JAL
He missed rocks. Kind of a stupid thing to miss, and a stupider thing to say, especially anywhere in earshot of Nash. The ribbing she’d give him would be goddamn diabolical, so he kept his mouth shut. He did miss them, though. Their sturdiness, their texture. Rocks made good climbing.
This shit didn’t.
The metal was slick. Flimsy. The bars couldn’t have been much thicker than his wrist, bolted together with brackets so corroded that half of them popped loose under his weight. But he kept moving. One bar fell, he grabbed another. His gloves slipped on a damp patch, so he yanked them off with his teeth and put those hard-earned calluses to work. One hand over the other, one story at a time. What he was made for, what he was good at. Don’t think, just climb. Down below, the ground shrank steadily away from him, and Nash was long gone and out of sight. Just him and the ghosts now.
“Johnny was a runner,” he sang under his breath, tearing a piece of rotten old plastic out of his way and trying not to wonder how many minutes he was saving not taking the stairs.
“They told him he could fly,
So they stuck a pickaxe in his hand,
And they sent him to the sky.”
“Thought the pick went on his back.”
Jal missed the next bar and had to swing himself up by his grip hand. “Saint!” Came out on a whuff of air too startled to be a laugh, but damn, Jal was glad to hear his voice. Still talking meant still breathing, and Jal kept climbing. Seven floors to go. Six. Five. “Are you—”
“Still stuck,” said Saint. “Damn tuna can.”
“Hey, be nice,” said Nash. So the gang was all there. What was left of it, anyhow. “Not the ship’s fault she’s sturdy. She’s…” She trailed off, then swore. “Well, I was going to make a joke about thin skins, but the hull’s taking my plasma torch like a champ. At this rate, we’re—”
“Not getting through.” As good as it was to hear Saint, it wrenched Jal’s gut to hear him talking like that. Wheezy and paper-thin. He’d always had one of those voices that could catch every ear in a room. Barked an order, and Jal swore rangers on the next planet over could hear it. “Not in time.”
He didn’t say in time for what. Saint was real gentlemanly like that.
Jal wished he could say he pushed himself that little bit faster, but he was already giving it everything he had. Skipping bars when he knew he shouldn’t, jumping a handful of rungs at a time when they could barely take his weight at a crawl. “If you’re still inside—” A bar swung loose and clipped him in the forehead; he knocked it out of the way and kept going without missing a beat. “—how’re you on comms?” If Nash had gotten the Ambit booted up that fast, he’d have some real crow to eat. He wasn’t used to being the slow one.
“Patched the radio through,” Nash replied. She sounded about as distracted as he felt. “I multitask.”
Finally, Jal made it to the top of the scaffolding. The old metal groaned as he shifted around the side, and Jal’s top-shelf hearing caught the creak of every surviving bracket all the way to the floor, ready to snap. Top-heavy was bad enough, but throw it sideways and off-balance, and it was just a matter of ti—
SNAP.
SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP.
Soon as one bolt went, they all did. The whole rig buckled, pitching sideways in a steep bow too quick for Jal to do much but let go.
Pure muscle memory twisted him in midair. No quick thinking, just habit born of hundreds of falls over dozens of years telling his body to turn, and his hands to grab, and his fingers to hold the fuck on as the rest of him slammed into the sleek metal bars of the railing along the top floor. “Sounds about right,” he groaned, peeling himself off the rail and throwing his weight over the top of it.
“What was that?” Nash asked.
Jal wasn’t sure if she meant the thud or the groan, so he pretended it was neither. “I’m at the top,” he said instead, shuffling to his feet and taking off down the walkway. The storefronts all looked the goddamn same. Maybe they’d have dressed them up nice, put some displays in their windows and splashed some paint on those walls; but more likely, they’d have left it that same stark, unfeeling white.
“Shit, already?” If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said Nash sounded impressed.
He couldn’t enjoy it, though. However long it had taken him to scale that scaffolding, it was too long. Saint’s breathing was getting shorter, shallower. Five minutes left? Less? “Hey, Miss Multitasker,” he said, “you want to give me a way to the roof? Reckon they might notice me popping out the stairwell door.”
“Maybe if you shout surprise,” Nash replied absently. “I don’t know, think you could make it from the outside? Gonna need you to be quick about it, miner boy; I’m one passcode from powering up, and Saint’s about four minutes from passing out.”
“I’m fine,” Saint said, but the slight slur in his words said otherwise. “But she’s right; go outside. Window. Ship side, busted glass.”
Jal took a second to orient himself. Ship side was back toward the entrance of the shopping center. Hard to spot a busted window from outside the stores, but the small lake seeping out one of the doorways was a solid clue. Wind must’ve blown the rain in. “I see it.” Water splashed under his boots as he jogged through the hollowed-out husk of the store. Might’ve been a sight to behold if they’d ever finished it, but nobody’d gotten around to putting up the lights and shelves and shit, just left them in piles. There was something depressing about a job started and never finished.
Almost as depressing as a busted window at twenty-something floors. No shards of silica on the tile underneath it; just a punched-out hole and a real long drop. Not a pretty picture. Hope you hit hard and went quick, whoever you were, Jal thought. A cracked skull had to be kinder than death by flesh-eating acid. They hadn’t seen a body on their way in, but after that long in the elements, he reckoned they probably wouldn’t have.
“Good,” Saint said faintly. Fuck, he was taking too long. “Vent unit’s close for cover. They’re not looking. Go.”
“Man has no air, and he still can’t help bossing me around,” Jal griped, but the joke felt forced. Less talking, more climbing. He knocked out the last few shards of silica from one side of the window so he could swing around onto the ledge, and goddamn, that rain. Brutal, pounding rain. It soaked him the second he stuck his head out and collected in the mask around his neck, sloshing down his chest as he made the first reach. The wall had the same strange beehive pattern as the skylight, carved just deep enough into the surface that he could hook his fingers in to the second knuckle.
Another ten or twenty decs—no problem. The ache in his muscles wasn’t real. The howl of the wind, the rush of the rain, the three gunners and the turncoat on the roof, none of it was as real as the strained breaths in his ear and the clock ticking down in his head.
He climbed.
“Johnny ran with starlight,
He was the quickest in the cut,
But years went by, ol’ John got tired,
’Til he wasn’t quick enough.”
Helped to keep a rhythm when he climbed, hissed between his teeth as he clawed his way up. Made him breathe when his lungs wanted to seize, made him move when his muscles wanted to lock. His fingers burned. Couldn’t get his boots in the gaps, couldn’t take his weight off his hands. His forearms quivered as he closed the gap to the edge of the roof, but Saint’s breath was getting thinner, and Jal couldn’t stop.
“Dry your eyes, little runner,
Ain’t no need to cry.
He’s still running with the stars,
But he left his pick behind.”
He stopped just shy of the top of the wall, listening over the rain for footsteps, voices, some sign of where the hell everyone was.
“—have time for this, Anneka,” he heard. A man’s voice, soft and severe; reminded Jal of this mining company preacher who used to roll through the tenements when he was a kid. Calm until he wasn’t, quiet until he had something worth saying loud, and then a six-year-old Jal would’ve sworn the man could speak the world on fire. “I know it’s hard, but we’re almost there.”
“Just let me try.”
Close. Sounded like she was damn near right above him. The other three couldn’t be that far away. “Missin’ my pocket sniper right about now,” he whispered. It’d always been easier to do the dumb shit, knowing he had a crack shot waiting in the wings to even the odds.
“Careful. Those’re probably the marksmen. You saw the bodies.”
“I did.” Room full of corpses—hard to forget.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Jal counted to three in his head. Figured he ought to at least pretend to consider it; only polite. “Nah,” he said when the three-count was up.
“Nah?”
“You already bailed on me once, old man. Not letting you make it a habit.” And that was that. “Save your breath, all right? Nash, how’m I looking?”
“Got Anke and a couple of—shit. That’s him.”
“That’s who?” He hated this. Reactions and pieces of information. Waiting for an opening with Saint choking in his ear.
“Drestyn. Isaiah Drestyn, that agitator with a dead-brother-sized chip on his shoulder,” Nash hissed. “Cap called it. He’s—okay, he’s walking back toward the rockhopper. If there’s another one up there, I can’t see them from here.” Which meant he still had an extra man to contend with when he nabbed the tablet, but also another reason for his friends not to unload their clips in Jal’s general direction. Call that one neutral. “Ventilation block’s about thirty decs to your right. If you’re gonna do something, you’d better do it—”
Jal vaulted over the edge of the roof, and there they were. Two backs to him, tablet in Anke’s hands and ripe for the taking. He sprang forward as one of the bogeys shouted a warning, but they weren’t quick enough. He got the tablet before Anke even finished turning around, and a hard shove sent her sprawling as the guy beside her whipped his gun around. Scatter gun, long barrel; shit weapon for close quarters, and Jal gladly showed him why.
He grabbed the barrel and ducked under it, and Anke’s friend did what all gunners do: he held on. Should’ve dropped it, drawn his secondary, but he grabbed with both hands and left his face nice and open for Jal’s elbow.
The guy staggered back, and as Jal twisted toward the vent unit with the scatter gun and the tablet, the first gunshots erupted across the roof. Drestyn and the other guy didn’t wait for their crewmate to get clear, just opened fire, and Jal swore the sky got darker. Rain turned to sand on his tongue, bitterness to blood, two guns to dozens ringing in the distance as he ran toward—
Suddenly, his leg dropped out from under him. Buckled midstep, no warning, and he’d barely registered the impact before the pain ripped up his thigh. Like an axe across his knee, and for a single horrible second, he was certain that if he looked down, there wouldn’t be anything there at all.
Then he hit the ground, and the world snapped back into motion. He snapped back into motion, clawing across those last few decs to duck behind the vents as bullets pinged off the roof around him. A god-awful wounded sound keened through the chaos as he shoved his back against the block, low and ragged and rasping. Took him a whole handful of seconds to realize it was him making the sound, that it was him breathing so fast, that it was him swearing on every other exhale like some fucked-up mantra.
So much red pooled on the white, white roof.
“—al! Jal, talk to me!” Nash shouted, but not frantically. Not like him. Quick and sharp, trying to get his attention, and it finally dawned on him that she’d heard that wounded sound, too. “What’s going on?”
“Hit.” Fuck, he needed to stop the bleeding. Despite what it felt like at first, the bullet hadn’t taken his leg, but it’d made a mess of his thigh. High-caliber, exit wound in the front, and white showed through the pulpy, awful red. Bone. Bone and blood and his own shaking fingers closing over it as the whole world flashed black and gray. “Fired before their guy got clear. They shouldn’t have—” They could’ve hit their own man. Hell, they could’ve hit Anke, and he knew they were crack shots, and it sounded like Jal was the only one who’d caught a bullet, but that didn’t matter. Jal wouldn’t have risked his own people.
Maybe that was why he kept losing.
A shadow stretched across the roof beside him; someone coming around the vent block. Scatter guns might’ve been shit for close range, but they made for great blind warning shots. He aimed it back around the corner of the block and fired, and a string of curses went up as the shadow retreated.
Wasn’t the high ground, but it would do in a pinch.
“Kid?” Saint sounded worse than Jal did. “How bad?”
He couldn’t answer that. The pain made him want to shrink away from his own body—the kind of pain that tried to scatter every coherent thought, but he held them tight. “Need a new plan,” he said instead, flipping the tablet right-side up on the ground beside him. Couldn’t hold it, his leg, and the scattergun, so the ground would have to do. “Can’t come down.” Even if his thigh would hold up to a climb, he wouldn’t be fast enough to get clear. If they could get the ship back online, though, Eoan could run off the rockhopper crew and get him an evac off the roof. Just had to rearrange shit a little.
Nash seemed to have the same thought. “If you can get the patch to us remotely, we can run those fuckers off and pick you up. Ship’s powered up and waiting. Can you sync up with it from there?”
Fuck if he knew. “I’ll ask.”
“You’ll what—?”
“Anke!” he shouted, digging his head back against the cold, dripping metal as a fresh wave of fire washed down his leg. Wasn’t like a cramp following his heartbeat; his heart beat too damn fast for that. He never would’ve felt a difference. His muscles felt like they were trying to move on their own, tensing around open air and torn meat and screaming with the effort. His vision spotted at the corners. “You want your GLASS back? Tell me how to sync this thing up with the ship.” Then to hell with whatever else Anke and Drestyn had planned; she could have the damn tablet and they could sort the rest. He just had to get the ship unlocked. He had to get Saint out.
The gunfire stopped, but Jal swore he could still hear the echoes. Made it hard to hear the direction of Anke’s voice behind the vent block when she answered him. “I can’t!”
“Bullshit!”
“No, I—I swear, Jal.” As if that was supposed to mean something. “I tried. As soon as I realized Saint was in there, I’ve been trying, but even with the ship back online, the signal’s not strong enough to support an upload. You’d need the Ambit’s comm systems on and receiving, or you’d need a hard connection.”
He didn’t want to believe her. Wanted to call her bluff and make her talk, so he could do what he’d set out to do. But the half-dozen error messages on the screen were plain enough that even somebody like him could read them. She had tried, and she had failed. And if someone like Anke couldn’t get it, then what sort of chance did a blunt tool like Jal have?
“Nash—” he started.
“I heard.” Tight, clipped. “Let me think. Just give me some time, let me think.”
“We don’t have time.” Wasn’t just Saint running out. Jal’s arms were getting heavier; his fingers, colder. Losing too much blood too fast, and if he didn’t get a solution soon, he’d be too useless to do anything about it. “Think this thing would survive if I threw it down to you?”
“Twenty-five floors? Wouldn’t bet on it,” Nash said reluctantly. Like she’d already had the thought and still hated to dismiss it.
Another shot rang out, perilously close to the edge of the vent box. He hadn’t realized he’d started to list sideways. “Ranger!” Voice as sharp as the gunshot. Definitely like that preacher. Jal assumed that voice belonged to Drestyn—probably the one who’d put the hole in Jal’s leg, from the aim of that shot. Bastard. He’d have to remember to thank him for that, nice and proper. “We don’t want you; we just want the tablet.”
“That hurts my feelings,” Jal said.
“We’re not the enemy here,” said Preacher-Man Drestyn. “We’re trying to save lives.”
Jal barked a laugh. “Know a few mercs who might have something to say about that.” He wondered if Drestyn’s people helped at all, or if he’d been the one to put them all down. With shooting like that, he probably didn’t need much backup. Might’ve given Saint a run for his money, shot for shot. Definitely a striker. Everybody with a ship and a gun fell into one bucket or another. Scratch off Trust, Guild, scav, and he was either the most badass Union rep in the O-Cyg, or an agitator with a cause he didn’t mind killing for. Eoan’s intel was right on the money. “Shit, I’ll bite. You want to be the hero, then you let me get this tablet down to my friends. I got some lives to save, too. Won’t even fight you for the GLASS when I’m done with it.”
“I’m sorry.” There it was again. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Like their hands were tied. Preacher-Man Drestyn and his pretty pink traitor, martyrs for the fate of the universe. Didn’t seem to matter that everyone else did the sacrificing. “But we don’t have time. By now, the Trust knows the facility’s been compromised. They’ll have reinforcements headed our way, and we’ve come too far for them to stop us now.” Cool, clean, matter-of-fact. Said it all like gospel, what was and what shall ever be. World without end. A-fucking-men.
“You know, you remind me of somebody,” Jal told him. “Old company preacher, used to come to the mines every now and then, spread the good word. In all labor there is profit, but idle talk leads only to poverty. Me, I reckon his only religion was a fat purse and a promotion off that no-sun rock.” Everybody always wanted off Brigham. Right about then, Jal would’ve given just about anything to be back there. “Tell me something, Preacher. What god’re you praying to?”
“Look around you, Ranger,” said Drestyn. Seemed trite to correct him. “Save one life or save thousands. Millions. It’s not even a question.”
Made sense. Pure, mathematical, utilitarian sense. Jal didn’t give a damn about sense, though. He gave a damn about the man drawing his last breaths in that ship down there. Screw the thousands; he gave a damn about the one.
“Anke,” he called. No changing Drestyn’s mind, but Anke … she’d tried, hadn’t she? They could’ve been gone already, but she’d tried to fix it. He had to believe that counted for something. “You did this. You trapped him in there, and you’re just gonna let him die?”
“I didn’t mean to.” Had she moved? Anke sounded farther away, voice beaten down by the rain. Or maybe it was just the ringing in his ears. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Nobody was supposed to be in the ship. You were supposed to get the drive from the console. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
I’m sorry, Fenton had told him, in that small, frightened voice. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know it was—And then he’d done what he’d done, and he hadn’t looked back. Jal had lost his taste for apologies that day.
“You don’t get to put a knife in somebody’s back and say you’re sorry it hurt them, Anke. Ain’t how it works.”
“Just give us the tablet,” said Drestyn.
Jal shot at another shadow creeping closer around the block. “Fuck you.” The gun felt nearly too heavy to hold; the recoil damn near took it out of his fingers, and it sagged as the shadow retreated again. Really missing his pocket sniper. “Saint?” he tried, quietly. Just wanted to make sure he was still there. Wanted to make sure there was still time.
“’m here.” So faint, Jal could barely hear him. Clumsy and slurring, and it occurred to Jal that the next time he asked, Saint might not answer at all. Silence down the line—the thought of it gripped his heart with cold, jagged fingers and squeezed. He’d lost Saint once, and it’d nearly killed him. The second time could only be worse.
“Please, Jal,” Anke said. “Just do what he says. We can figure something out, okay? You can still get home to your family.”
Bitsie. Regan.
He’d practiced it. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you. The words he’d planned to say, the smile he’d planned to smile when he saw them … all of this was for them. Everything he’d done was to get back to them, to hold them in his arms again and tell them, I missed you, I missed you, I missed you. To tell them, I love you.
That was the problem, though. Somewhere in the last few days, in the running and the fighting and the socked-feet galley dancing, in the mad whirlwind of being part of that crazy, unwavering crew, he’d realized it wasn’t just Bitsie and Regan he’d missed. It wasn’t just them he loved.
“I can’t do that.” His throat tightened. Too many things he wanted to say to people he prayed could still hear him, and no time to explain any of it in any way but one: “They’re my family, too.” He’d found himself these last couple weeks. Found his freedom, found his strength, found that feeling of belonging that he’d lost along the way, and it was all because of them. Saint. Eoan. Nash. His crew, the way crew was meant to be.
Blurry and burning, his gaze drifted out over the edge of the roof to storm-cloud horizons and an old, patched-up gyreskimmer. GS 31–770 Ambit. Not too pretty, not too clean, but she’d been cared for where it mattered.
He swallowed past the lump in his throat, wiping his face with his sleeve. “I’ve got an idea,” he rasped, just for Nash and Saint. It was all he could do to bite back a groan as he pushed himself to his feet, shoulder on the vent and scatter gun in his shaking hand like a crutch. The tablet slid down in his zipped-up coat, snug like the geodes when he was a kid. Safe, he hoped, because he’d run out of other options.
Three steps to the edge, maybe less. He could make it. He’d made it this far; he could make it three more steps. “You were right, you know,” he told Nash, struggling to keep his voice steady. “I should’ve called them. I should’ve told them.” They deserved to know that he’d tried. They deserved a chance to say all the things they never got to, but at least … at least he knew they’d be looked after. His name would be cleared, his pension and benefits reinstated. He could take care of them, at least, even if he couldn’t be there. “Promise me something, will you? Whatever happens…” He took a breath and blinked up at the cold, gray sky. “Whatever happens, promise you’ll get me home.”
They deserved a chance to say goodbye.
“Jal,” Nash said warily. “What are you doing?”
But she was clever; she’d have run through it, same as him. She wasn’t really asking. “Promise me,” he repeated.
The silence felt like a held breath. His, hers, everyone on that roof’s. He just hoped Saint still had breath to hold.
“I promise,” she said, at last.
He believed her. “You’re all right, glowworm.” Because thank you seemed to stick in his throat, and time was too short. Just one more thing. “Hey, old man? If you can hear me … this time, look away.”
He wasn’t gonna catch him now.
Three steps. That was all it took. Shots rang out, pain turned his vision white, but he was made to run. Three, two, one, until his boots hit the edge of the roof. Bitsie. Regan. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you.
With the tablet tucked against his chest, all he had to do was fall.
ANKE
She couldn’t scream. She wanted to. She felt one clawing up from her chest as Jal disappeared over the roof’s edge, but it died soundlessly in her throat. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t do anything but stand there, silent, while the world happened around her.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
A hand curled around her arm. “Anneka, we have to go,” said Drestyn with his soft, sad eyes. Preacher, Jal had called him, but he seemed more penitent than priest. A young face with too many lines, half an ear missing, and a vicious stretch of scars along his jaw. His brows furrowed earnestly as he tugged her toward the rockhopper. “Please, there’s no time.”
“We can’t,” she heard herself say, but it didn’t feel like she was the one saying it. Like someone had prerecorded it and just pushed the damn button. “He just—” Jumped. He jumped, and he’s gone, and it’s my fault. She’d put a knife in their backs, just like he said, and they’d bled, and it was on her hands. “The tablet—it was the only copy of the patch.”
“But not the virus.” Drestyn was so bizarrely gentle as he turned her away from the roof’s edge. “You have the drive?”
Her head jerked. She wasn’t even sure it was a nod, but her hand dipped into her pocket, and came up with the little metal tube. It felt like lead in her hands, cold and dense and heavier than it had any right to be.
He folded her hand closed around it with what might’ve been a reassuring smile, on a face less severe. “The plan hasn’t changed,” he said. “They need to pay for what they did. They need to never do it again. This is how we make that happen.”
This was how they saved everyone.
There was always going to be a price; she’d known that from the start. She just hadn’t known how high it would be. She hadn’t known someone else would have to pay it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as Nash’s shouts drifted up from the ground below.
With hot tears and cold rain wet on her cheeks, she let herself be led onto the ship.
SAINT
He woke up. Came to? Didn’t really know which.
God, it was bright. Staring straight up at the overhead lights from the floor of the bridge, trying to remember how he got there through a head stuffed full of cotton and mud. Fuck, it ached. His head. His ribs. The radio cable had tangled around his arm so tight his fingers had gone cold. Must’ve taken it with him when he fell.
“Saint,” Eoan said from everywhere. Their voice snapped him out of it—theirs, not whatever messed-up version of it had struggled over the comms before he’d killed the power. They were back. They were okay. The bright flare of relief didn’t last, though. “Saint, you have to get up,” they insisted urgently.
How were they back? He’d shut off the power, plunged the ship into that stark, black silence as he’d staggered his way back to the bridge, chest already aching, lungs already starving. Alone in the bridge but for the voices over the radio. Nash talking him through what she was doing outside the ship, and Jal—
“Jal.” He was on his feet before he’d even decided to move, yanking his arm free of the radio cable and tearing out of the bridge. His legs didn’t want to hold him, but he made them, ignoring the pitch and yaw of the floor because he knew it wasn’t really moving. “Cap, where’s Jal?”
“You need to get outside,” they answered, and something about the way they said it, the careful tonelessness, sank his heart straight to his stomach. Seeing the GLASS pad glowing from the hood of the rover was like waking from a nightmare and realizing he hadn’t even been asleep. If it was there, then—
This time, look away. He remembered. God, he remembered.
He barely felt the rain as he leapt from the cargo ramp. Should’ve landed in mud, but his boots hit something hard instead. The pavilion.
“Nash said it would be better to be closer,” Eoan told him, like they’d heard him thinking it. “Saint, I’m sorry.”
He heard the words, but they didn’t register. He’d spotted them: two shapes ahead in the shadow of the shopping center, Nash’s back to him as she hunched over—
“No, no, no.” Saint sprinted from the pavilion, mud sucking at his boots and his pulse roaring in his ears. Jal wasn’t moving. Fuck, he wasn’t moving, but as Saint slid to his knees beside him he realized Jal’s eyes were open. He was alive. He was awake, and aware enough to shape Saint’s name before a sputter of blood and a choked-out groan cut it off. Red everywhere. Spilling down his chin, gushing between Nash’s hands where she pressed against his leg. It painted the mud underneath him, too dark, and too much, and Jal’s eyes were too goddamn wide.
Saint suddenly had no idea what to do. No idea where to hold Jal that wouldn’t hurt him, no idea what to say that would ease that wild-eyed agony staring back at him. “Nash, Christ, give him something.”
“I fucking did,” she snarled. “Just keep your shit together and give me your fucking hand.”
He didn’t ask why, didn’t even look at her; he just stuck out his hand and forced himself not to recoil as she snatched it and shoved it over the bloody dressing on Jal’s leg. Another choked-out groan, another sputter of pain, but Nash pushed it down harder. Merciless. Determined. Holding his life in through sheer force of goddamn will.
“Keep pressure on it,” she said. “Keep him still. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you—?” But she’d already taken off back toward the ship, leaving him with Jal. Alone with him, watching his blood ooze between Saint’s callused fingers, watching his chest spasm around broken, stuttering breaths.
He looked so scared. Scared, and young, and somehow still fucking smiling. A shaking hand hooked around his elbow, and somehow it said what Jal couldn’t. Glad you’re here. Here. Alive. Like Saint wouldn’t have died a hundred times over to spare them both from this. He’d had Jal’s blood on his hands before, in every sense of the words, but it’d never felt so cold.
He didn’t know what to say, but the words came anyway. “I know, kid.” I know why you did it. I know you’re scared. I know it hurts. “But I’ve got you, all right? I’m here.” I wasn’t last time, but I am now. As if it made a difference. As if it made it better. “Just—Jal, listen to me. Listen to my voice, all right?” Because Jal’s smile started to falter as another wet cough rattled his chest. “It’s just a dream,” he told him, heart in his throat. “It’s just a bad dream. Go somewhere else.” He pressed down harder on Jal’s leg as his grip started to slip. Too much blood, making everything slick. “Remember the lake? Shining like a diamond, all that cold air on our cheeks. Remember the way Bitsie laughed.” His throat stuck, but he kept going. Kept smiling. Distantly, he noticed Nash making her way back with the tarp stretcher and medkit, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her for long. “Remember how excited she was to get out on that ice. Remember how happy you were. How happy we were.” For the longest time, he’d forgotten what peace was. He’d forgotten, but they’d shown him—helped him snatch splinters of light out of the dark, and he prayed he could give a bit of that back to Jal now. “Be there with them, kid. Be home. We’ve got it from here.”
I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.
He kept his smile as Jal’s eyes rolled back, even though it ached like a wound. Kept his smile and kept the pressure, until Jal went still beneath his blood-slicked hands. I hope you dream of them. Dream of family, dream of home.
More than anything, he hoped he’d find the strength to wake up.