Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(105)

Hasn’t he heard anything she’s said? Noemi wants to scream. The Elders don’t want to win this war, she thinks. They only see two ways to end this war—through death or isolation.

“I can’t make you believe in victory,” she says. “And I can’t make you believe in Abel’s soul. But I’m not going to let you hurt him, ever, so you can just—”

Noemi doesn’t hear the energy bolt. She only feels it. Heat beyond imagining erupts in her chest, sears outward along every nerve. Her muscles lock up, and her weapon falls uselessly to the floor. For one instant she sees the horror on Akide’s face, the way he looks from her to the blaster he just fired and back again in disbelief.

He meant to do it, she thinks in a daze. He just didn’t know what it would feel like to kill someone.

Then she falls.





36



HEARING RETURNS TO ABEL FIRST. HE PROCESSES THE input automatically, then consciously: It is the sound of a man crying.

Next he regains proprioception, the awareness of his own limbs and physical body. Then touch, which reveals that he’s lying on a flat, hard surface. Smell he finds with his next inhalation—

—and his receptors identify the scent of blood.

Abel opens his eyes and snaps back to full consciousness. He sits up quickly to take stock of his new situation and then realizes, no, he can’t be conscious yet. What he sees can only be a nightmare; therefore he is still asleep. But most dreams dissolve upon recognition, nightmares especially, and Abel’s still here, on a table, looking down at Noemi lying on the floor, unconscious or…

He looks toward the sound of weeping and sees Darius Akide on his knees, hands pressed together in the traditional shape of prayer. “Forgive me, Lord. Forgive your unworthy servant.”

On the floor next to Akide lies a blaster. The scent of ozone tangles with that of blood in the air.

Abel stares again at Noemi and sees the scorch marks on her exosuit. The faint spattering of blood around her on the floor from the few capillaries not instantly cauterized by a blaster wound. And the very slight rise and fall of her breath, which tells him that as seriously hurt as she is, she’s still alive.

This is no dream. This is reality, and he still has a chance to shape it.

He leaps from the table, landing between Akide and Noemi. Akide stares up in astonishment; apparently he didn’t know how long the stunner’s effects would last. Abel says nothing, just seizes Akide’s head in one hand and his throat in the other, then snaps them in opposite directions. His sharp hearing picks up the faint pop of the spine before the corpse drops to the ground.

There is deep inner programming meant to keep non-warrior mechs from hurting human beings, and that programming now throbs within Abel, one brief pulse of pain, and then it’s forgotten. Maybe it will trouble him later. Nothing matters at this moment except for Noemi.

He kneels beside her and brushes his fingers along her cheek. “Can you hear me?” Being stunned is a poor analogue of death, but he knows that in both cases, hearing is the last sense to go.

Noemi’s eyes flutter open. Abel rolls her into his arms, cradling her shoulders in the crook of one elbow. Her pupils are slightly dilated and both her pulse and respiration are dangerously low. She opens her mouth, closes it again, then manages to whisper, “Abel?”

“Yes. I’m here. I’m going to take care of you.”

With that he pulls her into his arms and dashes to the nearest biobed. He’s able to keep her steady in his embrace, without a single jolt to hurt her more, and once he’s reached his destination he lays her gently on one of the biobeds. Immediately readings light up on the monitors, each one of them more dire than the last.

Abel knows how a biobed functions. These readings are consistent with the injury Noemi has received. Yet he cannot believe them. Never before has he understood the human emotional response called “denial.”

“Where’s Akide?” she murmurs.

Hopefully in hell, Abel thinks, but he says only, “He’s not a danger anymore.”

“…Did he hurt you…?”

How can she worry about him while she lies on the biobed with a burned-out crater in her chest? “No. I’m all right, Noemi, I’m fine, and I’m going to make you well.”

“Liar,” she says softly, and somehow it sounds like the kindest name she’s ever called him.

The heart remains intact, he thinks, looking up at the readings. The lungs are badly compromised, significantly past recommended regeneration limits but not absolutely beyond the range of possibility. Liver, spleen, and gallbladder destroyed, but only the liver is critical and could in time be regenerated.

Time. He needs time to save her, and all his intelligence and ability can’t give it to him.

“It’s starting,” she murmurs. “You can feel it a little… like your body isn’t yours really….”

“Try to remain conscious.” Why does he feel such a strong need to say this to her when he knows it’s beyond her power to obey? He wants to believe it’s up to her. He hates even the idea of heaven, because if she has faith in some better place she’ll want to go there. “Stay with me.”

“Wish I could.” Noemi’s eyes close for a moment; when she opens them again, it’s obvious she’s fighting for even that. “…I’m going to find Esther’s star.”