I couldn't feel my fingers, and trying to find the laser scalpel was hard enough. But then turning it on and using it to slice open a wider hole would be far worse.
I braced myself, took in a deep breath, and ignited the laser. Fast, do it fast, I thought. Then the laser made contact with Nadim's healing flesh, and the pain roared and dragged me under, a red tsunami of anguish that made me scream and shake and keep cutting. Mercy wasn't an option now; the only way through this for either one of us was to bear it, scream through it, try to stay conscious under the numbing impact of the knowledge of the pain I was causing him.
I shut the laser off when I had a rough hole hacked all the way through to the thin membrane that covered the outside of Nadim's body.
I shoved the rock into it, still screaming. My throat felt raw, and I tasted metal. I was hurting myself, but I didn't care, because at least we were hurting together.
The rock's razor edges sliced the membrane, and it tumbled through, even as the vacuum of space sucked a bright spray of silvery blood after it--with some red human droplets that froze instantly--out into the black. Ruby jewels, frosting with ice crystals, mingling with still-liquid Leviathan blood out here in the ultimate wilderness. Nadim shuddered, and the pain flashed in such a spike that I lost the ability to scream at all.
Vacuum pulled at me, but the agony drove a wave through the liquid at staggering speed. I slipped, and the slick silvery lake of blood flowed over me in a disorienting flood.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Breaking Out
I DIDN'T KNOW where I was. I was down, floating, lost . . . and then, as the pain gradually began to recede, I heard someone talking to me. Just a voice at first, with no meaning.
Then Beatriz was saying in my ear, "Zara, get up, you have to try! Come on! I can see where you are, and you need to get up and out of there! Please!"
I fumbled around. There was no sense of up or down anymore, and I was floating blind . . . but then my shoulder brushed something. It was soft, and yielding, but it was also strong.
And it pushed me forward.
It took me a few seconds to get my brain operating again and to remember the pink membrane that had been moving toward the sharp edges of the debris. It was shoving me, and now, I felt a solid surface under my feet. I put my back against the membrane and let it push me on. The surface beneath my feet rose sharply in a curve, and I scrambled up, flailing for purchase. If I wasn't careful, it would crush me against the slope. I'd slid down this wall. Now, half-enveloped by Nadim's expanding tissue, I fought my way back up again.
As I came up out of the blood and rolled onto the flatter surface, I realized I still couldn't feel my hands. They didn't hurt anymore, at least.
Actually it felt like they didn't exist.
"Bea?" I gasped. "Bea?"
"I'm here! Zara, you did it, you got it out. He's going to be okay. But you need to come back now. You have to."
"I can't feel my hands." My voice was shaking. I didn't want to look at what was happening to me. What had already happened to me.
"We can fix that when you get back," she said, and her voice was calm, clear, just what I needed. "I'm going to guide you, all right? Can you see your H2?"
I clumsily lifted my left arm and tried to look. The screen was gummed with silver blood. I tried wiping it off, but it only smeared. "No," I said. I was so tired. I just wanted to sit down and rest. "I can't. I'm going to lie down now."
"Don't you dare!" Bea's voice thundered at me, and I remembered all the authority figures who'd ever yelled at me. Underneath all of that was my father's voice. I wanted to lie down just to spite them . . . and then the tone changed. "Zara, please. He needs you. I need you. If you quit now, you're not coming back, and you belong here. With me. With us."
That sounded like someone else now. It sounded like all the people who'd cared. Who'd loved me, despite all my cracks and flaws. My mother. My sister. Even Derry, sometimes.
It reminded me of Nadim too. And reminded me of just who Bea was, the angel who could sing stars out of the sky. I could hear music in her.
So I sucked in a shaking breath and said, "Help me."
"Okay, you can't climb back up. I want you to go straight ahead . . . now a little left . . . a little more . . . Stop. Reach up, there should be a kind of ledge there. Pull yourself up."
"I can't. I can't feel my hands."
"You can."
Bea's certainty made me reach up, and I did feel . . . something. A distant pressure, maybe. My body remembered things my mind didn't. I went up. Then I kept going, walking blind, turning and twisting, an exhausted stumble into silence where Nadim should have been. At least he wasn't hurting anymore. But what did that mean? If he wasn't hurting . . . Panic chewed at the corners of my mind; I didn't let it take root.
I'm not supposed to be here. I hope I'm not contaminating him with my blood.
"Okay," Bea said. I could hear a change in her voice. Hope, and something else too. "You need to listen to me now, Zara. Don't move, okay?"
"Okay," I said.
"You're standing right on top of one of Nadim's main arteries," she said. "The blood in there is moving very, very fast. I need you to focus, all right?"
I could actually feel the hiss of the liquid passing underneath my feet, a purely physical sensation that made me feel dizzy and a little sick. "What do you want me to do?" But I already knew. I just didn't want to think about it.
"Use the laser scalpel and cut it open and get inside," she said. "It'll carry you part of the way. I'll tell you when you need to get out."
I didn't bother trying to tell her I couldn't, not this time. Surviving meant I had to. So I fumbled the laser scalpel out of my utility belt again; I was glad it was firmly attached, because I dropped it twice before I got a good grip. Focusing the light on it, I saw the deep slashes in my hands and fingers; no wonder I could barely feel anything. Shock must have clamped down hard, and the Leviathan blood had created a sticky rainbow film over the damage, sealing it almost like the skinsuit.
I sliced down with the laser scalpel--one decisive cut that opened up the tissue wide enough to allow me through. I braced for the pain, but oddly, it didn't come. This tissue didn't have nerves to damage. The thick wall of the blood vessel parted, and silvery liquid flooded out in a spray that nearly knocked me over.
I slid myself in feet first, hanging on to the rubbery edge as an irresistible tide tried to pull me free, and with my other hand used the laser to burn the edges together, right up to the edge of my grip. I hoped he'd be able to heal that relatively small tear quickly.
"In," I gasped to Bea. The pull of the current was intense, and I couldn't hold on for much longer.
"Trust me," she said. "I've got you. Let go."
It was like being blasted into orbit. I held myself as straight as I could and the tide carried me. It felt good to just relax, at least for a moment. Beatriz would tell me when to move again.
An alarm went off in my ear, and I flailed, turning in the current. I had to level out. If I blocked the flow of his blood, that would be worse still.
"What the hell is that?" I asked Bea, and for the first time, I sounded more like the old Zara.
"Oxygen alert," she said. "Your suit can't manufacture enough to last much longer, not under these conditions. It was never meant for this. Try breathing slowly, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "That sounds easy." Just the idea made me want to suck in another, deeper breath. Nothing like the threat of suffocation to make you want to gulp air. I felt a little giddy, which was probably the falling O2.
"Focus, Zara. I'm going to give you a countdown from five. All right? Here we go. Five--four--three--"
The edges of the artery were brushing my shoulders now and still narrowing. I tried not to breathe too deeply. My vision glittered at the edges, and I felt dangerously light-headed. Bea's voice sounded far away. Was she counting in Portuguese?
"Now, Zara! Cut your way out now!"
I spot
ted a minuscule tear ahead. Twisting, I managed to hook a hand in it--and the effort nearly tore my shoulder from its socket. I didn't realize I'd been going that fast, but fighting the current and getting my other hand in place felt like lifting three times my body weight. When I pushed, the tear widened, and I wiggled out, shoulders, then hips, like a baby being born. I emerged in a forest of strange, thick filaments, and I squirmed through them, trying not to pull any loose. I was breathing deeper now, but it wasn't helping. My head hurt. My vision was fragmenting into strange sparkles.
Then I was in a wider tunnel, this one smooth and similar to the connective ducts. The skinsuit was barely breathing for me now, no matter how deeply I dragged the air in; I wanted to rip it off, but if it was still trying to feed me oxygen, that meant the atmosphere here in this tunnel was toxic. "Bea?" I managed to gasp out. "Where?"
"Go straight!"
I stumbled on and then slipped when I stepped in something slick.
The processed-waste flow.
It seemed to take forever to stagger to the end of the tunnel to the mesh that marked the beginning of the human-built sector, but eventually I slid under a flap and into the familiar sludge so comforting I almost wept.
Hard tremors set in as I half crawled toward our section of Nadim. The skinsuit had quit breathing altogether now, and my vision was nearly dark. I stripped the mask off as I splattered out of the hatch and onto the floor.
Air. Sweet, wonderful air. I dragged it in, out, long gasping, raw breaths, and finally realized someone was talking to me. Beatriz. She was frantically telling me she was on her way.
I collapsed in a puddle of ick. No idea how long it took Bea to find me, but she didn't bother with the biohazard suit. She was liberally splashed with muck as she rushed to my side in the narrow waste tunnel.
"Hey," I said vaguely as she grabbed my arms and started to drag me. "I made it."
She didn't answer; she was putting all her effort into moving me. I tried to help; by the time she managed to get me into a corridor, I rolled up to my knees and let her help me to my feet, and together, we stumbled to the med bay.
Medical intervention came in the form of an Earth-style bot, programmed with all the knowledge modern medicine and alien tech could devise, along with an impressive range of pharmaceuticals. The Emergency Medical Intervention Treatment Unit hadn't been built for beauty, so it was all boxy chrome, speakers, cameras, and spindly arms that could grasp, pull, twist, or inject with ease. I hadn't needed EMITU since we'd come aboard, so the thing perked up when I stumbled through the door.
"Honor Cole. You are injured. Processing severity." EMITU's voice had a definite old-school robo reverb, no uncanny valley there. The downside was it also couldn't manage empathy, so his cheer sounded like ghoulish delight. "Looks like we need to amputate. You will enjoy your new robot hands, manufactured by Jitachi, the industry leader in medical robotics."
My head was clearing, but for a long second I was almost sure I was hallucinating. Then I was sure I wasn't. I stopped cold and hid my butchered hands behind my back. "No way!"
"Only a little bedside levity. Are you not crazy entertained?"
From what I knew, EMITU wasn't supposed to have a sense of humor. I turned to glare at my companion. "Bea! Did you hack this thing?"
"It's great, right? I gave it some personality, over five hundred slang words, some I invented." She was using handfuls of medical wipes to clean the waste off her skin. "And you're in no position to complain, okay?"
I mumbled some choice Zone slang as Bea helped me out of my skinsuit. The med unit herded me into a decon shower, and the spray smelled overwhelmingly like the cheap pine cleaner they favored in institutions. It would have been reassuring if the mist had stung; I could see the damage to my flesh, but I couldn't feel it.
"Diagnosis: permanent nerve damage. Regenerative course required. Unless you want those robot hands?"
"Oh my God."
"Then please dress, Honor Cole. I'm not here for the booty."
Despite myself, I laughed. I put on the treatment gown and lay back in the chair. Permanent nerve damage didn't sound good, and the seriousness of it sank in fast. I realized I was breathing deeply, trying to make myself stay calm . . . and then Bea sat down next to me. "Hey," she said, and touched my shoulder. She was trying not to look at the mess of my hands. "I need to go back up there. We're good for now, but . . ."
"But you should keep alert," I agreed. I swallowed hard. "Bea, I'm sorry. I should have told you when I found out about Nadim's problem. But I honestly didn't think it would happen. I didn't."
"I know. And you were wrong." But her hand stayed gentle on my shoulder, and she smoothed my hair back from my face. "We're not out of this yet, Z."
EMITU told me to close my eyes, but the minute I did that, I thought that Mr. Personality would probably imitate a buzz saw. Beatriz walked away, so there was nobody here to check the thing if it went full horror show. I kept my gaze locked on EMITU, but it only prepped a syringe. Though I tensed, I still didn't feel any pain when it jammed the needle home in my hands. Not then. About thirty seconds later, the feeling came back in an excruciating rush, liquid fire from wrists to fingertips.
"Has sensation returned?"
"Yes." I hissed it through a clenched jaw. It was that or sink my teeth into my arm and chew off the offending limbs.
"I can give an injection for the pain, but I cannot expedite healing until the regenerative treatment runs its course. To attempt both simultaneously could result in a catastrophic shitstorm."
That was the best verbiage I'd ever heard from medical personnel. I imagined Beatriz cackling as she made her upgrades, and it occurred to me that she and I were two of a kind; she just rebelled in quieter ways. No wonder we got along so well. Most of the time, when I didn't screw it up.
"Understood."
"I am applying a protective sealant to discourage foreign matter as your wounds heal. Please return in twenty-four hours."
"Sure."
The stuff EMITU sprayed on my hands came out pink and looked like flesh caulk, basically. It molded over the gashes, at least, and while they still hurt, at least I didn't have to look at the gaping edges. Next I got an injection straight to my neck and my pain receptors all went on vacation. Such fast-working meds actually made the top of my head tingle. Right, this is probably how Derry got hooked on chem. My relief was so great, my whole body slumped, and I closed my eyes in the chair for a few seconds.
"You will live, Honor C. Get out of my office." The last sentence was pure Bea.
Now that it seemed like I would survive, and better yet, without pain, I mustered the last of my energy to get cleaned up, then stumbled to find her. When I got to the control room, she barely glanced up to verify proof of life. She was drenched in sweat; clearly we weren't out of the woods yet, and it had cost precious time towing my ass to EMITU.
I didn't speak as Bea flew Nadim on a complicated course to avoid the rolling, seemingly random paths of the big-and medium-sized chunks of rock, passing through the last of the debris field. Then it was just cold and dark and lonely, and I suspected neither of us had ever seen anything more purely beautiful.
Beatriz sat back in her chair and covered her face with trembling hands. She still had some crap in her hair and smelled like the waste tunnel. She quaked like an autumn leaf in a storm.
I put an arm around her. "Thank you. Thanks for saving us."
She elbowed me, hard. "It's your fault we're in this mess in the first place, and if you keep anything else from me, I'll kick your ass."
Normally I'd be like, You'll try, but she'd earned my genuine repentance. "Look, I really am sorry. But you know, if they'd leveled with us back in training, maybe I'd have known better. So it's maybe not entirely my fault . . . ?" I tried a coaxing smile that used to work on some of my counselors, the soft-hearted ones anyway.
With a sigh, she said, "Fine. I accept your apology. And . . . thanks to you too. I didn't crawl through N
adim's organs. You did. And look at you!" She lowered her hands and glared at my hands. "Is that the best EMITU could do?"
"It'll heal. And it doesn't hurt, which is all I care about right now." I flexed my fingers a little and winced. "Okay, it almost doesn't. Just feels weird as hell. Also, I love you, Bea, but you need a decon shower."
"I know," she said. "I also need to crawl into bed and pull the covers up and pretend this never happened, or I'll never sleep again. What are we going to do if this doesn't work?"
I just shook my head and used my newly useful fingers to chart a course to the red giant's glow--a glow that would wake Nadim.
I hoped.
That optimism died in the hissing, atonal light of the star we orbited for almost a full day, to no effect. I could hear the star--what Nadim would have called its song--but to my limited human understanding, it was a frightening, metallic hiss of roaring radiation. I knew because I processed the energy as sound through the console speakers. Couldn't take more than a few minutes of it before I shut it off, but I hoped it would be the healing balm that the Leviathan needed.
But Nadim didn't awaken. I sat up, staring at the screen until my eyes ached, listening. Pressing my hands to the wall. Calling his name out loud until my voice went rough and cracked.
I felt silent inside. Dark as the space between stars. Wake up. I wanted to scream it, pound on the walls until my hands were bloody, until he heard me. We were here. Around a star. And he wasn't coming back.
Bea brought me a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey. I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd eaten or slept. Too long. I drank the tea too fast, and didn't care that I burned my mouth. Bea sank down on the floor next to me. "Anything?" It was just something to ask. She knew I had nothing to tell her. I just shook my head. "I did some reading. Maybe it just takes longer. Maybe the star isn't giving off the kind of radiation he needs."
"How would we know?" My voice sounded thin and rough, and I tried some more tea. More carefully this time.
"Without Nadim to tell us? Maybe we need to call Typhon."
I shuddered at the thought. "And say what, exactly? This is Nadim's last chance. If he doesn't graduate up to the Journey this time . . ."
"He needs to live, doesn't he? We can worry about the rest later."