Sirena.
The words pierced through static, through the quiet hum of suspended systems and backup processes.
The last thing I remembered was shunting all available oxygen to my brain, letting everything else fail. Heart rate: slowed. Body: hypoxic. Survival protocol: preserve cognition.
Let everything else fail, except memory.
But now:
[REACTIVATION: FORCED]
[BODY STATUS: POST-TRAUMA STABILIZATION]
[IMPLANT STABILITY: COMPROMISED – ADAPTIVE SYNC IN PROGRESS]
[CURRENT LOCATION: UNKNOWN]
I opened my eyes.
Light stabbed in—too bright, too clean. A shipboard medbay?
The last thing I remembered was her anguished look as I was swept out to sea.
Panic surged. Systems flared, sluggish and half-synced. I reached for Xen across the mesh—nothing.
I wasn’t braided in here. No access. No uplink. Just meat and static.
I turned my head, slowly.
To the left: monitors.
One screen tracked my vitals—elevated, but stable. From the time on the screen, my estimated downtime had been twelve hours.
Unacceptable.
To the right: a ventilator.
My chest rose and fell with its rhythm, impersonal and metered.
I couldn’t call for her like this—or warn the rest of the MSA about Voss.
I took one breath and then—with careful fingers—reached up to find the tube that led from the ventilator into my lungs, and slowly, precisely, pulled it free. Without damaging my vocal cords. Because I was going to need them.
But I hadn’t accounted for the ventilator’s alarm giving me away. It started blaring, hissing the air meant for me into the room, and people rushed in. Royce and Omara, Cassia and Lung, and behind them, a being I could only assume was Xen—in a body.
I was so proud.
Then Sirena flew in past all of them, rushing to my bedside, picking up my hand to hold it to her chest. “What are you doing?” she asked, with tears in her eyes.
I gave her the only answer I could. “Loving you.”
62 /SIRENA
The steadying kraken’stentacle withdrew as we were yanked from the sea—and then we slammed down onto something that rocked beneath us with a bone-jarring jolt.
“Keep kissing him,” demanded the thing beside me—whatever it was that’d brought us here. “I need to prep a room for surgery.”
And then the boat started moving. Fast.
