Vick is alone.
AS SOON as the freight elevator raises us to the surface of the small moon, Alex, Lyle, and I usher our rescuees through the empty façade buildings to where Storm transports have blasted their way into the landing hangar. Backup teams meet us halfway, picking up and carrying most of the drugged, freezing victims, who can barely take another step. I’m not much better off, but I refuse Alex’s offer of a shoulder to lean on. I do accept a heavy parka from one of the similarly dressed mercs, and a fresh breather apparatus.
When we reach the hangar, I head straight for the guest elevator… where three shivering figures watch me approach.
Three. And it doesn’t take me long to figure out that none of them are Vick.
I pick up my pace, not pausing until I can wrap my hands around the lapels of Robert’s jacket. “Where is she?” I shout into his stunned expression. Yes, this little empath has claws, especially when it comes to Vick. “What happened?”
He tells me, prying my fingers gently but firmly away from his clothing. With each word he utters, my eyebrows rise higher.
“You left her? Alone? You just left her down there?”
The mine is collapsing in on itself. I overheard the mercs talking about it as they passed us. It won’t be long before the entire installation is one big underground pile of rubble and dust.
“Your partner is rather persuasive,” Robert says. Two medics arrive and take Secretary Hothart and her daughter to a waiting ship. He moves to go with them, but I grab on to his arm. “Really, you need to stop doing that. I merely wanted to fetch a warmer coat and get a replacement weapon. I’m not taking off just yet.”
I let him go, realizing my panic isn’t helping anyone prepare to go back down there for Vick. I reach out with my empathic sense, but she’s too far away. I can’t sense her at all. Or she’s already dead.
No. Peering at the flooring at my feet, I can just make out a faint blue line that disappears beneath the surface. She’s alive. But she might be hurt or captured. And she’s alone.
I pull my comm off my belt and try to reach her. Nothing but static answers my call.
If she gets out of this one, I’m marrying her as soon as we return to the base. Legal or not, we’re having a wedding. I’m making her mine in everyone’s but the lawmakers’ eyes. Before I lose her again.
“Let me get some additional firepower. Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” Robert says, reminding me he’s still here.
I grit my teeth. If he doesn’t hurry, I swear I’m going to punch him the way Vick taught me—no holding back, going for the most damage I can inflict in one blow.
Something whispers that this aggression is unlike me, and I should worry where it’s coming from, but I ignore the concern. This is Vick. She needs backup. The Storm and everyone else put so much faith in her skill set, and it’s well-deserved, but no one should be expected to overcome such odds all the time. The Storm is supposed to be a team.
Alex and Lyle jog up behind me, having delivered their charges to the transports. Alex has a medical bag and a repair kit slung over one shoulder. They pass a coat to Robert, and Lyle gives him an extra pistol. At least Alpha Team is on this. “Vick go after Jacks alone?” Lyle asks.
“Indeed,” Robert admits, shrugging into the insulated parka. He depresses a button on its exterior. Red lines light up throughout the material, extending across the front and back and down both arms.
I stare at him, then find my own button and press it. Additional warmth floods my frozen body.
“Self-heating,” Alex explains.
“Where is Vick?” I ask again.
Robert repeats his explanation, admitting that he wanted to go with her. “I’d like to take a few shots at that bastard Jacks myself, but someone had to see the secretary and her daughter to safety, and that duty was mine.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. It would have been irresponsible of him to leave the two inexperienced women to fend for themselves. They could have run into more guards on the other side of the lake from where Robert says he left Vick, or on the elevator, or even up here.
“I did send the raft back to her,” he says. “Or I sent it in that direction. It’s got a deadman’s pedal, but I held it down with a chunk of stone. It should bump the opposite shore and run onto the rocks. With her strength, I’m sure she can manage a push-off.”
If. If. If. If she’s not hurt. If the raft doesn’t just stop in the middle of the water. If the entire complex doesn’t collapse before she can get away. I make an exasperated sound, then stomp off a few feet away to regain my composure.
After giving me a minute, Alex eases up beside me. He rests a tentative hand on my shoulder. “She’s very capable of taking care of herself,” he says, echoing Vick’s own words only an hour or so ago. Has it been that little time? “We’re going down there, but she’ll be fine. Are you okay? You’re usually calmer than this.”
“I—” What is wrong with me? When Vick’s in trouble, I’m not calm. I’m panicking on the inside. But he’s right. I don’t show it like I am now. If it’s really bad, my empathy takes me out of the equation altogether and I go into emotion shock. If I can function, I’m cool-headed. So what is going on?
A surge of aggression and frustration blasts me then, like a shuttle’s backdraft on takeoff, and I spin around, shaking off Alex’s hand and searching the hangar for the source of the powerful emotions. At first I wonder if it could be coming from Vick, but no. The blue thread representing our connection still drops below the taxiing tarmac surface of the flooring, and the balance of feelings… it’s similar to Vick’s signature aura, but it’s not her. It’s wrong. It’s unstable.
Like what I picked up in the underground installation.
Whomever it’s coming from, the emotional output is strong enough to break through the barrier of the dampening drugs Vick gave me.
I scan all the figures milling about, too many to pinpoint the source. Most have the hoods up on their jackets, keeping in as much warmth as possible in the absence of heat shields, and those who don’t still have their faces partially obscured by the breather masks. There’s no one familiar, though I’m not sure why I expect the person producing those emotions to be someone I’d recognize. Emotional responses aren’t connected to physical appearance. And yet….
“Kelly?” Alex says.
I jump. He’s right there. I knew he was right there. He still startles me. I need to get a grip on myself or I’ll be no use to Vick when she comes back. And she will come back. She always does, even from death, just in varying states of mental and physical health. She’ll need me.
Someday she won’t. There may not be more clones. Someday, the Storm will send her to a permanent end. What are you going to do then, Kelly? Hmm? You’re deep, deep in with her and there’s no turning back. When she does die, you’ll die too, even if your body goes on living.
I tell the voice in my head to shut up.
“I’m fine,” I assure Alex. “Just worried. When you go back down there, I’m going with you.”
He looks like he wants to argue but thinks better of it and gives me a solemn nod. I follow him to the guest elevator and climb aboard with him and Lyle and Robert. The moment we drop beneath the surface once more, the emotional onslaught ends.
So now I have some idea of where my unusual aggression is coming from.
At least it can’t affect Vick unless she’s in physical contact with me and the source is still in the vicinity. She’s not an empath.