When she didn’t speak Stryker continued, “Unless–”
“Unless?”
“You want to go back now with Netto,” he finished.
“Ha! No thank you, I’ll stay right here with you. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
His brow crinkled and as she stood, holding up her towel, he reached into his suit and pulled something out and handed it to her. Norah let go of her towel with one hand and took it.
It was a picture of him. A picture of his face.
Without the mask.
Tears sprung to her eyes and she pressed the image to her chest, over her heart.
“So you can see me whenever you want, whenever you need to.”
Her throat closed up but she strangled out the words, “I love you.”
“I love you too, babe.” He pulled her into his arms and she crushed her tear-streaked face into his chest.
“What now?” she asked as she clung to him.
“That’s up to you. My affairs, at least those that need attention, are in order. Now it’s just you.”
“I want to see my family,” she quipped up before she had a chance to stop herself. It hurt. It hurt more than anything, thinking about them and everything that had happened to her. She had almost died, numerous times, without saying goodbye, without saying I love you, without having them in her life.
Stryker lifted her chin. “Then that, Norah Lee, is our next mission.”
Norah wanted to say a lot of things at that moment. She wanted to relay how much he had changed her life, how much he mattered to her, how she would never make the mistakes she had made before now that she was with him. Her heart bled. The love that had captured her had only grown and it flooded every fiber of her being. There was so much that she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the words.
So instead she lifted onto her toes; Stryker met her halfway. And with the image of his face crushed between them, they pressed their foreheads together.
She was Axone. And she had something to bring back to Earth after all.
Epilogue:
***
Norah stood in the alleyway, looking up the steps that led into her family’s condo. She remembered the place, embedded in her memory, her childhood.
The flashing high rise towered over her and the neon lights in the windows of nearby shops hit the glass windows of the building, splintering outward in a cascade of technicolor. Somewhere far above, where, if she looked straight up, she could see it past the constant array of vehicles, thunder roared through the clouds.
It echoed throughout the streets, a heavy ringing that drowned out the industrial noises of the street.
Some part of her hoped that it would rain.
Another part of her hoped that it wouldn’t.
Rain was a constant. Somewhere in the universe, it was raining. And it always would.
She had been planetside for several days now, dealing with EonMed and overseeing the transport of the shrieker she and Stryker had acquired. It had been grueling, but now the beast was locked away on one of the laboratories that floated over Earth. And after the fallout with Lindsey, Robert’s girlfriend, she couldn’t bear one more bad situation. Stryker had taken out funds to cover Lindsey’s failing eyesight and to have her eyes replaced with cybernetic ones. It hadn’t helped.
The EPED was sending Stryker back out to acquire another Wieraptor. Some concessions were made and she was going to join him. It would use up all of her vacation time but afterward, when the beast was delivered, he would stay with her on Earth and take up a consultation job.
He wouldn't hunt monsters anymore but he would oversee them. Stryker would guard one of the research facilities floating in orbit; his ship would be traded in for an advanced battle cruiser. It was hard to find a Cyborg who was willing to protect, anything, for any corporation.
Norah glanced up at Stryker and his brown eyes flashed blue at her. She loved it when he did that.
