This was it, the truth Nina had told her to find. The truth about her brain. Birgitte had lied with the truth after all.
Maya didn’t have to hold it all in. She didn’t have to make herself small. But she couldn’t let it all go, either. Not all the time. Not recklessly. She had to find the balance, how to use enough of her mind to soothe that restless itch without overextending herself.
Unless it was important. Sometimes, the high would be worth it. The crash, too. She’d have to learn where her lines were, and decide when to cross them.
She rubbed her fingertip against her thumb, remembering the firm softness of Gray’s mouth, the warmth of his skin, the tenderness in his eyes.
Even if she drowned in him, Gray would be worth it.
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
It’s time to harvest a certain asset. Send recruiters to the orphanage.
Internal Memo, August 2066
SEVENTEEN
The moment the door closed with Maya on the other side of it, Gray sagged against the wood. He whispered silent thanks that he’d managed to hold on that long and lifted his left hand. It was shaking—not trembling or wavering, but jerking unsteadily—and his knees felt weak, wobbly.
Somehow, he needed to get down the stairs.
Gray moved slowly, inch by hard-won inch, one hand braced against the wall until he reached the open stairway. There was no one in the living area or kitchen downstairs, no one to watch as he painstakingly navigated the stairs, locking his knees so that he wouldn’t tumble down them.
With only four steps to go, his legs gave without warning. He clenched both hands on the railing to hold himself up as he waited for the rolling waves of weakness to crash over him and subside.
He was certain Maya had been confused when he’d pulled away, maybe even thought she’d done something wrong, but it was better than her seeing him like this. For a moment, he imagined it—pictured her horrified reaction to him now, frozen on the stairs, barely able to stand—and panic knifed through him.
That got him moving again.
Finally, he slipped through the door separating Nina’s warehouse from the one belonging to the Devils. He gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the seemingly endless journey to his bunk.
“What the hell?” Mace stood in the newly framed and still-empty doorway between their makeshift living area and the emerging clinic, his brows drawn together in a stormy frown.
Gray couldn’t quite quell his dismayed groan, but busted was busted. He might as well avail himself of the medic’s presence. “A little help here?” He reached out, and the sudden shift in his center of gravity almost sent him crashing to the floor.
Mace threw aside the half-crushed box of gauze pads and dove, catching him as he stumbled. He looped Gray’s arm around his neck and started back toward the examination room. “When did this start?”
Somewhere between sparring with Maya and holding her on his lap. It had been a delicate moment, full of warmth and openness and trust, and he felt just as betrayed as she must to have lost it. “About ten minutes ago.”
“What were you doing?”
“Training.”
Mace’s jaw tightened as he lowered Gray to a folding chair—the exam tables and other specialized equipment were in place but covered with plastic to protect them from the sawdust that hung in the air. All the consumable goods they’d procured were still packed away in sealed boxes, protected from the construction—bandages and med-gel and basic medications.
Several of those boxes were open now, their contents laid out in neat, orderly rows. Mace must have been inventorying the supplies. He dug through one of the boxes and resurfaced with a pen light.
He flicked the tight, focused beam into Gray’s left eye, then his right. “Were you alone? Why didn’t you call for someone?”
“I was with Maya,” Gray confessed, bracing himself for a lecture.
It didn’t come. Mace eyed him knowingly, sighed, and tore open another box. After several moments of searching, he retrieved a bottle and shook out two small, beige tablets. “Here, try these. Under the tongue.”
Gray shoved away his outstretched hand. “Uh-uh. I hate that shit. It makes me loopy.”
“You hate the benzos,” Mace countered. “This is a fast-acting dopamine agonist.”
As if Gray knew what the fuck that meant. “English, please.”
“It’ll help with the tremors, but it won’t knock you on your ass.”
Grudgingly, Gray took the tablets. By the time he slipped them under his tongue, Mace was checking his pulse with two fingers laid along the side of his neck.
What a difference a few days could make. “Last time you had your hands this close to my throat, you were trying to strangle me,” he observed mildly.
“I feel better,” Mace admitted. “Since Knox refuses to lock me up, I had no choice. Had to get myself under control.”
“Don’t forget Dani and her Mace sedatives.”
He snorted, then gestured around at the tiny clinic space. “Being here helps. I think it grounds me.”
Gray agreed. Moreover, he understood. When he had his rifle set up, waiting for a shot, he slipped into this liminal space between thinking and just … being. It was meditative in a way, more familiar to him than his own name. That was Mace when he was in the zone. He got this look on his face, like the whole world just made sense.
“Good,” Gray managed finally. “Because if you haul off and stab Knox again, I’m pretty sure Nina’s gonna fucking kill you.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “She may have already sworn an oath to that effect, yes.”
“Word to the wise, man—she means it.”
“I know.” Mace pulled up a stool and sat, facing him. “So. If you were sparring with Maya, why didn’t you get her to help you down here?”
Gray stifled a groan. “No. I mean, I never want her to see me like this, but now? She’d assume that I pushed too hard with her training and that it was all her fault.”
Mace snorted. “Well, it’s not. It’s yours.”
Gray scoffed, taken aback by the blunt words. “I forgot what an assface you can be sometimes, man.”
Mace waved that off, his face screwed up into a grimace of disgust. “Shut up. I can’t do my job if I have to tiptoe around your feelings, and this job? It’s the one thing I’m good at.” He paused, then dropped his gaze. “The only thing I have left.”
Feeling properly chastened, Gray inclined his head. “Fine. I’m sorry, I overdid it. But it was just a little training, nothing major.”
“Nothing major,” Mace echoed, then sighed again. This time, when he spoke, it wasn’t tough love that filled his gruff voice but something gentler, scarier—quiet compassion. “Your condition is progressive. You’ll have good and bad days, but on the whole, time isn’t your friend. You’re deteriorating. It’s a process, and it isn’t going to stop.”
The room was so cold that Gray shivered, and he rubbed at his bare arms. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he was dying—but that was just it. He knew it, the way he knew the universe was infinite or that the world was billions of years old. It was a formless thing, an unfathomable fact he recognized to be true without truly comprehending it.