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“I… Why is that important?” I tried to change the subject. “We’re about to have an entire army at our doorstep. I don’t really think my feelings are what’s important here.”
Torgus chuckled dryly, shaking his head.
“Come on, kid. Let’s go find him.”
“I don’t recall dismissing you,” Nivek protested.
“Don’t worry, if we get ourselves killed, there’s still plenty of other people aboard the Vaclanheim to bend the knee to you. You don’t need us.”
Torgus threw an arm around my shoulder, leaning heavily on me as he ushered me out of Nivek’s office and pulled the door shut behind him, cutting off Nivek’s stream of curses.
“Are you sure about this? You’re still hurt.”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. If there’s anything that will stop that thick-skull from obsessing about Mia, it’s you. I will not let you miss your chance.”
“What if he’s already…” Once again, I could not bring myself to finish the thought.
Torgus squeezed my shoulder. “He’s not. I know my brother, and he would never allow that.”
18
MALIK
The next timeI cracked my eyes open, I was slumped in the corner of a dark room and I could smell my piss and sweat clinging to me. Groaning, I tried to stretch my legs, only to discover that every muscle in my body felt like it had been overextended. I was so weak, I could manage little more than slipping sideways until I was lying on my side, curled in a half-fetal position.
Consciousness was hard to hang onto, slipping in and out of my grasp from one second to the next, but I knew I had to try. That I wasn’t dead meant only that the Sovann’ash were still hoping to extract something valuable from me. It was the same reason they’d kept Torgus alive for so long. Now, I could only hope that he would put the same valiant effort into saving me I put into saving him.
But it was not Torgus that held my attention, giving me something to focus my mental energies on. No, it was someone else. Cosma. Cosma, who I had abandoned aboard the Vaclanheim without so much as a thought about how she would get home if something happened to me. But then, we both ought to be grateful she wasn’t aboard my ship when that drone-flower exploded. I could not imagine how much worse this would be if I knew she was somewhere in this ship being tortured. If I made it out of here alive, I hoped she would appreciate that, at least.
If I made it out of here. That was the thought that kept circling inside my head. From the floor of this cell, my mechanical arm pinned beneath me uselessly, I was having a hard time imagining what escape might look like.
As the minutes ticked by, alone and in darkness, I grew angry. That anger was like fuel for my body, giving me the strength to push myself back up to a sitting position, hauling my badly damaged mechanical forearm into my lap.
I did not need to test it to know that it was ruined. I’d felt the wires melting against my skin under the Sovann’ash’s electrified touch. Now, it was nothing more than a hunk of metal.
Experimentally, I tugged on it. The stump of my severed arm was numb. Or perhaps a better word would be cauterized. I could no longer detect the pressure on my artificial arm, even when I tugged viciously on it.
Slowly, a plan was coming together. Bracing my back against the wall, I gripped my mechanical arm at the wrist and twisted. Despite the cauterized flesh, I still had to suppress a groan as I felt the strange sensation of the hidden wires tearing loose from the nerves further up my arm, sending shooting pains through me. More than once I had to stop, taking deep, steadying breaths and mopping sweat from my brow, before I could continue.
At last, I gave one last twist and pull, yanking free the last of wires and freeing the contraption from my body entirely. The mangled stump of my biological arm hung limply at my side, a few frayed wires still protruding from between the puckered scar tissue that held them in place. It was a grisly sight, or it would have been if there was more light in here.
But it didn’t matter, because I had what I wanted. A weapon. And now, all I needed was a chance to use it. The other thing I needed? A moment to just breathe before I passed out from the waves of nausea and pain that warred inside my gut.
Fortunately, no one came to check on me for several long hours. Eventually, the throbbing in my arm lessened, and I could scoot my way across the room, pressing my back into the corner closest to the door’s opening.
While I waited, I imagined my attack, playing it out a thousand different ways. I was in no condition to leap upon someone and attack, but if I planned things just right, I could trip someone. As my strength returned, I became more and more certain that I could stand long enough to gain the upper hand if I had surprise on my side.
Normally, I would have thought harder about this sort of thing, mitigated my chances of losing. But this time, none of that mattered. I had exactly once chance to free myself, and if it did not work, I would be dead before I had time to consider my own failures.
I must have dozed off again because the sound of the door rattling awakened me, and I jolted upright, scrambling to gain my feet while I still had a few precious seconds to do so. I held my makeshift weapon down at my side, holding my breath while I waited for the door to creak open, bracing myself for the blinding light that I was sure would assault my eyes.
From the sound of things, my visitor was alone. That was fortunate, at least. Perhaps my fortunes were turning.
As soon as the crack in the door appeared, I made my move. With my shoulder braced against the wall, I kicked out with one leg, slamming the door wide open as I swung my good arm across my body, the remnants of my prosthetic moving in a wide arc.
The first blow did not take the Sovann’ash down at once. It glanced off his shoulder and made him stumble sideways, and I shoved off the wall, tackling him against the wide-open door until we were both sliding down toward the floor. Rage enveloped me, blinding me, as I swung again and again, bludgeoning him over the head as many times as I could manage.
I knew vaguely that we were grappling, that his electric touch was searing me, tearing free a throaty scream that I could not control, but I did not stop. Not now. Even if every Sovann’ash soldier in the ship came running, this one was going to pay the price for ever loss I had sustained. My home. My sister. My lover.
