Corin
***
My body was horrifyingly weak, and Artek managed to wrestle me into the seat in front of the control hub with embarrassing ease.
“It’s too late. She’s already crawled in.
Help her from here!” the Shaman directed me.
I didn’t want to listen to his sensible words; all my instincts told me to crawl after Min-Ji, to snatch her by the ankle and yank her to safety.
But he was right. She had already gone in and hadn’t gotten zapped. Now, I could best help her from here.
My brave mate, so afraid of bugs and the darkness inside those small tunnels, faced that fear head-on so she could rescue Triff.
Rescue all of us from Vrash, though maybe the little bot had sacrificed himself to defeat the Revenant.
If so, we owed it to him to repair him, to bring him back. I vowed that I would.
“Sit still and tell me what is going on,” Artek ordered.
I knew what he was doing, but it was working.
I focused my attention on the view on the screen.
On the dark shapes of deactivated cleaning bots and a hopefully equally inactive Vrash.
I couldn’t speak to Min-Ji. I only had the view, but I could reroute power from that area and prevent the bot from turning back on.
My fingers flew as I did that, and Artek worked with his healing device over my chest, repairing the damage to my heart that the shock had caused.
“I can see her,” I breathed when I saw her pale face appear out of the dark, her slender fingers searching along the floor.
“To the left of you,” I murmured when it appeared that she couldn’t see very well.
By touch, she located Vrash’s remains, and I knew she’d screamed when her hand brushed the spindly leg of the repair bot it was attached to.
I couldn’t quite make out what she was doing, but I thought that maybe she was fumbling around the many inactive cleaning bots.
Was she trying to find Triff? I couldn’t tell him apart from the rest now that he was turned off.
It was his behavior that made him stand out.
I shuddered in relief when I realized she was retreating, crawling backward because the space was so tight.
She had Vrash’s head, as I couldn’t see it on the feed anymore.
That meant the danger was over. Vrash could not control anything if he was not attached to the system.
I pushed Artek’s hand away, interrupting the healing process, but it was more important to hurry to the small tunnel and assist my mate.
When I pulled her free by her ankle, my chest aching from the strain, she beamed at me with a relieved smile.
“I got him!” she said, and I didn’t need to look to know which "he" she was talking about.
Cradled against her chest was a silver half-orb, and the cleaning disk she exposed to me had a broken crack, held together by string—my improvised repair from before. It was definitely Triff.
I pulled her into my arms, my chest aching for different reasons. I was proud of my mate. I was happy that it was over, and sad that Triff had fallen because of Vrash’s will to survive eons past his lifetime. “Let me see him,” I said, and she opened her arms, and let the bot fall into her lap.
“Can you fix him?” she asked, her voice trembling.
I hugged her tighter, ignoring the dead Vrash she'd tossed to the floor without any care, and focused only on the two beings that mattered most to me in this world. My mate and, damn it, the best bot on the planet. I had to make this right, but with all the scorched metal and fried circuits… it wasn’t looking good.
I barely paid attention to Artek as he finished healing me with his handheld device and checked over Min-Ji to be safe.
I didn’t care when he announced that he’d take Vrash and dispose of him for good.
When Iave and Zathar entered the control hub with their mates, Min-Ji talked to them, but I just held my mate tight and tried my best to salvage what I could of our little robot friend.
“Come on,” Min-Ji said eventually. “Your apartment is a better place for this. You’ve got time, Corin. As much as I’d want it, it doesn’t have to be now.” She gave me a watery smile. “We won. Triff won the battle for us. Let’s celebrate that.”
My clever mate was wise too. I rose with her in my arms, Triff held carefully between us. And then we went to face our happy Clanspeople as they reclaimed our home. My Haven, which we’d saved, together.