“The vehicles are five miles north,” Sage said. “Through the tree line, past the service road. Maybe ninety minutes on foot if we move fast.”
“Aren’t there wild Berserkers to worry about?” Honey asked.
“They’re handled,” Sage said simply.
Matthias walked with one arm still bleeding, seeping through the fabric of his robes, and when he spoke, his voice found some of the old steadiness. “Cassiopeia needs to be taken back. He needs to be monitored. The compound I administered—”
“The people coming after us in the tunnels,” Riot snapped, “are they going to keep coming?”
“They won’t stop looking for a missing Elder.”
“They’re not going to find an Elder.”
“Riot,” Cass squeaked, his voice small and muzzy. His eyes were open again—the half-mast look, swimming, but there was a window in them, a glimpse of lucidity breaking through the drug like sunlight through a crack.
“Hey, princess.” Riot adjusted his hold. “How are you feeling?”
“Floaty.” Cass blinked. His eyes found Riot’s face and stayed. “I want to go back to the Collective with you.”
“That’s where we’re going.”
“I know.” Cass’s eyebrows furrowed, then shot up, like he was trying to use the muscles in the top half of his face to keep his eyes from closing again. “Don’t hurt him.”
Riot went still.
“Please.” Cass shifted and pressed his face into Riot’s neck, scenting him. “I know…I know you want to. I can feel it through the—through the thing. The wire.”
“Cass—”
“Please, Brennan.” Cass’s lips moved against his neck as he kept scenting him, his nose running along one of the scars on Riot’s neck where Gensyn doctors tried to remove some of his modifications. “For me.”
No. No. I said later. It is later. He needs to die. He DESERVES to die. Of all the people I’ve ever killed, he deserves it the most. He doesn’t get to have another chance. He needs—
For me, Cass said.
Ten years of not being anyone’sfor me. Ten years of being a rogue asset, a Berserker, an inconvenient survival problem that had outrun its corporate origin. And this beautiful, kind person—this absolutely demolished, barely-conscious, drugged-out-of-his-mind man Riot loved with every piece of himself—was spending the thirty seconds of coherence the drug allowed to press his face into Riot’s neck and ask.
Notdon’t. Notplease stop. NotI’m scared of what you’ll do.
For me.
Like it was something Riot could give him. Like there was a version of Riot who had things left to give.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, princess. We’ll tie him up and let the guards find him.”
They used the sash from Matthias’s robes and the trunk of a birch tree twenty meters off the road. Sage did the tying, because if Riot did it, he would have intentionally dislocated both of the man’s arms in the process. She used the sash from her own robes and knotted a gag around his mouth.
Cass watched, bleary eyed in Riot’s arms, his gaze darting from Matthias on the ground to the wall of Springfield Gardens visible above the tree line. “I’m never going to see the fish again.”
“No,” Riot said, because lying about it would have been worse.
“I know it’s for the best.” He blinked away his tears. His voice was still thin and dreamy. “I love you. I love you so much…and I want to plant tomatoes.”
Riot’s chest did something complicated. “I love you too. And we’ll plant tomatoes.”
“Cherry ones. The small ones.”
“The small ones. Yeah.”
