I hadn’t thought of Armise’s bracelets—why the fuck would I when whether or not he continued to breathe was the most important thing to me? But those bracelets, they meant something to him. I should have thought of that first. I furrowed my brow.
“How do you know that?”
Dr. Blanc stood. “I know too much about both of you. Yet I still want him to live.”
Unease grabbed hold of me, as if my skin were tightening, making me claustrophobic in my own body.
“We can’t be here,” I said and made a move to get past Dr. Blanc and into Armise’s room.
Dr. Blanc put his hand up. He was a thin man, weak, who had relied on me to face Ahriman when he couldn’t do it. But I stopped regardless, because maybe I was being too rash. I couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision when it came to Armise’s life.
“You have nowhere else to go, Merq. You leave here, he will die. With me he has a chance since I’m the one who gave him most of his genetmods. You may want to let me work.”
“You’re the one who did this to him?”
Fuck being rash, at that moment I wanted to rip Dr. Blanc apart for having any hand in what Armise had become. Without those modifications, without this war and Anubis, Armise likely would have lived a traditional nomadic life.
“Fuck no, you’re not touching him anymore.”
Dr. Blanc put his palm on my stomach and tried to push me away from the door. The only thing keeping me from ripping his fingers off was that there was a sane part of me, barely at the surface, that recognized Armise needed those fingers to work.
“You listen to me. Armise has the right mods to give him a fighting chance. Anyone else would have been dead just from the shock and blood loss. But his modifications did what they were supposed to, slowing his heart rate, cooling his body—”
“He was fucking burning up!”
“So let me work,” he said as he jabbed a finger into my chest. “And don’t bother threatening me. I’m already a dead man.”
“You’re not,” I insisted. “If Ahriman hasn’t killed you by now he’s not going to.”
“My son is an arrogant, sadistic piece of shit who has a major god complex, but he’s not the one I’m worried about.”
I gaped. “You’re telling me there’s someone worse out there? Who scares you more? Your son just removed Armise’s arm for fun!”
He shook his head emphatically. “He did that to mess with you.”
I scoffed. “And you’re telling me Ahriman isn’t the person I should be worried about?”
“You should be worried about Armise surviving. The last few years of my life has been dedicated to trying to subvert Anubis. I was the one who restarted it and I will finish it. Genetic modification of human beings has to end. Despite that belief I’m doing everything I can for Armise to survive. So you… You should back the fuck off me and let me do my job.”
I held up my hands and took a step away from him. “Got it.”
With my anger subsiding and exhaustion taking over, the fight in me was waning. I stalked away from Dr. Blanc but kept an eye on him, watching as he interacted with the medical staff who walked in and out of Armise’s room. Physically, he had a passing familiarity to Ahriman, enough to note that they were related, but there was a light to his eyes that Ahriman had never exhibited.
When we were alone again I asked, “You gave Armise all his mods?”
Dr. Blanc deflated. I didn’t have the brainpower to figure why my question affected him that way. Instead of answering my question, he beckoned me. “Come in and see him.”
He pushed the door open and let me enter first. I’d expected to be met with the scene I’d left—Armise writhing in unconscious pain, sweat dripping off him from fever and the bloody stump of his arm exposed to the polluted air. I gritted my teeth, expecting to lose it again when I saw him. It didn’t matter how much I tried to prepare myself, that’s exactly what I did. My vision whitewashed and I fumbled for the wall. The only thing different in front of me was that Armise’s shoulder was wrapped. The rest of his condition was the same. His skin was gray, sweat-soaked, and he was tied down to keep his writing body from falling off the bed.
All of it made me sick.
“Were you there the entire four months?” Dr. Blanc asked as he approached the bed and checked the bandages on Armise’s shoulder. I didn’t know if he meant to distract me from what I was seeing in front of me, but his question worked. I ripped my eyes away from Armise.
I cleared my throat and leaned against the wall, trying to find my strength. I’d seen worse before. Much worse. I had to keep it together for Armise.
“As far as I know,” I answered in a voice that was strangled. Off. Everything about this scene was just…wrong. “You weren’t?”
Dr. Blanc shuddered, a visible shake that traveled up his spine and down his arms, leaving his hands unsteady to the point that he had to stop working on Armise’s shoulder. “No.”
He went quiet and I remembered Manny saying that things had changed with the war in the last four months. At the time I’d been more caught on the idea that we’d been held for so long, but now I had time—if not the mental capacity—to consider the world outside this medical room.
“I want access to a newsfeed,” I told him, making sure he understood that was not a request.
“I’ll arrange it.” He looked at the bandage and frowned as he started to leave.
I grabbed his arm as he walked by and brought him to a stop. “You were the reason I was able to break through the injections Ahriman forced on me.”
Dr. Blanc nodded. “I started injecting smaller and smaller doses of the Sleepsense so that you were more aware. That last shot was nothing but saline. Armise barely got any of the Sleepsense. I mixed the dosages so that he would be out but not paralyzed. With you…I couldn’t do that. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
I hated Dr. Blanc for his part in this, but he was the reason Armise was alive right now. “You’ve done enough. You think I can go back to where Ahriman was holding us to get Armise’s bracelets? That Ahriman won’t be waiting?”
“He won’t return there,” Dr. Blanc verified. “Once Armise is stable I’ll make sure you’re outfitted with the gear you’ll need to protect yourself so you can get them. Maybe there will be something else there you can find that would be helpful.”
I wanted to ask him why he was helping us at all, but I had to assume there was much more complexity to his answer than I wanted to hear let alone try to parse out.
“I’ll be back with someone to replace his bandages,” he continued. “I need to take a look at what other medicine they have available. Maybe make a trade for what we need.”
I dragged a chair across the room to Armise. I set my hand on his belly. It moved with the erratic up and down of his breath, harsh in and out drags. He wheezed with effort. His skin was slick and waxy, the bold thick lines of his tattoos standing out against his ashen pallor.
“Shit,” I muttered and sat down next to him before my knees could give out.
I dragged my hand off his stomach, down the line of his left arm and over the flame tattoos, fingertips skimming over the scars underneath. I fought to breathe as I turned over his left hand, unable to touch the dimpled flesh from where I’d taken his finger. I’d nearly lost my arm and life in the DCR but Armise had ensured I made it out alive and in one piece.
I lifted his hand and settled mine under his, grasping his wrist and holding on. He wouldn’t be able to hear me, but I had to give voice to everything swirling in my head.
“Ahriman thinks that putting that encryption chip inside you will motivate me to risk your life. That I’ll choose a fucking chip over you. He doesn’t understand—” My throat started to tighten. There was so much that Ahriman would never have the capability to understand, and what Armise and I were to each other was of a scope I could barely comprehend. “Fuck the encryption chip. If all that comes of it is the memory of how to do more like this to human
ity—to hurt and maim and kill… Maybe it is better if we let the old knowledge die.”
Armise’s nails dug into my wrist as he shuddered and arched off the bed, his features pulled into a grimace. I held my breath and waited for the waves of agony to pass through him. He didn’t open his eyes as he settled onto the bed again.
“I’m done with the Revolution, Armise,” I confessed when he was quiet. Too quiet. I would tell him all of this when he woke up, but for now I had to get it out. I had to make my decision real by giving it voice—by telling him. His opinion was the only one that mattered to me. “I’m done fighting. I’m tired of not having control of my life.”
I kept my left hand circled around his wrist, my fingers intertwining with the beads there. His mother had been a spiritual leader. How did I not know simple things like that after fifteen years with him?
“You asked me once if there was a death I regretted…” I thought of Vachir, of Armise’s older brother whose life I’d ended, but could only guess which he was in a long line of too many dead men and women. I ran my pointer finger over the scars at his wrist. “I would regret your death.”
I didn’t want to look at him anymore, but I owed him this. “I’m sorry. And I’m not quite sure what I’m sorry for, just that this all feels so wrong and I know I play a big part in…” All of it. All of it was my responsibility. “I’ll find a way to make this better.”
If Armise wanted a synth, his best bet was with the States’ doctors—the same ones who’d given Simion his new leg. But that would mean returning, putting me back in a position where Simion would try to convince me to go into active duty. I wanted to get Armise and run, to never look back so I could never be dragged back in, but that wasn’t fair.
I had to hear what he wanted first.
And despite how close to death he still was, I couldn’t see any other outcome besides me hearing his voice again.
“I don’t want to go back there, ever, Armise. But you wake up…you tell me that’s what you want and I’ll go back with you. For you.”
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About the Author
I sleep little, read a lot. Happiest in a foreign country. Twitchy when not mentally in motion. My name is Sam, not Sammy, definitely not Samantha. I’m a pretty dark/cynical/jaded person, but I hide that darkness well behind my obsession(s) for shiny objects. I’m the macabre wrapped in irresistible bubble wrap and a glittery pink bow, I suppose.
Email: [email protected]
S.A. loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.pride-publishing.com.
Also by S.A. McAuley
Someday It Will Be
An Immoveable Solitude
The Borders War: One Breath, One Bullet
The Borders War: Dominant Predator
The Borders War: Powerless
Semper Fidelis: Anomaly
Falling One by One Page 18
