“Sick how?”
“Spinny.Mmm, last time I was this nauseous, you made sure I didn’t throw up on the fruit outside the healing rooms,” Cass said. “I used to like those rooms…I don’t like them anymore.”
Riot’s arms tightened around Cass as he felt a strange sensation wash over him, like a radio signal through static under his skin, but it was just a sensation. The ghost of nausea that wasn’t his. The ghost of a smell, like a room that had been cleaned with too many chemicals.
“Everything’s too white in there,” Cass murmured. “And it smells like being sick. The smell gets in your robes and you can’t wash it out and then you smell like it for days and every time you smell it your—”
He stopped. Drifted. Came back.
“—lower back hurts.”
Riot felt it.
Pressure, low on his spine. Not pain exactly, more like the ghost of a hand pressing down on his lower back, but it wasn’thislower back, and it wasn’thismemory and the rattling—
There was no rattling in his head like last time.
It felt like something terrible was creaking open.
I am going to kill him.
The thought was clean, and it did not belong to the Berserker. The Berserker part of him wanted something messier that involved a prolonged duration and the wet sounds of things breaking. This was Riot’s thought. Brennan’s thought.I am going to kill him. I am going to do it with my bare hands and it will not take long.
Matthias was fifteen feet ahead, shuffling through the water. Close enough.
The weight in Riot’s arms shifted as Cass’s hand found the fabric of Riot’s tunic and held on. “I don’t like my hair in a ponytail anymore,” he mumbled. “It makes my head hurt. It pulls. I used to like it, but now when someone puts it up I feel—”
He didn’t finish, letting the sentence dissolve, but Riot felt it—a new ghost of a hand tying his hair back as the creaking became louder, making his eardrums rumble.
“Hey.” Riot’s voice came out rough. “Princess.”
“Mm.”
“Tell me what you want to plant. When we get back to the Collective.”
“...what?”
“I’m going to find a place just for you to plant things. What do you want to plant first?” Riot asked, pressing a kiss to Cass’s forehead.
The silence lasted long enough that Riot thought he’d fallen asleep, but then Cass whispered, “...tomatoes...”
Riot smiled, not bothering to wipe his eyes as his vision blurred again. “Yeah? What kind?”
“...the little ones. Cherry tomatoes. They grow fast and they’re sweet…you can eat them right off the vine...”
“What else?”
“...and lavender because it smells nice and the bees like it and I like bees...” He was getting quieter, the words spacing out. “...and sunflowers… they all face the same direction… looks like…watching something...”
“What are they watching?” Riot asked.
Silence.
“...everything...”
And then Cass’s breathing changed. His grip on Riot’s tunic went slack and the weight of Cass settled in his arms. He was finally asleep. Not the drug’s blank compliance—real sleep, the body’s last defense, pulling him under where the drugs and bad memories couldn’t reach. Riot just held him and walked.
The tears were back. Or maybe they never stopped. They came and came and his body did what it needed to do, and the two things happened simultaneously. He could cry and carry.He could love someone so much it was rearranging his internal organs and also be a weapon moving through a tunnel with extremely good situational awareness. People were complicated. Berserkers more so.
