Roderick’s shouted warning was appreciated but unneeded.Kira felt the shift in the air.Instinct and training kicked in.She shifted ever so slightly to her left, lunging forward at the same time.Just enough for the blade intended for her heart to blaze a path over her bicep.
She slashed outward with her en-blade, feeling a moment of fierce satisfaction as its tip bit into something substantial.
Mars’s glow dampened, giving her, her first look at his expression.Resignation.Pain.And maybe a little bit of disappointment as he glanced downward at the flood of blood coming from his abdomen.
The blade had nearly cut him in half, slicing through several vital organs and letting his guts slip out.
Unless he got care right now, the wound was a mortal one.
Mars’s legs collapsed.
Kira caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.“You should have walked away, brother.”
He would have lived a little longer.
Mars’s laugh was tired.“I couldn’t do that.”
“No, I guess you couldn’t.”
The forty-three were stubborn like that.
“Why did you do this?”Kira asked with a touch of heartbreak in her voice.
Her gaze strayed to the wound on his abdomen, sadness stealing over her for a brief moment.This wasn’t what she’d wanted.Another sibling dead at her hands.Even if the code of honor she lived by wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Ryan’s plan would see us enslaved all over again.”
“What does that mean?What plan?”Kira asked, shaking Mars slightly when he didn’t answer.
He was fading fast, death creeping over him in slow increments shown by the white leaching into his hair, climbing toward his scalp as his pallor faded and his skin took on the pasty grayness that heralded the end.
“The eight aren’t done yet.You’ll see.”
Mars’s breath rattled from his lungs in one last, final exhale.
“Who are the eight?”Kira demanded.
It was no use.Mars was gone.
“Damn it!”
As angry as Kira was, she made sure to be gentle as she moved Mars’s head from her lap and set it on the ground.Whatever he’d become, he’d once been her brother.That meant something.To her.If not to him.
“Are you alright?”Roderick asked as Kira rose.
“No, but that’s not what matters right now.”
Grief and anger could wait.
“We have to find Jin and the rest of the children,” Kira said, coldly determined.
She had a mission to finish.Once that was done, she could figure out who these eight were and what they were hoping to accomplish by all this.
Kira helped Roderick up, ignoring his grimace of pain and the way blood was beginning to seep around the synth armor’s seal.It seemed his fall had left him more wounded than before.
They hobbled forward.Another half hour passing in which Roderick grew increasingly fatigued.Kira wasn’t doing so great herself.The wound Mars had given her throbbed in a way that she suspected meant his little bone dagger had done more damage than she’d thought.
Her ankle wasn’t doing so great either.Each step sending a lance of sharp pain up and down her leg.
