or if she was just so struck by seeing him after so long that she couldn’t react, but Marcus’s face sort of fell again and Dom couldn’t work out why. Dismay. That was it. Maybe he thought she was checking him out and deciding he hadn’t come out of jail as pretty as he went in. Maybe he was thinking she didn’t look as good as he remembered, either. The strain had certainly taken its toll on her.
But Dom knew exactly what look Marcus should have had on his face right then: joy and relief. The love of his life had waited for him, and now things were going to be all right.
The moment hung there. Dom didn’t expect Marcus to sweep her up in his arms, but he did want to see some thaw in that expression. Then the ground trembled. Rounds struck the paving, throwing gravel in the air, and suddenly they had bigger problems to worry about.
“Locust!”
“Get down!”
Dom caught a glimpse of Anya scrambling into KR-239. Rounds whizzed past his head as he sprinted for the cover of a wall of sandbags. Muzzle flash lit up the overcast day, the rattle of automatic fire numbed his ears, and the world had returned to its terrible kind of normal, everyone back to their old routine of fighting and running and dodging the next round. But Dom had his brother back. That was almost all he needed.
Marcus squeezed off a burst and ducked down again. He glanced up at the sky. Dom knew damn well that he was checking that Anya was clear.
“She waited,” Marcus said.
“Yeah,” Dom said. “She waited.”
“And Maria?”
“Nothing yet.”
The Raven was already a dwindling speck in the distance. Marcus reloaded and peered over the sandbags, sighting up on a doorway where grubs were taking cover.
“Thanks, Dom,” he said at last, and carried on firing.
EPILOGUE
COG RESEARCH STATION AZURA: LATE RISE, 14 A.E.
DRIVE A
FOLDERS:
FENIX_E_COPY
PROJECT_NEW_HOPE
PROJECT_BNO
PROJECT_HOYLE
PROJECT_WHITTLE
AJF_PERSONAL
AJF_FOR_MMF
SELECT FOLDER: AJF_PERSONAL
SELECT FILE: JOURNAL
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s the good news, bad news joke. Prescott has been in touch to tell me that Marcus has been freed and he’s back on the front line. As that’s possibly the only place he’ll ever be truly happy—or the least unhappy, if I’m honest—I should probably be relieved. Dom, as ever, stands by him whatever happens. Is Marcus grieving for me? The damage is done. The loss has scarred him, even if he finds out one day that I’m alive. I want to see him again so I can tell him all the things I made myself too busy to express, things that can’t be left to a letter or this journal. That brings its own problems, however: I’ll have to tell him the truth.
But he has friends. Not people he drinks with, or says hello to at the office, or who occasionally send him mail. I mean devoted, life-on-the-line friends. They give him what I never could.
Meanwhile, we carry on. Nevil is my anchor to sanity and we share a distaste for the menu to excuse our existence here. Everyone I thought was dead is walking around alive and well, except Elain. Couldn’t there have been just one more miraculous lie, just one, for me? But it seems the price we pay for real knowledge is sacrifice. Elain was willing to make hers and so am I. The person I care most about in this world thinks I’m dead anyway.
So I carry on with the tests. Fifty-two hours ago, I took a new Lambent antigen. Twenty-six hours ago, the Lambency marker proteins were absent from my blood samples. This morning, they’re back, and they’ve changed again.
This organism evolves. We’re always one step behind it. I must find a way to get ahead of it, and if biochemistry is the answer, we have to find a wider range of its hosts to test. But biology may yet fail us, so physics must be ready to step into the breach. Nevil and I are carrying out a parallel program—yes, I’ve told Prescott—to look for a way of killing the pathogen with targeted radiation. Nothing is indestructible. And if there’s one thing history will say I excelled at, it’s destruction.
The hummingbird is back. I see it drinking from the blooms outside my window every morning. It’s glorious. It’s a living emerald.
You’d find it fascinating, Marcus. Take care of yourself, son. One day, I’ll see you again, I swear, and I’ll finally manage to tell you how proud I am of you, and—yes, how much I love you.
ENCRYPT? Y/N
Y
BACKUP TO MAINFRAME? Y/N
N
SAVE TO DRIVE A? Y/N
Y
FILE LAST SAVED: 1115/G10/14.
Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5) Page 58
