Page 98 of Elanie & the Empath
She pulled my face to hers, kissing me over and over, her tears salty on her lips, on mine.
“We must do it now,” Maximus growled. “There is no time.”
“You can’t ask me to do this,” I said, meeting her stare, refusing to imagine what it would feel like to look into her eyes and see someone who didn’t know me looking back. “I can’t let you go. I love you.”
With the saddest smile I had ever seen, she said, “I know.” She brushed her lips over mine. “And I have loved you since I saw those tiny blue and red sailboats on your underwear.” When she gazed up at me, the sorrow in her eyes broke me in half. “You’ve asked me twice now. And I’ve yet to give you an answer. But it’s yes, Sem. If you died, I’d miss you. I’d miss you so much, so thoroughly, so deeply I’m not sure I’d ever find my way back to the surface. And this ishow I keep you alive. Because you will survive this. You will survive without me.”
“Please. Please don’t leave me.” I whispered it like a prayer, though I knew it was futile. No Saints would hear me down here.
“I’m not leaving. I’ll just be lost, but you can find me.” She kissed me again, looping her arms around my neck while the lock on the door slid free. “You can find me, remind me. Don’t lose hope. Don’t give up on us. Mal has?—”
The door flew open, and Gol’s menacing bulk filled the frame. He moved toward us, his steps certain and ominous, two power syphons dangling like shackles from his hands.
“Do it now,” Maximus cried. “Avenge your family.”
When Lars aimed his prod at Maximus’s skeletal form, the master mechanic assumed a fighter’s stance.
Elanie’s eyes were huge and filled with fear. “Find me, Sem. Promise me.”
And as I held her close, surrounding her, protecting her with my body, my love, with everything I could, I said, “I will. I promise.”
I’d barely spoken the words when a wave of indescribable pressure rushed through the room. In the space of a breath, the beat of a heart, the world around me, including the woman in my arms, went completely and terribly still.
37.SEM
Apparently,Maximus really had been pretending to be weaker than he was. The Aquilian Royal Guard had trained him well, and with a swift kick to the groin and a surgical jab to the throat, he’d taken Lars down before Gol’s lifeless body had hit the floor.
I, on the other hand, sat motionless, stunned, gutted while holding Elanie in my arms. She was gone. Not entirely. She was still alive. Limp and heavy, but alive. But every part of her that knew me, the real me, every part of her that loved me, was gone. Worse than gone. Erased, like it had never been there at all.
“You have to leave her,” Maximus said, squatting in front of me.
“No.”
“Is that your favorite word? Because you say it all the time.” When I razed him with a tear-soaked glare, he relented. “I understand this may be difficult for you. But we have less than twenty-four hours before every bionic in Thura wakes up. Before that one”—he hooked a thumb toward Gol—“finds his way to his backupmemory, and all of this will have been for nothing. We have to get to the satellite array and call your ship before then.”
Snatching Lars’s cattle prod from the ground, Maximus spun it around once in a flourish and jabbed it into the Gorbie’s thigh.
When Lars cried out, Maximus sneered, “Hurts, doesn’t it?” before jabbing him again. “We’ll come back for her,” he promised me while he forced Lars to his feet and marched him toward the door. “And for Mal. But we have to go. Now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said into her hair. Then I kissed her head, then her lips. “I’ll be back soon. And then we can go home.”
Home, where she’d become herself again after her memory was restored from her last backup. A memory that wouldn’t include anything about this place. She wouldn’t remember how Thura’s soft breeze would blow through our windows and cool our skin at night. Or the way Grover’s ear-piercing crow would wake us up every morning. Or how a dinner of foot-eels by firelight could feel extravagant. Or how quickly foreign constellations could become familiar and comforting. She wouldn’t remember me. What it felt like to be with me. To know me. To love me.
I couldn’t bear it. And yet I had to, because she’d given me no other choice.
“I love you,” I said as I laid her down next to Mal. “More than you’ll ever know.” And then I stood, wiped my eyes, and made myself leave her behind.
“Can this thing go any faster?”Maximus shouted in my ear as I pointed one of Thura’s snowgliders toward the mountains where the satellite array was hidden.
“Do you wanna drive?” I snapped back, my teethchattering even though I was covered in so many furs I could barely move my arms. “No? Then zip it.”
To his credit, he did. He also hacked into the satellite system with the ease of a doctor taking a patient’s blood pressure. Even in my desolate, near comatose state, I marveled at his skill.
“How long did it take you and Elanie to jump here?” he asked after sending our distress signal to the coordinates where I guessed theIgnisarwould be on her route between Tranquis and The Aquilines.
“Nine hours, thirty-four minutes, and sixteen seconds,” I said, remembering what Elanie had told me in the pod with a stark accuracy. Hoping I’d remember everything else she’d said or done since with the same level of detail. Because that’s what she’d asked.You will have to remember it for me.“Give or take.”
“Not bad.” Maximus actually gave me an approving nod. “Let’s pad that a little and shoot for twelve.”
