But the moment that Kiara said she’d heard about Sean, something in her voice had caught Fi’s attention. There was granite there, a honed stone that could carve an edge. She remembered in a flash that Kiara would be turning ten this spring. Ten, she thought sadly. In the old world she would still be a baby, but in the new one the woman-to-be was already rising from the furnace, her youth chipped away as she was heated and battered and beaten into the mettle of Famine survivors — a “baby girl” no more. They picked their way through the makeshift morgue together and this time…this time Fi didn’t hide her tears.
In the end, the thing that struck Fi most that afternoon was the quiet. After a night filled with non-stop screaming and explosions, the day dawned still, with only the mourning doves to wail. Of the Army of Eden’s total ranks of four hundred and sixty, forty-nine were dead, and over eighty more were wounded. That didn’t include the ninety-some Lobo and Truther dead. Fi hovered over the bodies, laid out in neat rows in the snow beneath blankets. As if they might one day awaken, she thought, if only they were kept warm.
Crouching, she said a prayer for each one, and each was more painful than the last. Even Asher’s stoicism was utterly broken. Tears streamed down his cheeks as they crouched over the still form of their Commander.
“Do you remember him, Ki?” Fi said, gasping through her tears. But of course Kiara wouldn’t remember him. She never saw him pin Fi down with his gun. She never met him before the siege. She’d never know the man who had saved her life. The man with the movie star looks in a movie-less time. Fi touched his cold cheek, still greased with war paint. “He saved our lives, Ki. He saved our whole Family.” She swallowed an angry laugh. “Twice.”
“He was a true soldier,” Asher agreed, his voice thick. “You know, even though he was young, he…he kinda reminded me of my dad.”
Fi squeezed her eyes shut. How many more mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers had to be lost? When they rose, they had to step aside to let Zykeem and Titan pay their respects…along with a long line of others that snaked away into the forest.
It seemed that every surviving member of the Army of Eden was waiting to say goodbye to the Commander. He’d led them despite his vow to avoid war and violence. He’d led them through the darkness and the fight, to victory. He just hadn’t gotten to see it himself. Fi wiped her arm across her eyes. Curses rose and died just as quickly before they reached her lips. The lilting cry of the mourning doves served as reminder. There was a beauty in death, if the survivors had grace.
When she’d stood at her brother’s grave, she’d been too young for curses. All she’d known was pain: raw, and whole, like the molten burn of the sun. Children are closer to that pain, the kind that breaks their mothers in two, the kind that means only sacrifice. They have no shield yet to block it out, no carefully constructed wall of decorum. She knew now that they were lucky.
They moved two rows over to a body that had only one visitor at the moment, an older woman with greying curls who hovered on her knees like a guardian angel.
“Hello, Georgina,” Fi said quietly.
Georgina Ferrar looked up, her eyes red. “Hello, Fi. Asher.” She nodded at Kiara as she rose. “I’ll give you both a moment with him.”
She started to turn and Fi grabbed her hand. “Georgina?” she said, and then stopped. She’d meant to say a hundred things about how wonderful Darryl was, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. Her husband stood at her side, her child hung at her breast, and her sister clutched her hand. She had so much…so much. What could she say to someone who’d just started to discover love only to have it ripped away? What could anyone say? “He…he was a good man.”
Georgina nodded, her eyes filling. “I’d hoped to help him believe that.”
She walked away and Fi sank to her knees beside Dr. Darryl Heil. Like she had with Julius, she touched his cheek. She couldn’t stop herself. She had to feel the icy skin or else, like a fool, she’d have begged him to wake. “I wish I knew what to say to him. ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t seem like enough.”
“What are you sorry for, Fi?” Asher settled beside her. “You cared enough to draw him back to life, to friends, to family. If you hadn’t done that, would he have found a love so important to him that he lost his own life defending it?”
Fi flinched.
“Are you sorry for making sure that the entire world recognized him for his brilliance and dedication and not just his mistakes?”
With each new question, the agony bent her more as she doubled over the small man, now somehow smaller in death. There was a time when she’d been angrier with this man than any other on the face of the Earth, when she’d held him responsible for billions of deaths. But it wasn’t his fault. And this war, this outcome, this loss…it wasn’t hers either.
Asher’s tone was kind, but it didn’t make it easier. No matter what she’d done, through all this time and all this effort, she’d never be able to make it all right. And now, neither would Darryl.
“C’mon, baby,” Asher urged. “Let’s go back to visiting the living, ok?”
Her heart seized as she was reminded of one person in the world who still lived. For now.
------------- Sean -------------
“Did he move? I swear I saw his eyelids move.”
The voice was odd — familiar, but strained — like it was coming through a speaker.
“It’s ok, Sara. Doc says he’ll wake up soon.”
Definitely weird. It was like the words had “wah-ah-ah-ah” behind them. He wanted to open his eyes, but they were glued shut. He tried to move and lightning blazed in his chest. “Ow!” He was sure he’d screamed, but it came out as a whisper.
“SEAN?” The familiar voice changed, like a mouse caught on one of those awful glue traps. Squeaking. Screaming. “Help him, Doc! Please! He’s in pain!”
He grunted, wanting to roll away from the fire, but finding the crackling pyre on all sides. A hand found his: cool, sure, his anchor in a storm-tossed sea. Pain knifed through him with each breath, tightening his every muscle to the limit. He felt like he would snap in half.
Muffled voices murmured “CCs” and his pain evaporated…the seas calmed. Thank God. For a moment, he lay with his eyes shut tight, his chest heaving. The relief was insane. Like someone had branded his chest, only to bind the wound with the softest blankets imaginable. So fluffy that they felt of nothing.
He tried again to open his eyes. They were puffy and sticky and weighed a ton, but this time they creaked open. He stared into two sets of tear-filled eyes, one dark and one golden. Sara and Fi.
“Sean.” Sara’s tears fell, one landing on his cheek.
The voice sorted itself out. The trapped mouse was Sara. Her hand was shaking in his. He shook his head, confused. Maybe he was the anchor and she was the storm?
“Oh, Jesus, thank God.” Fi choked.
Sara collapsed onto his shoulder, sobbing, her grip tightening. He closed his eyes and tried to reach his arm to hold her, but he couldn’t lift it. He could barely feel it. If he hadn’t been able to see his own fingertips, he would’ve sworn they’d floated away. “Wha…what happened?”
His tongue was dry and fuzzy, like a mitten. He searched his memory. Dark. It had been so dark. And his lungs burned. Sara. Sara had come. His heart leapt, thumping through the anesthetic. They were on the battlefield. There was a scream and then he was running... “Hannah!” he cried, wincing as a needle of pain found its way through the morphine. “Is she ok?”
Sara sat up, tears still streaming. “Thanks to you, Sean. You saved her life.”
“But I couldn’t save Mr. Darryl.”
The world wobbled as Sean turned his head. The edges of his vision blurred and his stomach turned. “Whoa.” When his eyes came into focus again, he saw Hannah sitting on a milk crate beside him, her eyes as puffy as Sara and Fi’s.
She was filthy, her face and blond hair matted with blood. “I’m sorry, Sean. I almost killed you.”
She slumped and picked at her zipper. “I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Shh, Hannah,” Fi chided her. “That’s enough. A Lobo almost killed Sean…and you.”
“But if I’d kept my promise to you, Fi, this wouldn’t have happened.” Hannah’s tears welled, threatening to break their bonds.
Sara sniffed. “Look, Hannah. I’m tired of this guilt crap. I really am. I have other things to think about. If you don’t stop blaming yourself, I’m never gonna train with you again, you hear me?”
“Oooooh,” Sean murmured, woozy. “That sounds serious, Hannah.”
Sara’s face softened as she turned back to him. She smoothed his hair back from his brow. “I mean it, Sean. The only reason they let her be here was so you could see that she was alive. Otherwise, she’s on medical duty. We couldn’t have set up this hospital without her help.”
“Hospital?” Sean’s eyes tracked farther out. Around him people were scattered — a human confetti covering the tables and floors of the Main Cabin. Makeshift privacy walls had been erected with sheets and precious IV bags hung from whatever hook, stand, or chair that could be found. Doctors bent over the moaning casualties, trailed by volunteers carrying cloths and buckets. For a moment he thought he saw Truther volunteers, but no, that couldn’t be right.
“So what did happen to me, then?” He tried to think, but his brain kept turning soupy.
“You were shot, baby.” Sara’s face faded out for a second and then sharpened again.
“Shhhhot?” His tongue wasn’t working right.
“If Hannah hadn’t stuffed rags into your wounds right away,” Sara said, rubbing his fingers with shaking hands, “you would’ve bled out. She saved your life.”
He tried to nod, but the morphine was taking hold. At first it was just his fingertips that had flown away, but now it felt like all of him was coming apart, the pieces letting go and setting him spinning, spinning. “Thanksss, Haaaannah. Thankssss for sssaving my liiiife.”
His eyes closed. Hannah scooted her chair closer and took his other hand, her touch alighting like a butterfly at the edge of his consciousness. “Thanks for saving mine.”
Dragon Fire
------------- Fi ----------------
With Sean settled back into a medicated sleep, Fi got up to visit the others. Kiara volunteered to help Doc Ron and Fi decided to let her. If she wasn’t her “baby girl” anymore, then she wasn’t. Period. Still, Fi found her eyes following that blue-black shadow around as it tailed the good doctor. It was a habit she expected to find hard to break. Like biting one’s nails or scratching a fussy patch of skin. The urge would last long past the need.
On some level, it helped her shaking legs to focus on something else besides the fact that her best friend had nearly died…and was still pretty fragile, if she were honest. She’d given as much blood as the doctors would allow, but otherwise, she felt helpless. There was no feeling she abhorred more. She rocked Luke endlessly, trying to burn away the nervous energy still zinging through her.
She’d thought that once the last shot was fired she’d relax, but it didn’t turn out that way. Instead she was still on DEFCON 1 in her subconscious. Every loud sound or unexpected movement at her periphery made her jump. Her adrenaline pumped on and off in exhausting waves, draining away and then resurging, like aftershocks. Not that it helped being in the makeshift hospital.
Army members with varying amounts of precious morphine in them moaned as they lay on their blankets, many missing limbs. Some cried out for attention or assistance, and Army volunteers rushed to them, holding their hands and pressing cloths to their feverish brows.
Or Truther volunteers, she thought, watching them from beneath her eyelashes. Of course it was the right thing to do. She knew that they needed all of the medics they could get to help the wounded, regardless of what side they’d been on. After war we all have to go back to being civil, right?
She tried to force herself to believe her own rhetoric, but with Sean still hovering on the razor’s edge, she couldn’t stop the lingering pulse of her hatred. It was like a dying animal that still twitches and kicks, even after its spirit leaves its eyes. She worked to avoid interacting with them. She wondered if she would ever be able to relax around a former Truther again.
Then she spied Jack, the leader of Lakeland, among the wounded. Her heart bucked on a new surge of adrenaline. Apparently her body’s supply was endless. His chest was wrapped in a heavy bandage, dark with blood. By contrast, he was practically translucent, as if his entire body’s blood supply had sucked into the bandage. A thin blond man was fussing over him when Jack opened his eyes. She exhaled. He was alive.
“Fi! Good to see you.” His eyes pinched, the closest thing he could manage to a smile. “Fine doctor I make, huh? Getting myself clobbered instead of patching people up. Thank goodness my partner here was smart enough to avoid getting shot.” He nodded to his busy nursemaid.
“What happened, Jack?” She knelt beside him, tucking Luke up into her arms. “You didn’t fight, did you?”
“Nope, just took some shrapnel while I was trying to stop one of our guys from bleeding out.”
“Oh, Jack. You always have to be the guy in the E.R., huh?” One of the things she’d admired most about Jack when she’d met him was that he’d always chosen the hardest and most heart-wrenching medical jobs. She reached out to squeeze his hand and he startled, noticing Luke’s head peeking from her sling.
“What’s this?” He paused, taking a deep breath. “Or I guess the question is…who’s this, Fi?”
“This,” she’d said proudly, pulling at the sling so Jack could see, “is Luke David Grey. Born the day we found that Eden had been ransacked. A little premature, but luckily, he’s healthy.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jack laid back, exhausted, his chest heaving just from the effort of raising his head. “After you all left, Trill told me about the pregnancy. I’d been so caught up in other things that I hadn’t noticed. Strike two for the good doctor, I guess.”
“Now, now, Jack,” his caretaker said. “You’re supposed to be getting some rest.”
Jack grabbed the man’s hand and pressed it to his lips. “All right, Eli. You’re right. As usual.”
Fi startled and Asher coughed. Oh. That’s what Jack meant by partner. “I’m so glad that you’re going to be ok, Jack. Lakeland needs you.”
“Yes, it does,” Eli agreed.
They said their goodbyes and slipped outside to take a break.
“So are you going to make fun of me, Fi?”
It was a relief to hear some playfulness in Asher’s voice. Some people… Well, pre-Famine people, she thought. They would have found humor at a time like this kinda sick. They wouldn’t understand the way it could center you, that one moment that floats above the others, reminding you that when they choose too, people can float above themselves too.
And honestly, it was always in the worst of times that her husband’s humor pulled her through. She slipped her arm around his waist. “What? Just because you freaked out when we were in Lakeland thinking Jack was into me, and it turns out that he could’ve had more interest in you?”
Asher sighed. “Aaaaaaaand there it is.”
“Oh, I’m going to make fun of you, Ash, don’t worry.”
“Fi, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” General Zelinski approached with a man in black fatigues. “Staff Sargent Rasmussen, this is Fionnuala Grey. Mrs. Grey, this is Staff Sargent Rasmussen, our sniper.”
Fi’s eyes widened as she took his hand. Except for the moment when she’d first seen Asher, she’d never been so intimidated in her life. Rasmussen saluted and gave her a kind smile, the white teeth gleaming through the remnants of grease still on his face. She awkwardly attempted a salute in return, and he and the General bit back chuckles.
“Sorry,” she said, blushing. “It felt like I should salute you. I mean, the Army told me all about your role in this siege. They said you took out eight of the cliff guards bef
ore anyone even knew a thing.”
Rasmussen nodded. “Guilty as charged.”
“Wow,” she breathed. Asher squeezed her shoulders and began to massage them. She wiggled gratefully. God, she’d missed him.
“It wasn’t as hard as some other assignments I’ve had,” Rasmussen added. “It was only two hundred meters. I’ve heard that you hit a target dead center at fifty with your handgun.”
“What?” Fi blinked. How did he…
Trill materialized from behind the General. “I couldn’t let these fancy Army types go without knowing your skills, girl.”
Fi dropped her head.
“Look at her blush! Just like the pink little redhead she is,” Trill crowed.
“You don’t have to rub it in,” Fi protested, reaching to pinch Trill, who danced away. It was then she noticed the sling and bloodstained bandages around Trill’s arm and neck. Fi reached out. “Are you all right?”
“I‘m fine, girl,” she scoffed, pushing Fi’s hand away. “A little tree shrapnel and a broken forearm. No biggie.” Her eyes shifted to the “morgue” behind them. “I’m lucky.”
Fi’s cradled her son. Trill was right. She was lucky. Fi shook her head. “I wish I could have done more.”
“I could teach you, you know.” Rasmussen spoke up, catching Fi’s attention again.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you ever wanted to come spend some time at Diaspora, I’d love to show you how to develop your sniper skills.”
Fi’s heart picked up. Wow. That sounded…totally awesome. She could just picture herself practicing laying flat on the ground, holding her breath, setting her aim, learning to shoot things that were so far away they were hard to even SEE. That would be so badass. She bounced on her toes. Luke gurgled and she stopped, rooted once more.
“Sorry, Rasmussen. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer, but this battle was my last. I’m officially retiring.” She turned as a strange sound erupted from Asher. It sounded like he’d swallowed a sneeze in progress or something.
Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy Book 3) Page 29
