Page 23 of Vylit: Glowing for Her
Her translation patch blared a panic alert I didn’t have time to parse.
Every nerve in my body lit up in war-stripes, bioluminescence howling emergency through my skin. I launched off the bulkhead, driving all mass and muscle toward her. We collided in the breach, water already closing over her head, her body spinning out of my reach on the outgoing current. I roared, the sound transmuted by water into a bassline that shook the entire compartment. My fingers grazed the moss, then her ankle, but she slipped free, the current too strong, and for one heart-stopping instant I saw her silhouette dwindling, every instinct screaming that this was the last time. That I would never get another chance to hold her.
I detonated my swim membrane, a move that cost me several layers of skin and the last of my internal oxygen. The explosion of motion sheared me through the water, catching up to her half a meter from the open hull. She was floating weakly in the water, her eyes half-closed, her mouth fixed in an expression of utter disbelief. I wrapped both arms around her waist, tucking her against my ventral side, and redirected all my momentum into a savage kick that flung us both away from the breach.
The new water hammered us into the secondary wall, pain blooming from my shoulder to my jaw as the impact tore open old wounds. My secondary heart skipped, then scrambled to keep up with the system demand. I pressed her against the wall, using myself to protect her, and I hissed as the pain nearly blinded me. She was conscious but dazed, her eyes glassy and her mouth moving around a breath that wouldn’t come.
The Breather mask had been torn off from where I'd left it dormant next to her translator.
Fucking perfect.
I assessed our options with cold clarity. The pirate vessel was fused to our hull, dragging us both downward toward the abyss, but the initial shock had abated, water pressure equalized, slowing the influx. There would be a short window… fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, before the interior re-pressurized and crushed us both. I needed her breathing before then.
I risked one hand, digging into the moss and yanking free the tangle where the Breather had vanished. It took a full second to locate the device. Another to realize it was damaged, the main filter membrane ruptured. Useless. But my rebreather was designed for a much larger face, and if I sealed it directly to her mouth and nose…
She flailed as I pressed the device against her lips, her hands going up to bat me away. I gripped her wrists with my free hand, forcing her to hold still. "Breathe," I thought at her, trying to push the urgency through the still-fragile bond between us. The mask suctioned to her face, and after one long, convulsive moment, her body seized and then relaxed. The expansion of her chest, the slow dilation of her pupils… I could have wept with relief.
The current yanked us both sideways as another shockwave rattled the hull. I felt the pirate skiff trying to peel away, but it was jammed in the wound it had made, creating a wild eddy that spun us both in death-spiral circles. I looked up and saw a glimmer through the opening… blue light, not the blood-warm bioluminescence of my own kind, but the cold, digital gleam of Silvyr’s nano-drones fighting for control of the breach. In the momentary quiet, I caught the ghost-echo of his voice over the comm channel, staticky but insistent.
"Stabilize the mate. Kazmyr’s patching the core. Ten seconds to pressure restore."
Ten seconds to get her out of the breach or have both of us compressed to jelly against the inner hull.
I twisted her in my arms, locking our legs together and bracing her head against my chest. My blood slicked the inside of the corridor, leaving a tracer path back to the control node. I powered us forward, ignoring the way my injured arm screamed in protest, every motion costing me more than I could afford. The water thickened as we reached the cross-duct already, Kazmyr’s heat signature pulsed through the corridor, the temperature rising as he flash-baked the edges of the wound.
"Go!" Maya’s patch buzzed, not her voice, but a rebroadcast of the ship's announcement. "Hull integrity failing?—"
It didn’t need to finish. I hurled us both into the corridor, the narrowing gap nearly taking my left foot off at the ankle as the patchwork moss shrank to close behind us. Kazmyr’s massive bulk filled the far end, both arms glowing with fusion heat, welding the corridor shut as Silvyr’s drones built a temporary bulkhead behind him.
The thermal shock wave followed us, flash-boiling the water to steam in a split second. The effect on my exposed skin was immediate and horrendous. Every nerve lit up in agony, my vision fracturing into a checkerboard of pain. Maya’s body jerked in my arms, but the Breather stayed sealed and I could still feel the stutter of her heart through the new skin of my chest.
We tumbled to the deck, limbs entangled, the water hissing around us as the steam vented up into the life-support grid. For several seconds, I simply lay there, both arms and legs wrapped around her, the weight of her body the only proof that I’d succeeded… that she was not lost.
She coughed, a wet, desperate sound that turned into a fit of gasping laughter as she clung to my forearms. I couldn’t let go. Despite the diminishing pain, the idea of nearly losing her made me feel paralyzed.
Kazmyr loomed over us, his obsidian skin laced with new, white-hot Ember Marks from the heat surge. His eyes met mine with the same mixture of disgust and admiration he reserved for the terminally reckless. He knelt, using two fingers to check Maya’s pulse, then grunted, satisfied.
"You nearly cooked your own mate," he said, his voice rough with relief. "Impressive."
Silvyr’s projection appeared in the upper corner of my vision, silver face flickering with static. "Structural breach sealed. Hostile vector withdrawing. You two may proceed with your emotional decompression at leisure."
I would have laughed if my lungs worked. Instead, I rolled onto my back, pulling Maya atop me, using my own body as insulation against the freezing surface of the corridor. She shivered, hands still clutching my arms. The Breather hissed softly as it recalibrated to the new atmosphere.
Only then did I register the state of my own body. The water had rinsed away the top layer of my bioluminescent skin, revealing the raw, glassy tissue underneath. Blood wept from half a dozen cuts, each one glowing with the promise of infection. But none of it mattered, because the warmth of Maya’s body against mine, the pulse of her blood, the rhythm of her breathing, had become my entire world.
She peeled herself off my chest, but sat on my hips, her face red and streaming with water. "You absolute maniac," she said, and the words were all at once a curse, a compliment, and a confession.
My hands were still around her waist. I let them linger.
"You’re safe, Mate." I said, the words emerging as a growl even as I tried to soften them.
Her lips trembled, a laugh threatening. "You promised to take me home, remember?" Her hand found my cheek, thumb smearing a line of my own blood across the edge of my jaw. "Or was that just a line for the Agency report?"
I stared at her, all the words I’d rehearsed a thousand times falling away, useless. For a moment, I saw what I must look like to her… half-flayed, glowing, more animal than man, clutching her as if she was the last thing standing between me and extinction.
The thought of returning her to Earth tasted like poison. It always had. I just hadn’t allowed myself to believe it until now.
I let my forehead rest against hers, breathing in the salt and adrenaline. "I lied," I said, so quietly only the bond could carry it. "I lied to them, to myself, to you. I will never let you go."
