And then she’d fight for him. Whatever the cost.
MACE
Mace had slipped back into the comforting detachment of running a trauma.
It wasn’t fun for him—nothing about this situation was—but it was familiar. He knew how to pivot from one patient to the next, putting out fires. Emergency triage had rules, and there was never enough time to linger over decisions so long they became painful to make.
Being in the clinic helped. It wasn’t finished yet, but he recognized it in his bones, the colors and smells, even the way the noises from the telemetry equipment echoed off the unfinished floors and bare walls.
This was what he knew. Where he did his best work.
The frantic drive back to the warehouse had passed in a blur of blood and desperation. He could have used Rafe’s help, but Rafe was busy keeping a hot-wired truck full of cloned children calm. Mace had managed to stabilize Conall on his own, but keeping him that way had taken all his focus.
And then there was Gray.
He’d had another seizure. It had subsided, and he was awake, but Mace would never go as far as to call him alert. He could move, but would only do so when guided, and he didn’t even blink at painful stimuli. His body was running on pure, adrenaline-fueled autopilot.
What Mace didn’t know—what scared the absolute shit out of him—was how hard Gray would crash once the adrenaline faded.
But that was a problem for five minutes from now. Maybe an hour, if they were lucky.
With Conall finally on a monitor, Mace studied the display. “Keep an eye on his blood pressure,” he instructed Luna. “If it starts to drop, it might mean he has another bleed. When Dr. Wells—”
Rafe ducked his head through the empty doorway, terror painted across his face. “Gray’s not breathing.”
Fuck. He immediately started for the door, but called back over his shoulder, “I want to know the second Wells gets here.”
Gray was lying on a gurney in the main lobby area. Nina stood over him, rhythmically squeezing air into his lungs through a mask secured over his face. Rafe had already set out most of what he’d need to intubate—laryngoscopes, tubes, paralytic drugs.
Mace checked his pulse, half of his attention on the reedy thumps in Gray’s wrist … and the other half on Knox. “It’s time to make the call, Garrett.”
“Which one?” Knox demanded.
“Do we put him on a vent,” Mace clarified, quiet but firm, “or do we let him go?”
Knox closed his eyes, his face stricken. “Can you fix him? Is there any chance at all?”
“No.” It was the only honest answer. “But intubation buys us time.”
Dani was leaning against the far wall, but her whispered question carried easily in the tense silence. “Time for what?”
Mace eased Nina to Gray’s left side, pulled the intubation tray closer, and started assembling the laryngoscope. “To figure out how to say goodbye.”
“Do it.” Maya stood in the doorway, her expression blank and her dark eyes unfathomable. She hadn’t allowed anyone to touch the wounds at her wrists, or even wash Gray’s blood from her hands and cheek. She looked fragile, dwarfed by Rafe’s sweatshirt, but her eyes were pure steel. “Put him on the vent. We’re going to try to replace his implant. He’d want to try.”
Mace didn’t wait for Knox to confirm her words. She had as much right to make the call as either of them; more, because she was the closest thing Gray had to a next of kin.
He nodded to Rafe. “All right, you heard the lady. Push the paralytic. We’re gonna go down fighting.”
The intubation was swift, smooth. Once Mace had confirmed the tube’s placement and hooked up the ventilator, he turned back to Maya.
“What’s next?” she asked.
“You and me? Later, we have a long, hard talk about Gray’s odds. I don’t lie, and I don’t give false hope. Before we go one step further, I want you to understand what we’re up against with this surgery.”
She returned his gaze, unblinking. Unflinching. “I have half of the bad outcomes in TechCorps history shoved into my head. I know the odds are almost impossible. Tell me who could help you. A TechCorps neurosurgeon? An implant specialist? A bioengineer?”
“If you’re offering, I’ll take all three.”
“How about Nikita Novak?”
The stress of the situation made his words sharper and shorter than he would have liked. “Yeah, sure. Bring me her, too. And maybe a unicorn while you’re at it.”
She gestured. “Dani—come with me?”
He moved on, already focused on the next thing on his mental checklist. It took him a moment, but he finally spotted Ava hovering just outside the room. “You. You’re rich, right?”
She stepped closer. “By most people’s reckoning, yes.”
“I need to outfit an OR. Will you help me?”
She looked at Nina. They stood there, facing one another like mirror images locked in silent communication. Finally, Ava answered. “Give me a list.”
All he could do now was wait. The tape securing Gray’s endotracheal tube had peeled up on one edge, and Mace carefully smoothed it back into place.
Beside him, Knox sighed roughly. “Are you ready for Maya to come back dragging Nikita Novak behind her? Because she will, you know.”
“Good.” If she managed to pull that off, she just might get her miracle after all.
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
This is 66–793’s tenth psychological workup in nine years. His results consistently place him among the Protectorate’s most reliable and stable assets. But something about him continues to bother me.
I know he’s lying to me. What I don’t know is why.
Recruit Analysis, April 2075
TWENTY-SEVEN
The VIP ring worked like magic.
Dani flashed it at the guards, and they parted in silence. The party was still raging, even with dawn fast approaching. Maya barely noticed the tangle of bodies on the balcony this time. The music was a distant, annoying buzz. She was wrapped in a dozen layers of cotton, floating through a world that didn’t feel real.
This time, Dani didn’t wait to be acknowledged, and she wasn’t laying on the charm. She stopped in front of the dais, folded her arms over her chest, and announced, “We need the room.”
Savitri glanced at Adam, who stepped forward. “Come on,” he rasped. “Out.”
Dani ignored the command. “In my experience, it takes a while to break up an orgy, so you might want to get cracking.”
Adam sighed. “I will remove you, if necessary.”
Dani finally looked at him. “You can certainly try.”
He reached for her. Instead of dodging his grasp, she grabbed him, her slender fingers locking around his wrist. The move seemed to stun him—not so much the speed of it, but the audacity.
Her words were quiet, a whispered warning. “Consider your next move very carefully, Ryan.”
Savitri surged from her seat, but her expression was frozen. The abrupt movement drew attention from all over the room, a ripple that drifted through the crowd as heads turned and whispers started.