Page 74 of Alliance

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But my vitals deck? My LMem? No discernible change.

Fásach knelt at my feet and took off my boots as the ventilation system pumped hot air into the dome. He removed my coveralls, careful of the parts that were shredded and bloody. Then he sat me down near the charging port and clasped my cheek with a shaking palm.

“Your arm, I—”

“It doesn’t hurt yet,” I assured him. His nostrils flared as he looked down at my hands, my side. “And whatever happened, it’s okay.” I swallowed the fear that I had deserved it.Stilldeserved it. He lifted my injured arm with care, examining the slashes in my flesh with a chirp of relief.

“I had to grab for you with my claws when you fell off the antenna,” he gulped, his throat working the words with difficulty. “It’s not as bad as I thought. You don’t even need stitches.”

“I wasonthe antenna?”

Our eyes met, and Fásach’s ears swiveled back with confusion. He licked the corner of his mouth, a crease forming across the bridge of his nose as one ear turned back towards me.

“You don’t remember?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He closed his eyes. “I need you to say it out loud, Roz.”

“I don’t remember how I got to the relay station.”

“Do you rememberwhy?”

I paused as Fásach wavered before me, not sure how to respond. I didn’t remember, but part of meknew,didn’t it?

A look of hurt flashed across Fás’s eyes before he brushed his shaking palm up the short horns growing from his forehead, then picked up a cross bag stuffed with supplies. The wordsGil. Sharef, P03 Op IIglowed across a nameplate near the shoulder buckle. When Fásach pried open one of the pouches, several aero-syringes tumbled out, tinkling as they rolled off the edge of one tier and onto the next.

“Shit!”he hissed, his nerves fraying. He bared his fangs in a grimace, took a deep breath, then got on his hands and knees, picking the vials up one by one.

“Fás?”

“Just,” he snapped, holding out a hand, “stay there. Please. I need to take care of you before—”

I didn’t need to see his data halo to know he was struggling. So I took the meds from his hands and laid them on his sleeping bag. Then I slid my arms around his neck, carefulof both our injuries, and cradled the thick band of his tresses growing down the back of his head. I massaged the base of his wiry fur, brushing the tips of my fingers against the shell of one of his large ears and breathed in a slow rhythm. Just like he’d taught me.

“Does waking up always feel like the day you were born?” I asked. His ear twitched. “One minute you don’t exist, and then the next you do.”

“Most people don’t remember being born,” he answered.

“I do. It was exactly the same as sleeping.”

Fásach’s hand slowly wrapped around my shoulders, his other palm braced against the floor.

“Does mediplasma work on you?”

I nodded into his pelt, and he pressed the aerosyringe to my bicep. Relief washed through me like applying aloe to a sunburn. I did the same for him, pressing one to the back of his neck, swallowing hard.

“When I woke up, I heard an echo. The important one from the mountain pass. I started dressing and then decided that I didn’t need so many layers because I only had one task and it wouldn’t take me long. I silenced my vitals deck, and I don’t remember after that,” I told him, then shook my head. “No, there’s more, ah… The echo was a deep, calm voice. Quantum speech in the background, maybe? On repeat, like a distress signal. And I don’t remember the task, it was just somethingpriority,you know? Well, I guess you don’t.” I sat back on my heels with a self-disappointed sigh. “That’s it. I’m so sorry.”

The haunted look in Fásach’s stare faded some as he took the mediplasma from my palm and chucked both syringes into the trash with a shake of his head. “I believe you.”

“Yeah?”

His jaw ticked. “You were climbing the antenna when we found you. You wouldn’t respond when I tried to wake you up,either. You just opened your mouth and stared at the jungle. You didn’t make any sound, but it gave me symphonic vertigo.”

“Maybe I was saying something, but it was just too high or low for you to hear,” I wondered out loud. As soon as I said it, it rang true. “I have a line-of-sight transmitter. The higher you are, the further the frequency can travel! It makes sense that I would want to climb the cliff or the antenna. This could be important—”

Fás dragged me back into a battered hug without a word. He nuzzled my shoulder, the points of his claws pricking my thermal shirt. His horns dragged across my jaw as his muscles tensed.