Page 131 of Thorne
She weighs almost nothing. Her head lolls against my shoulder. Her arms hang loose. I've carried wounded operators out of firefights. I've dragged men twice her size through hostile terrain.
Butthisis the heaviest thing I've ever lifted.
The door is twelve feet away. I count them. Twelve feet through halon haze, through the white vapor that killed her, past the server racks humming with their trapped AI.
Three steps. Four. Five.
Her chest isn't moving. Her face is gray. I don't know how long she's been down. I was unconscious. I don't know for how long. She was doing compressions when I went out. How longdid she keep going? How long did she fight before the halon took her?
Seven steps. Eight.
The door handle is cold under my palm. I shove it open. The corridor air hits my skin: stale, recycled, but breathable. Real oxygen. Real air.
The concrete is like ice through my tactical pants, but the heat in my chest is a white-out. I lay her flat, her head lolling back, and rip the mask off my face. The halon has thinned, replaced by the smell of ozone and burnt circuitry, but the air still feels too thin to breathe.
"Julianna."
Nothing. Her eyes are closed, the lashes dark against skin that's turned a terrifying, translucent gray. Her lips are a bruised blue. Her chest is a flat, motionless horizontal.
The math has stopped.
I find the center of her sternum. My hands are shaking, a fine, violent tremor that I have to crush as I lace my fingers together. I lock my elbows. I lean my weight over her.
One-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four.
I can hear the beat in the back of my skull. It's the most cliché, ridiculous piece of advice they give you in every certification course—keep the tempo to a disco track. In any other universe, I'd laugh at the absurdity of it. Here, in the wreckage of a god-complex server room, it's the only tether I have to the living.
Stayin'-alive—ah—ah—ah—ah—stayin'-alive.
She's so small. I've had my hands on her body a hundred different ways: gripping her in the dark, holding her upright, hurting her to pay a debt, wanting her until it felt like a fever. I've memorized the geography of her body, admired the brilliance of her mind. The architecture of her ribs beneath my palms feels fragile, like I could snap the very thing I'm trying to jumpstart.
Five-and-Six-and-Seven-and-Stayin'-alive.
"Come on," I growl, the rhythm dictated by a Four-on-the-floor beat that feels like a mockery. "Don't you dare do this. The loop is seated. The math is finished. You don't get to leave me."
I press harder. The friction of her shirt against my palms is the only thing I can feel. I'm giving her everything I have—the air in my lungs, the force in my shoulders, the sheer, arrogant will of a man who refuses to let the ledger close on this note.
Ah—ah—ah—ah.
I tilt her head back. Pinch her nose. I cover her mouth with mine and breathe, forcing the life back into a vacuum.
"Stay with me." I press my lips against her cold forehead, the plea barely a breath. "Stay."
I go back to the compressions. My muscles are screaming, the adrenaline beginning to crash, but I don't break the tempo. I can't. If the music stops, she's gone.
One-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four-Stayin'-alive—ah—ah—ah—ah—Stayin'-alive.
"Come on. Come on, Julianna. You don't get to die. You don't get to save my daughter, and me, and then die on us both."
Her face is wrong. Slack. Empty. The woman who built financial empires, designed recursive traps, and took a bullet for a six-year-old, can't be gone.
I start again.One-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four …
"Thorne?" Fuse's voice comes from somewhere down the corridor. "Thorne, what's?—"
"Get help." I don't look up. "Now."
Footsteps. Running.
