Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Dahlia
Murmured conversation moves around me, the deep voices finding me in my unconscious daze. A dull ache grips my neck when I swallow, clearing bile and fluid—waking up.
“You interrogated him?”
Robert…
“He is here for Spero.”
Tomar…
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t tell me anything,” Tomar says. “He’s a damn Shadow. They don’t break. I just know.”
“Did you know, Tomar?” Robert asks, his voice dripping with accusation. “All this time? That he was one of them.”
“He is not one of them.”
“Why did he do that to Dahlia?” Robert’s voice is odd, deep and angry. This is his community, and I’ve been nothing but trouble. Two Xin De finding their way into the community, searching for me, here because of me. “Why not just take the child? Why touch her? Why did he do… that ?”
Why did he do… that?
That. That.
Take me and choke me.
I roll to my side and smother my face with a pillow. Finding false privacy, I curl my knees up and gasp through my sobs.
“Is he awake?”
Robert.
“It’s unclear.”
“And Dahlia?” Before Robert can finish his question, I am bolting upright.
He is awake.
Alive.
My Lagos.
Disorientated by the unfamiliar room, I take a moment, scanning the area, my gaze moving from a monitor to the door.
I rush to it. The thin gown I’m wearing sways open at the back, but I don’t care. In the hallway, I dart to the only other Patient Room, away from the small lobby and the men conversing too loudly.
The community only has one Common Medical Cabin, and it is unassuming, just like the Community. It’s no bigger than the two-bedroom wooden cabin I live in, but the Trade technology they have managed to raid and salvage is beyond anything I ever saw at the Half-tower.
Flinging open the door, I freeze in the gasping gap when I see Lagos strapped to the bed, thick leather cuffs wrapped from wrist to bicep.
A painful smile slides across my lips as I wonder how many times he snapped the restraints around his wrists before they realised he needed more. A lot more. All the way up his arms. He is just so… remarkably strong.
His blank stare breaks my heart.
Slowly, I walk over to his bedside. He doesn’t turn his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling—open, white, and void. The nictitating membrane over his eyeball looks thin and glossy, with a translucent sheen that is as beautiful as it is frightening.
I look him over. White material bands his head, covering a wound that I can’t see, leaving his blonde-brown knot of hair in a gap at the back. His neck and shoulders are perfectly aligned and stiff. The sight of his bare chest absolutely destroys me— it breaks a dam inside my gaze, blurring the vision of all those new scars and slices. They are already healing, but in parts, the tendons and muscles are only covered by thin, clear tissue— scar tissue. They skinned it, skinned him, or…
I cover my mouth but fight to stay strong. Wiping my face, I glance down at tubes snaking beneath the restraints, passing fluids. One of the tubes pulses with blood, and one drips with something clear. That’s good.
They are caring for him.
He will get better.
Instinctively, I reach for his hand, and my heart drops when my skin meets his. Sensation buzzes through me. His flesh is so warm and hard and still as if he is a mere heated stone.
“Lagos…” My voice wobbles. “Brute?”
What did he call himself?
Six?
I ignore the way my chest aches at the fact he won’t look at me, won’t acknowledge me. After that. After what happened.
He must be asleep, but it is hard to tell with his third eyelid closed. Another predatory trait to filter the sand and debris and to stalk. I understand why they aren’t allowed in the community. They have unfair engineered and evolutionary advantages.
“Oh, Dahlia .” Tomar’s voice soars around me, and I stiffen with rage, glaring at him over my shoulder, at the man who lied to me. “What are you doing here?”
“You knew,” I hiss.
He shakes his head. “I had?—”
“You knew, and you lied!”
“Dahlia,” —he thrusts his hands toward the bed—"I needed you to run from him. Not look for him. Not go to him. I saw that you’re pregnant, and I just… I had to think quickly. It wasn’t like I planned this on the way up here, but… I needed to keep you safe. As I was holding you…” He looks at his hands. “Holding your unborn child. At that moment, I thought only your hatred was powerful enough to shatter your love.”
“It wasn’t…”
I get a flash of a white coat as Robert enters from behind me, and I turn my cheek to look at my catatonic brute.
“Tomar was trying to protect you,” Robert says. “Don’t be too hard on him.”
“I’ve been following him since he left the compound two weeks ago,” Tomar admits.
The truth slices in deep. “You were never going to tell me, were you?” I scoff with anger. “If he didn’t come to me.”
“I was trying to protect you from this.” Tomar is still gesturing to Lagos, maybe assuming the sight of him will have me cowering. He has no idea how much I love that man. “From all of this.”
“I don’t give up on the people I love. There are so few of them!” I admit, squeezing a stone-like hand . I love him. I swallow hard, emotions lumping in my neck, the swollen column struggling. “What is wrong with him?”
“He’s…” Robert sighs as if stifling hollow words. “I want to be honest with you. It’s called Brain Interruption or Mind Washing. Basically, torture and conditioning.”
“Why won’t he look at me?”
“At the moment, he is sedated,” Robert answers. “I’m using a lot of Community resources for this. We’ve just removed his coil, but his brain has been through a shredder, and I am not that kind of doctor. I have never removed a coil before. It’s an entirely different kind of surgery, and I wasn’t trained for it.”
“They let him leave,” Tomar states, “And I just knew… I knew he was sent to finish this. I know a man who knows a man who is a Trade Tech. He told me that they sent a spy to get a stolen Trade baby. I lied and said I heard a man lost control and killed a runaway Lace Girl and a baby in the Common Community. He seemed too interested in that story. Hopefully, that gets back to The Trade Master.”
“And you think they’ll just forget about us?” I shrug. “Isn’t Spero a weapon? Isn’t Lagos worth something to them?”
Robert places his hand on my shoulder. “Better a broken weapon than one in the hands of a Common Community.”
With a sneer of derision, I turn my chin, glaring at Tomar. “What now for you? You fix him up and take him away with you? Your own mindless bodyguard and soldier?”
I know I’m not being fair, but I can’t help it. He lied to me. Made me second-guess everything between Lagos and me.
Tomar’s usual face of kind superiority crumbles. “I thought I was your friend, Dahlia. Isn’t that what you said? Can’t you understand why I did this?”
“I understand why you did it.” I look back at my brute. Last time, I accepted that Lagos was destined to save people. I was willing to let him go. This time, I can’t do that. This time, I want him to choose me. “I understood then, too. I don’t want to anymore. I want him to pick me.”
“There might not be anything left of him now.” Robert looks at my swollen belly. “At least not in the way you want or need. Wait until the sedation wears off.”
At the sound of his words, something deep inside me wilts to dirt and soil. So close to getting him back, so close to the farmhouse, and the pretty picture we played in where we are happy and raising our child. So close…
“Where is Spero?” I ask, my voice absent and flat, barely a whisper. “I want to stay here, so he needs?—”
“He might not?—”
“Don’t.” I lift my hand, cutting the lies and excuses in the air, finding my spine and it is as strong as the man lying beside me. “I want. To stay. Here. Where is Spero?”
A long pause simmers between us, testing my resolve and his steadfast authority.
“Safe,” Robert finally answers. “He is with Lucy. In her cabin.”
Hm. “Why Lucy?”
I hear the suspicion in his tone as he says, “I thought you were friends?”
“Sure.” I feel his eyes on me. “We are.”
“Give her some time,” Robert says to Tomar and leaves the Patient Room.
With a sigh, Tomar turns to leave. “I won’t be far away. I’ll check in on you.”
“He keeps fighting them,” I rush out. “You did that. You gave him hope all those years ago when others in his place jumped off cliffs and hung themselves. You gave him companionship and purpose. For that, I will always be grateful to you. I could feel him fighting them last night in his mind. You know what you said about the brain, how it is just too powerful to fully control?”
“Yeah. At the end of the day, a man has to submit to Meaningful Purpose. It needs to be the heart and soul of him. Lagos… What did you call him?” He laughs sadly, walking away. “He has always been a rogue brute .”
I don’t know how long I stand by Lagos’ bedside, watching his third eyelid swipe from one side to the other, a small sign of brain activity and awareness.
But after the time-lamp turns red, I’m too tired and crawl onto the bed, tucking myself into a small gap between him and the rail.
That is when his heart thuds harder, and that suffocating presence that used to scare me, rolls over me, soothing me, sending me a message. He is inside.
A hot tear rolls down my cheek, and I close my eyes to catch more. Inhaling his sweet, metallic scent and listening to the deepest, strongest pulse in The Cradle, I try to sleep.