War Machine: Book One in the Destiny In the Shadows Series

by Maggie Lynn Heron-Heidel

I coughed from the dust being raised in the stampede. I wheezed out my last full breath as my lungs couldn't handle the dust. I panted and shielded my eyes. Everything was going to hell as brave men lost all sense of reason in their panic. There were few yells of objection as the gate started to lower again with people still outside.

  I opened my eyes to see if I was alone on the road. I wasn’t.

  It appeared Cain and Argon had been trying to get to the box to stop its countdown. Rig was typing madly into the little keyboard while Cain and Argon covered him. Cain was exchanging a flurry of blows with the now-deranged-looking Emma who was still fighting on the ground even though she was handcuffed and pinned down.

  He shoved her down into the dirt as the device beeped its final two-minute countdown. “Tell us the deactivation codes!”

  “Never,” she screamed, reaching for her right pocket. My intuition alerted me to the fact that that was the pocket she had stowed the lethal dart gun she had used on me. She intended to use it on them. I couldn't let that happen. There was still a shot that they could make the gate.

  As I attempted to reach down to my boot for my pocket knife to throw, my eye caught on the abandoned weapon beside me. Michael had dropped the flare gun. I grasped it, unnerved by the unnaturally heavy way it felt. I laboriously lifted it into aim.

  I fired at the exact second she yanked her own gun free. I missed her entirely, of course, but as it rocketed past, it distracted her enough for Cain to knock the offending weapon from her hand. Argon knocked her out with a kick to the side of her head.

  I fell back into the sand completely spent and my eyes closed. I couldn't see what was happening, but I could still hear. There was a loud smashing sound and Argon cursed. “It’s no use. This thing is gonna blow no matter what we do!”

  “Get to the gate and get it closed!” I heard a faint objection, but Cain cut him off. “That’s an order.”

  His voice was scarily close. I heard feet running and heading to the gate, but another set of boots came closer. Sand shifted next to me and I felt hands slip under my back. I forced my eyes open a crack as I came off the ground. It was Cain. He had come for me. I started to protest but it came out as more of a pathetic mewl. He held me with gentle hands as we turned. “Easy. I’ve got you.”

  “No,” I moaned. “Get to the-”

  I heard the ground shake a final thump as the gates closed. I swallowed hard. He had damned himself to stay with me. I stared hard at the gate, praying desperately that by some miracle it would open again. It didn’t. All I could see was the crowd staring back out at us, Michael at the forefront desperately pounding on the force field. I looked away and tried to look up at Cain as he started walking around the perimeter of the bubble, obviously with a purpose in mind. I certainly hoped it was enough to save him. “Cain, you’re a-”

  “Save it. I know I’m a fool. My falling for her lies proves just that. I knew better but didn’t listen to my gut. I should have known you wouldn’t-”

  “You listened to those you trusted,” I rasped, trying to be kind. “It was the right choice.”

  “The right choice?! I shoot you and Emma deceives us all?” he snapped, quickly heading into an inlet. I realized with a start it was an abandoned sewer drain from the original city, hidden behind one of the massive generators. He snorted humorlessly. “From the sewers we come, to the sewers we go. This is how we first started our cat and mouse game, isn’t it?”

  He ducked in and placed me as far in as he could get me to the grate in the back of the drain. He then squeezed in and wrapped his arm around me. Even though I was in extreme pain, I felt strangely at peace. He stroked my hair and hummed a dissonant tune, trying to calm me. That ended when he felt my forehead. “Man, you’re hot. If we make it through this somehow, I need to get you inside and fast. How much of that crap did she get you with?”

  “Concentrated… dose.”

  “Damn.” I felt his hand reach for my injured wrist that I had cradled against my chest. I shivered as I felt his fingers caress my skin. I was so hot his hand felt cold. I felt dried blood fall onto my chest as his fingers withdrew. “A very concentrated dose evidently.”

  He took a shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry, Rain. If I had known-”

  “S’okay,” I muttered over my swollen tongue. “I… forgive you.”

  “You can tell me that again when you’re feeling better. I really wish you would smack me around and call me shaitan again,” he sighed. “And I deserve that title. This sucks. I hate feeling helpless and worst of all, I know that I did this. I put that bullet in your wrist. I left you to die.”

  I shook my head. “You should have gotten… to the gate.”

  “And left you again? I don’t think so. Leaving you behind was the worst mistake of my life. I shouldn’t have believed it. I didn’t want to, not with the way I feel about you. You have to know-”

  A loud, quick beeping interrupted anything further he had to say. It was the final warning of the bomb going off. I buried my head closer into his arms, heart beating even faster to its unsteady rhythm. Normally, I would have been afraid of dying but as he squeezed me tighter, all I could feel was his heartbeat speeding wildly to meet mine.

  “I love you,” he said in a choked voice. “I don't know how it’s possible. I barely know you, but I do. I just want you to know that before...”

  Scarlet tears clouded my vision as his free hand grasped mine and I felt his lips come close to my ear. I closed my eyes trying to block the blood from falling. His words hit too close to home. They cut the walls surrounding my heart to the quick and they fell away, exposing the true me underneath. Too bad they had come too late.

  “Love you, too,” I whispered, knowing that he couldn’t possibly mean it even though I did.

  The ground trembled and a blinding white light swept into the tunnel. A great hot force shoved both of us back against the grate as the blast swept in. Even though my eyes were closed, it still lit up my retinas, mixing with the blood in my eyes. It turned a dull pink behind the lids. I could feel more welling up in my sinuses, exiting into my mouth and throat. It started to choke me as I held what I thought would be my - our - last breaths.

  I was almost wrong. The light faded and so did the heat. He was still alive.

  All was still, including my heart. It wasn’t beating anymore. A great pain erupted in my chest and I knew I was having a heart attack. I fought back the cry of pain.

  He shifted beneath me, raising his head. “That’s it? How did it not incinerate..? Oh, I don't care. We need to get you to the… Rain? Rain! No, you’re still breathing-”

  My head lolled as he brought his ear to my chest. I was rapidly losing control of everything. I could feel it. I was slipping. My breath was barely existent as my lungs stopped receiving the energy to carry on. My ears barely registered his last parting words to me. “No! Don’t give up on me now, Rain. Damn it, keep your heart beating! Keep fighting!”

  I felt myself being lowered the ground and an aggravated assault on my heart started as he tore off my bulletproof vest. I whimpered as I felt him hit my chest in a precordial thump and start CPR. It hurt terribly; the pain sharp over the numb feeling of drifting away. I felt a light pressure at my lips, blowing air into my lungs and then the attack started again. “Breathe! I will not lose you this way! You are going to live!”

  I wasn’t and I knew it. Even if he managed to get it going again, the rest of me was failing. It was over. I was over. But I still wanted one look at the man I had only recently come to love.

  I forced my red-tinted eyes to open past the clotted blood and look up. He was right there, manically trying to beat the life back into me. I opened my mouth to speak but no sound came out. I managed one weak wheeze before my eyes started to slide shut again. In the last second before they slid closed, his eyes caught mine and my violet eyes met anguished blue.

  And then I was gone.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The air smelled like alcohol an
d disinfectant. Chemical crap. I hated it and coughed to get it out of my nose. Strangely enough, it didn’t hurt like I thought it would. Considering the last thing I remembered, that was exceedingly unexpected. Wait, the last thing I remembered -

  I bolted upright into a sitting position and the entire bed I was sitting on scooched a few inches forward with the force. I was in the sterile environment of a hospital. White walls matched the white sheets and white hospital gown I was clothed in. I thought everything in the room was white except for my skin until my eyes came to rest on the opposite wall. And what I saw took my breath away.

  Flowers, cards, and all sorts of various things lined the entire wall. Whether it was bouquets, teddy bears, or candy, there was a ton of them. Drawings of me and someone I didn't recognize papered one corner. It took me a second to realize it was Michael. The word ‘hero’ was in a few of them. I saw a newspaper on the counter with our faces on it.

  I looked down at myself with shock. No blood, no bandages; only an IV in my arm and oxygen at my nose. More strangeness. All of my accumulated scars over the years were gone. My wrists, ankles - everything - were flawless except for the color. I was really pale, almost chalky-looking under my brown skin. I dragged my gown up and saw two new vertical scars running the length of my torso. I felt up my back and discovered the same.

  A weird beat and beeping sounded in my ears. I looked over at the heart monitor. I screwed up my eyes, sure I was wrong. It was marking in a strange pattern. It was like a waltz: one, two, three beats. I put my hand to my chest and discovered the same. My heart was beating three times instead of the normal double.

  I stared down at my hands. They were making mechanical sounds that my obscenely sensitive ears were picking up. I flexed my fingers and toes to hear the same. I felt where the bones normally were and felt nothing but the hard edge. I hoped it was still bone.

  I was seriously starting to freak out when the door opened. Fennley was in the doorway. He shook his head, smiling in a surprised fashion. “Good to see you up. Leave it you to awaken when he finally takes a break and leaves. The condition he’s been in has been downright frightening. Whether he’s yelling or pacing the floor with worry, you have that man on his knees.”

  His expression turned guilty. “Also, sorry for attacking you. I was only going by what I was told-“

  “What did they do to me?” I demanded in a panicky voice, still looking at my hands.

  He frowned, stepping in. “You’re too damn observant for your own good. Let’s start with small talk and work up to that. You’ve been out for four weeks and-”

  “Four weeks?!” I exclaimed loudly, causing him to jump. “I was dead last I remembered! What happened?!”

  “No small talk, I guess,” he said with a sigh. “They kept you in a medically-induced coma for a month. You were in bad shape. Up until now, we weren't sure you were going to wake up. You had complete organ failure and they’ve been purifying your blood every three days.”

  “And why weren't they sure I would wake?”

  He hesitated. “You almost didn't take to the artificial-”

  My worst fears were coming into view. “Artificial what?”

  He scratched his head uncomfortably. “You’re not taking this well. I can see that. Um… all of your internal organs were fried. We had to replace pretty much every organ except for the brain. Can’t replace that, you see,” he chuckled. “Your hand had sepsis from the shot, so they decided to replace that-”

  I jerked my hand up to stare at it again. The metallic clicking set off the worst kind of fear in me: emotional panic. I looked at his hand, seeing the same strange, whitish pallor as mine. “They removed my arm?”

  “And the other limbs, too,” he said with a grimace. “Look, if you have any more questions about this, I should get the surgeon.”

  “Anything else?” I interrupted, starting to shake. He failed to answer me and instead watched my bionics start to quiver. “Let me rephrase the question. What’s left of me that’s still human?”

  He looked at me warily. “Let me get the nurse.”

  “I’m a machine,” I whispered, fear starting to take hold.

  The waltzing heart monitor started beeping faster and faster. Fennley came toward me. “You need to calm down. This isn't good on your new heart.”

  “Calm down?!” I said in a deathly whisper. “Why didn't you just let me die?! There was so little of me left in the first place. Now there’s nothing left at all! Nothing!”

  By the end of the tirade I was screaming at him. A nurse dashed in, exclaiming at me worriedly and pushed me back onto the pillows. I was beyond comprehending her. I was too lost in my fear.

  Fennley stayed at the foot of my bed as the nurse came forward, stepping in next to my I.V. pole. “You’re going to be fine, Rain. This is just a little hiccup on the road to recovery. Sorry to do this, but you give us no choice.”

  There was a slow burn in my wrist where the IV led into my skin and then there was blackness.

  * * *

  Voices again. All I could hear were voices. One aggravated voice, the other apologetic. Fennley’s was the apologetic one. And the other…

  “What do you mean she was sedated? I was told she was awake,” Cain was saying irately.

  The dizziness from the drugs was wearing off again. I opened my eyes and looked at the unnervingly white, clean ceiling above me. I could move my limbs… No, they were attachments. I had no limbs any more. The things God had given me to survive as a human were mostly gone. I was more machine than His creation now. And that terrified me.

  “We had to sedate her. She was placing too much stress on her heart.”

  “Why?” he demanded in a voice like ice.

  “She didn’t react well to the news of the bionics. Don’t look at me like that, Cain. I didn't tell her. Smart as she is, she had figured it out on her own. When I came in, she was awake and pretty freaked out looking. She was staring at her hands like one would a snake. She kept saying in her panic that she wasn't human, that she was a machine.”

  “I’ll go sit with her,” he replied, sounding resigned. “If there’s a problem I’ll call for help, but other than that keep everyone out. I know how to handle her. And let’s keep any more news about her resurrection to ourselves, shall we?”

  “Yeah. Just wait until she figures out we had to replace all of her blood, too.”

  That would explain the chalky appearance of my skin. I was like Fennley now, more machine than animal. I groaned, the panic coming back. The heart monitor started agitatedly beeping again. It was so annoying I wanted to throw it through the wall. I realized I probably could do that now. The question wasn’t what I could do; it was what I couldn’t do. Remembering fighting Fennley and his unnatural strength, it occurred to me now that I probably was capable of the same.

  I sat up and tried to shake off the horrible, drowning feeling I was experiencing. Silence fell outside the door. “Oh, damn. She’s awake.”

  The door creaked open and Cain stepped through. He took in whatever expression my face was resting in. To him it mustn't have been encouraging. He slowly shut the door. “You don’t look happy. Is this the moment you’re going to yell at me like I wanted and tell me I’m shaitan again?”

  His attempt at humor fell flat as I failed to respond. “Guess not.”

  For a second, I felt a tinge of unease at his entrance, considering how he had betrayed me before. But it faded quickly, seeing his condition. Truthfully, he looked worse for wear. There were dark circles under his eyes and light scruff dotted his chin. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Was my condition what had put him in this state?

  Warmth swirled through me and then it hit me. Maybe living like this wouldn't be so bad. That is, if his declaration from my last moments wasn’t just a dying fantasy on either of our ends. I tried to smile. “Hi.”

  His frown lifted. “Well, hello.”

  I patted the space at the end of my bed. “You should sit.”
<
br />   “I.e., I look like hell. I should. It’s been a long four weeks,” he said wearily, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “You may be unhappy about it, but it was a hell of a trip keeping you running. Your heart stopped a grand total of three times… After the first two times I got it going again before we even made it in the gate. The doctors wanted to let you go, but I threw a fit and Michael somehow leaked the surveillance tape of the whole incident to the press. Fennley got you to his doctor and you and Michael are national heroes. Worked out pretty well, except for your panic-induced hysteria, of course.”

  I bowed my head, processing his words. He mistook that as sadness on my part. “But perhaps I was too overzealous in my attempts to keep you alive. Perhaps I was hoping it would atone for my mistake if you lived. Instead I find myself needing to make another apology to you and for that, I am deeply sorry.”

  I looked up at him, my eyes making a small click. I tried to ignore the knowledge that they were no longer mine. I tipped his chin up to look at me. He had been looking at the floor sheepishly. “And perhaps I forgot that I had someone I didn’t have before. We should both apologize.”

  A smile formed on his lips. “More than a ‘someone’ I hope.”

  “Well, if we’re going to start talking about Argon-”

  He laughed at my poor attempt at a joke and drew me into a hug. “Welcome back, Rain. You had me scared there for a while. They kept tryin’ to tell me they were essentially working over a corpse. You’re the first woman to ever survive this operation, so this is truly a miracle.”

  “I’m like Fennley now?”

  He hesitated, clearly wondering if this was going to set me off. “Pretty much. How do you feel? If there’s any pain, I should get the nurse.”

  I shook my head. “No pain. Just weird. Robotic almost. It’s unsettling. All of my senses have been heightened. I can hear these infinitesimal clicks when I move. It’s like gears of a clock every time I so much as twitch. My eyes are clearer than before. There are no more veins on my skin past my torso. It’s like I’m not real anymore. Like I’m even less…”