Page 30 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“You can fall down dramatically.”

“I can identify the device.”

“You can do that while seated and being carried.”

His expression empties. “No.”

There is more in that one word than refusal. A whole pit full of it. Chains, maybe. Collars. Being lifted because someone else decided where his body belonged. The room hears only stubbornness. For me the lock is louder.

Damn it.

“He walks,” I say.

Merra turns on me. “Do not encourage the patient.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to avoid making him worse.”

“He is already worse.”

“Yes, but if we treat him like cargo, he’ll spend half his strength proving he isn’t. If he walks, at least his stupidity has a direction.”

Rhazek looks at me. I keep my attention on Merra. I’m busy being sensible in a way that unfortunately resembles kindness if viewed by idiots. Merra mutters something that probably makes plants wilt, then digs into her roll.

“Fine. He gets a stronger wrap, bitter-root, and one of the old braces for the wing.”

“No brace,” Rhazek says.

Merra smiles. It’s not nice. “I wasn’t asking.”

The sphere shrieks.

It’s not loud like the ship. Worse. A thin needle of sound that slides into my ears and hooks behind my teeth. The bright point on the map flares so hard the room goes green. The rhythm forces my knees to bend before I understand the command.

Rhazek’s hand closes around my arm and pulls me back from the central drain as a line of green light lashes up from it.

It misses my wrist by less than a finger.

Stone hisses where it touches.

For a second, nobody moves.

Rhazek’s hand is still on me. Hot. Steady. Too careful for something that large.

I look down at the burned line across the stone, then at his fingers wrapped around my sleeve.

“You grabbed me,” I say, because apparently I need to document the obvious before death does it for us.

“Yes.”

“Before I moved.”

“Yes.”

His face is hard, but the green beneath his throat plates has come back. Not a flicker this time. A thin toxic glow, pulsing under bronze skin and dark natural armor.

The toxic light repeats the pattern.

The sphere answers the same rhythm.