I don’t know if he hears me. His breathing has gone slow and even, the deep pull of the cycle taking him down, and the shield is already humming back to life at the base of the berth, the blue light beginning to climb to do its second pass.
I press my lips to his gloved knuckles and let go so the shield can take him.
And the power dies.
It doesn’t flicker.It doesn’t warn.
Every light in the med lab goes out at once, the shield collapsing mid-rise, the readouts above the berth blinking to black. The dark drops over the whole compound like a lid.
Somewhere a male shouts. Somewhere else, glass breaks.
The med tech cries out in horror.
“What.” My hands shoot out, finding the edge of the med bed. “What happened, what is this.”
“What the hell is happening?” Roxy yells.
“It’s a power cascade.” Scar’s voice is nearby. “The whole grid is down.”
The room is dim but not entirely pitch black. I can see though that Maxon’s readout is gone. The shield’s gone. The thing that was keeping him alive is gone, all of it, dark and dead, and in the silence I hear the worst sound I have ever heard in my life, which is Maxon’s breathing changing. Catching. Going wrong.
My hands are on his chest and it isn’t rising right. “He’s not breathing, the machine, turn the machine back on.”
“It’s too soon for the surgery process to stop,” the med tech worries. “It wasn’t finished. He’s not able to breath independently yet. Why isn’t the backup power engaging?”
Scar’s at the berth, huge hands moving over the dead console, and for the first time since I met him his voice has fear in it. “The cascade took the redundancies. I can’t…there’s no power, Hallie, there’s nothing to give it.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. He’s dying. The repair never finished. The deep work never came. His hearts are failing under my palms and there is no power in the whole outpost to stop it and I am going to lose him.
And then I see it.
In the dark of the room, at his hip, where his mining jacket is folded over the rail of the berth is a glow. Steady. Alive. The only living light in a med lab that’s gone completely dark.
Maxon’s personal crystal. It’s burning in his pocket like it never heard about the grid at all. And suddenly, I know exactly what I need to do.
“Hallie?” Roxy, from the dark.
I’m already pulling at the glove on my right hand, dragging it off finger by finger, my own hands shaking so hard I can barely do it. “His crystal’s still lit,” I say. “It’s the only thing still lit. When I touch him. If the crystal’s alive, thenhe’salive, the bond’s alive, and I can make it stronger for him.”
“Hallie, wait—if you clasp him you can’t take it back, that’s the whole?—”
“I know exactly what it is. Let it be on the record that nothing forces it now. I’m choosing him right now.”
I take his bare hand in mine.
I gasp as the change immediately sweeps over me. The energy between our bare skin comes up my arm like I’ve grabbed a live wire, a roar of heat and light that isn’t pain.Every nerve I own wakes up and screams his name at once. His crystal shines brighter and hotter.
I feel my own heart slam against my ribs and find another rhythm under it, a second beat, a deeper one,his, both of his hearts, thundering back to life beneath my palm and dragging mine along with them.
He arches off the berth.
And Maxon throws back his head androars, loud enough to shake the dark, loud enough that the brothers come running, and the sound isn’t pain either. It’s a male coming back to life.
The lights crash back on, the grid catching, the readouts flaring, the bots whirring to life down the hall like nothing happened, but it’s far away and it doesn’t matter, because the machines didn’t save him.
I did.
His eyes open and they aren’t unfocused anymore. They’re fixed on me, bright, burning andaware, and they are not the eyes of a male who needs a med lab. Heat pours off his bare hand into mine and rolling up my arm and pooling low in my belly, and I realize, distantly, through the rising roar of whatever this is, that it didn’t just wake him.
