11.23
A damp nose bumps my cheek, and I can’t open my eyes to see anything.
Rather, my eyes won’t work even if I could open them.
Bat? I think but can’t manage to say.
I don’t know where I am. The smell is familiar. My ship. My blankets.
It should bring some better level of comfort than it does, but I hurt. Nothing feels correct. I should be safe on my ship and fixed, but I’m not. I’m going to die, even here, and I can barely open my useless eyes, let alone speak. I want to wrap my arms around Bat and ensure he’s safe and with me, but I can’t move, can barely grasp hold of consciousness for a moment.
A soft, delicate hand slips under the back of my neck. Nope, no one’s supposed to mess around back there. No one’s supposed to find out I don’t have my chip. But the hand just gives a soft squeeze, moving to my hair. A voice echoes in the background.
Yvonne? I think before I can’t keep my thoughts straight any longer.
* * *
How much time will pass? I can’t imagine how long my body will cling to a thread of life before giving up. Nothing feels fixed, nothing correct. Each time I grasp consciousness for a few moments, it all feels more and more broken. I cannot move, cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot rid myself of the chill in my bones.
Someone has my numb hand cradled in the two of theirs, and this is all I know for a long time.
* * *
I wake, and I’m something akin to warm and comfortable.
A full breath fills my lungs without too much pain. My head is fuzzy and my body heavy as lead, but in exhaustion rather than death creeping her fingers over me. Something is wrapped around my eyes, stopping them from opening, and I consider Yvonne or one of the siblings bandaging up my ruined face. I don’t know how much good that would do for the implants themselves, but it’s thoughtful.
Panic reaches me a moment later, my hand tightening on an unfamiliar puffy comforter, the smell of this place entirely wrong. I’m not in my ship. Where am I? What did they do to me? Did they take me somewhere? Leave me somewhere—
“Aaron?”
I start badly at the sound, smooth and perfect and unbroken, from both my ears, unable to stop a groan when the movement hurts every inch of me.
But I know that voice too.
“Yvonne?” I croak, dissolving into a rough cough that rattles my chest.
Her hand brushes my cheek, and a cup presses to my lips. Too thirsty to be ashamed of the treatment, I gulp down everything she gives me until the cup is empty, trying to speak again and finding it rough but not impossible.
“Yvonne—”
“Oh, Aaron…” Her voice cracks. Her hands brush my cheeks, kissing every inch of my face. I try to say her name again but can’t quite manage it over her lips on mine. I tug at the gauze over my eyes, not knowing what’s happening but hoping against hope that if I can hear her I can also see.
“Oh, don’t pull on those!” She says before I manage to get the bandages off completely and her face, a little fuzzy but clearing up, comes into view just over mine.
She’s evidently been crying a lot longer than just now.
“Yvonne…” I say again, barely believing she’s real before I get kissed again. “Ow.”
“Oh, sorry!” Her hands flutter over my face, and she settles for lighter kissing this time. “Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, you scared me half to death, you stupid fucking idiot.”
“Did you change your hair?”
She half-laughs, half-cries, carefully wrapping her arms around my neck, pulling me into her shoulder. She’s so warm, and smells familiar and a little bit like some sweet soap. The room we’re in is dark but just lit enough to see we’re alone, and I’m in some sort of private room, not some sterile hospital bed and hooked up to machines. I wrap my arms around her, the broken one now not so heavy, concealed in a cast. She rocks us gently, running her fingers through my hair, and it’s a fight to keep my eyes open. I don’t want to go back to sleep. I want to know what happened and why she’s here and where we are and where Bat and Zane and Lalia and Anya are.
I’m too relieved to actually ask her. Besides, I think if I speak, she’ll be able to tell there are more tears in my eyes, my throat burning.
Finally, I manage to whisper, “What…happened…”
She doesn’t release me but mumbles, “Zane and La managed to get you back to where we had the ship down in as far as it would go. We’re a few days away from Zar, no one’s going to hurt us here, I promise.”
That reminds me.
I put my fingers to my eyes, feeling the unfamiliar texture of the repaired implants, the brand-new eyes. My breath hitches, picking up a bit too much. Someone replaced my eyes, had their hands on me, fixing up my augmentations, some stranger—
Yvonne seems to figure out what’s freaking me out, releasing me gently and looking into my new eyes, grimacing a little. I realize for the first time how bad my old ones were. I can really see her, the shade of her skin, the little flecks of gold in her purple eyes, and the soft lines around her eyes brought out my grief and exhaustion. Her hair sits in silky rings and braids, shinier than I’ve ever noticed.
She looks so much more real, so much more alive. I blink, hardly able to believe her.
“This place belongs to my cousin—he’s really safe, I promise—he has good doctors here, he’s richer than anyone has a right to be,” she babbles. “I know you hate doctors touching you, and I’m really sorry, and if you want to be mad at me about it, that’s fine, I get it, but we thought you were going to die, and even the doctors couldn’t believe you were alive, you would not believe the damage you did to your insides, and they had some replacements for your ears and eyes so I asked them to—”
I raise my head off the pillow enough to kiss her, then pull carefully on one of the bouncy curls of her hair. “Did you know you have gold in your eyes?”
She blinks, nodding, chin trembling, staring at my throat instead of meeting my gaze. Quietly, she whispers, “I thought you were going to die.”
“So did I…” I murmur, calmer than I ever expected to be in this situation. But the room is quiet and dark, and with her arms still cradling my head, it’s difficult to feel anything other than safe. “Where’s…Zane and Lalia?”
Yvonne hiccups, wiping at her eyes. “They just left like ten minutes ago to get something to eat. They haven’t left your side for ages, I told them to go walk around a bit and get food. They didn’t look happy about it.”
Something about that has me smiling a tad, though it hurts my sore face. “Bat?”
Sniffling, she points, and I follow her finger to what seems to be a bathroom, the light under the door lit. “He had blood on him and would not get off your chest so Anya took it upon herself to drag him off and is, I believe, hosing him down in the tub. He’s probably getting sprayed in the face too much to hear us.”
“And she has all her fingers?” I ask, the image making a laugh bubble up in my chest. I groan and cover my mouth—now is not a good time to laugh unless I want to die.
Yvonne giggles weakly, burying her face in her hands. “Aaron, please don’t ever do that to me again.”
“Believe it or not, that whole thing was not part of the plan…wait, your cousin?”
Yvonne nods, still not looking at me. “Don’t panic. We’ve been here a few days, if he was gonna call someone, he would’ve.”
When I don’t respond, she peeks through her fingers at me. “He richer than God, all of our bounties put together mean absolutely nothing to him and…well, in the nicest way possible: he has the emotional maturity of a child.”
I raise my eyebrows and my entire face complains.
“He thinks it’s way funnier that I’m giving my parents a headache than he would if he called them up and turned us over. Plus, he thinks Captain is stuck up, so anything that annoys him is a bonus. And I told him we’re heading home to Neyla Ve after this, so he’s fine and even a little happy to have us here. I mean, he was confused as hell when I showed up in a panic with a half-dead cyborg, but he’s known me all my life, this isn’t exactly my first oddball moment. He’s probably gonna want you to tell him some dramatic story, but he’s harmless, I promise.”
He thinks Captain’s stuck up… I nearly giggle. Whatever pain meds they’ve given me must be wild.
It all makes a weird amount of sense, and if we have indeed been here a few days and no one’s shown up, we’re probably alright for the moment.
I’ve been out for days.
Suddenly exhausted, I drop my head back to the pillow, eyes closed. Yvonne’s fingers comb my hair, making it difficult to stay awake. No irritating heat signatures flash in my eyes. I don’t even know if these models have them, but I hardly care at the moment. Everything is so peaceful, so calm. Gently, Yvonne kisses my cheek and her weight leaves the bed. Before I can ask where she’s going, I see her open the bathroom door and lean in.
“Guess who’s awake—”
There’s the flurry of what sounds to be wet metal toes on a bathtub, and a rather drenched badger comes flying out through Yvonne’s legs, nearly face-planting into the side of the bed before scrambling up.
“Hi, Bat…” I mumble, doing my very best not to cry again while I wrap my arms around him, crushing him tight to my chest while he wiggles into the crook of my neck, whimpering. “I’m okay. You’re very wet.”
He flaps his ears, splattering droplets into my face. From the bathroom, Yvonne laughs softly. There’s more rustling, and Anya appears in the doorway before scrambling onto the other side of the bed and flopping down atop me a little rougher than I’d appreciate, but I don’t tell her to move. She sounds like she might be crying too, and if I have to look at her face, I might just lose it. I hold onto Bat with one arm, her the other, and stare at the ceiling, thoughts out of order. Yvonne sits on the edge of the bed and goes back to running her hands through my hair.
I should definitely never let this happen—I don’t have even a speck of desire in me to move out of this situation. A few voices reach from somewhere on the opposite side of the room where a little kitchen sits across from us, and I panic for a moment before seeing Zane’s scruffy face appear around the corner, Lalia directly behind. They both look exhausted but have clean clothes undamaged by any firefight. Zane doesn’t look too bad, despite the fall he took back on that platform. The doctor here probably had a look at him as well.
I didn’t realize how much I was hoping to see them again, that they wouldn’t just fly off-planet now that I’m safe, until both go still in the middle of the kitchen and stare.
I don’t know what to say.
Lalia practically drops her box of food onto the little kitchen table and hurries to my side, squeezing into some of the limited space and getting her arms around me.
“Oh,” I say, then feel stupid for saying it as Zane squeezes in as well, everyone awkwardly trying to hug me without laying on me too much. I may not feel so much like I’m dying, but everything still hurts like hell. If I had any more willpower in me, I’d probably tell them to get off.
“Missed you guys,” I say, and manage to hug them in return.