Chapter 26 The Code That Saved Us
TWENTY-SIX
THE CODE THAT SAVED US
ART
My arm throbbed with a deep, grinding ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat, and when I tried to shift position the world tilted sideways, nausea rolling through me in waves.
I forced my eyes open, squinting against light that felt far too bright, and tried to piece together where I was and why everything hurt.
White ceiling. Antiseptic smell. The creak of metal bed frames and the low murmur of voices somewhere to my left.
The infirmary.
Memory crashed back in fragments: bombs falling, the ceiling of Hut X collapsing, Tom's face white with terror as he pulled me from the wreckage. The words I'd said to him in the library, raw and desperate. I love you. And his response, just as broken, just as true.
I turned my head carefully, testing the limits of the concussion Dr Hart had diagnosed. Ruth was in the bed beside mine, a bandage wrapped round her head and her dark eyes tracking me as I moved.
“You look terrible,” she said, voice hoarse but steady.
“You look worse,” I managed, though it came out slurred. My mouth tasted like dust and blood.
“Liar.” Ruth's mouth quirked. “How's the arm?”
I glanced down at the splint immobilising my left arm from elbow to wrist. “Broken. Hurts like hell.”
“Good. You deserve it for being stubborn.”
I couldn't argue with that. Across the ward, curled in a chair with a blanket tucked round her shoulders, Noor slept with her head tilted at an angle that would leave her neck screaming when she woke.
Her uniform was torn at the shoulder, dried blood crusted along one sleeve, but she was breathing steady and whole.
We'd survived. All three of us had survived.
The relief should have been overwhelming, should have drowned out everything else.
Instead, guilt sank its claws in deep, dragging me under.
I'd stayed when I should have run. I'd made Tom come looking for me, put him in danger, forced him to choose between duty and the terrified need to find me alive.
I'd been selfish and reckless and so bloody convinced that my patterns mattered more than my own safety.
What if I'd been wrong? What if the codes hadn't made a difference and all I'd done was nearly get myself killed for nothing?
“Stop it,” Ruth said sharply.
I blinked at her. “Stop what?”
“Whatever spiral you're spinning in that ridiculous brain of yours.” She shifted, wincing as the movement pulled at something. “I can see it on your face. You're cataloguing every way you failed.”
“I didn't fail.” My voice came out defensive, too quick. “The codes worked. They had to have worked.”
“They did work.” Ruth's gaze was steady, unflinching. “Preliminary reports came in an hour ago. Half the raid was diverted to decoy targets based on the intelligence you decoded. Casualties are far lower than projected.”
The words should have been a comfort. They felt like stones in my chest.
“But people still died,” I said quietly. “I can see it in your face. Tell me how many.”
Ruth's jaw tightened. “Seven confirmed dead. Nineteen injured. It could have been ten times that, Arthur. You saved lives.”
Seven dead. Seven names I wouldn't know, seven families who'd get telegrams, seven bodies that would be buried while the war ground on without them. My patterns had mattered, but they hadn't been enough. They were never enough.
“You can't think like that.” Ruth's voice softened just a fraction. “You'll drive yourself mad.”
“Too late,” I muttered, then regretted it when she looked at me with the kind of understanding I didn't want. Ruth knew about guilt. She carried her own, heavy and silent, the weight of a family she might never see again.
The infirmary door opened. I turned my head too fast, pain lancing through my skull, but I couldn't help it. Some desperate part of me needed to see who was coming through, needed it to be Tom even though I had no right to expect him after what I'd put him through.
It wasn't Tom. Dr Hart swept in with a clipboard and a no-nonsense expression, followed by a young nurse carrying a tray of supplies. Dr Hart's eyes swept the ward, cataloguing injuries with professional detachment, before landing on me.
“Mr Pembroke. You're awake.” She approached my bedside, set the clipboard down, and immediately reached for my wrist to check my pulse. “How's the head?”
“Hurts.”
“Specifics, please. Sharp pain? Dull ache? Any nausea, vision problems, difficulty concentrating?”
I wanted to lie, to say I was fine and could go back to work immediately. But Dr Hart had the kind of gaze that saw through evasion like glass, and besides, my body was doing its own betraying. “Dull ache. Some nausea. Everything's a bit blurry round the edges.”
“Concussion, as expected.” She released my wrist, made notes on her clipboard. “You're to remain in bed for at least forty-eight hours. No reading, no codebreaking, no strenuous mental activity.”
“But—”
“No arguments, Mr Pembroke. Your brain has been rattled inside your skull like dice in a cup. If you push it too hard too fast, you risk serious complications.” She fixed me with a look that brooked no disagreement. “You're no good to anyone dead or permanently damaged.”
I subsided, hating how weak I felt, how useless. My arm was broken, my head was scrambled, and I was stuck in a bed while the war continued without me. While Tom was out there somewhere, probably covered in dust and blood, probably furious with me for being so reckless.
“When can I see...” I stopped, reconsidered. Dr Hart knew. I was almost certain she knew about Tom and me, had seen the way we looked at each other, but saying it aloud felt dangerous even now. “When can I have visitors?”
Dr Hart's expression softened almost imperceptibly.
“Sergeant Hale has been by twice already. I sent him away both times to get himself cleaned up and rest. He looked half-dead on his feet.” She paused, studied me with those sharp, assessing eyes.
“He'll be back. That man's devotion is written all over him.”
Heat crawled up my neck. I wanted to deny it, to deflect, but what was the point? Dr Hart had pulled me from enough anxiety attacks and patched enough of Tom's scraped knuckles to know exactly what we were to each other.
“When he comes back,” I said carefully, “will you let him in?”
“For a short visit. You need rest more than conversation.” Dr Hart made another note, then set the clipboard aside. “You did well last night, Mr Pembroke. What you accomplished with those codes... it mattered. Don't let the guilt convince you otherwise.”
She moved on to check Ruth's bandages, leaving me staring at the ceiling and trying to parse how she'd known exactly what I was thinking.
Time moved strangely after that. Noor woke, stumbled to my bedside, hugged me one-armed with her face pressed against my shoulder until her breathing steadied.
Ruth dozed fitfully, waking every so often to glare at the ceiling like it had personally offended her.
A steady trickle of staff came through—Mrs Parker with blankets and murmured reassurances, a junior officer with preliminary casualty lists, someone from Art's section asking about files and codes until Dr Hart chased them out with a scathing look.
And through it all, I waited. Watched the door. Catalogued every footstep in the corridor, every voice that wasn't Tom's, every minute that stretched longer without him.
Maybe he wasn't coming. Maybe last night had been too much, too raw, and in the cold light of day he'd realised I was more trouble than I was worth. A liability. A responsibility he'd never asked for.
The door opened again.
Tom stood there, and my heart lurched so hard it hurt.
He looked wrecked. Uniform still dusty and stained, face streaked with grime and exhaustion, hands hanging loose at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them. But his eyes locked onto me with an intensity that stole the breath from my lungs.
Dr Hart intercepted him before he could take more than two steps. “Sergeant Hale. I'll allow fifteen minutes, no more. Mr Pembroke needs rest.”
“Understood, ma'am.” Tom's voice was rough, scraped raw, but steady.
Dr Hart nodded, ushered Noor and the nurse out with her, and pulled a curtain round my bed for privacy. Not complete privacy, anyone could hear through the thin fabric, but enough. Enough to pretend, for a few minutes, that the world outside didn't exist.
Tom moved to my bedside, pulled up the chair Noor had vacated, and sat down heavily. For a long moment he just stared at me, jaw working like he was trying to find words and failing.
“You look better than you did last night,” he finally said.
“You look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.” Tom's hands clenched on his knees. “Haven't slept. Can't. Every time I close my eyes I see that bloody hut collapsing and I—” His voice cracked. He stopped, swallowed hard, tried again. “You could have been killed.”
There it was. The anger simmering under his exhaustion, the terror that had been festering since he'd pulled me from the rubble. I'd known it was coming, had braced for it, but hearing the raw pain in his voice still felt like a punch to the chest.
Tom leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the look he gave me was equal parts fury and heartbreak. “You stayed in a bombing target because you had to finish a bloody puzzle.”
“It wasn't a puzzle.” The words came out sharper than I'd intended, defensive and brittle. “It was intelligence that saved lives. My work diverted half that raid, Tom. If I'd run when the sirens went off—”
“You'd be alive and whole and I wouldn't have spent three hours convinced I'd lost you.” Tom's voice rose, then caught, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, Art. When I got to that hut and saw the blood, I thought—”