Page 53 of My Alien Bughead
“You’re…crazy,” D’Aakh whispers next to me. “I…love you, Lucía. Just…wanted you…to know.”
His voice is weak. Too weak. Fuck! I turn to him, my heart nearly stopping when I see how pale he is. His antennae don’t even glow anymore. “D’Aakh? Shit, stay with me!”
I grab his comm and shout into it, “Nikolai! D’Aakh needs help. HURRY!” There are voices coming from the device,demanding status updates or something, but I toss it aside. Talking won’t do D’Aakh any good.
I climb astride his hips and slam my fist into his chest with all my might. Then I start CPR, pouring all of my fear and anger into the chest compressions. D’Aakh has to live. He has to.
An unidentifiable amount of time later, Nikolai joins me. “How long since he lost consciousness?” he asks, as if I have a fucking stopwatch on me. He injects D’Aakh with something that has absolutely no effect, then holds a scanner over his chest. “Fuck, this is what I’ve been worried about. Tareq! Get a stretcher! We need to get him to the infirmary. Call Xr and tell him to prepare for surgery.”
Surgery? I cast a frightened look at Nikolai, not fighting him when he pushes me aside. “You will save him, right?” I beg, tears trailing down my dirty face.
Nikolai’s expression is forlorn and when he shrugs his shoulder, my heart breaks. “I don’t know, Lucía. I’m not sure if anyone can save him at this point.”
Tareq arrives with the stretcher. They load D’Aakh onto it and carry him away. I want to follow them but I can’t seem to get my legs to work. I can’t seem to get anything to work. “Please, God,” I pray. “I know I’ve been bothering you a lot lately but please, do this one last thing for me and save D’Aakh. You can take me if you want to but save him. I think…” No, I don’t think. I know. “I love him. He has to survive. Please.”
Chapter 31
D’Aakh
Once again, I wakeup in the Supernova’s infirmary. Once again, I’m in terrible pain. And, once again, I’m not dead.
I don’t get it. How do I keep surviving when I shouldn’t?Whydo I keep surviving when I shouldn’t? The mathematical odds of survival are a million to one against me and yet, here I am. Math sucks.
I struggle to open my eyes. The room is dark, the lights dimmed to their night cycle. How long was I asleep?
As I try moving my arms, I figure out two things. I’m restrained again and I’m hurt. The pain is different from lasttime. Before, it was a general ache everywhere. My joints, my muscles, my bones. Now, the pain seems to be concentrated in my chest, raw and intense, flaring sharply every time I move. Or breathe. Or when my heart beats. So basically, all of the damn time.
“D’Aakh?”
Panic rises at the sound of my name. That’s not the voice I want to hear. As vain and delusional as I am, I’d expected Lucía to be sitting by my side when I woke up. It’s crazy of me to assume she’d be idly sitting by for hours while her people struggled with the aftermath of the attack. Or… Fuck! Was she hurt?
“D’Aakh,” Nikolai calls out, his voice bringing me back from the brink of a panic attack. “Please don’t move. For real, this time. Everything is fine. We defended the station successfully. Everyone’s alive. Including Lucía. So calm down and stop moving or I’ll have to knock you out again.”
I wasn’t moving, was I? Well, maybe a little but that sharp pain in my chest quickly stopped me. What is it that hurts so much, anyway? I know how broken ribs feel but this is so much worse. It feels like something clawed my chest open and rearranged my organs.
Nikolai offers me water which I gratefully accept, even if swallowing causes me to wince in pain. More pain. Just what I need.
“How…long?” Each word is a struggle.
“Five days.”
I blink. Did he just say days? I was out for fivedays?!
“I’m not even sure how you survived other than you being one stubborn motherfucker who simply refused to die, even when all of the odds were against you.” He half whacks half punches me in the shoulder. To my surprise, it barely hurts, especially compared to the pain in my chest. “I told you to rest. Iorderedyou not to move. And what did you do? You sprinted down a fucking tunnel just to get yourself blown up again! Seriously! You and Lucía are banned from explosives forever. I mean, getting blown up occasionally is probably normal in your line of work but twice in two days?! You two are either extremely unlucky or just crazy.”
My grimace is not just from the pain as I remember, “Crazy? Lucía…got shot!” I’ll never forget the sound she made when that laser bolt hit her. “Is she…?”
“I told you already, she’s fine. It was just a graze. Their station doctor fixed it while I was operating on your fucking HEART!” Nikolai rubs his frustrated hands down his face. “You do know I’m not qualified for any of this, right? I’m not even qualified to perform heart surgery on humans, let alone on stupid aliens! I had no fucking idea what I was doing!”
“I’m alive. You…did great,” I half wheeze through another pulse of pain.
He snorts. “Don’t thank me yet. I’m fairly certain that with the mess I made of your heart and arteries, you won’t ever be fit enough to go back to super-soldiering. Not to mention the damage to the heart tissue that was already done by the stimulants followed by you deciding to go cold turkey and nearly dying in the process.”
Grief doesn’t hit me as hard as I thought it would. Even if I never go back to being a Voidstalker, I can still be a technician. I can still have a life. With Lucía. Provided she’ll want a cripple by her side.
“Where…”
I meant to ask where Lucía is but Nikolai answers a different question. “We’re at the Schloppe station. Apparently, it’s a rather shady place but it’s outside of the UGC’s sphere of influence. We couldn’t stay at the Alevvo station much longer, not with the UGC ships on their way. They would have tried toarrest you guys and Zarkan wanted to avoid a fight. We’re here for…”
