Page 84 of Trusted Instinct
If Sheelah and Brandy had sins on their souls, Auralia wouldn’t taint hers by doing anything less than her human best to help them survive.
Creed was the same.
They’d help until the bitter end, if for nothing other than selfishly not wanting to live with the torture of regret and self-recrimination.
Rou was such a good girl dangling from the D-rings on her work vest below Creed’s backpack. Luckily, she was little. If she were a German shepherd, this wouldn’t be possible.
Dropping from the bridge onto the opposite shore, Creed stayed in a crouch longer than Auralia thought he should—possibly just catching his breath, hopefully not hurt.
She sent her concern winging across the water, and he lifted an arm and waved at her. And she waved back like a fisherman’s wife as he set off to sea. The kind of wave that held a longing that she was back in his arms, and that she hated the water for getting in her way.
Auralia stood over Sheelah, who lay on her back, with Auralia’s blue life vest buckled in place, helmet on her head, eyes closed. Her breathing was faint, her pulse fainter still.
As Creed tied the rope into place and winched it tight, Auralia made sure the line ran in the indentation on the pulley wheels. The loop around Sheelah’s ankles lifted, and her body was held in a straight line. That rope supporting her ankles couldn’t be comfortable.
When Auralia went across, she planned to lie on her belly.
A moment later, the loops of rope that wrapped under the totes drew taut. The whole system—woman and bins—lifted higher so Auralia could almost get her hand underneath. Another inch and Creed was making circles with his hand, pulling a knot into place. Every bit of this he’d done with the ease of a dancer.
He had been training in this since he was eighteen. And to Auralia, there wasnothingsexier than watching a competent man in action.
Creed stood at the shoreline with the guide rope in his hands. He gave it a tug, and the bins shifted in the gravelly sand.
Auralia reached down and shoved until Sheelah was out of reach.
While it made sense on paper that Sheelah went first so Creed and Auralia could work together to get her onto the apparatus, it was also true that Sheelah was closest to death, and possibly brain-dead. And since they had no time for testing, if things were going to fail …
Auralia hated that a thought like that was blooming in her mind.
And hated that it was probably a big part of the AI’s predictive outcomes. If there had to be a sacrificial lamb to test this escape route, it should be Sheelah.
If it were just her and Creed, Auralia thought, none of this would be necessary.
Saving the daughter had to be part of the AI's calculus.
Did she like thinking that a machine was weighing survival ethics? Who trained those ethics? Who reviewed the parameters? Auralia would talk that story over with her editor when she got back to the office.
“This tastes like a good story to bite into,” Remi would say. In dire situations, head over heart was painful butnecessary. Possibly the AI helped stay out of emotions and fully into the reasoning part of the brain?
If she were Sheelah, though, she’d want to go first, a mother’s sacrifice to ensure that her daughter had a safer route.
Auralia would revisit those thoughts later with Creed and Gator.
Right now, she needed to put her hands on her knees and suck in some deep breaths as relief flooded her system. Creed had his hands on the tote and was dragging Sheelah farther onto the shore. He quickly unloaded her, still dressed in her black leaf bags.
He pulled off the vest and helmet, attached them to a loop with a carabiner, and walked the totes into the water. There, he signaled Auralia to pull the stretcher back to her side of the river.
That part wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be.
The next step was going to test her. Auralia needed to get Brandy up, over, and on.
But when she turned, Auralia was surprised to find Brandy standing behind her, holding the Mylar blanket tightly around her shoulders.
Auralia needed to make decisions now. The sun had moved over the horizon. If Brandy came willingly, excellent. If it was a struggle, Auralia would go ahead and leave.
“Brandy, I’m so glad to see you standing up. Did you see your mom go over the river?”
No response.
