Chapter 15 Elanie
Falling to my knees by Sem’s side, I rolled him onto his back and brushed fine crystals of snow from his cheeks. I’d never seen him this color—pale, ashen, mottled like an old bruise.
Abnormal vitals alarms blared uselessly between my ears, bright red warning codes scrolling across my vision.
My resources were not infinite, and my systems continuing to alert me to what I already knew but could do nothing about was not only inefficient, but it was also annoying.
So I silenced all alarms for the maximum time my programming would allow.
After answering yes, I’m sure to the confirmation dialogue warning me that silencing my alarms would have serious, irreversible consequences, I shook Sem’s shoulders and shouted, “Wake up!” into the wind.
He didn’t stir.
Turning my head, I lowered my cheek to his lips. Wispy puffs of his breath warmed my skin. Thank the stars. “Sem.” I took his face between my hands. “Please wake up.”
He groaned once. And then nothing.
With proper sleep and nutrition, bionics had a basic self-sustaining metabolism.
But our energy-generating capacity wasn’t infinite, not without a charging station or a natural power source like the sun.
Maintaining my core temperature in the dark, freezing wind had already sapped my reserves.
Add to that carrying an adult Portisan male who’d just told me he wanted to drown in my eyes through two feet of snow in nothing but my pajama bottoms?
If we did survive the night, I’d be lucky if I had enough juice left to form two-syllable words.
Scanning the surrounding snow, I searched again for any trace of whoever might have brought me here.
They had to be out there somewhere, watching, waiting.
Otherwise, what was the point? Where was the logic?
But everywhere I looked, nothing looked back.
Nothing but snow and mountains and stars and the incessant, howling wind.
I needed to move. If we were going to survive, we couldn’t stay here.
Hoisting Sem over one shoulder and our meager supplies over the other, I took a breath, put my head down, and ran.
The entrance was little more than a narrow gap in the rock.
I had to turn sideways to get through, scratching my shoulder and bruising my hip to avoid bumping Sem’s head on the wall.
Exhaling in relief when the cave opened into a wider chamber, I dropped our supplies to the floor.
It was so dark I couldn’t see past my hand even with bionic night vision, so I activated my thermal scanner, mapping a jagged, oblong space no bigger than my pod.
Our sanctuary from the storm was just tall enough to stand in, just long enough to stretch Sem out onto the ground.
My eyes kept trying to close. I needed sleep so I could replenish my energy stores. But Sem was too cold, too still. His usually vibrant blue skin was so pale I barely recognized him. He’d die if I didn’t do something. He’d die, and I’d be alone.
Shunting my circulation temporarily into my fingers to improve my fine motor control, I unclipped his dead thermal generators, then slipped off his shoes and socks.
It was the first time I’d seen his bare feet, and I wondered if the delicate webbing that spanned his toes was as soft as it looked.
I wondered if I should find out. If I should touch it, brush my fingertip over—I shook my head.
It was delirium. Cognitive dysfunction brought on by hypothermic stress. I had to focus just a little bit longer.
I undid the button of his pants before easing his zipper down slowly, carefully, one tooth at a time like I was defusing an atomic.
Peeling off his pants, I revealed white boxers with tiny red and blue sailboats on them.
They were cute, the sailboats. Almost charming.
Adorable, actually. They were just so…Sem.
I was slipping again, my concentration fading.
But then a sound came from somewhere behind the walls.
Plunk, plunk, plunk. Like water dripping onto rock.
I focused on that sound, moving in time with the drips.
I unbuttoned his shirt, plunk. Pulled his arms out of the sleeves, plunk.
Removed his shirt, plunk. Took off my pants, plunk.
My eyelids were so unbearably heavy. My arms and legs even heavier. Plunk, plunk, plunk.
Forcing myself to remain conscious, I slotted into place behind him, slid my arm over his chest, and notched my knees into the hollow space behind his. He was freezing, his breathing shallow and rapid. But like the water dripping through the walls, his heart beat steadily. Thump, thump, thump.
He’d followed me onto the escape pod. He hadn’t wanted me to be alone, so he’d followed me. He’d sacrificed his safety and comfort. He wouldn’t sacrifice his life too. Not for me.
Pulling him close, I diverted the remainder of my energy stores into warming my skin and raising my core temperature, circumventing my programming’s prime directive to maintain homeostasis.
I muted the excruciating throbbing in my feet and hammering in my toes.
I muted the windburn scorching my cheeks.
I muted everything except the sensation of Sem’s breaths shuddered in and out of his chest.
His muscles seized as he started to tremble, then shiver, then shake so violently my arms strained from trying to keep him close.
Eventually, he calmed, his body growing still, his skin warming against mine. And then there was only his heart beating, the water dripping, my eyes finally closing.
Fingers played in my hair, brushed over my cheek, trailed down my arm. I was on a beach, sitting in the sand under the warmest yellow sun. Waves washed over my toes, my feet, my calves as tiny red and blue sailboats bobbed along the horizon.
Elanie, someone whispered, a voice carrying on the breeze. Open your eyes.
“Sailboats,” I whispered back.
A laugh. “Yeah, well. It was laundry day. If I’d known you were going to take off my pants…”
My eyes fluttered open, then flew wide. “Sem.” I jolted upright. “You’re alive!”
Still on his back, he grinned up at me. “Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me, you almost died in the first place.”
“True,” he said.
My vision snagged on the firm plane of his belly where his fingers were splayed across his bare skin. Skin that was vibrant again, as blue as the ocean in my dream. “I had to take your clothes off,” I said.
“I see that.”
“For the heat.”
“Of course.”
“Because you were freezing.”
His smile spread, so wide that a little dimple I’d never noticed before sank into his cheek. Maybe I’d never noticed because I’d never seen this smile before. “You saved my life.”
My relief that he was still alive, that he was blue again, that I wasn’t alone, was so all-encompassing that I forgot I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I only noticed when his eyes dipped, sank, then bounced back up to mine.
There was some color in his cheeks when he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. “My clothes are still wet. But I checked before I woke you up, and your pajamas are dry.”
He leaned over, patting the ground in the dim light in the cave.
And while I watched him search for my pajamas, knowing that when he’d checked them, he’d set them on the ground beside him even though that wasn’t where I’d left them caused warmth to fill my chest. Or maybe it was just my core temperature finally normalizing.
“Here you go.” He handed me my pants, keeping his eyes down.
“Thank you,” I said as I slid my pants back on.
“My memory of last night is a bit of a blur.” He held my shirt in his hands. “But I think you gave me this at one point? As a hat?”
I didn’t laugh, but something inside me wanted to. “Your skin was turning gray,” I said, taking my top and slipping it over my head. “I had to do something.”
I wasn’t an empath. Even when I tried my hardest, I still couldn’t figure out how another being felt with any accuracy until they told me. But his expression when he took my hands in his, when his cool fingers wrapped around mine? There was a gravity to it. A solid weight pulling me toward him.
“Thank you, Elanie,” he said. “Thank you for helping me. For saving me.”
I didn’t know what to say. You’re welcome seemed wrong. Too insignificant. Too small for everything he’d already sacrificed for me. Before I could decide how to respond, he released my hands and got to his feet.
Wobbling toward the narrow mouth of the cave, wearing his sailboat boxers and nothing else, he said, “Let’s see what we’re up against.” He peered outside, whistled a cloud into the air, then motioned for me. “Come here. You have to see this.”
I’d cataloged our surroundings during our walk from the pod to the cave last night. But I’d used night vision, everything around us cast in varying shades of black and white and gray. When I joined Sem at the cave mouth, all I saw was color.
A vast sea of snow and ice spread out before us, reflecting the dim orange and lavender of the morning sky.
A chain of snowcapped mountains rose sharply to our left, while Delphi hovered like a blue and purple marble to our right.
Two small moons glowed overhead, surrounded by a smattering of fading stars as the sun began its slow rise above the horizon.
“Is that a lake?” I asked, pointing my chin toward the icy plane we’d walked over last night.
“I think so,” he said. “Good thing it’s frozen, or we might have gone swimming.”
The thought sent a chill through me, but when I looked at him, he was grinning.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked, because he did this. Whenever everything seemed to conspire against us, he smiled.
Despite the cold, his laughter was rich and warm. “I’m smiling because if that’s a lake, then there might be fish.”
“Fish under meters of solid ice,” I pointed out.
“True. But that’s where you come in.”
“Me?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “How? I don’t even know how to fish.”