Chapter 18: Sefina
Menace guides me to a medical bay, picks me up by the hips, and sets me on the edge of a bed. “At least it’s a through-and-through.”
“Doesn’t hurt as much as I expected.” I watch as Menace digs through the supplies and collects a few items from what’s left of our gear. “Compared to blades, I think that was rather tolerable, like ripping off a bandage.”
Menace chuckles as he sorts through the kits and fills an injector with a biocell repair gel vial. “Only you would think a bullet wound tickles.”
“And you don’t?” I rest my weak arm in my lap, grab him by the belt, and tug his hips between my thighs. “Come on. I see the scars on your synthskin. I know you can take a lot, too. It just changes what we consider actually threatening.”
Menace watches me closely as he settles the injector over my wound and pushes the gel inside.
The pressure isn’t easy to handle. Heat rushes into my face. “Oof.”
“Breathe, Sefi.” Menace moves the injector to my back and fills the exit wound. And slowly, the heat leaves my face and spreads into my shoulder, bringing feeling and blood back to my arm.
Menace cleans my skin around the punctures, dries it, and then places two dermal repair patches over the surface wounds.
He picks up a booster shot, loads it into the injector, administers it to my good shoulder, and then pushes the supplies aside. Menace cups my face in his hands and studies my features like I’m a strange, intriguing alien creature on a foreign world.
“What?”
“How do you do that pulsing thing from your head? Where does it come from?” Menace asks. “It affects us too, though Titans not as much as Solcrue and welvirs apparently.”
I chew a lip and try to think back to the way I feel every time I send out the wave. “I have to sense them. There’s this feeling of impending doom that fills me. But it’s blended with a rage I can’t explain and desperation to save my charges. And the pain, I have to figure it’s the augment in my head that’s drawing energy from me and prepping the pulses. But I don’t know without someone to talk to like a cybertech. I was taken before anyone could train me to use it.”
“Maybe Leah will have answers for you,” Menace offers as his eyes light up with communication. He tries to wipe a smudge of blood from my face. “One second, okay?”
“Sure.”
I watch him leave, his eyes flashing. I think Fracture’s talking to him. Menace helps Sythius with something in the hallway.
Weary from the constant fighting, I lay back on the bed. I close my eyes and think about where we were just days before, at odds with one another when really we’re the only ones who can understand each other in our darkest corners.
The thrumming heat in my shoulder pulls me back to the mission at hand. We’re a day away from Ellipsis’s final evacuation attempt, and I’m not sure how we’re going to pull it off.
A pulsing Titan aura fills the doorway.
“Well, don’t just stand there, Menace. Close the door and get your hunky ass over here.”
He chuckles, closes the door, and crawls onto the bed. “Do you have the ener…”
“Oh, shut up and kiss me.” I guide his blood-splattered face to mine and find his lips. They are smooth and strong against mine.
Menace binds me up in his arms, slowly, carefully, but with strength. His nose trails over my neck in circular patterns as he breathes me in like he can’t get enough.
I want him and bend my knees so I can reach the buckles on my boots.
“Sefi, you need rest.”
“I need you.”
Menace squirms like he’s fighting it for a moment. Then he backs up. “Fuck it.”
He frees my boots with deft precision in just a couple of seconds each, unbuckles my belt, and slides my pants and panties off of my legs.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Go away!” Menace growls, and it makes me smile.
