Page 34 of Night in a Waste Land

“Beck,” she tried again.

But he stepped back, still holding her gaze, still grinning. His wings stretched, lifted, dropped, cupping and catching air. And then they were flapping, and he was lifting, hovering. And then he tipped his face up to the rain, and his wings gave a great thrust, and he was off. Flying.

Flying.

Away from her, as gracefully and lithely as he did everything.

EIGHT

Before

“Will he accept a new limb?” Morgan asked. She considered the board set up on the cot between them, then carefully took her rook between two small fingers and moved it.

“I don’t know.” Rose sighed. “We all want him to. Tris has been – especially encouraging about it. The doctors and scientists here have made some major progress with the tech. But. He says he doesn’t want to have something clunky that hinders more than it helps.”

Gallo had been more stoic and gracious about his injury than any of them could have hoped. He’d tried to downplay the pain, even when he was white-faced and sweating with it. Insisted that he didn’t need help, though God knew it had been offered. He had a new stubborn set to his jaw that made him look older, harder in a way he never had before. So many would have wept and despaired, but Gallo had absorbed his trauma and it burned hot in his chest, fueling him the same way that Rose’s fueled her.

“Hm,” Morgan hummed. “Maybe I could help.”

Rose paused with her hand on her knight, and glanced up. “Help how?”

Morgan was examining her own fingers. “I’m not sure. But I could try.”

~*~

“Absolutely not,” Captain Bedlam said, shaking her head for emphasis. “Greer, are you insane?”

Rose bit back a sigh of frustration. “Ma’am, what could it hurt to try?”

“She could kill him, for one,” Bedlam snapped. “Or have you spent so much time with her that she’s turned you against us?”

“Captain,” Lance said, firmly, before Rose could respond. “That’s not fair.”

“Did you forget what she is? This is aconduit, Sergeant!”

“I’m aware.”

“Last time I checked, we kill conduits – we don’t invite them to perform medical experiments on our Knights!”

“This one’s different,” Rose said, and earned a scathing glare of challenge from her captain. “She helped us. She’s cooperated with every one of our requests. She stays locked up in that cell and never complains, even though she could burn this whole place to the ground if she wanted to.”

You could have cut glass with the clenched edge of Bedlam’s jaw. “And who says she won’t?”

“I do.”

Rose heard Bedlam and Lance inhale at the same time.

Lance said, “Captain–”

Gallo interrupted. He stepped forward and inserted himself into the conversation, where before he’d been hanging back near the door.

“Francis,” Tris hissed.

He was ignored. “I want to try it,” Gallo said, boldly, chest thrust out, cradling his stump with his good hand. “I want to stay, and I want to fight, and the current prosthetic isn’t good enough. If…” He glanced toward Rose for confirmation. “Morgan?”

Rose nodded.

He nodded in return, and looked back to the captain. “If Morgan can help make it more efficient, then I want to let her try. My choice. I’ll sign whatever waivers I need to.”

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