Chapter 4 Tur #2
I clamp down hard on the instinct, forcing my shoulders to stay loose, my bone spurs to stay retracted, my grip on her to remain careful instead of crushing.
Her head lolls against my collarbone, her breath shuddering in shallow, hitching pulls that make my throat close up.
“Easy,” I whisper to her. “I’ve got you. I’m not dropping you. You’re okay. You’re okay. Just… stay here. Right here.”
Her lashes flutter.
She doesn’t wake.
The drones descend another meter.
The municipal alarm lattice escalates.
A public-address warning blares somewhere down the block, distorted by smoke and sirens and the rising roar of fire engines converging on the Fierson Grill.
“Unidentified combatant. Remain stationary. You are in violation of emergency containment protocols.”
I bare my teeth at the empty air.
“Go fuck yourself.”
I turn and start running.
Not away from the chaos.
Through it.
I hit the mouth of the alley at a dead sprint just as a section of the restaurant’s outer wall finally gives up and collapses into the street behind me with a deafening, bone-rattling roar.
A wave of heat and dust and burning debris punches me in the back hard enough to drive the air out of my lungs.
I twist my body sideways without thinking, hunching over her and taking the impact across my shoulder blades and spine.
Pain detonates down my back like someone just drove a crowbar between my vertebrae.
I grunt and keep moving.
I do not slow down.
Chunks of brick and flaming wood rain down around us, bouncing off the pavement and skidding across my boots. One piece glances off my ribs with a wet, cracking impact that sends a bright spike of agony straight into my sternum.
Good.
Stay in the pain.
Stay here.
Stay now.
The jalshagar howls anyway.
Claim.
Protect.
Kill anything that looks at her wrong.
My bone spurs twitch under my skin, pressing outward in reflex.
“No,” I snarl through clenched teeth. “Stay down. You don’t get to come out.”
I force them back with sheer, murderous will.
They retract.
Barely.
The drones scream overhead, engines whining louder as they accelerate to keep pace with me. Blue targeting grids ripple across my back, my arms, her legs.
I cut right, vaulting a stack of fallen scaffolding and nearly clipping my head on a dangling power cable that spits sparks into the smoke.
The street opens up into absolute chaos.
Fire trucks. Med units. Police skimmers hovering low over the intersection. Civilians screaming and running in every direction, some bleeding, some coughing, some filming with shaking hands.
Neon signage flickers through smoke plumes like dying stars.
Sirens layer over sirens until the sound becomes a physical pressure that hammers against my eardrums.
Someone shouts, “Holy shit, what is that thing?”
Someone else screams, “He’s got a body!”
I don’t look at any of them.
I keep my eyes on the narrow service corridor between two closed storefronts across the street.
My exit vector.
I sprint.
A police skimmer drops lower, its spotlight slashing across my path and pinning me in blinding white light.
“Stop! Put the civilian down and remain where you are!”
Kimberly’s head bumps against my chest as I pivot hard and dive through the service corridor instead.
“Fuck your spotlight,” I rasp.
A stun round cracks past my shoulder and explodes against the wall in a burst of blue electricity.
I feel it arc across my back, lighting up my nervous system like someone just plugged me into a generator.
My muscles seize.
For half a second, I almost drop her.
Almost.
The jalshagar surges like a living thing trying to tear its way out of my rib cage.
Mine.
Protect.
Kill.
I ride the surge instead of fighting it this time, using the feral energy to force my legs to keep moving even as my nerves scream in protest.
I stagger.
Recover.
Keep running.
I hit the end of the corridor and launch myself over a collapsed chain-link fence into a drainage culvert choked with trash and ankle-deep water that splashes up over my boots and soaks my pants.
The drones overshoot my position by a few meters.
I vanish under a rusted maintenance overhang and bolt into the maze of lower-district alleys that don’t exist on any public map.
The smell changes immediately.
Less fire.
More sewage.
Ozone.
Old coolant.
Rot.
I welcome it.
The darkness closes in around us like a blessing.
My heart is hammering so hard it hurts.
My hands are still shaking.
Her blood is still soaking into my shirt.
“Don’t do this,” I whisper to her as I run. “Don’t die. Don’t you fucking die on me now.”
She makes a soft, broken sound in her throat.
It shreds something inside me I didn’t know I had.
“Oh God,” I choke. “Hey. Hey. Look at me. Open your eyes. Just for a second.”
Her lashes flutter again.
They part.
Barely.
Her eyes are unfocused, glassy, swimming.
“Monster,” she whispers faintly, like she’s not sure the word is real.
The jalshagar explodes in my chest.
No.
“No,” I say immediately, too fast, too intense. “No. I’m not. I’m not going to hurt you. I swear to you. I swear.”
Her gaze drifts over my face like she’s trying to assemble me from broken puzzle pieces.
“…hot,” she murmurs.
I huff a broken laugh that turns into something dangerously close to a sob.
“Yeah,” I rasp. “That tracks too.”
Her eyes slide shut again.
Panic claws up my throat.
“No, no, no, stay with me,” I beg, my voice cracking wide open now. “You don’t get to clock out yet. You don’t even know my name. That would be rude as hell.”
I run harder.
The drones scream overhead again, closer this time, their shadows flickering across the alley walls.
I hook left, then right, then drop into a maintenance trench that runs under a row of derelict buildings and sprints blind for thirty meters before spitting me out behind a shuttered nightclub with a burned-out holo sign that still reads ECLIPSE in flickering purple.
I press myself flat against the wall, panting, every muscle in my body vibrating with adrenaline and pain.
The drones hover above the trench opening.
Their lenses sweep.
Pause.
Sweep again.
My jaw locks.
The jalshagar coils tight and low inside me, vibrating with violence and possession and the sick, terrible certainty that I will murder anything that comes down here for her.
They don’t descend.
After three long, torturous seconds, they pivot away and accelerate back toward the main fire plume.
I sag against the wall, my knees nearly giving out.
“Oh thank fuck,” I whisper.
Kimberly stirs again, a soft, pained sound slipping out of her.
I slide down the wall into a crouch, keeping her cradled tight against my chest.
“Hey,” I whisper, gentler now. “Hey. I’ve got you. We’re out. You’re safe. Sort of. Safer than you were.”
Her breathing is shallow.
Too shallow.
Her blood is still coming.
My hands are slick and red.
My vision blurs.
This is exposure.
Total.
Irrevocable.
The Alliance knows I exist now.
Oversight will be pulling biometric matches as we speak.
My containment status just went from theoretical to actively catastrophic.
Every safehouse I ever used is now a liability.
Every identity I ever wore just burned to the ground.
Exile doesn’t even begin to cover what I just chose.
I press my forehead against her hair, breathing in smoke and blood and something indefinably hers that makes my chest ache.
“I don’t know what you are to me,” I whisper hoarsely. “I don’t know what the hell just happened inside my body back there. I don’t know what it’s going to cost me.”
My hands shake harder as I tighten my grip on her.
“But I know I’m not leaving you.”
I stand.
And start moving again.
Deeper into the lower districts.
But this time, not alone.