Nhika’s earlier confidence was wavering.
Strangely, this felt like an echo of the past, a night in the Theumas Medical Center. Maybe it was because they were so close—and still without casualty. She had a dreadful feeling like something terrible was about to happen.
And there were so many opportunities for it to arise. Mimi and Andao might never get the message to Trin. And he may not come in time. She and Kochin might never make it off this ship. Nhika figured nothing could go as wrong as that night in the Theumas Medical Center when she’d lost her life, but when she thought of everyone on this ship who’d been pulled into her plight—Lanalay, the Congmis, Kochin …
She could imagine worse things than death.
“We’ll be okay,” Kochin said, as though reading her mind. He took her hand, guided her through the ship. “I promise. We’ll be okay.”
Their path took them down an industrial-looking hallway—the bowels of the ship, where pipes gurgled with fluid and bellows churned like a digestive system. She’d come from the loading bay, so she knew exactly how to get back.
At the end of the hallway, she pushed a set of double doors open into the loading bay, a spacious and cylindrical room. Shipment boxes cluttered the bay, strapped down with netting, and the floor sloped upward at the far end: the wide door through which her Guardian had been loaded.
The Guardians were still there. For a moment, Nhika wondered if they could hop back into one, because inside she’d felt untouchable. But even if those Guardians had gotten her on, they couldn’t get her off.
They found the parachute packs lining the walls, strapped above the emergency seating. Kochin tugged one of them down and fit it over her shoulders. In an instructional tone, he gestured to the various parts of the pack as he buckled her in. “Pull this cord to deploy the chute. Yank this strap to tighten the pack. And, if you get caught somewhere, you can cut yourself free with this razor blade. Does it feel okay?”
She hummed agreeably, a little awed by his expertise. She had only ever known him to be a scholar. “And if it doesn’t deploy?”
“Then the ocean surface will hit you like an autocarriage,” he said. Nhika gave him a withering look.
He was reaching for his own pack when a rumble shook the bay. When they whipped around, her heart went straight to her stomach, because one of the Guardians was coming to life. Its body straightened with a series of hisses and whirs, its joints cracked like a giant coming out of hibernation, and when the cockpit lit up, Nhika saw the face within.
Commissioner Nem.
His low voice buzzed from an audio horn at his shoulder. “Thought you two might consider jumping. But I can’t lose two bloodcarvers to the sea.”
Nhika sucked in a breath, eyeing the exit. A dozen calculations looped through Nhika’s head: how fast a Guardian might go, how many strides to the exit, the meters of space between them and the commissioner.
But Kochin grabbed her hand, yelled at her to run, and that was all the command she needed.
They sprinted toward the door. The Guardian’s hand shot out on a cable, whipping around the bay. Boxes split on impact, spraying shards of wood and shredded paper. Nhika leaped over its extended reach, only to be caught on its recoil—the wire slammed against her chest with disorienting force, knocking her away from the door.
Kochin called her name, but the thud of her heartbeat in her temples drowned him out. She clutched a hand over her sternum, checking her ribs in turn: a hairline fracture here, a bruise across her entire chest, but she was still breathing.
Nem’s Guardian had turned its full attention toward her—a soldier encased in metal. A man immune to heartsoothing.
Still scraping herself off the floor, she found Kochin making his way toward her. The Guardian was fearfully fast, treads sparking metal as they skirted around the bay.
“Are you okay?” Kochin asked, reaching her side. He didn’t give her time to answer as he scooped her up over his arm and dragged her out of the Guardian’s path. It tore through behind them, then circled back to block the only exit.
“What do we do?” she asked, feeling panic rise in her throat.
Even Kochin looked uncertain. “I … I don’t know. I’ll draw him away, and you make a sprint for the exit.”
“No. Not without you.”
The Guardian’s audio horn blared to life again. “Kochin, Ms. Suon, I’m giving you one last chance to come freely. If you continue to resist, I’ll have no choice but to detain you against your will.”
“We’re getting off this ship,” she growled, and saw Nem glower behind the glass cockpit.
“We shall see,” he said, and shot forth another metal claw of his Guardian.
It snapped between them, tossing her and Kochin apart. She dove on her belly just in time to duck under its extended reach. When she regained her footing, the other arm rocketed out.
It caught her around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Kochin screamed her name as the arm retracted into its socket, pulling her with it. With a strangled cry, she flew back through the air and came to a jarring stop at the Guardian’s side, squeezed by its tight grip.
Kochin came to a stumbling halt, his arms outstretched as if to quell the metal beast of the Guardian, rather than the mortal man within. Nhika squirmed, but the rigid metal claws around her didn’t yield. They crushed her parachute pack against her ribs, threatening to squeeze her to bursting.
“Kochin, Ms. Suon, I am at my wit’s end trying to compromise with you,” Nem said, his voice crackling across the Guardian’s audio horn. “Kochin, we had a very agreeable deal, only for you to treat this as a form of imprisonment. And Ms. Suon, I’m not sure what I’ve done to make an enemy out of you.”
“Don’t pretend as if you weren’t using me as blackmail,” Nhika grunted. Her arms flexed uselessly at her side, fingers scrabbling at her backpack. She couldn’t reach the tab to deploy the chute, but she could just finger the edge of the knife.
“Commissioner Nem, please, set her down,” Kochin negotiated. He feigned calm, but she could read his concern in the twitch of his brow, the clench of his jaw. “You’re … you’re right. Let’s compromise.”
Within the Guardian, Nem shook his head. “No, no, Kochin. I compromised when I found out you were a bloodcarver. I compromised when you refused to bring her back at my request. I even compromised when you tried to escape Yarong with Mr. Dep Trin. Now, I’m done compromising. I’m looking for results.”
“I … can’t,” Kochin said, his calm facade breaking as his voice cracked. Nhika extended her fingers toward the knife, muscles aching against the metal grip of the Guardian. At last, her longest finger caught the hilt, and she drew it out of its canvas sheath.
“See, I don’t quite believe that,” Nem continued. “I’m holding the very evidence that you can. What I think is that you don’t want to, but for the life of me, I can’t understand why.”
Nhika met Kochin’s eye as she began sawing at the bottom of her pack, trying to release the chute. With her hands behind her, she didn’t know if he could see her escape attempt. She only needed him to stall.
“You didn’t give me enough time,” Kochin said, seeming to read her quiet request. “How long did you give the Congmis to build you their machines? Months? I only had weeks.”
“I would’ve given you more time if you showed me progress. But there was none—birds and mice and rodents, you couldn’t bring back a single one.”
Nhika continued sawing, opening a gash from one end of the pack’s bottom to the other.
“I can’t bring back animals. I only brought back her,” Kochin said. He swallowed his words immediately, eyes flaring—that had been the wrong thing to say.
Nem lifted her on his arm, grip compressing. The knife fell from her fingers as she let out a pained gasp, ribs threatening to snap and shoulder wrenching in her socket. “Her?” Nem repeated. He went quiet behind the hood, a look passing over his eyes—and Nhika could read it plainly. It was the look of an idea—something twisted, something desperate. It was the same look Santo had given her right before he’d gone to vivisect Kochin, but this time … she was the one on the operating table.
Mother, he was going to kill her. Then he was going to make Kochin bring her back.
Kochin held up a hand. Nhika snagged a finger against the chute within her sliced pack, trying to pull out the slippery fabric. “Commissioner Nem, I know what you’re thinking, but—”
“So, how many times will she have to die for you to perfect the skill?”
Picking up her pace, Nhika drew out the first inch of fabric, muscle straining against the compressive force of the Guardian’s arm. It came out slowly, one handful at a time.
There was true fear in Kochin’s eyes. “Commissioner, if you hurt her, I won’t be able to bring her back. You’ll be murdering her.”
“I don’t understand, Kochin!” Nem bellowed into his mouthpiece. “I don’t understand how you can’t repeat something you’ve already done. Physicians perform procedures over and over and over again until they perfect it. Were you not a physician’s aide? So, why is it that you hoard your miracle—is it because you feel that Theumas does not deserve it? Are you really so selfish?”
At that word, Kochin’s fear morphed into adamancy. “No,” he said, the word resounding around the bay. “I’m not selfish. I love Theumas—it’s my home. It’s who I am. If I could win us this war through heartsoothing alone, I would. But I can’t, because … Because that’s not what heartsoothing is. It’s not a science, to be studied. Nor an innovation, to be industrialized. It’s … It’s a magic, Commissioner.”
“What is the point of magic, then, if it cannot even save one’s home?”
“To survive,” Kochin said. “Isn’t that why we’re all fighting, Commissioner? To survive?”
That was the first time Nem stilled. The Guardian’s claws stopped clamping, and Nhika managed to yank out the bulk of the chute. Like a pustule popped, the chute squeezed out of the backpack and fell to the floor. With it, Nhika slipped out of Nem’s grasp, no longer filling the space of his hold.
She landed heavily on the floor, shrugging off the backpack and running to Kochin. He took her in his embrace, holding her defensively at his side. His hands checked her wounds in turn, influence pulling at her pain with a caress that numbed it.
Once he’d assured her safety, he turned his attention back to Nem. The Guardian remained still, unmoving. “Commissioner,” he said, sounding so much more assured now that she was free, “how can I change your mind?”
Nhika had never seen Nem unsure before. That man was made of harsh words and even harsher lines, brows drawn with zeal and boisterous confidence. Now, he seemed at a loss for words, stumbling over the start of his sentence.
“I…,” he began to say.
He didn’t finish his sentence before the ceiling burst.