She scrubbed a hand over her face, ridding herself of any last trace of emotion.
Raider groaned a few steps away.“I think I broke my collarbone.”
Like Kira, he must have been thrown into the wall during the blast.He was lying on his back, half buried under the stone, staring up at the sky.
“Can you move?”Kira asked, shifting over to help him up.
A short distance away, Bez was doing the same with his people.His gaze met Kira’s briefly before he went back to tending Az and Pye.
“I think so.What happened?”
“Bomb.”
Raider paused in the process of prodding the wound on the back of his head.“Must have been a pretty big one to do all this.”
“We think it took out the world gate.”
There was a resigned horror in Raider’s gaze as it met hers.“Fuck!”
“That about sums it up.”
Raider punched the ground next to him.“Damn it, Maksym!”
Losing your own never got easier.No matter how many times it happened.Every single loss felt like being stabbed in the gut anew.
You learned to contain your grief.To put it in a little box in your head and seal it up tight.
Every now and then, negative emotions leaked out of that box, laying waste to your mental health.Sometimes your personal relationships too.
The only way to make it stop was to deal with what you locked away.
But that was easier said than done.
“Enemy combatant!”Az yelled.
She was firing into the trees before anyone else could react.Bez followed suit an instant later.
It was chaos for a few moments.
Kira didn’t know what Az saw that made her think they were under attack, but as the moments slipped by and no return fire was exchanged, she began to think the other woman was jumping at ghosts.
“Hold fire!Hold fire!”Dylan shouted.
It was several seconds before Az stopped shooting herzuipi.“There was someone there.I’m not imagining it.”
“No, you’re not,” someone called from the trees.“But did you ever stop to think they might be friendlies?”
Kira knew that voice.“Maksym?”
The ginger menace poked his head out from behind a tree.“You were expecting someone else?”
“Holy shit!I think he might have more lives than you, Nixxy.How the hell did you survive?”Raider asked Maksym.
The oshota left the cover of his tree, glancing at Az and Bez who still had their weapons pointed at him.“Mind pointing those somewhere else?Violence makes me frisky.”
Bez did so without delay.
Az was a little slower,suspicion written all over her face.“The human raises an excellent point.Why are you alive?You were supposed to be guarding the gate.”
