Chapter 59 #2
Two hands try to restrain me. I claw at them, nails breaking on skin and mesh.
I bare my teeth and bite the hand that covers my mouth, taste the dirty, coppery tang of blood and sweat.
My legs are useless, but I use them anyway, slamming myself to the ground and crawling, ribs flexing under the strain.
Every inch is a new frontier of agony. The first time I move, something in my hip gives way with a pop.
I ignore it. The next crawl, my thigh rips open at the suture, blood running hot down my skin.
I ignore it. I plant my hand and drag, plant and drag, leaving streaks of red and black in my wake.
I don’t look up until I am at the table, Kang’s face just above my own.
He looks dead.
I seize his wrist, pressing my fingers to the inside where the pulse used to be. There’s nothing. The medic yanks at my arm, shouting something, but I can’t hear the words. The world has been reduced to the space between my skin and his.
The panic is total. It’s not just this cycle—every memory the node ever forced on me is back, stacked and layered, a multi-echo of every time I lost him.
I remember the hospital, the night they took our daughter, the cold mornings when I woke up and he was already gone.
I remember every version of Kang that ever died, and every time, I was left alone, bleeding out in the dark.
“No,” I snarl. “No, no, no, no—” The word is a lifeline, a loop I refuse to break. “You don’t get to do this, you don’t get to leave me—”
A hand slams into my shoulder, Maven’s. “Dee. Dee! He’s gone. We did everything.”
I look up. Their face is drawn, sick with the knowledge that this is the end of the line. The other medics step back, defeated, letting the bloody pads drop to the ground. One turns off the monitor; its beep goes from urgent to nothing. The world goes silent.
For a moment, there is nothing but the static in my ears. No movement, no sound, just the taste of salt and iron and the pressure of Kang’s cooling skin under my hand.
Then I remember the baby. Helena, her tiny fist wrapped around my finger, the sound of her first cry echoing in a room that didn’t even belong to us. I remember the promise I made: that if I ever got the chance, I’d bring him back. No matter how many times it took. No matter what it cost.
I start CPR. It’s a joke, really—a one-eyed, blood-soaked wreck pounding on a dead man’s chest—but I do it anyway.
I don’t care about the damage, about the ribs already shattered, about the pain that slices through my hands every time I press down.
All that matters is the rhythm, the memory of how his heart once sounded, the hope that muscle memory will override death itself.
I keep going, even after Maven tries to pull me off. Even after Rosie says, “Diana, he’s gone, you have to stop.” I spit blood and keep pressing, keep counting, keep willing his body to catch fire again. The tears don’t come, not yet. I’m too angry for that.
The world narrows to the space between my palms and his chest.
After what feels like forever, I rest my cheek against Kang’s sternum. I listen. There is nothing. But I am stubborn, and I don’t let go.
Maven sits beside me. They put a hand on my back, not to restrain but to anchor. “He was a good one,” they say, voice soft for the first time ever. “You did everything right. It’s over.”
I shake my head, still pressing Kang’s wrist, waiting for the impossible.
The light overhead flickers, then dims. Outside, the wind rattles the tarp, bringing in a faint note of ozone—just enough to trigger a memory of the garden, of Kang’s hand in mine, of the blue flower he tucked behind my ear before all this started.
I sob, not for me, but for the version of us that didn’t end here.
I am adrift—untethered, cut loose from the world, the only thing holding me down is the vice-grip I keep on his hand. Kang’s skin is already cooling, the blue under his nails spreading like an ink stain. My own blood runs hot over the back of his knuckles, sticky and desperate.
The tent is silent now. The medics have stepped back, Maven’s expression shuttered, Rosie’s eyes rimmed with something that looks too raw to name.
The solar lamp flickers and dies, leaving only the milky light leaking through the torn tarp above.
I press my cheek to Kang’s, skin to skin, and murmur the only things I have left.
“You don’t get to quit, Kang. I’m not letting you off that easy. You hear me? I’m still here.”
I say it again, softer, even though I know there’s no one to answer. “I’m still here.”
The silence is total. No heartbeat, no breath, just the final trickle of warmth leaking from him into my hands.
Despair claws at me. With a sudden, desperate surge of purpose, I rip the radshield pendant off my neck—now cracked and covered in blood—and press it against his cold throat.
It doesn’t even flicker. The stupid thing remains stubbornly dark, registering nothing, no power, no output, no life to scan.
I want to die. It’s that simple, that clean. The pain is so white-hot and absolute that it pushes out every other sensation. I close my eye, clutch his fingers tight, and let my consciousness slip down into whatever crack of oblivion I can find.
For a moment—nothing.
Then—something shifts.
A tremor. Then a hiss of air, shallow and wet, dragging itself out of his lungs. The barest twitch—a memory of motion, an echo of the old nervous system. At first I think it’s a spasm, a trick of dead muscles firing off one last shot, but then I feel it again. A squeeze, infinitesimal, but real.
I stop breathing.
I look down. Kang’s fingers are wrapped around mine, hard enough to blanch the tips. I stare, not trusting my brain, waiting for the vision to flicker and reveal the truth. But the grip only tightens, the pressure deliberate, impossible to mistake.
His eyes snap open.
They are not the eyes I remember—these are dull, the green gone to a kind of gray, the pupils blown wide from shock and hypoxia. But they are focused, and they are looking at me.
He tries to speak. His lips part, but the only thing that comes out is a rattling cough, a thread of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. I brush it away, my own hands shaking so bad I nearly knock his jaw out of joint.
I lean closer, so he can see me. “You’re alive,” I say, unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice. “You came back.”
He looks at me, the way he always did—like he’s measuring the weight of the world and deciding whether to let it crush him or just toss it aside. His mouth cracks into a lopsided smile, the old sarcasm fighting through the paralysis.
“Always,” he whispers. The sound is a rasp, more air than voice. “Told you. I always—find you, Dee.”
I choke on a sob, press my forehead to his, and laugh through the tears. “You dumb motherfucker,” I say, smiling so hard it hurts. “You absolute bastard.”
The medics, stunned, rush back in. One yells for a defibrillator, another fumbles a syringe, Rosie shouts something and Maven grabs Kang’s wrist, searching for a pulse. It’s there—weak, but rising. I refuse to let go. My hand is locked in his, blood and sweat and dirt fusing us together.
Through it all, Kang keeps his eyes on me.
Even as the medics slap electrodes to his chest and inject him with a stimulant, even as his body spasms under the shock and the pain, he never looks away.
It’s not love—love is too soft, too easy.
This is survival, a bare-knuckle will to endure, to spit in the face of every bastard who tried to erase us.
“Helena,” I whisper, because I want him to remember. Because I need to know the virus worked, that all of this wasn’t for nothing.
His eyes flicker. He remembers.
“Helena,” he says, the name like a curse, or a prayer.
I let go of the last bit of resistance, sobbing openly now. The medics work, the tent fills with urgent voices and the clatter of tools, but all I care about is his hand in mine. The world could collapse again, and I wouldn’t care.
Maven leans in, voice almost gentle. “You did it, Dee. You broke the cycle. He’s here.”
I nod, unable to answer.
They wheel Kang away, prepping him for transport, but I refuse to let go. I follow, limping and bleeding, trailing a line of red across the concrete. My fingers never leave his.
Outside, the Zone is quiet. The sky is a pale, cold blue, stripped clean by the wind. The sun is up, and for the first time in years, there are no Authority drones in sight.
I look down at Kang, still breathing, still fighting, and I know we will never be safe. But we are together, and that is enough.
I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.
I am alive.
So is he.
We are finally free.