Secondborn (Secondborn #1)(60)

Two more claws emerge from the medical drone. One attaches to the armor of the soldier while the other stabilizes his neck and back. Together, the claws lift him from the ground while a third arm emerges and places a swatch of cloth beneath the soldier’s body. The swatch inflates into an air-pallet. The claws lower the soldier to the pallet, securing him to it with straps. The air-pallet lifts from the ground and hovers away with the soldier in tow, in the opposite direction of the battlefield. The medical drone retracts its arms and flies into the mist. I move on, pawing through bodies, checking for pulses, opening visors to check for breathing. No one is alive—not Swords, and not the Gates of Dawn soldiers in their warrior armor and unique helmets.

At midday, the sky is just as gray as it was at dawn, and the mist is no less thick. I take a sip of water from the straw in my helmet. The supply is running low. I’m not sure when, or if, they plan to pick me up.

I’m so near the battle now that the noise is no longer muffled. An arm moves in my peripheral vision. A dark-armored soldier with heavy black gates etched into his breastplate lies on the ground amid others with violet-colored Tree emblems on their breastplates. His visor is down, a swirling night sky engulfed by black holes. I’ve seen it before, like the one the Gates of Dawn leader wore when my hovercade was attacked. The one I dream about almost every night. It can’t be the same man. They’re probably just both from the Fate of Stars.

He reaches for his fusionblade, but a body bogs him down. He struggles against the dead weight as he sees me nearing him. One of his arms is useless. His armor is sliced open from his shoulder to his abdomen.

I’m close now. He tries again to grasp his fusionblade, but it’s just out of his reach. I kick it away, he stops struggling, and his head drops, his breathing coming in heavy pants from beneath his visor. My hand trembles. I have to see him.

I inch nearer, drawing my fusionblade. I hold it close to his neck. “Open your visor,” I order.

“Why?” he asks in a deep voice.

“Do it.”

The visor skips back to reveal his grimace. He squints in pain. I stare at him for a long moment. “What are you looking at? Just do it! Kill me already!” My hand trembles, and he sees it. I extinguish my fusionblade, attaching it to the weapon’s clamp on my thigh armor. “Aw, I thought you were brave, Little Sword,” he says. I unzip my pouch and fumble for a black death-drone beacon. “But you’re a robot, same as the rest of them. They programmed you not to think for yourself. To follow orders. To do as you’re told. I bet you don’t even know why you can’t think for yourself. It’s the way you were raised, indoctrinated into their society—and it is their society. It was never yours, not since the moment you took your first breath. It was always theirs.”

I set the black beacon on the side of his boot. He tries to scrape it off, but it holds firm. The ominous black light blinks on and off, calling to the nearest death drones. The ground rattles beneath us, the battle growing louder. The injured man tries again to reach his sword. He groans in anguish and tries to scrape the beacon off his boot again, but it clings with the tenacity of a parasitic insect.

He’s not the one who attacked me in Forge. I know he’s not. He was probably never even there. The wrongness of summoning the death drone tortures me. I move to pick up his fusionblade to give it to him so he can defend himself. As I grasp the hilt, sparks pierce my skin. Molten heat burns me. I scream in agony and drop the sword. Red welts bloom on my right palm in the perfect outline of the crest etched into his fusionblade.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he asks. “It knows you’re not me.” The smirk of vengeance on his feverish face is more acrid than the smell of my burnt flesh. “You can’t shrug that off.”

I turn my head and hit my visor button with my chin as I retch. It ticks back enough so that my vomit only splashes on the ground. When I’m done, I walk a few steps and sit down, cradling my swollen hand in my lap. The compartment on my gun belt holds my first aid supplies. I fumble through it with one hand for some ointment and a clean bandage. The ointment cools the burn on contact, and I breathe easier. Tearing the bandage package open with my teeth, I wind it around my palm and tie it off. I lean back against a rock and stare straight ahead.

The wounded Gates of Dawn soldier reaches to his waistband. I tense and make to stand, but he doesn’t pull a weapon. Instead, he extracts a little white pill. Raising it to his mouth, he’s about to swallow the cyanide when I lurch forward and knock it from his hand.

He groans and closes his eyes.

“Shouldn’t you at least go out fighting?” I kick his fusionblade closer and back away.

“No one fights to stay in hell.” He doesn’t reach for his fusionblade. “Your drone will interrogate me, Little Sword. I’d rather not stick around for it.” Drool runs from his mouth. “Do you know where the phrase ‘stick around’ came from?” he asks. His hand searches the ground for the cyanide capsule.

“No.” I pull at the dead body that has him pinned.

He seems not to notice. His breathing slows. His skin is losing color. “It’s from a book. ‘A friend sticketh closer,’” he grunts, “‘than a brother.’”

The dead body slides free, and I let go of its limp arm, seeing his wounds for the first time. His collarbone is cut clean through, but it can be mended. “What does it mean?” I ask.