Chapter 10
Hallie
They won’t let me touch him.
That’s the cruelest part. Maxon is right there, an arm’s length away, laid out on a white berth in the center of the Minecorp med lab with a shimmering surgery shield humming over his whole body and I can’t put my hand on him.
The shield is a wall of light between us.
I’ve been standing at the edge of it for an hour, close enough to see his face, far enough that I might as well be on Chronos.
His chest is wrong. Even through the shield’s blue shimmer I can see where the blast hit him. Every time I look I see it happen again, the third operative’s weapon coming up, leveling at my chest, and Maxon putting his body in front of mine.
Meanwhile, I don’t have a scratch on me.
Roxy bumps her shoulder against mine. “This is the best med lab in the Four Sectors, Hallie. Better than anything on Chronos, I’d put money on it.
Minecorp pours everything into keeping these miners that can extract Illibrium perfectly healthy.
That shield’s already done the worst of it.
” She tips her chin at the readout glowing above the berth, lines and figures I can’t read.
“He’s stabilizing. Watch the third line.
It’s been climbing the whole time you’ve been catastrophizing. ”
I watch the third line. It climbs.
Back at the compound the cleaning and repair bots are already fixing the mess left behind, making sure that everyone can move back in, in record time. Meanwhile, all the Fever Brothers are at the med lab, getting healed with a variety of wounds. Broken arms, ankles, blaster shots…
Scar told me they quickly realized the south breach was a feint, exactly the way Maxon said it would be, and the second the brothers understood they’d been pulled the wrong way they turned around and came back at a dead run.
They hit the House operatives with everything they had but the operatives had better armor and weapons.
But Margol miners are bigger than other Xylan.
Stronger. Three trained killers from a Royal Pigment House, and it didn’t matter, because seven mountains came down on them at once, killing all three.
I continue to wait by Maxon’s side, gazing at the lights on the screen next to his surgery shield.
Finally, the shield changes.
The hum drops in pitch and the blue light peels back, retracting toward the base of the berth.
Roxy straightens beside me. “Is it resetting?” she questions the med tech.
“Yes, the first pass is done. It’ll reconfigure and go again. This time for different work, the deep repair.”
“Oh my gosh, I think he’s waking up,” I exclaim and eagerly move forward.
I reach him before the light is fully gone and reach my covered hand out to take his bare hand in both of mine.
It’s the first time I’ve touched him since I had my gloved hands pressed to his chest while I was screaming for his brothers to call for medical help.
“Hallie.” It comes out cracked, barely there. His gaze moves over my face, my shoulders, down my arms, and I realize he’s checking me, looking for damage, even now, even like this. “You’re…you’re not hurt.”
“I’m fine. You’re the one who took a blaster to the chest, you absolute idiot.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Almost a smile. “Worth it. Got you out of check.”
“You did get me out of check. Now you’re going to lie here and let the fancy machine put you back together, and when you wake up I’m still going to be here, because I’m not going anywhere.
Do you understand me? I’m staying. On Timbur.
With you. I decided this morning and I’m deciding it again right now. ”
I don’t know if he hears me. His breathing has gone slow and even, the deep pull of the cycle taking him down, and the shield is already humming back to life at the base of the berth, the blue light beginning to climb to do its second pass.
I press my lips to his gloved knuckles and let go so the shield can take him.
And the power dies.
It doesn’t flicker. It doesn’t warn.
Every light in the med lab goes out at once, the shield collapsing mid-rise, the readouts above the berth blinking to black. The dark drops over the whole compound like a lid.
Somewhere a male shouts. Somewhere else, glass breaks.
The med tech cries out in horror.
“What.” My hands shoot out, finding the edge of the med bed. “What happened, what is this.”
“What the hell is happening?” Roxy yells.
“It’s a power cascade.” Scar’s voice is nearby. “The whole grid is down.”
The room is dim but not entirely pitch black.
I can see though that Maxon’s readout is gone.
The shield’s gone. The thing that was keeping him alive is gone, all of it, dark and dead, and in the silence I hear the worst sound I have ever heard in my life, which is Maxon’s breathing changing. Catching. Going wrong.
My hands are on his chest and it isn’t rising right. “He’s not breathing, the machine, turn the machine back on.”
“It’s too soon for the surgery process to stop,” the med tech worries. “It wasn’t finished. He’s not able to breath independently yet. Why isn’t the backup power engaging?”
Scar’s at the berth, huge hands moving over the dead console, and for the first time since I met him his voice has fear in it. “The cascade took the redundancies. I can’t…there’s no power, Hallie, there’s nothing to give it.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. He’s dying. The repair never finished. The deep work never came. His hearts are failing under my palms and there is no power in the whole outpost to stop it and I am going to lose him.
And then I see it.
In the dark of the room, at his hip, where his mining jacket is folded over the rail of the berth is a glow. Steady. Alive. The only living light in a med lab that’s gone completely dark.
Maxon’s personal crystal. It’s burning in his pocket like it never heard about the grid at all. And suddenly, I know exactly what I need to do.
“Hallie?” Roxy, from the dark.
I’m already pulling at the glove on my right hand, dragging it off finger by finger, my own hands shaking so hard I can barely do it.
“His crystal’s still lit,” I say. “It’s the only thing still lit.
When I touch him. If the crystal’s alive, then he’s alive, the bond’s alive, and I can make it stronger for him. ”
“Hallie, wait—if you clasp him you can’t take it back, that’s the whole—”
“I know exactly what it is. Let it be on the record that nothing forces it now. I’m choosing him right now.”
I take his bare hand in mine.
I gasp as the change immediately sweeps over me. The energy between our bare skin comes up my arm like I’ve grabbed a live wire, a roar of heat and light that isn’t pain.Every nerve I own wakes up and screams his name at once. His crystal shines brighter and hotter.
I feel my own heart slam against my ribs and find another rhythm under it, a second beat, a deeper one, his, both of his hearts, thundering back to life beneath my palm and dragging mine along with them.
He arches off the berth.
And Maxon throws back his head and roars, loud enough to shake the dark, loud enough that the brothers come running, and the sound isn’t pain either. It’s a male coming back to life.
The lights crash back on, the grid catching, the readouts flaring, the bots whirring to life down the hall like nothing happened, but it’s far away and it doesn’t matter, because the machines didn’t save him.
I did.
His eyes open and they aren’t unfocused anymore.
They’re fixed on me, bright, burning and aware, and they are not the eyes of a male who needs a med lab.
Heat pours off his bare hand into mine and rolling up my arm and pooling low in my belly, and I realize, distantly, through the rising roar of whatever this is, that it didn’t just wake him.
It’s waking me.
“Oh,” I breathe, and it comes out wrong, comes out wanting, my skin too tight and the room too hot and his hand the only thing in the universe I can feel.
“The clasp took.” Scar’s voice, somewhere behind me, fast and tight. “Both of them, look at them…it’s a full claiming, it’s happening now.”
“This should be impossible,” the med tech says, “but…but his readouts say he’s perfectly healthy. I’ve never seen anything like this. He needed another hour in the shield, but now his stats are fine.”
“Get the holosuite.” Chief, already barking orders. “Program it, the forest, now, we can’t put them in the open jungle with the perimeter still down—move—”
Hands, voices, the family surging around us, but all of it’s at the far end of a long tunnel, because Maxon’s fingers have laced through mine and he’s sitting up off that berth like he was never dying at all.
And every careful, guarded, calculating part of me—the part that built the wall, that ran the math, that kept its own king alone in the corner for three years—goes quiet at last.
I’m done guarding. I’m done running.
Come and get me.