Page 28 of Ascendent
“No one did. No one ever has.” He glared at Dr. Voronov. “Until now.” Vulnerability scratched at his bones.
His fingers flexed and twisted, pushed and pushed against the metal he held in his hand. He’d swiped a cufflink of Sergey’s, something big and bulky, and had kept it with him since the movie premiere. He had to touch it, hold it. Had to feel something of Sergey’s, hold on to that warmth that infused every part of Sergey. Without it, he’d freeze over. He knew he would.
Dr. Voronov held his stare. “I received a copy of your pre-surgical MRIs.”
He and Dr. Voronov had gone to the University’s hospital, to the wing that hadn’t been destroyed in the fighting. Some walls still had bullet holes in the concrete, and burn marks scorched the lobby, the stairwells. He’d spent the day there, undergoing more medical exams and tests than he’d thought were possible.
You’re dead. You’re already dead. Your heart is made of ice.He could hear it now, as if Dr. Voronov had already spoken.You’ve frozen from the inside out. You’re a monster. An aberration. You’re an infection, and we must contain you.
Before you kill Sergey.
“You have some significant scar tissue in your—” Dr. Voronov’s lips thinned as Sasha’s head whipped up. He stared, his jaw falling open.
“You can see that?” His voice was lighter than a shooting star, the first falling snowflake in winter.
“This was a comprehensive medical imaging. NASA wants full spectrum images of your entire body. Three-D MRI, CT, PET, ultrasounds, x-rays, EKGs. They need to know your body better than you know it yourself.”
He couldn’t breathe. Snow filled his mouth, choked his throat. Ice circled his spine, raced down his legs, his arms, froze his hands. Sergey’s cufflink wasn’t saving him. He was destroying it, freezing it. “They’ll throw me out,” he whispered. “They’re going to discharge me!”
“NASA does not care about your sexuality.”
“Stop saying that!” He spun away, pitching forward, his hands sliding into his hair, gripping his skull.
“They don’t care, not about that. But theywillcare about evidence of trauma and about whether you’ve healed. Physically and mentally.”
“We are not talking about this!”
“Sasha—”
“No!” Sasha leaped to his feet. His blood thrummed. Snow fell everywhere, in his mind, the edges of his vision. He heard jet engines take off, felt the burn of the after wash like a frozen gale, like plunging into the Arctic waters. “You’re not a psychologist! I don’t have to talk to you! You don’t even know what you’re doing! Stick to IVs and cutting out body parts! It’s all you’re good at!”
“This is not the West, Europe or America! You want a psychologist? Go cry in Vienna, lay on a couch and sob your childhood away! This is Russia! And you are Russian! A hero! You face the truth and you accept it because you are made of strength. Russian strength! Nothing can break you, Sergey says! Is he lying?”
“I know the truth! I already know it!”
“You were attacked.”
“I’m afreak!” Sasha roared. “I’m a monster! I deserved it!” He stormed across the room, looming over Dr. Voronov.
The old man didn’t flinch. He stared up at Sasha. “Is Sergey a freak, too? Does he deserve the same?”
He felt his heart shatter. Burst into a billion icy shards, scatter to the beyond. His breath hitched. Snow obscured the world, whited out reality. “No,” he hissed. “Not him. Never him.” Something grabbed his throat, yanked. His grief pulled him down, down to the floor, beneath the surface of the Earth, to the blackness of the pit in his soul.
“You are the same, are you not?”
“No! He’s nothing like me!”
“He loves you.”
He was going to vomit. He was going to vomit out his guts, replace his stomach and his liver and his intestines with coils of ice. He turned away, pacing to the far wall. Images flashed in the snow, shadows against the storm of his mind. A desk. Hands holding him down. Cold, the chill on the back of his thighs. A hand—
The images smeared, and suddenly it was Sergey, Sergey held over the desk, Sergey restrained—
“No!” His fist slammed into the wall, the plaster denting, smashing into the brick. Pain rocketed up his arm. Blood welled on his knuckles, stained the white wall, the center of the dent.
Dr. Voronov hauled him back to the chair and examined his fist. He was silent as he cleaned Sasha’s knuckles, wrapped two and glued the split skin of a third back together. Sergey’s cufflink bit into the skin of his palm, dug into the center of his hand.
“If…that… happened to Sergey.” Sasha shook his head. “I couldn’t go on.”
