Page 70 of Repossess My Heart

Mom… CeCe… everything is about to be gone. Wiped clean and I can’t stomach the thought of letting all the corruption win. Knowing how much it’s hurt everyone I love. Nathan’s life was destroyed by it, his mom’s, and Above… my mom. A Half killed her for what?For fucking what!?I don’t know how much of this is me, or if any of it is just tech, Everly’s memories, but I can feel it all now and it's horrible.

Nathan growls, turning me and slamming my back roughly into the support post behind us, “I am not losing you over vermin!” His blue eyes are misted, filled with so much… love and fear it makes my own spill out even faster.

“I want to save you, too.” I whisper, “Let me make this right. Let me try. Please.”

“Guys the drones are almost done, we have to bail!” Six yells jolting towards the control panel again but not before Nathan’s mechanical arm jerks out gripping his neck and stopping him in his eyes never leaving me.

“You’ve got one shot at this. Let’s hope the fucking bot knew what it was doing.” My eyes widen as he shoves Six backwards, all the while turning me, my back to his chest before he shoves me forward. My heart ratcheting in my chest as he presses into me from behind his flesh hand slowly following the contours of my spine before it gets to the bottom finding what he wanted.

The tech.

Flesh is quickly traded for metal as he presses down on it. Making a spasm of pain jolt the length of my spine, “This is gonna hurt sweetling.”

It did.

I scream until I’m hoarse, a sharp jolt of electricity slamming into the base of my spine and they’re crawling again. The tiny bugs slipping all over inside me. I gasp because I feel like I’m choking on it, the pain until he wrenches me upright, his lips meeting mine again, “Save me sweetling cause we’re out of time.”

Bright flashes of light burst behind my eyes and I wobble on my feet as I stare down that the keys. The numbers, swapping and twisting together. There’s a garbled flow of information, awareness, and above it all numbers…

And letters.

I’m on the couch again and CeCe is hovering over me, her lights flickering as she repeats that stupid code. This time when I say it with her, it’s out loud, “8F20BH61DY36H79.”

Error code invalid.

My heart sinks to my feet. “No…”

Nathan reaches over me and all I can do is watch, ready for him to wipe away all of it but he retypes the code quickly, all of it the same except one number… the end, not nine… the letter P.

The screen boarder lights green and he’s breathing harder behind me as he pulls up and shifts through loads of code, when he frantically fishes a tiny piece of tech from his pocket, I watch him carefully swipe it across a scanner off to the side.

Another female voice takes over the doomsday one, my eyes slamming towards the window as giant tubes rapidly descend towards the ground, zipping past so quickly I nearly missed them, “Evacuation protocol enacted. Residents, please make your way towards the tubal system for immediate ascension to the surface.”

I laugh, still caged between his arms, but nobody else shares my sense of relief. I all but ignore Nathan’s frantic typing, watching in amazement as the first few tubes filled with people zip past the windows. They boarded so fast. More empty tubes joining to replace the ones already topside. Six is fighting now. There’s a struggle at the door, but I can’t seem to look away from the window.

My head goes fuzzy again. The pain in my chest is as blinding as the one in my spine. I know we’re no longer alone in the room, but my mind can’t seem to focus there. Every labored breath of Nine’s makes mine hurt more. The sensation of crawling, the information is jerked from me roughly. Whatever burst of energy he’d given the tech is gone, and it's determined to take my consciousness with it.

Or maybe that’s my heart.

My lids flutter as I sag, Nine’s arms jerking me up, making him grunt in pain as he lifts me into his arms. “Stay with me sweetling. You’re going to see the sun, baby. I promise you.”

It’s the last thing I see for a moment before I’m woken again. Nine’s voice is harsh. “We’re almost there.”

That can’t be right.

Blood splatters across the glass and I frown at it. It’s not the windows, I try to lift my head to look around. Six slashes through the neck of a man and judging by the jostling around me, Nathan is doing the same.

“I’m going to rip you a fucking cunthole…” whatever colorful threat Nathan was wielding filters past as my eyes close again.

When I come back, it's to being shoved inside a tube, Nathan and Six fighting to get the door closed as it jolts, taking off at rapid speed. The clear door splinters inwards as part of it is jerked through the shaft. Six pitches forward, barely stopping before his face connects with the exposed wall of the shaft. Nathan sucks in a pained breath, his mechanical arm whirling loudly. My eyes widen in horror at it as I see the place where his hand was. Something slams loudly into the bottom of the tube, cracking the glass but my eyes can’t focus on it.

“Nathan-“

“We’re good baby. I got you out. We did-“

The tube pitches violently and Nathan screams my name over the ringing in my ears. The tube shouldn’t be able to turn like this…

We’re sideways?

---