Chapter 22 #2
I drew up another dose of Lorazepam, administered it into his shoulder. The medication would buy us time, but I was running through the supply. Two more doses, maybe three before I’d have nothing left to stop the seizures.
And then what?
“Havoc.” The crack in my tone was audible. “Please.”
“52%. Encryption is layered. Military, then corporate, then custom. I’m peeling them back as fast as...”
“Faster.”
Forty minutes in, the arrhythmia started.
I’d been monitoring Xavier’s pulse manually, my fingers pressed to the artery in his neck. The rhythm had been fast but steady.
Then it skipped.
I pressed harder, counting.
Thump-thump. Skip. Thump. Skip-skip. Thump-thump-thump.
Irregular. Getting worse.
“His cardiac rhythm is off.” Hellhound stopped pacing, turned to look at me. “Arrhythmia.”
I grabbed the portable monitor from the medical kit, clipped the leads to Xavier’s chest. The screen flickered to life, showing the erratic spikes of his heartbeat.
Not immediately dangerous. But deteriorating.
Hellhound moved closer, his shadow falling across the surface. “What do you need?”
“Just stay close. In case I need another set of hands.”
He nodded. Positioned himself at Xavier’s shoulder, ready.
“Blood pressure’s dropping too. 90 over 60. He’s crashing.”
“Havoc.” Hellhound’s tone was granite. “How much longer?”
“68%. Almost there. Almost...”
The screen flashed red.
DECRYPTION FAILED - RETRY?
Havoc stared at it. The blood drained from his face.
“No. No, no, no. It rejected the key.”
My pulse stopped. “What does that mean?”
“It means...” Havoc slammed his fist on the surface, making the laptop jump. “It means I have to start over. Different approach. Different algorithm.”
“He doesn’t have time for you to start over!” The words ripped out of me, too loud, too raw.
Havoc spun on me, and for a second I saw the desperation in his face, the same terror I felt.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’m not going as fast as I can?”
“Then go faster!”
“I can’t crack quantum encryption by wishing, Clare! It doesn’t work like that!”
“Then he dies! He dies waiting for you to figure it out, and I...”
Emma’s memory cut through the rage: You can’t save everyone.
I froze.
What if I can’t save him? What if Havoc can’t crack it in time?
The parallel slammed into me like a freight train.
Emma, waiting for Monday. Xavier, waiting for codes.
Both dying while I watched, helpless.
But I wasn’t helpless this time. I was doing everything I could. I was here, fighting, refusing to give up.
Xavier seized again.
The third time was worse. Longer. More violent.
I grabbed the medication, administered it, supported his skull while his body tried to shake itself apart on the wood. The monitor screamed, pulse spiking to 180, blood pressure plummeting.
When it finally broke, he didn’t wake. Didn’t stir. Just lay there, respiration shallow and fast, heartbeat threadbare under my touch.
“Havoc. Please.”
“I’m trying.” His tone cracked. “I’m trying.”
Seventy-five minutes in, Havoc switched algorithms.
He didn’t explain. Just cursed, wiped the screen, started over with a different approach. His fingers flew across the keyboard, scanning code that looked like gibberish to me.
The new progress bar appeared. 23%. 41%. 59%.
I watched it crawl forward while I watched Xavier die by inches.
Xavier’s respiration was failing. The Cheyne-Stokes pattern had devolved into agonal gasps, irregular, desperate attempts to pull oxygen into lungs that didn’t want to work anymore.
His lips were turning blue.
“Come on.” One palm on his chest, feeling the weak rise and fall. “Come on, Xavier. Stay with me.”
The monitor’s steady beep suddenly went flat.
High-pitched. Continuous. The sound of a cardiac arrest.
“No!” I was moving before I thought, palms positioning on Xavier’s chest, fingers laced, arms locked straight.
Thirty compressions. Hard. Fast. Breaking ribs if I had to because broken ribs were better than dead.
“Come on!” I counted aloud, forcing rhythm into the chaos. “One, two, three, four...”
“Clare...”
“Don’t! He’s not gone. He’s not...”
“I wasn’t going to say stop.” Hellhound’s tone cut through my panic, firm but not harsh. “I was going to say I’ll take over if you need a break.”
“I don’t need a break. I need him to live.”
“Then keep going. I’ve got your back.”
Fifteen compressions. Sixteen. Seventeen.
I tilted Xavier’s skull back, pinched his nose, breathed into his mouth. Two breaths. Watching his chest rise, fall.
Back to compressions.
“Havoc!”
“96%! 98%...”
Thirty compressions. Two breaths.
Xavier’s face was slack, lifeless. No response.
You can’t save everyone.
“Watch me.” The words came out vicious. “Watch me save him.”
Compressions. Respiration. Compressions.
“99%!”
The monitor beeped.
Once.
I froze, palms still pressed to Xavier’s chest.
Another beep. Weak. Irregular.
But there.
Xavier gasped. His chest heaved, pulling air in a ragged, desperate inhale. His cardiac rhythm stuttered back, erratic but beating.
“100%! I’m in! I have the codes!”
I collapsed forward, forehead pressed to Xavier’s shoulder, my whole body shaking.
I did it. He’s alive. I saved him.
“Clare.” Havoc cut through my relief. “You have to enter them. I’ll walk you through it.”
I forced myself upright, swiping at my face. My palms were shaking so hard I could barely grip the tablet Havoc shoved at me.
“What do I do?”
“The device connects wirelessly to the implant.” Havoc pulled up the interface on the tablet screen.
“Three code sequences. You have to enter them exactly, in order. First one stops the chemical release. Second locks the regulation system so it can’t restart.
Third disables remote access, the kill switch. ”
The screen swam in front of me. Numbers. Letters. A cursor blinking, waiting.
“Does he have to be conscious?”
“For neural feedback, yes.” Havoc looked at Xavier’s unconscious form. “The device needs confirmation the implant received the shutdown command. If he’s not awake, we won’t know if it worked.”
“Then wake him up.”
“Clare...”
“I said wake him up!” I was already moving, grabbing a vial of stimulant from the kit, drawing it up. “We don’t have time.”
I administered the injection.
For ten seconds, nothing happened.
Then Xavier’s eyelids fluttered.
Those emerald irises opened, unfocused, dilated, terrified. He didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know who I was.
“Xavier.” I cupped his face, forcing him to look at me. “Stay with me. I need you to stay awake. Just a few more minutes.”
He blinked. Recognition flickered, faint but there.
“Clare.” The word was destroyed, barely audible.
“I’ve got you.” I positioned the tablet where he could see it, even though I doubted he could focus. “Havoc, first code.”
“Alpha-7-Tango-9-Zulu-3.”
My fingers shook on the screen. I entered each character, double-checking, triple-checking.
CODE SEQUENCE 1 ACCEPTED
The tablet beeped. On the monitor, Xavier’s vital signs stuttered, pulse spiking, then dropping, stabilizing slightly.
“It’s working. Next one.”
“Delta-2-Echo-8-Kilo-5.”
I entered it. Slower this time.
CODE SEQUENCE 2 ACCEPTED
Xavier’s respiration evened out. The arrhythmia on the monitor smoothed, the spikes less erratic.
“Last one. This is the kill switch. Once you enter this, Dresner loses remote access permanently.”
“Good.” I positioned my fingers over the screen. “Code.”
“Bravo-4-November-1-Sierra-6.”
I entered it.
One letter at a time.
Verified it.
Hit confirm.
CODE SEQUENCE 3 ACCEPTED
COMPLIANCE STABILIZATION SYSTEM: DEACTIVATED
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Xavier seized.
Different this time. Not the violent, bone-breaking convulsions of the PSI-317 overdose that had torn through him before.
“What’s happening? Why is he...”
“It’s the disconnection.” Havoc didn’t look up from his laptop, but his knuckles were white on the edge of the surface. “The chip’s been regulating his neurochemistry for a while. Now it’s gone offline. His brain’s trying to recalibrate.”
Xavier’s body arched off the wood, every muscle locking tight with brutal precision.
Those emerald irises rolled back, showing only whites.
A choked sound escaped his throat, not pain, shutdown.
Watching a machine power down, except the machine was the man I loved and I couldn’t do anything but watch.
I grabbed him, wrapping my arms around his rigid body, feeling the tremors wrack through him in waves. His skin burned against mine, fever-hot despite the freezing air.
“It’s working. It’s supposed to do this. Stay with me. Just a few more seconds. Please, Xavier. Stay.”
Xavier’s fingers twitched against my arm. Once. Twice. I held tighter.
The seizure lasted thirty seconds. Felt like thirty years.
When it broke, Xavier went completely limp in my arms, dead weight, boneless, a marionette with its strings cut. The sudden stillness was almost worse than the convulsions. Too still. Too quiet.
I held him, my palm pressed to his chest, counting his heartbeats. Listening to the rasp of air moving through his lungs. Waiting for the monitor to flatline again, for his cardiac rhythm to stutter and stop, for everything to fall apart the way it always did when I needed someone to live.
But it didn’t.
Xavier’s respiration steadied. Deepened. The harsh, irregular gasps smoothing into something almost peaceful.
I looked at the monitor through tears.
Pulse: 68 bpm. Strong. Steady. No arrhythmia.
The jagged line had gone smooth.
On the tablet, the interface displayed a final message:
SYSTEM SHUTDOWN COMPLETE. NEURAL INTERFACE INACTIVE.
Silence fell.
Just respiration. The storm outside. The steady beep of the cardiac monitor.
“Did it work?” Havoc sounded small, tentative.
I verified Xavier’s vitals. Pulse: 72 bpm. Strong, steady. Blood pressure: 110 over 70. Normal. Respirations: 14 per minute. Even, unlabored.
Pupils: equal and reactive.
The tremor in Xavier’s palms: gone.
“It worked.” Tears were streaming down my face, and I didn’t care. “The chemical release stopped. Brain damage halted. He’s stable.”
“Will he wake up?”
I looked at Xavier’s face, peaceful in unconsciousness. After everything his brain had just endured, the memory integration, the seizures, the death and revival, the shutdown, I honestly didn’t know.
“I don’t know. His brain went through hell. But he’s alive. He’s stable. That’s enough. For now.”
Hellhound was quiet for a long moment. Then: “You did good, Clare. Better than good. You saved him when the rest of us couldn’t.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Coming from him, someone who’d probably saved dozens of lives in ways I couldn’t imagine, it meant something.
I’d saved him. I’d trusted myself. I’d made the right choice.
I was enough.
Havoc and Hellhound exchanged a look, then quietly left the room. Giving us space. Securing the perimeter. Whatever they told themselves to justify leaving me alone with Xavier.
I didn’t care.
I pulled a chair close to the surface, sat down, and took Xavier’s palm. No tremor shook his fingers. They were warm.
“Come back to me. Please. I need you to come back.”
I don’t know how long I sat there. Minutes. Hours. Time lost meaning in the quiet aftermath of crisis, measured only by the steady beep of the cardiac monitor and the rise and fall of his chest.
Then Xavier’s fingers twitched in mine.
I leaned closer, watching his face.
His eyelids fluttered. Once. Twice.
Then they opened.
Those wonderful emerald irises, unfocused at first, stared at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. I held my breath, waiting, searching his expression for any sign of recognition.
Xavier’s focus shifted. Found me.
I searched his face desperately for Xavier, for the man who’d held me last night, for anything that told me he was still in there beneath the memories that had crashed back in.
His lips parted. When it came, the sound was rough. Broken. But clear.
“Clare.”
My name. He knew my name.
Relief crashed over me so hard I nearly sobbed.
But then Xavier’s gaze filled, not with confusion. With horror. With a clarity that made my blood run cold.
“I remember. I remember everything.”