“Aparoe! Danie!” The bellows beside me were jarring, as much as the hands on my body. “Gods, get this damn thing off him. Fucking Freska and her technology.”
“It did what it was supposed to do. And I designed most of it,” Danie said. “The suit is locked into his ports. You have to disengage them here and here or you’re going to hurt him more.”
“By the stars!” The smell of burning flesh and scorched metal only grew stronger. Deke was there too, his voice somewhere near Captain’s. “That was inside him. It’s fried.”
“The circuits compartmentalized his mind using the implanted technology, keeping a kernel free from Lakshou’s control until the end when he said whatever that phrase was, letting Freska control his body. That let your plan move forward. It succeeded.”
“At what cost?” The bellow was a whisper. “Kohen, I’m sorry. So sorry.”
I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I’d been given next to no time to absorb the plan after the details had been revealed to me. In the end, the fact was I’d had no choice.
“The suit was supposed to do all the work after we took out some of the aliens. It was just supposed to be strong enough to electrocute and stun Lakshou. Not this. How did this happen?”
“He did it.” Freska’s voice entered the room. I still couldn’t see, couldn’t feel my body, but I could hear them all.
“Freska! Are you okay?”
“Fine. Stop, I’ll be fine. But Kohen drew in a large amount of electricity from the ship through the connection the AI shared between us, and since I was locked in, he also sapped my system.” Her voice shook. “I didn’t even know that was possible. He used the channels in his mind and turned them back on Lakshou, cooked him from the inside. I caught just a glimpse of his plan before he walled me out along with Captain Querry.”
“I don’t feel him. I don’t feel our bond.” Captain’s voice shook. “He’s not moving, not responding. Where is Aparoe?” His voice rose in a roar at the end. “This ship is not that big!”
“People are injured.”
“Kohen may be dead.” Captain’s voice broke.
“Do you see him breathing?” Aparoe’s voice was as steady as always. They were so unchanging, so… them.
“Just… help him!”
If it had been anyone else, I might have been concerned. My heart might have started to beat faster. Or beat at all. I still wasn’t sure what was going on in my body. I could hear, but I couldn’t see or feel anything. Aparoe said I was breathing, but I couldn’t even tell I was doing that, and I couldn’t smell anything.
Shouldn’t everything smell burned. I felt… crispy. Crumbly. Fragile on the edges. Like a single touch would make me fall into a pile of dust.
“His heart is beating, he’s breathing. His brain patterns are not consistent, however. They are different from his baselines, and I’m tracking fluctuations. What do you sense?”
“Nothing!” Captain’s voice grew more wild. “It’s like… like our bond doesn’t exist.” His voice broke. “He’s gone.”
“No, I don’t think so. What did you do?”
I tried to sense Captain as the voices rose and fell around me, but that caused an instant surge of agony. I retreated instantly.
“Wait! There. Oh yes, he’s definitely in there.” Aparoe cursed. “Look at these circuits. Damn it! If he wasn’t infested with these nanos, he’d be dead. You realize that, don’t you? He burned out his brain in order to burn out Lakshou’s through the connection that traitor had made through their auras. How could you let him do that?”
“That’s not… I didn’t! The suit bomb Freska set off was supposed to stun them so we could capture them with the weapons he was hiding.”
“And do what?” Aparoe snorted. “Turn Lakshou in? That worked before. He was going to die; Kohen wouldn’t let you make that decision and we know his past, so he made it. He purposefully channeled the power not just through the suit, but into himself and his internal circuitry as well.”
“Blast the stars, Kohen! Why? Did you want to leave me?”
I hadn’t, but at the same time, in the very short period they’d given me to learn about what was happening, I’d gone through so many emotions. Betrayal, anger, frustration, reluctant understanding, and a resigned acceptance of what I had to do.
The only one who could stop Lakshou’s threat forever was me.
“Why won’t he wake up?” Captain asked.
“He’s got shields raised. I’m guessing he’s in a lot of pain and shock. I can alleviate some of that, and maybe it will help.”
A hiss and pop.
Scrapes, bangs, people moving and sounds of murmuring… I still couldn’t feel my body. I didn’t want to. Opening my eyes meant opening myself back up to everything I’d faced before. All the disappointment.
“Did it work? Kohen? Wake up, please. Please, I love you.” The words were spoken softly, right against me.
Love only went so far.
The AI’s voice rose above all the crew voices in the room, rose above Captain’s harsh whispered pleas, and said, “There has been a containment breach on Deck Three. I repeat, a containment breach on deck—”
I didn’t need to hear any more. Whatever had happened, before this or after this moment…
Chomper had broken free.
And he was pissed off.
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