A second paintball crashed into her chest, and she stumbled back with her mouth gaping open. Beads of carmine paint dribbled down her gray racerback. Her fists clenched, and she stormed across the rocky yard, clomping onto the narrow sidewalk where he stood.
“How dare?—”
“You think they care if your hair’s messed up? If you need a breather?”
Zane’s chest heaved as he fought to get air. Red consumed his vision. Red splotches staining her shirt, red gushing from a wound inhis leg, red staining a pair of dark hands. Then red staininghishands. He couldn’t breathe. There was only blood. Holes carved into a camouflage uniform, splotches on an ash-colored tank top…
“They’ll kill you. Out there, the second you screw up, the second you let your guard drop, you’re dead. You’re dead, and—and nothing will bring you back?—”
As his voice broke, Kalie shrank away.
Pulsers shrieked through the speaker, and he could feeltheir heat scorching his hair. The spurt of blood, the vibrations as a body hit the ground. The fires. Their smell had been burned into his nose for three cycles. Cannons thundering, missiles wailing, distant screaming… and those tinny, haunting wails as pulsers fired.
Zane slammed the control box. A final explosion boomed, then the sounds disappeared.
He dropped to the floor, putting his head in his hands.
His shoulders shook, and he bit down on his tongue. A coppery tang filled his mouth.
He needed air. Real air. It could be rank with the stench of sewer for all he cared, but he couldn’t take another second of the noxious smoke and acrid flames. His legs wouldn’t move. He slumped against the cool metal control box, as useless and helpless as he’d been that day on an Oppallese battlefield.
Soft footsteps crept towards him, bringing back memories of thumping boots.Go,he wanted to say,leave me alone.
But his mouth wouldn’t move, and the footsteps wouldn’t stop.
“What happened, Zane?”
He hated Kalie’s voice at that moment. Hated the soothing cadence he didn’t deserve, hated that she was seeing him like this. Like the miserable, broken failure he truly was.
“Tell me about Lysa.”
“What—” Zane’s jaw fell open as he scanned her solemn face. “How…?” He’d been so careful. For all their late night talks, all the times he’d called her after nightmares, all the things he’d confided, he’d never mentioned Lys. She couldn’t have known, unless… “Mira told you?”
“No. I figured it out.”
His muscles were so rigid that he couldn’t move if he tried. “How?”
Kalie’s eyes shifted away as she crouched beside him. “You, um… you talk in your sleep.”
The realization hit with painful clarity. On the flight to Etov, he’d woken up with Kalie curled beside his bunk, clutching his hand. When he’d gone into the bathroom and seen the tears crusted on his cheeks, he’d known. She hadn’t said anything, so he’d let himself think she’d heard nothing, just a scream or a shout…
“How much do you know?” he croaked.
Kalie traced a pattern in the dirt coating the cement. “She was your best friend, the one you learned to dance for. And she was an Oppallese Marine. In your squad, I’m guessing. And you… you wish you could’ve gone in her place.”
Her last words were strained, and her features were clouded. Damn nanotech, with its noxious odors burning his eyes.
Zane sniffed. “Yes.”
There was no point in denying it, not anymore.
“You loved her.”
Loved.Zane flinched. That was the hardest part about loving someone—that the love didn’t die when they did, that he had to muddle through the rest of his miserable life hearing the wordloved, as if it was in the past. As if it was over now.
His eyes stung. And damn it all, it wasn’t from the nanotech’s odors.
“I’m sorry,” Kalie murmured, rising to her feet. “I shouldn’t have?—”
