If his lies peeled away to reveal the vulnerable core of truth.
And if they both survived.
* * *
Logen snuck around the edge of the Supply Depot as much as he could in the impenetrable vegetation.
He kept Talia’s position in the corner of his eye as he moved.
She hadn’t rejected him this time. Not only hadn’t she rejected him, she acted as though she was drowning in his kiss.
Her responses, that she wanted him and more, kept his hopes alive, even as she said things that made it sound like she thought he was a faithless player. He wasn’t a fucking idiot and he knew his own feelings. If the stents got shut off, he’d only love her more.
But yeah. The way she grabbed his head and yanked him down to her, or teased him with a smart comeback and a little smile, or cracked open her protective shell and melted into his arms ... it made him feel like she had changed her mind about him. Maybe they had a future together this time, as soon as he got her out of this mess.
Beneath his feet, jungle creepers slithered across the ground, covering over the ragged edges where once a force shield had held them back.
The shield had gone down yesterday, it looked like.
He reached the opposite point around the bare field and looked into the building. The jungle seemed to hold its breath, strangely silent. Silent as a charnel house.
He stepped forward until he was visible and communicated the all-clear gesture.
Talia also emerged from the jungle.
He grabbed a rock and tossed it up in a gentle arc. It landed on the ground in front of the building and bounced.
A low, ominous wind blew through the depot. The empty doorway gaped, its interior shadowed.
Talia tossed a rock harder. It arced onto the roof and clattered down. They both waited. Nothing happened.
Fuck.
He took a deep breath. Psyching himself up for the long walk in the deadly open.
Across the field, her eyes fixed on his. Their worries matched.
If they had their battle gear, clearing a compromised area had a routine. They’d test as much as they could remotely, with robots, before going in. They’d test for holo-cameras and booby traps, and all the triggers: body-recognition bombs set to blow up when they sensed humans in proximity, facial-recognition weapons targeting only certain faces, scent-recognition triggers, the whole shebang.
Her determination crystallized. She lowered the gun and scanned the surroundings, covering him.
He stepped out of shadow, into the field.
Standing exposed to a sniper’s bullet or hidden enemy heated his brain for one long, hot moment.
Nothing happened. Still.
He let out his breath and walked cautiously toward the depot building. Landing marks of a recent hover bubble dented the ground. His ears strained for the deadly click of a pressure mine or the transcendent snick-whoosh of a charging laser pistol. The rolling pop of a contact-grenade, or the destructive whine of a cliff-breaker missile.
He moved into the darkened room. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust. Then, his gut clenched. He smelled blood.
An instant later, his stents kicked in and swept away the gut-clenching feeling. The familiar menthol coolness was both strange and unwelcome.
Someone had torn through the survival gear. The water filtration system was in pieces and the box with the emergency comm and spare parts was gone.
Fuck.
He stepped past the spilling open closets and cabinets to tour the main and secondary rooms. Destruction everywhere, and a dark spray of biological tissue, but no body. He returned to the main room and sorted through the supplies.
The exposure suits all had long rips through them, destroying their integrity and making them no better than ordinary cloth. He found the knife amongst them, as though dropped, and curled his fingers in the knuckle grips.
Sabotage.
Which meant someone expected him to come here.
Someone was there. With him. Right now.
Someone he needed to kill.
Hair rose on the back of his neck. The sense of being watched crept up on him. Anyone could be hidden nearby, wearing a chameleon suit, invisible until the right moment.
He stuffed useful supplies into a bag. He needed out of here as fast as possible. Talia was waiting on him.
A shadow moved outside the main windows. Boxy and metallic.
Shit.
He crouched down, lifting the knife to ear level, and crept forward.
The shadow hesitated.
He waited. His ears attuned to their footsteps. Soft, quiet, careful. Sneaking up on him.
The shadow stepped to just outside the door.
Kill.
He burst from cover, bashing into the soldier and landing full force on her. She cried out and hit the ground. He brought the knife down decisively.
At the last minute, he registered it was Talia.
He diverted his hand and buried the knife in the dirt next to her head.
Her mouth flopped open, the air knocked out of her. Fear widened her eyes.
It sliced open his chest.
His own heart suddenly thundered in his ears, heat rolled over him in a wave, his palm slicked as he yanked up the handle of the knife buried in the ground, and fury exploded from his mouth. “Fucking hell, Talia!”
She shook her head, still struggling to take in a breath.
He got up off her, and scanned the jungle while she finally sucked in huge, desperate, shuddering gasps. Sunlight reflected off her metal exoskeleton. Insects buzzed in the filtered white sunlight. Uneasy wind susurrated through the shadowed fronds.
They were out in the open.
He reached over to haul her into the shelter of the Supply Depot.
Her eyes widened further and she tried to move away.
Fuck!
He grabbed her by the exoskeleton and yanked her in, away from unseen eyes. Once inside, he released her. “What are you doing here?”
She crawled away from him, settling across the room, under a window. Her hands trembled. “I thought I would spot for you.”
His hands were trembling too. He found a holster for the knife and attached it to his tattered belt. “What the hell were you thinking? I can handle this.”
“I never said you couldn’t.” Her tone rose to a whine.
He stopped.
That didn’t sound like his Talia. Near tears, her red-rimmed, frightened eyes and her continued shivering did not sound like the bold, strong, determined woman who stood firm and shouldered a world of challenges without asking anyone else for help.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sorry.”
She shuddered, not seeing him.
He needed to ground her. Without touching her, because she was still too sensitive, he needed her to reach for her own inner core.
“Where’s the gun?” he asked.
She blinked.
Then, frowning, she patted herself. Locating the gun in her side holster, she held its long barrel, staring at it. Her breath smoothed and lengthened. Her shivering stopped.
Yes. She was strong and fierce and capable.
A few seconds later, she focused on him. “What did you find?”
“Not a hell of a lot.” He tossed her the bag, then pawed through the remaining gear, separating it into piles of things they could use and things they couldn’t.
One pile was a hell of a lot larger than the other.
She joined him on hands and knees, picking through the discards pile. “All the suits have been slashed.”
“Hell of a sabotage.”
She sat back on her heels. Sick understanding crossed her features. “Someone expected us to come here.”
Their conclusions matched.
“Don’t open any closets or cabinets,” she said, studying the distant blood sprays. “I want to inspect them.”
Before inspecting anything, she had to get into an outfit that would offer
some protection. He set aside an exposure suit with only a small nick in it and rose. “Put that on.”
She moved away from the windows, stood, and set the gun and her hover disk on a shelf. Laboriously, she undid the exoskeleton, eased out of it, and began changing.
At the flash of creamy skin, he hardened to granite and turned away. Just like back at the gym.
Before the bonfire all those weeks ago, he’d seen her body thousands of times, but it hadn’t meant anything.
Now...
The reflection in the cabinet mesmerized him.
Her body was sweet and soft, as he knew from so recently tackling her, and he wanted her squirming beneath him and dragging passionate fingernails across his back while she screamed his name in ecstasy. Delicate breasts, grippable hips, and that heart-shaped ass he wanted to squeeze and cum all over. His cock pulsed, throbbing with imagined pleasure.
He rubbed the dull surface casually.
“Like the view?” she asked, her voice amused.
He jerked. She’d noticed him looking in the reflective surface. Fucking spotter.
But it relieved him to hear her sounding normal again. “If I say yes, are you going to pound me?”
“I have a better idea.”
At the hint of purr in her tone, he turned.
She studied him with a burning gaze that turned hotter. “You change too.”
He lifted a brow. “You don’t want to see this.”
“It’s only fair.”
He indicated the scars. “Serious?”
She nodded at the suits on the concrete in a pile. “Go ahead. I’ll watch.”
He reached for his belt and tugged. The frayed fabric snapped, and his suit fluttered loose.
She licked her lips.
Suddenly, the concrete bunker was a hundred thousand degrees.
He hooked his fingers in the collar and peeled it open, revealing his massively scarred chest, and the dusting of hair that persisted in growing down below his navel, and lower. Her gaze consumed him, burning everything it touched. He kept peeling back, stepping out of the suit in bare feet and straightening to reveal the proud cock that sprang from dark curls.
Her chest rose and fell. A high blush colored her cheeks. “T-turn around.”
He did, facing the cabinets. Displaying his scarred back, his bullet-ridden buttocks, his laser-raked thighs.
“Keep turning.”
He did as she asked, turning full circle to face her again.
Her lips parted. She seemed to be trying to think of what to say.
He helped her, tossing her words back at her with the same sardonic twist. “Like the view?”
She nodded, first slowly, then decisively. Her clear eyes met his. “Yes.”
It sucker-punched him.
She spoke without fear, without revulsion, without guile.
That was Talia. She always saw past the outside—past the stents, past his mistakes, past the scars—to the man. The man he was inside. The man he wanted to be.
That was why he loved her.
That was why he endured weeks of beatings and lost teeth to stay beside her.
That was why nothing else mattered. Not their hopeless situation, not what everyone else thought, not his impending court martial. He would protect her to his dying breath and beyond it. He would protect her forever.
And he would protect her from his feelings, if that was still what she asked of him.
She swallowed. “Um, I guess, though, you should dress.”
He stepped into a suit that would fit him with minimal slashes and adjusted it, affixed his knife to the new belt, and cinched it down.
“There’s a hole in mine,” she noted.
“Pressure tape’s right here.” He turned and opened the cabinet.
She jerked up, from where she was cinching down the exoskeleton again, with a gasp. “No!”
Something round and black dropped from the top of the cabinet, where it had been precariously balanced, and fell to the ground.
Shit.
He leaped back.
It rolled into the empty clothing. Sensing that it hadn’t made physical contact with a target, the contact grenade popped upright like a piece of popcorn and flashed a purple light. It scanned their chests and made the iconic beeping. Three, two, one.
Kaboom.
He was already moving.
Grabbing Talia around the waist, he dove with her out the window.
The force of the explosion slammed them into the ground. Logen rolled atop to cover her. Debris puffed out the window and dusted them.
Additional contact grenades bounced out of the cabinets, pooling on the concrete floor. He saw a brilliant purple strobe and heard furious beeping.
Again, he yanked her up by the exoskeleton and started running, dragging her.
The crack-crack-crack-boom of combat grenades exploded.
The whole place went up, the entire structure, cratering with a sustained crack-a-boom that took out the entire depot. They ran, arms pumping, fear making them fleet. They reached the edge of the clearing when a larger shockwave knocked them both down. Ash misted down on them, along with rubble and plastic shards. No joke, someone was trying to kill them.
They moved out, into the jungle, far from the smoldering disaster before the bomber came to check on their handiwork.
Chapter Eight
Deep in the dense, tangled jungle, they finally stopped running.
Logen let go of her hand and she collapsed in a mulchy, flat spot. Behind them, the crackle of destruction echoed through the jungle, and smoke chugged into the sky.
“They definitely saw that above the canopy,” Talia gasped, wiping hot tears from her debris-gritted eyes.
“Yeah, but who’s ‘they’?”
Hopefully the Misfits, and not only the hunting androids.
Logen reviewed their scavenged supplies. It wasn’t much, just a few meal bars and their suits.
They’d lost the gun.
They’d lost her hover disk.
Not only would they be slow, but they would be land-bound, too. Land-bound in the most difficult, uncharted wildness.
Hopelessness overwhelmed her. The shivers started in her belly. She tried to hug herself, to force them away like usual, to hide them before her team noticed. But they wouldn’t stop.
“Hey.” Logen touched her shoulder. “We made it.”
Her brain refused to process that she had almost died a second time, but her body had already long come to terms with it and gone to deep, primal emotions.
“Hey,” he said again, and rested his large, warm palm on her fragile shoulder. “Hey, we survived. Base Two is still out there. We’ll wire up their comm tower and call for help. We can do this.”
She shook her head, still shivering. “It’s so far.”
He looked away, as though ashamed of his failure to notice the trap, when she herself had been in the Supply Depot half an hour and also noticed nothing.
What else would they miss? How many more close calls could they handle?
They were going to die. Her and Logen. Especially her.
He had taken her down so easily. She hadn’t even resisted. All those years of combat training and she was a failure.
Fear swallowed her whole and choked all the way down.
“We can make it,” he said. “We’re a team.”
“Without your gun,” she continued, hating the warble in her voice, “or my oculars, we’re nothing anymore.”
He frowned and looked away.
Proving her point exactly.
“I should never have left Base One.”
“That was a necessity.” He tried to encourage her again. “We can do this. We’ll move on.”
“We go on and we’re going to die, and I can’t be restored.” She sank deeper into the mud and covered her face with her hands, blocking out his depressing resignation. “I mean, there’s nothing else uniting us, right? You have your stupid whatever ‘physiological reaction
s’ with no feelings. You’re only here because you owe it as my Gun.”
“What do you mean, you can’t be restored?”
Oh, of course he hadn’t heard. She dropped her hands only after she was certain she had control of her lancing tears.
“My restore point was destroyed on the resupply ship.”
“No.”
“Yeah. They suffered a casualty—”
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “There was a problem with the resupply drone. Vi, Navina, and Iren went to investigate, and they found a hole in the side where someone had bored in and ripped the restore point out, setting it adrift in space.”
“No.”
“It was destroyed by the same Robotics Faction—”
“No!” He jerked to his feet and stared down at her, face red, hands flexing. “It’s not true. They just restored you.”
“Obviously,” she snapped. “In fact, restoring me is the whole reason my restore point was ever removed from its secret, hidden hospital barge... Oh.”
Of course. The Robotics Faction ploy was so obvious now in hindsight. Where was Chaelee? She had to tell someone who would understand.
Instead, she settled for Logen. Holding her forehead, she played out the theory in her mind. “The Faction activated someone to kill me, thus drawing out my restore point, and then they destroyed it as it flew back.”
He whitened. “It’s a lie.”
“I’m under a death sentence.”
“No, no, no! You are going to be fine. This is fine. We are not stranded in an alien jungle with two crates of androids hunting us while you have no restore point.”
Somehow, his angry denial made it easier for her to deal with the terrifying truth. “Sorry.”
“No.” He shook his head and started pacing. “No. Just, no.”
“Logen—”
“No!” Rage filled his bellow. “You are not telling me I could lose you forever. That’s not possible. You’re the only woman I’ve ever—”
He broke off abruptly, studied her for so long that the tendrils of heat curled in her belly and warmed her like an embrace.
She swallowed a suddenly dry throat. “The only woman you ever what?”
Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries Page 10
