Chapter Forty-Nine
The moment the doctor cleared Gemma to leave the infirmary, she was out of her bed and racing for the door. Christian followed, his hand on her lower back, as if he feared she might need the extra support.
But she felt great, better than she had since before they’d left Zion. Even the wound the Kaizen had given her was gone. If nanobots weren’t so blasted expensive, Gemma would keep them on hand constantly.
A message from Imara popped up on her eyepiece as she reached for her door’s lockpad.
Glad to hear you’re okay. Hawk and I were worried. The moment either of us see Colton, we’ll cut off his balls.
Smiling, Gemma held her fibroglass ring to be scanned. The square, black lockpad flashed green, and the door to her room swished open. Her bed was still unmade from the last time she’d slept in it, and the soft blankets seduced her.
“You want me to stay?” Christian asked.
Gemma faced him. “Of course I do.”
His shoulders relaxed. Had he really thought she would say no?
Gemma took his hand and led him inside. “You don’t have to ask, you know. My caca is your caca, or whatever they used to say.”
A bellow of laughter roared out of Christian. “It’s casa, Gemma. Not caca. I do not want to share your poop.”
Her face turned as hot as Reva’s sun as he tugged her into his arms. Still laughing, he planted a firm kiss on her lips—the first one they’d shared since Colton ripped her away from him.
Gemma’s embarrassment waned as her spirit filled with calm at his tender touch. She was with him. She was home. She was safe.
Leaning into him, Gemma opened his mouth with hers, but he gently pulled away.
“As much as I would love for that to be the first thing we do, I think we need to talk instead.” He brushed her jawline with his thumb.
Gemma groaned, stepping away from him. “I don’t want to share what happened with Colton. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“That’s . . . I don’t want to hear about that either. I already want to slit his throat.” His hands balled at his sides, and she grimaced at the anger in his deep, gravelly voice.
His expression softened. “It’s all right. You didn’t know what I was going to say.” He held out a hand to her. “Come sit with me.”
Gemma found a spot on the two-person sofa and angled herself to face him.
He braced an arm on the top of the sofa, digging his fingers into his hair. “So, Colton’s disappeared.”
Gemma sighed. “I’m not surprised.”
“The Kaizen led everyone in the building on a massive sweep of Zion, even inside the maintenance shafts like the one we found. No one’s spotted him. Rami says even his comm is off, which is supposedly impossible. None of their messages to him have gone through. He’s turned into a ghost.”
She frowned, unable to hold eye contact any longer. She’d had an opportunity to kill Colton, and she’d failed miserably.
Christian placed his hand on her knee, stroking the inside of her thigh with his thumb. The tension in Gemma’s shoulders released at his gentle touch.
“Now, I don’t want to know what happened when you were with him,” Christian said. “But Rami does need to know if he shared anything about the Dissent’s plan for Zion.”
Gemma swallowed. “Not specifically, but he did say that the Dissent expects to have control of Zion before the shuttle to Oranos comes, and that they’re not against killing hundreds if it means they win the war.
” She looked at Christian at last. “I think it’s a bomb, what he had Imara stick in his backsack.
He knows how to make plenty of different kinds.
He told us when we were in that bounty hunter place. ”
Gemma had had a long time to think about it when Colton dragged her across Reva.
It was the only reasonable plan that made sense.
Reymond wouldn’t risk storming the tower, even if they did have hundreds of weapons at their disposal.
Zion had some of the best security in all the Systems’ galaxies.
But if the Dissent were to take out that security . . .
“That’s what we feared,” Christian replied. “No specifics though?”
She shook her head.
Christian cursed. He held his thumb on his comm. “Send a message to Rami Vidar. Gemma confirms likely a bomb. No other details known.” He ran a hand down his face.
Gemma’s leg shook. “Anything else? I’d really like to shower.”
He squeezed her knee. “No, go ahead. I think that was it.”
Smiling softly, Gemma went to stand—the memory of the ghoul attack flashed through her mind.
She hadn’t thought about it much since then, between focusing on staying alive and trying to determine the Dissent’s plan for Zion.
But now that she was here, the impressions from that night filled her: the roaring from the power in her veins; the shock that froze every molecule in her body; the sulfuric smell of the ghoul’s breath as they clawed at her dome.
Her purple blood.
“Actually . . .” Gemma sat back, and Christian held her stare.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” His face tightened, fear passing over his eyes.
She entwined her fingers with his. “Something happened to me when Colton and I were in the desert. Something, I think, because of how you found me in the temple.”
Christian sighed. “You mean the purple blood. Yeah, we saw that too.”
Of course they would have—they’d carried her into Zion with her body covered in it.
Gemma bit her bottom lip. “It’s . . . not just that, though.”
He furrowed his brows.
She swallowed. “When I was with Colton, I got attacked by those ghouls—those demon creatures we saw on our first night. And right when I thought they were going to kill me, this . . . power came out of me. I don’t even know how to explain it.
” Christian’s jaw flexed. “It protected me from them until Colton stepped in and blew them up. But it was like—I don’t know—an instinctive reaction.
And then I had flashes of what happened in that temple. ”
Christian’s gaze swept across her face, like he was searching for a clue that something was out of place. “What did you see in these flashes?”
She looked away. “A purple orb. I touched it. And I remember feeling so cold . . . and screaming into a pool of purple blood.”
Several moments passed before he let out a long breath, and when Gemma looked at him, his eyes grew tight. “Okay, well, tomorrow I think we need to ask Rami what he knows about that place. He said we’d see ruins. He might be able to tell us something.”
Gemma nodded, digging her nails into her palms as she stood. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. They had enough to worry about already. But what if something was really wrong with her and she never got to go to Oranos and see her sister again?
Tears pooled in her eyes.
Calloused fingers touched her palm when she turned to walk away. “Hey.” Christian stood, enveloping Gemma in a hug so fervent that her chest pinched. “We’ll figure it out.”
Clinging to him, she let the promises too difficult to verbalize flow from him into her soul. From this moment on, she would never fight another battle alone.