My eyes fixed on the rise and fall of his chest, bile burning in the back of my throat. I don’t know what to think or feel, other than a mess.
He’s alive. That has to be good enough for now. Even after everything he’s done, the thought of losing another family member to the spellplague is unbearable.
But that thought came too soon, because in the center of all the blood and bodies is Remi, on their knees and sprawled forward with their face pressed to their folded forearms, sides shaking with coughing sobs that fill the whole room. My heart squeezes hard in my chest, and my foot catches on a piece of broken concrete as I stumble back through the gash in the wall and to Remi’s side, falling to my knees beside them.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, laying a hand on their shoulder, running the other through their hair. “Remi, are you okay?”
Remi shakes their head, then shoots up to kneeling, their puffy red eyes wide.
“Dizzy, get out of here! The maz might not have settled yet, and—”
“I don’t care,” I say, cupping their face in both hands. They’re pale, so pale, and their breathing is thready and uneven. I brush my thumbs over their cheekbones and swallow hard. “I don’t care. Can you stand?”
They keep their eyes fixed on my face as they take several deep breaths, then nod. “I just caught a bit of blowback from the spell. I was sloppy. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Fine is relative, but I’ll take their word for it. I sling Remi’s arm over my shoulders and push from my knees, staggering a bit as they lean hard on me until their legs steady. Jaesin dashes out a second later, taking Remi’s other arm over his shoulders and helping me get them out of that room and its stink and blood and fading, deadly maz.
“Dizzy,” they whisper. “I’m sorry. There were so many of them, I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t want Davon to be ill, I don’t think he will be, but if he is—”
“Hey,” I say gently, stepping over a groaning guard. “It’s not like you’re a trained combat weaver. You did what you had to. Where did you even get the maz-15 from?”
Remi looks up at me from the corner of their eye, a bit sheepish. “The professor’s stash in his lab. I took a little while I was replenishing our stock, kept it in the smallest chamber in my necklace, sealed up with linkaz. In case of emergency. I thought this qualified.”
“This is ridiculous,” Jaesin says as soon as we prop Remi up against the wall to recover. “The mission is blown. We have to get out of here.”
“And then what?” Remi says. “We just disappear? Never do anything about this giant world-killing problem? Let them destroy this city? Let them continue to exploit the planet, put everyone in danger, and profit off it all?”
Jaesin looks pained, and shakes his head. “But it doesn’t have to be us. We retreat, we spread the word until something gets through—”
Remi cuts him off with a weak gesture. “We’ve already screwed that possibility. Now that they know we know, this place will be a fortress. No one but the most high-level employees will ever set foot in here again. No one else will ever have a chance to fix this without blowing a huge crater in the city and letting all that toxic maz out. It’s now or never, Jaesin. I choose now.”
“Remi, look at yourself right now. You’re about to collapse. I don’t think you should—” Ania begins, but I slam my fist against the nearest wall, shaking with all of it—nerves, anger, fear for Davon, sheer terror for us.
“It’s their decision.” I take a slow breath through my nose and meet Remi’s gaze, trying to convey my meaning. “I know I’ve been a jerk about this in the past, but I really mean it. It’s your choice. Only you know if you feel well enough to do this. And you’re right, anyway. This is our one and only chance to deal with this. If we don’t do it now, it could be years before we can try again, and we’ll have to be on the run the entire time. I know that’s not how any of us wants to live.”
Remi smiles at me, that same warmth in their eyes that I saw this afternoon. Something in my stomach flutters, tightens, but I force it down.
“Time’s wasting, then,” Remi says, holding my gaze for an extra beat, then looking to Jaesin and Ania. “I promise I feel well enough. I probably won’t later, but this is save-the-world-level stuff here. We need to move on before reinforcements show up.
Jaesin reaches out and pulls Remi in for a hug, clutching them to his chest like the big brother he is, blood be damned. Then he lets them go, steps back, and nods.
“Let’s do this.”
Ania squeezes Jaesin’s arm and nods.
“Let’s do this,” she echoes.
Remi grins and turns back to me with a little bow.
“Well, pathfinder,” they say with a wave at the blank hallways beyond. “Find us a path.”
“I don’t know where we’re going,” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I take in our surroundings. Behind the giant metal security door, this part of the station looks much like the rest of it, much like every other MMC building I’ve ever wandered in, through, or on. In fact, I’ve been on the roof of this one before, about a year ago, and with the positioning of the vapor stacks . . .
“This way,” I say, and set off down a hallway to the right.
I’m not sure. I’m never sure about anything, and that’s part of my constant problem. Sometimes, though, the situation calls for decisiveness. My steps are sure even as my guard is up, checking around every corner before proceeding.
I don’t have maz, but this is all me.
The way forward quickly becomes clear, fortunately. All I need to do is follow the glaring orange signs that warn of potential illness OR EVEN DEATH. Quite dramatic.
We pass two empty security checkpoints along the way. The guards are likely lying passed out or dead in the pile we just left behind, but the comms are still working just fine. Voices chatter back and forth, calling in the report of the bodies we left behind, signs of our passage, and most importantly—our location caught on video. I whip around and spot the offending camera in the upper right corner of the hallway.
Great.
I give them a rude gesture and turn another corner, my mind an uninterrupted litany of swear words. The hallway ends in a decontamination airlock, loudly marked with yet more warnings, and a wall of bright orange storage lockers with—yes, victory—eight heat-shielded suits, each with canisters of oxygen and nullaz. I pass three of them back to the others and yank one down for myself, holding the thing out at arm’s length. Where the hell is the zipper?
Ania, who can deconstruct any piece of clothing on sight, discovers a nearly invisible seam that hides a zipper running down the center of the suit. She steps into it with impossible grace—but pulling it on is another matter. It’s impossible for even Ania to do without looking like a complete jackass. I stumble to the right, hopping on one foot as I try to yank the skintight suit over my shoes. It keeps sticking to me like it wants to strangle me. Remi barks a laugh and falls against the wall, their feet completely tangled.
“Wait, wait,” they say, gasping. “These things are spelled. Wait one . . .”
They draw a bit of maz to hand and weave it into a simple pattern, then crush it and sprinkle it over the suit. The gaudy, violently orange thing sags and stretches like a punctured balloon, the arms and legs loosening into wide, floppy noodles. Three more quick spells, and we’re all able to maneuver our way into the suits with much more success.