Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ronin sat motionless in the worn leather chair, fingers digging into its arms. His processors blazed despite his outward stillness.
Hours had passed with excruciating slowness.
Rodriguez’s questions were concise, direct, and seemingly endless.
Throughout, Ronin’s thoughts had repeatedly returned to Lara.
There was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Rodriguez called.
The door opened, and a woman dressed in a white coat stepped in, approached the colonel, and whispered in his ear. When he nodded, she turned back toward the door.
Rodriguez’s gaze settled on Ronin. “Lara is in stable condition.”
Ronin rose from the chair. “Then I’ll go see her now.”
“We’re not finished here.”
“I’m finished. I’ve answered your questions, many of them numerous times, and I’ll answer more later. But right now, I am going to see Lara.”
The woman hesitated in the doorway, eyes flicking between Ronin and Rodriguez.
“You can trust him to cooperate,” Newton said from his seat beside Ronin. “Please, allow him this.”
At length, Rodriguez waved at the woman. “Take him.”
Ronin followed her into the corridor. The tail of her coat drifted behind her as she wove through the hallways with surprising speed.
There were fewer people than before in the large chamber, and different soldiers patrolled the catwalks.
The woman led Ronin into the passageway with green paint marking the floor.
After walking through another collection of labyrinthine corridors, they finally arrived at a doorway with Infirmary painted on the wall beside it.
They entered a low-ceilinged room that was divided by curtains hanging from metal rods. Ronin counted forty such partitions, only six of which were closed.
Narrow, neatly made beds stood in the open sections, surrounded by pieces of equipment similar to what he’d glimpsed in the unused rooms at the Clinic. The machinery for bot repairs in the far corner looked more advanced than anything in Cheyenne.
The woman led him to one of the closed curtains. A soft, steady beeping came from within.
She stopped at the narrow gap between the curtains and turned to Ronin.
“You need to understand that she’s still in serious condition.
She’s stable, but that can change any moment.
She’s got a broken arm, fractured ribs, several lacerations, and severe bruising.
The swelling should go down in time, and we don’t believe her vision will be affected. ”
Ronin nodded and moved to step past her, but she stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest.
“You also need to know that she suffered head trauma. She’s in a coma. We don’t know when, or if, she’ll wake up.”
Ronin’s processors halted, either unable or unwilling to assimilate that information.
If he’d listened to Lara and left Cheyenne when she’d first suggested it, if he hadn’t insisted on one more run, if he hadn’t allowed himself to grow so complacent that he’d missed the countless signs of danger all around…
The woman sidestepped and opened the curtain. Ronin walked through.
Lara’s hair caught his attention first. It was clean and woven into a braid, standing out in bold contrast to the white bedding.
Dark bruises marred the pale skin of her face.
Both her eyes were swollen, a four-centimeter-long line of stitches marred her left cheek, and her left arm was splinted and wrapped against her chest in a sling.
Apart from the shallow rise and fall of her chest, she was still, and she looked so slight in the pristine bed surrounded by medical equipment. Though a blanket covered her abdomen and legs, he knew the flesh hidden beneath was mottled with bruises.
His optics followed the tube in her right arm up to a jar of liquid suspended on a pole beside the bed before shifting to the monitor displaying her heartrate. Its beat was slow, but steady.
Gently, he placed his hand over hers. “Don’t leave yet.”
Lara didn’t respond. Seconds dragged into minutes.
“I’ll get you a chair,” the woman in the white coat said, drawing Ronin’s attention to the open curtain. Had she stood there the entire time?
“I don’t need to sit.”
“I’ll get one anyway, in case you change your mind.” Stepping back, she took hold of the hanging cloth. “Talk to her. It’ll do her good to hear a familiar voice.”
The woman closed the curtain, and her soft footfalls faded as she left the room.
Squeezing Lara’s hand, Ronin brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. He trailed a fingertip over the tiny patch of uninjured skin on her cheek.
“Remember the ocean, Lara? I asked you what places you’d like to see, and that was your answer.
You didn’t even have to think about it. I’ll take you there once you’ve recovered.
You can dance barefoot in the sand to the music of the waves and collect as many seashells and bits of driftwood as you want.
We can watch the sun set over the water and pretend we’re the only two people in existence. ”
He struggled to picture it in his head, to piece together images from his memory to create the scene. How content would they be if they were the last two survivors?
But the images eluded him, and the logical part of his mind listed the myriad challenges such a scenario would pose.
How could he guarantee her food supply, or proper medical care?
Would she be saddened if she never saw another flesh-and-blood person, if she never knew what it was like to carry a child, to see a family grow around her?
Another part of him set those concerns aside, if only for an instant, and saw the happiness, the intimacy, the companionship.
He loved Lara, and it didn’t matter if his emotions had begun as a simulation, didn’t matter if they were still classified as such. Whatever they were, whatever people like William Anderson called them, Ronin felt them.
He stroked the back of Lara’s hand with his thumb.
“I spent a long time searching for my purpose. For my core programming. All of us were made for a reason.” He chuckled.
“It’s not a reason I would have guessed…
but it doesn’t matter anymore. I found what I was looking for before Newton told me any of that.
“It was you, Lara. You’re my purpose, you’re my reason for carrying on, the reason I haven’t sat down in an abandoned building and never stood up again. I don’t think I’m selfish, normally, but I need you. I only just found you, and I don’t think I can go any further without you.”
Her only response was through the steady, indifferent beeping of electronics.
Twelve minutes and fifteen seconds later, the woman in the white coat returned with an ancient-looking chair. The cushion was flat and ragged, but the metal frame was solid and rust-free. She quietly set it down several feet from the bed and checked the equipment.
Reluctantly, Ronin sat on the chair to keep out of her way, fixing his optics on Lara’s unchanging face.
It would take no effort to call up his memories of her dances, or the first time he’d heard her laugh, or any of the hundreds of moments with her he’d forever cherish, but he refrained.
What would reminiscing bring other than more pain?
The past was gone, and it could never be reclaimed no matter how impeccable his recall.
Lara couldn’t dance now, couldn’t smile, couldn’t even open her eyes or react to anything around her.
“We’re doing everything we can,” the woman said. She’d been at the edge of his vision, watching him.
“I know.”
“They told us it was rough on you getting here. There wasn’t much information at that point, but…from the first moment, our only priority was keeping her alive. That’s not going to change.”
Ronin shifted his focus to the woman. His processors replayed her words twice, analyzing her tone, before understanding dawned on him. This was compassion. Sympathy. Traits he’d rarely seen in this world, apart from in Lara.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Cyndi.”
“Thank you, Cyndi.”
She smiled, and the sad gleam in her eyes reminded him of the blonde synth who worked in the clinic. Perhaps he’d been overly harsh in his judgment of Mercy. Her sympathy was likely just as genuine as Cyndi’s.
“Thank Nancy. She’s the one who really saved this girl’s life.” She moved deeper into the small space and plucked something from a metal tray in the corner. Ronin’s processors slowed at the flash of gold.
With the ring resting on her palm, Cyndi held out her hand. “We needed to remove it to bandage her ribs.”
Yours Until the End of Time.
He stared at the painful reminder that he’d failed in his vow to protect Lara. Keeping his hand steady, he took the ring from Cyndi, closing his fingers around it. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cyndi left, and Ronin relocated the chair to the bedside. He took Lara’s hand again, seeking comfort in its warmth and finding little. He slipped the ring onto her finger and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to it.
“Don’t leave yet,” he repeated. “Don’t…leave me.”
Four hours later, the curtain rustled. Reluctant to look away from Lara, Ronin turned his head slowly to find Will, the younger of the two Andersons, peeking through the gap.
“Ronin? Would you come with me, please?”
Facing Lara, Ronin shook his head. “I’m not ready to answer more questions yet.”
The pulse monitor continued its gentle rhythm without variation.
“I’m not here to interrogate you. My father and I noticed you were damaged when you came in. We’d like to get you repaired while Lara rests.”