I look around, not even knowing if more of Quldo’s bots are readying to strike. There’s the sound of scraping from the smoke-filled atrium in front of me. I can make out sparks and then hear a sharp click, then a rising in pitch until it locks into a steady tone. The air fills with a tight, vibratingvvvvvvvvthat doesn’t fade—something’s powered back on.
It's shadow looms through the haze, and hold my breath as I throw myself over Mekkra’s barely breathing chest.
“Mae?” Starcroft's confused digital voice asks as he materializes from the smoke.
“Starcroft!” My fear turns to joy. “How do we save him?”
CHAPTER TEN
The atrium smells like burnt wiring and coagulating blood, and there’s only two of us on this ship who bleed.
“Mekkra.” His name leaves my lips as if it’s been punched out of my chest.
He’s on his side, one arm bent wrong beneath his hulking form. And from what looks like at least twenty stab wounds on his one side, red leaks through…way too much red.
My hand hovers over Mekkra’s chest, unsure of what to do.
“You’re not allowed to die,” I whisper, swallowing hard. “A warlord doethn’t get to die in the damn hallway!”
A wheezing huff leaves him, and I can’t tell if it’s a tiny laugh or a punctured lung.
“If you let me die, you’d be free,” he rasps before his head lolls back and he loses consciousness for a moment. He comes to again with a cough.
“Thut up.” My voice, even through the annoyance of my lisp, shakes. “Don’t you dare—” I can’t even bring myself to say die.
My hands circle his wrists, and I use every bit of my strength in what feels like an impossible tugof war. Even with Starcroft’s help, dragging Mekkra’s body to the medbay feels like a marathon.
“Leave me,” he mutters.
Like that’s even an option.
“And do what? Take over ath Warlord Mae? Abtholutely the fuck not,” I scoff.
The lights overhead flicker, and something down the corridor groans—metal bending, systems failing.
I don’t have fucking time for this.
I switch my grip, hooking my arms under his, and drag him. My arms are slick with his leaking blood.
Mekkra's spines scrape at the floor like nails on a chalkboard, leaving jagged trails as they scrape their path.
“Medbay is just three doors down, don’t give up on Warlord Mekkra just yet,” Starcroft’s muffled digital voice comes from behind the alien’s body.
“Three door isth nothing for Mekkra, you can make that right?”
His head lolls backwards, there’s blood at the corner of his mouth, and without thinking, I wipe it away with my sleeve.
“Are you…you’re crying,” he murmurs.
“I am not.”
I am.
With one last tug of his arms, I fall backward, tripping over the metal threshold of the medbay’s door frame. The wind is knocked out of me as I lie flat on my back, and I only start breathing when what looks like a claw machine crane hovers over me before dropping and quickly ratcheting straps around Mekkra’s back.
“I should have…protected you. Shouldn’t have brought you into my dangerous world,” he says, regret fraying the edges of his voice.
“But you did, and now you’re not allowed to die.”
