Page 25 of Cloverleaf Station

“Son of a bitch!” The curse sounded slightly mechanical, relayed as it was over Catalina’s radio transmitter, but that didn’t do anything to diminish the rage in it. Kieron forced his eyes open, only to see the crenelated bottom of an environmental suit’s boot heading for his faceplate.

It didn’t crack the faceplate, but the impact still reverberated through Kieron’s suit. As Catalina repressurized the cabin, impacts like these would only hurt worse and worse. He raised his arms to block the next stomp, but his motion was sluggish, too slow to be any real help.

“You piece of shit!” This time the kick was to his ribs, followed by another, then another. The next smashed down so hard on his leg he thought his kneecap fractured. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, huh? Did you want to be a hero? Want to be, what, more than just a fucktoy to Elenus? You’ve just sealed your fate. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill your friends and all their children.”

No! Kieron couldn’t let that happen. Him, well, he’d been out for long enough that the radiation probably was going to kill him before he could get back to Cloverleaf Station, but he wasn’t going to die before he made sure this piece of shit couldn’t hurt Zakari’s family. He needed to fight back, but there was no chance to even catch his breath when Moritz just wouldn’t stop beating him. But he couldn’t … he couldn’t let him …

A new alarm blared from the console at the front of the cabin. Moritz swore and turned back toward it, threats and violence toward Catalina herself in every breath. He’d already opened his EV suit’s helmet now that the atmosphere was back to breathable.

Now. Kieron had to do it now. He took a deep breath, then rolled himself over onto all fours. It took a dizzying five seconds to orient himself, but the interior of Catalina was much like the Lizzie’s. Which was good because he didn’t have any energy for a misstep at this point.

Kieron reached out blindly to his left until his hand impacted the edge of the med kit. He pulled it down, fumbled it open, and rummaged inside of it with sausage-like fingers until he found what he was looking for. He just had to get to his feet and—

“Ha!” A fresh kick took him down again. Kieron felt one of his ribs break that time. In terms of agony, though, it could barely compare to the fire already racing up and down his spine and through every nerve. Moritz crouched over him, his bald head gleaming under Catalina’s lights, his carefully sculpted facial hair scruffy and indistinct after weeks on the run.

“You really are a fool,” Moritz declared. “What, were you thinking you could heal yourself after what you’ve just been through? I don’t even need to kill you—you’ll be dead in five more minutes. Even with the Regen in that kit, you’d be a goner soon enough. What were you even hoping for, you da—aaaaaaaahhhh!”

His screams as Kieron slapped the defibrillator device against his face and activated it were intensely satisfying. The way he twitched and fell over a second later was even better. Five seconds of direct current, and Moritz was down for the count. Now was Kieron’s chance.

If only … if only he could …

The Regen injection was right there. Right … there. If only he could—he tried to move again, but his hand had erupted in flames or maybe fallen off entirely.

“Catalina,” Kieron coughed out thickly. “Go back to the station. Your daddy is waiting for you. Go to the station.

“Go home, Catalina.”

Then he passed out, gratefully.

Chapter eleven

“Open your eyes.”

The words filtered in, like they were coming through gauze or dirt. Kieron had buried himself in snow and sand enough times on Hadrian’s Colony that he knew the experience inside and out—granular, suffocating, surrounded in a way that clung and stung. This … was not like that. Nor was it cold like snow would be. He was surrounded by something soft and wet and warm. A bath?

No. The smell was too bright for that, too medicinal.

“Open your eyes; I think they’re going to work this time around.”

Regen tank. Kieron assessed the feeling of cooler air on his face, especially around his eyes and nose and mouth—he’d been wiped clean, but he wasn’t being let out yet. How long had he been in here?

“Eyes, Sparky, or I might start thinking it’s just me you don’t want to look at. Is that it? I’ll leave if that’s it, but if I were you, and I’d been staring at nothing but the back of my own eyelids for five days—excepting those times when you didn’t have eyelids, or eyes for that matter—I’d definitely want a change of scenery. What, am I not pretty enough for you?”

“Shut … up …” Kieron managed after a moment’s effort to muster up his voice.

“Sparky!” Elenus sounded way too enthusiastic for Kieron to deal with, but there was no escaping the man right now, not when Kieron was up to his neck in a Regen tank. “There you are at last! I’d been thinking I might have to dunk you under again after all, but you’re finally coming around. Perfect. Now open your eyes, I want to make sure this set is actually working.”

“Set?” Kieron squinched his eyelids tight, then blinked them open. Everything was a blur above him—which was strange. He’d never experienced that side effect from Regen before. A head came into his field of view, slowly resolving into a familiar face. Still blurry, though. “Why … sets?”

“Why?” Kieron thought Elenus was smiling, but it was hard to tell when his voice was such a mixture of earnest and manic. “Oh, well, it turns out that there are some things even complete submersion in Regen can’t cure right off the bat. You were melting when you got back to Cloverleaf Station, Kieron—literally melting.

“I want you to pause and think about that right now, m’kay? Think about how it felt to drag you into the clinic, only to literally have to pour you into the fucking Regen tank. Have you ever poured an individual anywhere before and expected them to live through the process? Because this was a first for me, and if I never have to go through it again it’ll be too soon.”

The memory of what he’d been doing to get so messed up finally resurfaced in Kieron’s mind. His hand bumped the top of the tank in a futile effort to reach out and grab Elenus. “Catalina made it back okay?”

“She did.” Elenus’s smile softened, becoming more genuine in an instant. “She was in pretty rough shape herself, but she’s recovering nicely. Nothing like a little TLC to bring my baby back to tip-top condition. Mentally, it’s a little rougher,” he admitted. “She’s startling at everything and anything. It’s a good thing I was able to get her a private hangar because her trust of people and machines right now is at absolute zero on the Kelvin scale with the exception of me … and interestingly enough, you.”

Kieron was nonplussed. “Me? Why?”